The Covenant-Keeping God Part 2 Genesis 15:16-20

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It is Palm Sunday and next week we'll have a Easter sermon, but today
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I'm actually going to continue through our sermon series through Genesis. So if you have a
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Bible, you can turn to Genesis chapter 15, we're going to look at verses 16 through 20. And if you don't have a
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Bible with you, we have the red Bibles behind the pews that's on page 13.
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Then two weeks ago, the sermon focused on part one of a two -part series titled
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The Covenant Keeping God. The covenants that God makes with humans are a theme throughout the
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Bible. The Lord humbly descends to the human level to make a human covenant in order to show that he is making a promise that he will keep.
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He doesn't have to do this, but he does for our understanding.
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This is the way the Lord works. He always descends to our level so that we can understand him, the infinite
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God. The first covenant that we see in the Bible and we've already seen in the sermon series is the
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Noahic covenant where God promises that he will never destroy the earth again by water.
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And so the Lord made a covenant and the Lord has kept his promise. We haven't been flooded by water ever since.
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The Lord made other covenants too. Later on in the history of Israel, the Lord made a covenant with Israel that they are supposed to keep.
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This is known as the Mosaic covenant. Then during the time of the monarchy, about four or five hundred years after Moses, the
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Lord made a covenant with David, King David, that he and his offspring would have a throne that would go on forever.
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Lastly, the Lord made a covenant known as the New Covenant. This covenant started when Christ's blood was shed on the cross and all who believe in Christ, whether the church in the present or Israel in the future, enter this covenant and are able and they are able to keep this covenant because of the indwelling of the
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Holy Spirit. Now, the covenant that we started looking at two weeks ago and we're going to continue to look at today is known as the
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Abrahamic covenant. The Abrahamic covenant is probably the most significant covenant in the
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Bible, which is why we've taken three Sundays to focus on Genesis chapter 15.
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With this covenant, the question we're going to ask today, who is under the obligation to keep this covenant?
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Is it the Lord or is it Abram? And we will see that today because in some of the covenants, the obligation is on the people.
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Right. God makes his covenant with the people and they're supposed to keep the covenant. But in some covenants, the obligation is on God to keep the covenant.
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So this is what we're going to see today. Now, two weeks ago, when we did part one of this sermon, our big idea was the
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Lord shows his faithful dedication in formal pronouncements. And I introduced four ways that we see his faithfulness show up.
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And we looked at two of those ways two weeks ago. The first way was that he humbly descends to earthly procedures for our benefit.
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And the second way is that his faithfulness is shown by holding his promise through adversity.
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The third way, we're going to look at the third and fourth ways today. The third way is that he shows his faithfulness is by taking the responsibility to fulfill the promise.
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And what we looked at two weeks ago in point two was there was there's two reasons why the
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Lord made this the way that he made this covenant with Abram. Remember, I gave you the image that the animals are cut, right?
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The animals were cut and a path was made. And so if you can imagine, again, the aisle here, animals were slaughtered, the path was made and the slaughtered animals are on both sides of the aisle.
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The question we have to ask is why did the Lord give this instruction to Abram? We saw the first reason why two weeks ago, and that was that this was a symbolic prophecy that the
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Lord was making. This covenant that the Lord made with Abram happened in about 2000
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BC, so about 4000 years ago. And the symbolic prophecy was what was going to happen to Abraham's descendants.
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They were going to be held captive in slavery under the
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Egyptians for 400 years. OK, so the symbolism that we saw in in verses 12 through 13 of Genesis 15 is the animals that were on the ground symbolized
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Israel. They were the victims. And then the birds that came, the ravenous birds that came upon the animals, that was
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Egypt. And the Abram getting the birds away from these the victims on the ground symbolized
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Abram, of course, because the Lord was going to deliver Israel because of this promise that he made to Abram in the
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Abrahamic covenant, because that was the first reason why the Lord set it up this way with these paths. The second reason why the
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Lord makes this unique covenant with Abram by slaughtering the animal and then making the pathway with with the dead animals.
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And by the way, I know this is a little graphic. OK, I think you can handle it a little bit better than where I came from, because you're used to hunting and things like that.
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And I know we have some cow slaughter that happens here. We don't have any of that where I'm from. OK, so so I feel more comfortable presenting this to you.
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Now, the second reason the Lord makes this unique covenant with Abram by making this pathway of sacrifice to animals is to make it clear who is under obligation to fill this covenant.
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Like I said in the intro, the question we are asking right now is who is responsible to fulfill this covenant, the
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Lord or Abram? And verse 17 of chapter 15 gives us the answer.
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When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
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OK, so imagine right here this pathway. Imagine fire going through this aisle right here.
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That's what happens. Remember at this point earlier on in the narrative,
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Abram is asleep when this is happening. It's dark out. And this flaming torch goes through this path.
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And when this happens, the Lord is making it clear that he is under obligation to fulfill his promise in this covenant, not
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Abram. God is responsible to fulfill this covenant, not the man
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Abram. And he shows this by passing through the pathway. Abram does not pass through, but the
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Lord does. Now we know the Lord does not have a body. OK, so he can't walk through this path.
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And so he sends a symbol to pass through the path. Fire is symbolic for the presence of God in the
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Old Testament. What may come to your mind is Exodus 20 with the Ten Commandments when the fire and the cloud and the smoke was on the mountain where Moses met the
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Lord and the fire and the smoke and the cloud that symbolized the presence of the
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Lord. And some of you maybe have that picture from the old Charlton Heston movie, the
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Ten Commandments, if you've seen that famous movie. Now, this covenant that the
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Lord makes with Abram is a certain type of covenant where the superior is under the obligation.
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This covenant the Lord makes is known as a royal grant. These were covenants that the king has made with those who were lesser than them in the ancient
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Near East. So about 4000 years ago, this was a common thing. And so the Lord is descending again, like I mentioned, to this human level to make this royal grant covenant.
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And of course, the Lord is superior, far superior to Abram, and he makes this covenant to his loyal follower who is inferior to him.
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And he makes this covenant by giving him a reward to his faithful servants.
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The Lord blesses the faithful man, Abram, by giving him the rewards of offspring, a nation and the land.
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We've seen that reiterated over and over again over the last several months. The Lord has committed to doing this, and he is under obligation to do that.
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In the inter, I mentioned other covenants in scripture, this theme throughout scripture of these covenants that the
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Lord makes with people. The Mosaic covenant was different from the
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Abrahamic covenant. It was known as a treaty where the expectation or obligation was on the inferior, not the superior.
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This in the Mosaic covenant, the obligation is upon the people of Israel to keep this covenant.
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The Lord, through Moses, gave Israel 613 commands and prohibitions that they needed to keep.
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The responsibility was on the people to fulfill the obligation, not the Lord. He handed it to him and said,
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OK, here's the covenant I'm making with you. Now you do this. But that's not what's happening here in this sermon today.
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This covenant, the Lord makes with Abram, it's sometimes been called an unconditional covenant.
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Well, the Mosaic covenant has been called conditional. Those terms are fine, but more accurate terms are unilateral.
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It's happening from this side and bilateral. So Abrahamic covenant is unilateral.
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Mosaic is bilateral. I know this is pretty technical today, so I hope this makes sense.
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We've already seen a unilateral covenant with the Noahic covenant.
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Who's under the obligation? It's the Lord. The Lord says, I'm not going to make a flood. I'm not going to send a flood on the earth.
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And the sign that you're going to know that I'm not going to send the flood is every time you see a rainbow and we see rainbows all the time, we haven't seen in a while, but hopefully soon.
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Right. Every time you see a rainbow, it's saying that I'm not I'm reminding you that I'm not going to do this.
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I'm not going to flood the earth again. Another example of a unilateral covenant or an unconditional covenant is the
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Davidic covenant. The Lord established this with the throne of David forever.
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And that that covenant culminates in the forever Messiah, Jesus Christ. No one can stop this from happening since the
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Lord is going to bring it to pass. So we see that God makes covenants in the
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Old Testament where he is under obligation to keep them. And today, the Abrahamic covenant, this is one of those examples.
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The Lord is showing us that when he makes a promise, he is going to keep it. He is unable to break it since he is unable to lie.
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He makes a human covenant, knowing full well that he is going to keep it. Now, let me ask a question with an obvious answer.
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Did he keep this covenant? We have hindsight, right? We're four thousand years on the other side of this.
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We were able to look back and say, did he keep it? And of course, the obvious answer is absolutely. He kept it.
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Everything he said plays out exactly as he said. And only God can do that. Only God can can say what he's going to do in the future and then have it play out precisely how he said it was going to play out.
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Only God can do that. The one who knows everything, the one who knows the future. The Lord promised that Abram would have offspring, a nation would come from them and they would inherit the land.
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He promised that those who blessed Abram and his offspring would be blessed and those who got in their way would be cursed.
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Everything the Lord said came to pass. Even the length of time the Israelites would be in slavery.
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When the early Christian Stephen is getting stoned to death, he tells him a brief history of Israel and he says the
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Israelites were held in slavery in Egypt for 400 years. And that's precisely what the prophecy says here, that they're going to be in slavery for 400 years.
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So the Lord kindly descends to the level of making a human covenant for the sake of our understanding, and he keeps his promises 100 percent.
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As I was thinking about this this week, what this made me think of is this is the way the
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Lord operates in this world. The Lord is going to accomplish his purposes in the world, whether people are on board or not.
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He has this master plan that he is going to establish a kingdom where God will be the one who reigns forever.
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It first happens with the messianic kingdom during the 1000 year reign of Christ that's coming in the future and then the eternal kingdom that follows the 1000 year reign of Christ.
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The Lord promises that people will reign with him. Revelation 5 9 says that people from every tribe and tongue and nation will populate the earth with the
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Lord, they will reign on the earth with him and God is going to bring this to pass and the people who reign forever with the
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Lord are those who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior and treasure. And we see this, that God is going to bring to pass everything he says he's going to bring to pass in these unilateral covenants.
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And we see this in his great plan for creating the world, that the
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Lord is going to bring this to pass whether people are on board or not. And you might confront this in your life.
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People might say, you know what, I don't believe in God. I don't think all that stuff is true. And they might even say, you know,
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I don't want to follow God. I have no desire to do so.
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But you know what? They live in the same reality we do, the one where God created the heavens and the earth.
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And God's plan is going to come to pass whether people are on board or not. And the day is coming, a judgment is coming where everyone will stand before the
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Lord. And if you know Jesus Christ, then you'll go to heaven and you'll be with him forever.
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But if you do not know Christ, If your sins have not been paid for at the cross and you have rejected Jesus Christ, then you will go to hell forever.
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And that's the truth. And that's the reality we live in. And so when people say, you know what, that's not for you.
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That's not for me. Those people are in great danger because they live in the same reality we do. The same
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God who created you created them and they will stand before him, too. And the
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Lord will bring this to pass. And that gives us the urgency to invite people to believe in Jesus Christ.
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Because everybody in the world either bows their knee to God or raises their fist at him.
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The Lord fulfills his own plans for the world and fulfills the obligation set forth by his own promises.
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When the Lord made these unilateral covenants, the first example, of course, being the
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Abrahamic covenant here, if the males weren't circumcised, they would not they would be cut off from the people and they could not share in this covenant.
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And to bring this to us, obviously, we are as followers of Jesus Christ, we are spiritual offspring.
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If you don't if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, you're not among the offspring of Abram. So you don't you don't get to enjoy this, this great promise, this great covenant that the
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Lord has made with his people, whether Israel or the church. And the
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Lord is going to is going to accomplish it, whether you're on board or not. And obviously we want to be on board.
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This is the most wonderful thing there is to be on the Lord's side and to be in this wonderful plan that he has.
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So this is the third way his faithfulness is shown by taking the responsibility to fulfill the promise.
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The fourth way his faithfulness is shown is by leading Israel to the ultimate goal, by leading
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Israel to the ultimate goal. And you might say, you know what, I'm not an Israelite. What does this have to do with me?
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I came here today to hear you say, what does this have to do with me? Well, I'll tie this in again at the end, how this fits with you.
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But this is this is really fascinating because Israel is always in the news. OK, so as you as you watch the news and as we see what the
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Bible says is going to happen, what could be more fascinating than that? OK, so let's let's look at this here and we're going to see
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God's master plan for the nation of Israel. We already saw the prophecy from point two that the
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Lord was going to allow the Egyptians to hold Israel in slavery for 400 years.
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The Lord makes that prophecy in verse 13 where he says, then the Lord said, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in the land that is not theirs and will be servants there and they will be afflicted for 400 years.
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Now, toward the end of this chapter, the specifics of the fulfillment of the land promise come into focus.
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As the Lord leads Israel out of the hand of the Egyptians, as verse 14 tells us this is going to happen,
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God makes clear what is going to take place in verse 16. It says about Israel, they shall come back here in the fourth generation.
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OK, so they shall come back to the land of Canaan for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.
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In the fourth generation, the Lord is going to lead Israel out of Egypt into the promised land, which is also known as the land of Canaan.
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The Hebrews at this time considered a generation to be 100 years, and they lived a lot longer, even at this time in history, they tend to live longer than we do today.
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So four generations is 400 years. This is the time when
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Joshua and the Israelites would wipe out all of the Canaanites by wiping them out.
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Israel was performing justice by the sword on behalf of the Lord. In the land, one group among the
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Canaanites was a people known as the Amorites. They were a main population group that lived in the land of Canaan.
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And verse 16 makes it clear that the Amorites were an evil group of people. After the 400 years of enslavement to Egypt, the
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Israelites would leave Egypt and go north to the land of Canaan and under the leadership of Joshua.
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Remember, Moses passed on his leadership to Joshua. They would defeat the Amorites and many other peoples broadly known as the
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Canaanites and possess the land for themselves. The wickedness of the
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Amorites became so bad that the Lord said, I've had enough.
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OK, so he lets it build and build and build. And he gets to the point where he says, no more judgments coming.
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We can think about this in our world today, right? Sometimes I think we can all see, I'm pretty young,
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I know, but if you live long enough, you can see the downgrade of society, right? It continues to get worse and worse and worse.
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We go from I love Lucy, right? Not a pretty clean show to you can't even watch TV shows anymore because they're so raunchy.
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We have this, we see this in society. The Lord's letting it happen. OK, but it's not going to happen forever.
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It's up. There's coming a day where he's going to say no more. And I think that's when the end of the world comes.
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He's going to say no more. And then he's going to come and judge the world and then establish his kingdom.
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So the Amorites were this way. They became so bad. He let it happen for several hundred years, for four hundred years.
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And it says their iniquity is not yet complete. And once it got to the full level, the
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Lord said, now I will send my people with the sword to bring judgment upon them.
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That's how he did it historically. And in the future, God is going to bring judgment.
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God himself is going to bring judgment upon the world. And as Israel enters the land, what we see is the land portion of the
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Abrahamic covenant being fulfilled. The Lord has already fulfilled this covenant partially.
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And I will add that he is still in the process of fulfilling this covenant. And I say this for two reasons.
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Number one, the Lord promised this covenant of land for the offspring of Abram forever. OK, so no one is going to take their land from them.
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This is going to be a forever. Genesis 17, 8 states this. And what we know about the history of Israel is that Abram's offspring has not been in the land forever.
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OK, so the question is, did God not fulfill his promise or is this promise not being not not yet finished?
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The latter is the truth. It hasn't been finished yet. The Israelites were taken into exile in the eighth and seventh centuries
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B .C. All right. So they were in the land probably about 700 years.
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And they were first taken into captivity by the Assyrians and then by the Babylonians. So they did not have had the land forever in ancient history.
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Verse 18 tells us the extent of the land promise the
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Lord made to Israel. That verse tells us that the promised land stretches from the
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Nile River to the Euphrates. The Euphrates would be present day Iraq.
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We know that question of the war in Iraq that our country just fought not too long ago. And Egypt, of course, the
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Nile River runs north to south in Egypt. So the full scope of this land has never been held by Israel.
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OK, they've had they've held large portions of it at one time, but it's never been fully held by the nation of Israel.
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The greatest extent of the land was in the time of Solomon. He ruled close to that.
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And what happened is he actually ruled over these countries. They had these vassal rulers that ruled under Solomon.
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But Israel didn't have the whole land to themselves. OK, so so we can't say that that was the fulfillment in modern times.
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Some of you maybe remember this. Israel did get some of the land back. That took place in 1948.
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The promise of having the land forever in Genesis 17 8 seems to have started. And no one will ever take this land fully from them again.
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I mean, they're fighting every day to hold on to their land. But no one will ever succeed.
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That's that's that's my understanding of it. But the land they have now is not near what the
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Abrahamic promise is. The piece of land that Israel has now is actually quite small.
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It's about the size of New Jersey. That's it. New Jersey is a small state in our country. The territory they're going to have is much bigger than that.
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And I submit to you here that the full amount of the land will come and that will come during the 1 ,000 year reign of Christ found in Revelation 20.
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Sometimes you're reading you're reading from the Bible. You're reading through Revelation and all of a sudden you see this millennium pop up at the end of the
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Bible. You're thinking, that seems kind of odd. Why is that in there? What's the point? Right. Can't we just zoom ahead to eternity?
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Why does there have to be this 1 ,000 years before the eternal state? The answer is the
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Abrahamic covenant. Israel is going to have their promises completely fulfilled during the 1 ,000 year reign of Christ.
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And I'm passionate about this because there's a lot of churches today that don't teach this. But the
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Bible could not be any more clear. And so Eureka Baptist is going to teach this. OK. So the full amount of the land will come and it will come during the 1 ,000 year reign of Christ.
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Otherwise, Revelation 20 doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. But if you realize it's the fulfillment of the land promises to Israel and the messianic reign of Christ over over this land, then you understand and make sense.
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Now, the second way the Abrahamic covenant has yet to be fulfilled is an offspring through the conversion of Jews and Gentiles.
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True Israel, the true offspring of Abraham are those who believe in the Messiah, Jesus. And there will be a large gathering of those who believe in him before the 1 ,000 year reign of Christ.
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And that happens when Christ returns. The Apostle Paul said in Romans 11, 26, that all Israel will be saved.
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So that's what he's referring to, this mass conversion of Jews. So right now, there's a hardening over the Jewish people.
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They don't believe in the Messiah. They don't believe that Jesus is the Christ. But one day when Christ returns, they're going to look on him and they're going to say he is the
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Messiah and they're going to believe in him. Lastly, those also included in the number are all spiritual offspring.
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And that's us. It is those who believe in Jesus. We are in that number.
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And there are still many people who have yet to believe in Christ.
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I remember I sang that song a few weeks back. Father Abraham and many sons, many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them.
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And so are you. All right, that's that's what it's talking about. I didn't sing it this time. I just spoke it.
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But so the promise is still being fulfilled as people believe in Jesus and are added to the offspring of Abram.
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So anytime you share the gospel with someone, this is someone who might be an offspring of Abram. This offspring is promised to Abram in Genesis 15.
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It's neat to think about that. Four thousand years ago, we're seeing these things play out in our very day.
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So we see the Lord's faithfulness shine in his fulfillment of these promises. This is the fourth way his faithfulness is shown by leading
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Israel to the ultimate goal. So what we've seen in this two part sermon is the
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Lord shows his faithful dedication in formal pronouncements. We have seen this in four ways. By humbly descending to earthly procedures for our benefit, by holding to his promise through adversity and by taking the responsibility to fulfill the promise.
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And fourthly, by leading them to the ultimate goal, by leading Israel to this to this land that he promised them, the land of Canaan, the promised land.
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So we have seen the Lord's faithfulness through the Abrahamic covenant in this two part sermon, and we're going to we need to praise the
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Lord for his faithfulness. He's a faithful God. And when we think, can we trust the
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Lord? Absolutely. He's he's the only one we could we could trust fully. Right.
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People always let us down. The Lord never does. He always keeps his promises. That's his character.
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And so before I close in prayer, I'm going to say that next on Friday, of course, we have the Good Friday service.
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And I hope I hope you can come out to that. We're doing a combined service with Trade River Free Church, which is about 10 miles north of us.
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And so Pastor Dale and I are both going to both going to be leading that service and and looking at the the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the significance of that for us.
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And then next Sunday, of course, we're going to have Easter Sunday. And I hope you can all make it for that as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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Let's close in prayer. Father in heaven, as we as we close here, you are a faithful God and Lord, everything.
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That you speak in the pages of scriptures will come to pass. Today, we remember, of course, the.
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The day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the donkey and they said, Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the
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Lord. And in Zechariah, it said the Messiah is going to to ride in on a donkey.
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It said the Lord is going to ride in on a donkey. And that's exactly how it played out.
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The cult of a donkey. He rides in and. We're amazed, Lord, at the precision in the way you operate, you say this is how it's going to happen and then it happens.
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And so we offer praise to you for your exactness and your fulfillment and your faithfulness and always fulfilling your promises.
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And in our own lives, Lord, as we go through the journey of the life of faith, as we've talked about today,
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Lord, it's not easy. It's hard, but we have a steady rock that guides us through it all.
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And you are that steady rock. Thank you, Lord, that you are a God who always keeps his promises and you always keep your promises to your people and we are your people.