The Abrahamic Covenant - Part II

Well, this morning we continue on in Genesis chapter 15, which we aim to complete as we prepare for chapter 16 next week.

This is the second part of our consideration of the Abrahamic covenant. Last week, we tried to lay the groundwork and give the bigger picture in which this covenant is given to us.

And so we talked about the covenants of common grace. And again, that common grace doesn't speak to the quality of grace, as though there were different levels or different shades of God's grace, but rather the scope, the quantity of it.

The common grace covenants, God's creational covenant with Adam, and then also

God's renewal of that covenant, the recreation covenant, as it were, with Noah. So we looked at the

Adamic covenant and the Noahic covenant, and we said these are common grace covenants because they're covenants with respect to all humanity.

Covenants with respect to all of creation. Beginning in chapter 12, we saw the promise given to Abram when

God called him out of Ur of the Chaldeans to a land that He would show him, a land in which

He would make Abram the father of the promised seed and the father of many nations, that He would bless

Abram and make Abram a blessing to the families of the earth. That promise has now taken the form of the covenant in chapter 15, and the covenant is not reestablished, it's not reinstituted, and it's certainly not a different covenant when we get to chapter 17.

So the Abrahamic covenant is Genesis 15. That is the covenant that God makes with Abram.

What we have in chapter 17 is further elaboration or further understanding of that covenant and more conditions that God attaches to that covenant, and when we get to chapter 17, we'll unfold the second half of covenant theology.

We'll consider the Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the New Covenant. So that's just a big picture of where we are, where we've been, and this morning we want to take a step further into the

Abrahamic covenant. With Abram, God begins not a covenant of common grace, but special grace, grace to a select people, a redemption that is promised to the people of God.

This is now the unfolding purpose of God for the rest of the storyline of Scripture. All of the cosmos is upheld with the creational covenant and its renewal under Noah, and yet within that covenantal framework,

God has chosen Abram to make him a blessing to the families of the earth. And that blessing will come through the seed of Abram, the promised seed, which is

Jesus Christ. This major step forward is building all off of the promise that God gave to the woman in Genesis 3, verse 15, which we also spoke about last week.

And this promise was given to the woman in the wake of the fall. Remember how that deep horror, that deep darkness, that deep slumber, all the same language in Hebrew, fell upon Adam when

God fashioned His bride from His side. And of course, that bride deceived the man.

And she ate being deceived by the serpent. They both transgressed. And through Adam, Romans 5, sin entered the world.

And through sin, death entered the world. But Genesis 3, verse 15 establishes the redemptive movement of God.

This promise of a seed that will come and undo the destruction of the fall. It will crush the head of the serpent and bring man and woman, though fallen, into a state of grace, into redemption, into a promised land, a paradise that will never be lost.

And so we're reminded of this plot line from the seed of the woman in Genesis 3 down through Noah, down through the lineage of the faithful, through Abram, and then beyond.

And that's very significant that when we think of Jesus, when we think of Jesus Christ, we understand all of the entailments of what it means for Him to be the

Messiah, the Anointed One, which is what Christ means. Christ is not the family name of Jesus.

Mary Christ, Joseph Christ, James Christ. It's a title. It's a Messianic title.

The Anointed One. I have a professor, Dr. Schnabel, who will never use the word

Christ. He always says Jesus Messiah. He only ever says Messiah because he doesn't want to lose sight of this.

That when you said Christ, in the ancient mindset, especially to a Jewish audience, they had one understanding of what that meant, and it was

Messianic. It was the Messianic King. And when you talk about Jesus being the long -awaited

Messiah, you're taking with that all of God's history of redemption. The promise

He gave to the woman. The covenant that He made with Abram. Genesis 15 is embedded within what it means for Jesus to be the

Christ. And so we must never lose sight of that. Let me just reinforce that before we actually dig through these verses.

God had promised from the very beginning that He would send a seed that would save His people. That promised seed, as we find out, will be the seed that comes through Abram.

Many thousands of years later, an angel comes in the fullness of time and announces the arrival of this long -awaited promised seed.

The serpent -crushing seed. And when the angel announces that, Mary, the recipient of this favor, the most blessed among women, responds with what church history calls the

Magnificat. Mary's song, which we have in Luke 1. And the fingerprints of God's covenant with Abram are all over her song.

Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit has rejoiced in God, my

Savior. He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant. Behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.

For He who is mighty has done great things for me. Holy is His name. His mercy is on those who fear

Him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with His arm. He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He has put down the mighty from their thrones. Boy, that sounds a lot like Genesis 11. He's exalted the lowly.

That sounds a lot like Genesis 12. He's filled the hungry with good things. The rich He has sent away empty.

He's helped His servant Israel in remembrance. That's covenantal language. You remember a covenant.

In remembrance of His mercy as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever.

And then even more. A few verses later, when Zacharias gives this utterance, this prophecy, and he says,

Blessed is the Lord God of Israel. For He has visited and redeemed His people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant

David. That's the Davidic covenant. As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets who have been since the world began.

Lamech the prophet. Noah the prophet. That we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us to perform the mercy promised to our fathers to remember

His holy covenant. The oath which He swore to our father Abraham.

So when we think of Jesus, we must think of God's covenant with Abraham. When we think of what it means for Jesus to come, even the initial people that would be a part of His arrival, even

Zacharias and Mary, cannot think of this outside of the framework of the

Abrahamic covenant. The promise that God made to Abraham. When we read about God's grace to Abraham, when we read about God's covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15, we are truly reading about the person and the work of Jesus the

Messiah. Notice how our passage begins. We're beginning here in verse 7 and 8.

God says to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to inherit it.

Now just right there you'll notice off the bat language that sounds somewhat familiar. We have shades of Exodus here in Genesis 15 -7, don't we?

Exodus 20, the prologue to God giving the law to Israel. I am the God who brought you out of Egypt.

Well here we have I am the God who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, this calling of God that prefaces the commitment

He puts upon His people, the promise He gives to His people. And He says to Abraham, I'm the

God who called you, I'm giving you this land to inherit it. Now that Exodus theme is so tightly interwoven, it will take up the rest of Genesis.

There'll be all of these themes that point us toward Exodus. Look at Abram's response.

Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it? That to me is so striking that that is

Abram's response. Especially considering where we've been and what according to the narrative seems to be just the previous night.

It seems that everything we have in chapter 15 takes place between maybe the end of a day into a night and then the whole next day.

And that makes Abram's response to me so surprising. Remember how chapter 15 began with Abram looking for comfort, looking for assurance.

He was afraid. And this is the experience of Christians, isn't it? We seek from time to time, often, very often we seek comfort.

We want to know, like Abram wants to know, that God is with us. We want to know.

We want to have the comfort that God is for us. We want to know that God is not against us.

We want to know that God has not been removed from us. We're looking for that comfort of assurance.

Is there a meaning to where I am and what I'm doing, God? Am I really Yours? Do You have me where You want me?

Are Your promises sure? Will they unfold in my life? Is it true that You're a deliverer? Is it true that You provide a way to escape?

Is it true that You will continue this work that You've begun in my life?

We look for the comfort of assurance. And God has already given a pledge at the very head of chapter 15.

What does He say in response? Abram, I'm your shield. Your reward will be abundant.

But then, even there, what we would want to take as a token of comfort, as a token of assurance, it doesn't lead that way with Abram, does it?

How does he respond? How can this be? You have given me no children.

The heir of my house is Eleazar. One born in my house. In other words, he takes what was meant to be this comforting promise of God, and he's still wrestling with this doubt.

That wasn't enough. And so he lodges his complaint against the Lord. He's being very honest about his doubts and his fears.

This discouragement he has. A sense that he's being deprived. Remember that even after this great victory, and as the adrenaline settles, his nephew leaves him again and goes back to the edge of Sodom.

The thrill of victory had now paled into discontentment. Well, now what? And so what does

God do in the wake of that complaint, in the wake of that discouragement that Abram is facing?

Abram comes to Him being honest. It's not enough, Lord. He comforts Abram again.

He gives him a sure promise. No. Surely a child will come from your own body.

And then he takes him out of those sheltered ceilings, this sort of living room where he's staring at his feet, in a pit of despair, and God says, get out of this place.

And he takes him outside to look at the night sky. And as we said when we considered these verses,

God wasn't just saying, oh, look at all the stars. You can't count them right. That's what your descendants are going to be. It was much more than that.

He's saying what he said to Job in effect. Who are you, Abram? Who are you? Did you cast the constellations in the night sky?

Look at the starry panoply above you. Where did this come from? Did it not come from the power of My spoken

Word out of nothing? Can not the Creator of heaven and earth do anything and everything that He wills?

Abram, your seed will come forth from your body. Look up. Look around you.

Who are you worshiping? Who are you serving? Who are you walking after? Who are you seeking?

Who has called you? My promise is sure. Now again, not long after, from my understanding of the narrative, the very next day,

Abram again comes to this place where God gives him this pledge, this token of comfort.

And what does he say in verse 8? Lord God, how shall I know? Do you see this response of how will

I know? Yes, but how do I know? Yes, but I'm discouraged. I'm doubting. I'm wrestling to see how this will be true.

I know what You've said. I know what You've been revealing, but it's not what I see. It's not how I feel,

Lord. How will I know that I will inherit? He's looking for a sign of confirmation. Just like Gideon looks for a sign of confirmation.

Just like many of God's people, kings and prophets, look for signs of confirmation. Lord God, give me a sign that this will be so.

Notice that Abram is struggling with the apparent reality. Notice that I say, very importantly, apparent.

It's not the reality. It's the apparent reality. It's not the reality in terms of what is really going on in God's purpose, which is sure.

It's just the reality to Abram's eyes, from Abram's position. The apparent reality.

Abram is struggling with the apparent reality of what he sees and how he feels over against what

God has promised. Does that sound familiar to anyone? How often do we struggle with the apparent reality of what we can see and of how we feel over against the promise of God?

Not only is this familiar to our Christian walk, it's instructive. What did we say

Abram was according to Romans 4? In this very passage, because he believed

God, he had faith in God, and God credited that to him as righteousness. He's the father of those who have faith.

He's the ancestor of faith. In a chapter where he doubts God at each turn.

How is this the father of faith? But notice how instructive this is.

That our understanding of what is faith that justifies has to look something like this and thank

God it does look something like this, doesn't it? Once more we see this grace of God who invites us to be honest with what

He already knows to come with Him out of our apparent, misconstrued, myopic, minute, selfish point of view full of fears and troubles and invites us to be honest with that.

Like a little toddler who just doesn't understand anything about how the world works or what a day is supposed to be like.

And the parent very patiently and lovingly knows exactly how they're feeling and why they're feeling that way and invites them to come so they can talk it out.

God invites us to wrestle with Him as we're being humbled. We don't do this defiantly. We do this meekly.

We do this with a sort of trembling position. We're humbled first because we're feeling overwhelmed and we're coming to grips with the reality that we're struggling and it's hard to admit that to yourself.

And it's even harder to admit that to God. How do you go to the One who demands faith and say,

I have no faith to give? And so first we come to Him because we're humbled by the sense of stress or struggle, dryness, coldness.

But then we leave even more humbled. Why? Because we've met with Him in His grace. And just like He does with Abram, at each turn of doubt,

God brings more comfort, more assurance, more presence. And so we leave even more humbled, not because of the stress, but because of the mercy.

So much trouble in the Christian life begins with the fact that we're not honest to God about what we're seeing and how we're feeling.

And if you're not honest to God, you're definitely deceiving yourself. You're not being honest with yourself.

And sadly, the way we're wired, you're definitely deceiving everyone else around you.

It begins with being honest to God about who you are, where you are, what you see, and how you feel.

And if you're unwilling to do that, you're unwilling to even be honest with yourself. You won't even allow the thought to enter your mind about where you truly are, the state you're truly in.

You just won't even go there. And so when other inquiring minds and other people come to you and look at you, and they have that little glint in their eye, a little glint of concern, and it's more concern than you have for yourself, red flag.

You're not being honest with yourself. It's a scary place to be when someone else has more concern for your soul than you do.

But what are we called to do? We do what Abram does here.

Abram is fulfilling 1 Peter 5 -7. You cast your cares on him because he cares for you.

Abram has this boldness that is amazing to me that he's literally casting his doubt and his fear and his anxiety.

All of that could be translated as the word care in 1 Peter 5. He's casting that all on the

Lord because he truly knows that God cares for him. So he can be honest to God because he knows, if he's sure of anything, it's that God is love, and God is merciful, and God is patient, and God does not quench a smoking flax.

He doesn't break a bruised reed. He's merciful. And so what do we do with our anxieties and our struggles and our pains and our discouragements and our coldness?

We're honest to God. We bring these to God, Lord. This is how it looks to me now. I know it's wrong, but I don't feel that.

I just feel this way right now. I feel frigid. I feel dry. I feel distant.

I feel like a sham. I feel like a joke. I feel like a fool.

The only times I feel close to you are the times I feel afraid about the state I'm in. I don't feel your love. I don't feel your light.

I don't feel your grace. I don't feel your warmth. You give God that honesty so that He can come in His grace and minister to you.

And it may be that the way He ministers to you is helping you to be honest to others so that they can minister to you as His extension, as His instruments.

This is how God strengthens the faith of His people. I cannot help but be struck that the preface to God's unconditional covenant with Abram is

Abram's doubt. Isn't that beautiful? That God pledges, as we'll see, in the fullness of what this covenant is,

He pledges, as it were, the cross to Abram to answer his doubt. That's very instructive to us as Christians.

I was speaking just last Sunday evening. I was preaching at Emanuel Chapel, and there was a young man that stuck around after the service.

The sermon was on unpardonable sin. You know, what is the unpardonable sin? And apparently this young man had often struggled with it through many years.

Is that something that I've committed? Is it something I'm capable of committing? How would I know if I've committed it? And so we had a long conversation about what is faith and what is doubt?

And he was very astute. Well, whatever is not of faith is sin. Unbelief is a sin that we must repent of.

But here we are in Genesis 15, and we see doubt right next to faith.

What's the relationship between doubt and faith? Doesn't that stand out to us?

How much is this life of faith a successive journey with abundant blessings, joyful splendors, but also trials and painful doubts?

And the point that I think we see here with Abram in Genesis 15 is that the life of faith as a whole for the father of faith is not only counted from the times he exercised faith, but it's the whole thing.

It's the valleys and the hilltops. It's the life of faith that comprises the times that unbelief is shaking and then it's made firm and it becomes strong and resolute and it's sanctified.

This is what encompasses the life of faith. We know this to be true as Christians by experience.

Every Christian at one point or another comes to the place of that trembling father worried about his child because the disciples could not heal.

And we say, Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief. I'm conscious of both. Because of indwelling sin,

I will always be in one shade or another, at one variance or another, an unbeliever.

Until Christ returns and I look upon Him and I'm made like Him, there will be some aspect of my life or my mind or my heart or my walk where there is unbelief.

I love what Spurgeon says. While men have no faith, they are unconscious of their unbelief.

If you're worried, if you're worried that you don't have faith, you probably have faith.

If you're worried they don't have enough faith, you probably have faith. While men have no faith, they are unconscious of their unbelief, but as soon as they get a little faith, then they begin to be conscious of the greatness of their unbelief.

When the blind man gets a little light into his eyes, he perceives something of the blackness, of the darkness in which he has been living.

Even the smallest measure of faith is needed to discover the greatest measure of unbelief.

We as Christians do not like to learn that apart from Christ we can do nothing. But that is a lesson that God likes to teach us over and over again because we have this constant daily need to be reminded of His promise and encouraged by His promise and to find

His power in the midst of His promise. And so we're reminded at those very times of unbelief and doubt that He is a

God who's able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all we ever ask or think or pray. And we see that with Abram.

God doesn't just come when the moment that we believe in answers faith and then otherwise remains distant. If anything, my reading of the

Scriptures is the times when His people are doubting and struggling that He is most present. That's why

He's a shield. And so we trust in the midst of doubt.

We trust in the midst of fear because God becomes present. He gives us the assurance. He gives us the pledge of what

He's done. He shows us what He's like. He's proven to us again and again.

That's the wisdom of that great line from the hymn, Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him. Oh, if only

I could trust Him like that hymn writer. That hymn writer probably had this perfect trust for the last 30 years of their life, never doubted one time, was never discouraged, full of peace and contentment, writing hymns all day long, singing of my

Savior all day long. If only I had trust like that. What does the hymn writer say? How I've proved Him over and over and over.

I keep doubting, and I keep from that doubt trusting, and I keep proving that He's trustworthy over and over and over again.

Oh, for grace to trust Him more. That's the position of the hymn writer. Notice next, we move into this ceremony, this covenant ceremony.

So we move from Abram, from this place of doubt, I think almost coaxing out,

Lord, I want a sign. I want confirmation. I want to see you. I want to see something,

Lord. Do something. Like, please, like Moses, just show me your glory.

And Abram gets that request. Genesis 15, beginning in verse 9, he said to him, bring me a three -year -old heifer, a three -year -old female goat, a three -year -old ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.

Then he brought all these to him and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other.

But he did not cut the birds in two. And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

So we've already seen throughout our time in Genesis the significance of sacrifice. When our first parents fell in the garden, they realized they were naked.

In other words, there's this sort of understanding that they were fully exposed now. Fully vulnerable.

And that nakedness became a picture of their guilt and their shame. The need for a covering, which is atonement language.

The atonement is the cover. And so throughout the rest of Scripture, atonement is a covering, a garment.

It's why we can talk about God's righteousness being a clothing for His people. Covering their guilt and their shame that stems from their rebellion against God.

God covered them Himself in Genesis 3 with animal skins. So reading between the lines,

God Himself makes the first sacrifice in Scripture. God Himself kills animals in order to provide skins to cover the fallen man and woman.

This is part of His grace toward fallen man. From this, we infer, Abel learned that it was necessary to have a blood sacrifice.

He took of the best of his flocks, of the firstborn, and he sacrificed them to God. We can understand that as something that they habitually did, as was taught by God Himself to their parents,

Adam and Eve. So there needs to be a blood sacrifice. There needs to be this symbol of a covering.

Of something to satisfy the wrath of God for sin. That was Cain's rebellion that he decided

I'm not going to do this. I'm going to use the product of my field. I don't want to have to do what

Abel does. I don't want to have to maybe trade or barter or find one of his animals. I want to do something myself.

He brings, as it were, the first strange fire to the worship of God. God's covenant with Noah.

We see again the importance of the bloody sacrifice. Last week, we talked about how that sacrifice came and it soothed the

Lord. The scent of that sacrifice was soothing to the Lord. And He renewed this covenant with what He had made.

He renewed the covenant through Noah with creation. So we see that these are covenantal sacrifices.

Every sacrifice is covenantal. God's blessing, whether it's to all humanity or toward God's people, it always flows through the blood of sacrifice, which is to say, every blessing, every good thing that comes down from God above has come through the purchase of the blood of Christ.

Now here in verse 9 and following, we see the same emblem of Christ's sacrificial death.

God commands Abram to take clean animals. Our translation says three -year -old. It could be a number three.

Some Hebrew differs where it could be three of each of these animals. But I think the translators probably have it right here.

Each one is a three -year -old animal. They're to take these clean animals and He's to kill them.

And so you can picture Abram. I can picture this. We went to the Southwick Zoo just a few days ago and we went to the petting zoo.

I know every day at the Polyars is a petting zoo day. But for us, it's a special thing to go pet a goat until the goat rams poor

Sophia. But anyway. I can picture quite vividly what it would be like for Abram to put his hands around the neck of a goat and to hear that goat bleed as he ran his knife across the jugular and as the goat writhed in agony, fighting for its life as it bled out.

And then as he began to divide that goat and that ram and that heifer and as he took the birds in his bloodied hands and his bloodied garment and he twisted their necks and he made this corridor, he made this hallway of these animals, this bloody scene.

Something that was sort of horrific. It's sort of this butchery. These animals cut in two and just left as carcasses divided and all their entrails and blood in between.

And God commands him to do nothing more than that. So he just waits. He waits as the hot sun takes that blood onto his hands and dries it onto his clothes and he waits.

All of this is part of the covenant ceremony. Abram would have understood this is the beginning of a covenant ceremony.

I must be about to walk through. He must have gulped, knowing the significance of what that meant, which we'll talk about.

Moses' audience, when they first received this from the hand of Moses, they would have understood exactly what this language, what this ceremony was.

This was a covenant ceremony. This was the solemn part of the covenant. And Abram waits.

And he waits. And he waits. And there's no word from God and there's no action to take place.

Abram's to do nothing but wait. And God has not yet intervened. And he's chasing off these scavenging birds as they drop in on this bloody scene.

And he's waiting. And he's waiting. And he's waiting. And the waiting, I think, is very significant.

The waiting is very significant. Because given what follows, the first emblem we get is this prophetic time period.

His seed, speaking to earthly fulfillment, will be in bondage in a land not their own for 400 years.

And so there's this waiting. It's also an emblem of this long time that his earthly seed will be in the shadow of the serpent king.

So it's this long time that Israel will be, as it were, in that long bondage awaiting the fullness of time when that promised seed comes, when that Deliverer comes.

So there's this long period of waiting. And then what we'll see later on this morning, I think there's a more immediate fulfillment of the time between the sacrifice of these animals and the coming of God.

Something strikes me about v. 11. Maybe it strikes you too. You don't waste ink.

You don't waste papyrus if you're writing in the ancient world. In fact, ancient writing had no spaces, no indentation, often even no punctuation.

You smooshed all the words together because you couldn't afford to waste even an inch of space. And that means that everything that is recorded is recorded for a purpose.

There's nothing superfluous. There's nothing unnecessary. There's nothing like, that's a bizarre detail, but it probably doesn't mean anything.

And so v. 11, when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

Why is that recorded? Is it just a detail? That this is what was happening because he was waiting so long and he had to keep driving them away?

Well, I think there's something more going on here. It's a symbolic action. I think this is related to, again, the sacrifice being a picture of Christ.

And symbolically, Abram is brought in, as it were, to protect the sacrifice from being eaten, from being decayed or decomposed by these scavenging animals.

And so when the apostle Peter is in Jerusalem and he's preaching to the crowds in Acts 2, he mentions

Psalm 16. We read this at the beginning of the service last week. And he's quoting

Psalm 16, beginning in v. 9. And this is what Peter says, which is what David says. And David, remember, is a prophet.

I have set the Lord always before me, because He is at my right hand,

I shall not be moved. Therefore, my heart is glad and my glory rejoices. My flesh also will rest in hope.

For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.

You will show me the path of life. In Your presence is fullness of joy. At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

And Peter makes this commentary. Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of our patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried and in his tomb, which is with us to this day.

Therefore, being a prophet, knowing that God had sworn an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, he would raise up the

Messiah to sit on his throne, he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the

Christ, that his soul was not left in Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.

This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are witnesses. Now what

God is doing, in my mind, in Genesis 15 -11, is He's inviting Abram to symbolically picture

His sovereign preservation of His Son, not allowing the flesh of the sacrifice to see corruption.

He's given this honor, as it were, to be a handmaiden to the cross. A handmaiden to the sacrifice of Christ.

No wonder that in chapter 22, God will put Abram in this parallel position again when

He must sacrifice His only Son, whom He loved. And in that same way, He's picturing

God. And then, of course, in a certain way, He's not picturing God, because God restrains

Abram from sacrificing His only beloved Son, whereas God does not restrain

His own hand. He does it all the way through. And then we have this dark dream beginning in verse 12.

I don't want to spend a lot of time considering this, because some of these details we'll unpack when we get to chapter 17.

But we want to notice, again, this prophecy moving rather quickly. There's two major prophecies that help us understand this 400 -year period that will befall

His seed. First of all, they're going to be brought to this land of Egypt. They're going to be given these great possessions from Egypt.

So this bondage will lead to a blessing. Being, as it were, under the shadow of the serpent

Pharaoh. Being fast -bound in sin and nature's night, as the hymn would put it.

This emblem of God's people being in the bondage of sin. But when He comes as their deliverer and leads them out of that bondage,

He will bless them abundantly. And they will plunder the Egyptians. So that, as a biblical theological theme, is very important.

Notice also this very bizarre phrase. This will be until the iniquity of the Amorites is complete.

So God has a certain accounting of the sinfulness of this people, and yet there is more sin that He will not restrain before He moves in judgment.

And that is a terror to every nation, or at least it ought to be. There is iniquity that is on the scales of God's judgment.

And it's constantly being racketed up. That's why we often pray, how could it be that we have not seen the most tremendous, spectacular judgments in our land, given that our land is bathing in the blood of aborted children?

How could it be that our iniquity is not yet complete? When men are parading around as women, and women are parading around as men, and our culture tolerates evil as good, and good as evil, and God's wrath is upon those, not just who practice these things,

Paul says, but on those who tolerate them. Our iniquity is not yet complete.

How could that be? How could that be? Another parallel I want to point out is this deep darkness that falls upon Abram before he has this prophetic vision.

You notice this language at the very beginning of verse 12. When the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram.

Behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him. Now this language of a deep sleep, it's very rare in Hebrew, especially that adjective deep connected with sleep.

And so the only other time we've seen this is back in Genesis chapter 2, verse 21, when Adam fell into a deep sleep, into this dark sleep.

And that was when God opened up his side, and from his rib he created this bride for Adam.

And so there was this deep sleep. And now Abram is given this prophetic vision and he causes this deep sleep, this horror and this darkness to fall upon him.

We might only be thinking in terms of the horror being what God will show. These 400 years of bondage in a land not their own.

The judgment that will come upon the Amorites. Perhaps that's the horror and the deep darkness, but no, this itself is part of this covenant, part of this pledge of Jesus Christ.

God was making a covenant with His people. And at the very start of it, there's this deep sleep.

There's this horror and this darkness. And so when we get all the way to the New Covenant, we see

Jesus on the cross. The last Adam. And the sky is turning thick black.

Remember that the sky had once been shining with the radiance of the Father who said, this is My Son in whom

I'm well pleased. And the Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove. This is My beloved Son.

And now that sky is pitch black as the

Son looks up for the Father's smile and He finds it not. So He cries through gasping bloody breath,

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, why have you forsaken Me? And then

He falls into that horror and the deepest sleep there ever was, the sleep of death.

And in the midst of His bloodied sleep from His very torn side, God is crafting

His bride, the church. That's why Paul can say, it's a mystery in Ephesians 5.

What God was doing between Adam and Eve, it's a mystery. It's all about Christ and His church. And we see this mystery elaborated even more.

And that brings us to our last point, our last focus this morning, cutting the covenant. This may be why we have the phrase cutting the covenant.

You have in your translation often, make a covenant. It's always the Hebrew verb cut. You don't make a covenant, you cut a covenant.

And it could be that you cut a covenant in the Hebrew language because of Genesis 15, quite literally.

Because this is the first instance where a covenant is cut. And symbolically, it's the animals being cut.

It's a covenant ceremony. It came to pass when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.

On the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying to your descendants, I've given this land. So we have this treaty, this covenant.

Remember a few weeks ago, we introduced the idea of covenant between a suzerain and a vassal.

So the suzerain is the great king. And it could be at any time, and really any land or kingdom, where you have a king who's exercising power over a lesser king or a lesser kingdom.

And that lesser king or kingdom becomes a vassal. So you have the suzerain, the great king, and the vassal.

And so the covenant was made from the suzerain to the vassal. Here's the covenant. Here's what I'm covenanting to you.

I will protect you in a time of war. If you're ever besieged or in need of resources, I will come in and protect you.

I will provide for you. This is My covenant to you. But you're My vassal. You must pay Me yearly tribute.

You must come when I call. If I want to invade a land or defend a part of My kingdom, I will require your armies and your forces.

I will demand from your hand whatever I see fit. And if not, if you rebel against Me, I will come and destroy you.

So this is the way these suzerain -vassal covenants work. You had a title of the covenant.

We have all sorts of clay records of these from the ancient world, especially Hittite covenant treaties. Historical prologue, a sort of background information to the significance of that covenant.

You had blessings announced, and then you had a grant often. If it was a covenant of grant, this is what

I'm going to give to you. And then the last part of the covenant was the ceremony. All of these elements we have, all of these elements we have in Genesis 15.

Very familiar. This covenantal framework, very familiar. The most important part, of course, of the covenant was the ceremony.

This was sort of signing the dotted line in our language. The solemn ceremony is where the sacrifice was split apart.

And the vassal would walk through. Jeffrey Neha says, treaties could be ratified by this ritual passage between dismembered animals.

The vassal would walk between the cut up pieces of the beasts. The animals were apparently not just a sacrifice to a god, but rather symbols of the vassal's fate.

This is what you're going to be like if you rebel against me. If you break this covenant, this is what

I will do to you. Look at these animals. Walk on their blood. This is what's going to happen to you if you ever go against me.

If you fail to meet this covenant. So we see that in Jeremiah 34, just to give you an example of this.

There had been a covenant that God made with his people in reference to Babylon. They broke it. And God said, this is what

I'm going to do to you. I'm going to bring judgment upon you. Look at the language. Jeremiah 34, beginning in verse 18.

I will give the men who have transgressed My covenant, who have not performed the words of the covenant which they made before Me when they cut the calf in two and passed between the parts of it.

The princes of Judah, the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, priests, and all the people of the land who passed through the parts of the calf.

I will give them into the hand of their enemies, into the hand of those who seek their life. Their dead bodies will be meat for the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth.

I'm going to make you just like these animals you walked through because you broke the covenant. So here's the ceremony.

Abram is covered in blood. It's been drying as he's been waiting. No doubt, in what maybe was half a day, 12 hours, all he can think about is,

I have to walk through these animals. God's making a covenant with me. And if I break

His covenant, this is going to be my fate. He's promised me all these things and now it's come and He's making this covenant with me.

And if I can't keep it, if I falter, if I transgress it, I'm as good as dead.

He's going to cut me down. How in the world am I going to be able to keep this covenant?

He's waiting. He's waiting. He's going to make me walk through this covenant. How am I going to be able to do it? I went down to Egypt.

I know how I can be. I can be so fickle and so foolish and so discouraged so easily. I want to think that this will be different but I don't think it will be different.

I don't know how I can do this. How am I going to be able to walk by this? And then what happens when

God comes? He doesn't ask Abram to walk through it. He doesn't want Abram to walk through it.

The suzerain, the great king, the one who would always make the subject walk through.

Here, this great king, God the Creator, He walks through it. He passes through the pieces. You're not going to walk through it,

Abram. I'm going to walk through it. May this happen to me if I don't fulfill this covenant

I've made with you. May I be cut down. May I be judged if I don't uphold this covenant.

You said you wanted assurance. You said you wanted comfort. You asked, how will

I know? Here's how you'll know. I swear by myself. I put the judgment pointed at me.

I will surely do this. And He does it as a theophany.

This smoking fire pot. This is nighttime now. You can picture this blaze. It would have been like the blaze that Moses saw when he took off his sandals and buried his face into the ground.

This flaming torch. This is very suggestive, especially in light of the prophecy we've seen of Israel in bondage.

Of the cloud and the pillar of fire leading through that sacrifice. And of course,

God is passing through these bloody pieces and it all is foreshadowing the substitutionary atonement of Jesus.

The covering for a covenant breaking people. So all of these things, all of these animals, all of this sacrifice, it's all pointing to Jesus.

But here, here in Genesis 15, we find that ultimate picture of the cross.

God Himself will be sacrificed. And so, in the fullness of time, the

Lord Jesus Christ, the promised seed of Abram, the One who Abram saw from afar, He saw my day,

John 8, 56, and He was glad. And He comes. When the

Holy Spirit places Him within the womb of Mary, she rejoices in her Savior. She says, God is keeping

His covenant. He's keeping His covenant. Elizabeth and John the

Baptist in her womb leap for joy. He's going to be preparing the way of that Lord. Zechariah is prophesying.

God is fulfilling this covenant He's made with Abram. He comes and He fulfills the terms of the covenant that Adam could not keep.

He fulfills the law that Israel transgressed. When they said, as for me and my house, we will serve the

Lord, the rebuke came. You're not able to do this. You will not do this. Jesus did it.

He lived that perfect life. And then

He was arrested and captured, interrogated, tortured.

They bound this Prince of Life, this promised seed, and they nailed

Him to a tree. And they pushed the post up into the ground and raised

Him into the air. Because without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sin.

If sin is not really that bad, it's difficult to see why a God that is so gracious, so abundantly gracious to Abram, would have to commit to something so brutal, so horrific.

If God is not holy, it is impossible to see why His justice is holy, and it's a justice that requires the punishment of sin.

That a God who is infinite in mercy must be infinite in justice.

We have a natural tendency to slight the debt of our sin. To turn a pale eye and a blind eye to the things that made the animals being split apart and God alone passing through necessary.

For we could only be saved if God alone passed through. Abram could not pass through and find salvation.

Moses could not pass through and find salvation. None of us could pass through and find salvation.

There was only one who could pass through and perfectly fulfill the conditions of that covenant, and yet be cut down in Golgotha.

Cut down. And so Jesus, on the Via Dolorosa, staring up at that skull's place, would have seen a corridor far longer than what

Abram saw. Not just a heifer and a ram and a goat, but an infinite corridor of all the sacrifices that had ever been sacrificed when

God's people called upon His name and said, Bless me, God, and be my Savior, and redeem me, and help me, and be my strength and shield.

Jesus alone looked down that bloody corridor of carnage through all the history from the first sacrifice

God made in Genesis 3 to the very fullness of time. All of the perfect lambs, all of the bulls and the heifers, all of the turtle doves and pigeons, anything that had been killed and its blood poured out.

The sacrifice of all of the families of the Israelites when the blood was spilling down the Kidron Valley.

He looked through that valley of carnage and he says, I go, I go, I go.

He gets to the Mount of Olives and he looks upon it and he says,

Father, if there's any other way, take this cup from me. And then he presses forward, trudging through the blood of sacrifices, seeing what every sacrifice has always pointed toward.

And he submits and he surrenders himself and he gives himself to be cut down. He takes the curse of the covenant.

He has made sin for us. His body slumps upon the cross.

He's unable any longer to lift himself up, to draw air into his lungs. He breathes his last, not in some passive subjection to an unrelenting fate, but as an act of obedience.

He's offering himself through the Spirit. He himself as the Divine Son is constantly upholding even the nails that keep him in the wood.

As he cries out in agony to a dark, unanswering sky, he has the perfect faith in God that does not doubt like Abram doubted, does not doubt like you and I doubt.

He trusted his Father perfectly. There was no shadow of unbelief within him. And he breathed out his last.

He gave up his spirit. He was fully cut apart. And you can picture the beloved disciple and maybe

Mary, his mother, maybe she can't even be close. She's just a far off, weeping, turning away.

Maybe some of the other disciples that are unnamed, servants of Joseph of Arimathea. Maybe Joseph himself is there.

They're lowering this slain body. The carcasses that Abram is walking between, they're as it were lovingly taking this body.

And now just like Abram's hands with that dried blood and the sacrificial blood on his clothing, now they have that on their clothes.

And they wrap him in linen and they anoint him with spices and they lay him in that tomb and they grieve and they wait and they wait.

And a day goes by and they wait and they grieve and they wait and they wait.

And then that time comes when God himself walks past that scene of sacrifice, that scene of carnage.

And just like with Noah, he breathes in this satisfying scent and he reaches down into the tomb, the death of his son, and he breathes into him new life.

And the grave cannot hold him. He has been satisfied. The atonement has been accepted.

Christ is risen now for our justification. God demonstrates

His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

He Himself passes through. He Himself is the sacrifice that makes peace.

Brothers and sisters, we are not called to walk through that corridor of carnage.

It has been walked through on our behalf. We do not stare down the possibility of us being cut out of this covenant because the

Keeper of the Covenant was cut down for us. Christ is the surety. He is the yes, the amen of all that God has promised.

He has done our part. He has paid our cost. He has owned our debt. He has redeemed us, both body and soul.

The eternal Son of God lived that life of covenant faithfulness. It was the Son of God who the darkness and the horror fell upon on Golgotha so that we would never have to experience that, never to be separated from God, never to be cut out, never to have our steps examined as though they're conditional upon our ability to know

God and believe upon Him. We doubt and we wrestle with doubt. We fear and we're plagued by anxiety.

All of that is bought by the blood of the God who loved us and who saved us. This is a completely unilateral, unconditional fulfillment of a covenant that God Himself has made.

Surely I will do this. So coming full circle to where we began the sermon, what is our assurance?

Lord, how will we know? How do I know,

Lord, that Your promises are sure? How do I know? Give me a sign. Confirm it to me.

Comfort me. And so we come up and we take a piece of broken bread and we drink a cup of wine and this is the covenant sign.

This is how we know. This is an emblem of what God has done. God Himself has been cut down for His people.

He made an end to sin. He crushed the head of the serpent fatally. Our assurance does not depend upon our shaky performance or how strong our faith is or whether we've doubted or whether we've stumbled or where we've failed or where we're cold or where we're dry or where we're distant.

Our salvation rests on this fact alone that God sent His Son into the world to be a

Savior for sinners and all who come to Him will never be cast out. God Himself has secured their entrance into paradise when

He took the exit through that bloody corridor of carnage into the tomb and was raised by the

Spirit of God for our justification. If any part of my salvation rests upon me, it is not sure and it should give me fear and not comfort, but if salvation is from God, then

I can have all comfort and all boldness and all courage and all strength and every hope.

Amen? He who began a good work will perfect it until the day of the

Messiah, Jesus. How will you know that He will perfect it? Eat the bread.

Drink the cup. Let's pray. Father, what words can we say?

We look for words that are more fitting than thank you and we just cannot find the language,

Lord. We cannot find the deeper levels in our heart to express our thankfulness. Where we are not filled with the awe of gratitude, surely there is lingering unbelief.

Where our immediate jaw -dropping response is not thankfulness and humility and meekness and a desire to know

You and love You and serve You more, surely there is unbelief. Help us,

Lord, not just to hear the promises from afar while we look at our apparent reality plagued with doubts and stress, but help us,

Lord, to know, to know. Give us the comfort and the assurance of what

You've done. More than Abram ever could have seen, Lord, when he saw that flaming torch, that smoking fire pot pass through the midst of that carnage.

You've given us more. You've shown us the fulfillment of that. The whole point of it, Lord. You've given us the emblem of the cross, a far greater emblem.

More precious blood than the blood of sacrifice is the blood of Christ, for the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin.

And yet by this one act, by this one sacrifice, You've put away all sin forever. Lord, You've put away our sin.

You've covered our shame. You've taken our guilt. You were made that on the cross when that horror and that darkness fell upon You.

Praise You. Bless You, Lord. We love You. Help us to bear this hope in our lives.

Let it be vibrant and shining to others around us, Lord. Let our lives be marked, shaped, changed, and contoured by the reality of this

Word, not the apparent reality of a deceiving world or fleshly way of life.