Becoming Better Theologians (part 2) - Theology Proper

Well, I just, a little preface,

because we are going to be, I don't know how long we'll do this, probably a long time, at least until

Pastor Mike steals the classroom back to do parenting, or is this a classroom?

And I would just say this, I've become really, I think more aware over the last

year or two that there are just a lot of people who could really benefit from basic

theology, and this is actually going to be not so basic, but we want to, we'll

proceed rather slowly because I want there to be questions if there are questions that you have, so I would

want everybody at the church basically to be here, because I think we can all benefit from this

as we go through this.

Let me ask you a question, and this is one that really doesn't take much thought.

If your child says to you, you know what, dad, mom, I really love you,

I just don't want to know anything about you.

If your spouse says, you know, honey, I love you more than applesauce,

I just don't want to talk to you, and the things

about you that are peculiar and interesting don't interest me at all.

I don't think we'd take that sort of thing very seriously.

Well, if it was my child, I'd take it seriously because we'd be off to the woodshed, but that's a whole other thing.

But this idea, and I think there is an idea in the church that we don't need to know

theology, theology being the study of God, that we don't need to be theologians.

Newsflash, you are a theologian.

Everyone is a theologian.

Unbelievers are theologians.

They just are really bad ones, horrific ones.

On a scale of one to zero, they're about negative three.

Theology matters.

What you think about God, how you think about yourself, how you think about the world impacts how you live.

Do you hear that message often?

So here we are talking about the doctrine of God, the doctrine of God proper, and this morning we're going to talk about some

broad themes that we will be expanding upon in the weeks to come.

And I've taken this from Robert Culver's Systematic

Theology, and we're going to be going through basically a chapter at a time until we're done.

So I don't know, that's quite a few chapters.

In seminary, I'll never forget sitting down and my professor saying, okay, the topic this

morning is prolegomena.

And I just, you know, I'm looking around the room and everybody else is looking straight forward and I'm going,

what is prolegomena?

I don't know, it doesn't even matter.

It's not even in the notes.

But I just thought, there are preliminary things to talk about before we discuss God.

The most striking statement, this is what Culver says, the most striking statement in the whole Bible may be the first one.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, Genesis 1 .1.

Why would that be so striking?

Why would he say that might be the most striking thing in the entire Bible?

Because it doesn't say what created God.

It doesn't give any explanation at all for God.

It just says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

I mean, one of the things, if you ever read mythology, there's always some kind of explanation

for where things come from, even where the gods of the various, you know,

mythologies come from.

But the Bible doesn't do that.

It just says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Let's look at Revelation 22.

Let's go to the very back of the Bible.

By the way, anybody have a Bible with Revelation 23 in it?

You know, I always used to like to throw this phrase into my messages, you know, from Genesis 1 .1 to Revelation 22

.21, which is the entire Bible.

So if somebody has one with Chapter 23, bad, very bad.

Although I was reading, I should have brought this this morning.

I don't know why I didn't because it fits right in there.

You know, I do get the TBN newsletter and what's

so funny?

I do, I get it.

Because if you've ever given in your life, and you know what that means, if you've ever

given in your life, then you stay on their newsletter.

It doesn't matter how many times I moved, you know, I just stay on their newsletter.

They sent one today or the other day and it said, you know, here's a prophecy that was made

in like 1977 by so and so on, on our station.

And then he starts calling it the word because it was, you know, the Lord said this and the Lord said that and the Lord

said this and the Lord said that, and he starts referring it to it as the word.

And I thought it should be Revelation 23.

If this is, you know, a word from the Lord for all peoples for all time, which is how

he treated it and I just very bizarre.

Revelation 22 verses 18 to 21 and who would like to read that?

Bruce.

So, the book begins within the beginning God and it ends with

Jesus saying that he is coming soon.

From beginning to end, the Bible is about God.

As I said, there's no preliminary introduction to the leading person or idea.

God is simply there.

There's no indication of where he came from.

Why?

Because he always existed.

It's interesting.

He notes that God's name appears 28 times in the first chapter of the Bible.

God did this or God said that yet not a single sentence is devoted to identifying

or defining him.

Nothing is said about where God came from or what he is like.

Just God did this, God did that.

He's the only person.

Later in scripture, God is identified with other non -gods which are

regarded by mistaken people as real.

Gods of men's own invention, the ones that they make up.

But there are a few important statements about God's being.

For example, the Shema of Israel, Deuteronomy 6 .4 says, the Lord our God is one, so we

learn that he is one.

Some formal statements about his character, I the Lord am a jealous God.

But the clear position of the authors of scripture is that people come to the Bible

knowing that God exists.

The burden of scripture is to tell about God's dealings with mankind, not to explain his

existence.

There's a fancy word for that, and that word is,

we don't explain God, we declare him, which is presuppositionalism.

Why don't we prove the existence of God?

I already told you, but let's just kind of review this.

Why don't we prove the existence of God?

The Bible doesn't try to.

It just declares that he is, and then it goes on to explain what he does.

Presuppositionalism is the idea that everyone knows that there's a God.

And you say, well, what about the atheist?

Well, what about the atheist?

Does the atheist know that there's a God?

How do we know that?

Romans 1, verses, what's that?

Give me a second.

Oh, second Romans.

Oh, no.

Let's turn to Romans 1, and I think we'll find that the

verses would be somewhere around 18 to 20, with the emphasis being on 20.

Who would like to read Romans 1, 18 to 20?

Go ahead, Brian.

Whether it be through just the orderliness of creation,

whether it be through the miracle of childbirth, all manner of things point to a

creator.

I was just reading an article this week in one of the creation magazines about which came first, the chicken or the

egg?

And what's the answer to that?

Chicken.

How do we know that?

It said God created beasts of the air and all these other, or however it's described, but birds and

beasts and all these other things.

It doesn't say God created an egg and put it in an incubator and waited for it to hatch.

But their point of this was, you know, if you take an evolutionary mindset, you say, well, you've got a chicken and you've got an egg, which

one came first?

Well, there might be a real dilemma there.

And then you have to think about the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions.

By the way, I don't believe in this.

Just to be clear.

The millions and billions of years that would take for, you know, the kind of hit and miss.

Gee, the chicken almost had an egg and it almost worked out.

How many have ever seen the March of the Penguins?

That is a killer movie.

I don't know how anybody could watch that movie.

And I know it's not a theological movie, but I don't know how anybody could watch that movie and think, wow, I love

evolution.

I mean, these penguins are doing insane things.

I mean, they just, you just go, there's no reason for this.

They go waddling off, you know, for tens of miles out to the ocean and then they come waddling back and they're carrying these

eggs and they do all this stuff.

You just go, in terms of just simple perpetuating

the species, what they do makes no sense at all.

But it does make sense if God created everything and he wanted things to be

peculiar and to reflect the order that he set in motion.

And that's the world that we see around us.

Not some chaotic, crazy, random world.

We see an orderly world.

Enough is disclosed about God in the scripture in the world that is quite correct to say scripture tells us all we

need to know about the one who is creator, savior, and Lord.

And all we need to know about ourselves as well.

There's so much packed into that.

What do you need outside of the Bible?

In terms of knowing about God and in terms about knowing about yourself, you say, well, you know, I mean,

we could even go so far as to say that that little paragraph there, listen, one tells us what we

need to know about the one who is creator, savior, and Lord.

And all we need to know of ourselves as well.

Well, I really need to go see a counselor.

I really need to see a psychologist.

I really need to find out, you know, why I do the things that you do.

No, you don't.

What you need to do is you need to think, I'm a creation.

I have a creator.

He made me.

Sin impacted me.

I need to live in light of that and not in light of, well, you know what?

Your mom didn't give you enough hugs when you were a child.

Therefore, I was just, I don't know how many of you are

familiar with this case in Connecticut, this home invasion thing that's been in the news here lately because these guys are on trial.

And they went in and they did all these unspeakable things and lit this family on fire, did all this stuff.

And now, you know, there are some people wanting to make excuses.

For some of these guys, because they didn't get the proper treatment when they were younger.

And I'm just like, I'm reading this and I'm going, and that makes a difference.

How bad things come into a lot of people's lives.

We don't have the right to do whatever we want to do.

We are God's creatures.

We owe allegiance to the creator.

We are accountable to him.

This idea was shared by the Reformation fathers who shaped the

great creeds and confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Listen to this.

I love this.

Luther's small catechism.

I've never read this before, but listen to what this is written for children.

Can you imagine saying this to your child and having your child repeat it?

I think this is awesome.

I believe that God has made me and all creatures.

That's great.

Every child should understand that.

You know, well, I don't know, you know, what if they find out about evolution?

I believe that God has made me and all creatures.

Evolution is just one theory that will come up and get knocked down over and over again.

The truth is the truth.

John Calvin, who after 400 years, still informs most evangelical teachers,

began the first complete work of Protestant theology with this sentence.

Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts,

the knowledge of God and of ourselves.

The Bible speaks of God and his interaction with men.

I've said this before, but let me just say this again.

The theme of the Bible, I would argue, is that God

is what?

You're going to come up with a lot of different answers.

I'm going to say this.

God is a savior.

Why would I say that?

Because at every turn, man rebels against him right from the beginning.

And God never just says, you know what?

But again and again, he saves, he redeems.

Most informed students of the Bible are convinced that people do not need to be told that God exists.

Let me say that again.

Most informed students of the Bible are convinced that people do not need to be told that God exists.

We read that in Romans 1, 18 and 20, a passage there that you ought to really kind of

at least know the address to, know where it is.

He goes on to say the Christian mission in part is to address this painful awareness that we already know that there's

a God, to clear up the garbled understanding of God with correct information and to relieve the

conscience of its weight of guilt, provided, of course, that the good news is received into the heart.

What's he saying?

He's saying, listen, there are a lot of ideas out there about God.

Everybody's got their own concept of God.

I worked with a woman one day and she was explaining to me, I think I was a relatively new Christian, and so I was always trying to

engage in these kind of discussions.

And this woman told me what she believed.

And I just, I listened to it and I couldn't, it was so mixed up.

And I said, where did you get that?

Because I recognized parts of Mormonism in it.

And she said, well, you know, part of it is Judaism and the other part is Mormonism.

And I've just kind of picked and chosen which parts I wanted.

That's what people do.

So what do we do?

We have the Bible, the infallible word of God, and we bring the Bible and we say, well, wait a minute.

Here's what you're saying about God.

Can I tell you what the Bible actually says?

Can I tell you what the truth is?

I want the light of the truth to just radiate on your air and the

darkness that you live in so that you see the truth.

That's what we do.

To do that, we have to know the Bible.

You know, it's interesting talking about knowing the Bible.

I love to get phone calls like this.

I got a phone call here about a week ago from my neighbor across the street.

And she says, you know, I was talking to one of my friends and I

told her, I said, I didn't think it was right for women to be teaching men the Bible.

Now, this woman is a Roman Catholic.

She says, I don't think that's right.

Can you help me out?

And I said, well, yeah, matter of fact, I can.

And I said, First Timothy two, and we and we just talked about it a little bit.

And I said, you know, I know a guy who's pretty lousy preacher, but he just did a message on this.

I mean, you want to listen to it and.

Listen, when people it was me.

When people they instinctively know some things.

And when you can bring the scripture to bear, it's helpful, it's very

helpful.

What we want to do is we want to give hope to people.

I mean, what is the worst thing in the world?

The worst thing in the world is to be a sinner weighed down with sin, unsure what to do, have a wrong idea

about God, a wrong idea about yourself, you know, kind of an Oprah view of the world.

I'm good.

I don't know why good things aren't happening to me.

When people have that kind of outlook on life, they're going to struggle.

Maybe not all the time, but a lot of times they will think of it this way.

Jesus said what that he came to set the captives.

On fire, no, he came to set the captives free.

I would like to propose this to you.

It is as if you are kind of the person who sneaks into the prison.

Unlocks the shackles.

God uses you through his word to bring people out of darkness, to set them free from their

shackles.

People have this concept of God.

They understand that he is there.

They suppress that truth.

But it's much like the Israelites before God's presence at Sinai, or like the startled

man in the gospel that are apt to cry, depart from me for I am a sinful man.

Or like Isaiah, they may say, woe is me.

And what do we want?

We want them to do that.

We want them to understand the holiness of God.

We want them to understand the truth.

And we want them to understand that truth before the day where they are forced to acknowledge it.

Let's talk about general awareness of God a little bit more.

Basic to all the preaching and exhortation of scripture is the assumption that all people

everywhere already know something about God.

When you hear that phraseology, that phrasing, what do you think about?

You can say Romans 1.

I'd like to turn to Acts chapter 17.

Pastor Mike says all the time, we are going to worship something.

I like the illustration he does with the Iwana kids, where he goes to different schools,

and he talks about the number one thing that people worship.

And, you know, the kids are all raising their hands.

And I mean, I'd like to be at one of those things, maybe sometime and just see one of the kids go the NFL.

I think that would be right.

But but he has it all covered.

And then he invites the kids one by one back there to see what it is.

And he lifts it up and they look and it's a mirror.

So they see themselves.

And I'm going, that's right.

I think that's the number one thing that people worship.

But we are created to worship.

Look at Acts chapter 17.

And I'm going to begin reading in verse 16.

And again, this is a really seminal passage in understanding

not only how to evangelize, but the truth that everyone is created as

a worship kind of person, a machine.

This is what we do.

We worship something.

Acts 17, verse 16.

Now, while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him.

As he saw, the city was full of idols.

So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day that is in the town

center with those who happen to be there.

Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also converse with them.

And some said, what does this babbler wish to say?

Others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and

the resurrection.

And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus.

That is Mars Hill.

That's exactly what that means there.

The hill of Ares, the god of war.

May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting.

For you bring some strange things to our ears.

We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean.

Now, all the Athenians and the foreigners who live there would spend their time in nothing except telling

or hearing something new.

So Paul, standing in the middle of the Areopagus, said, Men of Athens, I perceive in every way that you are

very religious.

For as I passed along, I mean, imagine if he just said today, he could say, Men and women of the United

States, I perceive that you are very spiritual.

For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found an altar with this inscription to the

unknown God.

What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,

nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives all to

mankind, life and breath and everything.

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth.

Having determined allotted periods in the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God

in the hope that they might feel their way toward him.

Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.

For in him, we live and move and have our being.

As even of some of your own poets have said, for we are his offspring.

Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or

stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

Not like that at all.

The times of ignorance God overlooked.

But he now commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will judge

the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

So we start with a situation here where Paul is vexed.

He's concerned.

He's irritated.

Why?

Because they've got all these false gods all around.

And what does he do?

He doesn't take the time disproving every false god.

He doesn't take the time to say, you know what, you know, let me just explain.

This thing here has no power.

He says all that in a very short period of time.

What he does do is declare the God who exists.

Gives a very nice little gospel message there.

Talks about Adam.

I mean, think about all the truth that is in that one message.

We all descend from Adam.

We all are going to be accountable to one man, the man Christ Jesus.

Talks about the resurrection.

Gives a full gospel there.

The book of Jonah furnishes a striking example as well.

Jonah, Pastor Mike preached through this a few weeks ago, several weeks ago.

And Jonah did everything he possibly could.

I mean, the number one thing I love about the book of Jonah is the best example in my mind of the sovereignty of

God.

God says, hey, Jonah, you're my prophet.

I mean, this is kind of my translation.

You're my prophet.

Or maybe you thought I had it memorized.

He says, you're my prophet.

Go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach repentance to them.

Why doesn't Jonah go to Nineveh?

Because he doesn't like the hotels there.

No, I'm sorry, Becky, what'd you say?

He doesn't want the Ninevites to be saved.

He doesn't like the Ninevites.

He hates them.

So instead, Jonah says, okay, you want me to go that way?

I'm going to go that way.

He's going to go check out, you know, the Mediterranean in the south of Spain.

Going to have a little holiday.

But God doesn't allow that to happen.

And eventually he winds up in Nineveh.

And Jonah preaches this.

Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown if they didn't repent.

But what happens?

The people of Nineveh believe.

And it's interesting.

We don't have time to go through the whole book.

But let me ask you this question.

Do we read in the book of Jonah that Jonah spent several days holding seminars explaining the

existence of God?

That he gave them, you know, several systematic theologies and said, read these, discuss them amongst yourselves.

And I'll come back and talk to you guys in a couple weeks.

He doesn't do that.

He just declares that they need to repent.

Why?

The implication is that they knew God.

They knew that there was a God who existed.

They just didn't worship him.

Jonah says, you need to worship this God.

And they repented.

And of course, Jonah doesn't like that at all.

But they responded in such a great way that what did Jesus say later

to all the people who had seen his ministry?

He said, the men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it.

For they repented of the preaching of Jonah and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

People have a knowledge of God.

But Culver says this knowledge of God, which sinful people have does not bring them pleasure and peace.

For that knowledge is largely guilty knowledge.

What do people think?

I mean, this whole back rally here a few weeks ago, where there were hundreds of thousands of people there.

What was the overall message of that?

If you could just encapsulate that in a few words, what would you say the message was for those of you who paid any

attention to it?

The overall message was be good, do better.

I guess that's a fine political message, but it's not much of a Christian message.

Do I want to be a better husband, father, brother, son,

person in the church?

Yes, but the idea that somehow do better, do more

is a Christian message.

Is this wrong?

Skip over that.

But even without the special aid of supernatural revelation, that is the Bible.

There have been benefits to the world because of the Bible, because

of an overall belief that God exists.

Can you think of some of those benefits?

What does a belief in God and understanding that there is someone ultimately that we're going to be accountable to,

what are some of the benefits that everyone gets from that?

Accountability and what'd you say?

In workmanship.

People have a tendency, if they understand that there is a God, they have a tendency to work

harder, I think.

And also, I mean, just think about this.

Some of the great works of art of all time, right along those same lines.

Would we say that, you know, the Last Supper, was it a Christian who painted it?

Sistine Chapel, was it a Christian who painted it?

I mean, great works of art, but they're not necessarily Christians who

did it.

But what about just the idea that there is a restraining force on

people?

Why?

Because I don't want to do something really bad, because then God will get mad at me.

Right?

I mean, what do we hear from people who say, well, yes, I'll get to heaven because I'm really not that bad of a person.

So the implication, therefore, is what?

That they want to try not to be a bad person.

So even just that mere idea that there might be a God out there, restrains

people from being as wicked as they could be.

But the Bible moves very quickly on to show that the creator of heaven and earth is not some obscure

principle or power.

God tolerates no rivals.

God tolerates no rivals.

Though there are many claimants to deity, there is but one being in the category of

God.

In the first chapter of the Bible, the God is called Elohim.

In chapter two, he's called the Lord God or

Yahweh, Elohim.

Yod -Heh -Vav -Heh, Y -H -W -H,

the covenant name of God.

Several other names and name -like terms appear farther along in the Bible, but they all

belong to him that is true.

Let's talk about the necessity and importance of worshiping God.

A report of the earliest evidence of mankind to worship God is the immediate sequel of the

fall.

What happens right after Adam and Eve are kicked out of the garden?

What's maybe in the next chapter?

Cain and Abel.

And they both bring offerings.

One is rejected.

They inherently knew.

I mean, we don't see...

Here's what we don't see prior to that.

We don't see any kind of laid out plan for what men are to

do in terms of worshiping.

We don't see that.

But two men are born and they are aware that God is and

that he may not be ignored.

He has to be worshiped.

If God the creator exists, and we know he does, then man, the only... I like this.

The only visible rational creature on earth must worship him as also do the angels in heaven.

The two sons of Eve knew this.

We have no knowledge of how they came to this information.

It's not in the Bible.

It's in the white spaces.

But all generations of mankind have known that God must

be worshiped.

Let's talk about one God lost and recovered.

The first generations of humanity worship God.

When the narrative of redemptive history moves on to the call of Abraham, that event is interpreted

as a recovery from paganism.

Why?

Because Abram lived among...

You know, he was in a commune of very spiritual people, heathens.

But Abram's obedience really was what?

When he does what the Lord says, what is he in essence doing?

He's converting, I would argue, to a new religion, away from polytheism

to monotheism, back to worshiping the one true God.

What convinced Abram to follow the God most high and what means was employed to perpetuate that faith among his

posterity, his children?

Well, we do not know by what external means the divine spirit employed or what he employed to

convince Abram belatedly to follow the initial call.

We do know how God strengthened his faith.

In fact, let's just look at Genesis 15 again.

You know, some real mountain peaks of Scripture and chapters here in this early part that I just think

every Christian ought to be familiar with.

Romans 1, Acts 17, Genesis 15,

starting at verse 1.

After these things, and again, notice Abram in this, not Abraham because he's not yet Abraham.

After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.

Fear not, Abram.

I am your shield.

Your reward shall be very great.

And Abram says, well, thank you, Lord.

I accept that on faith.

No, verse 2.

But Abram said, Oh, Lord God, what will you give me?

For I continue childless.

The promise of God to Abraham was or Abram was that he would have more children

than, more descendants than he could count.

More numerous than the stars of heaven, more numerous than the sands on the beach.

For I continue childless and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus, who was not his son, obviously.

And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring.

I mean, you imagine talking to God like this?

Behold, you have given me no offspring and a member of my household will be my heir.

And behold, the word of the Lord came to him.

This man shall not be your heir.

Your very own son shall be your heir.

And he brought him outside and said, look toward the heaven and number the stars, if you are able to number them.

Then he said, so shall your offspring be.

And he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.

Now, listen to this as it goes on, because I just think this is one of the great chapters of the Bible.

And he said to him, God said to Abram, I'm the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the

Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.

But he said, O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?

Great man of faith.

He said to him, bring a heifer, female cow, three years old, female goat,

three years old, a ram, three years old, a turtle dove and a young pigeon.

And he brought him all these, cut them in half and laid each half over against the other.

But he did not cut the birds in half.

And when the birds of prey came down on their carcasses, on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram and behold,

dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.

Then the Lord said to Abram, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs

and will be servants there.

And they will be afflicted for 400 years.

What's he talking about there?

Egypt.

But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve.

And afterward, they shall come out with great possessions.

As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace.

You shall be buried in a good old age and they shall come back here in the fourth generation

for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.

Now listen, when the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking

fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces, the animal pieces.

And I have to explain, some of you have heard this, but I have to explain this anyway.

When you made a covenant with someone, you would cut

these animals in half.

This was, you know, the old way of signing a contract.

And they didn't have courts.

You couldn't sue.

You couldn't say you broke the contract.

So what they did was they set up the ultimate contract.

They took these animals and they would walk between it.

And the point of walking between these split dead animals wasn't, you know, the

grotesqueness of it.

It was to point out that if either one of us violate this contract, then the same thing will happen to the

person who violates this contract as happened to these animals.

So it wasn't, you know, you signed and then look for a lawyer to get you out of the contract.

I mean, it was life and death.

But listen to this.

So this is the picture.

The pieces are there.

The smoking fire pot and flaming torch symbolizing God passed between these pieces.

But notice again, back in verse 12, as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram.

Verse 17, again, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed

between those pieces.

Listen, verse 18.

On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying to your offspring, I give

this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,

the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the

Perizzites, the Repham, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

What's the point?

The point is God made this covenant with Abram, but Abram never walked through the pieces.

Abram was asleep.

God, as it were, walked through those pieces by himself saying that he was going to give Abram this

land or God himself

would suffer the punishment promised by breaking a covenant.

Can God die?

No.

So his point is Abram and his descendants would possess the land exactly as described there

without fail.

It's an ironclad contract.

When we understand, and I'm going to close here now, but when we understand the nature of God,

that he is by nature a saving God, that he keeps his word, we're going to see as we look

here further, when we talk about miracles, when we talk about prophecies, when we talk about

the things that God has said, if he does not do them,

then he's a liar.

God does not lie.

He cannot lie.

God cannot break his word.

He cannot break it with Abram.

He cannot break it with us.

When he says to someone, you will be with me in paradise, that person will be with him in paradise.

When he says, if you repent and believe, you will have eternal life, you will have eternal life.

These are the great promises of scripture and in understanding who God is, his

faithfulness, even in spite of our faithlessness, in spite of our tendency towards

sin.

When we understand God, who God is, does that cause us affliction and pain and torment?

No.

We can wake up every morning and say what?

Your mercies are new to me every single day because I know what I deserve and yet you don't give it to me.

We praise him because we understand who he is.

Let's pray.

Father, you are a great God and worthy to be praised.

Lord, we love you and are so thankful for your mercy, for your love, for your

compassion, for your steadfastness.

Lord, when we think about the sinfulness of a man like Abram, who would go on to even lie about his

wife being his sister, who would doubt God over and over again, who would sin in terms of

adultery.

Father, we are reminded that the Bible is never a story about faithful men

and capricious gods.

Those are religions that are made up.

The Bible is about a faithful God, sinful men, and his

unfailing love to redeem for himself a people,

to so change them that they become trophies of his grace.

Father, we thank you for your son, Jesus Christ.

For in him, we know, in his resurrection, we know that we have a sure hope

that we can look forward to eternity with you.

Father, make us a people who praise you each and every day, not groan and moan about our conditions,

but rejoice that we have been redeemed through the work of your son.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.