God Made a Promise

Well, here we are again in our old stomping grounds. It was nice to have a different place last week, but it's also nice to be home, in quotation.

Marks.

And we continue on now in our summary of Genesis. Of course, as we've come now to the conclusion of the book of Genesis, we want to take several weeks to summarize and take out some of the highlights, some of the important themes, important applications along the way.

Abraham, the Seed of Promise, and the Promise of Genesis 3:15

And this morning, we want to consider Abraham in chapters 12 through 25, and even more than that, the God of Abraham in chapters 12 through 25. Again, I cannot say if I'll be standing here next Sunday morning, it's out of my hands.

But if I am, we'll continue most likely with Jacob and probably Joseph as well, seeing as Jacob makes it all the way to chapter 49, a chapter shy of finishing the book. So perhaps we'll finish summarizing the book of Genesis next Sunday, Lord willing.

If not, you'll have the great pleasure, I trust, of hearing Brian Labozier come and minister for a time. And then we'll pick up and carry on to the book of Exodus after we finish our last review. So if you're wondering where we're going next, we'll be in the book of Exodus, literally the page from Genesis 50 to Exodus 1, turning the page over four centuries' time to see how God raises up a deliverer through Moses to bring his people out of the evil empire.

And we'll read up to chapter 20, then we'll take a break and go consider the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 through 7 before we return to Exodus. So we've got big plans for 2023 and beyond. Well, this morning, we want to remember that Genesis is the foundation of the Gospel.

It's more than the foundation of the Bible. It's the foundation of the Gospel that is proclaimed within the Bible. We talked last week about the importance of Genesis 3, verse 15, the promise that God makes to the woman, more specifically to the seed of the woman, that though his heel would be bruised, he would crush the serpent's head.

This promise from the very beginning, immediately following the fall, brings forth an expectation that God is going to give a redeemer to his fallen people, and that that redeemer, that seed of the woman, would come in due time, in the fullness of time, and we on this side of that great revelation know him in the person of our Savior Jesus.

So we move from chapters 1 through 11 in that opening cycle where we closed with the empire of Babel, looming in all of its might before the confusion of the languages that dispersed the people across the landscape, divided them into people groups, tongues making nations, ethnicities deriving therefrom after the flood.

And the cycle of the patriarchs begins in chapter 12. As one put it, God's covenant with the patriarch Abraham sounds the note of a seed that rings like a tolling church bell. Some of you heard that 10 a .m. bell.

Here's the first ringing of that bell coming out of Genesis 1 through 11, beginning in verse 12, the great ringing of the bell, the seed is coming, the seed of promise. This has everything to do with the constant refrain we've seen throughout the generational structure of Genesis, and to your seed, and to your seed, and to your seed, these are the generations, these are the generations, these are the generations, Adam, Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth, Terah, Abraham.

Now, last week we said God brings forth in Genesis the beginning of the work in person.

Of Christ.

So, in Genesis we have the mystery being formed of who this promised seed is and what he must.

Do.

And the big key word for us in the first part of this morning is God made a promise. That takes us from Genesis 3 .15 all the way to the beginning of Genesis 12, and all that.

Will follow.

God made a promise. God patiently, faithfully, purposefully preserves the line of Shem and his sovereign grace stretches forth from the promise he made to the woman down through that line of Shem all the way until it unilaterally rests upon one man, Abram, dwelling in Ur of the Chaldeans.

We're going to look at that. First, the grace of God's call, and then secondly, the patience of Abraham's faith. That's all we're going to attempt to do this morning. So first, the grace of God's call, God made a promise, and second, the patience of Abraham's faith, Abraham believed.

If you take nothing else out of Genesis 12 through 25, you at least better take this, God made a promise, and Abraham believed. So the grace of God's call, first, remind us of Genesis 12, 1 through 3, now the Lord said to Abram, get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house to a land that I will show you, I will make you a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great.

You shall be a blessing, I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you, and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. This is the beginning, formally speaking, the beginning of the Abrahamic promise, which will come to its height in the covenant that God makes with Abraham in chapter 15.

So the history of redemption is going to unfold covenantally. When we were in Genesis 1 through 11, we saw that. There was a covenant of works that God had with Adam prior to the fall, and as a result of breaking that covenant of works, God instituted a covenant of grace.

He gave a promise that in due time, the seed of the woman would bring forth grace, sacrificially.

Bring forth grace.

As a result of his heel being struck, he would crush the serpent's head. All of redemption unfolds covenantally. All of God's grace comes by way of covenant. And so here, we take a significant step forward in the history of God's redemption.

It begins, notice, with God speaking. God is the one who creates this redemption, much like he created the world, he speaks. Abraham doesn't wake up one morning in Ur and say, you know what, I better look into the God who made the heavens and the earth.

I need to stop worshiping these idols over here in the land. I need to understand who made me and what his purpose might be. Maybe if he'd have something to do with me, if he'd consider me, maybe call me into his employ.

That doesn't happen. That never happens. No one wakes up seeking God. What does Paul say in Romans 3?

None, none seek after him.

No, not one are righteous. So we see, just like the beginning of creation, the beginning of redemption, it always begins with God's activity, God speaking into the darkness, God speaking into the void.

All of redemption revolves around God's undertaking, God's activity, not man's. That doesn't mean there's not a role for man, that there's a response for man, and we'll see that in the second part this morning.

But we must highlight this, redemption begins with God's act. Creation and redemption in this way are woven together. It's one of the important themes in the book of Genesis. God as creator and God as redeemer, God undertaking the work, God speaking into the void and bringing something out of that darkness, something good, something genuinely good.

Remember Nehemiah chapter 9, this great prayer, this great confession, you alone are the Lord, you have made the heavens, the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts, the earth, everything in it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve them all.

The host of heaven worships you. What's Nehemiah 9 recounting here?

God, you are the creator.

You have sewn together the galaxies. You uphold them all. They all glorify you. And what's the next thing that happens in the mind? You are the Lord God who chose Abram and brought him out of the Ur of the Chaldeans.

You see, you go from creator to caller, creator to redeemer. You created the galaxies and you called Abram. That's how we get from God as creator to God as our redeemer. The covenant, the promise that God makes to Abraham.

You have performed your words. You are righteous. This is the language that constantly attends God. And what is this related to? It's related to the promise, always related to the promise. You are faithful to what you have declared.

That begins here in chapter 12 as the next step forward out of Genesis 315. You are the Lord God who chose Abram. We're reading in Genesis 12, 1 through 3, God's choice of Abram. And with that choice comes this great promise.

God made a promise. Look at it's all what God is going to do for Abram. None of it is what Abram is going to do for God. All of it is what God is going to do for Abram. And more importantly, through Abram, I will make you a great nation.

I will bless you and make your name great. I will bless those who bless you. I will curse him who curses you. In you, I will make all of the families of the earth blessed. God made a promise. Hebrews chapter six, verse 13, locates this promise with this very calling.

When God made a promise to Abraham because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, saying, blessing, I will bless you. Multiplying, I will multiply you. This great promise of God carries forth all that God had promised.

In the Garden of Eden, to a fallen man and woman, guilty, clutching fig leaves over their naked bodies. The grace of God begins with a call. Isn't that true of you, if you're a believer here this morning?

That as wildly different as Genesis has been to our own cultural expectations, our own idiosyncrasies as modern Westerners, there's at least similarity here. Even for us still, the grace of God begins with a call.

Keep in mind the world at this time. The effects of the fall are more pronounced. People are dying earlier and earlier. The cords of death, Christopher Ashe, the cords of death closing in upon them. Remember that the world is full with idolatry and abomination.

It's as much as Joshua says. Thus says the Lord God of Israel, your fathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham, the father of Nahor, dwelt on the other side of the river in old times. They served other gods.

But I took your father, Abraham. I led him throughout the land of Canaan, and I multiplied his descendants. Abraham was no different. He worshipped the gods of his father. He was an idolater. He was a pagan.

He ran in the great flood of dissipation. But one day, when he was 75 years old, God called him. Some of you are sitting in this room, and you think that somehow you're acquainted with this grace. It's the name of the church.

It's what we talk about, I hope, every week. And you think you're somehow acquainted with it. But sometimes you can be around someone and never actually meet them, never actually know them. You know of them.

You see them regularly, but you haven't been introduced. You haven't embraced. There's no comfort, there's no closure, there's no closeness. You just see from afar. You're on the outside. And yet you think, I know, I know, I know, I get it.

Abraham is called a friend of God because he was acquainted with the grace of God. If you are not a friend of God, you are a stranger to God. And you may be exposed to grace, you may be around grace, you may hear the proclamation and see the living testimonies of grace week after week and still be a stranger to it.

And there's almost no worse condition imaginable to man than being a stranger to God's grace, convinced that they're actually acquainted. God called Abram. Abram was not seeking, Abram was not praying, Abram was not doing anything.

Things that you want to do if you are a stranger to grace, to seek and to pray, to strive, to seek help. But the key is always, and this would be true even in this case, God is the one who calls, God is the one who promises, God made a promise.

We don't know the details of this calling. We don't know how it took place. We don't know if a chick tract made its way under his doorstop one day. We don't know how God called Abram, but we know that he called Abram.

It was a sovereign, it was a gracious act. And from that moment, not perfectly, but truly his life was forever changed. Reading chapters 13, 14, 15, we see the stumbling of Abram even after. But the significant thing is this, Abram actually got out of Ur.

Abram actually left. He actually responded to the call. And this is used again and again as a reason that God's people are to find comfort. It's not in their failures, neither it is in their performance.

It's not in their backsliding, neither it is in their merit. It's in the fact that God called and therefore God will perform. Listen to me, Isaiah 51. You who follow after righteousness, you who are seeking the Lord, look to the rock from which you were hewn, the hole of the pit from which you were dug.

Look to Abraham, your father, to Sarah, who bore you. I called him alone. I blessed him. I increased him. The Lord will comfort Zion. The Lord will comfort her waste places. He will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord.

You see, creation, redemption woven together in Abraham. What assurance can I have as a believer that I'm not a stranger to grace? I look back to God's calling. I look in my own life and I see the way that he has brought comfort to my waste places and that which was desolate, he has begun to make fruitful.

It makes me yearn for more of his work, more of his presence in my life. But the difference is this. I can look back and find a time when I was living in Ur and I responded to the call of grace and I left that place behind.

What does James say about being a friend of the world? Speaking of being a friend of God, we're either estranged from one and very friendly and comfortable with the other or vice versa. We're either estranged from the world and we stick out like a sore thumb and we see all of the values and ways and charms of the world as as horrifically pale, as almost disturbing because the closer we draw to the Lord, we can't help but see that contrast, that calling upon our lives.

And so we leave Ur behind, as it were, or we feel that way about the Lord and the Lord's people and the means of grace. We're most comfortable when we're not looking at those things, not being around those things.

We're most comfortable when we're in Ur. Really, there's only one way or the other. We find this pattern of God calling his people. And by his grace, his people responding to his call. And we know that all things in the life of Abraham and the life of every believer work together to those who are called, to those who are called.

We're reminded that God's grace in drawing near to embrace a sinner like Abram is a grace that is built around the cross. God cannot justify the guilty. And so even here, where does this grace come? Why does he choose Abram?

What has Abram done to warrant this kind of favor? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. How can it come about? Can God just dispense it freely? No. Every grace of God is blood bought. Even here from Calvary, stretching back millennia, is the grace of the cross of Christ Jesus calling Abram into a relationship with God, even as a believer today goes all the way back millennia to Calvary.

It's the grace of Calvary that brings us into a relationship with God. All grace is blood bought grace. Grace is not arbitrary. It's not some vague motion, not some ever changing or rotating plan. It's not a ceremonial gesture.

It's not a vestige of kindness. It's a work, a sacrificial work of a holy God who sends his son in the fullness of time according to his promise. Grace is a humiliated savior, stripped naked on the tree, his back torn open by Roman cattail whips to save a people who are only concerned to serve themselves and serve their idols, who prefer often more than we're willing to admit to return to our vomit like a filthy pack of dogs.

But the grace of God has called us. And so redemption moves forward. Because God made a promise. God made a promise. If you look in your bulletin, I just feel like I have to review this a little bit. You'll see a little what we call a chiasm.

It's a way of showing literary structure. And so we've had some experience with this in Genesis. And this is something that we looked at back in Genesis 11, I believe. So you'll notice the corresponding letters.

You'll notice A at the top and at the very bottom, A with the apostrophe. And this is a way you create, again, this chiasm. And so each letter corresponds. There's symmetry and yet difference. And this is the way that Genesis 11 through 22 is structured.

And what I would draw your attention to is where it all heads, where it all goes, which are the corresponding E's, the sort of point of the arrow. And notice the difference, right? So we begin here, we're looking at genealogies, right?

That's the sort of chapter breaks. That's the backbone of the book of Genesis. You have the genealogy of Terah and the genealogy of his brother Nahor. That's the sandwich, the bookends, as it were, of everything that we're looking at between chapter 11 through 22.

And it draws or it forces our attention to what are the parallels? The shift that takes place in the very middle is when God, by his covenant, no longer is interacting with Abram, but Abraham. It's a result of the promise, the unconditional covenant that God makes with him.

And so notice everything prior is God dealing with Abram. Everything after corresponds to God dealing with Abraham. And everything has begun to shift. With Abram, we have the enunciation of Ishmael, chapters 15 to the beginning of 16.

But then we have God's covenant with the enunciation of Isaac. So we have the child of the flesh, as it were, Romans 9, and we have. The child of promise. That structure is vital to rightly understanding the way that God is going to unfold redemptive history, you have to see this duality in the way that God is viewing Abraham and the same way he'll view his people, Israel, and all of that corresponds to those who are of the flesh and those who are of faith, those who are in bondage to the law and those who are the children of the promise.

So everything that Galatians 3 and Romans 4 and these other really important passages want to build upon is found even here, just in the structure of Genesis 11 through 22, in the contrast between Abram and Ishmael and Abraham and Isaac.

We spent many, many weeks and we won't review it now looking at the differences, the distinctives of how we as Reformed Baptists look at covenant theology, how we understand the mixture within the covenantal relationships of God.

And we maintain, against some of our good friends, we maintain a contrast where they want to say there's a unity. That's as much as I'll say for those who have ears to hear. I would just remind you of a few very important verses along these lines.

Romans 9, 6. They're not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham. We're children of Abraham. What does John the Baptist say? God's able to raise children from these stones.

Being a child of the flesh and the blood does not make you, does not qualify you to be the seed of Abraham that God made promises to. They're not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they're the seed of Abraham.

No, in Isaac your seed shall be called, not in Ishmael, in Isaac. Those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God. The children of the promise are counted as the seed. Galatians 4, 28.

Now, we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. We, brethren, are the children of promise as Isaac was. Galatians 3, 7. Therefore, know this. Only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham.

Only those who have faith are the seed of Abraham. Galatians 3, 29. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Very important. More than I can emphasize, more than six weeks, a year and a half ago could emphasize.

Notice this language. If you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Here is Paul writing to the church in Galatia, and even still, he's reminding them of an event that took place all the way back in Genesis 12.

God made a promise. You are still walking out the lived reality of God's promise coming to fulfillment in and through Christ.

Genesis 3, 15.

The seed has come. All that God promised Abraham and the many families of the earth that will be blessed through him. You believers stumbling together there in Galatia, you are the fulfillment of all that God had promised.

You are the heirs of which God spoke to Abraham. And this is what Abraham believed. So secondly, moving on to this patience of Abraham's faith, right?

God calls.

God acts.

God makes a promise. That's all of God's activity in his work of salvation. But then Abraham responds, Abraham believes, Abraham walks. God made a promise to Abraham, Hebrews 6, 13, because he could swear by no one greater.

He swore by himself, saying, surely blessing, I will bless you. Multiplying all multiplying. So God made a promise. God promised blessing. But with promised blessing comes trial. With promised blessing comes a testing of faith.

What did God say? And we're going to be looking at Genesis 22, thinking what are the pivotal moments you must remember, the covenant of a call and 12, the covenant in 15, the way that that's confirmed in 17, the Akedah, the binding, the sacrifice of Isaac in chapter 22.

Mountaintops of redemptive history. But you remember what God said to fast forward a little bit in response to Abraham's sacrifice. Now, I know now I know God brings trial into the Christian's life so that it can be assured it can be objective.

You believe it's a good thing when trial brings us to the place where we can say now we know. Now, we know when other believers around us can say how we know it's not good to spend many years in a church body with a question mark over your head.

It's not good for you. It's really not good for the church either. It's a sad thing. The elders often will rejoice when we hear news of some trial because it's with it comes the anticipation God's doing something.

God's going to expose or bring or produce something. It's better than static, better than stagnant, even if it's painful and even if it's difficult. God is ever proving his people. And if you have lived a good chunk of your life without trial, without testing, it's hard to find a parallel in Scripture to that.

It seems like with trials that we succeed, greater trials yet to come. It's amazing, right? Pilgrim's progress. It only gets harder as he goes. He thinks, OK, finally, I can coast my way to the celestial city.

And it keeps getting harder and harder until he gets to the very end. And that's like the hardest of all. There's something to say about the Christian life, that though there's more comfort, more peace, more joy, more assurance, there's also simultaneous to that more difficulty, more challenge.

More of a fight of faith, more storms. It's the what we talked about last week, the warp and the weft of how God is knitting redemption together. So God promises blessing, but it comes with trial. It comes with a test.

And this test is not arbitrary. Nothing that God does is arbitrary. This isn't something that he says, I'm kind of bored sitting up here. Let me throw a curveball to Abram. I really want to know where he's at.

Even this test in Genesis 22 is is designed to be a a window, a portal. I loved we were in Florida at the beginning of the year and we went to this really neat aquarium where they had these these tanks and you had to kind of climb underneath.

And there'd be a sort of acrylic bubble where you could kind of stick your head in and it felt like you were in the middle of the tank and you could look around. And that's Genesis 22. OK, you know, the sacrifice here, blood sacrifice.

That's something very familiar to the people of God. We know that all the way back to Genesis five. And then we actually get in Genesis 22 when we put our head in that bubble and we look around and we go, oh, yes, this is actually all about the Lord Jesus, isn't it?

This is all about the promise seed. And the father who gives his beloved son as a sacrifice. So Calvary here reaches all the way back to the life of Abraham. Genesis 22, one and two, the first words, God tested Abraham.

Protest all you will. God is God. He does what pleases him, Psalm 135.

He sits in the heavens.

We have no right to protest the trials that he brings. It's our part to submit. To trust his wisdom, his goodness, his fatherly care. God tested Abraham. Remember all those weeks that led up to this weeks for us that corresponded to decades in the life of Abraham, he had been childless his whole life.

How many offerings do they bring to the pagan gods and are for fertility, some fertility offerings, this will be the year, this will be the month, that roller coaster they were on and how in that great wavering, that great backsliding, they concocted a way that they'd bring forth through Hagar and air.

But then God came and he assured them of his promise. And in due time, Sarah bore the child of promise. And here's this beautiful relationship, Abraham loving his young son. The son he had waited a hundred years for a century, he's finally holding him.

I can't imagine there were too many nights where he wouldn't pass by the room and just stare and just bless God and thank God in his heart. Be amazed that even though it was hard to wait all this time, God was true because God made a promise.

And then Genesis 22 explodes like some scud missile in the middle of the narrative. What's going on? Abraham, here I am. Take now your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on the mountain, I will tell you, it's shattering, it's devastating.

But just like Abraham responded when he was called in her. He responds immediately. Remember what we read? He wakes up early, no depression nap. He doesn't wake up at lunchtime. No, he doesn't distract himself and busy himself.

Yes, Lord, such as his faith.

Yes, Lord.

So he takes his son and he takes the firewood and he takes his servants with him and they march out toward the land of Moriah. God is sensitive. He's sympathetic to how Abraham feels, your only son. The son whom you love, Abraham does not question God's command, he obeys it, but he wonders, God, you made a promise.

Sacrifice Isaac.

Well, how are the lands going to be secured by my generations if Isaac is dead? And how are the families of the earth going to be blessed if Isaac is dead? If you kill this child of promise. How will anything that you've promised the world come true?

How will your people be saved? How will they be brought to be friends of you rather than be estranged from you? How will they dwell with you in Edenic paradise again? If you kill the child of promise, but he presses forward by faith.

God made a promise. Abraham. Believe at every step, he must have hoped for a change to come. You can imagine him every nanosecond praying for change, praying that there'd be some intercession if he had interceded and stood as it were in the way of the Lord, as he was setting his face towards Sodom.

Can you imagine how much more he was interceding here? He couldn't have eaten anything without throwing up. He's constantly interceding.

Take this cup from me.

This is the trial of faith. By faith, we read in Hebrews 11. When Abraham was tested, he offered up Isaac. He who had received the promise offered up his only begotten son of whom it was said in Isaac, your seed shall be called.

How are you going to call my seed if he's dead on the altar? Well, the writer of Hebrews explains how such was Abraham's faith that not only did he obey, not only did he hold that sharpened knife above his son's chest, but he concluded, we read, he concluded that God was able to raise him up even from the dead.

God was able to raise him up even from the dead. If you have said, oh, Lord God, that in Isaac my seed shall be called, then even though I slay him in Isaac, my seed shall be called. You must be able to raise him from the dead.

And if you have made a promise, I believe what you have promised. No wonder we get little details like this in verse five. On the third day, on the third day. Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place of far off, said to the young men, stay here, we will come back to you.

That's what the writer of Hebrews is drawing from. Abraham knew and trusted that the God who had commanded the sacrifice of Isaac had also promised that Isaac was the one through whom the seed would come that would bless the world.

Such was Abraham's faith. God had made a promise. Abraham believed it. In Romans four, Paul does not say Abraham never wavered, period, full stop. Thank God he doesn't say that for you and I, right? We watched throughout the life of Abraham just how much he wavered.

He threw his poor wife into the lion's den time after time. He did waver. But he didn't waver at the promise. That's what Paul says. Romans four, 16, Abraham did not waver at the promise. When the rubber met the road, he knew what God had said.

However much of my life is unstable and backslidden, I know what God has said. And he was still walking according to that promise, even as a failing sinner. He was still walking by faith. And Paul says in verse 20, he was strengthened in his faith, strengthened in his faith.

You're not strengthened in your faith unless you're relatively weak. You only need to be strengthened if you are weak.

You need to be strengthened.

He was weak in his faith and it was strengthened and he went from strength to strength in his faith. And he gave glory to God, Paul says, being fully convinced that what he had promised he was able to perform.

He's entirely looking to God to fulfill what God had promised. Abraham then becomes for us the model, the paradigm of what it looks like to have faith. He's called the man of faith in the New Testament.

If you need the dictionary entry for faith, you open up the columns of F beginning A, I, there's faith. And there's the portrait of Abraham. He's a living definition of what faith is. And notice that this faith we talked about Galatians three, Romans four, Hebrews 11, by faith, Abraham.

But what does James two pick up about Abraham? Because he said he is the man of faith. And James says, I agree, he's the man of faith, I agree, he's the living definition of faith, and I want to tell you Christians something.

About that faith.

Someone says, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without your works. I'll show you my faith by my works. Do you not know, oh, foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered Isaac, his son, on the altar?

Don't you see faith was working together with his works and by works his faith was made perfect. And this way scripture is fulfilled, which says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.

And he was called a friend of God. You see, a man is justified by works, not by faith only. Now, it's very important that we understand what James is not saying there. We don't have a alternative path to being justified before God.