God Made a Promise

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 12-25

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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.
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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.
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And this morning, we want to consider Abraham in chapters 12 through 25, and even more than that, the
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God of Abraham in chapters 12 through 25. Again, I cannot say if I'll be standing here next
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Sunday morning, it's out of my hands. But if I am, we'll continue most likely with Jacob and probably
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Joseph as well, seeing as Jacob makes it all the way to chapter 49, a chapter shy of finishing the book.
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So perhaps we'll finish summarizing the book of Genesis next Sunday, Lord willing.
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If not, you'll have the great pleasure, I trust, of hearing Brian Labozier come and minister for a time.
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And then we'll pick up and carry on to the book of Exodus after we finish our last review.
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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
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God raises up a deliverer through Moses to bring his people out of the evil empire.
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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.
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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.
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It's more than the foundation of the Bible. It's the foundation of the gospel that is proclaimed within the
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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.
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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
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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.
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As one put it, God's covenant with the patriarch Abraham sounds, the note of a seed that rings like a tolling church bell.
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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.
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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.
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These are the generations, these are the generations, these are the generations, Adam, Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth, Terah, Abraham.
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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
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God made a promise. That takes us from Genesis 3 .15
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all the way to the beginning of Genesis 12, and all that will follow, God made a promise.
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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,
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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.
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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,
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Abraham believed. If you take nothing else out of Genesis 12 through 25, you at least better take this,
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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
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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,
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I will make you a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great, you shall be a blessing,
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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.
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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.
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So the history of redemption is going to unfold covenantally. When we were in Genesis 1 through 11, we saw that.
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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,
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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.
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As a result of his heel being struck, he would crush the serpent's head. All of redemption unfolds covenantally.
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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.
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It begins, notice, with God speaking. God is the one who creates this redemption, much like he created the world, he speaks.
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Abraham doesn't wake up one morning in Ur and say, you know what, I better look into I better look into the
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God who made the heavens and the earth. I need to stop worshiping these idols over here in the land.
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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.
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That doesn't happen. That never happens. No one wakes up seeking God. What does
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Paul say in Romans 3? None, none seek after him.
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No, not one. All right. So we see, just like the beginning of creation, the beginning of redemption, it always begins with God's activity,
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God speaking into the darkness, God speaking into the void.
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All of redemption revolves around God's undertaking,
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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.
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But we must highlight this, redemption begins with God's act.
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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,
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God undertaking the work, God speaking into the void and bringing something out of that darkness, something good, something genuinely good.
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Remember in Nehemiah chapter 9, this great prayer, this great confession, you alone are the
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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.
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The host of heaven worships you. What's Nehemiah 9 recounting here? God, you are the creator. You have sewn together the galaxies.
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You uphold them all. They all glorify you. And what's the next thing that happens in the mind?
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You are the Lord God who chose Abram and brought him out of the Ur of the
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Chaldeans. You see, you go from creator to caller, creator to redeemer.
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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.
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You have performed your words. You are righteous. This is the language that constantly attends
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God. And what is this related to? It's related to the promise, always related to the promise.
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You are faithful to what you have declared. That begins here in chapter 12 as the next step forward out of Genesis 315.
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You are the Lord God who chose Abram.
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We're reading in Genesis 12, one through three, God's choice of Abram.
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And with that choice comes this great promise. God made a promise.
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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.
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All of it is what God is going to do for Abram. And more importantly, through Abram, I will make you a great nation.
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I will bless you and make your name great. I will bless those who bless you.
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I will curse him who curses you. In you, I will make all of the families of the earth blessed.
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God made a promise. Hebrews chapter six, verse 13, locates this promise with this very calling.
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When God made a promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, saying, blessing,
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I will bless you. Multiplying, I will multiply you. This great promise of God carries forth all that God had promised.
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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.
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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
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Westerners, there's at least similarity here. Even for us still, the grace of God begins with a call.
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Keep in mind the world at this time. The effects of the fall are more pronounced. People are dying earlier and earlier.
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The cords of death, Christopher Ashe, the cords of death closing in upon them. Remember that the world is full with idolatry and abomination.
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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.
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They served other gods. But I took your father, Abraham. I led him throughout the land of Canaan.
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And I multiplied his descendants. Abraham was no different. He worshipped the gods of his father.
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He was an idolater. He was a pagan. He ran in the great flood of dissipation.
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But one day, when he was 75 years old, God called him.
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Some of you are sitting in this room and you think that somehow you're acquainted with this grace.
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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.
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But sometimes you can be around someone and never actually meet them, never actually know them. You know of them.
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You see them regularly. But you haven't been introduced. You haven't embraced.
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There's no comfort. There's no closure. There's no closeness. You just see from afar. You're on the outside.
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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.
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If you are not a friend of God, you are a stranger to God. And you may be exposed to grace.
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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.
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And there's almost no worse condition imaginable to man than being a stranger to God's grace, convinced that they're actually acquainted.
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God called Abram. Abram was not seeking. Abram was not praying.
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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.
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But the key is always, and this would be true even in this case, God is the one who calls.
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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.
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We don't know if a chick tract made its way under his doorstop one day. We don't know how God called
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Abram, but we know that he called Abram. It was a sovereign. It was a gracious act.
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And from that moment, not perfectly, but truly, his life was forever changed.
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Reading chapters 13, 14, 15, we see the stumbling of Abram even after. But the significant thing is this.
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Abram actually got out of Ur. Abram actually left. He actually responded to the call.
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And this is used again and again as a reason that God's people are to find comfort.
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It's not in their failures. Neither it is in their performance. It's not in their backsliding.
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Neither it is in their merit. It's in the fact that God called and therefore God will perform.
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Listen to me, Isaiah 51. You who follow after righteousness, you who are seeking the Lord.
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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.
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I called him alone. I blessed him. I increased him. The Lord will comfort
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Zion. The Lord will comfort her waste places. He will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the
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Lord. You see, creation, redemption woven together in Abraham. What assurance can
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I have as a believer that I'm not a stranger to grace? I look back to God's calling.
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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.
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He has begun to make fruitful. It makes me yearn for more of his work, more of his presence in my life.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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God cannot justify the guilty. And so even here, where does this grace come?
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Why does he choose Abram? What has Abram done to warrant this kind of favor?
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Nothing. Absolutely nothing. How can it come about? Can God just dispense it freely?
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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
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Abram into a relationship with God, even as a believer today goes all the way back millennia to Calvary.
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It's the grace of Calvary that brings us into a relationship with God. All grace is blood bought grace.
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Grace is not arbitrary. It's not some vague motion, not some ever changing or rotating plan.
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It's not a ceremonial gesture. It's not a vestige of kindness. It's a work, a sacrificial work of a holy
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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.
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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.
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But the grace of God has called us, and so redemption moves forward because God made a promise.
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God made a promise. If you look in your bulletin, I just feel like I have to review this a little bit.
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You'll see a little what we call a chiasm. It's a way of showing literary structure.
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And so we've had some experience with this in Genesis, and this is something that we looked at back in Genesis 11,
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I believe. So you'll notice the corresponding letters. You'll notice A at the top and at the very bottom,
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A with the apostrophe. And this is a way you create, again, this chiasm. And so each letter corresponds.
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There's symmetry and yet difference. And this is the way that Genesis 11 through 22 is structured.
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What I would draw your attention to is where it all heads, where it all goes, which are the corresponding
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E's, the sort of point of the arrow. And notice the difference.
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All 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.
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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.
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And it draws or it forces our attention to what are the parallels. The shift that takes place in the very middle is when
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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.
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And so notice everything prior is God dealing with Abram. Everything after corresponds to God dealing with Abraham.
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And everything has begun to shift. With Abram, we have the annunciation of Ishmael, chapters 15 to the beginning of 16.
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But then we have God's covenant with the annunciation of Isaac. So we have the child of the flesh, as it were,
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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.
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You have to see this duality in the way that God is viewing Abraham and the same way he'll view his people,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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How we understand the mixture within the covenantal relationships of God.
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And we maintain, against some of our good friends, we maintain a contrast where they want to say there's a unity.
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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.
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Romans 9, 6. They are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children, because they are the seed of Abraham.
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We're children of Abraham. What does John the Baptist say? God's able to raise children from these stones.
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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.
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They're not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they're the seed of Abraham.
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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.
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The children of the promise are counted as the seed. Galatians 4, 28.
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Now, we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. We, brethren, are the children of promise.
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As Isaac was. Galatians 3, 7. Therefore, know this. Only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham.
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Only those who have faith are the seed of Abraham. Galatians 3, 29.
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And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs, according to the promise.
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Very important. More than I can emphasize. More than six weeks, a year and a half ago, could emphasize.
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Notice this language. If you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs, according to the promise.
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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.
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God made a promise. You are still walking out the lived reality of God's promise coming to fulfillment in and through Christ.
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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.
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You believers stumbling together there in Galatia. You are the fulfillment of all that God had promised.
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You are the heirs of which God spoke to Abraham. And this is what Abraham believed.
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So, secondly, moving on to this patience of Abraham's faith, right? God calls.
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God acts. God makes a promise. That's all of God's activity in his work of salvation.
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But then Abraham responds. Abraham believes. Abraham walks.
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God made a promise to Abraham, Hebrews 6, 13, because he could swear by no one greater.
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He swore by himself, saying, surely blessing, I will bless you. Multiplying or multiplying. So God made a promise.
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God promised blessing. But with promised blessing comes trial.
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With promised blessing comes a testing of faith. What did
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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 in 12, the covenant in 15, the way that that's confirmed in 17.
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The Akedah, the binding, the sacrifice of Isaac in chapter 22. Mountaintops of redemptive history.
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But you remember what God said, to fast forward a little bit, in response to Abraham's sacrifice?
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Now I know. Now I know. God brings trial into the
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Christian's life. So that it can be assured, it can be objective, you believe.
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It's a good thing when trial brings us to the place where we can say, now we know.
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Now we know. When other believers around us can say, now we know. It's not good to spend many years in a church body with a question mark over your head.
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It's not good for you. It's really not good for the church either. It's a sad thing.
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The elders often will rejoice when we hear news of some trial, because with it comes the anticipation.
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God's doing something. God's going to expose or bring or produce something.
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It's better than static, better than stagnant, even if it's painful and even if it's difficult.
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God is ever proving his people. And if you've lived a good chunk of your life without trial, without testing, it's hard to find a parallel in Scripture to that.
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It seems like with trials that we succeed, greater trials yet to come.
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It's amazing, right? Pilgrim's progress, it only gets harder as he goes. He thinks, okay, finally
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I can coast my way to the celestial city. And it keeps getting harder and harder until he gets to the very end.
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And that's like the hardest of all. And 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.
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It's what we talked about last week, the warp and the weft of how
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God is knitting redemption together. So God promises blessing, but it comes with trial.
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It comes with a test. And this test is not arbitrary. Nothing that God does is arbitrary.
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This isn't something that he just says, ah, I'm kind of bored sitting up here. Let me throw a curveball to Abram. I really want to know where he's at.
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Even this test in Genesis 22 is designed to be a window, a portal.
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I loved, we were in Florida at the beginning of the year. We went to this really neat aquarium where they had 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.
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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.
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We know that all the way back to Genesis 5. 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
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Lord Jesus, isn't it? This is all about the promised seed. And the father who gives his beloved son as a sacrifice.
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So Calvary here reaches all the way back to the life of Abraham, Genesis 22, 1 and 2, the first words,
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God tested Abraham. Protest all you will.
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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.
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It's our part to submit. To trust his wisdom, his goodness, his fatherly care.
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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.
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How many offerings do they bring to the pagan gods in Ur for fertility, some fertility offerings?
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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 an heir.
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But then God came and he assured them of his promise and in due time, Sarah bore the child of promise.
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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.
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And 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
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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.
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And then Genesis 22 explodes like some scud missile in the middle of the narrative.
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What's going on? Abraham, here I am. Take now your son, your only son,
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Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on the mountain,
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I will tell you. And it's shattering, it's devastating, but just like Abraham responded when he was called in Ur, he responds immediately.
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Remember what we read, he wakes up early, no depression nap, he doesn't wake up at lunchtime.
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He doesn't distract himself and busy himself. Yes, Lord. Such is his faith.
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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.
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God is sensitive, he's sympathetic to how Abraham feels, your only son, the son whom you love.
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Abraham does not question God's command. He obeys it, but he wonders, God, you made a promise, sacrifice
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Isaac. Well, how are the lands going to be secured by my generations if Isaac is dead?
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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 promised the world come true?
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How will your people be saved? How will they be brought to be friends of you rather than be estranged from you?
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How will they dwell with you in Edenic paradise again if you kill the child of promise?
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But he presses forward by faith. God made a promise. Abraham believed at every step.
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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.
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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?
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He couldn't have eaten anything without throwing up. He's constantly interceding. Take this cup from me.
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This is the trial of faith. By faith, we read in Hebrews 11, when
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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.
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How are you going to call my seed if he's dead on the altar? Well, the writer of Hebrews explains how.
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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.
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God was able to raise him up even from the dead. If you have said, O Lord God, that in Isaac my seed shall be called, then even though I slay him, in Isaac my seed shall be called.
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You must be able to raise him from the dead. And if you have made a promise, I believe what you have promised.
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No wonder we get little details like this in verse five. On the third day, on the third day,
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Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place of far off, said to the young men, stay here. We will come back to you.
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That's what the writer of Hebrews is drawing from. Abraham knew and trusted that the
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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.
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Such was Abraham's faith. God had made a promise. Abraham believed it. Romans four,
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Paul does not say Abraham never wavered, period, full stop.
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Thank God he doesn't say that for you and I. Right? We watched throughout the life of Abraham just how much he wavered.
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He threw his poor wife into the lion's den time after time. He did waver, but he didn't waver at the promise.
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That's what Paul says. Romans 4, 16, Abraham did not waver at the promise.
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When the rubber met the road, he knew what God had said. However much of my life is unstable and backslidden,
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I know what God has said. And he was still walking according to that promise.
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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.
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You're not strengthened in your faith unless you're relatively weak. You only need to be strengthened if you are weak.
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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.
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And he gave glory to God. Paul says, being fully convinced that what he had promised, he was able to perform.
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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.
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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
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A, I. There's faith and there's the portrait of Abraham. He's a living definition of what faith is.
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And notice that this faith, we talked about Galatians 3, Romans 4, Hebrews 11, by faith, Abraham.
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But what does James 2 pick up about Abraham? Because he said he is the man of faith.
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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
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Christians something about that faith. Someone says, you have faith and I have works.
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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?
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Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered Isaac, his son, on the altar?
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Don't you see faith was working together with his works and by works, his faith was made perfect.
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And this way scripture is fulfilled, which says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.
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And he was called a friend of God. You see, a man is justified by works, not by faith only.
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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.
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Paul had laid down what James would amen, we're justified by faith alone apart from works. What James is highlighting here, as is often quipped, is that a justifying, you know, we're justified by faith alone, but a justifying faith is never alone.
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If faith is a gift from God, that that gift of saving faith will correspond to work.
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And that's what we see in Abram's life. Abram had been called, Abram believed he was justified and it was evident that he was justified by his faith.
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Why? Because it was a working faith. It was an active faith. It was an evidential faith.
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That doesn't mean the works or the evidence is what justifies. It simply corroborates the fact that his faith is genuine and therefore it is justified.
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The angel of the Lord called to Abraham. This is what James is likely picking up on. Genesis 22, 15.
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The angel of the Lord called to Abram, Abraham a second time out of heaven and said, by myself, I was sworn, says the
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Lord, because you have done this thing. Verse 18, in your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.
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Now, wait a minute, God had already promised that in him, all the nations would be blessed. Was there this new demand now, this new condition?
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No, no, no. God's promise was unconditional. This is what I'm going to do. And on the foundation of that unconditional promise, that unconditional covenant.
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Abraham is given this grace, given this faith in God, and it's a working faith, it's a responsive faith.
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It's an active, sensitive faith. And when God looks at that, he says, yes. And because you've responded, because you've obeyed, that's why all that I have promised will come forth.
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It's not the ground of it, but it's the means. It's not the foundation of it, but it's the way.
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And so it is with our faith as believers. This is repeated to Isaac. I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven.
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I will give to your offspring all these lands and in your offspring, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.
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That's Genesis 12, 1 through 3. That's Genesis 15. That's all that God unilaterally, unconditionally promised.
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But what does he tell Isaac? Because Abraham obeyed my voice.
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All of this is coming to you, Isaac, because Abraham obeyed, because Abraham believed.
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You see, there's much more foundational sense, but the covenant is unconditional.
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And yet everything that rests upon that unconditional covenant matters.
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It's conditional. It's not the foundation. But it's vital.
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That's what James is saying. Brothers, faith without works is dead.
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Demons believe. Show me your faith by your works.
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That's what James is saying. But how do we know that the covenant that God makes with Abraham is truly unilateral, truly monogistic, truly unconditional?
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You remember. When that darkness and that great horror fell upon Abraham in his sleep.
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And when he saw the smoking torch, the sort of symbolic presence, that smoking fire pot, that flaming torch, symbolic of the presence of God, the consuming fire.
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Remember the torn carcasses, this picture of covenantal curse. If you fail to fulfill this covenant, may you be like these animals.
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And so a mighty king would call the subject ruler, pass through these carcasses.
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If you don't keep my covenant, that's what you're going to look like. But Abraham never walks between them.
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God is the one who passes between them. Abraham simply watches as the sacrificial animals are split like the
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Red Sea and the presence of God walks down the corridor of covenantal curse.
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And so moments ago when we speculated about what Abraham would have protested in his mind.
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How can your promise come true if you kill the child of promise?
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How can a seed be called from Isaac if Isaac is killed? How can the families of the earth be blessed if the promised seed is killed?
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And what we see here in the life of Abraham is that this was the only way the promise could be fulfilled.
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The only way that God could fulfill all that he had promised from Genesis 3, 15 until every yes and amen is fulfilled in a new heavens and a new earth.
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All of it depends upon the child of promise being killed.
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He must be killed. And the
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Lord shows that as he passes through the corridor of the curse. It was just a bookmark for the passion of the
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Lord Jesus Christ where the Lord, as it were, becomes that curse, succumbs to that condition.
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He is rent asunder. His body, like the veil that separated the holy of holies, is torn so that all that God had promised could be fulfilled in the fullness of time in our risen
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Lord, God himself keeping his covenant. God made a promise.
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And Abraham believed. God made a promise.
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And Abraham believed. God, who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all.
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For us all. This is what we believe. God made a promise and we still believe as Abraham believed.
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We believe in this great promise. And so the writer of Hebrews, going back in chapter six, he begins to develop this.
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He's going to get to chapter 11 and he's going to show what faith looks like and he's going to draw heavily upon Abraham.
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But in chapter six, before he he heads in that direction, he simply gives this little preview of exhortation.
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We desire that each one of you in this room, each one, not most of you, some of you, the best of you, the brightest among you, each one of you show the same diligence.
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It doesn't say we desire that each one of you just keep coming here on a Sunday and keep listening.
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You know, try not to be on Instagram too much during family worship. Try to jot down a few sentences to make it seem like you're engaged.
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We desire that each of you just show up and maybe something will happen someday. And it's really out of your hands.
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That's not what the writer of Hebrews says. We desire that each one of you show diligence.
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Diligence until the full assurance of hope. Until the end, don't become sluggish.
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But imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promise.
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The writer of Hebrews is going to develop that specifically in Abrahamic terms, faith and patience inherit the promise.
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So what does the writer of Hebrews want? He wants you to have assurance, assurance of hope, something concrete in your soul that's guiding your life.
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It's animating your affections. It's it's stoking your zeal and your desire. It's preventing you from wandering or being distracted by the pull of Ur.
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It's causing you to be further estranged from the world rather than friendly toward it. That's what the full assurance of hope until the very end is.
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And not to become sluggish because you've been following the Lord for 25 years and there's still no fruit and you're just in a tent in the wilderness with nothing to show for it.
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But don't become sluggish. How is that going to come about? So what assurance of hope, what ultimately to inherit the promise?
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To inherit the promise, how diligence, how imitation?
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Who are you imitating? Who are you copying? Whose manner of life are you following?
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You'll have a profound difference in where you end up. How ultimately, how be diligent?
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How imitate wisely? Faith and patience. Faith and patience.
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Saving faith is more than a momentary decision. I wish we could return to the days of the second great awakening.
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You probably, some of you have probably heard of this before. Asahel Nettleton used to be around these very parts.
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Of course, coming off the heels of the first great awakening and in the colonies, there was some cultural memory of what awakenings looked like and what they accomplished.
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And as with any movement of God, people observe, people mimic, people regurgitate what they hear.
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You don't have to be a Christian to speak Christianese. People were catechized from the time that they could form syllables.
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And it's no wonder that it was quite difficult to discern who genuinely knows the Lord's grace and who is a stranger to that grace.
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I was reading, I've been reading John MacDonald of Ferintosh. I did a book review this week about it.
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And he was a late 18th, early 19th century minister and was known as the apostle to the highlands.
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I think I mentioned him a few weeks ago. What struck me in reading about him was he felt called.
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He had preached when he was finally settled in Urquhart, where he had a good part of his ministry.
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He had done at that time, the church in Scotland did annual communion services. And the parish system meant if you were a subject, you would come out to the
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Church of Scotland for communion. So his first ministry in Urquhart was at Ferintosh.
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Why became, why the appellation of Ferintosh came, he preached to 10 ,000 people.
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And there was a revival that broke out in the midst of that. He became in such hot demand as other ministers of that area began to preach and began to recognize
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God is doing something. People are responding. Lives are being changed. And John MacDonald had an opportunity to go to a very distant island to the west called
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St. Kilda. St. Kilda, if you can think of California going to Hawaii, that's what
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St. Kilda was off the Hebrides. It's really far away. There's only 108 people living on the island at the time.
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Only half of those were adults. And he felt called by God to go. There was no established church there.
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There was no stated minister there. He felt called to go. And so he went.
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He preached 13 messages in 11 days. When he first got there, there was sort of a cool reception, but people seemed eager to listen.
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By the time he left, 11 days later, the whole island came to the shore, weeping that he was leaving.
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Tell us more. What struck me about that is simply this.
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If I had been John MacDonald the Ferintosh and I went to the distant shores of St. Kilda and I saw 108 people standing on the shore with tears pouring out of their eyes saying, preach to us more.
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We want more. I would think, praise God, the whole island's been converted.
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But you know what he wrote in his diary? There's maybe four or five that are just beginning to understand something of four or five, maybe.
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That's what he said in his diary. The modern church has this idea that saving faith is just so easy, so effortless, just write your name on a card.
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Pray the prayer you're in. Don't let anyone ever dissuade you of that. Look at Abraham and recognize saving faith is not a momentary decision, nor should the fact that you ever had a momentary decision in past time mean anything to you today.
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Faith is a patient thing. Faith is an enduring thing. It's a lot of people who make decisions and they never make it to the promise.
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It's a close, consistent walk with God. Now, I'm speaking primarily with those who are strangers to grace.
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They think they know something of faith and they think it's relatively easy. You get back to the days of the second awakening.
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Nelton would say to someone who runs up to him, I've given my life to the Lord. I'm a Christian now. He'd say, oh, you have high hopes.
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I hope that's true of you. We'll see. I'll be coming back in a few months. I'll look you up. We'll see if you really are a
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Christian. I can't take that at face value. So easy to claim. So easy to chameleon your way through church life.
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Is there something genuine? Has there been a work of grace? Has it been substantiated and corroborated by fruit?
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Have you left behind her because you see her for what it is? Are you even here this morning and you're as it were, you can't wait to get back into the world of her.
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But let me say a word also to believers about the life of Abraham. Abraham also shows us that we can truly be a friend of God.
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We can truly be walking in the promise of God. And we can truly stumble and backslide and be relatively distant from God as well.
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You see that with Abraham, don't we? We know that the covenant is sure we know the promise is true.
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We see these highlights, these triumphs of Abraham's faith. But we know that's not the whole story of Abraham.
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In fact, those little spikes are the exceptions that prove the norm. The norm was a passive, stumbling man.
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But he had a genuine walk with God. And sometimes the stumbling is part of that genuine walk.
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How you respond and how you react to that stumbling will show the truth of that walk.
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There's something that hurts your soul when you're brought to see your sin in your coldness.
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Something an unbeliever could never know, what it feels like to genuinely, truly hate sin.
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Not the consequences of it, not the discovery of it, but just hate sin.
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I love what Spurgeon says. The secret of the Lord is with those that fear him and he will show them his covenant.
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But many a child of God, please notice, he's not saying unbeliever, please note, many a child of God walks distantly.
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And the Lord does not fully reveal the covenant to such. Some of God's peters follow afar off.
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And they get themselves into trouble and they never come to enjoy the sweetness of divine fellowship.
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But this careful walking, this close walking, this keeping near to an all -sufficient God, this resting solely in him, oh, this it is that brings sweetness and joy and becomes a foretaste of heaven.
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I wonder if we are God's peters, so to speak. We can't truly say we've come to experience the sweetness and the joy and the rest that comes from walking closer with him.
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Keep in mind, we're speaking of children of God and of children of God, it can be said that though we waver, we will not waver according to the promise.
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We will be strengthened, though we are weak. Our faith is fully convinced that what God has promised he will fulfill.
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But even still, as believers, like unbelievers, the biggest problem we face is our separation from God due to our sin.
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It's not a separation, a judicial separation. It's not the separation of being estranged from him, not being united to him, not having saving faith in him.
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We're not talking about that. We're talking about this relative distance. We're talking about the
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William Cooper, where is the joy that I once knew, distance, where's the grace, where's the light that I once felt, where's the conviction that used to eat me inside, where did it go?
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We look to him, we believe his promise, we commit ourselves to him, we receive him.
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In many ways, the problem is the same. Separation from God due to sin, whether perceived separation or judicial separation.
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And in many ways, the answer is the same, isn't it? The all sufficient sacrifice of Christ, the bleeding lamb who reconciles us to God.
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After we read Hebrews 11, 15, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.
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Not before, not during. But after. Paul can say to a group of Christians in the church at Galatia, what happened to you?
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You were running well. Who bewitched you? Paul can say that to a group of Christians in Galatia.
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He can say that to us. It's not the momentary decision.
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It's not yesteryear. It's today. What kind of faith do I have today?
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Have I responded to God's call today? Am I closing my walk with him today? Am I embracing the sacrifice of Christ?
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To be in closer communion with my savior, will I have a faith that is patiently enduring whatever trials and tests may come.
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If they bear more fruit in my life, it will bring him glory, even as it brings me assurance. I don't want to be sluggish.
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I want to be diligent. I want to have full assurance of hope until the end, because it's through faith and patience that we inherit the promise.
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God made a promise. Abraham believed. Father, much like Abraham, we recognize we are so fully dependent upon your work, upon your spirit, upon your grace.
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We can only speak to the ear, Lord, the ear of flesh. We can only speak outwardly, but Lord, you speak inwardly.
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We can only give a call that will resound in the physical dimensions of this room. But Lord, you can give a call that speaks to the spiritual dimensions of the heart.
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You can give the word that divides the joint and the marrow. You can give that creative word that springs light out of darkness and life out of death, beauty out of the void.
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If there is a stranger to grace and a friend of the world this morning, Lord, conquer their stubborn heart.
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Give them all diligence to seek you while you may be found to respond to your call upon them.
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Even the call, as simple as it comes from my lips, that they would respond to it by faith to repent and believe the
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Lord Jesus Christ. To trust the promise that you have given, not just the promise of the inheritance, but the promise that you will never cast out those that come to you.
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And Father, for believers here in this room, as we look at the life of Abraham, we can't help but see our own lives, our own stumblings, our own passivity, our own coldness.
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Lord, we long for a closer walk. At times we long too long for a closer walk.
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We desire to have desire. We're convicted for not having conviction.
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Please, Lord, do not stray from us. Do not be distant from us, but draw us closer to yourself.
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May we understand the fullness and the sweetness of what it means to be your friend. May we pass triumphantly those tests of our faith, which simply reveal further the work of grace that has begun by your hand.
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The same hand that will see us through to the end. I pray for us as a church body,
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Lord, that we would not set forth easy believism or cheap grace or some low bar of what it means to be a
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Christian. But that we would have a high bar, that we would pursue foolish, bewitched
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Galatians, that we would discern those who have become speakers about grace, acquaintances from afar but are truly estranged.
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We pray for the youth, especially in this church, Lord, the children that grow up with so many means of grace surrounding them.
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And therefore, Lord, it's so much easier to assume but never obtain the real thing.
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Be merciful to our youth, Lord, we pray in your son's name.