Genesis 15:1-21 God on the Block

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service. This is a message from the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis, by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filsack.

If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

God's Provision Beyond Wealth and Prosperity

This morning, we're going to hopefully be reminded that God's provision for us goes very much beyond wealth or health or prosperity or what's given in the black box or building buildings and things like that.

God is certainly the giver of good gifts, but we now encounter for the first time in the text of the book of Genesis, and really for the first time in Scripture, the whispers or what I might call the echoes of a God who not only gives good things to people, but in a very real sense is going to eventually give himself.

That's really what we see as the center of our faith, is that we serve a God who is giving and generous and loving, and he does give good gifts, but in the end, it's ultimately the best gift of all, is that he ends up giving himself in a very real way.

He lays his life on the on the block, if you will, in our text and basically says, may I become like an animal sacrifice, God saying that, may I become like an animal sacrifice, if I do not keep up my end of the promise to reconcile and to make things right for a fallen and broken humanity.

And as strange as that may seem to us, the notion of God's being sacrificed, we know that eventually he will in a very real way become one of us and lay his life down for you and me in the text of Scripture.

So as we speak from this vantage point of Genesis, we know that we are looking forward from that vantage point to a time when Jesus Christ will show up on the scene and make good on the promises of God.

As I read the text, it may seem difficult to understand some of the symbolic actions that God undertakes in this text and his interaction with Abram, but as we walk through this, I think it will snap into focus that God is in our text making a unilateral, one-sided agreement with humanity.

He is, again, going to demonstrate sacrifice to us and show us that he is willing to sacrifice himself to make things right. And so God gives to Abram two signs to demonstrate how serious he is about his promises.

So if you can open your Bibles, please, to Genesis chapter 15. And if you take out the Bible in the seat back in front of you, you can find that on page 9. So that's an easy way to find it. We're gonna read Genesis chapter 15 in its entirety.

And if you don't own a Bible, please take that one with you. We do desire for everybody to have a copy of God's Word. So you can take the Bible in the seat back in front of you. But the very words of God to us this morning, Genesis chapter 15.

And Abram said,. And he brought him outside and said,. If you are able to number them. Then he said to him,. And he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. And he said to him,. And he said to him,.

And he brought him all these, cut them in half and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram,. Back here in the fourth generation for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying, Let's pray as the band comes to lead us.

Father, I thank you for the opportunity we have to hear from your word. We see some pretty obscure and ancient notions here of sacrifice and animals being cut in half and some things that just seem mysterious and strange and weird.

But as we walk through this text, I ask that you would open our eyes to see the reality of you putting yourself on the line for us, for our salvation. And Father, we know that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, was raised again three days later, and that by faith we can be made right and reconciled with you and our sins can be washed away and forgiven.

Father, I ask that you would help us to rejoice in that reality. Let the cross guide us into worship even this morning and allow us to focus on the awesome price that was paid for us. Father, that you are not a God that is distant and far removed and not connected, but that you connected with us through the sacrifice of your Son in order to reconcile us to you.

I pray that you would help us to worship you in spirit and in truth, that our hearts would be engaged, that it would not just be an exercise of our vocal cords to sing these songs, but that you would move in us to rejoice in you as you are the God who saves.

I thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, big thanks to the band for leading us. Hopefully you were able to step up before the throne of God and actually worship him this morning. Appreciate Dave stepping in in Josh's absence this morning as well.

Make sure you have your Bibles open to Genesis chapter 15. It's helpful for you to have that, I think, to be able to follow along with the flow of the text and understand kind of where I'm going. But we're going to jump right in.

Be sure that you get coffee, donuts, juice if you need to at any time during the message, but make yourself at home. Let's jump in. Verse 1 makes it clear that these things occurred after the big battle sequence that we saw last week.

It says in verse 1 of chapter 15,. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. He has another experience with God after this victory that's gone on last week. And we're going to see that God is going to say two words to him right off the bat.

The first two words that God speaks in this vision to Abram are what in the text? Fear not. What would be a cause for Abram to have fear at this point? What could possibly be going on in his mind? Well, we saw that God had delivered the entire region of Canaan from the grip of servitude to four foreign kings last week in the text.

You can go back and listen to that message. It's available online if you want, if you weren't here. But he used Abram to do it, and it seemed like a little bit of a side note. But with the remainder of the context, the reminder of the context at the start of verse 1, when it tells us to remember these things after these things, it reminds us of that.

It's an indicator that we ought to be trying to put ourselves in Abram's shoes and think about how would he be feeling after these events that just happened in order to prepare our hearts for what comes next.

So put yourself in Abram's shoes. You would just chase down the armies of four powerful kings, your enemies, the enemies of your people. You fell upon them at night and won back your nephew and all the spoils of war.

Ended up turning those over, of course, to the king of Sodom. But you'd probably be feeling pretty good, right? Victorious, strong, powerful, mighty. So would the command from God to fear not, doesn't that seem a little bit disjointed?

He's like, after those things, after that massive victory, God came to Abram and said, don't fear.

Huh?

You're kind of like, well, I'd be feeling extremely victorious, super awesome. Everything's going great, right? But if you're anything like me, if you were to really actually be in Abram's shoes, now it's one thing to kind of think we can try to put ourselves there mentally or something, but if you had been there in battle, you had actually conquered these kings, you had actually been there.

I find that often after a big victory, there's a little bit of a letdown. Have you ever experienced that? Huge, huge mountaintop experience and the only place to go is down. And I think it's just like human nature, and I think Abram being a human just like us, that there's probably a sense of fear in him.

That he probably actually has fear that God is trying to dispel from him in the sense of reprisal or something like that. So he's gone out and he's conquered these four kings, but how many of you know there's a people group behind those kings?

And he's like, they're going to raise up another leader. They're going to recoup and when they recoup, what's going to happen? Where are they going to come back to? Where are these bully nations going to come back to when they finally recoup?

They're going to come back and get him. So there's a sense of fear already in the text that God is going to seek to dispel. So God first speaks then in verse 1, and we know that he is actually comforting Abram who is fearful.

And he says, don't fear Abram. And how often does God start off with those words? Fear not, don't fear. It's all throughout Scripture. It's Old Testament. It's New Testament. It's all throughout Scripture that he is very concerned with our hearts.

How many of you, if you're just being honest, you struggle with fear from time to time? Anxiety, how are things going to work? How is this all going to come down? There's a complete sermon just in the phrase, do not fear.

Maybe some of you already have in that one phrase what God wants to communicate to you this morning. Maybe that's the sermon to you in a nutshell is that he's saying to you by the Holy Spirit alive in you, stop fearing.

Be at peace. Stop worrying about things. It's easy to get wrapped up in the fears of what might happen. How many of you know that today's got enough troubles of its own? Jesus said that. And that if you're trying to solve tomorrow's problems and next month's problems and next year's problems, there's no end to the problems that you could be trying to solve.

Problems that don't even exist. How many of you find yourself solving problems that don't exist? Okay. Seven of us and the rest are not telling the truth right now or just didn't feel like raising your hand, right?

But we do.

We have a tendency to solve problems that don't even exist. It's a trap that I can fall into personally. I confess to you that my mind often turns to the worst case scenario. Any of you worst case scenario people?

You automatically prepare and plan for that which is unlikely to take place but you want to be ready. Scout's model, be prepared. And so you can justify it all you want but it's anxiety and it's worry and it's not placing your life over into the hands of God and saying, I trust you with what you bring my direction.

I've got to be the solution. And that's what fear ultimately is, isn't it? I've got to solve it. If anybody's going to solve my problems, it's going to be me. Well, there's God there too. And God has something significant to say to us.

He comes to Abram and he says, don't fear.

But then he goes on.

And for those of you who are sitting here and you're going,.

Yeah, I acknowledge that.

I've got a problem trying to prepare for the worst case scenario. This is what God says to him. I am your shield. I am your protector. I am your shield. God says that. Not me, not Pastor Dunn. But God says, I am your shield.

Does that provide any encouragement to you? Is that a significant statement that God Almighty, the creator of the universe, is declaring himself to be a shield for his people? Now, we know that he's specifically talking to a person of his choosing centuries ago, a guy named Abram.

But if you are in Christ, he is no less a shield for you than he was for Abram. He is a shield for you. And he goes on to promise also a great reward to Abram. Anybody in here that can relate to God promising you a great reward?

He has promised those who are in Christ a great reward. Two comforts come straight out of the first verse of this text. God encountering, coming to Abram, his chosen man, and he says, I will provide you protection and I will provide for you provision.

I will give you provision. Those two comforts that come to Abram right from the start. Abram, finally for the first time in the book of Genesis, takes up the conversation with God. I actually had to go back and kind of look again because I was really shocked to realize that this is the first time we have Abram speak.

Is anybody shocked by that?

Really what we have is, he hasn't talked to God yet. We don't have any recorded words of Abram to God until we get to this text right here. We've been following his life since the very end of chapter 11 was the first place that Abram was mentioned.

From the end of chapter 11 to the beginning of verse 15, God speaks to Abram a lot. And Abram does a lot. Abram follows God and walks after him and moves his family on the basis of God's speech to him.

But now, for the first time, there's going to be a dialogue rather than a monologue. There's going to be something, because we're going to see Abram's heart more. How many of you know when he's speaking in the text we're seeing something of his heart?

Because he's going to talk to God. How many of you know that if I could watch you, if I could be a third party to a conversation between you and God, I'd get to know a lot about you? Would you agree with that?

And we're going to get to know a little bit about Abram. We're going to find out what makes him tick, what's going on inside of his heart by the way that he talks to God. So far he's only listened up to this point, but now he speaks.

And the first word he speaks is to identify God as sovereign. Now you don't get it in the English text very well where he says, O Lord God. That would be very easily and very accurately translated, O Sovereign God.

You are in charge, you are the boss. The word that's used there for Lord is a significant word in Hebrew. It means sovereign, director of all things. And he is basically identifying God as the one who is in charge.

So his first words to speak is to identify the sovereignty of God. O Sovereign Lord, you are the boss.

But then,.

Some of you maybe in the room can't relate to this because you don't have a boss. That's very approachable. But how many of you have ever brought a concern to your boss before? Some of you have brought a concern to your boss and it depends on the type of boss that you have whether or not you feel comfortable bringing that concern, right?

Or it depends on the nature of the concern or whatever.

But Abram feels comfortable.

Bringing his concern with emotion before the throne of God. Before the ruler of all things, he feels comfortable. He's in relationship. That shows something about his relationship with God that he feels comfortable bringing a concern before him.

And it's a deep concern. And the way he does it might surprise us because it's not as gentle as we might think you ought to approach God. Some of the things he says here as we dig in. Verses 2 -3 he expresses his deepest heart concern.

We're learning something about Abram here. What's going on in his mind and that is that he doesn't have a biological heir. Verses 2 -3. But Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus.

And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring. Lot has been removed from the picture, ultimately has removed himself from the picture of the household of Abram and so Abram now identifies that the next logical heir is a servant in his household.

Not even a relative anymore. He no longer has hopes that a relative is going to be his heir. It's the servant who serves in his household named Eleazar of Damascus. Well, what we have really in the text is God promises Abram a reward in the text and Abram is going to kind of kick back at that a little bit.

The word that's used has a military victory twist to it for reward in verse 1. Your reward shall be very great. And in context it kind of makes sense that it's talking about military reward because we actually saw Abram receive spoils of war, military reward, this very word last chapter.

So he received this reward and what did he end up doing with the reward? Gave it all away, right? He gave it all back. He didn't receive that reward but he ended up saying to the king of Sodom, for example, I don't want your filthy wealth because you're going to say that I owe you one if I keep it.

So you take it all back for yourself because you're not the kind of guy I want to owe something to. So we saw that last week. So God here is saying no, no, I'll hook you up. I'm going to hook you up with a great reward because you are my guy.

And Abram pushes back and says what good is your reward? What good are your spoils? What good is this if I don't have a biological heir? What is this reward you're talking about? I don't even have an heir and you're talking about some reward.

Verse 3 says the same thing even more directly towards God. Brazen and brash, Abram speaking to the Almighty says behold you have given me no offspring. Now the word behold is one that we don't use very often but another way to translate that would be look exclamation point.

Have you ever said that to somebody? How many of you know that when somebody starts a sentence with look.

Does that.

Whatever comes next. Are you already defensive? Somebody starts look. Look you. Oh okay. That's what he's saying. Behold is like God is called. Later in just a couple of chapters he's going to be called the God who sees.

This is a title, a divine title self given for him. He says I am the God who sees. How many of you know that that's a really good title for God? Does he see? He sees everything right? There's nothing that goes beyond his gaze.

There's nothing that he doesn't see and here.

Abram.

With full brazenness says to the God who sees look. Look. Look at me. Pay attention to me. Does that sound a little bit brash to any of you? Anybody getting that from. How many of you have your kid talk to you that way?

Do you know what I'm talking about?

It's like I don't know how you guys feel about paddling and all that stuff but something's going down at the house.

It is look.

Look you look at me. You pay attention to me.

And then look at look at the phraseology.

Who is he blaming for having no offspring?

You have given me.

No offspring. You haven't you haven't done it. Pretty brash, pretty brazen and so this is key.

Notice God's.

Divine and awesome.

Patience.

His willingness to put up with our complaint. His willingness to put up with our concerns. His willingness to listen even if it's not brought in a nice pretty package. Even if we haven't dressed it up real well.

He can handle the heart of you and me. He can handle us bringing our frustrations and our problems and our difficulties before him. I would dare say he delights in that by the way that he responds in the text.

Certainly.

The text, what are we getting to know about Abram? His intense angst that he's feeling about this entire air and barrenness business. And I would dare say that everybody in this room has something specific that if you could stand before God there would be a challenge to him from you.

Am I accurate about that? Can you think of, if you were to stand before God, anybody have any questions? A couple of you. I think all of us probably have a couple of questions. Could you explain to me where you were when that happened or why did this happen or what is going on here or why don't I have this yet or why hasn't that happened yet?

It's a good thing, right? Why is that not in my life yet? So can you see, put yourself in Abram's shoes he actually gets an audience with God in a vision and he's having this interaction back and forth and he's bearing his soul before God and saying his deepest, deepest longing is for a son.

That's the deepest thing in his heart is that he wants to have an heir rather than coming back at Abram with a harsh judgment for his questions or the way that he's questioned. God obliges this chosen man with.

More words of comfort.

Verse 4. Look at verse 4, And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. Definitively, Eliezer will not be the one, but you will have your very own son and he will be your heir.

Promise to Abram. This is where the English, I've mentioned before that the Hebrew language and then the translators love to dodge the terminology because we like to soften it or make it a little bit more comfortable for us.

They don't pull any punches. The text literally says in Hebrew, that which comes out of your loins. Loins is even a word that we just carry over from Old English just to be comfortable, so we can all be comfortable about the words that are used here.

But in Hebrew, it's just direct. There's just no way around this. If Abram is to trust God on this one, then there is no room for him to have an adopted son become his heir. Okay, I guess I'm going to have to go out and adopt one to get a son.

This is just very direct and graphic. He's going to have a son himself. And it's obvious that this interaction between God and Abram was going on at night in the tent. You kind of go, what's going on here?

How do I know that? Because God takes Abram outside, commands him to look up at the stars, and number them. Now, we're not talking about some of you live in Portage, some in Kalamazoo, or spread all around.

Some of you are right here in Matawan. It kind of depends on where you live, what you can see when you look up, right? By all the light pollution. If you're in downtown Kalamazoo at night, you're not going to see as many stars and things like that.

We're talking about between somewhere probably around 1700 to 2000 BC in the context here. So, how many of you are kind of thinking that when he stepped out of his tent, there was not much light pollution on the planet?

Are you getting what I'm saying? He's got a lot of stars to count. God says, get counting, buddy. There they are. That is going to be the number of your offspring. That's how many children you're going to have.

Just like God promised Abram earlier that his offspring would be like the dust of the earth, here again he uses an extreme example to emphasize that Abram's offspring will be numerous. And without getting into detail, we know that the New Testament uses the same imagery for all the children of Abram, including.

You and me.

The implication is that one of those stars that he saw that night was your star, if you're in Christ. He looked up at the sky, he saw a multitude that he couldn't count, including you and me because we are sons and daughters of Abram according to faith, as Paul talks about.

In the book of Galatians.

God lit a star for you, so to speak. And Abram looks up and he can't count. And then we have the picture in the end, John, in the book of Revelation gets a special vision again, just like Abram's getting a vision here.

And he saw a multitude worshiping around the throne of God on the new earth. A multitude, he says multiple times in the book of Revelation that no one could count.

You.

And me included in that number. If you are in Christ by.

Faith.

Justification by Faith and the Promise of Offspring

Verse 6 is a pivotal point in all of Scripture because it identifies. How do you get into this promise? How is that happening? Verse 6, and he believed the Lord, Abram believed the Lord and he, God, counted it to him, Abram as righteousness.

It defines so much about a relationship with God that it's quoted five times in Scripture in its entirety by four different authors including three times completely quoted in the New Testament in different books of the Bible.

Verse 6, Abram trusted, believed by faith that God was telling him.

The truth. At this.

Point he steps out of the tent, looks up at the sky, and for whatever reason in his heart he was moved to say, I believe you. I'm an old man. I don't have a chance. I mean he's like about 90 years old when this is happening.

How many of you go like logic and biology and all kinds of things say this isn't going to happen, okay? How many of you know that what he's being called to believe is kind of silly by the world's standards?

He says, I believe. I believe you, God.

I'm going to trust you that this is actually going to happen the way that you say it's going to. Despite what he could see with his eyes, he believed that God was going to make good on his.

Promise. And here's.

The central point to a relationship with God. This is vital for us to understand as believers. This is so key. And that is that God converts trust in him to righteousness. He counted it to him.

As righteousness.

Did Abram earn righteousness? No, it's credited. It's counted to his account, but he didn't earn it. He didn't gain it. It's his faith that is counted to him. His belief in God is counted to him as righteousness.

God converts trust in him to righteousness. He takes faith and reckons it. He takes belief and counts it as righteousness. He doesn't take good works. He does not take good works and count those as righteousness.

He doesn't take church attendance and consider that as righteousness. He doesn't take giving to the poor and reckon that as righteousness. What does he take and reckon as righteousness according to the text?

Faith.

Belief. Trust. By the way, we have a problem in the English language because we separate, we are a dissecting kind of language. Our language is great for describing things. So we have multiple words that do various things and have little nuances to them.

Other languages are not as precise. English is a very precise language, and so we struggle when a word in Hebrew is a sum total of a variety of things, we struggle with a word that's generic enough to cover it.

Like, faith is kind of like a heart issue, but it's a head issue. Where does belief happen? Point to where belief happens in you. Where does belief.

Happen? Everybody.

Kind of go, right here. Isn't this where belief happens? It happens in your head. You believe in your head. But where does faith happen? It happens in your heart. Where does trust happen? So we have a tendency to dissect that out, but this is the whole ball of wax.

Belief, faith, and trust all wrapped up together that you actually hear what God says and then put your whole weight in it. And that's why sometimes it's better to put word pictures to these words. So I liken it to standing on a dock, and you can say if I jump in, I'm going to be okay and then turn around and walk away.

But faith, belief, trust is like, I'm going to be okay and you're all in. It's hard to have partial faith. Kind of like, I can't quite reach the water down there in the dock. Faith is all the way in. And that's what Abram does here.

He says, I'm all in. I'm all in with you. And it's counted to him as righteousness. What was the problem in the garden in the first place? What was the first thing that Satan said to the woman?

Did God indeed say.

Deception? Basically driving a wedge between trust between the woman and God. Ultimately then, between the man and God, and then even driving a wedge of distrust between the man and the woman. Isn't that the ultimate?

Isn't that ultimately what the first deception was? Trust to distrust God. And what is the way back into a relationship with God? Through trust. Through faith. Through believing that he is going to fix it.

That we trust that God is going to save us and fix this mess is the most important thing about us. Certainly it will affect everything about our lives. And if it is absent, if faith is not there, we will not have any righteousness on that final day standing before him.

The only hope that we have is faith. God is still working to convince Abram. He has basically walked him through that he is indeed going to have offspring. He is indeed going to become a great nation, but now he is going to tackle the issue of the land.

And indeed you are going to have a great land. So we see that in verse 7, and he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. He now brings up the second part of the covenant.

You are indeed going to get the land as well. But one thing that is key is the way that God identifies himself in verse 7. I love this. This is beautiful. He said, I am the God who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans.

How does God identify himself? He identifies himself in relationship.

To Abram.

How many of you could spit out some titles for God? Some titles that he gives himself. The Almighty, the All-Powerful, the Omnipotent, the Rock, all of these things. How many of you know there is something unique and special about the fact that he is willing to identify himself here as a title in relationship to Abram, to this.

Human? He's.

In essence saying, if you're asking the question, which.

God? Which God met.

With Abram here? Oh, the God who brought Abram out of Ur. Are you getting what I'm saying? It's hard for me, I think it's hard to communicate this, but this makes me really excited in this passage. It's as if.

It's appropriate.

For me, put it in these terms, it's appropriate for me to think of God as the God who met me as an 8-year-old in a dark, dank church basement in a WANA program in 1981. Which God? The God who met me there in that church basement.

Again, the same God who called me to repent of living for myself when I was 16 through the fiery preaching of a guy who wasn't very fiery.

Which.

God?

How has God worked in your history? How has he revealed himself? He's the God who met you at that summer camp years ago. He's the God who raised up a godly parent or a godly grandmother who would proclaim the truth to you.

How has God showed himself in your life? He is a God who is willing to connect his identity with you and me.

That's significant. That's huge. He is not some.

Distant, removed deity who is just all powerful, lightning bolts. He's a God who loves and will title himself according to us. Significant.

That's huge. But now we learn.

Something interesting about the nature of faith here because Abram still has questions. If you look back at verse 6, it's pretty obvious he believed. He expressed faith. He believes that God is going to actually do this.

But he still has questions. And I think some think of faith or trust or belief as the absence of questions. How many of you maybe have leaned in that direction for a while? Like, if you really have faith, then you have no questions.

And I would suggest to you, if you really have faith, then it's important enough to you to have questions. You hear the difference? If you have faith, then it's important enough for you to ask questions.

If you don't have faith, then it's like, okay, whatever. It'll all work out in the end kind of attitude. But once you become a child of faith, you're going to have some questions. But the thing is, you're committed to seeking answers, right?

You've got to pursue and figure out. And Abram does that. He takes them straight to God. He has questions and thoughts. Trying to figure this.