Living In The Truth of God’s Promises
All right, good morning. Hope you're preparing for the storm. Many of you are. Some of you have moved here to escape that kind of thing, and many of us who are from here aren't too used to it. So anyway, I'm sure Walmart will be picked over this afternoon. I'm sure so anyway, so anyhow, Thursday was my six year old son's birthday. John, David. I know that I look too old to have a six year old, but I do. And one of the things about having an 18 year old and a 16 year old and an almost 13 year old and a six year old is when we have parties like we did yesterday, for for John David the six year old, I find myself older, sometimes a lot older than the other parents. And so I realized that, you know, I have I see parenting differently than the other parents do much differently, and I'm a little more harder on them. And so as I was trying to pass out the presents, I feel like I was being mobbed by little munchkins, and I had to tell them all to sit down, you know. And because other parents are just sitting there smiling, thinking they're so glad this wasn't their party, you know. And but anyhow, but we have a different view of parenting. The only problem is, at my age, I'm just too tired to do anything about it. So this week, when I put him to bed day or around his birthday, Thursday or Friday night, and he laid there in the bed and he said, Dad, sometimes I wish I wasn't famous. I said. I said, What? What did you say? He said, sometimes I just wish I wasn't famous. And I said, so I didn't want to, you know, kill his reality. And so I said, Well, when did you get famous? How long when did you get famous? He says, I don't know, sometime after I was about one. So part of the struggle of growing up as a young child is learning what you are and what you aren't, who you are and who you aren't, is my job as a parent is not to tell him, boy, you're not famous. I just kind of figured out what he means by that. I think what he meant was he has a lot of friends and things like that, but, but what does he mean by that and and part of growing up, and then it never really ends, as you grow up, is learning who you are, who you aren't. The Bible says primarily that you are a child of God. That's who you are. That's who we are. Now, it says a lot of things about your identity, but it also says a lot about who God is and who God is, and his character and his identity is much more important than who we think we Are. In fact, who we are is contingent on who God is and who God says He is. Today, we're looking at a section of scripture where God unpacks more of his promise to Abram, who would be renamed Abraham, in a few chapters. Now, his initial command to Abram was to move to a land that he would show him where, and that he would make his name great. And God would then give more and more details to Abram as he obeyed God and continued living in the truth of those promises, which is what we're talking about today, living in the truth of God's promises. The truth is that God has promised us many things, yet not quite the same promises that he had for Abraham. God has promised us salvation. He's promised us deliverance from sin. He's promised us eternal life and abundant life, among other things. And so like Abram, we too are called to live in the truth of the promises that God has given us, even though we have a very different calling than Abram had. So that brings us to today's passage in Genesis 15. I'm going to just read verses one through six before we pray. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram. I am your. Shield, your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, Oh 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've given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, this man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, Look toward heaven and Number the Stars, if you're able to number them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be? And he believed the Lord, and He counted it to him as righteousness, Heavenly Father. We thank you that we too, when we believe in you, we believe in the new covenant of Jesus Christ, his work on the cross, that you too count it to us as righteousness, that we are saved through faith in the reality of the promise that you made, that a Messiah would come, and he came. So we thank you for that Lord. We thank you for what you've given us today, Father, as we look at this description of the promise that you gave Abraham and the more details that unfolded as you would continue to do so throughout his life, that it would remind us that the details of our life, and the plan for our life continues to unfold a little bit of the time, year after year, decade after decade. So we get a better idea, a full idea, of who we are, as children of God, because of who you are our Heavenly Father, Lord, I pray that today my words will reflect your heart in giving your word to us, that your Spirit will speak through me in preaching, and that the Holy Spirit that is indwelling in the believers here today will receive your word and You will remind them who they are in Christ, Lord, we love you, and we ask these things in Jesus name. Amen, I want to give you three realities we see here today, about living in the truth of God's promises. Three realities we see about living in the truth of God's promises. First, God reassures us of His promises. There's times in our life where we get a reassurance that what God said is still true. We can't always rely on our feelings. Feelings are great. They enable us to really experience life in a great way. But sometimes we might feel that God has abandoned us. We might feel that we have abandoned God and that we are the reason God feels distance and that we deserve it possibly even. But God reassures us of His promises throughout our life. Verse one talks about that after these things have happened in verse chapter 14, that the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. Now, previously, we're not sure how he spoke to Abram, but now he speaks to him in a vision, and he says, Fear not, Abram. I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. He's a shield. What does a shield do? It protects you from enemies and arrows and things like that. In the biblical time. Now, God had promised Abraham that he would make him a great name and his offspring would be great. Well, Abram was childless, as we know, and at this point he was still childless, and he wasn't getting any younger. He was over the age of 75 at this point, and apparently God knew that Abram had begun to fear that maybe God's promise might not come true. So God speaks to Abram again, this time in a dream, and he tells not to fear the future, not to worry about the future, because I will protect you. I will protect you. And God protects us because He loves us, but also he protects us for the glory of his name. He protects us for the glory of His promises and his character. God's reputation is at stake when he makes a promise, so he's not going to let it fail the very least, because that's not who he is. It, but he still has worries about the promise of his lineage being great because he's childless. So Abram talks back for the first time we see and he says, Lord God, what will you give me for? I continue childless, and I like how this is written in the editors in the ancient Hebrew didn't have punctuations, but the editors make it like a question. And I can see him saying this, and he says, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. That's who it is. And so Abraham had just obeyed, but now he asks a question, and that's typically how it goes. God puts a great calling in your life, where he gives you a calling, where you know it's true for your life, and you do it, and then things get rocky. You have to go rescue your nephew from four kings you had kidnapped him, which is what happened to Abram, things like this. And you start wondering, is this really the promise? Is this really the plan you have for me. Times have gotten tough. You know, if God, I'm really following God's plan, shouldn't everything just be as smooth as silk? Absolutely not. Nowhere in Scripture. Do we see that Abram, who Jesus came through his lineage, who the Israelites came through his lineage, did not have an easy life. It was ups and downs, but God's promise remained, so he's wondering verse three And Abram said, Behold, you give me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir. What are my employees? Essentially, verse four, the Lord says to him, this man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. Heir. This is the first time Abram has heard this part. He's thinking, Well, I'm going to have this great family. But I haven't heard this actually section yet. He hasn't really told me exactly that it's going to be my son, but now he does, and he unveils that to him. And so three times, God had promised Abram that he would have a multitude of descendants, but now he says it's going to be your son. And then we see God acting like the lovingly Heavenly Father He is, and if he was standing beside him, I can imagine what he would done. He was put his arm around and write verse six, and he said, Look up. Look toward heaven. Number the Stars. If you're able to number them, so shall your offspring be a very fatherly tone. Now it's been a long time since I've been able to see the stars very clearly. If you live out in the country, maybe you can see them better. But you know, there's so many lights everywhere, it's hard to tell. But back in Abram's day, there was no electricity, and I'm sure on the clear night, it was an amazing sight. You could see all these stars shining bright and twinkling. Also, Abram knew the stars very well. That's what he was. He was a star watcher before he was saved, before God called him to faith and took him out of that pagan practice. He was from a land that built these pyramid like structures where they studied the stars. So he God draws on Abram's expertise, something that he knew well, and he uses that to underscore and fortify his promise. Think about something that you're good at or have experience doing, and God, using that to show you how the promise would work. And this hit with Abram. He understood it. And verse six says, And he believed the Lord, and He counted it to him as righteous. Now the Hebrew meaning for this word believe, here is means that he continued to believe, he didn't believe, and then the next day he didn't believe. He continued to believe. In fact, the word amen. Amen comes from the same root word as believed. So God told him what would happen, and Abram essentially answered him with Amos writes us. This is the point that Abram, as we would say, had faith. This is the point, the day of salvation for Abram he believed it to him, and God said, You are now righteous. In my eyes, Abrams say the same. We are same way. We are by faith in God's promises. Faith is simply resting on God's promise. You're resting in the protection, in the providence of God. If you had a hard day, and you come home and all you want to do is sit on your favorite chair. Oftentimes, when I come home, one of my children is sitting in my favorite chair, and I just say, I. Don't even ask nicely. I said, No, you can move. And I sit in that chair, and I recline back, and I never worry about, I hope this thing's going to hold me up today. Now, if you have a broken down chair, maybe you have that thought, but if you have a favorite chair, I don't think, man, I really, really hope that this thing doesn't fall apart in the middle of this game or in the middle of me watching the news. I never, ever think about that chair collapsing. Maybe I should, I don't know, but I never think about it. That's the type of faith that we should have when we rest in God. That God, we don't have to worry about the chair collapsing. God is not going to break his promise. He and he's more sturdy than the best piece of furniture you can imagine. And so Abram, like us, was saved through faith in God's promise the Old Testament. Saints were saved through faith in God's promise of the Messiah to come. The people in Jesus' time were saved by seeing Jesus in His resurrection and faith in that and we are saved on the promise that the Messiah came, and we know that He died and resurrected, we're all saved through faith in God's promise of the Messiah and the work that he did. So how then can God reassure us? How does he reassure us of His promises? Firstly, number one, through His word the Bible, it's filled with God's promise. When you say, I just want, I just need a word from the Lord. Well, according to my Bible, you have 1200 pages of it, from Genesis to maps. It's filled, filled with God's promises numerous passages, but we forget about them because we have all these other messages coming at us all day long. Secondly, He reassures his promise to us through prayer. Through prayer, one of the great things about our Bible reading plan, if you do it on the app, there's this prayer area. Now you can go to you can tap prayer, and you can write your prayer out, and then you can click the button that says you prayed it. Now I thought I was a little silly when I first started it, because I was like, Well, I mean, I gotta click a button to say, I prayed it, you know. But there's something powerful in doing that. I mean, you pray in your head all the time, but when you write out and you click prayed, and then you can come back to it and you can ask, I've prayed every day, several things. I pray every day, you come back to it, and you can add updates what happened. And this week alone, I've had all these updates happening, and it's just a reassurance to me when God answers his prayers, he's still working, even though I knew he's I know he's always working, but through prayer and God reassures us that he is there, that he still has his promises. Thirdly, He reassures us through signs and blessings. Signs and blessings. I mentioned, I think it was last week I mentioned that that we have a dog because the dog was given to us for free. But then my wife was like, we're keeping this dog because it has the same birthday as our oldest son, so God wants us to have it. I thought, Okay. And then a couple years ago, a kitten showed up on our doorstep on my wife's birthday. So she says, this is a sign that God wants us to keep this cat. And so on Thursday, when John David turned six, I was really praying there would be no animal showing up. Well, wouldn't you know it the day before, two dogs showed up the day before, and I said, it's not anybody's birthday. We're not keeping them. I almost felt like God was just having some fun, because I mentioned it last week, so I'm just going to show up. And I think my son says he saw a cat on John David's birthday, a new cat. But I you know, I'm not believing in that, right? Because it never came back astray or something. I think God sometimes just gives us even things like that, to let us remember, hey, he's working in our lives, right? He's working through blessings, through signs and forth, through his presence, ultimately, God's presence that he gives us the peace that he offers us. It's just this constant reassurance that God is committed. He's committed to withholding His promises in your life. Secondly, God solidifies to us His promises. But. Verse seven, he says, I am the Lord who brought you out from Earth the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But Abraham said, Lord, how might I know that I shall possess it? So at this point, Abram enters, or God enters, Abram into a covenant with him, a covenant ceremony, if you will. Which was what they would do at this time of the world history. Verse nine, he says, Bring me a heifer. That's a cow, three years old, a female goat, a RAM, a turtle dove, a young pigeon. He brought them all these he cut them in half and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when the birds of prey came down on the carcass as Abram drove them away. I can just imagine Abram getting ready for the ceremony, cutting these animals in half, and they would lay on each side of this pathway and just chasing the vultures away with a stick trying to eat these carcasses. This is one of the points of the Bible where you know it's true. Because why would you put a detail like that? Unless it really happened? You wouldn't need that detail in there, unless Abram was running around with a golf club attacking these villagers. Now, God's promised Abram was two parts a people in a land. Here's the land part of the promise. The two most famous events in Jewish history started with the same phrase, I'm God, who took you out of this place. We see this when he talks to Moses and the Egyptians and Abram as well. But we have a question that's more to him. It's more like this, where he says, God, help me believe this. How am I going to believe this? So God works in Abram's context and culture. So even though God transcends space and time, he still works with us in our culture, in our time. And so he takes a contract ceremony that was very similar to the time where two people enter into a covenant, into an agreement two people, and they would cut the animal in half, and that was symbolic of what would happen to them if they broke their covenant together. So God takes Abram through a ceremony which he knew very well, and Verse 12 tells us, and as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on him, and behold a dreadful, great darkness fell upon him, And the Lord said to Abram, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs. It will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years, but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. And as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age, and they shall come back here in fourth generation. The iniquity in them writes not yet complete. So this is a prophecy to Abraham, they gives them that that even for 400 years later, your people are going to be enslaved, they're going to come out, and they're going to bring Abraham's people back now God is just to show God's patience and his promises in his will that he would still judge Egypt and then take through Abraham's descendants, then take them out of Egypt, and then judge the land who still needed judging, as we see in The Book of Joshua. God is patient with his plans. He's patient beyond our imagination. He's long suffering with them. And so how, then does God solidify to us His promises? Because for Abram, it was another 400 years for some of his promises. Well, number one, through his perfect timing, God's timing, when these things happen that he has planned for you, happens in his timing. It is solidification of that we don't want him in our time, because our time may not be God's time. Secondly, through answered prayers, we can look back and see God answered that worry I had. He answered that fear I turned into a prayer. He he answered this. I can see it. And God solidifies those promises. Three, through the Holy Spirit. He just works through our lives. The Spirit reminds us of these times, these right now, as we're hearing God's word preached, the Holy Spirit is all communicating with us right now. That's why I pray it every week. It's reminding us of what God has said and finally, forth through other people God, bring other people to your lives to remind you, here's how God has worked. Sometimes we need reminders. A couple years ago, I had another pastor friend. I was down and out about some stuff in ministry in my life, and I just told him some things, and he he. He repeated back what I said, and he said, I don't see your problem. I don't really see your problem. Here. I was like, You're right. God is good. Sometimes you just need other believers to come beside you and say and say, Hey, God is working in your life. And finally, number three, God delivers to us His promises. God delivers to us His promises. Verse 17 says, When the sun had gone down, it was dark. Behold a smoking fire, pot and flaming torch passed between these pieces, and on that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying to your offspring, I will give this land. And he names all the different people that live there that I'm giving you the land. This was a visual manifestation, much like the burning bush to Moses that God was going to make this happen when went right through this pathway, and he's ratifying this covenant, saying, me, God, we're not going through it together. He didn't say, Me and Abram were passing through this together. God says, I'm going through it alone because I am making this happen. We cannot make the covenant of God occur. We are just willing recipients of it. God makes it, and he delivers on his promises. Every morning, I get an email from the United States Postal Service telling me what to expect in my mailbox. Sometimes they're right. Sometimes it's delayed. This package is delayed, but God's deliverance is always on time. He always delivers rain, sleet, wintry mix, freezing rain, no matter what we get this week, God delivers. How does he do it? Real quickly through provision. God fulfills His promises through providing for us, providing for us opportunities, providing for us resources, providing for us people that contribute to us. This is the beauty of the church. God provides for your spiritual life, your spiritual needs, and other things as well through God's people, especially when you have people who are committed to following Jesus, God provides for you. Secondly, he delivers through trials. If Abraham had trials, if Moses had trials, if Paul had trials, David, a man, after God's own heart, spent years of his life on the run from his father in law trying to kill him. You think your in laws are tough, from his son trying to kill him. Trials. Don't mean that you're doing wrong necessarily. It means God's working in your life. It challenges our faith. It leads us to really know that God promises us. And finally, through His faithfulness, God is faithful. He is faithful. And just as God made that covenant with Abram and saw it through and walked through that ceremony by himself to show that he is the one that brings the covenant, God made a similar covenant with you and I, through the cross, through Jesus' death, think about that. That's the new covenant. It didn't take our part at all. It wasn't you and Jesus hanging on the cross together, as I could do anything. It was Jesus hanging on the cross, and if we had been there, all we could do is watch, because only he could make that covenant come to realization, and because you're standing in God's eyes, just credited as being righteous, being made right with God has nothing to do with you. Just as Abram's calling had nothing to do with him, Abraham was not some Sunday School worship every Sunday Christian. He was a pagan worshiping the stars, and God said, I choose you. Why? We don't know. But he chose Abram, and Abram believed, and God said, You are now made right with me, same with us. When we believe in Jesus Christ, it has everything to do with what Jesus did not what we did. What Jesus did. Jesus walked through the fire, he hung on the cross, He rose from the dead, and that's why we can trust the truth of God's promises. There's a lot of quote, unquote. Famous people who don't have access to their favorite app today are all hoping President Trump will give it back to him. But you know, whether a six year old thinks they're famous, whether an influencer thinks they're famous, we know there's only one that is truly famous, amen, and that famous one gives promises that are never broken, Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your promises, for your faithfulness, and we thank you that you deliver on them. You're more reliable than any mailman, FedEx ups, Amazon driver, and they always are delivered in your time frame. Lord, You tell us that Your word is a lamp unto our feet. We walk step by step, following you, and we can have confidence that no matter what the day brings, no matter what we feel inside, no matter what experience we undergo, how your faithfulness never fails us, and that you always deliver on what you told us will happen, but we thank you for those promises you give us. If there is one in here today, it's never placed their faith in you, that today they would believe that they would turn from their sins and ask forgiveness and believe in you, and that you would credit to them as righteousness, Lord, we love you. We ask these things in Jesus. Name, Amen. Amen.
