You're the Word of God for you, the people of God. You find it in Genesis chapter 15 and beginning at verse 6. And he, that is Abram, believed in the Lord. And he, the Lord, accounted it to him for righteousness. Then he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of ear of the Caldeans to give you this land to inherit it. And he said, Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it? So he said to him, bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female go to to the three-year-old ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. Then he brought all these to him and cut them into down the middle and placed each piece opposite the other. But he did not cut the birds into. And when the vultures came down in the carcasses, Abram drove them away. So when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram and behold horror and great darkness fell upon him. Then he said to Abram, no certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs and will serve them, and they will afflict them 400 years. And also the nation whom they serve, I will judge. Afterward they shall come out with great possessions. Now ask for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried at a good old age, but in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. And it came to pass when the sun went down, and it was dark, that behold there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying to your descendants, I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river of Fridays, the Kenites, the Kenisites, the Cadmenites, the Hittites, the Parasites, the Rephane, the Amorites, the Kenanites, the Georgasites, and the Jebiusites. The word of the Lord, thanks be to God, let's pray together, Father, encourage your people as they have come here this morning to worship and as you in turn promise to be in their midst, so now in their midst, buy your spirit, encourage their hearts, take this your word, instruct us where we need to be instructed, comfort us where we need to be comforted, convict us where we need to be convicted, but in the midst of it all, oh Lord, give great encouragement to us, your people. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Maybe seated. For months and months and months to come, you are going to hear stories. Marathon stories. I could promise you that. If you get tired of hearing Marathon stories, please tell me, but when you take six months to prepare for something, you accumulate stories, and when you spend four hours and fifty minutes plotting through the streets of New York City, you accumulate stories, and I've got a boatload of stories, but maybe the most poignant of those stories occurred about halfway through the race. I heard someone behind me, I couldn't discern what this person was saying, but I heard someone behind me saying something, and it didn't really register what they were saying, what this person was saying, until they passed me, not the only people who passed me by the way, but they didn't really register with me what was being said until these two runners passed and they were tethered together by a short cord. When I looked at the cord, it sort of registered what it was that I had heard, blind runner to your left, blind runner to your left, and they ran on the two of them, tethered together, slowly weaving their way through the hundreds of runners on 4th Avenue in Brooklyn, a blind man running the New York City Marathon, unable to see entirely dependent upon another to lead the way, entirely dependent upon another to guide him, a blind runner who has learned to trust and not doubt the one to whom he is tethered. Now, not surprisingly, I have often made the connection between the Christian life and a marathon, the New Testament does that, the New Testament thought of it before I did, but I will tell you that the language of Hebrews 12 takes on a vivid and living quality as a result of this business of running a marathon, run with endurance, the race that set before you, but it never occurred to me that in the Christian life, I'm a blind runner, never occurred to me that we are in the Christian life, blind runners running this race entirely dependent upon the one to whom we are tethered, entirely dependent upon one we cannot see, entirely dependent upon that one whom we cannot see to lead the way, the whole of the Christian life, the whole of the Christian life, folks, the heart of it all is learning to trust, learning to trust and not doubt the one who is leading and directing and guiding, and that is especially true in times of uncertainty, it's especially true when there are doubts, here is Abram, this father of the faithful, this one whose life is a paradigm and a model for all of us and for all of God's peak across the centuries, here is Abram caught in this tension, this tension that God described last week, attention between God's promises and God's providence, attention between what he has heard from God and what he is experiencing at this particular moment in the providence of God. What was the promise? I will make you a great nation, Genesis 12, verse 2, I will give this land to your descendants, the reality, that's the promise, but the reality is that in the providence of God Abram has no son and Sarah is barren, there is a gap, there is attention and in that gap in that tension doubts can arise, you have doubts, you face uncertainties,
life has not turned out as you had expected that it might, as you had hoped that it would, I don't know what the details are, but I know that there are gaps, things remaining unfulfilled, how do you address this? You take this chapter, that's how you begin to address it, you take this chapter, you take this 15th chapter of Genesis and you take it home with you and you get into it and you let it get into you, you swim around in it, you let it permeate your heart and your soul, you press it into your head, Martin Luther used to say, the business of the ministry is taking the gospel and pressing it into people's heads and then pounding it down into their hearts. Over and over and over again, you take this 15th chapter and you go home and you read it and you reflect upon it, you meditate upon it, you plead with God that he would take these things and press these things into your head and then pound them down into your heart, how do you deal when you find yourself in this tension? Between the promise of God and the providence of God, you look at Abram, you remember that Abram is walking by faith and not by sight, you remember that Abram is a blind runner and you remember that God knows Abram and you remember that God is tethered to Abram, not unmindful of it, but personally involved with him, concerned for him, desirous, the minister to Abram in the midst of the gap and the uncertainty and Abram on his side is free to seek him, to pursue him, to ask him, to call upon him for help, for understanding, for resolution. Look at what transpires in this passage, it's really a wonderful, wonderful passage, the passage reflects the intensely personal nature of God's relationship to Abram and Abram's relationship to God. Understand first of all that God gives Abram as he finds himself in the gap, God gives to Abram exactly what Abram needs, gives him what he needs, go back to the first five verses, by five verses that we looked at last week, the situation is this, that Abram has just acted faithfully, he has acted in a marvelously faithful way by giving up the spoils of war, by giving away all of his wealth and he does that right on the heels of defeating these enemies and rescuing Locke and his Bob pointed out last week, there had to be a couple of questions in Abram's mind, will they come back? People don't take the feet well, do they? Do we know something about that right now? People don't take the feet well, they don't like to be outvoted, will they come back? And the second question was, I have full and giving away all of this money, all of these resources, all of these riches. Do I run the risk of impoverishing myself by having turned over the spoils of war? But God in his response to Abram gives Abram exactly what he needs before Abram utters another word, before another thing is said, God says two very specific things designed to address the two very specific questions that must have been in Abram's mind. Abram, don't fear these kings, I and your shield. Do you think that's arbitrary language? Do you think in verses one and two, when God comes to Abram and speaks to Abram and tells him not to be afraid, do you think he just sort of pulls words out of the air? Well, let's see, maybe I'll say to Abram that I'll be his shield. It's very specific, very precise, designed to relay the particular fears of the man. Don't be afraid, I will be your shield. If they come back, I will defend you again, just like I defended you the first time. And second, I will be your very great reward, your exceedingly great reward. Another word designed to address the very specific concerns of Abram at a very specific moment in time. So God deals with people. We talk about this as Christians, we say, that being a Christian means being in relationship to the living God. When you're in relationship with something, that's something is, I don't have a relationship with this podium, I don't have relationships with pews, I have relationships with people. And God, the infinite person has drawn Abram into relationship with himself and Abram is in relationship to that God. And when Abram has particular needs, God as an infinite wise person addresses Abram in the midst of his uncertainty. That's how God does stuff. Examples of this are all over in the scriptures. Don't just read the Bible for the information. We're so cognitive in this culture of ours. We're so propositional. The propositions are there, the content is there, but understand that the content, the propositions are not the end of the deal. The end of the deal is that God is a person who loves people and who loves to be in relationship with people and wants those people to relate to him in that way. That's what you see in Genesis 15. Look at Psalm 34, Psalm of David, marvelous Psalm. You ought to read this in its historical and circumstantial context. This is a Psalm of David when he pretended to be mad, you know, and he let the saliva run down his beard and he tried to persuade a bemaleck that he was crazy, that he was a madman. He was in trouble. Verse 4, I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears. They looked to him and were radiant and their faces were not ashamed. This poor man cried out and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all of his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear him and delivers them. Here's David confessing the thing that you see in the life of Abram, a particular man or the particular place in a particular circumstance, and God gives him precisely what he needs. You come to the New Testament. There are some great passages in the New Testament in this regard. Read Matthew 10 verses 21 to 26. In that particular passage, God is giving instructions to His disciples about how the business of the kingdom is to be conducted and carried out. And in the midst of giving those instructions, God reminds these folks that they're going to suffer persecution. They're going to be dragged before them. They're going to be arraigned before kings. They're going to be scourged. You know what a scourge is? It's that cat of line tails. It's those strips of leather that have pieces of bone and iron tied into the ends of them and they were used as a whip. That's what a scourge is. And Jesus is telling these guys that they're going to experience that kind of handling when they appear before kings and courts and Peter and James and John and Acts 4 and 5 were dragged before the Sanhedrin. And they were beaten. It was a fulfillment of what Jesus had promised. But right in the midst of that, in verse 26, Jesus gives a reminder. A reminder to His disciples is He gives them this instruction. He tells them exactly what they need to hear. He tells them, and this is a paraphrase, but this is the thrust of a thing. These deeds will not go unnoticed. There is one who sees. And when you experience this treatment, know that it is known by one who knows you and who will care for you. You see the same thing? In Matthew 19, read that whole chapter. It's the story of the rich man and Jesus and their encounter and this man who can't give up his material possessions. And Jesus says, it's hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom. But then he goes on to say, I say to you, whoever gives up father, brother, mother, sister, for my sake will have this and more will have eternal life in my father's kingdom. A particular teaching point, a particular emphasis upon the cost that there isn't being a disciple of Jesus and Jesus speaks to the hearts of His disciples and gives them exactly what they need. That's how God deals with us. It loves to deal with His people that way. Let me personalize this a little bit. Is it okay for me to tell you that there are times when things get dry for me? Is it okay for me to confess to you and acknowledge that there are times when things feel like a wasteland parched this last Thursday morning. I sat with a book I hadn't read before by Eugene Peterson called Answering God. I commend it to you. His advice is that we as Christians learn to do with Christians across the centuries have done. And that is pray the Psalms, not just read the Psalms, but pray the Psalms interact with the Psalms. And his pastoral advice is that we not make this a great science, but that we simply do it. We just go to book one chapter one of the Psalms and we pray the Psalms. So I tried to take him at his word and I sat in my study and I was parched and dry. I freely confessed that to you. And I read Psalms one, two, and three. And in Psalms one and three, two words came out over and over and over again. And I felt like they were being pressed into my head and pounded down into my heart. Blessed and defended. Blessed and defended. Blessed and shielded. And may I say to you that I felt very much that the Father was speaking to me. That's what God does. He talks to us. He speaks to us. He takes the things in his word and presses them ever so patiently, but ever so forcefully into our heads and he pounds them down into our hearts. That's what he does here with Abram. He goes on and he does it again. Abram raises the question in verse 8, Lord, how am I going to know this? You see, he's still caught between promise and providence. He's stuck there and God responds to him again as we'll see in just a minute. He responds to him again and gives him exactly what he needs. God will do that for us folks. He'll do it, though he's unseen. We are tethered to him and he will guide and he will direct and he will speak and he will give exactly what is needed. Then on Abram's side, this is God on his side, but then you see there is this response, Abram on his side trusts what he hears. God gives what is needed. Abram trusts what he hears. That's what Genesis 156 is all about. He Abram believed in the Lord and he the Lord accounted it to him for righteousness. Now let me just tell you that the verb and the language suggest very strongly that verse 6 is not a response to verses 4 and 5. For God takes Abram outside his tent and shows him the stars and the heavens and tells him that his descendants will be as numerous as those stars in the heavens. Rather, verse 6 is a kind of a summary statement, interjected at this particular moment, but a kind of a summary statement about the whole pattern of the life of Abram. What's being described here is a habit of belief, a pattern of belief. It is a summary of Abram's response to God. You see Abram had gotten into the habit because of the repeated demonstrations of God's intense personal interest in him. Abram had gotten into the habit of responding to God by believing him, by trusting what he said. Hebrews, if you go back into the New Testament and read Hebrews 11, 8 through 10, you'll read there that Abram obeyed when God called him out of ear of the Caldys and you'll see there that Abram lived by faith, lived by faith in the promised land, living in tents. You see the whole of his life from its inception in ear of the Caldys where God spoke the first time and there was a first moment of belief to be sure, but from that first moment of belief you see Abram's life is characterized by faith. It is characterized by this business of trusting when God speaks. When God speaks, he speaks the truth. He means what he says. And Abram, because of God's repeated, repeated demonstrations of reliability and trustworthiness and faithfulness, Abram has learned the habit of believing. You know what belief is? It's trust. It's trust. It's beyond mere ascent to something. It's certainly beyond merely noticing something. If when you walked in here and you observed the surroundings and someone asked you are there pews in this room, you would have said, yes, I know there are pews in this room, but then if someone said, well, describe the pews for me, you'd have to go beyond noticing the pews to really ascenting to the pews. And you describe the grain and you describe the cushions that are on the pews and you might describe the himmels that are in the pew racks on the back of the pews and you describe the finish. You describe as much as you could to give a response to the person who asked what you noticed, what you saw. You'd be going beyond merely noticing to ascenting, but it's when you sit in the pew that you've gone beyond either noticing or ascenting to trusting. You've placed your trust upon that pew. You've put the full weight of your body upon that pew. That's biblical faith. That's where Abram gets to. He's like that blind runner, tethered to that man as they ran through the streets. He trusts him. If the man says move to the left, he moves to the left. If he says move to the right, he moves to the right. If he says slow down, he slows down. If he says speed up, he speeds up if he has the strength to do it. He trusts him, you see. Abram on his part on his side trusts what he hears. Let me stress this, folks, if you would have a relationship with God. If you would have a relationship with God, if you would have God as your shield and your defender and your very great reward, if you would have God as your father, if you would be one who would enjoy all of the benefits of being drawn into fellowship with this God, and you must be prepared to believe what he says. To trust what he says when he says it, God on his part gives what is needed. It isn't always what is wanted, but it is always what is needed. And Abram on his part trusts what he hears. You see, if I will only trust what I understand or agree with. If I will only trust what I understand or agree with, I don't have a relationship with God, I have a relationship with myself. Because you see, I have become the final arbiter of what is trust worthy and what is not. I have simply projected my own preferences, my own desires, and am trusting myself to those. Abram, you see, Abram believes God and God credits that to Abram as righteousness. This passage, this phrase, which Paul picks up in Romans chapter 4, he makes Abram a test case of what it means to be in relationship to God, that it's not a function of works, it's not a function of performance, it's not a function of satisfying somebody's standards, but it is simply believing what God says and God's response to that is to credit someone, impute to someone, righteousness. The credit righteousness to impute right to righteousness is tend to mount to an acquittal before a judge. The effect of this is that God declares to Abram not guilty. Not guilty. So God, on his part, gives what is needed, does it because he loves Abram? Abram on his part trusts what he hears. And then in this remarkable passage, beginning at verse 9, in response to Abram's next question, how will I know God gives again? And in this case, honors what he sees. He honors what he sees. God gives what is needed. Abram trusts what he hears. And God then on his part honors what he sees. He sees the response of faith and trust. And as a response to that response, God gives more. He gives more. What do you see in these verses? You see enacted, you see unfolded. What would have happened between kings when kings would enter into a covenant with one another? And in that covenant arrangement, the superior king would make demands of the inferior king and the inferior king would pledge his allegiance to the superior king. And then the two kings would create a gauntlet of dead beasts just as you find in this passage. They would slay these beasts. They would cut them in half. And then the two kings would pass between these beasts. And they would be saying in effect as they called upon the gods to witness what they were doing. They would be saying in effect to one another. If I should fail in my responsibility to you, whether it's the superior, protecting and defending the inferior or the inferior, pledging his loyalty and obedience to the superior, if either should fail in the performance of his duties, may what has happened to these beasts happen to me. And they would call upon the gods to be the judge of the proceedings and would submit themselves to the prospect of being cursed if they should fail. And here, God, to reassure Abram's faith yet again, honoring what he sees in Abram, rewarding what he sees in Abram, God asks Abram to create the gauntlet. But when it comes time for the two parties to pass between the beasts, Abram is on the sidelines. And God, God, personified in a smoking pot and a flaming torch, God passes between the beasts and says in effect to Abram, all of the obligations of this covenant are mine and I will fulfill it all for you. And you understand, folks, that at the cross of Jesus, God fulfilled exactly what is promised in Genesis 15. The infinite God, man, Jesus, suffered the curse. Having assumed all of the responsibilities for this covenant relationship, those of the superior, those of the inferior as the infinite God superior person, as the infinite God man inferior person, Jesus passed between the beasts and in his humanity bearing the sins of his people, suffered the curse because we have failed. You see, God obligates himself to fulfill all of the obligations of this covenant. It's not bilateral. It's unilateral. One party, assuming responsibility for the whole thing, is an act which God performs as a response to Abram's faith, as a reward for Abram's believing he gives even more. And that is biblical religion. Hebrews 11, 6, God is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. God does that. And so faith grows from faith to faith. And it enlarges because God shows himself faithful again and again. And God gives what is needed again and again. So what you have in Genesis 15 is a man in the gap, a man in tension, a man without a man who faces uncertainties, a man who wonders, will the promise ever be fulfilled? And God gives to Abram what he needs. And Abram responds as is the pattern of his life by trusting what God says. And God then in response to that trust gives him even more and confirms for Abram his determination to fulfill the promises that he's made to Abram. The man said, praise the Lord. And that is the thing to be said.
How we live the Christian life in the midst of doubts. We go to God, we seek God, we appeal to God, we take the time to do this folks. And God in his turn is pleased to give us what we need. And we then by his grace are summoned to trust what he says so that he then might heap more upon us. You know what God's like? God's like the bishop who used this illustration before. You know the bishop in Les Mises. You know when Jean-Veljean comes to the bishop's home, stays in the bishop's home is fed by the bishop's sleeps in a clean bed for the first time in his life. Tastes kindness and mercy like he hasn't tasted in 19 years. In the middle of the night he rises up and he steals the bishop's silver. And he escapes from the bishop's house and then he is caught by the gendarm's and he's brought back to the bishop. And when Jean-Veljean is presented to the bishop, the bishop doesn't take out of his knapsack. The grip's not already bestowed but he takes the candle sticks and he presses the candle sticks into his knapsack and he hens him on his way in peace. The minds in my have reclaimed you for God. Not deals with his children. He's not cheap with his grace. God would give the Jean-Veljean. Certainly he will give to those who struggle, who labor to seek him until they find him, who struggle and labor to trust him. To those he will heap more and more and more and more grace, mercy and kindness upon their lives. The man said it. Praise the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Oh Lord, oh Lord you know that we are much more like Jean-Veljean than we are even. We live in the gap. We live with these uncertainties. We stumble. We fall even in premeditated ways we rob you of your silver. Thank you to folk like us. You are pleased to receive us back. Thank you that you are pleased to pour out upon us even greater demonstrations of your grace. And we thank you for the marvelous teaching of this passage. But you have assumed all of these responsibilities of the covenant, taken it all upon yourself and fulfilled it all in the cross of Christ. Oh Lord, may we be encouraged by this. May we be encouraged by this great demonstration of your kindness to trust you when you speak and believe you as we hear you. We ask in Jesus' name and we ask this that he might be glorified in our lives. Amen.