like to lead us in prayer. Let us pray. Eternal God in the midst of all the changing words of this generation, those words that seek our attention, our allegiance, our loyalty, we come now and ask that we might hear your eternal word that does not change and may we respond to it as we ought with faith, understanding, and obedience. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Now, let me just reiterate, we're going to have a little opportunity for this later. The last 4,000 years or so, when people of faith come together and pray, it is customary and modeled by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself that we together say, the Amen or the Amen. And when you don't do that, it either means you're not paying attention or you're not praying or you're so deeply devoted that your mouth isn't working anymore. And whichever it is, I really want to encourage us to pray, like Christians do, the world over and throughout our story. And that is to say the Amen together, the Amen, shout it, wave your hands, I really don't care. But I want us to do actions that show that we're in fact worshiping together. All right, so let's think that we're still praying and what do we say? Oh, that's very good. See, don't you feel like you've just been praying together when you do that? Isn't that great? It almost feels like you're awake and good things are happening, right? All right, enough of the sermon. Now, on to the sermon. I'm going to be reading Genesis chapter 15. This is printed inside your bulletin, by the way, if you'd like to follow along. This is in the context, by the way, if the story we looked at last week where Abram, like a great king, was successful in an unbelievable military coup, delivering his nephew Lot and his family from the greatest power alliance in the world. The king of Babylon and his allies carried Lot off in a raid. And Abram rose to the challenge of faith and stood up to them and rescued them. And this story, if you will, is sort of an afterglow of the big battle. So after this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Did not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield and your very great reward. But Abram said, O sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abram said, you have given me no children, so a servant in my household will be my heir. Then the word of the Lord came to him. This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir. He took him outside and said, look up at the heavens and count the stars if indeed you can count them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. Abram believed the Lord and he credited to him as righteousness. He also said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of the ore of the Calvians to give you this land to take possession of it. But Abram said, O sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it? So the Lord said to him, bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon. Abram brought all these to him, cut them into and arranged the halves opposite each other. The birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the Lord said to him, no for certain, that your descendants will be strangers in the country, not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated for 400 years. But I will punish the nation they service slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers and peace and be buried in a good old age. In the fourth generation, your descendants will come back here for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, to your descendants, I will give this land from the river of Egypt to the great river of the Euphrates, the land of the Kennites, Kennesites, Cadmenites, Hittites, Parasites, Raffiites, Amorites, Kennenites, Geiger Shites, and the Jebusites. This is the word of the Lord. This is a story about Abram, who is known as a man of faith. In fact, most of the stories we're looking at are stories that are tests of faith. This story, I think, powerfully shows us how to get at what it means when we say that a person is a person of faith. Do you have a favorite inspiring story of someone who is a person of faith? Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, maybe someone who inspires you as a young person? Do you have a story of somebody who truly inspires you as a person of faith? Mine, I guess, is a standard operating procedure for Protestant ministers. Mine, of course, is Martin Luther. And it's interesting if you look at Martin Luther, and of course his great moment, his Genesis 15 came 500 years ago, when the Holy Roman Empire demanded that he give an account of these teachings from the scriptures that he was bringing to bear actually about faith and how we're made right with God. In fact, this was one of the important texts he looked at that Abram believed God and that faith alone was what credited righteousness with him, with God. If you look at the story closely, you begin to realize you begin to see a true anatomy of what a person of faith is really like. But a lot of people don't know. You know, you hear the famous story of Luther standing there before the imperial diet, this gathered representation of an empire that wanted to kill him. And of course, the famous word he says is, here I stand, I could do no other to go against the conscience is neither right nor say, God, help me. I'm in. You know, that's the kind of thing you put up on a wall and chiseled and stone. What you don't generally hear is that on the day before, when they said to him, Luther, you heretic, are you going to stand by all the things you say the Bible's teaching that you've written in your books and his first response was, well, you know, I've written a lot of books. I'm sure I've made mistakes. You know, how can I, you know, look, let me read them all. I'll get back to you, okay? No, will you stand behind your books? Why, you know, what part? You know, I'm not sure what, you know, what does it mean? You know, I mean, he really did a lot of debating about, you know, what's really in there. And finally, they said, nothing is nonsense. Luther, will you stand behind what you said? In other words, will you sign your death warrant? And Luther said, I'd like to have the night to think it over. Now, why am I telling you that story? The sole your thought about Martin Luther? No, to say this, that behind every great story of a person of faith, behind anybody who has great faith, there is a person who has learned how to wrestle with their doubts. Anybody who has great faith, that is a person who has faith that has integrity, is a person who acknowledges and readily takes and gives account. Now, it is part of the equation of a thinking person, of a person who's looking at the whole world, the real world. This story here of Abraham, by the way, is the, it is the central story of the book of Genesis, I think most scholars would say, and the way the book is divided. And interestingly enough, when it comes to the use of the New Testament, that is, what passage of the New Testament is most alluded to in a central way? A number of scholars would say that hands down this story is the story that finds its way sort of at crucial arguments in books like the books of Romans and Galatians. This story of what we've just seen about what it means to truly come to faith, and yet here's the irony. The very center of this story, a faith, if you will, the father of faith. In fact, Abraham is so considered the father of faith, not only are his descendants considered to be the fruit of his faith, but frankly anybody who ever even comes to believe in the New Testament is considered a child of Abraham, the father of the faithful. And yet, at his greatest moments of faith, what you really see is somebody wrestling with doubt. Doubt can be something very destructive in your life, and no doubt. Very often when you're young and you ask questions of a teacher or you ask questions of your parents and they try to shut you down from thinking or asking they're afraid of destructive doubt. Now that's not a very good response, I don't think. But what are they afraid of? They know that doubt can destroy you. You can lose all sense of being centered, all sense of there being truth or accountability. I can lead into spirals of irresponsibility. Doubt can lead into spirals of depression. But, doubt is a gift in this. Doubt can also be a tool not only an instrument of evil that spins you downward into despair and to any lack of assurance or certainty or knowledge, but doubt can also be the instrument of moving you into faith. Because doubt becomes the way that you take your questions seriously. Rather than just being a pious dumb dumb who never thinks doubt becomes a way of actually waking to God. Doubt becomes a genuine tool of asking the hard questions that won't go away when you turn the lights off and the television isn't playing anymore or you don't have any more work to throw yourself into. Doubt becomes a way an instrument of God, if you will, of wrestling with him, of waking to the reality of who he is. Doubt in scripture often comes not just when we would often think when things go badly, somebody saying, how can there be a God? Look at my career. Not just then, but often doubt creeps in at your best moments. One of the great biblical stories is the story of Elijah. Talk about a man of faith, a man who squares off against an evil, powerful king and queen, and there defies them, their armies, and their prophets. And in faith, praise, and his prayer also goes into one of the all-time record books of great prayers of faith. He prays so much it stops raining. He prays so much with such faith that fire falls from heaven and literally burns up the rocks. And yet, with all that faith, the next story is the queen, understandably, he kills her prophets, kind of thumbs his nose out, or she says, you know, I think I'm going to kill you. And it scares him so badly, it depresses him so badly that he runs off to a cave. And when he gets to the cave, his doubts, this is a man who just, you know, crawled down the Holy Fire, his doubts become so great that we see Elijah in the cave, so depressed, so spiral down by his doubt that he prays and says, I wish I could doubt. I wish I could die. Right after his greatest success, the temptation to doubt is there in the ministry of Jesus Christ. His greatest moment, the beginning of his ministry, the heavens break open, the God in the form of a dove descends and says, this is my beloved son, and I'm well placed. You know, a great and glorious moment, and from there he is driven by the spirit into the wilderness without any clear sense of purpose or explanation. And the temptation is there to doubt what? Are you really loved by your father and approved by your father? You see, often, doubt hits us after tremendous triumphs or tremendous successes. And that is exactly what's happening here. Abraham has just courageously, as I was saying last week, he's just stuck it, he's just dived to him. He's gone out like a great king, like a great warrior, and done the right thing by his thankless and effulite, rescued him. Such, you know, politicians don't, they can, you know, when things, you know, when the cards play right, they get all the credit, don't they? Here's Abraham getting, you know, he's got a full house, you know, everything lays out beautifully, not a hair touched on anybody. He gets everything, he's gracious in the way he responds. So how should he be feeling now? You know, he's flying home from the Olympics. How should you feel? And when you come to Genesis 15, he's absolutely spiraling down with doubt. He's majorly taking a downturn in this thing. Now, this text, we're going to look at two things. First of all, this text shows you that you need to deal with your doubt. Doubt must be dealt with. Bring God your doubts. Abraham, you see, has made some very powerful enemies by rescuing a lot. Doubt is beginning to suck into his mind that here he is with his little Mary band and should really expect some fierce retaliation from these allies that he's defied in this military action. And no doubt, as he is understandably terrified, he also begins to think, you know, years ago, God promised me that I would have a legacy, that I would have an heir in this land. It was years ago, we're not sure exactly how long, but we know it was a long time ago, that God had made this promise. And he's not getting any younger. His wife's not getting any younger. You know, the biological clock probably isn't ticking anymore. And so his bareness, the bareness of their experiencing as a couple, becomes more and more real to them as this threat comes over them. You see God come to Abraham. God initiates. He comes, and what he says to him is, Abram, do not fear. He said that interesting, that God doesn't come and squashing like a bug because there's lack of faith. God comes with compassion when he looks at our hearts. He comes and he says, Abram, do not fear. I am your shield. And literally, the best translation would be, and your reward will be great. Because God comes and says, don't you see, Abram? All the things I promised you, they're going to come. They're going to come in my time. Trust me. Abram, think of me as a shield. What a metaphor. A total complete protection, personal around you, the one who never slumbers and sleeps. Abram, don't be afraid. I am your shield. And notice how Abram responds to God's promise, with absolute resentment and protest. Verse two, oh, sovereign Lord. And what does he say? sovereign Lord, what are you going to give me since I still remain childless. In other words, hey, thanks for the promises, really. What are you going to give me since I still remain childless? And the best that's come about is, and he mentions, this is an ancient Near Eastern cousin, probably, a family has been welcomed in. Some former slaves probably have been welcomed into his caravan. And one of the children of the slaves, Ellie Azer, Abram has adopted into his own family. That is, he's getting old. He's got to do something. But he knows, is this what you call the provision, the miraculous provision of God? There's my ear. I have no ear. I'm childless. And in fact, it's a double protest. He says, I am childless. And I have no ear. That is, I feel a double failure to your promises. I'm childless. You said I'd have a child. And this ear, this great promise of legacy simply hasn't come through. Now, what I want you to see here is that the Bible encourages us to take freedom in expressing our misgivings honestly. Remember, if God knows all things, there's a certain nonsense in thinking that somehow muttering pious platitudes and not really engaging with God will keep them from being offended. He already sees it all. He knows what's in your heart. The Bible actually encourages us to come to God honestly and to wrestle with him so that we might get to the truth, to the reality we're seeking. There's actually a book in the Bible, the Psalms, which is a prayer book or a song book that frankly goes through the whole gamut of human experience. If you've never paid close attention to them, I cannot recommend them enough to you. Actually, the Psalms have been the prayer book of the church for nearly 3000 years. They're the prayer book of Israel. They were the prayer book and song book of Jesus Christ himself. For most of the centuries of the church up until the 20th, they were the mainstay of Christian worship. But see, now we can't put them to hopping tunes because they're too long and complex and so either people want to put them to bad rhymes and put them in a hymn tune or we just pull out the happy parts and make a nice little betty about them. But frankly, the Psalms are much richer and more complex. What was the last time you heard somebody write a night's little happy tune that really reflected the full retzling of the Psalms? You never answer a prayer. You can't imagine singing that, something that kind of gut-wrenching honesty could you, but that's what the Psalms are like. Every time I call on you, you always hide your face. That just wouldn't happen in a Christian worship service. Now what is? That's what the Psalms are. They're an invitation to wrestle with God with the enigmas, with the frustrations of the gap, the reality gap between what is promised and what we experience to wrestle with the enigmas, the incongruencies. God doesn't squash Abram for saying, you know, basically, you didn't deliver. That's what verse two is. Oh, sovereign lord, don't be fooled by that. Oh, sovereign lord, look at what he really says. Oh, sovereign lord, you haven't delivered. And he gives a double accusation, no child, no air. And God's response is to come to him with a double promise, not to squash him, but to see him where he is, to see his need, to see his heart. And we read in verse four, the word of the lord came to him, the span will not be your air, but his son coming from your own body, not Eleazar, but his son coming from your own body. He promises him physical descendants. He shows him the stars and says, can you count him? Abram, that's why this text is so important. This is the birth of Israel. This is the call of Abram and the promise of a people of God. And I would say it is the beginning, if you will, of the legacy of the church, the people of God. God's saying, I will call those who will be mine and they will be mine here, since it begins in fullness here. Look at the stars, Abram. Can you count them? And then we read in verse six, this, Abram believed the lord. Abram believed the lord. And the Hebrew word there for believe is very similar to the word I was trying to get us to all say together earlier. And then because it's a word that expresses agreement and certainty and expectation. When we say, I'm at the end of a prayer, what we're saying is, I agree with us. And not only that, I expect God to answer this prayer. That's why that's why Jewish prayer and Christian prayers developed that way, because we expect God to answer the prayer. And that's what this word is. He believed that is Abram became certain. Abram began to experience conviction about what God had promised. Now here's my question to you. When we talk about faith, why? What happened? How did Abram get from being a person who has doubts, who wrestles with his doubts, to moving through those doubts, not around them, but through them, wrestling with them to the point where he can say, I believe you. I trust you. What? This is frankly, this is an incredibly important question. Because if you look at the story, we just look at God did not come in with any foolproof argument, city. In fact, God didn't even give Abram any more data. When he said, look up at the stars, there was nothing up in the heavens that wasn't up there before Abram looked. They had been there, you know, for billions of years, right? I mean, they had always been there. The stars were always there. God didn't put new stars and gloss on from Abram. He just said, look up there. In fact, God didn't make any new promises. He had already promised in these descendants. He had already promised a plan. So there's no new data. There's no new argument. There's no written here, expression of flesh and blood. It's not for the first time flesh and blood when God speaks, Abram finally begins to feel a little regenerative tingle in his loins and thinks, you know, I think I can do this. It's not that, you know, flesh and blood, he doesn't look over and see his wife, and you know, you know, she may be pushing 90, but she's a young 90. It's not some renewed confidence in his body. What is it? It's not argument. It's revelation. And what begins to happen when faith begins to take hold, it lays, you see, the idea, truth is important, reason is important. Don't police don't hear me saying that faith is an irrational leap in the dark. It is not. It has to be true to the way things are. But you cannot lay hold of something higher than God because there is no higher, nothing higher than God. You cannot take a reality that is somehow more trustworthy in God and by it discern your way to God because don't you see by definition God is ultimate reality. The creator and the stinger of all things, Abram lays hold of God and he begins to realize by God's revelation and by God's power that God is God. And that's what changes. Walter Bergman, the theologian who comments has a commentary on this text. I love what he said about this. He says Abram has permitted God to be not a hypothesis about the future, but the voice around which his life is organized. God becomes the presence, the reality around which his life is organized. So you see, this text shows us Abram wrestling with his doubt, dealing with his doubt and bringing it to God. But most importantly, you see in here's the outcome that's so critical. You see him hearing the word of the Lord. He is wrestling with his doubt so as to hear God, to seek God and to experience God. Many times as a pastor, people will say can I talk to you or they'll make an appointment and we'll sit down and have coffee. And I'll hear somebody who's wrestling with doubt, but what I hear is somebody who enjoys the doubt as a way to hold God off at a distance. Abram wasn't doing that. Abram was being serious about his doubt, but he was doing it in such a way that he might know what was really there, who was really there, that he might hear the word. And by the way, this may sound like a very common expression here, but that first verse where it says, now the word of the Lord came to Abram and then verse 4, the word of the Lord came to Abram. That is the only place that phrase occurs in the entire Pentateuch. That is in the first five books of Moses, that's the only place you find it. That's a common phrase later in the Bible in the time of the prophets. But this is the first time you see that. The word of the Lord came to Abram and in chapter 20, the author of Genesis says, this makes Abram a prophet. Abram is a prophet that is his prophet Abraham. He is someone who hears the word of God. The word of the Lord came to him and he should understand the word of the Lord. This defining moment of his life, it begins one evening and it lasts for an entire other day as he prepares these sacrifices into the next evening and he looks up into the stars. The whole thing is the word of the Lord, the presence, the personal speaking presence of God coming into his life in any way. And it's simply the reality of the word of God that transforms and there's nothing else you can point to here. There's not, you know, it wasn't, you know, God the lawyer come in and go and take that. What are you going to do with that? No. It's God coming in and saying, I am the Lord. Hear me. And that reality transforms and you know, there's a similar story of the New Testament with the Apostle Peter that disciples have been looking at Jesus observing Jesus, questioning Jesus, being intrigued by Jesus. And in a final moment when Jesus, you know, has a come to Jesus meeting literally, he says, what? Who do you say that I am? And Peter responds and says, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. That is, you are the Messiah. You are who you say you are. I believe he said he moves into conviction, to certainty. And when he moves into that, what happens? Jesus said, now Peter, you did not get this on your own. It says Matthew, chapter 16, read it. Peter, you didn't get this on your own. My flesh and blood did not give this to you, but my father in heaven has revealed it to you. You need to hear this. Hearing the word of the Lord is, there's a hearing that God gives. It is a hearing that is from God. It is a revelation. It is a work of the Holy Spirit that we might be able to hear and know that things are true. Now, this is pretty important because I have met people who would say, you know, I guess I just don't have whatever gene it is that makes me susceptible to faith. I mean, I would just love to believe that they are simple to answers out there, but, you know, I have always been a thinker. I'm not trying to argue for some irrational leap for, you know, a crutch for emotionally pathetic people who need to dream of something hope. What I'm saying is, there is a truth. There is a transcendent reality that gives the best accounting of who you are and why you're here. And it can take all colors, but please know this. To become convinced of that, to know that is nothing less than the work of God's Spirit and the work of God's Word. It is not something you can conjure up yourself or get in your own. But as you seek, there is the promise that says, those who truly seek me, they will surely find me. Let me take a moment for any of you who may think of yourself as a seeker. You think of yourself like Abraham and saying, you know, I can honestly say, I would love to be there with Abraham. I would love to believe the Lord and have some certainty. How do you get certain of anything? How do you hear the Word of the Lord, know it's the Word of the Lord and cast your lot in there? Well, let me just ask you, how do you know anything? Already, every person in here is a person who has some sort of plausibility structure. That is, there's already a whole series of codes, macros within you by which you discern what you buy and what you don't buy. By which you discern what you trust and what you don't trust. How do those plausibilities come in? Well, at some level, that is, frankly, mysterious. It involves, it's not non-rational, but it's not merely rational. There's a coherence you experience in those plausibilities. It's a coherence that takes in your mind, your experience is both empirical, rational, and translational. Each of you, some of us more than other, have a gut. You have a gut, and by that I mean not a beer gut or an ice cream gut, but I mean an inner sense, a conscience, by which you begin to say, yeah, or I don't think so, I'm not going there. And there's conviction, persuasion, is a mystery. Some people, more consciously, some people, less consciously, but at some level by which you have to come to trust and rely on something. Now, in our history, the enlightenment of several hundred years ago was basically the time in our history where people said, leading intellectuals said, you know, we can exclude God from the explanation. I'm talking about the explanation. Who are we? Why are we here? How can I know? We can exclude God from the explanation. And I think if you look at history, and I'm amazed, I never would have dreamed this could have happened, but more and more people are beginning to go, you know, I know that has to be nonsense. Because of the tyranny of the isms, what what the illusion calls the tyranny of the isms, think about it. If God can explain then you have rationalism or scientific materialism or Marxism or Freudianism or biological determinism, what are all those things? What are the isms? They're all one way to say, you know what, without a transcendent, I can explain it. I can see through it, but you're not seeing too anything. You're simply trying to see through everything. CS Lewis had a wonderful little in his book, his essay, rather the abolition of men. He basically said, don't you see how foolish that is? The conclusion of the book, he says, you can't go on explaining away forever, or you'll find that you've explained your explanation away. You cannot go on seeing through things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something else through it. It is good to look through the window because the garden behind it is opaque. But if you see through everything, then everything is transparent. And a holy transparent world is an invisible world so that to see through all things is the same as not to see at all. Think about the isms. You know, if you've been in a university in the last 20 years, you've heard of deconstruction. And the only way to see is to see all truth claims are what? Power grabs. Don't you see if you reduce the universe with any sort of ism, you get reduced by it? If you say that all truth claims are power grabs, why should I listen to you? You're just grabbing for power. But you see, if you try to see through everything, you get reduced in your own reduction. Listen, we've looked at the evidence and the universe is meaningless. We are a product of meaningless processes. There is no order. There is no truth. There is simply chaos at the biological root of all things. Notice that this person is attempting to construct a meaningful argument.
You're trying to assume that there's such a thing then as purposefulness, meaning and truth that you just by your own fundamental presupposition, your fundamental premise has said has no true existence. And you see, when we talk about Christian persuasion, there's a great phrase, Francis Schafer. He said, it's got to be true to the way things are. What do we mean? It's got to be able to be a truth that can deal both with the rational account of what we see, the empirical account, but also the full account, the personal account. You see, Christianity says that the universe is fundamentally personal. That there's a person behind all things. Let's just be rational for a moment. You know, it's not going to be persuasion. How do you account for personality? Show me one place in the universe and all of your experience where you've ever seen the impersonal produce the material of the personal. Okay, farmers produce fields. Fields do not produce farmers. Show me any place in your experience where the impersonal has ever produced the personal account for it. I dare you. You can't because you know as a person and in the universe you live in that the personal is fundamental to everything you see. See, it's the issue of what are you looking at? See, as Lewis, I'm going to make quote him again, put it this way, I believe in Christianity for the same reason I believe in the Sun, not just because I say it, but because by it, I see everything else. It's the framework. It's the system of coherence by which I enter into the reality of God and in that reality with humility, I begin to see and that is a gift. Agustin, put it this way. Credo, oot, and telegong. I believe in order to understand, don't you see coming to persuasion requires commitment. And some of you right now, you are outside the circle and there's some part of you that wants to know but you want to be able to hang on to everything, ruling your own life, being your own God, being your own Lord, being your own conscience, having the life circle around you, you're never going to step in because you're not willing to believe in order to understand. You're not willing to take a risk. Jesus never said to anybody, think about me. He said follow me. You've got to pursue me if you're going to be worthy of me. What do we begin the worship with? What does Jesus say? Ask. Listen, please know what we say. We are not saying, hey, there are just some people who get it and some people don't. Hopefully you've got the gene. Jesus said ask, and it will be given to you seek and you will find knock and the door will be up into you. Persuasion is there. And what you see in Abram is a man who isn't afraid to bang on the door and go, hey, what's going on here? And no, God doesn't tell him everything he wants to know but God gives himself to Abraham. And Abram believes and he begins to see. Let me conclude with this. This text tells us a wonderful thing. It says that in verse 6 that when Abram did begin to believe, he believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness. And then the weirdest thing happens, God says, hey, go cut up a bunch of animals. And we don't know why the numbers and the different ones, we just don't know. But this was actually something Abram knew from his culture. This is something people all over the ancient world did. It was a covenant. You cut a covenant literally. You had to cut up animals. And it was a basic way that these little kings would make deals with one another. You know, if you're a powerful king and you've got a small king and you wanted to act and do a certain way, you kill a couple of cows. You just lay them on either side and it was a simple way of saying, now, I'm going to walk through these pieces here. And if I don't say what I'm going to do, may this happen to me, may it be torn to pieces. Now you little king, why don't you walk through the key? It's like a mafia protection policy that comes into your neighborhood. It's an offer you can't refuse. You know, the big king comes in and says, come on, walk between the pieces. I just did it. Come on. Let's do it together with partners. That's basically what a covenant was. And you know, there was lots of blood and entrails laying around in case, you know, the little, up at the little, you know, little thief, them started thinking, maybe I can rebel you, but always remember the guts laying on either side of you when you walked between the covenant. The reality Abram is an arrangement to and just so you know this is you consider faith as you walk in faith, this is the reality. God tells Abram to do the killing, lay the guts out, but he never says to Abram to walk between the pieces. God walks between. What Abram begins to believe, what is credited to righteousness? What does that mean? Well, let me just start to say it means this. Abram realized that listen, righteousness is a rightness. Me being everything I should be, the world being what God promised it will be, becomes a reality now because I'm accepted by God, not just the beariness of our life, but the beariness of me. I see that God loves me and embraces me in this covenant. And God is saying I would rather be cursed and torn to pieces, Abram. Then to see you fall away from me in my problem and by God's putting himself there, Abram is able to believe. And that is exactly what happened on the cross. God allowed himself to be torn to pieces so that you might see in such a way that you might know that he loves you. You might come to the full wealth of conviction, but that love is for you. Lord, thank you for seeing us as we truly are. People with questions, some of them honest, some of them with a great agenda, for seeing us with people who are broken and yet swearing to tear yourself in pieces before you would not reach out to save. We thank you for the love that goes to the cross for us and for the love that in going to the cross comes to us in our situation. Some of us, Lord, maybe for the very first time beginning to say, how can I know? Some of us, maybe like Abram, very far down into the journey of faith, still knowing that it's only still learning that it's only by believing you and trusting you, that we see more of who you are and grow in our ability to trust you. Lead us all to answer that call of Jesus to follow you to believe in order to understand so that our lives might be more and more centered in the reality of who you are. We pray, yes, in Jesus name. Amen.