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Genesis 15 Romans 4:1-5
15:1 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.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue1 childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son2 shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
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.” 8 But he said, “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9 He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 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. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. 13 Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. 14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give3 this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”
[1] 15:2
[2] 15:4
[3] 15:18
(ESV)
4:1 What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” 4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but believes in1 him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,
[1] 4:5
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
If you would, open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 15. We have been working through the book of Genesis, and few weeks ago started the life of Abraham. Tonight, we'll be looking at Genesis 15 and Romans chapter 4. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram, I am your shield.
Joel Brooks: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 Elazer of Damascus. And Abram said, behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the lord came to him.
Joel Brooks:This man will not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. He brought him outside and said, look toward the heavens and number the stars if you are 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.
Joel Brooks:Now let's read from Paul's words found in Romans chapter 4, beginning in verse 1. What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.
Joel Brooks:Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Pray with me. Our father, we ask that you would honor the very reading of your word. Lord, that even as we heard those words, we would begin feeling our heart softening, our mind becoming receptive, ready for truth to be implanted deep within us.
Joel Brooks:God, I ask that you would do that here for your glory. Lord, I pray we would walk away from here tonight with such a greater understanding of you and your gospel by which we are saved. So god, for that to happen, I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen. Every Christian that I know of sees their own conversion as a response to God's call. God called them out of darkness and into light. He called them out of a life of sin in order to walk in righteousness. He called them to believe in him.
Joel Brooks:Called them to be his child. We understand after our conversion that it was God who is the one who has been pursuing us, calling us to himself. And even those people who I know who came to know Christ after years of what they would see initially as searching for him, maybe reading through spiritual books, walking in churches, listening to sermons, going to Christians with many questions. Even those people, when they come to know the Lord, upon reflecting on their conversion, say, you know, it was God who was after me. It was God who was calling me, and they see how God had pursued them.
Joel Brooks:God had changed them. God had brought people in their life. God was calling them. And the only reason that we love God is because he first loved us. And the only reason we ever call out or cry out to him is because he has first called us, and we see this, we have seen this in the life of Abraham so far.
Joel Brooks:Abram didn't know God. He came from a family of idolaters. He lived in a very pagan place, but God called him out of that. And Abram responded. Abram was not seeking for god and and all of a sudden got lucky and and found god.
Joel Brooks:That's not what happened. God was pursuing Abram. God revealed himself to Abram. He called Abram to himself, and we will see after the initial call, 11 more times, god reminds Abram of his call. And sometimes he adds to it.
Joel Brooks:Sometimes he just accents one certain part of the call, but the call will be very important in the life of Abram. Abram needed to be reminded of his call, and we're not any different as Christians. We need to be reminded of our calling. We need to remind ourselves of this in order to get a little clarity when we look at life ahead. We need to remind ourselves of the calling in order to get wisdom with all the choices in front of us.
Joel Brooks:And we remind ourselves of the call of god because many other things are calling out to us. Most of you, you know, you you've got a job and a and a career going, and your career is going to call out to you saying, trust me. Rely on me. I'm the one who can provide what you need. Your your spouse is gonna be calling out to you saying, hey, you know what?
Joel Brooks:You can find satisfaction in me. Or if you're not married, it's the idea of a future spouse. And it calls out to you. But these are all empty words. They're loud words.
Joel Brooks:They're the words you're bombarded with, the words you hear, but they're empty. There's times, dangerous times where we can actually convince ourselves that the things we want is really the call of god. It's scary in America how similar, how very similar the call of God looks to the American dream. I don't know if you've ever noticed that, but but the 2 are kind of blurred together in many ways. We believe that God has called us to a good home.
Joel Brooks:God has called us to a safe place, maybe in a gated community. Called us to have several cars, maybe several TVs. He has called us to always have the latest expensive gadget. He has called us to a great career, called us to be polite, called us, you know, to tithe, called us to go to church. A lot of those things are just the American dream.
Joel Brooks:You know, churches often believe that God has called them to, you know, large air conditioned auditoriums with with great lights and and wonderful music, and and that's what God has called them to. Many of these places, not all, many of these places are much more driven by marketing and what works and what brings people into the seats than the actual call of the Lord. But is this really what god is calling us to? Is God really calling you to pursue the American dream, calling you to live a life of luxury? You know, when you die and you stand before him and and you show him all those things and where you pursued your life, is he gonna say, well done my good and faithful servant.
Joel Brooks:Is that what the call of God looks like in your life? I hope not. But I need to be very careful here. Very careful because there is a temptation for me to ride that horse, to just go with it, and tell you that God will only be pleased with you if you radically change your lifestyle. That you have got to start giving things away, or that you have to have a church that meets in a rundown gym without air conditioning.
Joel Brooks:I'm serious. It's I'm serious. It's a great temptation for me to do so because then you would all go out there and do those things. You'd go out there and do something extreme for God, and you would pat yourself on the back. You would say, man, I'm doing great in my spiritual walk.
Joel Brooks:Look what I've done. You would begin to feel superior to all the other Christians who aren't selling their things, who aren't serving in the homeless shelters, who aren't having their quiet times, who aren't as generous as you. Man, I'm doing so much better than them. We would begin thumping our chest. We'd begin boasting.
Joel Brooks:I want you to know, I'm wired to preach that way. I I I am wired to preach that radical extreme, and that you need to be doing those things. And I will confess that there are have been times in the past where I have leaned in that direction, especially when I was doing college ministry and I didn't do it intentionally. But now upon further reflection of those 10 years of college ministry, there were times where I really pushed what people must do, the radical steps that they must take. And the result of that was we exploded in growth.
Joel Brooks:People want to hear that. But preaching like that inspires you, but it does not empower you to live the way that Christ wants you to live. You'll walk away feeling inspired. I've gotta do this. I gotta do this.
Joel Brooks:I gotta be all this, but there's not the undergirding of the gospel. It's gonna present produce instant results, which will fade given time. You know, when Paul wrote his letter to Timothy, a pastor of a young church, and he said, I don't want you to scratch itchy ears or tickle itchy ears. We usually always assume that, okay, this is what Paul's talking about. He's saying that you're not to preach about health, wealth, and prosperity, and that, you know, God's gonna give you the car of your dreams.
Joel Brooks:And that's what itchy ears want to hear. But that is not at all the context when Paul writes that to Timothy. When he's surrounded by people who want law, not grace. Want people to have to do things. No, you have to be circumcised.
Joel Brooks:You have to tithe. You have to do all these things to be part of this group. And Paul's saying, no. That's what people wanna hear. That's what today people wanna hear.
Joel Brooks:People love law. They love it when you tell them all the extreme things you have to do. It says, you don't do that, you preach grace. You preach the gospel. Let me tell you that's a lot harder I have found to preach the gospel Because you don't often see that immediate results that you want, but you're laying the foundation for what I hope will bear a lifetime of fruit.
Joel Brooks:The liberalism in it, I'm not going to bash a denomination here. I, I worked in the Methodist church for a year doing college ministry. There are wonderful Methodist churches out there. But as a whole, you might define the Methodist church now as theologically liberal. As a whole, not every church, The liberalism has has swept through much of the Methodist church.
Joel Brooks:This liberalism crept in as a direct result of what we would call hard preaching in the past. I mean, if you go back about 50 years or or even more, you had preachers who were not scared to do what we would call step on some toes. Tell some people, you've got to be out there. You've got to be serving every day. You've got to be giving.
Joel Brooks:You've got to they went all out. You have to spend your entire life as a life of service and just preach and preach and preach that. And for a while they were okay because they had that and the gospel, but then that became their gospel. And theological liberalism just kinda came in. The reality is that if you were to give away everything you had, as Paul would say, even if you were to give your life, your body to be burned, do everything God has asked of you to do, you would profit him nothing.
Joel Brooks:Nothing. I mean, why would God reward you? Why why would he he praise you? Because all your good works profit him nothing. Do you think by by giving to him everything, you made god richer?
Joel Brooks:Do you do you think by by singing louder, you made god feel better about himself? God profits nothing. We can't expect reward. We can't expect being seen as righteous before God because of our efforts in what we do. Because there are never never enough good works to offset the evil in our hearts.
Joel Brooks:There is absolutely no way you can do anything to appear righteous before god. Now the reason I'm hammering this in, I'm going on about this, is that I want you to see first and foremost that the call of God on your life, the call on the life of Abram is first a call to believe, not a call to do or to perform. Not saying he will not call you to do things, perform things. He will. But it is not first.
Joel Brooks:The call of god is a call to believe and to trust him. We often sing the hymn. It's actually my favorite hymn, I'll boast no more. Every week during worship planning, we're we're tossing out songs we should do and I'm like, I'll boast no more. They get, you know, they just kinda tune me out because I say it every single week.
Joel Brooks:But one of the lines in there I love so much is, the best obedience of my hands dares not appear before your throne, but faith can answer thy demands by pleading what my lord has done. The best obedience, my best tithes, my best prayers, my my best outreaches, my best service, my best workings at the hospitality house. All those best works dare not appear before his throne. But faith can answer thy demands by pleading what Jesus has done. That's what Genesis 15 is about.
Joel Brooks:That's what Paul's explanation of it and Romans 4 is all about. We just read in Genesis 15, how God once again reminds Abram, basically, I'm gonna bless your socks off. Okay? It's gonna happen. I'm gonna make your offspring more numerous than the stars.
Joel Brooks:You won't be able to count them. And then verse 6 is the key verse. Once again, you should have the same circled, highlighted, starred dog, you know, ear your page. Verse 6, and he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. Once again, let's read Romans 4 First 5 verses in which Paul explains what is happening here.
Joel Brooks:We'll start at verse 2. For Abram, Abraham was justified by works. He had something to boast about, but not before God. For what does scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.
Joel Brooks:Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. And so the one who does not work, but believes in Him, who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Abram believed the Lord. Abram trusted the Lord, and the result of that was God counted that as righteousness. This is what we will call, if you want to use a theological word, we will call that justification.
Joel Brooks:Justification. There was at one point, Abram stood condemned before the Lord. The wrath of the Lord was upon him, and then he was justified. He was made righteous, declared righteous, and that's how he was later seen, and that happened in a moment. It happened because he believed.
Joel Brooks:And Abraham does nothing here. The text does not say because Abraham left everything and followed the lord, the Lord considered him righteous. Abram only has to believe to be considered righteous. It's interesting when you read Jewish commentaries, Jewish scholars just really wrestle with this verse, and actually a number of Jewish traditions started up very early on, 100 of years ago that that explained it this way. Actually, Abraham passed 10 tests first, and then he was declared righteous before the Lord.
Joel Brooks:The last of the tests was him being willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac. And actually, if you you have the apocryphal before you, but before ripping it out and just having your Protestant Bible. If you go to 2nd Maccabees and there, it actually ties these two events together. It ties together Genesis 15, and the the Lord counted this as righteousness with Abraham sacrificing Isaac, because there had to be some great work that he did. Had to be some big test he passed in order to prove himself to be considered righteous.
Joel Brooks:Didn't there? But chapter 4 verse 45 of Romans knock this view completely down. Does not have a leg to stand on. Verse 4, once again. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.
Joel Brooks:That's religion. That's what we looked at last week, in which we approach God in a tit for tat. I'll scratch your back, God. You scratch mine. I'll work for you.
Joel Brooks:You give me my wages. And that's how all religion works, and that's what God is trying to completely abolish before Abram. He says, you do not relate to me that way. And verse 5 is absolutely stunning. Once again, circle, highlight, star.
Joel Brooks:And to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Did you hear that? To the one who does not work, To the one who does not give his money away. To the one who is not faithful to his wife. To the one who never feeds the homeless, to the one who rarely spends time in prayer, to the one who is hardly ever in the word of God, to that one, if he believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
Joel Brooks:We cannot depend on any of those good works. We can't ever hold on to those things and say, God, save me because of this. We throw it aside and it's gonna say, no, no, no. Save me because I trust in Jesus. Only faith is counted.
Joel Brooks:Perhaps this would be a good time for me to define faith, define belief. I came up with my own definition, but Alan Ross, who's a Hebrew scholar in his commentary on Genesis, his is better than mine. So I'm gonna read his, and he's explaining the verse, Abraham believed the Lord. And he says, he defines the Hebrew idea of belief as this, declaring something dependable and acting on it. Declaring something dependable and acting on it.
Joel Brooks:And I think that's a pretty good definition. So when god told Abram, go outside, see if you can count the stars. You can't. That's how many descendants you're gonna have. Abram declared God as dependable.
Joel Brooks:I believe you, and I'm gonna act. I'm gonna live my life accordingly. That's belief. I'm gonna build my entire life on this rock, what I see as dependable. That's belief, but I think we need to be equally clear as to what Abraham believed in.
Joel Brooks:His faith was in god. His faith was in god alone. It was not in his own abilities. And hear me now. It was not in his own faith.
Joel Brooks:He didn't have faith in his own faith. Don't make the mistake of placing your faith in your own faith. Of believing that you are righteous because you're living a life of faith. Because if Abram's faith was in his own faith, Abram would be up. He'd be down.
Joel Brooks:He'd be up. He'd be down. He'd be just like a ship tossed by the waves. If Abram's faith was in his own faith, what would've happened after he lied to pharaoh? And he didn't trust god.
Joel Brooks:What would happen when he lied to King Abimelech where he didn't trust god? What would happen to what we look at next week where he doesn't trust god for a son through Sarai but he goes to Hagar? What would have happened then if his righteousness, his right standing with God depended on how good his faith was? You would have been left absolutely adrift. So do not put your faith and your righteousness and the fact that you had your quiet time this morning and that you and the Lord are feeling pretty tight right now.
Joel Brooks:Yeah. I'm in right standing with the Lord because I have my quiet time. You know, because I I just finished up my 3 hour prayer time to walk an old lady across the street on my way to the hospitality house. We're feeling pretty tight, God and me. If you do those things, great.
Joel Brooks:But realize you were declared righteous because of your faith in God. And if you did not have your quiet time and you gave yourself into sexual sin, or to some impure thoughts, know that you were still declared righteous by your faith in God. Our faith is in God who justifies the un godly. Our faith is not in us. And the reason that God can justify the ungodly is because he sent his son to die for the ungodly.
Joel Brooks:While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So when you read Genesis 15:6, I want you to think, the gospel, this is the gospel. We're saved by faith apart from works. And then to hammer this point home, go back to Genesis 16 15. God does something else in Abraham's life.
Joel Brooks:He makes a covenant with him, man. And when he makes this covenant, he is hammering home the gospel. Let me just read all this from 7 to the end of the chapter. I'd rather you hear these words than mine. And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you up out of from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.
Joel Brooks:But he said, oh Lord, how shall I know that I shall possess it? And he said to him, bring me a heifer, 3 years old. A female goat, 3 years old, a ram, 3 years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. 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.
Joel Brooks:By the way, don't ask me why, I'm not sure. 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 Abraham, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there and they will be afflicted for 400 years. But I will bring judgment on that nation that they serve.
Joel Brooks:And afterward, they shall come out with great possessions. 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 the 4th 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 pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
Joel Brooks:On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying to your offspring, I give this land From the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, to the land of the Kenites, the Kenazites, the the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, and the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. Now to understand this, you have to realize 4000 years ago, if you wanted to make a covenant, a very sacred, serious covenant, you would take some animals like described there, and you would cut them in half, pull them apart, and you make an aisle between them. You it's called cutting a covenant. You would cut a covenant. Jeremiah 34 mentions one of these covenants.
Joel Brooks:And then what would happen is both parties would walk through the aisle. They walk down the aisle through these hacked pieces. And when they did that, they said, what they're proclaiming is, may this be done to me if I don't keep up my end of the bargain. If I don't keep this covenant, may I be cut in half? May I be slain in half?
Joel Brooks:And I want you to notice what happens in this. Abraham, he he he gets the pieces, animals, he cuts them in half, and then he comes and he waits for the Lord. He waits and he waits. He waits all day. He's getting tired.
Joel Brooks:Vultures are coming. He's driving them away, but he still waits and still God does not appear. Finally, as the sun is going down, Abraham falls out exhausted, and God caused him to go into a deep sleep. That that word deep sleep there is the same word that's used of Adam when god causes a deep sleep to fall on Adam so he could take out a rib and form the woman? This means that Abraham is unconscious.
Joel Brooks:He's not just tired and sleeping, he's unconscious at this moment. He cannot do anything. And then what we see happen here is stunning. Sets Christianity apart from every other religion, in which every other religion tries to relate to God by making those deals. God, I'm I'm gonna do this.
Joel Brooks:I'm gonna somehow work my way into a good relationship with you. I'm gonna work my way up to heaven. I'm gonna work my way to be where you are, but not here. Here Abraham collapses. He's unconscious.
Joel Brooks:He can do nothing. Absolutely nothing can he do. So when he's passed out from his own efforts, God shows up. And he appears as this smoking pot in this fire. And then, God goes through those cut halves.
Joel Brooks:God walks down the aisle. Not Abram. God says, if I don't keep my word, if I don't keep my covenant, if I don't bless you, may I be hacked in half? No, Abraham, I will bless you. You do nothing.
Joel Brooks:There's not a charitable act great enough to do in order to win God's favor. This is good news. And when you're incapacitated, when you were, as Paul would later say, when you were dead in your sins, God came to you and he made you alive. By walking through the animals, God is saying, if I have to be sacrificed, I will be sacrificed in order to bless you and in order to have a relationship with you. And indeed, we we know 2000 years after this, that is exactly what happened.
Joel Brooks:That in order for us to be blessed, in order for us to have that relationship, Jesus was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And was sacrificed that we might be blessed instead of cursed. So while we were dead in our sins, Christ died for us. We did not pay the penalty for breaking the covenant. Christ did.
Joel Brooks:God did it all. The result is we cannot boast in any way. We can never go around thumping our chest, saying how much better than we are than other Christians, how much better we are than other churches, how much we are doing. We can't do that. Christ has done it all.
Joel Brooks:And the reason I'm going to such great lengths to unpack this is that I wanna make sure that this is your foundation. Because everything else is sinking sand, let this be your foundation that you build your entire life upon. And when you come to believe this, when you come to treasure this, then you know what? You will start finding that your wallet begins opening and you begin giving. You will find that you begin giving your time and your money.
Joel Brooks:You will find that you begin to flee from sexual immorality. You will find that you begin progressing in sanctification. You will find those things, but you're undergirding the rock on which you stand is justification by faith. Nothing else. And it's not faith in your own faith, it is faith in Jesus Christ.
Joel Brooks:So your salvation rests in him alone. Pray with me. Our God, we never, never outgrow the gospel. We don't start with the gospel and then move on to bigger and better things. God, our whole life is about the gospel.
Joel Brooks:Every day we need to remind ourselves of the gospel, why we are saved, why we stand in the right relationship with you. So God, right now through your spirit, work in us the deep and everlasting work of your son. We boast in front of no one. The only thing we plead is the sacrifice of Jesus. It's the only thing we trust.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.