Genesis 15 one through 21.
After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision.
Fear not Abraham, I am your shield.
Your reward shall be very great.
But Abraham said, O Lord God, what will you give me?
For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus.
And Abraham said, behold, you have given me no offspring,
and a member of my household will be my ear.
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 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.
And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out
from earth of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.
But he said, O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?
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.
And he brought him all these.
Cut them in half and laid each half over against the other.
But he did not cut the birds in half.
And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abraham
drove them away as the sun was going down.
A deep sleep fell on Abraham.
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 the nation that they serve,
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 fourth generation.
For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.
When the sun had gone down, and it was dark, behold, a
smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
And that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying to your offspring,
I give this land from the river of Egypt to the great river,
the river Euphrates, the land of the keynotes, the Canisius,
the cabinet, the Hittites, the parasites, the Rahim,
the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Gargash, and the Jebusites.
Everybody,
good morning and welcome to Christ Community Chapel.
Really, really glad that you are here.
All right.
This is the third week of our ten week series in the Old Testament.
We're looking at the life of Abraham, and we're calling this series
Promises made, promises Kept.
The story of Abraham begins in Genesis chapter 12 and goes
all the way to Genesis chapter 25, in the economy of the Bible.
That's an enormous amount of space
dedicated to a single person.
But the story of Abraham really moves throughout the whole Bible.
A couple of weeks ago, when we kicked off the series, we talked about the promise
that God makes to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12,
where he says to Abraham, I'm going to make your name great.
And through you all the families of the earth will be blessed.
In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter one, verse one, it starts out like this.
The genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David,
son of Abraham.
The coming of Jesus Christ into this world was connected
to Abraham.
And Jesus, of course, is the center of what the Bible calls the gospel.
The good news that God was not going to let the world go to hell in a handbasket.
It wasn't going to let you go to hell in a handbasket or me, but instead
he was going to send a Savior to rescue us.
And that rescue began with a man called Abraham.
Right? Right.
So today we are going to look at a wild
and mysterious, story.
It's where has Abraham slaughtering
and sawing animals in half, creating a path between the haves.
We have a deep and dreadful darkness that falls.
We have a smoking fire pot, a flaming torch.
It is wild and a little weird, right?
But we have this story and we're going to look at it.
It's something that none of us have done, but it's really a story about what
we have all experienced because it's a story about doubt.
Faith is hard
for everyone, even for kids.
Over Memorial Day weekend, I had,
two of my youngest grandchildren at a pool.
And my youngest grandchild, Malachi, had never been in a pool before.
He desperately wanted to get in the water, so I brought him into the water,
and as soon as I had him in the water,
he desperately wanted to get out of the water.
So I had him.
There was nothing that was going to happen to him, but he wasn't so sure.
That's doubt
that what happens?
What do we do when we find ourselves
doubting God?
We find ourselves afraid of where God might take us.
That's what this story is about.
So if you have your Bibles, you can turn to Genesis chapter 15.
Genesis chapter 15.
If you could use one of our Bibles, it's on page ten, page ten.
And here are the three points
that I want to pull out of this great and mysterious story.
I want to talk about Abraham and doubt
God and doubt you and doubt
Abraham and doubt God and doubt
you and doubt first Abraham and doubt.
Now I'm going to be.
I'll probably make some mistakes throughout this message.
I'll call Abraham.
Sometimes I'll call him Abraham, sometimes I'll call him Abraham.
His name is Abraham.
Here in chapter 15.
In chapter 17, God changes his name to Abraham.
The name Abraham means father.
The name Abraham means father of many.
That's a promise made promise kept by God,
which we'll get to go first point
Abraham and doubt the story begins with Abraham being afraid,
and you have to ask why was he afraid?
This is the first verse of Genesis chapter 15.
After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision.
Fear not, Abraham, I am your shield.
Your reward shall be very great.
It says, after these things.
Now the reason that Abraham was afraid.
We covered chapter 13 last week.
This is chapter 15.
We skipped over chapter 14.
In chapter 14, Abraham's nephew lot has been kidnaped
by some marauding tribal chieftains.
Abraham goes and rescues lot, and he does it with a military
kind of operation.
And now he is concerned about possible retaliation.
That's why he's scared.
Sometimes dread of the future,
of what the future holds can make us doubt.
So Abraham is afraid.
God shows up in a vision and speaks to him
very, very unusual.
This is the way God speaks to prophets in the Old Testament.
It's unmistakably God.
Abraham knows that, and God says, fear not.
Abraham calls him by name.
And then he says, I am your shield.
Your reward shall be very great to Maisie.
Incredible. What's interesting is
it doesn't do the trick for Abraham.
Like Abraham doesn't respond by going, oh yeah, thanks.
Oh, that that solves everything.
It's great.
I feel much better now.
You're my shield. Nothing's going to happen.
I'm not afraid anymore.
That's not what he says.
What Abraham says to God.
This is amazing to me.
He blows right past that and he says, you mentioned reward.
I want to talk to you about that. Right.
That's what he says.
If you've ever struggled with doubt, this story should make you feel better.
What happens with Abraham is he.
He blows past God saying, I am your shield.
And he says, listen, God, you you've made a statement.
You're going to make my name great.
My reward will be great.
But what good is reward if I don't have a son?
That's verse three.
And Abraham said, behold, you
have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my.
And that's the first type of doubt Abraham brings to God.
He says, God, I'm not so sure you're going to do what you say you're going to do.
I'm not seeing it
right.
And God deals with that doubt in verses four through seven.
And you say wonderful way, which I'll get to my second point.
But then Abraham, after God deals with that doubt,
Abraham introduces a different type of doubt.
The first doubt is about God, right?
I'm not sure God will do what he says he's going to do.
That's in verse two
where it says, And Abraham said, O Lord God, what will you give me?
For I continued, childless, in the air of my house is Eliezer of Damascus.
But the second kind of doubt is different.
The second doubt is in verse eight.
And Abraham said, O Lord God, how am I to know that I will possess it?
The first doubt is about God.
The second doubt is about Abraham.
He said, how do I how do I know I won't mess it up
so badly that the promise won't come true because of me, right?
Two types of doubt that we can have in our relationship with God.
God deals with both types of doubt and he deals with them differently.
And that brings me with my second point God and down.
God is incredibly patient with Abraham.
Now the story starts out with Abraham being afraid of a possible
attack retaliation attack.
God shows up and speaks to him in an audible voice
and says, I am your shield.
How incredible would that be?
What God is saying to Abraham, you don't have to be afraid.
Anyone who comes after you will have to go through me,
and that's not going to happen.
And Abraham doesn't even acknowledge that.
He doesn't even acknowledge the amazing thing
that God has done to quell his fear.
Be like, if you were having trouble paying your bills,
and then you get a call from an enormously wealthy
person who has more money than you can even imagine.
And the wealthy person says, listen,
I understand you're struggling with paying your bills.
I want you to know you don't have to worry about that anymore.
I'll pay all your bills from now on.
Send me every bill. I'll take care of it.
And you,
without even saying thank you, you say, oh, now that I have
you on your on the phone, I have another issue you can help me with.
That's what Abraham does to God.
And when he says to God, he brings up these two doubts.
The first doubt is about God.
When he says, God, how do I know?
How do I know you're going to?
You know, sometimes people think that guy gets frustrated when we doubt
he does it because he deals with Abraham
in such a gentle and tender way.
Abraham called God into question.
How do I know you're going to do what you say you're going to do?
And what God does is this this is verse five.
It says, 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 them, so shall your offspring be.
You can almost see God putting his arm around
Abraham, taking him outside, and say, look up, Abraham,
look up at the stars.
Very few things can fill my my heart with all
like a star filled night on a cloudless night.
There have been times where my wife and I have been
in a place where it's completely dark, you know, ambient light.
We've taken a blanket and laid it on the ground
and just laid down and looked up at layers upon layers of stars.
That's what God does to Abraham.
He takes him outside.
He says, look up at the stars.
Let your heart be filled with all of what I can do.
Then the second thing he does is in verse
seven he says, I am the Lord who brought you out
from ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land, to possess.
The second thing he does with Abraham, he says,
remember what I've already done for you, right?
Remember, I'm the one who brought you step by step from here of the Chaldeans
to here.
You are here because I brought you here.
When Abraham doubts God
whether God's going to do what he says he's going to do,
God tells him to do two things
look up
and let your heart be filled with awe,
and look back on my faithfulness in the past and what I've already done
for you.
It's the way God deals with the first kind of doubt.
And then Abraham, after God does that and Abraham says, but what about me?
What if I mess up this whole thing, and I mess up so badly
that you can't fulfill your promise?
And this is where it really gets interesting,
because something mysterious happens there.
God tells Abraham,
go get some animals.
Go get a heifer, a goat, a
ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon.
Right?
And it sounds so strange to us for God to say that, but but Abraham knew
exactly what God was doing when God told him to go get those animals.
And the reason I say that is that he doesn't ask any questions.
He doesn't go,
tell me.
Tell me that list again.
Why do we get those animals?
He doesn't bring them on a rope.
Like to go and say, now what am I supposed to do? No.
He immediately goes, gets, gets the animals, slaughters them,
saws them in half, right?
Because he knows what God is doing, what God is doing.
Is he saying to Abraham, if you doubt you, this is what I want you to do.
I want you to prepare
to make a covenant with me in the ancient world.
That's the way a covenant was made, you know, now we call them contracts.
Like if if you make a promise with someone else, like,
we're about to go through a building program here at KCC,
every Minute Matters is going to be awesome.
We're going to have a lot of contracts, contracts that we will sign
where somebody will say, I promise to do this work.
And we say, we promise to pay you this amount.
That's what you do to make sure somebody fulfills their promise.
In the ancient world, they didn't have contracts, they had covenants,
and it was literally meant to cut a covenant.
What they would do is take animals.
They would slaughter them, cut them in half and make a path between them.
And then if you were if you were making a covenant
with somebody, you would say, I promise to do this.
And then you would walk through the path, and by walking through the path,
you would say to everybody around, if I do not fulfill my promise,
may this be done to me, may be slaughtered
like these animals may be cut off.
Right?
So when when God says to Abraham, go get these animals,
Abraham knows he's about to cut a covenant with God.
So he prepares everything.
And then something very mysterious happens.
First, a deep and dreadful darkness falls.
It's a supernatural darkness.
Then a flaming torch,
a smoking fire pot appear
and those two things are really hard to translate from the Hebrew to English.
It's better to go to the book of Exodus when when God leads the people
out of Egypt, he leads them with what is called the Shekinah glory.
It's is his visible presence, and they describe it as a pillar of fire
by night, a pillar of cloud by day.
That's what appeared for Abraham.
And that that visible presence of God
pulsing with energy and power and danger, appears
and then goes through the piece, the path, the, the, the pieces of animals.
And there are two surprises.
The first surprises, that is that God goes through.
And I say that because if you made if you're in the ancient world,
you made a covenant with a neighbor, you would both walk through, right?
You would walk through, they would walk through. They you'd both promise.
But if you were in the ancient world, you made a covenant with a king.
Only you would walk through.
The king wouldn't walk through the king and say, I don't need you.
You go through.
I'm not going through.
But instead God goes through.
And what God is saying to Abraham, if I don't fulfill my promise to you,
may this be done to me.
May I be slaughtered, may I be cut off.
The second surprise is Abraham doesn't walk through
a God doesn't make Abraham make that same promise.
What God is doing is saying, my promise is solely dependent on me.
If I fail, may this be done to me.
Abraham, if you fail, may this be done to me.
I will walk through.
For both of us is a covenant of grace.
That brings to my third point,
which is doubt in you.
Faith and doubt are closely connected,
and God knows that faith and doubt are like cousins.
You can't have one without the other.
I remember reading a quote years ago and that it was something like this.
In order to believe greatly, in order to have great faith,
one must doubt greatly.
And I looked for it all week and I couldn't find where
I read it or who wrote it.
But it's helped me through the years when I found myself
in doubt of anything that has to do with God.
Doubt will happen
because faith and doubt ebb and flow in all of our lives.
It will ebb and flow in your life.
What do we do when when doubt seems like it's getting the upper hand?
If you're doubting today, this is what you do.
If you're doubting God, do what God said to Abraham.
Look up and look back. First.
Look up.
Find a way to fill your heart with.
Or it may be laying out on a cloudless night,
looking up at the stars and just saying to
God, this is amazing right there.
There are things that God has given to fill your heart with all.
The great poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning said, Earth is crammed with heaven
and every common bush of fire with the glory of God.
For him who has eyes to see.
There are things all around this part of what a worship service is intended to do.
That's why we create the worship services that we do.
With all that's going on.
It's is to create a sense of awe in you,
because all is the way that God says
you deal with the doubt that you might have about him,
that your heart be filled with on what God can do, but then also look back.
Look back on God's faithfulness to you.
If you're here today, God has already done a thousand things,
10,000 things to get you right here, right now.
Pastor Zach calls it building the Resumé of God,
and it helps tremendously for me to take the time to look back on
what God has done.
That's why in the Old Testament,
the prophets are constantly telling the people of God, look back.
Remember what God has done.
Remember, don't forget,
that's the first thing.
But the big thing is to look to Jesus, right?
The greatest thing that God did for Abraham
is that he
he cut this covenant with him, a covenant solely based on himself,
where he was saying to Abraham, I will walk through for me
if I fail to fulfill my promise, may this be done to me.
But if you fail, may this be done to me.
I will take responsibility for my failure or for your failure.
It was a covenant of grace.
In Mark chapter 15,
when Jesus is being crucified, this is what it says.
And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness
over the whole land until the ninth hour.
That's a deep and dreadful darkness.
That's a supernatural darkness that fell.
Isaiah 53.
The prophet, talking about the suffering servant,
says he will be cut off from the land of the living.
That's covenantal language.
He will be cut off when God, when Jesus cries out
on the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
What's he doing?
He's paying the price
for your failure.
For my failure
because it's a covenant of grace.
That's why Paul will write in Galatians chapter three, Christ redeemed us
from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree,
so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham
might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive
the promised spirit through faith.
Two types of doubt
you can have in your relationship with God
when you're doubting God, and whether he will
fulfill his promises to you.
Look up.
Look back.
Find a way to fill your heart with awe.
Look back on his faithfulness to you in the past
so you know you can trust him in the future.
But when you're worried about
messing up your life to such a degree that God will not be able
to fulfill his promise to you, then you look to Jesus.
Because what God did for Abraham,
he did for us through Jesus.
For God said, my promise is solely dependent on me.
It's a covenant of grace
through Jesus.
It's a promise made and a promise kept.
Do you pray with me?
Father in heaven, we come to you. And,
I pray for all of this.
I pray that sometime this week, for every one of us,
you would fill our hearts with,
help us to remember all that you have done
in your faithfulness in our past, so that we can trust you in the future.
When doubt enters in and if doubt is creeping into anyone's
heart right now, I pray that you'd help them
to look up and look back.
But more than anything,
we thank you for Jesus,
the one who who cut the covenant
for us so that regardless of whether we fail or not,
your promises stay true
because the promise is solely dependent on Jesus.
Thank you for giving us such a wonderful Savior and we pray this in his name.
Amen.