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Genesis 15
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)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 15. Genesis 15. There's a lady at the gym that I work out. She's a professor, at UAB, atheist. And, she came to me a few months ago, and she said, why is it you're trying to convert everybody else here, but you won't convert me?
Joel Brooks:And I said, because you're not ready. And I walked away, which I knew would anger her. And so she she's been pestering me. Like, what's wrong with me? Am I just unsavable?
Joel Brooks:Do you think I'm a waste of time? And I just keeps kept saying you're not ready. And finally, this this past week, she said, no. You're gonna talk to me. I said, okay.
Joel Brooks:She goes, tell me what you preached on this past Sunday. And so I talked to her about Abram and Lot, and she asked some questions about Lot. And I I told her about how Lot made his decisions, and she says, well, you have given me a lot to think about. And then she walked away, and has continued to mock me. However, what I'm excited about is that she's asking more and more questions as we begin to open up Genesis, and I just kinda cracked it open to her and was able to show her how really Genesis is about faith in Christ.
Joel Brooks:And that is something that has been fun over these last few weeks is really to see a number of eyes of y'all's first be open for the first time as you've gone through Genesis and you've said, wait, this is about Jesus? Absolutely, this is about Jesus. And all of scripture points us to who Christ is. And we're just in the beginning steps of Genesis. We will be going through all the way until, at least Easter.
Joel Brooks:So we'll be going for a while in Genesis, but I love the way that it unpacks who Christ is. So we're gonna look at one of the more famous passages in Scripture today, Genesis chapter 15, where God makes His covenant with Abram. 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 Eliezer 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 shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, look towards heaven and the number of the stars 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:And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But he said, oh, Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? 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. He did not cut the birds in half.
Joel Brooks:And when the 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 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 400 years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward, they shall come out with great possessions.
Joel Brooks: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 and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying to your offspring, I give this land.
Joel Brooks:From the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates. The land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. This is the word of the Lord. Pray with me. Father, I ask that through your spirit, you would open up your words so that we might see your son more clearly.
Joel Brooks:We might understand the great love that you have for us, which you have covenanted with us to bless us. All through Jesus. 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. Any any of you grow up in church singing the song, father Abraham? Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had father Abraham. Or, you know, or, songs about Noah.
Joel Brooks:The Lord told Noah to build him an arky arky. Why why we do songs like this, that are so obnoxious and, I'm sorry, will now forever be stuck in your head, at least for today. And you know, you're told to just move your arms around, move your legs around. Somehow that brought glory to God and taught you that that Abraham was your father. But it is interesting that we would call Abraham our father.
Joel Brooks:And we're not alone in this. You realize half of the world's population calls Abraham father. Those who are Christians, Jews, or Muslims, all consider Abraham to be their spiritual father. And the reason they do so is because, well, Abraham was a great man and what he was known for was his faith. He was a man who exercised remarkable faith, yet he wasn't perfect.
Joel Brooks:Abraham had his doubts. And I find that somewhat comforting. That if a man who was known, he was he was his greatness was tied up to his faith and he had doubts. I I I feel a little better about my doubts and I think it's safe to say that probably every person in this room has some doubts as well. And what we see here is how should we handle these doubts?
Joel Brooks:Because our doubts can actually express a great faith. Think about it this way, if, those who don't have any faith, well they don't doubt. It's only those who doubt who have faith. And what we see here is what did Abraham do when he had those doubts? We see that he took those doubts, he took those questions to the Lord, which shows that he ultimately trusted in God.
Joel Brooks:And can he really blame Abram for having questions? Think of it this way. He had no scripture to guide him. He had no saints who had ever walked before him. A record of those saints.
Joel Brooks:His own dad was an idol worshiper. He was traveling to a place that you could not locate on a map. All to become the father of nations, yet he couldn't even become a father. He was childless. When I was a youth, the most common way to present the gospel was to go up to somebody and says, say God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
Joel Brooks:That's what I was taught to say. God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. That's how people in my generation typically share the gospel. We still do that, some today, but we add, you know, hashtag bless, hashtag Jeremiah 29. God loves you, has a wonderful plan for your life.
Joel Brooks:But look at what God's plan was for Abram's life. And it included famine, wandering, barrenness, warfare, loss. I mean, after a while, Abraham's got to be thinking like, so God, how exactly is this a wonderful plan for my life? I've got some questions. But the reason that God was putting through Abram through all of these situations is because this is actually how you build faith.
Joel Brooks:Building faith is a lot like how you would build muscle. If you just feed faith, it's gonna get lazy, it's going to get soft. And if God were to just tell Abram what he was gonna do in Abram's life and how he was going to bless Abram, and then just give Abram everything he needed, Abram would have never grown in faith. You know, to build muscle, you have to tear your muscle down to the point of failure. And then when your muscle is torn down to that point of failure, it grows back stronger.
Joel Brooks:Building faith is the same way. Building faith, God is going to bring things into your life that's gonna stretch you, that's gonna tear you down, that's gonna pull you to the point of failure, all in order to make you stronger, to make your faith grow. After years of wandering, what we are beginning to see here is Abram is getting fatigue. He's beginning to break down. And whatever faith that Sarai had, that faith is hanging on by a thread, if not gone, and we will see that next week.
Joel Brooks:And so we would say that the honeymoon phase of Abraham's relationship with the Lord is over at this point. I've I've only talked to a few people, ever about this, but but starting this church, we we did that 11 years ago. Starting this church nearly took me to the breaking point. Lauren and I, we started this because we thought we had a clear calling from the Lord to go and to do this. To leave behind a place that we really knew and we loved.
Joel Brooks:To go to a place where we didn't know what was going to happen. And and we did, and we joyfully did so. But we didn't have anybody who went before us. We didn't have anybody who we can ask like, how do you do this? We felt very alone as we were doing this, and we were just trying to figure things out and we felt like we were doing a pretty poor job of it.
Joel Brooks:As time went on, I began to doubt whether this was God's call in my life or not. As we were ending year 3, beginning year 4, I remember just thinking, gosh. Are things supposed to be this hard? I mean, it's just I I thought if, you know, you answer God's call in your life that things would be going a little bit better. We'd see a little more progress.
Joel Brooks:But at that point, we had about 70 people. The problem was the year before, we had 80. And so we were the trajectory was not looking very good for us. And, so that beginning of year 4 was really one of the darker moments of my life. I in no way, Lauren and I never questioned God's love for us.
Joel Brooks:Never. As a Christian, we can never. In light of the cross, how can you ever question God's love and his provision for you? Because He has abundantly provided that through us in Jesus. What we were questioning was our calling.
Joel Brooks:Did we actually hear the Lord correctly? I began daydreaming about trying to find ways to go back to my old job or something like it. If there was just some way I could go back. But I tried to put on a strong face because my family was depending on me. My friends were depending on me.
Joel Brooks:We had staff depending on me. And I was like, I'll just fake it. Fake it until you make it. Alright? You know, just just try to be try to be strong, but inside, I was beginning to crumble.
Joel Brooks:That is nothing compared to what Abram was going through. Nothing. Abram had to be feeling some intense turmoil and doubt at this point in his life as to whether or not he actually heard God's calling correct. Once again, he's not questioning God's love. But did God really tell him to leave the land of her?
Joel Brooks:Did God really tell him to go out here and he was gonna be blessed by God and the whole world was gonna be blessed through him? Because what he had experienced is just year after year after year going by and no progress whatsoever. He was just as childless now as he was many years ago. And God was silent during this period. And so, he had to be questioning it.
Joel Brooks:God, did you really call me? I'm sure that he started off that journey back at the end of chapter 11, beginning of chapter 12 with such hope, such joy, but but the honeymoon is over for Abram because nothing's happening. Verse 1 begins with these words as we read after these things. That these things is referring to chapter 14, which we skipped over. But chapter 14 is when Abram has to go and rescue Lot.
Joel Brooks:When he does so, he makes a bunch of, marauding chieftains or kings angry at him. And so now he's made some pretty powerful enemies, and he's just wondering how he's going to be protected. He's feeling vulnerable. And so in order to calm Abram's fears, the Lord speaks to Abram. We actually have this unique phrase here.
Joel Brooks:We we read, the word of the Lord came. The word of the Lord came. This type of language is only found in the prophets. It's the only time in the first five books of the Bible that you ever find that language. This language reserved for the prophets.
Joel Brooks:That the word of the Lord would come. And what it means is, this is a authoritative, you can't doubt the clarity in it. You absolutely know this is the word of the Lord coming. No mistake this time. No wondering, is this actually God's calling on my life?
Joel Brooks:Clear as a bell, God communicates this to him. And what God says is, fear not Abram. I am your shield and your reward shall be great. So how does Abraham respond to this crystal clear word from the Lord? I mean, we've responded by writing like 50 cheesy praise songs on this verse alone.
Joel Brooks:I mean, the the shield of God becomes this imagery that's gonna be used over and over and over. But how does Abraham use it? It doesn't mean much to him. He comes responds with questions. This is actually significant because up to this point, Abraham never talks to God.
Joel Brooks:He never talks back to God. He is silent. God speaks, He obeys. God speaks, He obeys. This time God speaks and He says, I've got questions.
Joel Brooks:I've got questions. How? How is this actually all going to happen, God? I I mean, I've been obeying you so far, but years are going on. There's no real progress.
Joel Brooks:So can you throw me a bone here? How? That's how God responds to this. He says something, he say, my reward is gonna be great. Yes.
Joel Brooks:I've got wealth, but I trade it all for a child. I'm childless. And so Abraham has doubt here and I don't care how great your faith is, There is going to be times when you struggle with doubt. And the question is, what are you going to do with those doubts? Abraham took those doubts to the Lord, which is a demonstration of faith.
Joel Brooks:A faithless person doesn't struggle with doubt. A faithless person certainly doesn't go to the Lord with questions. So Abram does the right thing. These questions are swirling in his mind, and rather than denying that he has those questions, he just lays them before the Lord. Let's see what the Lord does with these doubts, these questions.
Joel Brooks:We read again in verse 4 that once again, the word of the Lord came to Abram. This time telling Abram that he was gonna have his own son. Now you were gonna have a son. And then God, in a sense, puts his arm around Abram and just takes him outside. He says, why don't you look up at the sky?
Joel Brooks:And of course, it would have been a jet black sky at this time. And Abram, he would have looked up. He would have seen countless stars. Yet God says, can you count them? And we actually know the way that this is written in Hebrew that there's a pause here.
Joel Brooks:God wants us to sink in. Abram, can you count these? You can't, can you? Of course, you can't count them. So shall your offspring be, Abram.
Joel Brooks:That's how many offspring you will have. And Abram responds to this crystal clear word from the Lord. He responds with this renewed belief. He didn't know the details. He didn't know exactly how it was going to happen, but he knew that God was going to keep his word and to do it.
Joel Brooks:And so we we come up on the verse 6 here, which is one of the more important verses in your entire Bible. Paul's gonna quote this verse both in Romans and in Galatians. James is going to quote this verse. All as how we become saved. Read with me verse 6.
Joel Brooks:And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. He believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. It is not the strength of your faith that matters. It's the object of your faith that matters. Some of you have a misplaced faith because you put your faith in your faith.
Joel Brooks:Like, I know I'm right with God. Why? Because I believe in my faith. I have strong faith and you're putting your faith in your faith. But what we see in the story of Abraham is sometimes Abraham had a lot of faith.
Joel Brooks:Sometimes he had a little faith. It wasn't the degree of faith that mattered. It was the object of his faith. He had placed whatever faith he had in God. And that's what sustained him.
Joel Brooks:And because of that faith, God declares him righteous. Because nothing honors God like faith does. Nothing honors me like a dad, as when my children trust me. All my children, you know, I got to teach how to swim, And so we would go to the to the pool. And one of those great moments as a dad is when you're in the pool and your child is not.
Joel Brooks:And you're trying to convince your child to jump into the pool. You see other children jumping to their dads and you're like, come on, you're leaving me hanging here. Like, you you begin to feel it, like, why don't you trust and you're, you know and so you're talking to your children and and what I found is every child is different. One of my children, I would have to, like, get there and I would talk for, like, 10 minutes. You could trust me, could do all of this.
Joel Brooks:And finally, she would get the courage and she would jump and I'd catch her. Another one of my children would just literally run and say, I'm gonna count to 3. 1, Jen, she would just jump. You know, it's just like instant. Each child, they would jump to me.
Joel Brooks:It it'd be different. But it didn't matter if it took a lot to convince them to jump or a little. It didn't matter the degree of their faith because it wasn't in their strength. Them not drowning had nothing to do with them. It had everything to do with me.
Joel Brooks:And that's what faith does. It just shows whether you have a little faith or a lot of faith, it's not your faith that matters. It's the object of your faith. And when you jump, God holds you up. Whether it took a little or a lot, it's in God and he is honored.
Joel Brooks:He brings some great glory when you jump into his arms. God never asked you to jump into nothing. Take a leap of faith. No. It's a leap into His arms.
Joel Brooks:It's a leap to where He is calling you. And so faith honors God and when he sees us place faith in him, he declares us righteous. It's our righteousness. Immediately after the Lord declares Abram righteous because of this trust he is putting in God, Abram responds with another question. Once again, faith is not the absence of questions.
Joel Brooks:It's not the absence of doubts. It's knowing that we could go to God with these things. So let's read these in beginning of verse 7. And he said to him, this is the Lord, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But Abram said, oh, Lord God, how how am I to know that I shall possess it?
Joel Brooks:He said to him, bring me a heifer 3 years old, a female goat 3 years old, a ram 3 years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon. And he brought him all these, and he cut them in half, and laid each over against the other. This is the closest that we have, I think in the old testament of that phrase we find in the new testament. I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief.
Joel Brooks:I believe you God and I believe you, but could you just tell me how? And could you just maybe give me some guarantee that you're actually going to keep your word? I mean, I do believe you, but could you give me a guarantee? I believe help my own belief. And God says, you want certainty?
Joel Brooks:You want a guarantee that I will keep my word to you. I'll give you a guarantee that not even you can doubt. Bring me these animals. Abram immediately goes and he gets these animals. Notice that God doesn't tell Abram what to do with them.
Joel Brooks:Abram just knows. He knows what God is doing in this moment. What God wants. He gets a heifer and he cuts it in half. And He drags part of its body over here, and then He gets the other part of the body and He drags it over here.
Joel Brooks:And then He gets a goat and He cuts it in half, and He drags part of its body over here and the other part over here. And he does the same with a ram. And so he's he's he's cutting these animals in half and then spreading them apart and the blood would have just pooled all in the middle. What is Abram doing here? He's not making a sacrifice.
Joel Brooks:That's not what's going on. This is not a sacrifice. Abraham's making a covenant. A legal binding contract with God for God to keep his word. Any of you ever make pinky promises when you were little?
Joel Brooks:Anybody? You know, you put your pinkies together, make a little pinky promise. You keep those? Lauren, when she was younger, she made a pinkie promise with her little sister that she would never own a minivan. It's the one thing, like of all the promises, she's like, I'm not gonna be that kind of mom.
Joel Brooks:I will not I will not own a minivan. And she pinky promised with her sister. Lauren broke that promise. She's going to hell. All right.
Joel Brooks:We know that's that's what happens when you when you break the pinky promise. No. I told Lauren that like any pinky promise you make before the age of 12, you're not held responsible for. It's it's in Deuteronomy somewhere. Oh, that's that's the go to for any pastor.
Joel Brooks:It's in Deuteronomy. But but what happens when you when you break a pinky promise when you're little? What happens? Nothing. Like, absolute there's no consequences whatsoever, which is why as adults, we don't do pinky promises anymore.
Joel Brooks:If I'm working with a contractor to, to renovate part of my home, when we've settled on the terms, I don't put out my pinky. Like, do you pinky swear? Like, that that you will keep her end of the bargain. Because there's no consequences to that. What we do is we, you know, we hire a lawyer.
Joel Brooks:We write up a contract and we say, I will do this work for this amount of money. It needs to be done at this amount. Because when you have that legal contract, we know that there are consequences if it's not met. 4000 years ago, they didn't have lawyers. They didn't set up legal contracts with pen and paper.
Joel Brooks:They did it through cutting a covenant. They would cut a covenant together. In verse 18, we read that in that day, the Lord made a covenant. Literally, that word made there in Hebrew literally is cut. The Lord cut a covenant.
Joel Brooks:That's what you see here is you have to cut animals to make a covenant. To make a covenant, you would cut animals in half and then you would separate them, creating that aisle filled with blood. And then both parties making this covenant would walk through the blood together. Their feet would be drenched in this blood. The hem of their garments would be soaking up this blood.
Joel Brooks:And when they walk through those animal halves together, what they were saying is this, if I don't keep my end of the deal, may what happened to the animals, happen to me. It's way better than a pinky promise. I mean, just think of your renovation, if you had your contractor do that. And like, you are assured, you're going to keep your word, if when you fail to do it, what you're saying is may I be cut in half. And so, when God asked Abraham to get these animals, he knows exactly what God wants.
Joel Brooks:He gets them and he prepares the covenant and then he waits. And he waits and he waits. Once again, he's waiting. God, are you actually going to show up? Birds of prey, vultures, they begin coming.
Joel Brooks:He's driving them away. And so he's running to one sacrifice, driving away, running to the other animal part and and driving away. He's doing this all day and he is utterly exhausting himself. And finally, he can't do it anymore. And he's he's beginning to think, Lord, are you not showing up?
Joel Brooks:Am I supposed to just walk through this alone? That was actually a common practice in that day. When Kings would make covenants with their vassal States, they wouldn't walk through. It was a representative from that vassal state who would have to walk through because it's not like the king is gonna kill himself if the deal goes bad. And Abraham's gotta be thinking, is is that what it You're not gonna show up.
Joel Brooks:This is on me. I thought it was gonna be different than that. I thought we were making a covenant together. And in his exhaustion, he collapses. We actually read that God causes him to go into a deep sleep.
Joel Brooks:This is not a normal sleep. It's the same word that's used to describe when God put Adam under, when he took out his rib. What what we see here is God is rendering Abram unconscious. And it's not a blissful sleep here. It's it's a terrible, terrible sleep.
Joel Brooks:Yet this dreadful and great darkness falls upon Abram. In other words, this is a terror descending on Abram, unlike any terror he has ever known. And from amidst this dark and terrible place, he hears a voice saying, you will indeed have the offspring. You will indeed have land. 400 years are gonna go by in which your people will be afflicted, but make no mistake, you will possess these things.
Joel Brooks:And then what happens next is one of the most important moments in all of human history. Let's read about it in verse 17. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, Behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying, to your offspring, I will give this land. This smoking fire pot and this flaming torch is nothing other than the presence of God.
Joel Brooks:We have similar imagery, nearly identical imagery in Exodus where God went before His people as a pillar of fire at night and a pillar of cloud during the day. It's very similar imagery to what we have when God met Moses on top of Mount Sinai, in which there was a pillar of cloud. There was smoke. There was fire happening on that mountain. The amazing thing that we see here though is that God actually does walk through the pieces.
Joel Brooks:God walks through the pieces. Think about this, the one who cannot die, he cannot die. He steps into a covenant and He says, May I die? May I die if I don't keep up my end of the deal? I mean, there's your guarantee, Abram.
Joel Brooks:You want a guarantee? Here it is. The immortal will become mortal. The everlasting is willing to have his life cut off if I don't keep my word to you. It's absolutely astonishing what God does here.
Joel Brooks:He signs this contract with his own blood. There is nothing even remotely like this in any other religion. Nothing else like this in history. But you have to ask the question, well, what about Abram? I mean, what about Abram?
Joel Brooks:Doesn't it take 2 people to make a covenant? Aren't 2 people supposed to walk through this? Abram, however, doesn't walk through it. God renders him unconscious so that he cannot walk through it. God alone walks through these pieces.
Joel Brooks:What God is saying is this, I am responsible for both parties. If I don't keep up my end of the deal, may I be cut up in pieces? Abram, if you don't keep up your part of the deal, may I be cut in pieces? It's absolutely astounding. God says that he will pay whatever penalty is required no matter who fails.
Joel Brooks:To this day, I mean to this day, Jewish scholars are puzzled by this. Puzzled like, I mean, is is God is God saying that he will pay the penalty for our sin? For our failure? Is that what God is saying here? It doesn't really make any sense.
Joel Brooks:But it does make sense to us, because if you were to flash forward 2000 years from this event, you would find another day in which a terrible darkness fell on the land. Matthew 27 says, at noon, darkness covered the whole land, as God in the flesh, Jesus Christ hung on the cross. And it was there that Jesus, our savior, bore the penalty for our sin, for our failure. We failed at our end of the covenant. God took the responsibility for it, and God paid the penalty.
Joel Brooks:And God knew this when He's making this covenant with Abram. He knew it. I mean, it wasn't like, well, you look like you're gonna keep your end of the bargain. I'm just gonna go ahead and put my life on the line here. No.
Joel Brooks:God knows man will fail. But it's out of deep love for Abraham and all of humanity that God goes through with this. And he makes that covenant anyway. And hear me. I I'm not sure what you think it means to be a Christian, but I I want you to get a clear understanding of it.
Joel Brooks:And you get such a clear picture of that here. Being a Christian does not mean try. Try to be a good person, try to keep up your end of the bargain and God will keep up His. It's not try because you will try and you will fail. Christianity is this, God knows you will fail.
Joel Brooks:But when you fail, God has already paid the penalty for you. Christianity is when you have done nothing. Not when you're trying to do something, but when you've done nothing. When you've essentially been rendered unconscious, or when you were dead in your trespasses and sins. God moves on your behalf.
Joel Brooks:When you work and you work and you work, and now you're utterly exhausted from your works and you fall down from it, God's like, finally, you're And God shows up and He pays for your sin with His own blood. And what He asks of you is will you trust him for that? Will you place your faith in him and not in your own faith and not in yourself, but will you trust God? If you would pray with me. Lord Jesus, as we take this time of communion, may we indeed commune with you through your spirit.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in your name. Amen.