God Keeps His Promises - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Genesis 15:7-21, we see God establishing a covenant with Abram reiterating the promises that He made in chapter 12.
Transcript:
The scripture reading today is from Genesis 15:12-16. 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, know for certain that for 400 years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at 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.
I want you to think this morning about what it takes to have a functional human society. What does it take? You might think of many things, maybe security, strong economy, or people with strong moral character. The truth is that many of these things tie into one another. What comes to my mind is a bit more basic and rather simple compared to these things. Human society begins by people making promises to one another, and it holds together by people keeping those promises. We must make promises and keep promises to have a human society. My son's school has promised to educate him and keep him safe while he's outside our home. I can release him into their care because I'm trusting they won't just let him and his classmates run wild in the streets. You think about when you come to a four-way stop, everyone's at the stop sign. You're trusting that everyone's going to stop at the stop sign. Now sometimes people break the rules there and it kind of breaks down your trust when you come to those stops. But the idea is when there's red lights, when there's stop signs, you're trusting people are going to do the right thing so we don't have a big pile up of cars. I got a small loan to buy a car earlier this year and I promised to pay the loan every month for 12 months at a particular rate of interest. And in turn, the credit card company promised to give me that money and the time to pay it back. Now, none of that happens unless both parties believe the other can keep their promise, which is why we have credit scores. Now, as it turned out, that company mistakenly charged a full amount of that loan with the regular automatic payment we have set up for our credit card statement. And it totally wiped out our bank account and put us in a real bind. They eventually restored the funds after I threaten to report them. But as you might imagine, I'm not very interested in taking a loan with them again, because they didn't keep their promise. The more you think about it, the more you'll notice how our life together is based on making and keeping promises. If we can't trust one another, and we can't work together and we won't be able to live together. In a certain sense, we find Abram striving to work and live with God. This was God's initiative, though, not Abram's. It was God who promised to make Abram into a great nation and to give him the land of Canaan.
In the remainder of Genesis 15, we see just how far God will go to build Abram's trust so that he will continue to walk with God. So we pick up in verse 7 of Genesis 15. There Moses records for us, that “God also said to him, Abram, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it. But Abram said, 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 in two, 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." So, with God speaking to Abram here again, He is reminding Abram that it was God's initiative that has brought Abram to this place. He was the one who called him out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give him this land. Now you'll remember earlier in this chapter, God had promised Abram that he'd have many offspring and yet Abram didn't even have one kid at this point in his old age and God reassured him of his promise by taking outside and saying look up at the stars Your children will be like the stars if you can count them now God was not upset with Abram when Abram kind of pressed him like how can I know that I'm gonna have all these kids when I don't have any, not even one. And in the same way, God's not upset here either when Abram presses again, you know, how can I know? Because what Abram's doing here is he's not doubting, he's not doubting God's promise. He's desiring it. He really wants it to be true, but it's just really difficult for him to envision this coming to pass. And so God meets Abram where he's at. And He tells him to bring together these animals, a heifer, goat, ram, dove, young pigeon, and coincidentally these are all animals that will be used in the sacrifices of Israel later on, hundreds of years later on. And he basically has Abram set up the staging for a ceremony and we'll look at that more closely as it actually gets played out. But he says divide these animals and cut them in half. And so Abram does that, and he's made to wait. And as he's waiting, these birds come flying down and trying to get the free meat, basically.
At least one commentator suggests that in some way Abram warding off these birds, it actually happened, but him warding off these birds also kind of anticipates how his faith, the faith that begins here, is going to help the people of Israel persevere as they come under attack in the years that will come. this faith of Abram will help preserve them. Now this sets the scene for the assurance that God is going to offer Abram that he will indeed gain possession of the land. We're going to read verses 12 to 15 and the scene changes quite a bit. Now we get the sense that this is happening at night time and because the sun was setting, Abram falls into a deep sleep and this thick, dreadful darkness came over him. So you can kind of just imagine the scene. It's very just dark and murky. It's just kind of seems pretty grim. And it's because God has some difficult things to tell Abram. He says that while Abraham is going to have many offspring, they're going to face some difficult times. Abraham's descendants are going to be strangers in a country not their own, and they're going to be enslaved and mistreated there. So, he's going to be enslaved, Not exactly what you want to hear. Abram's trying to get some reassurance here. Can you imagine God telling you that about your own family? That your children, your children's children, that they're going to be enslaved and mistreated. But God has a word of assurance in the midst of this kind of grim sort of news. He says, but I will punish the nation, they serve as slaves, and afterwards they will come out with great possessions.
Now what God is talking about here is the time of the people of Israel when they were in Egypt. That's the country that he's referring to. And this happens, as it's suggested, 400 years later, in Exodus 12 verses 40 through 41, Moses records, now the length of time that the Israeli people lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of the 430 years, the very day, all the Lord's divisions left Egypt. So, you saw there that God said 400 years, Moses is saying here 430 years. It's supposed to be a ballpark estimate. God's not intending that it's gotta be right down to the dot, the specific year, but it's that they're gonna be in there for basically 400 years, that amount of, which is representative of the generations that will live during that time in enslavement. But they're going to be delivered. Egypt is going to be punished. And we do in fact see that come to pass when God brings the plagues upon Egypt and the people of Israel are led of Egypt to the promised land. Abram's not going to see any of this. He's going to be long dead. So for himself he can have the assurance that he is going to have a peaceful end. He's going to go to his ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. Now, as I was thinking about this word that God gave to Abram, I was thinking about there are some parallels here, I think, between, you know, Abram in our experience as the church. where we've received the promise of resurrection in the coming kingdom as we've seen Jesus conquer the cross and be raised from the dead. But between His resurrection and His ascension, between His ascension and His second coming, the church faces some difficult times. We face dark times in which the people of God are mistreated. But in the same way that Abraham sees the light of the promise for his people and what God is saying here, we too have the light of promise that the tribulation that we go through is not the end of the story. That Christ will return, that those who are committing evil and injustice will be punished and we will enjoy eternity with God. So there's kind of an interesting sort of parallel there.
Now when God says that he's going to bring Abram's descendants back here, he's of course talking about the land of Canaan. But he says not yet and the reason why is this, in verse 16, he says in the fourth generation, again that kind of broad four hundred yearish number, in the fourth generation your descendants will come back here for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure, Now you might be wondering, the Amorites, who are the Amorites? You know you've heard of Canaanites, but what about Amorites? well you might remember how in chapter fourteen we heard about how Mamre was an Amorite and his two brothers were Amorites, obviously, as well. So the area in which Abram is living is occupied by those who would be considered Amorites, although they are not the only people living in the land of Canaan. But they are particularly iconic people, as we'll see, but something to be understood here is that those who are Amorites are in fact Canaanites. They are a Canaanite tribe. In Genesis 10 verses 15 through 19 we see all those that were descended from Canaan. Now Canaan was the son of Ham and if you go back into the story with Noah and Ham and the way in which Noah was shamed by his son, a curse was put upon the people of Canaan. And so here we see all the people of Canaan listed. and talks about how Canaan fathered Sidon, he's first born, then Hath and it just goes down and you'll see in verse 16 it mentions the Amorites. So in referring to the Amorites what God is really doing to Abraham is not saying that they're not going to also, that he's not concerned about these other people in the area but they're particularly iconic people for the reason that it seems perhaps because they have a reputation for being kind of gigantic people. Now you'll hear mention of giants in the scripture, and sometimes when you hear that word giant, you tend to think of like Jack and the Beanstalk giant, where the guy is like 20 stories high and stuff, and you're like, really? That's not the biblical idea of giants. it would be safe to assume that someone who would have been considered a giant in biblical times would have been probably someone that was like a plus size Shaquille O'Neal basically. Very tall person. We don't know what the upper limit on that is. That's speculation, but it's safe to say at least like a plus size Shaquille O'Neal. And then you have to consider everyone else is really small. I don't know if you ever dug into some of your family members you know, items up in your attic. And like I have a hat from my great grandfather. I've like put it on my head. It's like, this is like kid size. And it's because, you know, we know that people in the past tended to be smaller, less nutrition than we all have today. And so it wasn't unusual for people at that time to be like five-five, and that'd be kind of just the usual height. So if you have like a person who's five-five, and then you have plus size, Shaquille O'Neal, that certainly counts as as a giant.
In Amos 2.9, God reminds the people, he says, Yet I destroyed the Amorites before them, though they were tall as the cedars and strong as the oaks. I destroyed their fruit above and their roots below. Now in talking about the sin of the Amorites what God is kind of picking out here is the fact that these people have been particularly rebellious. Now all people, all human beings are sinful. All humans have rebelled against God including Abram and the people of Israel that will proceed from him But what God has done here in the land of Canaan is set up some borders basically to demonstrate to the world really, the holiness that he actually expects of us. So you go back to the beginning to Genesis. What happened when Adam and Eve sinned? They got cursed and what happened then after? Anyone know? They got expelled from the garden. They got kicked out. Now what we can kind of see going on here is God is kind of reduplicating that kind of scenario where he's established the land of Canaan as his promised land and those who do not live holy lives are going to be expelled from it. Now this is going to be a case even with the people of Israel themselves where when they do not live up to God's expectations they're expelled, they're sent into exile. By this point they don't occupy the land. The Amorites, all the Canaanites do. but the time for their expulsion is not now. God says that their sin is not complete. Now it's difficult to know exactly what that means, but apparently God was giving them more time. Again, we're talking about 400 years, and sometimes it's easy just for us to throw numbers out, but just try to imagine that Abram's receiving this promise that in 400 years his descendants will get this land. The US isn't even 400 years old. It's not even 250 years old. So imagine having to wait that amount of time. How much history has to transpire until all this is going to come to pass? God is giving the Amorites a lot of time here. but he will bring judgment upon them. It's a sure thing. It's not as though they're going to change course and actually Abram, we're not going to give you the land. God knows what's going to happen. He can see they're not going to change their ways, and he's going to bring judgment upon them. And we see this articulated clearly in Deuteronomy 7. We look at verses 1 through 8. And I'll read some of these verses, and some of them I'll summarize. verses 1-2, it says, When the LORD your God brings you into the land, you are entering to possess, and drives out before you many nations, the Hittites, Grigashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you. And when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you, and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Now there's a reason for this.
You go to verses 3-5. God says, don't marry them. Don't have anything to do with them. And the reason why, the reason why God's calling them to bring this destruction and not have anything to do with them is because they are worshiping and serving false gods. And God does not want the ways of the Canaanites to become the way of His people. Because as He says in verses 6, through 8, for you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. And he goes on to say, I didn't choose you because you were the greatest, the best. It was just because I loved you that I chose you. Now, we circle back around a little bit. You think about, okay, they're worshipping false gods. We know people nowadays worship false gods today. Were these people really all that bad or were they just kind of different? Well, it's difficult to dig into the past to understand completely what was going on the ground. But when we look at the gods of the Canaanites and the in particular one of their religious practices, it becomes clear that they are very immoral people. Their gods, in the story of their gods, they are depicted as doing very wicked things, abusive things, I won't get into it here because of the mixed audience, just very wicked things. and if their gods are doing that you can imagine the people are saying well if it's good for them, it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander, that kind of thing. But they also serve this god Moloch. And I have a picture of depicting this god. And we actually know a little bit about this because of Carthage. Now if you know anything about Carthage, Carthage was actually located in North Africa kind of notorious because they went to war with Rome and the reason why they're relevant is because Carthage was founded by Phoenicians and the Phoenicians are a Canaanite people so they sailed from Israel went up to North Africa and there's very clear records there and there's records in Israel as well that they would offer their children as living sacrifices to the god. So they would take kids from infants up to four years old, and they would take it, and you see the god, and they'd put them into the fire and feed them to the god. And in Carthage, there's actually little urns that have the remains of these children in them, and basically saying, I offered my kid to this God, and I was blessed because of it. and that's a kind of a unique thing, we don't see this worldwide, it was particularly bad and sadly what we see is later in Israel's history they actually adopt some of these practices for themselves. Remember, God said don't have anything to do with them, well they had things to do with them, in Jeremiah 32:35. God speaking to his people says, they built high places for Baal in the valley of Ben Hinnom to sacrifice their sons and daughters to Moloch, though I never commanded nor did it enter my mind that they should do such a detestable thing and so make Judah sin. So this is what God was trying to get rid of from the land of Canaan. And this judgment that we see play out later on in pages of the Old Testament where the people are in fact not only driven out but many of them are massacred. The reason why it was right for the people of Israel to do that is because they were acting under the command of God and playing out God's judgment against them. And what we have here is really an anticipatory judgment. It's difficult for us to wrap our minds around this because this is a unique command. It does not extend at all into the present day. But we have to understand that God is ultimately going to bring judgment against all human sin. That ultimately, anyone who has not found shelter in Christ and put their faith in Him, they will be destroyed in the lake of fire. And what we see going on here in the land of Canaan, what we will see going on here, is really kind of an anticipation of that judgment. Just as in a similar way, the resurrection of Christ in the middle of history is an anticipation of the resurrection that we will enjoy on the last day.
Difficult things but true things that because we have sinned we are worthy of death and God is just to bring that judgment and in this case he's going to use the children of Israel to do that. Now this is not all that God had to say though. Now we get back to the animals that Abram had divided. Verses 17 through 21. When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot 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 give this land from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river Euphrates, the land of the Canaanites, Kenazites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites. Again, this is happening at night time. It's very dark. And we see this mysterious scene play out. A smoking fire pot, or alternately referred to as a sensor and a torch, passes through these divided animals. So why a fire pot? Why a torch? Well, when other cultures in the ancient Near East are examined, these tend to be common elements in some rituals, so there's a little bit of familiarity there. The basic purpose is to represent the invisible god. You notice that Abram doesn't have any perception of a physical being. He just sees these things like floating in the air. At least one commentator suggests that they may be even anticipating how God will lead his people by a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud by day because the fire pot would have created a lot of smoke. You can almost think of it like if you've been to the Catholic Church and they have the incense and they're drinking it around and it's got smoke. It would have been a similar idea going on here. So great, we visualized what's going on here, but what does it mean? What does it signify? But what it signifies is the sealing of a covenant. It's a forming of a treaty of sorts between God and Abram. Now, it was a common practice during this time for a ritual like this to play out in which people would divide these animals and then both parties would walk through it as a sign that they would keep their covenant. The meaning of walking between the animals is pretty serious. And we actually see it brought up in Jeremiah 34, 18 through 20. At this point, there's many hundreds of years later, the people of Jerusalem had made a covenant that they would release their slaves because the Babylonians were about to attack the city. Then the Babylonians relented of their attack and they decided they were going to take their slaves back. Now God was not happy about this because as it was God had commanded the people of Israel to release their slaves on a regular basis. The slaves we're talking about here is their own people, the Hebrew people. So in Jeremiah 34, 18-20, God says this to them, those who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces. The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests and all the people of the land who walked between the pieces of the calf, I will deliver into the hands of their enemies who want to kill them. Their bodies will become food for the birds and the wild animals.
So what God is saying here is that you walked between these divided animals, by breaking the covenant you will become like these animals. You're going to be slaughtered. You're going to be left out for food for the wild beasts. So. There's an implied judgment on the one who walks through these divided animals and does not fulfill the promise that is made. But notice here who it is that walks between the animals. Not Abram. Abram doesn't walk through the animals. It's God. God walks between them. And we wonder, what could this mean? How could God walk through the animals? Obviously, he's trying to indicate to Abram how serious he is about his promise, that he would go to this extent to show how serious he is, but what could it mean that God could possibly have this curse come upon himself. Because we know that God is perfect, that he keeps his word. And we see through the pages of scripture that God does indeed keep His Word. And yet, we do see when we come to the New Testament that God suffers the curse of that covenant by the fact that His Son went to the cross. And in fact, by sending His Son to the cross, He is keeping His promise. Think about that. That God had promised Abraham that His children would be a blessing to all nations. God is even willing to go so far to bring a curse upon himself by sending his son to the cross in order to keep his promise to Abram. And we have a hint of that here, by God entering into this covenant, walking between the divided animals. Now, God has not only just promised Abram children, we've already looked at that earlier in the chapter, place, the land, and that's Abram's concern here, and God outlines the land that he's going to give to Abram based on the people groups, I'm not going to read those all again, and we see how it's bookended by the Wadi of Egypt and the Euphrates River. Now the Wadi of Egypt, you might be wondering what that is, and before I looked at this passage I didn't really know what it was honestly. I was set on a bit of a wild goose chase because I was reading the English Standard Version at first and it said the River of Egypt. I said well the River of Egypt that must be the Nile River and when you see the Wadi of Egypt you might suppose that it's talking about the Nile River. But that's not actually the case. The Wadi of Egypt is a seasonal river. It's not the Nile. And when we look at the rest of scripture where it talks about, it says the Wadi of Egypt rather than the River of Egypt, because the ESV is an accurate translation, it does say the River of Egypt, but it seems to be referring to the Wadi of Egypt. And we can go there today, it's called the Wadi El-Arish. It's located, you'll see familiar images, with everything that's going on. You'll see the Gaza Strip there. just over into Egypt we see the Wadi El-Arish which would have been the Wadi of Egypt also known as the brook of Egypt that's kind of a that's the one bookend of the land that God is giving to the people of Israel now elsewhere God offers different descriptions of the borders of this land So with a lot of detail but varying because you know you can describe things in different ways and be referring to the same thing. So Numbers 34 verses 2 through 12. Again I'm not going to read all the verses here but just want to point out where it appears. You see the wadi of Egypt? Appears that again. And then when we go to the next set of verses, to verses 7 through 12. We find another marker that wasn't mentioned in Genesis, talks about Lebo Hamaph. I'll show a map on that in just a second. We go to Exodus 23 verses 28 to 31. God tells Moses and the people that he's going to drive off the Canaanite people and he's going to set his borders from the Red Sea, so kind of on just the opposite side of where the Wadi of Egypt would have been, on that little land bridge there between Egypt and Israel today, and again the Euphrates River. When we get to the book of Joshua... It's said that God has kept his promises to the people of Israel by giving them everything that he promised. In Joshua 21, 43, it says, So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their ancestors, and they took possession of it and settled there. And in Joshua 23, 14, Joshua, as he's kind of bidding farewell to the the people of Israel, he says, every promise has been fulfilled, not one has failed. Now, when we look at the biblical record itself, there are indications that there was actually some mop-up duty to do, and in fact the people of Israel failed to do that, which is why they got influenced to worship gods like Molech. So we ask, well, I mean, I thought it said that the promise was fulfilled, shouldn't there not be any Canaanites in the land? What's being indicated here is that God has kept up his end of the deal. Like all the people of Israel had to do was be obedient. And they didn't do that.
And there was consequences for that where that ultimately resulted into them going into exile. But they did kind of have a high water mark. We find this in the reign of Solomon in 1 Kings 8 verses Solomon says very much the same thing, praise be to the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel just as he promised. Not one word has failed of all the good promises he gave through his servant Moses. And then in 65 it says, so Solomon observed the festival at that time and all Israel with him, a vast assembly, people from Lebo Hamath to the Wadi of Egypt. He celebrated it before the Lord our God for seven days and seven days more, 14 days in all. So now we kind of connect the dots here. a map. You see Wadi El Arish . I just plugged in Google Maps and I said, take me to Lebo Hamath, which today is Hamah in Syria. You notice it pretty well outlines the land of Israel. Now, it goes further north, obviously. We're going into Syria. But that's the influence that the Kingdom of Israel had under the rule of Solomon. And that doesn't mean that the Jewish people were living in all these places, but Solomon, at the very least, was drawing tribute from these places, and they did have a presence. It didn't last long, though. It contracted pretty quickly. The kingdom was divided. And then eventually the Syrians came in. The Babylonians came in. But we see the basic outline there of what God had promised to them. And it was fulfilled. I do think, though, that we also have here a bit of a hint of a of a universal promise that God has in mind. I think we can kind of pick up on that by these reference marks. Now, if you're wondering, you know, God had said to the Euphrates River, the Euphrates River leads up to that lake up there. So again, we're just dealing with things approximately. But elsewhere, it seems like this is kind of a way to denote a large area of land, talking about from Egypt to the Euphrates, those book ends. So we go and we look at Micah 7, 11 through 12. And God promises his people, The prophet, Micah, says, the day for building your walls will come, the day for extending your boundaries. In that day, people will come to you from Assyria and the cities of Egypt, even from Egypt to the Euphrates and from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain. Now we know when we get into the prophets, we do have that universal scope in mind of that messianic kingdom which is to come. So you work backwards, you're talking about from mountain to mountain, well that certainly seems universal, from sea to sea, and then So while yes, there's an immediate fulfillment that God has in mind in giving the people of Israel the land from the Wadi of Egypt basically up to the Euphrates, it seems like there's also a hint of something more. And when we go to the New Testament, there's indications that maybe Abram even anticipated something of this. where he was looking for something more. Hebrews 11, 8-10 says, By faith Abraham made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. Now that city is something that certainly exceeds what I just showed you on the map. Something certainly more than that. We think about the apostles, the disciples, after Jesus' resurrection, coming to Him and wondering about the Kingdom of God.
In Acts 1, 6-8, it says that they came to Him and said, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the Kingdom of Israel? What Jesus says to them is this, it is not for you to know the times or the dates the Father is set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all of Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. So when they're talking about will you restore the kingdom at this time, they're very much kind of thinking within that territorial sort of framework. They'd be really glad if Jesus just kicked the Romans out. Jesus has something much larger in mind, much more universal in mind, which is indicated by what he says, I want you to be my witnesses not only here in the land of Israel, but to the ends of the earth. In Paul talking about Abram and his offspring, He says in Romans 4.13, it was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. And of course, in Jesus' sermon on the mount, talking about those who are meek, which should be his disciples, he says, they will inherit the earth. So there's a universal scope. of the promise made to Abraham that exceeds just the territorial boundaries that are initially given. Like Abram, looking to that city to come, we're looking to this city that will come, that will bring together all the people of the earth, those who have put their faith and trust in Christ. We're not looking to get a rocket off of this earth. We're not looking for an escape. We're looking for God to bring heaven to earth. This is what God tells us in Revelation 21. John says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. And he carried me away in the spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the holy city of Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. What John sees is this future in which God has brought heaven to earth, this new Jerusalem, and brings together all the nations of the earth. We have this picture of a universal reign.
Abraham can walk by faith because of the certainty of God's promise revealed in this covenant. God would sooner be destroyed himself than to not keep his word. Because it is impossible for God and His divine nature to be destroyed, so it is impossible for His word to not come to pass. Think about what this means for your life. If we live every day on the basis of mere human promises, and we enjoy the benefits of cooperating with each other, how much more will we be blessed living in the confidence of God's promise? If I can trust God at His word, I can live differently. I don't need to throw myself after gaining riches, pleasure, or fame. I don't need to live a life full of anxiety, greed, or lust. Every good thing you and I desire, and it is usually good things, but just out of proportion, every good thing you and I desire is just a mere shadow of that greater glory that will be revealed. In the course of history, God did give the people of Israel the land that was promised. They didn't keep it for long, and the Jewish people today don't possess all that territory. But this land is just a shadow of the greater inheritance for God's people. We will inherit not just a parcel of land, but the entire earth. Not merely the historic Jerusalem, but a heavenly Jerusalem which will come to earth.
The Christian's pursuit of happiness does not lead us to worthless things. It leads us to pursue God Himself, our Promise Keeper. Our shield and reward, as God told Abram at the beginning of this chapter, as we look forward to the day when he will live with us. We can live as nomads in this world because we are seeking the city with foundations whose architect and builder is gone. Let us pray.
Dear Father it is incredible how you've humbled yourself to reassure us. Truth be told, Father, we should just take you at your word when you give us your promises. But you know that we are weak. You knew that Abram was weak father. And so you went and performed this covenant ritual to show him the surgency of your word. Father, you have kept your promises because not only have you given Israel what you promised in their day. But Father, you have taken on the curse of breaking the covenant upon your Son. Father, we thank you that by His death and resurrection, by experiencing the curse for us, we can look forward to this greater inheritance which even back in the day of Abraham, you were hinting towards. Again, not a mere parcel of land, Father, but the entire earth. And that we would dwell with you in a new city that is to come. Father, help us to set our eyes on that city and to live by your promise. Not depend on the promises that the kings of this world would make, but to live on the basis of your promise. and to enjoy the peace and confidence that comes from that Father. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us this Sunday as we continue our sermon series looking at the Bible's account of Abraham. It's our joy to welcome you into our community.
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)