Abram's Believe it or Not

I guess as good day as any to talk about fatigue. So while preparing for this sermon, I heard this quote from that famous World War II general, George Patton.

Fatigue makes cowards of us all. Now, Patton's controversial when it comes to his leadership style, but I think we can agree that our resolve can waver if we're exhausted mentally, physically, or spiritually. Maybe that's where you are right now, just fatigued. We have some relatable examples in the Scriptures. For one, Elijah had this great triumph at Mount Carmel.

He stared down the King of Israel and hundreds of Baal's prophets one moment, but next thing you know, he's running for his life. After hearing Jezebel's death threat, he's sitting under a tree complaining to the Lord. It is enough now. Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my father's. Then he retreats to a dark cave and throws a pity party.

He said, I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts, for the children of Israel, have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they seek to take my life.

It's possible that as we turn to a new chapter in Genesis, Abram felt the same way. Maybe he felt that fatigue that makes cowards out of many. Recall that in chapter 14, he equipped his young men and led them on a chase to fight four formidable kings. The pursuit covered roughly 160 miles from Hebron to Dan to Hobah. Sure, Melchizedek refreshed them physically and spiritually during his return.

But Abram's still human, like you and me, gets tired. Maybe second thoughts creep in. Should he have left on the table that lucrative offer from Sodom's king? Will those forces from the east strike back with vengeance?

If we agree that fatigue makes cowards of us all, Abram's no exception. He could, and he could, entertain such thoughts.

So let's see how God ministers to our wary hero here. And we'll learn from today's passage how the Lord inspires courage when we need it the most. Let's turn to Genesis 15:1 6.

Genesis 15:1 6.

After these things, the Word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward. But Abram said, lord God, what will you give me, seeing I go childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. Then Abram said, look, you have given me no offspring. Indeed, one born in my house is my heir.

And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, this one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir. Then he brought him outside and said, look now toward heaven and count the stars if you are able to number them. And he said to him, so shall your descendants be. And he believed in the Lord, and he accounted it to him for righteousness.

This important passage can be neatly divided into two parts.

The key phrase of note is the word of the Lord to same. Again, it's the word of the Lord to same. You'll find this word clustered twice, first in verse one and secondly in verse two, verse four. So God spoke to Abram on two occasions. And we have two part outline verses one to three and four to six.

I tend to believe it happen right after each other.

But we not only learned that God reveals Himself by His Word, we learn about our proper reaction. So after the Lord comforts Abram in verse 1, Abram responds with humility and honesty in verses 2 to 3. Then after the Lord predicts Abram's heir in verse 4 and 5, Abram responds with faith in verse 6.

Now we study this text carefully so that from our Father of faith, Abram, we can derive some timeless principles. Romans 15:4. Paul says, Whatever things were written before were written for our learning. That we, through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope. Know that Paul had Genesis 15 in mind when he said in 2nd Timothy 3:15 the Holy Scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.

So based on this two part outline, the twofold revelation and two responses of Abram, here are two faithful reactions to our faithful God. One, with due respect, pour out your heart before the Lord. That's verses one to three. Secondly, with true faith, believe in your heart to get right with God. That's four to six.

The first faithful reaction to our faithful God is with due respect, pour out your heart before Lord God.

Again, the vision in verse one is timely. Abram's probably fatigued from the recent battle with the Four Kings. He might even be worried about retribution. The Lord comforts him, saying, do not be afraid. He calls Abram by name.

He is Abram's shield.

By the way, while KJV and NKJV and NIV identify God himself as Abram's reward, I side with most other translations. The Lord is assuring Abram that his reward will be very great.

That reward will more than compensate for whatever gains he had forfeited when he refused to Take anything from Bera, the king of Sodom, God's recompense will be more than enough.

But again, Abram's human. He's got common sense. He's got eyes. He sees in a mirror an aging man with a barren wife. What's the point of having all this inheritance, all this stuff, without an heir?

In verse four. I'm sorry, verse two. Next verse, verse two, Abram voices his complaint. Without descendants, there's no channel for God's blessings to flow beyond him. From a legal standpoint, the only one qualified to continue his legacy is an unrelated servant.

Eleazar of Damascus is a trusty steward, but still he's not of Abram's kin.

And Abram reiterates his concerns in verse three. I think he's more forceful this time. God has not given him any offspring. Eliezer is likely the leading man among the 318 trained servants born in his own house. But even if he attains to the highest ranking, he's not the seed of Abram.

You can understand Abram's frustration, but in the midst of his raw honesty, there's sincere humility.

Look at how Abram addresses God in verse 2. Let me get a little technical here. Behind the compound name Lord God, we have Adonai Yahweh. Adonai simply means Lord, Master. So that's easy to translate.

But what's tricky is that Yahweh is typically rendered as Lord in all caps, as you see in verses 1, 4 and 6.

So if the translators want to be consistent, the English translators, they have to translate Adonai Yahweh as Lord. Lord. Right. That sounds a bit strange. So they made a decision to translate Yahweh this time as God.

But it's God in uppercase to indicate the covenant name of I am the that I am as God revealed himself to be. All that to say. And altogether, Abram addresses God as Adonai Yahweh. He does that to show reverence, even while he's complaining.

Last chapter, we heard him as he added to the name of Yahweh the titles of Most High, the Possessor of Heaven and earth. That was inspired by Melchizedek and his blessing. Now Abram adds to the name of Yahweh Adonai, which means Lord or master. Adonai is a title that communicates authority, dominance and power.

That's inspired by Abram's own humility. That's his faithful reaction to his faithful God. With due respect, he pours out his heart before God or Lord God.

Let's stop here for a few applications on this point. You might recognize this pour out your heart phrase from Psalm 62. I'll read verses 7 to 8 in God is my salvation and my glory. The rock of my strength and my refuge is in God. Trust in him at all times, you people.

Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us.

The rock and the refuge imagery in the psalm is not so different from the shield imagery in Genesis 15. But now look again closely at verse 8 in Psalm 62. See how trusting in God continually is not contrary to pouring out your heart before Him.

I'm saying that saints like David and Abram not only believed in God, they believe that it's okay to express your sorrows before God. Winset your wounds, lament your circumstances so sound. Biblical faith gives you permission to sigh, cry, weep before your heavenly Father.

Before him. You don't need a stiff upper lip. Quivering lips are just fine.

Tim Keller advises, neither be a stoic, suppressing your feelings, nor give full release of your emotion by venting or dumping your emotions on others. Rather, take it to the Lord in prayer, cast your burdens on him. Your tears will be preserved in his bottle and remembered in his book. So, like Abram, with due respect, pour out your heart before Lord God.

And as you do so with honest words and humble posture, be sure to return to God's word. We learn how as we continue in today's passage in Genesis 15:4,6. There we find the second of the two faithful reactions to our faithful God with true faith, believe in your heart to get right with God again. In verse four you see that section marker the cluster of key words? Behold is the word of the Lord to saying God makes it clear Abram's heir will not be Eliezer of Damascus already born.

Abram's heir will be his own flesh and blood yet to be born. Then, to reinforce his promise, the Lord takes Abram outside.

In verse 5, he invites him to start counting the stars. In the evening I shared before, my personal stargazing experience that resembles Abram's was during a week long summer mission trip to the Navajos at Flagstaff, Arizona about 20 years ago. One evening the host missionary led us up a hill. We walked through pitch black darkness, following his voice. At some point he told us to lie down flat on our backs on the ground.

And there it was. The most beautiful summer sky, starlit sky I've ever witnessed. It felt as if I could just reach up and touch the stars. Probably don't get that too much in the cities. Later, David would look in the night sky and wonder aloud, and Psalm 8, what is man?

That the Creator of the universe would be mindful of him. Abram here not only felt the same awe and privilege. There's another lesson here. There's a promise God will grant him to have innumerable descendants.

And that's possible because Abram's not only the father of the Jews who believe, as Paul Observes in Romans 4, Abram receiving the promises before circumcision is also the father of the Gentiles who believe he's the father of all later saints. People all over the world and across times united by faith.

And we can exercise the same faith as Abram's by carefully studying Genesis 15:6. This is an important commentary by Moses. If you see a verse in the Old Testament and repeated multiple times in the New Testament, you know it's a pretty important verse.

Here, God has revealed to Moses what's most important about Abram. Now, to be sure, this instance isn't the first time Abram trusted in God. I'm sure he believed the Lord at first when he called him out of his homeland. At any rate, the Spirit arranged the Scriptures so that this verse stands where it is. And here in Genesis 15:6, God speaks to all who are of faith as sons of Abraham.

It's a verse worth memorizing. Not that long. And he believed in the Lord, and he accounted it to him for righteousness. It's an amazingly simple yet profound statement. I look at it in two parts.

First, he believed in the Lord. In Hebrew, the verb believed is from where we get the word amen. To say amen is to say so be it. It must be so. That's right.

We normally say amen during worship or sermons to express enthusiastic agreement with the verbal contents. And so Abram said amen to God's word of promise. In his heart. He trusted God. He believed what he said must come to pass.

And what's amazing about believing God and his truth is this. Not only is there a payoff in the end, a payday coming for believing in him. God gives you today a reward up front for putting your faith in him right now.

That's what's the. That's what the second part of Genesis 15:6 means. And he accounted it to him for righteousness. Some translations say he credited Abram's faith as righteousness, accounted it or accredited. That verb is a language of financial ledgers and accounting.

In most cases in life, we get what we pay for five dollars For a five dollar item or something similar. In bad cases we get less than what we pay for. We pay $5 for a $1 item. That doesn't feel good. In good cases we get more than what we pay for.

We pay five dollars to get a ten dollar item.

But here we have the greatest deal ever.

Abram gets a lot more than what he bargained for. Just by believing in God, Abram obtained righteous standing before God.

That's priceless. It's better than winning the lottery. This is the glorious truth of what's called theologians call imputed righteousness. Impute being another ledger type of terminology. If Abram got a spiritual bank statement each month, it would read paid in full, in good standing before God.

All clear.

We too can enjoy such status. For that end with true faith, believe in your heart to get right with God.

Conclude now with some applications. I have two in mind. These are two implications of Abram's saving faith and justification. First, like Abram, we can be justified at the divine courts forensically. Forensic is the term to use as we stand before the tribunal of God as we face him in the cosmic courtroom as the judge of all earth.

And the Gospel is what prepares you to meet your maker. So it's that time of sung sermon again. To get to the good news. There's in the faith of Abram the Gospel in seminal form. God progressively revealed his plan through history.

Christ the anointed one of God would come from Abram's line. The descendants. In Genesis 15, five is literally seed. The word seed is what's called a collective singular noun like team or family. But it can also refer to an individual.

While Abram would have many descendants, many seed resembling the stars in number, there is one seed who outshines all as the bright and morning star. Ultimately, there's the one descendant of Abram through whom all of us are blessed. There's none other than Jesus. On one hand, Jesus is like us that he's man. He came to us in flesh and blood.

But unlike us, Jesus had a pre existence as God's son. That's why he said to his naysayers in John 8:58 Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abram was Abraham was. I am. It didn't take that well and Christ became one of us so that we might be saved. All we have to do is trust in Jesus and it be all right.

But when he was here, his own people, the physical descendants of Abraham, rejected him, both his word and his works. The world hated Jesus because he testified that their Works are evil. He shone a light on their dark practices. He exposed their hypocrisy, murderous intents, adulteries of their hearts, idolatries of covetousness. That's the bad news.

No thought, speech or deed of ours is ever forgotten by God. We might live as model citizens in society without a single crime on our record. But we're all sinners before God. We can't hide from his all knowing gaze.

Our lives are like open books at his great white throne. On that day, those who die in sin will be judged according to their works. And our works will fall short of God's perfect standards will face his wrath in hell.

So what can we do to make sure our sins are not counted against us? We need God's grace because the wages of our sin is death. We need God's blessing because we're under the lost curse. A good follow up reading for this is go to Romans 4 and Paul says in Romans 4:7, 8 Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.

We read this verse regularly in our church as a scriptural assurance of pardon. And this blessing that David talks about, Paul cites. And for that blessing to be ours, we need God's Son. We need Jesus to take our place. We need him to suffer God's wrath and be our substitute.

We need that wonderful Exchange described in 2nd Corinthians 5:21. God the Father made His Son who knew no sin to be sin for us. That we might become the righteousness of God. In him.

We can be credited with God's righteousness. Because Jesus took the blame. He paid the penalty. Having finished his work of redemption on the cross, Christ died. He was buried.

But death could not hold him. So on the third day he rose from the grave. He gave many proofs of his resurrection. For many days he ascended to heaven to sit at the Father's right hand. Someday he'll return to judge all mankind.

This good news of Jesus demands a response from us. All were faced with the same decision as Abram did. Abram had his believe it or not moment. Now it's your turn.

Will you repent and believe in the Gospel? Repenting means you turn from sin and self righteousness. Only believe in Christ to be saved. The righteousness of God is available through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. Romans 3:22 and that's the greatest news.

To be declared innocent before God the judge. You don't have to earn eternal life or deserve it. God saves us by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone.

I Hope that Genesis 15:6 can be your personal life verse. Paul says at the end of Romans 4 about this particular verse. Now, it was not written for his sake alone. Abram's sake alone. That it was imputed to him, but also for us.

It shall be imputed to us who believe in him. Who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. Who was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification.

What a blessing it is to be counted just righteous before God.

I remember about 16 years ago I got into a car accident. Fractured my hip. Pins and screws on my right hip. Now there was a surgery. The recovery medicine told to have no weight bearing on it.

On my right leg as a whole muscle atrophy. Physical therapy. On top of that, there was a busy seminary schedule. All these things were bad enough. Over time I received in mail bills, one after another.

They're so numerous that I started to tie all the envelopes and the bills together in rubber bands. Pretty soon I had these bundles looking like bricks in my room.

And I had no insurance at the time. So I applied for medical assistance. I called a social worker that I met at the hospital. She was working behind the scenes to help me. But I admit that I was nervous at times when she didn't pick up the phone or return my voicemails.

But one day I finally learned that I was approved. Now all of a sudden I had this random complex number. I didn't memorize it, but it was given to me. I could call the billing departments and tell them I was approved for medical assistance. And all of a sudden the account receivables were cleared.

The nasty collection call stopped. I was approved by some higher powers that be so that I was no longer in debt.

That's just a little taste of what it's like to experience imputed righteousness by faith in Jesus. I wasn't alright physically, emotionally or mentally right away. That wasn't the promise my account. But my account was clear.

My problems from a legal and financial point of view no longer mattered. I felt freedom, relief and peace for the first time in over a year. Again, that's just a small taste of what it's like to be justified before God.

So that's the gospel application and illustration for forensic justification. Now let's get to the evidential justification. We'll talk about how Abram's justified at the human court. Evidentially, I'm saying that our fate, if it is true will prove itself to be so over time. We must remember this.

While we need only a small faith to be saved, our faith should not remain small. It should grow over time. If we possess faith that's genuine at its root, there will be fruit like a healthy verdant tree with abundant fruit. We know someone saved by looking at his or her life. That's the point James makes in his letter.

James uses the language of justification like Paul, but he envisions a people's court, not God's court. While Paul speaks of justification before God who saves us by his grace, James speaks of justification before men who judge us by our works. How would I know that so and so's faith is real? It's not empty, it's not fake, that it's better than what the demons profess to believe? Of course God knows whether faith is genuine because he knows all things.

But what about fellow Christians? How would they know that you truly believe?

The answer is that they know by the evidence put forward. As James says in 2:18, show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. James doesn't say I'm saved by faith and works. He's saying, I'll show you a brother or sister in Christ, my faith by my works.

James goes to the life of Abram to illustrate his message. He works his way chronologically backwards from Genesis 22. What happened as Abram or Abraham by that point offered up Isaac in obedience to God? We'll get to that later. That work of obedience proved that what the readers knew already from earlier in Genesis 15:6, Abram believed in God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

I was talking with a Catholic once and I used this example of marriage. How do I know that the decision I made in October 10, 2016 is genuine? That's my wedding anniversary, by the way. It's going to be our 10th this year. Now, how would I approve?

How would I prove to my children that their parents really married back then? They weren't there in 2016, by the way. If you want a really bad dad joke, open up your wedding photo album and ask your kids, hey, kids, why weren't you there at my wedding? Why didn't you come? It's a corny thing, but of course I'm going to do it.

So after that bachelor of do make this point. You know you believe that mom and dad made that decision on that day a decade ago, not only because of this photo evidence. You believe that day is special. October 10, 2016. It means something is genuine because you see us loving each other day by day.

Likewise, Abram's journey of fate does not consist of just one moment. He began a relationship with God, and over time, that friendship has proven to be genuine. His contemporaries knew that from observing him. His descendants knew from reading about him. We know today as well.

Not only was Abram justified at the divine courts, forensically, he's also justified at the human courts. Evidentially, he's proven to be the friend of God. That's the Gospel application of evidential justification. A lot of big words here, but hopefully the illustrations help. So now that we live by faith justified because we believe in the gospel, we can experience joy, freedom, relief.

We can cherish and prize Jesus. We can be satisfied in him. So I pray that our last song will be our anthem of faith. The chorus goes, I rejoice in my Redeemer, greatest treasure, wellspring of my soul and I will trust in him no other. My soul is satisfied in him alone.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for your word.