When you’re going out with someone there comes a day when you say, “You should meet my parents.” It’s scary, because your mum and dad don’t always share your values. What if they embarrass you with cringe factor stories of when you were little? What if they say with something totally inappropriate? What if the generation gap opens up like the Grand Canyon? The first time I met the man who would eventually become my father in law, he was watching TV in his y-fronts and, without so much as acknowledging I was there, asked Kathie to scratch his back for him and bring him a cup of tea. I just knew from that night on that this was the family I just had to marry into.
Let me tell you a little story about a young woman who introduces her fiancé to her parents. After dinner, her dad takes the young man into his study and says, “OK now, tell me what your plans are.” “Well,” he says, “I’m studying theology and I hope to go into pastoral ministry.” So the father says, “Oh, that’s great. And how do you intend to provide for my daughter and establish a stable home for her?” So the guy says, “Well, I’m going to read the Bible, live by faith and just trust that God will provide.” So the dad says, “I see, but how are you going to raise children on an income as precarious as that?” And the young man replies, “Oh that’s cool. God has told me to live by faith. God will provide.” So dad replies, “And your holidays, your car, those little unforeseen expenses that crop up?” And the guy replies again, “I live by faith. God will provide.” A little later his wife asks how it went. “Well,” he says, “he’s a nice lad but he has no work, few prospects, no money and he thinks I’m God!”
Reassurance - Belief - Righteousness
Just to remind you that we’re looking at living by faith. Over the next five weeks we’re going to continue to follow Abraham as he walks with God in both victory and adversity. Tonight, we’ve pressed the fast forward button from chapter 12 to chapter 15, where, following a difficult episode, God speaks to Abram in a vision. And it’s a reassuring word… “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” In other words, I am for you, I am on your side, I am going to protect you and uphold you, come what may, and I am going to be there for you at the end. So don’t be scared, I have got it all in hand.”
How do you think Abram felt, hearing God speak to him like that? All right, let’s put it another way, hands up if you like being encouraged. Raise your hand please if you prefer encouragement from people to indifference or condemnation.
Encouragement, spiritual support, does you good doesn’t it? So why are Christians often so bad at it? Somebody said to me recently that one of the things this church has struggled with down the years is a spirit of criticism. We tend to speak up readily when something isn’t quite right, and say nothing when something is done really well. Don’t get me wrong. We should place a high value on competence and achievement. Jesus did. He set the bar high for his disciples. I want everything we do here to reach for supreme standards of excellence, because it’s for God and he deserves the very best.
But one of my goals here is to discourage nitpicking and promote a culture of encouragement instead. This is one of the reasons why we make space for prophecy in these services. Because prophecy is designed to build up the body of Christ. It is positive in nature. 1 Corinthians 14.3 says, “those who prophesy speak to people for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort” and those are things to commend and nurture.
So God’s word to Abram is positive and faith building. But the response (v2-3) to that reassurance, encouragement and consolation from God is less than enthusiastic. “What can you give me Lord…? I remain childless. As things stand, because you, God, have not yet moved in my life on the child issue, my entire estate is going to my servant Eliezer.” Abram is saying, in effect, “Look, where’s the hard evidence, Lord, to back up what I hear you saying to me about future blessing? I need something a bit more substantial than fine words and big promises. To be honest, Lord, this is taking much longer than I had expected and, frankly, I would like to know when you intend to deliver.” I’d describe Abram’s response here as ‘faith in two minds.’ He is still calling God “Sovereign Lord” (in v2 and v8) but he is asking some pretty hard questions.
Now, some of you have been there, in that place, where you’re trying hard to hold on to God but everything around you is saying “what’s the point?” Most of you, I would guess, have been there. Some of you are probably there now. Well, what Abram says here is what we all feel like saying when we’ve been praying for something for ages and nothing moves. God seems to disappear from view. And when God is slow to answer prayer we start to say to ourselves, after a certain point, “Has the time come for me to accept that this is not going to happen? For whatever reason - either I didn’t hear from God right or I have sinned in some way, or God has some higher purpose in this or whatever; I need to readjust to my new reality that God is not going to come through for me on this one.
Be careful! This is a big test for your heart as it was for Abram’s. I don’t think he allowed himself to become cynical and hard-hearted over this but I do think he struggled with the obvious lack of evidence before him. I want to encourage you to do what he did and articulate to God what you really feel. Speak it out. About a third of the Psalms are basically saying, “Lord – you want to know my honest opinion; life sucks! This stinks. And by the way, where are you, Lord? Hello! I need to hear you again. I can’t go on if it’s going to stay like this. I need something more. Refresh me, please. Open my eyes and show me your salvation.” I think this is basically where Abram is at here. “Lord, I just need a bit more, please.”
So many times in prayer ministry, when I have asked for prayer; I’ll say, “Pray for me, I’m struggling with obedience to God on a particular issue.” “Pray for me, I’m low.” “Pray for me, I’m finding it hard to pray at the moment.” Pray for me, I need to forgive someone.” And so often, when I have humbled myself and asked for prayer God has spoken into my life and changed my perspective. It’s what happens for Abram here. At the end of his honest statement of where he is with his faith and his simple request for more (“What can you give me Lord…?”) God gives him a visual aid. He leads him out of his tent and draws his attention to the night sky. “Look at those stars! How many do you think there are? See if you can count them.” If Abram had managed to tot up all the stars visible with the naked eye from the earth he would have counted about 6,000. There are, in fact, about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way alone and there may be as many as 200 billion similar galaxies in the observable universe.
And God says, (v5) “That’s what your family is going to be like.” That’s a lot of kids! For a man facing childlessness, talk about encouragement… and v6 says this; “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” This is the key to the whole passage, indeed this is one of the most important sentences in the whole Old Testament revelation of God. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that no other verse in the entire Old Testament is as directly relevant to you tonight as this one.
In Romans 4 the Apostle Paul says that these words, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness” were written for us. Those are his exact words. This verse is the key to questions like “How can I know God?” and “how can I please God?” This short verse unlocks the mystery of how an infinitely great and holy God accept me and declare me not guilty even if I am the worst of sinners.
Listen carefully now, this is essential truth: Because you hold on to Christ as your only hope, because you believe him and take him at his word, because you trust him to forgive your past, to nourish your present and to guarantee your future, God looks at you and sees through the darkness of your heart, through your fears and failures and sees only the awesome, eternal, unblemished righteousness of Christ.
That’s the key to this passage and if you recall nothing else tonight remember this; that God is for you and, on the basis of Jesus’ death and resurrection, your faith in him fixes his favour and approval upon you forever.
Who Are These Promises For?
On every Alpha course I have been involved in, it seems that someone has asked about religious conflict and someone else has asked why the God of the Old Testament is so vengeful and violent. And it just so happens that Genesis 15 gives some important insights into both questions.
The first objection, “Why is religion so often the cause of war and conflict?” is a major obstacle for some people considering the claims of God’s word. In v18-21 God makes a covenant with Abram (that’s what the cutting up of the animals is all about) and God says he is going to give all this land to Abram’s descendants forever.
There’s a huge problem here, isn’t there? Most Jews say that this promise concerns every Jewish person alive today, who has ever lived before and who will live in the future. They will say this: “We alone are the direct fulfilment of this promise. It’s about Israel and the promise of the land is literal, physical and permanent. It’s ours!” Then most Arabs look at v5 and say, “No! It must refer to the Arab people past, present and future, who descend physically from Abraham, through his eldest son Ishmael. So the land is ours. So get off it now!” And that is the nub of the conflict between Jews and Arabs which is ongoing and shows no signs of abating. “The land is ours, because God promised it to Abraham and his descendents.”
So what do we say, as Christians? We take a different approach entirely. “According to the New Testament, if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are a real child of Abraham because he is the father of all who believe. For example, Romans 4.16-17 says, (the Message paraphrase) “Abraham is father of us all… He is our faith father. We call Abraham ‘father’ not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody.”
So when God says to Abram, (in v5) “Look up at the heavens and count the stars, so shall your offspring be,” he’s talking about us.
So what about the land, promised in v18? Who is this promise addressed to; the Jews, the Arabs or to… us? We need to be really clear in our thinking here. How do we read these promises as Christians?
With the coming of Christ everything changed because he is the ‘yes’ to, and the guarantee of, all the promises God made to Israel. He is their long expected Messiah. Jews who reject Jesus as their Messiah and Saviour forfeit the promises God made to them as Jews. It’s all about Jesus. Any Jew who rejects Christ rejects God, but Jews who acknowledge him as true and Lord of their lives are made right with God. Conversely, Gentiles who accept Jesus of Nazareth as their Jewish Messiah and Saviour become heirs of all the promises of the Old Covenant.
For example, read Matthew 8:10-12. Here, a Roman soldier asks Jesus to heal his servant. Moved by this Gentile’s simple faith Jesus says, ‘Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
That means that Jews tragically lose their inheritance if they reject faith in Jesus as the Messiah. That means that Gentiles become true Jews by faith in the Messiah, Jesus. Any Jew who does not have faith in Jesus will be cast into outer darkness, but any Gentile who does have faith in Jesus will inherit Abraham’s promise in the age to come. Jesus said it.
All that fighting over land; it’s all tragically short sighted. It’s so not the point. It’s like two beggars fighting over a cherry when God says you could have the whole cake. “All things are yours in Christ” (1 Corinthians 3.21). Why fight over a piece of land the size of Wales when “the meek shall inherit the whole earth?” (Matthew 5.5).
It’s tragic; all those wars, all that bloodshed, all that trouble in the Middle-East – all because Jew and Arab alike have refused Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
Why All That Smiting?
The second objection, “Why does the God of the Old Testament seem so vengeful and violent?” is also a major obstacle for enquirers to find faith. The conquest of Canaan under Joshua makes sobering reading. It’s wholesale destruction of a nation and people. It’s heavy. And the explanation for it is found here in v13-16.
“The Lord said to (Abram), ‘Know for certain that for four hundred 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.”
In other words, what these verses say is this; God waited 400 years, and allowed his own people to be ill-treated in Egypt for that length of time, until the wickedness and evil and vice of the inhabitants of Canaan had got so bad that there was no way back.
What was it about the Amorites that made their obliteration from the face of the earth so justified and necessary? Theirs was a foul and degrading society. Their worship cults were little more than sadistic orgies. We know that child sacrifice was widely practiced. Such was the scale and extent of their perversions that sexually transmitted diseases would have been endemic and any intermarriage would have been catastrophic. They were a barbaric, sick and infectious nation. But God waited patiently for four centuries, giving them time to change. They didn’t. And at the end of that time, when the sin of the Amorites had reached its full measure, God said, “Enough.”
The conquest of Canaan under Joshua is, therefore, as much an expression of God’s extraordinary patience as it is of his fearsome wrath. To allow his own treasured people, the apple of his eye, to remain bound in slavery for all that time - in order to give the Amorites time to repent - gives a whole new perspective on things.
Ending
I think I want to finish on this uncomfortable note - and it’s one you don’t hear very much in churches these days, possibly because of fear that people will take offence.
God’s anger against sin is like a pan of milk on a stove. It simmers for a long time, because he is slow to anger and abounding in love, but there comes a day when his patience runs out and he is resolved to punish evil and it’s not pretty. There is no way back from hell. Those who reject Jesus Christ, who refuse the cross and who say ‘no’ to the gospel will suffer weeping and torment and anguish and regret forever. Since they have rejected the glory of God, which is infinitely valuable, their forfeit of eternal pleasure will be infinitely tragic.
However, when you (like Abram) simply believed God, in his great mercy, in his incredible kindness, he credited it to you as righteousness.
No power of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from his hand;
Till he returns or calls me home -
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 1st March 2009
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