Brothers and sisters, how sure are you of your salvation through Jesus Christ? I wouldn't ask the question, of course, if I didn't think it was important, since I ask it at the risk of casting you, perhaps unnecessarily, upon some bed of doubt. But how sure are you? I hope you are sure. I want you to be sure. This is one of the goals of a pastor's ministry, to lead the people of God to a faith that is sure, a faith that has the assurance of salvation in Jesus Christ. But if you are not sure, perhaps you'll allow me a bit of analysis into your soul. Doctors are allowed, even expected, to analyze their patients. And since pastors have been called doctors of the soul, perhaps you'll let me have some analysis. If you are not sure of your salvation from sin, then the reasons might be several. First, maybe it's just not an issue for you. whether you are saved or not, because you have not truly come to that point of conviction for sin that would move you to look to Christ in faith. So for you, if this is you, then then you are not prompted by a a sense of conviction for sin in order to look for an equal conviction of salvation. You don't doubt your salvation simply because you don't doubt your own righteousness before a holy God. So you lack assurance because instead you have presumption, presumption of innocence and righteousness even as you stand condemned before a holy God. And the reason for this state of apathy, and I think that's really what it is, apathy, is that you just don't care enough about whether you are saved in order to question whether you are saved. Because you do not know God in all His holiness. So to know yourself as a sinner and in need of Christ and His salvation. Second, if you lack assurance, maybe it's because you are still too focused on yourself rather than on Christ. You see your sin every day. In other words, you see the new sins that you commit against God each day. Or even more, you are so focused on your past sins that the charge of sin against you is so loud and it's so reverberating, it's so intense that it drowns out the gospel for you. You can't hear the promise of God that everyone who calls on the name of Christ will be saved. And so you're left thinking, if only, if only I could straighten up and fly right, then God would forgive me. If only, if only I could somehow qualify myself for forgiveness, well, then I would be forgiven. And I would be sure that I am forgiven and would find peace and joy and hope in Christ as my Savior. But third, a third reason why you might lack assurance is that you don't have the full gospel in your understanding and faith. You accept that you're forgiven that time you stole something, those times you lied to your parents, that time you lusted after a woman who was not your wife, all that grumbling and gossiping you've done throughout your life. You accept that you're forgiven. But you but you haven't come to the conviction that you that you are not only forgiven of past sins, but you are righteous in the sight of God from the point of faith and forever after. So your conviction is that you're forgiven of the past, but you still have work left to do to be saved, so you think. If this is you, then it actually makes perfect sense that you lack assurance. You should lack assurance because who knows whether you're going to make it or not. You certainly don't know. Nobody else knows. But you don't know because you think that righteousness is not yet yours. And who knows when or if you'll ever get there. Well, if any of these analyses of the lack of assurance are true of you, then then this sermon is for you, because it even starts with an Abraham who is lacking assurance. Maybe you think you're a failure because you lack assurance. Well, perhaps that's true. You are failing at assurance, but that doesn't mean that your faith has failed or that assurance can't yet be yours. but you'll need to see that you are no different than Abraham. This morning, it's the doubt and assurance of Abraham. We've heard God's call of Abraham, we've seen the response of Abraham, the fall and failure of Abraham, the repentance of Abraham, the ferocious faith of Abraham, and yet we have this yet to hear, the doubt and the assurance of Abraham. And it begins with a repeated promise. First point, Genesis 15 begins with a report that we should be familiar with by now. Genesis 15, verse one says, After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram. This time we're specifically told in a vision. And he said, Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, your reward will be very great. In this one statement, God is renewing His promises to Abraham. Remember what God has already said to Abraham in Genesis 12, in Genesis 13, God spoke to Abraham and made grand and glorious promises to him. God had said, Abraham, you are my favorite person on all the earth. It's my paraphrase, but I think that's pretty close. And I am going to bless you. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to prosper you. I'm going to give you a land. I'm going to give you many descendants after you to possess the land. Well, did God then need to repeat his promises to Abraham? In Genesis 15. And notice the order of things here, it wasn't the case that Abraham cried out to God in doubt so that God said, believe and be patient. I have made my promise to you and my promise is good now or no. Instead, God knew where Abraham was in his faith. By the way, he knows where you are in your faith, too. But God knew where where Abraham was in his faith. God knew that Abraham was doubting. God said, fear not, Abram. I am your shield, your reward will be very great. Can we hear that this is simply a summary repetition of all that God had already promised to Abraham? And it was because Abraham was doubting. Abraham standing in covenant relationship with God, Abraham, on the basis of his faith, answered God and confessed his doubt. He said, Oh, Lord God, what will you give me for I continue childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. In other words, as as Abram went on to say, behold, you have given me no offspring, a member of my household. will be my heir that is a servant and not a son. God had promised him many descendants and he had not one. God had promised him that his descendants would possess the land promised to him. And yet he had no descendants. He had no heir. He had not even a single child by way of his wife, Sarah. Well, I trust that you can identify with Abraham. God has promised us in Christ forgiveness. And yet we continue under the conviction of sin and the sense of condemnation by God. God has promised us salvation, even a place in his new heaven and earth. And yet we continue to struggle in this life. If you lack assurance, well, then welcome to the Christian life. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see, says Hebrews 11, verse one. But how good are we at hoping for a whole lifetime? Who hopes for what he already sees, asked the Apostle Paul, but we wait for it patiently. But do we? Do we wait for it patiently? Paul is calling us to have faith, but how quickly our faith fails us. so that we lack assurance despite the gracious promises of a faithful God. So the thing to see here in Genesis 15 is that God knew where Abraham was in his faith. Why should God have to come back to Abraham over and over and over again to repeat his promises? Genesis 12, Genesis 13, Genesis 15, and later we'll see it again in Genesis 17. Why would God have to repeat His promises to Abraham? The answer is that He shouldn't have to repeat His promises. He said it and so it was. And do you remember God said, let there be light and there was light. And so if God said, Abraham, you are my favorite in all the earth and you are blessed, well, it is that that should be enough. But it wasn't enough, was it for Abraham? Abraham was like you and he was like me. He was certainly a man of faith, but he was also a man of doubt. And so God, in his condescension and mercy, appears to Abraham in a vision and repeats to him the promises that he had already made to Abraham. We'll say more about the doubt of Abraham in the next point, but for now, we need to understand this. This is why we need to be in church each Lord's day. Because each Lord's day, we come to hear the gospel again. We need to come and hear the promises of God in Christ again. And it's just like Abraham that God doesn't wait for us to cry out to him in our doubt. God just knows what we need. And this raises the point again, who is worship for? Is God lonely that he wants us to come and spend time with him? Is God starting to feel kind of bad about himself so that we need to come and prop up his self-esteem? Is God in need of anything from us? Does he need our praise of him when he is surrounded by myriads of angels? who day and night never cease to say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. No, it's we who need to worship God because in worshiping God, we hear again the promises of God and we are impressed again with the character of God as gracious and as patient and as faithful to us and willing to love us when we are so terribly unlovable. Repetition is the way of God. Repetition is the stuff of God's Word. So don't expect some new secret meaning to a passage whenever you spend time in God's Word. Don't expect the preacher to give you some stunningly new insight every Lord's Day. The point instead is repetition for the sake of renewal. And let us not play the arrogant fool who says to God, I don't need the blessing that you have commanded me to receive. Those who say, I need something else more than I need church, or I need that activity or this activity, it's more important than sitting under the preaching of God's word. Well, they are those who put themselves and their wisdom above God and His wisdom. We need the repetition. We need each week, perhaps even every day, we need to hear the promises, the promises, the promises, the promises of God in Jesus Christ. So the second point is the doubt of Abraham. And I think this deserves to be a point all by itself, because doubt is so much a part of our faith. And I understand that sounds like a contradiction, that doubt is so much part of our faith. But think about it. If you don't have faith, then you can't have doubt. It's just like we said in the beginning, that if you don't have faith to start with, then it's possible that it's not the lack of assurance that you're feeling, it's actually the matter of presumption. And in the same way, if you don't have faith, then you can't possibly have doubt. Doubt presumes the presence of faith in the heart. So here's a great comfort. If we are lacking assurance, if we have doubts, then it's very possible that what we're dealing with is simply the weakness of our faith. But if your faith is weak, then at least you have faith. It's just a weak faith. It's the person who has no faith who ought to be concerned. But the person who has no faith is not concerned about faith nor about doubt. So if you have doubts, then it shows that you have faith, only that your faith is weak. We see the doubt of Abraham in verse two, after God had again repeated his promises to Abraham, yet Abraham responded, oh Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. And in verse eight, Abraham responds, oh Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? Have you ever had that experience, the experience of doubt? If you have, then it probably wasn't so different than it was for Abraham. The promise of the gospel is that the meek shall inherit the earth. And yet what do we see? The earth belongs, at least for now, to all kinds of people who, at best, don't seem to care about God, at worst, who despise God and use their money to oppose righteousness and true justice while we struggle to stay faithful to Christ and perhaps to make ends meet. And so we might say, really, the earth is promised to me? The riches of heaven are mine? Well, that's really nice of you to say, Jesus, but what real hope do I have that I will receive what you have promised? A couple of sermons ago, we dealt with the great failure and sin of Abraham as he gave up his wife to another man. And we said at that time, should we go easy on Abraham? Should we make excuses for him? We might figure that when you're afraid for your very life, like Abraham was, well, you're more given to such extreme sin. But we decided then what we need really to decide now, that by way of the promises of God, Abraham's behavior was despicable. Well, now again, maybe we wouldn't use the word despicable to describe Abraham's doubt here, and yet it's still Remarkably inappropriate. That's maybe the nicest word we could use. It's inappropriate. It's markedly inappropriate, even wrong, and an offense to God for Abraham to say, in essence, yes, but in response to God's promises. Okay, Lord, I hear you, but how can I be sure? basically how he answered God, and he even did it twice in this one exchange between God and Abraham. Also remember that this is now the third time that God has revealed himself to Abraham in order to make promises to him. Shall we excuse Abraham? Well, we can certainly understand him, but we shouldn't lose sight of what we might call the offense of doubt. All you have to do is think about an occasion when you might make a promise. Imagine a man and a woman getting married. The woman says in her vows, I promise to be faithful to you. But the man stops the pastor in the middle of the ceremony and says, wait a minute, let's just stop and consider what she just said. How can she prove that to me? Pastor, before you pronounce us husband and wife, how can I be sure that this woman will be faithful to me? Or imagine a child saying to his parent, you promised, but how do I really know that you're actually going to do it? Prove it, mom, prove it. Dad, the parent would say, well, nevermind, and go to your room. And in the case of a marriage ceremony, we might imagine, well, that's the end of the ceremony right there. Who's gonna put up with that, right? A promise is a promise. Isn't that really all we can expect from each other as human beings? But here is Abraham, not dealing with his wife, not dealing with even one of his servants. Here is Abraham dealing with God and his promises to him. And yet here is Abraham saying, Prove it to me. Here really is the heinous nature of doubt. And for some reason, we can recognize it in others like we recognize it in the Pharisees. For example, in John 11, Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever believes in me shall never die. That's a promise to you and to me that should really make us invincible in our faith. It's a promise from Jesus that ought to make us the most generous, the most sacrificial, the most courageous people on the face of the earth. And yet, just like God's dealing with Abraham, Jesus didn't just make the promise, he backed it up. He proved it by raising Lazarus from the dead in the very next moment. But what did the Pharisees do? Not only did they set out at that point to kill Jesus, but to kill Lazarus too. Both the promise and the proof they were seeking to erase. And yet, do we believe it? Are we the most generous, the most sacrificial, the most courageous people on the face of the earth? No, we we doubt the promise so much. So as to live for ourselves, our needs above the needs of others, our feelings hurt rather than asking what we can do for others. On the basis of God's promises to us in Christ, we ought to say, who cares what the world thinks of me? Who cares what I have or don't have in this life? What does it finally matter even whether I live or die? I have Christ. I have salvation. And I have the promise of eternal life. And so we come to this last point, the righteousness of faith. And I might start by admitting that this point might be unexpected. If the second point was the doubt of Abraham, why isn't the next point the assurance of Abraham? Well, it is. The next and last point is the assurance of Abraham, but that assurance comes by way of the righteousness of faith. In other words, we really ought to ask, Why do we hear at this particular point that he believed the Lord and God counted to Abraham the righteousness of faith in verse six? Doesn't it seem to sort of come out of nowhere? But what the Apostle Paul later teaches in Romans four is that here is the gospel, the good news of salvation already in Genesis 15. The point you see is not just a temporary promised land, even when temporary is defined by hundreds and even thousands of years. The point instead is God entering into a covenant relationship with Abraham and promising him not just earthly blessings, but heavenly ones as well. Once again, we see that we have much in common with Abraham. Once again, we see why Abraham is not just Abraham, but father Abraham. The apostle Paul calls him the father of all who believe, which means that Abraham was saved by the same plan of salvation as you and me, so that Abraham's faith can serve as a model and example of the faith that we are called to have. And Abraham's doubt can give us a kind of commiseration with him. Are we really that different from Abraham? God made grand and glorious promises to him and God has made grand and glorious promises to us. And yet Abraham was called to faith. He was called to be sure of what he had been promised and certain of what he did not yet see. And isn't that us as well? According to Hebrews 11 verse one, we are called to faith. We are called to be sure of what God in Christ has promised us and to be certain of what we as yet do not see. But here's where assurance comes from, from knowing that even now, not later, but even now we are righteous by faith in God. Even now, we are credited with the perfect obedience of Christ for us. Even now, we are counted worthy. As we are clothed by God in the righteousness of Christ, so it might seem strange to us that suddenly the gospel pops up here in the Old Testament. The righteousness of faith suddenly, it would seem to us, is taught in Genesis 15. But we need to see that it's not sudden. And it's not disconnected. It's perfectly connected. This was what Abraham was stressing about. God, you have promised to bless me, but I haven't yet received what you have promised me. Even more, I'm a sinner. Every day that goes by, every moment in some days, I prove myself more and more unworthy of your blessing. You have promised me blessing, but when it finally comes, how am I to deserve it? Every day I show myself unworthy. Every day I prove that I have not and cannot earn it. And so every day I'm left in doubt whether you will really give what you've promised to me, not so much because you're unfaithful, but because I am unfaithful. And so how did God respond to Abraham's doubt? Did God say, well, how dare you doubt me? No, God responded to Abraham's doubt by counting righteousness to him. God knew, better than Abraham knew, his own heart of doubt. God knew that Abraham lacked assurance and God knew that Abraham was a sinner and was not worthy. And so God knew why Abraham lacked assurance, because Abraham knew that he was not worthy of the blessing promised him, so that with each passing day, Abraham knew it all the more. Isn't this us? I'm not worthy. I can't earn it. It becomes all the more clear the longer I live. I can't earn it. How will it ever be mine? And we travel through the same path of life. We have the promises of the gospel. Heaven has promised us, not held out to us as a possibility if we're good enough, but it's promised to us. The meek shall inherit the earth, Jesus promised. But every day we prove ourselves unworthy. And so we miss out on assurance, whether by the conviction of specific sins or by some general conviction. We know that we are not worthy of heaven. so that we miss out on assurance. But why do we miss out? Back to the beginning. First, because we miss out on assurance, maybe because we presume upon the blessing of God. We grow impatient only because God hasn't given us yet what we think we deserve. We presume our own righteousness. Why shouldn't God bless me with heaven? But we fail to see that what we actually deserve is hell. While we expect more blessing, we actually deserve less. We even deserve the removal of all blessing, and that's what hell is. So we presume so that it's not so much a lack of assurance that we feel, but the presumption of unbelief. Or we miss out on assurance because we are still so focused on ourselves, just as it would seem Abraham was doing. Why should it be told at this point that God counted to Abraham the righteousness of faith? We are left to understand that Abraham's doubt was due to his growing conviction day by day, that he was unworthy, that he wasn't growing any more worthy, but only less with each passing day. And so God counted to him the righteousness of faith. Was it because Abraham's faith was so strong and worthy? No, his faith was weak. In fact, he again cried out to God in doubt. And yet God counted to him the righteousness of faith, even a weak faith. God assured Abraham that he was OK. That he was righteous. Not by his own obedience. Gave his wife to another man. But God was assuring him that he was righteous by way of his own grace to him in Jesus Christ. And so where does this assurance come from for us? It comes from the doctrine of double imputation. Our sin has been counted to Christ so that he got the credit for our sin. He suffered hell and died in our place. That's the cross. And and the word and here is is never so important as the word and is never so important as it is here and. His righteousness is credited to us. And not later, not when we have managed to deserve it, but by faith and by faith alone. So that assurance comes from knowing that we are not only forgiven. Of all past sins, but from knowing that God counts righteousness to us. God gives us the credit of Christ's perfect obedience. His perfect obedience on our behalf. God imputes to us the worthiness of Christ. And unless we get it, unless we understand God's plan of salvation, we are likely always to struggle to find assurance, and perhaps even to live in the presumption of unbelief. So brothers and sisters, trust in Christ, and trust fully in Christ, not so much with more faith of your own doing, but with a better God given understanding of the gospel. Theology matters because it's what the Bible teaches. And be assured, be joyfully assured that you are going to heaven because your sin went to Christ on the cross and because his righteousness is counted to you as you trust him as your Savior. Amen. Let's pray together. We do thank you, O God, gracious and loving as you are, for the good news, the full good news of Jesus Christ that you gave Him to take our sin And you also gave him to provide us with the credit of his perfect obedience. We thank you for this full and free and final salvation. So grant us the faith to receive it and to rejoice in it and to enjoy a great and wonderful assurance. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.