Let me say this. Anytime you're listening to a speaker you don't know, if you're like me, a little bit your hackles go up because you've got to put your radar up. You go, who is this guy? I mean, he's a Baptist, but he's wearing shorts and not a tie. What version of the Bible is he using? Does he believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father or the Father and the Son? And if he believes one and not the other, can we still be friends with him? Here's the thing that's the most important thing that I would say to you guys. Anytime, anytime you're going to listen to anybody who stands in front of a podium, whether it's at your church or whether it's at a big huge conference with 10,000 people present, Your question is not, what's this person's reputation? How eloquent are they? The question is always, is this based on the word of God? Does this person speak with authority? And so what I want to invite you to do, if you brought your Bibles with you, we're going to open up to Genesis chapter 15. Genesis chapter 15. What I'm going to do over the four sessions that have been given to me, and I'm going to try to keep this concise, is I want to talk to you about four patriarchs. We think of three patriarchs, and we're right. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. We're also going to touch on this weekend Judah, because the line goes through Judah. The message you don't get is Joseph. You'll have to find that one online if you're interested. Now, of course, Abraham especially is enormous. We could cover all kinds of material, but I want to focus in on what I think is a particularly significant moment in Abraham's life. So I'm just going to read to you this text, and then we're going to spend a few minutes looking at it together. Genesis chapter 15 says this, after these things, you say, well, after what things? Well, after Abraham and his men, or Abram and his men, went out and slew Cedolamer and the four kings who were with him and rescued Lot and all of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and brought them back, after those things, after he'd met Melchizedek, king of Salem, after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram, I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, O Lord, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus? And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, this man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, look toward heaven and number the stars if you are able to number them. Then he said, so shall your offspring be. And he believed God, and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness. And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But he said, O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? He said to him, bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other, but he did not cut the birds in half. And when the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. And as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterwards they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age, and they shall come back here in the fourth generation for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete." When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pod and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, to your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. It's the end of the passage. There's no mosquito bites. All right, I had to add that one in there. Let's pray, and then we'll get into the text. Lord, thank you for these men. Thank you for the safety we've had traveling to this place. Lord, we pray that this would be a time of rest and restoration and enjoyment together, that new friendships and relationships might be made between various men from various congregations. Lord, we thank you for our church's father, and we pray for them, Lord, as they will meet with us here, Lord, that they would be well led this week. And Father, we pray particularly tonight and throughout this time, Lord, that you might meet with us in a very special way. Lord, that your word would live before us, Father, that you might speak to our hearts. And Lord, show us that this is not simply to increase our knowledge, but Lord, to increase our love for you and our walk with you to make it right. Lord, we ask these things now in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. The vision that came to Abram came in the middle of the night. If you read the text carefully, you'll discover this is a vision that stretches out over two days. There's vision, and then action, and then a greater vision that comes. It comes in the middle of the night, and it's not like Abraham, at least according to the text, heard from God or saw visions of God all the time. There was a vision that had come to Abram while he was still living in the great moon city of Ur amongst the Chaldeans. Chaldeans were the ancient wise men. They were half astrologers, half astronomers. Astronomy is the thing that you could study and it wouldn't be a problem. Astrology is the thing you probably shouldn't dabble with. Astronomy is the looking at the heavens and deciding where the constellations will be tomorrow and why this happens to be the longest day of the summer because this is summer solstice. That's astronomy, the knowing of the heavens. But they mingled in there this astrology, this superstitious belief that when such and such a star is over here it means good things for our armies so we should sally forth and smite the Persians. So, he had grown up amongst Ur of the Chaldeans, amongst a moon-worshipping people in the moon city of Ur, and it was there, ten years earlier, when he was a spring chicken of 75, that God said to this man, Abram, whose name means father of many, who had no children, go to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and through you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. And Abram went. And the story carries on there. His nephew Lot went with him. He gives Lot his choice of land. Lot chooses the better land by Sodom and Gomorrah. And again, God speaks to him. And he says, lift up your head, Abram. Look all through all that your eye sees. This I give to you. But this vision comes in the middle of the night. For all we know, the sword that he had used to slay Cato Larimer and the four kings was still sitting there, just recently polished with a little bit of oil. There might still be blood that he's wiping off his sandal straps from that battle. Just recently he has given a tenth of all he has to Melchizedek, king of Salem, and the king of Sodom has offered him a huge reward, and he has said, I won't take a single shoelace. Go back to chapter 14, you'll see it. He says, not one leather thong from Sodom would I take, lest you say I made Abraham rich. And the very next thing we hear God say to him is, Abram, Abram, fear not, I am your shield, I am your very great reward. And twice we hear a complaint from Abram. And neither one of these complaints is a sinful complaint because doubt is not the opposite of faith. Okay, if you want to take one thing away from tonight, understand this. Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Sometimes, men, we get this feeling that says, I have questions, or I have uncertainties, or I have doubts, and if I have doubts about things, that means that I lack faith. And yes, to a certain extent, it does mean that I lack faith, but doubt is not the opposite of faith. Unbelief is the opposite of faith. And Abram is not disbelieving God when he says, God, what will you give me? God says, I'm your shield, your very great reward. Your reward will be very great. He says, I'm 85 years old. I mean, how much stuff do I need? I have no descendant. Eliezer, my chief steward, the head of my servants, he's going to be my heir and inherit everything. It's a complaint that Abram makes. And the first thing we see is the Lord says, and this is how we know the vision comes in the middle of the night, Abram, go outside. Abram goes outside and says, Abram, look up at the stars. He says, number the stars. If you can number them, Abram, so shall your offspring be. Your own son will be your heir. And the text is here in verse 6. We're going to camp here for a second. Abram believed God. Abram believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness. There's some technical words in there. It does not say Abram believed God and Abram's faith earned him good standing with God. That's not the word that's used. It's Abram believed God. And God credited to his account righteousness. God gives him righteousness. God declares him righteous. And he does that not because Abram deserved it or earned it or won it or paid for it by believing, but because God gave it as a gift. This is grace that is given to Abram. So here's the question. We're going to go to Romans chapter 3 for a moment. Romans chapter 3 verse 21 because the Apostle Paul significantly takes up this part of the incident. And here's the question. Hey, this is the first place where we might get in a great big fight afterwards, okay? How are the Old Testament saints saved? How is Abraham saved? How is Isaac saved? How is Jacob saved? How is Moses saved? Or Aaron saved? Or David saved? Or we could keep on going with these names, right? How are they saved? Now, here's the first, this is the question that I get coming back from Sunday school kids, but not my Sunday school kids. The Old Testament saints are saved by keeping the law. And you say, that's not right. That's not right. They are not saved by keeping the law. Abraham can't keep the law because he doesn't have a law to keep. That law that God is going to give to Moses, that's half a millennium in the future. Well, he must be saved by circumcision then. No, that's not right. Because Abraham believes God. He's not circumcised yet. That's still two or three years in the future. So Paul is going to take this up and he's going to make the case that Abraham is saved the same way that you and I are saved. Abraham is saved by faith. By faith in what? By faith in the promise of God. The gift of God. We are saved If we are saved, we are saved by faith in the grace of God through the person of Jesus Christ, what He did on the cross. Now listen, don't take my word for it. Just because I've got a big voice and a big beard and I'm standing in the front, don't believe me just because I say so. Believe it because you see it in the text. Here it is. Romans chapter 3 verse 21. We're going to just read a little bit of text for a moment and then we'll get back to the tail end of what I want to show you. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested, that means to be made evident or to be revealed, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith." Listen, if I stop on all of these, I'll preach for three hours. Propitiation is a big word. Propitiation is the easiest way to think about it. Propitiation, that is the thing that takes the hammer's blow. When the hammer is about to strike and you put something in to propitiate it, it hits that instead and the thing that it was aimed at is spared. God has put forth Jesus Christ as the propitiation for our sin. He is the one that takes the blow that my sin deserved. Now listen to this, this is really important. This was to show God's righteousness. because in his divine forbearance, that's a word like patience, he had passed over former sins. Paul's looking backwards at Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He said those guys were sinners, and their sin deserves penalty, and the penalty is condemnation, and the condemnation leads to hell, and God has passed over their sin in his forbearance. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who is faith in Jesus. Okay, we're going to talk about that little piece right there is going to be how we end our message today with the end of this passage in Genesis 15. Let's keep going for a moment longer in Romans 3 and 4. What becomes of boasting? We're men. We have a tendency to boast. That tends to be something that we like. We are prideful creatures. We like to say, I did it! Look how strong I am. Look how big I am. Look how capable I am. Look how able I am. I didn't need help. I didn't need Jesus. I did it all by myself. My own righteousness. What becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law. What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he's got something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. Pause there for a moment. How many people here have a job? Whew, bunch of unemployed guys. Sorry, not making fun. I know it's a tough economy, but hey, you've got a job. If you've ever had a job, you go to work, and at the end of your shift, at the end of your pay period, at the end of the time that you've agreed to work for, the boss comes up to you and hands you a check, and you look at it, and you don't go, well, thanks for the gift. That's fantastic. I just think it's wonderful that you appreciate me so much that you just gave me all this money. You don't go that way. In fact, you look at it, and you say, I think you got the hours wrong. There's too much going to CPP and EI. Where'd all my taxes go? I mean, you go, I earned that. Right? I mean, to this extent that if you work for something, the person you work for owes it to you so that they're in your debt. If I go to work for my dad, and I do sometimes, and at the end of my work, he owes me something. He is in my debt because I have given him a service and he has agreed to pay me money for that service. And so I have the right to stand before him and say, no, you owe me. And if you don't pay me, I have been shown injustice. So here's the case. If Abraham works, or if any of the Old Testament saints works for their salvation, earns their salvation by keeping the law, and that's how they're justified, then they have the right to stand before God and say, God, you owe me salvation because we have an agreement here and I've kept the whole law. And Paul goes on in great detail to say it is impossible that anybody should ever keep the whole law and therefore be justified that way. There has to be another way. So he says, now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due, and to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted to him as righteousness. Paul is at great pains here to make this clear, and I'm at great pains right at the beginning to say to you, you cannot be justified by works. I don't know three quarters of you and three quarters of you don't know me. And I never presume when I stand in front of a body of people, not my own congregation and certainly not this congregation, Every single person here fully understands the gospel. So let me make it clear to you, if you think that at the end there's a great scale in the heavens and God is going to put all your good works on one side and all your wicked works on the other and see which one tips it down, you're sorely mistaken because all of your righteous deeds are like filthy rags before God. They're always, always flawed and there's nothing that you can do to justify yourself and so you need a Savior and Jesus Christ is that Savior. Paul is at great pains to say to the Jewish people who will read this book of Romans You cannot be saved by your works. You can't be saved by keeping the law You cannot stand before God and say I have won something from you. I've merited it. No you can't You must stand before God and say I am a desperate sinner in need of grace. Please save me In order to justify Abraham on faith and In order to justify all of the Old Testament saints on faith, in order to justify anyone on faith, God has to do what would seem to be impossible for a righteous and just judge to do. God has got to pass over our sin. He's got to look at the sin and say, Philip is a sinner. Phil, I don't know you super well, but I know you well enough to think you're going to nod your head. Are you a sinner? You've done things that if God saw those, you'd say, yeah, I'm guilty. I'm picking on you guys. I'm not a pastor. Let's go to the pastor. Josh, you're a sinner. God would be perfectly right to damn your soul for the sins that you have done. I'm not picking on Josh because you know this. If we were to put a screen up here and project on that screen all of the most evil, wicked, terrible things that you have ever done, you would cover your face with shame and leave this building and never come back. I hate the fact that anybody saw that. God saw it all. You cannot be justified on the basis of your work. If God is going to justify, He has to pass over the sin. How does it just God pass over sin? You probably know the answer, but I'm going to show it to you in Genesis 15, the gospel according to the Old Testament. Let's go back there for a moment. Chapter 15, verse 17. Chapter 15 verse 7, I'm sorry, verse 7. But we're going to move through this pretty quickly. God again speaks, he says, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But he said, O Lord, how am I to know I shall possess it? And so he said to me, bring me a heifer three years old, and a female goat three years old, and a ram three years old, and a turtle dove, and a young pigeon, and But he doesn't tell him what to do with it. But here's the interesting thing. Abraham goes and gets those things and he cuts the three bigger ones in half and spreads them out and he kills the other two. How does he know what to do? God didn't tell him what to do. Why is he doing this? Do you know why Abraham knows what to do here? It's because this is a covenant. And he lives in a culture where they cut covenants all the time. This is how a covenant works. A covenant is an agreement that is bound together in blood. This culture that we live in, this is a pansy culture. You want to sell your house, you know, there's lawyers that are involved, and you sign on the dotted line, and that signature says, if I don't keep my part of the agreement, bad legal things will happen to me, because I put my name, it wasn't just my word, it was my signature here, I read all the legal documents, I found myself. The ancient culture, this is how they did it. A king would come down and he would say to the lesser party, I am willing to give to you protection and certain benefits that you don't currently have. If an army comes against you, my army will come out and fight on your behalf. If famine comes upon you, my granaries will be open to you. I'm willing to make this agreement to you and in response, you are going to be loyal to me and I'm going to be your sovereign or your king. And we're now going to cut the covenant, and here's how the covenant works. We actually see this played out in Jeremiah 34. You can go there if you want, but I'll just read it to you real quick here. Jeremiah chapter 34, verse 17, therefore thus says the Lord, you have not obeyed me. by proclaiming liberty everyone to his brother and to his neighbor. Behold, I proclaim to you liberty to the sword, to pestilence, to famine, declares the Lord. I will make you a whore to all the kingdoms of the earth. But listen to this part. And the men who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me, I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and pass between its parts. Okay, that's one of the places where we see the covenant enacted. So this is how a covenant works. There's a suzerain or a king, a great powerful person. There's a peasant or a vassal, a lowly person. The king says, I'm going to give certain benefits to you. You're going to give your loyalty to me. And we're going to cut the covenant and we're going to cut these animals in half. And then one of two things usually happens. Either both pass between the cut in half pieces or the lowly servant passes between the pieces. And what they're saying, in a time before there's ink and paper and a lot of literacy, is they're saying, if I don't keep my side of the bargain, may I be cut in half and may my blood be poured out on the ground like these sacrificial animals were torn asunder and their blood cut out. See what I mean when I say we're a bit of a pansy culture? That's the way to make an agreement. Listen, if I go back on this, you can cut me in half and drag the two pieces apart and just leave me there for the birds to eat. Right? And so the normal practice would be for the lowly person, that would be Abram in this case, to walk between the parts and demonstrate, yes, I understand what you are promising to me and I accept that and I take upon myself the weight of this covenant. Or sometimes for both the king and the servant to walk together to say we are together making this covenant. But here's the fascinating thing. This takes all day long, and it shouldn't surprise us it takes all day long. Do you know how long it takes to get together a three year old cow, a three year old goat, a three year old ram, and two birds? And then to kill them, and then to cut them in half? I mean, he does not have a bandsaw like your butcher does. This is a man standing there with, I don't know, an axe or a sword or something trying to cut a cow in half. You know, it takes all day. And so here's Abram. And I mean, anybody looking down there says, what's Abram of the Chaldeans doing down there by his tent? He's just cut three animals in half. And the other people from Canaan are looking down and says, it looks like he's going to cut a covenant. But who is he cutting the covenant with? He's the only one down there. He's dragging the pieces apart. Then he spends the rest of the day running around the birds of prayer coming down. He's driving off the vultures. Get away from my cut up pieces of meat. Stay off these things. Finally, as nighttime falls, The second vision comes and a great fear descends upon Abraham. He is paralyzed with fear. He is unable to move. And then he sees a great smoking fire pot. This is interesting. This great smoking fire pot, let me find it here. Verse 17, when the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these two pieces. Do you know the other place where we find this language, smoking fire pot, blazing, flaming torch? is 500 years later when God leads the people out of Israel to Sinai and they look on Mount Sinai and it says the whole mountain seemed to be ablaze with fire and covered with a deep smoke. This is the glory of God. Or when they're walking in the wilderness during their days of wandering and God leads them with pillar of smoke and pillar of fire, it is the glory of God that comes down and Abraham is terrified by what he sees. He's paralyzed with fear. Now here's the interesting thing. God comes down And God does the walk by Himself. And so what God is saying to Abraham. I mean, really, Abram, my word is enough. I have promised you these things. I have said I will make you a great nation and that I will make you a blessing through all you, all the nations of the world will be blessed. My word is my bond, but Abram, so that you know for sure, he says, this is what I'm taking upon myself. I, the immortal God, come down and say, if I break my covenant, if I fail to do what I have said I will do, may my immortality become mortality. May my glory become my shame. May I be torn to pieces if I break my covenant. But here's the really interesting part. Because as we hear the covenants and promises of God, you're gonna hear more of them over this weekend. You might go, you know, I believe that God will keep his covenant. I believe that God will keep his side. But what about me? What about me? I don't believe that I can actually keep my side of the covenant if my side means constant loyalty to God. You know what Abram does just a little bit after this? Abram goes and has a child with Hagar, his wife's handmaid. His wife told him to, but that still doesn't excuse it. I mean, if we're talking about people justified by works, Abram doesn't have it. Right? I don't think I can do it. God, you're going to keep your part. I'm going to fail in my part. If I walk through those parts, I'm going to be torn asunder one day. And this is the amazing thing, because the Lord walks through it alone. He speaks these words before he does it. He says, Abram, your descendants will be prisoners for 400 years, but will be brought back to this land, and you will become a great blessing. Great things will happen to you, and through you, you will die in peace. And then God walks through these things, but as He walks through, He is also saying to Abram, Abram, I'm taking your part. I'm taking your part. I am willing to stand in your place, and I am willing to say, Abram, if you don't keep your part of the bargain, if your descendants fail to do the things that I have commanded that they must do in order to receive the covenant, if you fail in the covenant, Abram, then I am taking your part and I'm saying if you fail in the covenant, then may I be torn to pieces. And may the shame that should come upon you come upon me. And may that punishment that is deserved by your sin fall upon me. And when do we see this enacted? We see that enacted when Jesus goes to the cross. when darkness falls upon the entire world. Why is Jesus on the cross? He's the only man, the only man who has ever lived who could actually be justified on the basis of his work and stand righteous before God and say, I deserve salvation. If he wanted to, he would never say this, but he could have said, you owe to me eternal life because I have fulfilled both the passive and the active aspects of the law. I am the only righteous and just man who has ever lived. And instead, Jesus is their son of God to take upon himself the weight of the broken covenant on Abraham's side and say, I am about to enact that side. Let the curse fall on me that it may propitiate the sin of the sinner. This is the good news of the gospel, and this is how God is able to pass over the sin of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, David, and Joshua, and Judah, and all these Old Testament characters. This is also how God is able to pass over the sin of you. And even if you have never come to understand this, today maybe you do. That God is able to pass over the sin and yet be just because he himself took the broken part of the covenant on himself, was torn asunder on the cross, let his blood be poured out, saying, this is for Abraham's part. This is for Abraham's seed. This is for the sons of Abraham. This is for all who will come to believe by faith. This is the gospel. that if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you'll be saved. We'll hear more about that as the week goes on. Let me pray for you as I close. Father, thank you for tonight and just for helping to draw together these thoughts. Lord, I don't know these men, but Lord, you know them right to the very bottoms of their hearts. Lord, you know what they've been going through and the thoughts that they've been having, Lord. by your Holy Spirit, Lord, can better apply the words of Scripture to them than I can. So I pray, Lord, that you would take this message and use it in the way that you see fit, Lord, to bring yourself glory, and Father, to bring us first to our knees, and then, Lord, on to glory with you. And we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.