Our scripture reading this morning is from the book of Genesis, chapter 15, verses 1 through 21. We are continuing today to go through the life of Abraham together, and we find ourselves now in Genesis, chapter 15. Hear now the word of God. 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 God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer 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 towards heaven, and number the stars if you are able to number them. Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of 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, 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. 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 yourself, 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 pot and a flaming torch passed between the 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. So far, the reading of God's Holy Word. May He bless it to us this day by His Spirit. Many things in life depend upon the promise of another. Think about a business agreement, a new job, a marriage, perhaps the purchase of a property. Especially during this election season, all sorts of quote-unquote promises are made, yet we're not sure all the time what to make of them. Well, as Christians, we are a people of the promise. And yet, one of the prime strategies of the devil is to tempt us to doubt God's goodness and God's promise. Did God really say? We remember those words that Satan spoke to Eve way back in the Garden of Eden, wanting her to doubt the certainty of God's word. And so for us, in our experience, we can be tempted to think that maybe the problem we're facing will never be resolved. Or maybe it's getting worse. And Satan is whispering to us saying, is this God really good and can he really be trusted? If he was good, the devil says, then you wouldn't be going through this problem. Here we are in Genesis 15. This is a weighty chapter. In many ways, it's like an anchor. And if you were to read the rest of the Bible without this chapter, as one pastor says, it would kind of be like watching a movie, but only starting the movie about 20 minutes in to the main scene. You're not really sure what's happening. You've all maybe had that experience. You walk in and you think, well, what's going on? Who's this character? Who's that? And you ask all these questions and your siblings or your parents or friends are saying, well, I don't want to answer these questions. I want to watch the movie. That's why this chapter is important. Here lies our spiritual heritage. And what we see is the promise given by our triune covenant God to Abram is still a promise and still a covenant that we enjoy today. It is called the covenant of grace. And despite what appearances may be, Despite that things often look impossible despite the fact that we wonder will your promises of God come to pass We know from the Word of God that every one of them certainly does and So we want to look at this covenant today this covenant of promise We want to look at the contents of the covenant secondly the cutting of the covenant and third the consummation of the covenant So we begin by looking at the content of what this covenant is. And in order to understand this, we have to see what's going on here in the setting of Genesis 15. Verse one says, after these things. That's an important marker telling us something has happened before that we need to pay attention to. And from two weeks ago, we probably remember that what had happened before in Genesis 14 is a great battle. In fact, Abram had gone in and done, from an earthly perspective, what seemed to be impossible. He had defeated Caeder Laomer and that alliance of kings from the east. These kings that were literally running roughshod, shedding blood throughout the land of Israel, which at that time was Canaan. He defeated them. God gave him the victory. And after his victory, the king of Sodom offered Abram a deal. And Abram said to this wicked king, I will not enter into covenant with you. The Lord, my God, He is my sovereign. He is my king. I'm not going to bow to your wishes. It is after that that God says here in verse one, Abram, I am your shield. Literally, God protected him in that battle. He literally was his shield, but it was much more than that, wasn't it? He says, I am also your reward. Not the spoils of victory from war that can be here today and be moldy tomorrow. Rather, a reward that will not fade. God is saying, Abram, even though you have not yet tasted the fullness of this reward, trust me, I am faithful. Fear not, God says. Abram had a lot of earthly reasons to fear. We too, from an earthly perspective, have much that is uncertain. We live in difficult days. We can fear the difficulty with health, with the economy, with the election, with terrorism, with all that is rampaging around us, with fractured relationships, with anxiety, with shame. But God says to Abram, and He says to us today, Fear not. I am the Lord, the Sovereign One. And he says in particular to Abram here, remember what I have said to you. Because Abram at this point was getting rather old. He was about 75 when he left Haran. Now he's about 80. He'll be 86 when Ishmael is born in the next chapter. And he's thinking, God, what is going to happen? Because you promised me back in Genesis 12 children. And not only that, but you said you would make your name great and I would have offspring in Genesis 13 that number as the sands on the sea. And now I'm old and my wife, it looks like she's passed menopause and it doesn't look like we're going to have any children. She's barren. And I'm wondering, God, will you bring this to pass? That's what he's saying here. He says in verse 2, Lord God, what will you give me? Thinking about the reward here. I'm trusting you, but yet I am still childless. And the heir of our house is this servant, Eliezer of Damascus. Most likely, Eliezer was possibly a business guy. Damascus was a center of commerce. So he could have been a banker or some sort of a manager of some sort. And Abram is thinking, well, Sarai doesn't have any kids or hasn't been able to have kids. Maybe just this will be the one who fulfills God's promise. Maybe it'll be him. which was a common thing in that ancient culture. That if a couple did not have children, then a servant who was very trusted would inherit everything that that family had. So Abram here is struggling. Struggling on the one hand with, God, are you going to fulfill this promise? Struggling on a deep personal level with his wife not having a child. Many of us have struggled with that. Have struggled with realizing maybe it's not God's will for us to be able to have a child. Maybe we should adopt and struggling with the sting and the pain of childlessness. Abram knows what that's like. He's struggling with it. And yet God tells him, I'm bringing you a word of promise. I want you to trust me. Literally. Eliezer will not be your heir. Now, to us, Eleazar of Damascus, it sounds like, okay, that's not that bad of a deal. But if someone was in Israel in about 600 or 700 years before the coming of Christ, and they had read Genesis 15, and they had read that for a period of time, it looked like maybe Eleazar of Damascus was the heir of the covenant, that would have been shocking. Damascus is in Syria. Syria was one of the great enemies of Israel in those 600 or 700 years before the coming of Christ. And so, as God's people are reading this through history, they're thinking, Eliezer, he is the most unlikely of characters. And God says, you know what, Abram? Literally, one from your own body. That's what the text is saying. That's who will be your heir. And God says, I want to assure you that I will do this. I want to emphatically reaffirm my promise. That's what happens in verse 4. The word of the Lord came to him, and he said, You will have a son. And he says, I want to show you a visible sign of this. Look at the stars. Do you see the stars? When you kids go up north or go out in the forest or the wilderness and you're away from all the light to the city, do you see all those stars? If you tried to count them, could you count the stars? No way! There's so many millions and billions of them, you can't even count them. And so God is giving Abram a visible covenant sign to say, this is what I will do for you. You will have children and it won't be just one, but they will be so numerous that you cannot even count them. God says to Abram, look up, up and trust me. Remember what I said to you in Genesis 12, I will give you offspring. I will give you people and I will give you a land. Remember Abram what I said even before that to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 15 That one who is of the seed of the woman will come and crush the head of the servant Remember my gospel promise to you Abram Don't grow weary do not fear And how then did Abram respond God who is reaffirming his word in his promise Abram in verse 6 did he laugh and Did he become angry? Did he shout or curse or doubt? Look at verse 6. And he, that is Abram, believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. Now, Abram here is not just crossing his fingers behind his back. This is not just wishful thinking. But Abram here literally is placing his faith in the God of promise and the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We know that from Galatians 3. Galatians 3 says the Gospel was preached beforehand to Abram. He's trusting in God's promise of a Messiah. Of a deliverer. Of a sin-bearer. He's believing that what God said is true and will come to pass. Through faith alone, he trusts. And it says he ultimately is justified before God. Reformation Sunday is next week. We remember on this Reformation Sunday, as we do every year, every Sunday rather, the gospel that God has given to his church and has been preserved by God for his church. And here we see these themes of faith and justification and righteousness and imputation. We see them here in the early pages of Genesis. Abram believed God, putting his faith not in himself, but in God's promise. And do you see what God says? It says that the Lord counted it to him as righteousness. That word counted. Here, it's literally in the passive voice. So Abram is receiving the action. God is performing it. Why would God reckon Abram here and credit it to him as righteousness? Why? Some people have said, well, it's because God saw that Abram was pious. that he was godly, that he had a little bit of faith in him, that because God knew what a wonderful man Abram would be, that's why he's saving him. However, we know that there is no one who is righteous, no not one. Abram was not full of godliness. He was a worshipper of the moon god. And so we need to think ourselves about this very thing. We are not saved because we're good people. because we're pious, because we go to church, because we say our prayers, because we're better than others. A pox upon the thought. We are wicked, rebellious, wretched sinners apart from the grace of Jesus, just like Abram was. Rebellious against God's law. Passively indifferent to God's Word. Stained by sin. Seeing far-reaching interpersonal relationships in conflict. Sometimes the Word of God comes to us and we are so insensitive to it. Our minds are filled, not with the Word of God, but with what is on our schedule, with what we are doing, with the anxieties and difficulties of life. Sometimes people can listen to the Bible and it can just go through one ear and out the other. Apart from God's Spirit, that's how we would all respond. We are actively unrighteous before God's law because of our sin, unfit for the presence of God because of our sin. So it wasn't because Abraham was good. that God counted it to him as righteousness. It was not at all. It was because God delighted in saving his people, and does still today, by his grace through his promise. What does counted it to him mean? In particular, what is he referring to here when it says counted it to him as righteousness? This is an important part of verse six. We know that it was not Abram's godliness, that it was not Abram's goodness, and ultimately it was not Abram's faith. He was not saved by his faith. Rather, it here is referring to the righteousness of Jesus Christ that was imputed to Abram. It's the same way you're saved, the same way I'm saved, the same way David was saved in the Old Testament, by grace alone, through faith alone, looking to Christ alone, and trusting in Him and His blood alone. That's what the it was. It is Christ's perfect righteousness. Abram looked by faith and trusted in what God said that he would do. He trusted God alone. He wasn't saved by being circumcised because he was not yet circumcised. He wasn't saved by keeping the law. It says the law came to Moses 430 years after Abram. This is the only hope for Abram and the only hope for us. To rest in this finished work of Jesus alone. It's the only hope for people like you and me who blow it. People like you and me who say, Lord, every day I need your grace and your mercy because I am a sinner and I know it and my conscience accuses me of it and I need an outward promise that I can look to to depend on that will not fade away and is not fickle and is not shifting. The sure promise of Jesus and His blood. The Old Testament saints were saved just like this, as we are today. In fact, Paul picks up on this in Romans 4. In Romans 4, 18, Paul says, Abram believed against hope that he would be the father of many nations. Every earthly reason was given that he shouldn't believe, but he believed. And he did not weaken in faith when he considered how old he was. No unbelief made him waver, but he grew strong and was convinced that God was able to do as he promised. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. His faith in the Messiah. Loved ones, this Abram, just like us, knew that he needed salvation to come from outside of himself. He knew that there was nothing in himself that made him acceptable before God, and he believed the Lord. This is truly a remarkable statement. Abram was justified before God on account of Jesus' blood and righteousness alone. But there was also another promise. God said to Abram, I will give you a people, which Abram says, I believe, I trust that, and God said, remember, I will give you a land. So in verse 7 God says I will give you this land to possess it and in verse 8 Abram says well, how do I know that I'll possess it and So the cry of faith says here. I want a sign Now when Abram asks for a sign in verse 8 we might be tempted to think that this is a sign of doubt on his part But in fact, it's not this is a sign of faith. Do you remember the wicked King Ahaz? In Isaiah 7, the Lord said to Ahaz, ask me of a sign. And Ahaz was too proud and stubborn and he said, I don't want a sign. No, a sign is good. Signs typically accompany God's Word. God's promise to Noah, the sign of the rainbow. God's promise to us in Christ, the sign of baptism in the Lord's Supper. And so God gives Abram a sign and he says, I'm going to seal this covenant with you, Abram, with this ritual, which is our second point, the cutting of the covenant. In particular, God says in verse nine, here is how we're going to do it. We are going to get these animals and we are going to cut them in half and we are going to set them side by side. To us, this sounds crazy and maybe even a little bit gross because today we have lawyers and we have pens and we have suing lawsuits that are given from one person to another. But back then, when covenants were made, this is how it happened. There would be one king who was a greater king, another who was a lesser king. And they would, so to speak, make a covenant by bringing out animals, laying them, as God tells Abram to do here, side by side. The hunters out there can get a picture of this. This is quite a hunter's gathering of animals here, so to speak. The heifer, the cow, and the The goat here we have, and the ram, and the turtle dove, and the pigeon. And so you have a head here and a tail here. This is very vivid. But the birds were not cut in half. They were all laid together. Blood, and guts, and flies, and smelly stuff. And in the ancient world, the lesser king would say, I am going to walk between these cut up pieces of animal. And if I don't keep my part of the covenant, if I rebel against you, the greater king, who is offering me peace to be a part of the kingdom, then may it be to me as it is to these dead animals. May I literally be cut in half. This is what had happened one chapter before. Cedar Laomer. the head of the Eastern Coalition of Kings. Remember, he was going against those rebellious Western kings who had broken the covenant. And he was literally going to cut their throats because they had not kept their end of the deal. So Abram knew visually what this exactly looked like. And so here we have the covenant. The animals are placed. The blood is shed, ultimately. But this is not a sacrifice. This is a blood oath, an oath of a covenant ritual. And as you can imagine, when there are carcasses on the ground, what would soon appear in the sky? Vultures. Birds of prey. And so here are these dead animals, and now there are birds of prey flying around, in verse 11, and Abram has to drive them away. They wanted to eat the carcasses. This is not the only time in the Bible that we read of such a dealing, such a covenant. In fact, we read about something similar in Jeremiah 34. In your Bibles, turn with me to Jeremiah 34. This is happening hundreds of years after Abram, of course, but it sheds some light on what's happening in Genesis 15. In Jeremiah 34, verses 18 through 20, the context is this. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, was literally smashing down the doors of Jerusalem. He was coming in to invade, to take them captive. And the people of Jerusalem, the leaders and the people themselves, realize that they're about to be conquered because they have been unfaithful to God's covenant. They've rebelled against Him. And God says in Jeremiah 34, verse 18, The men who transgressed My covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before Me, This is referring back to the covenant made with Moses. I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts. He will literally make them like a dead cow that they passed between. Exactly what's going on here in Genesis 15. The officials of Judah, the officials of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf. And God says, I will give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their lives. Their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth. The leaders of Israel themselves had broken the law of God like we all have. They were guilty before God, like we all are. And the Lord says to them, because you have turned away from me, because you are rebellious and unrepentant, you have reneged on this covenant, I am going to do to you what is symbolized in these dead animals. They were sent into exile. There was a remnant preserved, yes, but there were many who were unbelieving and untrusting in the Lord. And this is the rebellion, sadly, that is pictured before us. Jeremiah tells us there's a picture here of a carcass on top of the ground Think about that a person's body on top of the ground with a bird of prey descending upon them There's not any even anyone there to bury this body. That's the point It's a sign of ultimate judgment from God and being cut off from his promises and people it's a curse because of the unrebellious unrepentant nature of many in Israel at that point and Contrast that and that picture of judgment and the fact that the leaders of Israel and the people of Israel walked between the calves of the animals and said, may it be to me as it is to this animal if I don't keep this covenant. Contrast that with what we see back here in Genesis 15. Back in Genesis 15 verse 12, deep sleep fell on Abram. Deep sleep. You guys, maybe you've all had deep sleep at a point. Maybe your spouse knocks you in the middle of the night and you've been dreaming. You don't know where you are or when you are or who you are. Well, deep sleep here is also a picture that God will do something to fill Abram with awe. Darkness. When God put Adam in a deep sleep, he made Eve. When darkness fell on the land of Egypt, the death of the firstborn. When Mount Sinai was covered in darkness and Israel was camped at the base, God was delivering His law. The new creation in Christ. Do you remember what happened on the cross? Darkness and earthquake. This is a sign that God is acting in power and awe and holiness and majesty right here in this text. Darkness falls. And God then in verses 13 to 16 prophesies of the bondage to come of Israel in Egypt. Abram, at that point, didn't know that it would be Egypt. But God says, you, yourself, Abram, will be buried at a good old age. You will not go into exile. But your descendants, for four generations, one generation is 100 years, that's 400 years, will be slaves in a foreign land. And they will be oppressed, but God will bring them out and restore to them the promise that he's made. then what is most amazing at all of this whole text verse 17 Abram sees another important vision a vision of fire and smoke What do we make of the fire and smoke Literally, this is a symbolic representation of God Fire and smoke fire in the cloud led the people through the wilderness and they were wandering from Egypt into the promised land Fire and smoke filled the tabernacle in the temple with God's glory. God himself is doing something here. And remember what happened in Jeremiah 34. There's a very important difference here between these two events. In Jeremiah 34, the people passed through those animals. Abram would have expected that he, as the lesser vassal servant of God, would have passed through these dead animals. But, wonder of wonders and grace of grace, God does it. What a promise! God himself, in the form of this smoking oven and flaming torch, passes between the pieces. The sovereign Lord of all walks between them and says, If I don't fulfill my covenants of promise to you, Abram, and to your descendants after you, may I become like these charred up dead animals. This is a promise of grace. God here is invoking a curse upon himself if he doesn't fulfill it. He says, I will do it, Abram. It is sealed with the oath of blood. The covenant is cut. How then, finally, is it consummated? The third point, the consummation of the covenant. In order to understand how this is fulfilled, we need to remember again that the promises God made to Abram were of a people and a land. He made that promise in Genesis 12, which was itself pointing back even further to Genesis 3 in the promise of the seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent. These promises of people and land are fulfilled on two levels, as one pastor tells us, and that's how we can understand what's going on here. The first level is in the nation of Israel itself. Abram, by God's grace, and Sarai gave birth to Isaac. Isaac to Jacob. Jacob to the 12 sons. The famine came into the land of Israel, so they were driven to Egypt. And who was in Egypt? Joseph. And in Egypt, the people of Israel went to get food, and they lived there for many generations. That's where the book of Genesis ends. After the death of Joseph, The Pharaoh forgot about Joseph. He realized these people, these Israelites, are expanding. There's so many of them. They're like the dust of the earth and like the stars of the heavens. Exactly what God said. I am fearful of them, so I need to make them slaves or they might overthrow me. So the slavery happened in Exodus, just as God promised it would and prophesied. However, even through the trial of the 430 years that they spent in slavery, God said, I have not forgotten my people. He brought them out. And as they wandered in the wilderness, they all praised God with full voices and without doubt, right? We remember what happened in the wilderness. They grumbled. They said, oh, how I missed the life I had in Egypt. The lemon, and the garlic, and the leeks, and all that good food. I want to go back there. God had delivered them from slavery, yet they grumbled. And we're tempted to think, well, tsk, tsk. I certainly wouldn't have grumbled. And yet we know our hearts, loved ones. We know that we have received more revelation than they received. We have received the fullness of the Word of God, the fulfillment of everything in Christ, and yet we grumble. And we can complain, and we can murmur, and we can whine, but God says, trust my promise. What about the land? The people themselves were numerously multiplied, as God said, but he also said, I will bring you into this land. And not Moses, but Joshua was raised up by God to lead them into the promised land. And all of these iths, the Iths of Genesis 15 verses 19 and 20 and 21, the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Gergesites and the Perizzites and all these different Iths. These were the people that were inhabiting the land in Abram's day. This is quite a diverse group of characters. All sorts of different languages and tribes. And God said, I will give you the land that is inhabited by all these enemies. It wasn't, however, ultimately until the day of David when the land and its boundaries were, as it says here in the text. When the Kenites and the Kenizzites were drawn into the family of Israel, when the Jebusites were vanquished, and when the borders were actually, as God said. It was in the time of David that that happened, but it didn't last, did it? Solomon built the temple. And things looked wonderful, but right after Solomon, did the kingdom continue? It divided. North and South. And North was taken captive in 722 by the Assyrians. The southern kingdom was taken captive in 586 by the Babylonians. And people might wonder, did God abandon His promise? The promise of people and a land, what happened to it? Even when they were in exile, Daniel and his friends, The furnace was hot. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. God preserved his people. He brought them out of Babylon. He then restored to them the land and a rebuilt temple, although it was not nearly what it was under the days of Solomon. And then Malachi ends. And 400 years of silence. Is this it? Is that what Abram was told he would wait for? This land that now has been kind of run over in the temple that was once destroyed. Is there anything more to this? Praise be to God that there is another second greater fulfillment. The second level that God promised to Abram is seen in the New Testament. Galatians says, in Galatians 3, God himself said he would justify the Gentiles by faith. He preached the gospel beforehand to Abram saying, in you all the nations will be blessed. Salvation to all tribes. The promise went to Abram and it went out to all the earth. And in Galatians 3 it says, this promise was made to one offspring who is Christ. Christ is the offspring to promise to Abraham through whom all the promises come to us. And Galatians 3.29 says, if you are Christ, If you are in him and you are Abraham's offspring, then you are heirs according to the promise because you belong to Jesus. The Old Testament picture of Israel as a people was looking forward to something much greater and we see it being fulfilled even this day as people are being saved from all lands to come and worship the Triune God through the Gospel. What about the land? The people we have seen who are not just Abraham's Ethnic offspring, but all tribes who are in Christ who trust in Jesus the land Abram himself. It says in Hebrews 11 He knew about this land He knew about Canaan, but in his lifetime. He never possessed it, did he? In fact Hebrews says that he went out and he was looking to the city of Jerusalem No to Tel Aviv No He was looking to the city whose builder and maker is God and It says in Hebrews 11 that by faith he died, not having received this land, but rather knowing that he was a stranger in an exile and knowing that he desired a better country. He did not bank on a piece of real estate in the Middle East. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called his God because he has prepared for Abram and all who are in Christ a better and lasting city. Canaan was only temporary. It was a picture of the eternal new heavens and new earth that await us by faith alone in Christ alone. Abram knew it, and today, loved ones, we await the final consummation that Abram also looked to by faith. As we think about this covenant, as we think about what God did in Genesis 15, we also are drawn to think Is there a way that God, even more graphically, could have demonstrated his covenant commitment that he made to Abram? Even more graphically than the smoking fire pot and torch that passed between those animals? The only way would have been for the figure to become a reality. Meaning, ever-living God to come and take on human nature and taste death in the place of covenant breakers like you and me and Abram and all of his offspring. We're all covenant breakers. And that is what God did for us in Christ. On the cross, the curse that we deserve, that Abram deserved, fell completely on Christ for all of God's people so that we who are guilty might now experience the blessings of the covenant. Do you remember what Jesus said in Luke 22? As he was about to go to the cross, he said to his disciples, on the night in which he was betrayed, this cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. Jesus is saying, so far long ago, God promised to Abram that he would himself pay the curse of the covenant if he didn't fulfill. His promise. And Jesus is saying here, I am here to pay the price because the price demands that payment be made for sin because you are sinners. God is fulfilling His promise by literally passing through the animals and becoming a dead piece of animal for us as Christ was cursed for us on the cross. It wasn't just something that happened back in Genesis 15. Christ Himself bore the covenant curse that we deserve. We have been sealed in His blood. All our sins are taken away. And we know that all the blessings of God are yes and amen in him. He became like a severed animal, even though he was sinless. The sinless son of God on him, the wrath of God that you and I deserve was poured out. And that's the only way for you and I and Abram and all of Abram's descendants by faith to one day eat of the tree of life. the promise that God has made to his people. And so our place in the covenant community is determined by whether we are in Christ or outside of Christ. Are we still dead in Adam? If you are, I pray today is the day of salvation. Repent and flee to the Lord Jesus, because if you are in Christ, then you have been invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. The bride herself has made herself ready, it says. These are the true words of God. The descendants of Abram will sit with the king in his presence for all eternity, staying worthy as the Lamb who was slain to receive glory and wealth and wisdom and power and might forever and ever. But for the unrepentant, for the rebellious, Revelation says there will also be a feast. But at this feast, the birds will come and will literally eat the flesh of kings and mighty men and horses. They will be gorged with their flesh. Revelation 19. Birds of the air feasting on the flesh of unrepentant covenant breakers. Do you remember Abram? Do you remember the animals? Do you remember the vultures that were swirling? Jeremiah 34 has the same image those who violated the covenant and were unrepentant were fed to the birds of the air and This is the picture of curse upon those who don't believe loved ones God himself says he will fulfill every word that he has promised and We live in the time when the iniquity of the Amorite so to speak is not yet complete You see that in Genesis 15 verse 16. I Do you wonder why do the wicked seem to prosper? God's forbearance is not yet exhausted. There is still time for repentance, but God's patience with the ungodly is not unlimited. It will not go on forever and ever. And so come today, come and believe on Christ, come and confess your sins and trust in him that no matter how grim your situation appears, no matter how weak the church might seem, No matter how high the waters of persecution might rise, God is faithful to His promise. Yours, O Lord, is the glory and the power and the kingdom forever and ever. Amen. Let's pray. Our Lord and our God, what wonder and majesty what glory and holiness we see displayed for us in your work.