Genesis chapter 15. We're going to read from verse 1 to verse 6. It's a word of explanation. Last week, we read about Judgment Day. Matthew 25, 31 to 46. And so that should provoke the question, who can stand in that judgment? Who will God pronounce just? And with man, it is impossible. But with God, all things are possible. So here in the Old Testament, We have God declare a man righteous. So let's read and see how it happened. Genesis 15, reading from one to six, please give your attention to 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 toward 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. You know, as you begin this passage, you see Abram in doubt. And it shows the force of that doubt. It says, after these things. Well, after what things? Well, after four kings came from Iraq and invaded the area and conquered a whole bunch of them and took his nephew away as a prisoner. And Abram had rallied his 318 trained men born in this house, that gives you a sense of who he is, and his allies, and he chased down these kings, and he attacked them by night, and conquered them, and he brought back everything, but he did not take any of the spoil. It was after these things. Now, how might you feel at this point if you're Abram? Well, you might fear retaliation. are those kings gonna come back with a bigger army to get me? You might be filled with regret. Boy, that was a lot of money I turned down. Did I really have to do that? Your fear might lead to regret. I wish I'd kept the money because then I could hire more bodyguards. And so it would appear that God graciously and kindly comes to speak to him about this. He says, fear not. I am your shield. So don't worry about the Mesopotamians. I got your back. And your reward will be very great. Don't worry about the spoil. What I give you will be much greater. It would seem as though God, after these things, is very kindly coming to deal with any fear, deal with any regret, to say, I am with you, have no fear, have no regrets. But then we get something for the first time. we get Abram say something to God. Now, God has spoken to Abram before. He has said to him, I will make you a great nation. He has said to him, to your offspring, I will give this land. He has said to him, I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth. God has spoken to Abram and God has promised Abram a lot. But Abram has not spoken to God. Now, for the first time in this vision, Abram is able to speak to God and we see, all right, so what's on Abram's mind? What does he say to God? Well, we don't see fear of retaliation from Mesopotamia. We don't see regret over money. He says, what are you going to give me? Whoa, that's quite a thing to say to God. Now he was an old man, somewhere between 75 and 85. Let's call him 80. And he was obviously rich. He's a tribal chieftain, basically. So what he's saying is, I have it all, except for children. And you see how great his pain is. God is saying, I am your shield, your reward will be great. And so great is his pain if we're no children. He says, well, what are you going to give me? Since I can't have kids, you haven't given me that and I am so old. But notice also his faithfulness. Remember, he is surrounded by idolatrous Canaanites. There are idols all over the place. And yet he has not said, well, I suppose that having kids might not be the Lord's specialty. Perhaps I need to turn aside, perhaps to one of these fertility goddesses who I see pictured all around me. They promise fertility. Let me turn aside to them. Maybe I need a specialist for this special need. No, he doesn't say any of that. The Lord is his God, he follows God only, he's only going to worship God. But he has this question, what are you going to give me if there's no child? Now, there are other childless couples. You can think of some. Should they speak to God in the same way? There's nothing you can give me, since you have given me no child." Well, no. It's different for Abram. God had promised Abram that his offspring would be like the dust of the earth, that his offspring would inherit the land. Abram had promises from God. And not only that, he had changed his life in light of those promises. He had left Mesopotamia. He had come to the promised land. He was living as a stranger there. Because of those promises, an amazing chain, a world-changing chain of promises that God gave to Abram. But a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And that first link was, how can your offspring become a nation when you don't have any? and you're too old to have any. How will these promises come to be? So we see that his pain was great, both because children are so wonderful and also because it's the only thing he didn't have, but most sharply and uniquely to him because he was basing everything on the promises of this God and yet he didn't have the first thing he needs for those promises to come true. And in that moment, God responded by simply promising again. Obviously, eventually he gave him the child, but that's not until chapter 21. That's more than 14 years later. It might be, let's say, 20 years later. In the moment, having already promised him children, he just promises him children. In the second half of the chapter, he underlines it by making it a covenant. But at the same time, a covenant, again, is just a really serious promise. It's more words. It's a more detailed promise. Your servant will not be your heir. What comes out of your body, what comes out of your body will be your heir. Okay, you're talking about a biological kid. I don't know why they don't leave that to a footnote. Might as well put it right in there. What comes out of your body will be your heir. Biological child. And it's more emphatic. Takes him outside at night into the pre-electric great darkness. in which the stars do shine out brightly. And in that environment, he says, count the stars and so shall your children be. That's very emphatic. It's very impressive. And yet, it's the same promise he's already gotten. Because while stars are more glorious than the dust, the point is the same. If your kids will have you like the stars of the heaven or the dust of the earth, the point is there's going to be lots of them. He's already gotten this promise. It's a promise he's already had. And now they're older than they've ever been before. How will this doubting man respond? to yet another promise of future blessing, a promise that seems more impossible every time it is given. Well, it says, and he believed the Lord. He believed what God said to him. This was against science. Because Sarah is between 65 and 75. Call her 70. That means she is no longer having her period and therefore cannot have children. They knew that. It's against their experience. When they got married, they were young enough and it never worked for them then. How is this going to work for them now? He believed God. And what did he seen God do? He had seen God do this for him. When he lied and didn't protect his wife, and Pharaoh took his wife into the harem, he saw God afflict Pharaoh with such plagues and such clarity that suddenly his wife is coming back to him out of the harem, which is not O'Harem's work. He had had this miracle done for him. And he'd won that battle, yes, but, I mean, he had had 318 trained men and allies and did it at night. So, you know, was that God or was that him? He might think. In terms of what he had seen God do, he'd seen that one miracle, and he had seen victory in battle. And then he'd seen promise after promise not fulfilled. And yet he believed God and did not turn to another God. and did not give up in despair. He believed the Lord. Now what was he believing? He was believing that God would bring life from the dead. Out of a dead womb. Out also of his own not so lively 80-year-old body. Not my point, it's in Romans 4. Just as later on, he believed that God would bring Isaac back from the dead if necessary. When he said, sacrifice your son, Isaac, whom you love, on a mountain I will show you. So he has faith in general way that God will do as he has promised. In a more specific way, he's believing that God will bring life, give life where there is death. And that is the kind of faith we are to have as well. Now, I want to reiterate because there is so much confusion among Christians, including Christians right near to us. Faith is not believing that God will give you what you promise yourself. God does not promise you that he will give you your word, your goals, your plans. That's why we want to be clear on what God has promised. He has not promised every childless couple children, but he had promised this childless couple children. And so even though no one looking in would predict it, even though the whole household is getting ready for the day when the boss is Eliezer, Abraham believed that Eliezer would never be the boss, but that instead God would bring life out of his dead body, almost dead, and out of Sarah's dead womb. Now we come to what really concerns us tonight, the second half of the sentence. Abram believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. And you have the he and the him, and who was counting it to whom? And I have some Jewish book or two at home. They note the both possibilities, but I said, no, God is counting it to Abram. for righteousness. That seemed to be the majority point of view in the book I was reading. Both the Jewish and, of course, the Christian following the New Testament. Christians better say it's God counting it to Abraham. You don't have a choice on that. It's in Romans 4 that way. That's how it's written up that way. That's how it goes. All right, God counted it to Abram as righteousness. That is, when Abram believed this hard-to-believe promise of God, God counted him just. God counted him righteous. Same word in Greek, at least. I didn't check Hebrew, but you got the same concept. Just, righteous, we're in the same area there. He counted him just. He counted it to him as righteousness. And again, that counted means your faith is considered to make you righteous. I pronounce you righteous on the basis of this faith. And you'll notice in verse six, that that doesn't exactly advance the action. It's kind of like in Genesis 2, where we're getting the action of, you know, God is making Eve and bringing Eve to Adam, and Adam's saying, whoa, this is great. And then you have an aside, all right, for this cause a man shall leave his father and mother. Okay, that's the moral that you're supposed to take out of it. And here, in the same way, you might say this doesn't particularly in any visible way. I mean, if you were filming this, there's nothing to do with verse. I mean, what are you going to film? And so, it's the moral of the story that we're to take home from verse 6. We're to understand, okay, when Abram believed the Lord, the Lord counted that believing to him as righteous, righteousness. And that's tremendous. A man has been counted righteous. He's not a sinless man. He had lied about Sarah. He's not from a pure stock. His parents, his ancestors were idolaters. When he believed the Lord's hard-to-believe promise to bring life where there was death, then the Lord considered him righteous. And it's written for our instruction. Believe God's promises and God will reckon it to you as righteousness. Now, what promises are we to believe? Let's consider back to Romans 4, the end of the chapter, verses 23 and on. We read there in Romans 4, but the words, it was counted to him, from Genesis 15.6, those words were not written for Abram's sake alone. He was long since dead by the time Moses wrote. It was not written for Abram's sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. We'll hear this also from Romans, chapter 10. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. The particular thing that we are called on to believe is that God raised Jesus from the dead. And we have it easier than Abraham because he had to believe something future and we have to believe something past that has witnesses testifying that it happened. This is what in particular we are called to believe. that God raised him from the dead. Of course, Jesus is Abraham and Isaac's later descendant. He is the son of Abraham. One of the first things the New Testament says about Jesus. Son of David, son of Abraham. So notice the connections between Isaac and Jesus. God called Isaac out of a dead womb and he called Jesus out of a virgin womb. In both cases, a womb that can't do this, but God called Isaac and Jesus out of one. God brought Isaac to the brink of death and called him back. God brought Jesus into death, into the grave, two nights in the grave, and then called him back. So Abram believed God would bring life where there was death. We also are to believe that God has brought life where there was death. And we are to believe that God will bring life, that He will also raise our mortal bodies from the grave. And we are to believe that God will reckon us righteous when we believe in these promises. So believe in the Word, simply the believing in Him, the believing in these hard-to-believe promises. This is what God counts as righteous. With this, we are justified and we believe and we are saved. Consider for a second the other person I could have talked about tonight. I'm looking for an illustration of justification. Well, Paul used Abraham, let's use that one. But I could have used Naaman. Do you know who Naaman was? Naaman was an enemy general. He had gone on raids and captured Israelites. He had an Israelite girl as a slave. But he was a leper. And the slave girl said, I wish master would go see the prophet in Israel and be healed from his leprosy. And so he made it happen. And he came to the prophet's house. And the prophet didn't even come out to see the great general. He just sent out the servant to say, go wash in the Jordan River seven times. And Naaman was not used to being treated like this. He went off in a rage. He said, I thought the prophet would come out and see me. I thought the prophet would call the name of his God and wave his hand over the place. What a dirty little creak it is. But his servants came to him and they said, Master, actually I think they said my father. My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then if he simply says, wash and be cleaned? And so Naaman said, all right, yes, that makes sense. And he washed seven times and was clean. And this is for us again. If God had called you to do some great and difficult thing, and that was the only way you could be pronounced just by God, would you not do it? Would it not make all the sense in the world to say, let me give my all to doing this great thing. I will climb Everest. I will be an astronaut who goes to Mars. I will do whatever this great thing might be that I might be just before God. If he set before you this great Olympian goal, would you not go for it? How much more then? When he says, wash. and be clean. For that is the message of Jesus Christ. You saw it done today as we baptize the child right here. What is that? But wash and be clean. That is belief. Believe in Jesus Christ and He makes you clean. He removes your sin and you are counted clean, just in His sight. Wash and be clean, beloved. Jesus is powerful soap. He's the Savior who does the job right. Nothing you bring to the table, you do not need to add anything to it. Simply wash and be clean. You will have nothing to boast about. Might seem a pity, but that is your security and your hope, that it does not depend on you. Depends on Him who cleanses you. So seek the God who raises the dead, and He will count that believing in Him as your righteousness. This is what we mean when we say, justification is by faith in Christ alone. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You that You are so gracious and kind to us, that You give us this work to do. We believe in Jesus whom You sent. We believe and acknowledge that You have raised Him from the dead, For You, O Lord, are the Almighty God, who made all things of nothing, who began by making life where there was none, and who continues by bringing life where there is none. Truly, Lord, You alone can do this, and so we trust and praise You. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.