Scripture: Genesis 15 and Romans 4: 1-5
Sermon: The Cost of Covenantal Blessing
Topics: Certainty, Faith, Doubt
Preached: October 13, 2013 am
Rev. Mike Abma
Romans 4: 1-5
What then are we to say was gained by* Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? 2For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.
3For what does the scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.’
4Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due.
5But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.
Genesis 15
15After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.’ 2But Abram said, ‘O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?’ *3And Abram said, ‘You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.’ 4But the word of the Lord came to him, ‘This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.’ 5He brought him outside and said, ‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ 6And he believed the Lord; and the Lord * reckoned it to him as righteousness.
7 Then he said to him, ‘I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.’ 8But he said, ‘O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? ’9He 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.’ 10He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. 11And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. 13Then the Lord * said to Abram, ‘Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; 14but I will bring judgement on the nation that they serve, and afterwards they shall come out with great possessions. 15As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.’
17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire-pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
18On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,19the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites,20the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim,21the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION
When I was younger, I had a pretty strong desire for certainty.
I think school and being student had something to do with this.
School is all about tests, and exams and grades.
When facing an exam — say a series of multiple choice questions —
it is not particularly helpful to be uncertain whether the best answer is
a or b or c or d.
Facing those multiple choices,
we want to be as certain….. as certain as we can be.
Certainty is our friend.
Certainty is our confidence.
Certainty is the way we navigate forward.
That goes with tests and exams.
That goes with choosing the right college to attend,
the right major to select
the right career to focus on.
The more certain we feel
the more comfortable we are.
Here is the thing: the older we get,
often the less certain we become.
Our questions multiply.
Our doubts grow.
We begin to wonder whether we can be certain about anything ever again.
ABRAM, THE UNCERTAIN
Abram is growing older.
As a younger man, he and Sarai had eagerly set off from Ur,
they had wandered through the hills of Haran.
They had settled in the wilderness of the Negev,
for God had promised….
God had promised them offspring.
God had promised them land.
As Genesis 15 opens,
there are no offspring.
This is no land.
And doubts begin to multiply in Abram’s mind.
Then God arrives in a vision.
“Do Not Be Afraid.” God reassures.
“I am your shield. Your reward will be great.”
But Abram is not so sure.
He has heard this before,
and there still is no baby in the stroller,
no land to stake out with boundary markers.
So Abram complains.
He says, “Look around, God.
No kids here.
No infant drooling on my shoulder.
No baby for me to dote on.
And when we last updated the will at Miller Johnson,
We had to put down the name of my employee,
Eliezer as my main beneficiary.
Who else could I put down?”
There is bitterness in Abram’s voice.
There is disappointment in his words.
He has spent years working hard to believe God,
to trust in his promises.
But reality is a hard thing to argue against.
And the reality is that he and Sarai are old and barren.
The reality is that they are still strangers in this strange land.
ABRAM, THE FAITHFUL
Remarkably, God is not irked by Abram’s questions,
nor by his tone.
God senses how hard it is for Abram to believe.
So God does some “show and tell” — or in this case, some “tell and show.”
First God “tells” Abram something:
“Be ready to update your will because Eliezer will not be your heir.
You and Sarai will have an honest-to-goodness child.”
Then God “shows” Abram something:
God puts his arm around Abram’s shoulder.
He gently leads him out of the tent into the dark expanse of night.
He points Abram’s face upward to the heavenly host of stars and says:
“Look….look at all those many, many stars.
Your descendants will be as numerous as those stars.”
And after this “tell and show”,
it says, “Abram believed – the first time in the Old Testament this verb “to believe” is used.
And “God reckoned it to Abram as righteousness.”
DOUBT & FAITH
Doubt and Faith.
What is the relationship between these two?
First Doubt.
The preacher Tim Keller, writes that we are often of two minds when it comes to doubt.
There is the conservative mind that says doubt is bad – a sign of weakness – doubt nothing.
And there is the liberal mind that says doubt is good – a badge of honor – doubt everything.
Keller observes that both extremes are unhealthy.
The reality is that doubt simply is.
Where there is faith, inevitably there is doubt.
Faith does not sail on a sea of certainty.
Faith sails on a sea of uncertainty.
And so, in the middle of his questions, his struggles, his doubts,
Abram believes.
That raises the question: where did Abram’s faith come from?
Was it simply a product of his will?
Did he simply try harder?
What we need to see here,
and what Paul makes more clear in Romans 4,
is that faith is not simply something we manufacture.
It is not something we can boast about.
Faith is both a miracle and a mystery.
Why? Because it has its roots more in God than in us.
On the sea of uncertainty,
God provides the planks of his promises;
and somehow his Spirit gathers and girds those planks together
into something resembling a ship —
a ship of faith we can board
and thus navigate through our doubts and fears,
our questions and our misgivings.
FEAR AND COVENANTS
This chapter has two parts: 1-6, then 7-21.
Verses 1-6 feel surprisingly modern with its struggle to believe in God.
But when we come to verses 7-21.
They feel remarkably ancient and primitive,
strange and even a little spooky.
While reading it this week, it was like I heard a distant Australian didgeridoo droning in the background.
Abram believes, but by verse 7 he is still looking for assurances.
So God commands him to get a heifer (young cow)
A young goat, and a young ram,
plus a turtledove and pigeon.
What happens next is gruesome.
The animals are cut in half,
and laid out,
one piece to the right, one to the left,
the turtledove and pigeon on either side,
leaving a bloody passageway down the middle.
This is no dream.
There is real blood, real death, so much so that Abram knocks himself out trying to keep the buzzards and vultures away.
What is going on here?
What we have is an ancient pledge-making ceremony.
The animals are cut in two.
Then each party making the promise, the pledge,
had to walk between the pieces to seal the deal.
By walking between the pieces you were, in effect, saying,
“If I do not keep my promise,
may I be cut in two, even as these animals have been.”
What we have here is a promise,
with the penalty enacted out for breaking the promise.
So Abram gets everything for this pledge-making-ritual,
This covenant-ceremony set up.
Then falls into a deep sleep.
Not a restful sleep,
But a disturbed sleep
because a deep terrifying darkness descends on him.
What do you suppose that terrifying darkness was?
Do you mind if I make a confession to you?
The night before a covenant-making ceremony I was facing,
the night before Shirlene and I got married, I was very nervous.
I tossed and turned. I was terrified.
I loved Shirlene, but I was afraid – could I trust her to be faithful to our vows?
But I had an even deeper fear – could I trust myself to be faithful?
This, I believe, speaks to the deep fear Abram experiences.
If verses 1-6 are about God keeping his promises,
Verses 7-21 are more about us keeping our end of the bargain:
Will we continue to trust God no matter what?
Will we be faithful?
In that great covenantal chain, we are the weakest link.
Then in verse 17, in the darkest part of the night,
when Abram is facing his deepest fears,
suddenly he sees something both strange yet awe-inspiring.
Abram sees something that looks like a smoking pot and a flaming torch –
something of smoke and flame,
the same two words that describe God’s presence on Mt Sinai,
the same two words that describe the pillar of smoke and the pillar of fire in the wilderness.
Here is the Presence of God, the Shekinah,
the Glory of God
passing between these pieces,
passing down the bloody passageway.
OUR COVENANTING GOD
Here is what is earth-shattering about this.
Only God passes through.
I want to pause here because, if there is only one thing you get out of this sermon, it is this:
Normally both parties passed through.
Here only God does.
It is as if God is saying,
“The cost of this covenant, I will pay.
Whether I fail to keep my promises
or whether you fail to keep your promises,
I will pay the price.
No matter what,
I will pay the penalty.”
This is the God we worship,
The one who stoops to us
The one who descends to us
The one who bind himself to us
The one who puts his life on the line for us.
OUR DEEPEST NIGHT
I do not know what fears dwell in the darkness of your deepest sleep.
I do not know what questions you keep hounding God with because they never seem to be answered.
I do not know what waves keep battering your fragile ship of faith as it bobs up and down on a sea of uncertainty.
I do not know what kind of barrenness, emptiness, loneliness, or lostness you are facing.
I do not know what failures haunt you,
or what brokenness festers in your life.
I do not know.
What I know is that we human beings,
both ancient and modern,
Live in the darkness of
our doubts
our despair,
and our disappointments
both in God,
and even more so, in ourselves.
But here is the good news.
God is deathly serious about fulfilling his promises
and making us his people.
That is why he came down to us
from the starry host above
to lay himself down, not simply between the bloody passageway,
but as the bloody passageway.
He lay himself down,
to fulfill God’s side
and our side.
He lay himself down
as God’s faithfulness
and our faithfulness.
CONCLUSION
We no longer have the bloody pieces of an animal carcass to confirm this covenant.
We have this table.
We have this font.
We have this cross.
All these have blood on them, blood in them
to remind us of what Christ
has done
is doing
and will do for us.
He is the Way,
he is the passageway
Out of our darkness into his light
Out of our despair into his hope
Out of our death into his life
Out of our barrenness into the family of Abraham
Out of our homelessness, into an eternal kingdom.
He is the Way,
He is the Truth
He is the Life.
So do not be afraid.
Whatever fears dwell in the darkness of your deepest sleep,
Do not be afraid.
Amen
Prayer
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