The scripture reading for this morning is in
Genesis chapter 15 and we are picking it
up where we stopped last Sunday with verse
6 and reading from verse 7 through verse
21.
Remember the context.
The battle between the four and the five
kings has taken place and Abram has rescued
Lot after the defeat of the kings of
the land and he has refused to take
anything from the king of Sodom because he
did not want him saying, I have made
Abram rich.
And then right after that the Lord said
to Abram that he would be a shield
to him and his reward would be exceedingly
great.
He took him outside, showed him the stars
of the heavens and said, so shall thy
seed be.
And Abram, the author adds, addressing it to
the readers, believed in the Lord and he
reckoned it to him as righteousness.
In the seventh verse we continue, and he,
that is God, he said to him, I
am the Lord who brought you out of
Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this
land to possess it.
And he said, O Lord God, how may
I know that I shall possess it?
So he said to him, bring me a
three-year-old heifer and a three-year
-old female goat and a three-year-old
ram and a turtle dove and a young
pigeon.
Then he brought all these to him and
cut them in two and laid each half
opposite the other, but he did not cut
the birds.
Evidently he set one bird over against the
other bird, one in each of the lines
of the pieces of the animals.
And the birds of prey came down upon
the carcasses and Abram drove them away.
Now when the sun was going down, that's
a rather important little clause and I want
you to reflect for just a moment upon
the fact that when God asked Abram to
go out and look at the stars it
was nighttime.
In the meantime, Abram brought the animals for
the sacrifice, but now it is the next
afternoon and so Abram has been waiting a
very long time, at least twelve hours, probably
even more.
Now when the sun was going down, a
deep sleep fell upon Abram and behold, terror
and great darkness fell upon him.
And God said to Abram, know for certain
that your descendants will be strangers in a
land that is not theirs, where they will
be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.
But I will also judge the nation whom
they will serve and afterward they will come
out with many possessions.
And as for you, you shall go to
your fathers in peace.
You shall be buried at a good old
age.
Then in the fourth generation they shall return
here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is
not yet complete.
I may not have time to say anything
about that in the message, but you can
see from this that those who criticize Joshua
for going in and exterminating the Canaanites do
not really understand what was back of that
command of the Lord to exterminate the inhabitants
of the land.
They were very wicked.
They carried upon an exceedingly idolatrous kind of
religion in the land, and consequently it was
a necessity bound up in the holiness of
God.
And furthermore, as you can see from this,
there is at least four hundred years of
long suffering on the part of God.
And finally, the time comes when the iniquity
of the Amorite is full, and then God,
a holy God, must execute his judgment.
This is something our modern society does not
understand at all, that there is a time
when the judgment of God must be exercised.
So God was not an arbitrary God, but
he was very long suffering in his dealing
with the inhabitants of the land.
But he is a God of holiness, and
consequently judgment is part of his being.
Now in verse 17 we conclude, And it
came about, when the sun had set, that
it was very dark, and, behold, there appeared
a smoking oven, and a flaming torch, which
passed between those pieces.
Notice that last relative clause, it's very important,
which passed between those pieces.
On that day the Lord made a covenant
with Abram, saying, To your descendants I have
given this land, from the river of Egypt
as far as the great river, the river
Euphrates, the Kenite, and the Kenizite, and the
Kadmonite, and the Hittite, and the Perizite, and
the Rephaim, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite,
and the Girgashite, and the Jebusite.
May the Lord bless this reading of his
word.
The subject for this morning in the ministry
of the word is the ratification of the
Abrahamic covenant.
We have been saying, at least in the
last message and this one, that Genesis fifteen
is one of the truly momentous chapters in
the word.
One of the Lutheran commentators, H.
C.
Leupold, has called the chapter monumental.
The reason that this chapter is so important
is it has tremendous testimony to the saving
truth of God.
It is the first, and no doubt one
of the greatest, that deals with the fundamental
truth of justification.
This great text, Genesis chapter fifteen and verse
six, is one that plays a large part
in the theology of the Apostle Paul.
And Abram believed in the Lord, and he
reckoned it to him for righteousness.
Job's great problem, I know it is so
of a truth, but how should a man
be just with God, is solved by that.
The Apostle Paul uses it, and in the
fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans,
summarizes by saying, in chapter four and verse
five, But to him that worketh not, but
believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his
faith is counted toward the obtaining of righteousness.
Now we stressed several features of justification in
our last study.
We stressed the fact that the ground of
justification lies in three great imputations.
To impute is to reckon.
It's one of the great theological words.
And these three great imputations lie at the
base of the doctrine of justification by faith.
For example, there is first of all the
imputation of Adam's sin to the human race.
Because Adam sinned as our representative, the result
is that in the reckoning of God, every
individual is born guilty.
We are under divine condemnation.
He was our representative, and he failed as
our representative.
And consequently, the Apostle writes for this cause,
As by one man sin entered into the
world, and death by sin, so death passed
upon all men, because all sinned.
That is, sinned in Adam.
Now that is the doctrine of the Word
of God.
Adam's sin has made it necessary for sin
to be imputed to all of us, and
death is the evidence of it.
We all die, do we not?
And consequently, that is God's way of bringing
the penalty of the sin that has been
imputed to us.
That's imputation number one.
The Bible also speaks of the imputation of
believers' sins to their representative, the Lord Jesus,
their mediator.
So when the Lord Jesus died upon the
cross, he died under the judgment of God
for the sins of believers.
When he cried out, My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?
He was our substitute and was dying under
the sin that was imputed to him.
He had no personal sin himself, but our
sin was reckoned to him.
The Apostle writes in 2 Corinthians chapter 5
and verse 21, He hath made him to
be sin for us.
He made him to be sin for us.
Now he did not have sin, that was
our sin reckoned to him.
And finally the Bible speaks of the imputation
of the righteousness of God to believers.
That very text that we referred to just
then goes on to say, He hath made
him to be sin for us, him who
knew no sin, that we might become the
righteousness of God in him, so that there
is reckoned to believers the righteousness of God.
Consequently, the ground of our justification lies in
the fundamental expiatory sacrifice of the Lord Jesus
and these imputations that are so important.
He paid our debt for us.
Everyone knows what it is to walk into
a building and pay a bill that you
owe.
The teller behind the counter takes your bill
and your money, stamps the bill with a
receipt or at least a sign paid, gives
you that or something as a receipt, and
the result is that the company can never
collect that bill from you again because it
has been paid.
The Lord Jesus Christ walked up to Calvary,
which was God's desk for the payment of
the bill of sin, and there he paid
the debt of believers' sins.
And consequently, heaven has no further claim against
those for whom Christ died.
Now the ground of justification then lies in
the saving work of Christ and the imputations
that are taught in Scripture.
The fundamental principle, as you can see, is
the principle of grace because we do not
have any merit that makes us acceptable to
God.
The apostle uses that expression that we being
justified by grace might become heirs of eternal
life.
By grace we are what we are in
justification, Richard Sibbes said, and work what we
work in sanctification.
So the fundamental principle of justification is grace.
We preach justification by grace.
We preach justification by grace in believers' chapel.
We preach justification by grace to you so
that you will not have any desire to
trust in your own merits, of which you
really have none, before God.
The means of justification is faith.
The Bible says being justified by faith we
have peace with God.
Now faith is not a meritorious work.
It is simply a means by which we
receive what God has done for us in
grace.
Faith saves not because it is meritorious, but
faith saves because it is the means by
which Jesus Christ is grasped.
Have you ever been real sick?
Have you ever been so sick that you
could hardly lift your head up?
Have you ever been so sick when your
mother or your wife or your husband came
to you with the medicine that you could
hardly reach and get for yourself?
Have you reached out with a trembling hand
and have taken the medicine and swallowed it
when you could hardly hold it?
Well, almost everyone has had that experience.
Well, a trembling hand can grasp the healing
dreath to the lip, but the weakness of
the hand does not lessen the power of
the medicine.
It is the medicine of Jesus Christ's death
that saves.
It is faith that may be very weak
and trembling, which is simply the means by
which the healing dreath of the saving work
of Christ is received.
Abraham, we learned in the twelfth chapter, was
called.
Now justified.
And so in a moment he will be
taken into a covenantal relationship with tremendous blessings.
I think it's interesting that when the Apostle
Paul writes in Romans chapter eight, he describes
five great blessings that belong to those who
are called according to his purpose.
He says they are foreknown.
He says they are foreordained.
He says they are called, justified, and glorified.
Now Abram has been called and justified, and
the order that is found here in this
chapter is the order the Apostle uses.
So we're not surprised that he should speak
about the ultimate blessings that are grounded in
a covenant.
Now the ultimate blessings have to do with
the land and with the new heavens and
the new earth, because according to the New
Testament, Abram's faith looked beyond the land promises
on to the eternal promises of the new
heavens and the new earth.
He looked for a city that had foundations,
whose builder and maker was God.
And he looked for a heavenly city.
And so his faith was not simply restricted
to the land of Palestine and the earthly
city of Jerusalem, though that was a genuine
object of his faith.
But it went on ultimately to the possession
of the eternal blessings of the new heavens
and the new earth.
In the meantime, there were intermediate blessings that
he would enjoy.
He was to have a Messiah who would
come and who would accomplish the atoning sacrifice.
He was told that in him all the
families of the earth should be blessed, and
so there was a posterity lying before him
of people who had a similar faith with
him.
One of the great joys of leaving your
presence is going to be the experience of
the fellowship and communion with the saints who
have lived down through the years.
I'm sorry, but I'm looking forward to it,
in spite of the fact that I will
be probably absent from a lot of you.
If you have faith, you'll join me, and
if you don't have that joy already, you
will ultimately have it too.
When the years pass by, your hope will
be centered more and more upon being gathered
to your fathers and enjoying fellowship with the
great body of believers from Abraham on down.
Now, I love your presence, you understand, but
if I had a choice, if I had
a choice, I think I would enjoy the
presence of Abraham and Isaiah and Paul and
Luther and Calvin just a little bit more
than you in your present condition.
Well, that was one of the blessings that
Abram had, and of course the immediate blessing
that Abram had was the enjoyment of the
fellowship of God right then.
For Abram had the great experience of communion
with Yahweh while he was still on this
earth, and that is our experience as well.
We don't have to wait until the future
to have communion with the Lord.
When we turn now to the covenant, and
it's, I must say again, it is one
of the most important sections of the word
of God, this unconditional, unilateral covenant that God
made with Abram.
The occasion of the covenant is described in
verses seven and eight, and incidentally in these
words God teaches Abram something about his own
timetable.
For Abram must be taught that the promises
which he has are promises that are not
going to be fulfilled in the immediate future.
He might have thought when God said, so
shall your seed be, that he was speaking
about next month or next year, but God
in the experience that follows teaches Abram that
it is not now, it is to come,
but there is a great period of time
that is to pass between the giving of
the promises and the fulfillment of them.
He begins after Abram is said to have
been justified by faith by saying to him,
I am the Lord who brought you out
of Ur of the Chaldees to give you
this land to possess it.
So he's reminded of who it is with
whom he speaks, and of the relationship that
he bears to Yahweh.
He is in effect to be shown what
must yet transpire before the realization of the
promises.
Well Abram now has believed in the Lord,
but still in spite of that he blurts
out, oh Lord God, how may I know
that I shall possess it?
In the Hebrew text the word bamah, which
is used here as a word that means
by what?
By what shall I know what, that I
shall possess it?
So he is looking for some little tangible
token by which he may know that he
is going to possess these promises.
One looking at the words themselves might surmise
that Abram here is guilty of unbelief.
But looking at the context more closely, in
particular the words in verse six, then he
believed in the Lord, that his descendants would
be as the stars of the heavens.
And in the following context in which he
obeys the word of the Lord and goes
and gets the materials for sacrifice, we're rather
inclined to believe that when he utters, oh
Lord God, how may I know?
But this is really a sad complaint, and
it represents a trembling weak faith, but nevertheless
a basic faith, somewhat like the faith that
we read of in the New Testament of
the man who said, Lord I believe, help
thou mine unbelief.
Well the ritual of the covenant follows as
God's answer.
Sometimes we are inclined to center our attention
upon the failures of the saints when we
ought to center our attention upon the love
of God which bears up these failing saints.
The Lord does not criticize Abram for his
unbelief if there is unbelief there, but rather
is faithful to his word and faithful to
his weak and trembling servant.
So he said to him, bring me a
three-year-old heifer and a three-year
-old female goat and a three-year-old
ram and a turtle dove and a young
pigeon.
Now the answer then that God gives to
Abram when he asks, how may I know
that I shall possess it, is a covenant
sacrifice.
Now the real answer will come when in
this covenantal sacrifice we are taught that it
is an unconditional unilateral covenant.
In other words, God is answering Abram and
saying, how will you know that you will
possess it?
Well I'm going to give it to you.
That's how you'll know it, and I'm faithful
to my word.
But he will do this in symbolical fashion,
in another object lesson which Abram could understand
and anyone else who pays attention to it.
It was the custom, it seems, for sacrifices
to be made by the slaying of animals,
the dividing of them, putting one on one
side, one piece of the animal over here
and another piece over here.
And then in the case of the birds,
evidently since birds were not normally divided in
any way in the sacrificial system later on,
one bird was placed on one side and
another bird on the other.
In Jeremiah chapter 34 and verse 18, reference
is made to this custom.
So it was something that the early believers
knew about.
They had had experience of that very thing.
I won't turn to that Jeremiah passage.
It is in the notes in the Believer's
Bible Bulletin that some of you have in
your hands, and so you can read that
text.
But Jeremiah knows about the dividing of animals
and a sacrifice like this.
It's interesting too, by the way, that the
expression to make a covenant in Hebrew is
literally to cut a covenant.
Karath barith is to cut a covenant.
And even the idea of cutting then is
perhaps related to the dividing of animals.
In the Greek, the same type of thing
is found.
The expression is temnein oikia, or to cut
oaths or a covenant.
So that the idea of dividing and separating
in that way is something represented in the
language itself.
Now before we look on, I want you
to notice that in the tenth verse, after
God has said, Bring me, we read, Then
he brought all these to him.
There is obedience on the part of Abram.
The faith that Abram has is a faith
that works.
Now there are people who suggest that in
places where the sovereign grace of God is
proclaimed in our salvation, that that kind of
doctrine is the kind of doctrine that is
contrary to the presentation or the bringing of
good works before the Lord.
And then if you preach the grace of
God, then you cannot preach the holiness of
man in his life.
Well now that of course is foolishness, because
all that the Bible teaches is that it
is the old faith and the sovereign grace
of God that promotes holiness of life.
And so the idea that, as Mr. Spurgeon
used to like to say, that those who
believe in the sovereign grace of God cry
down good works, is not true at all.
Now if you're thinking about good works as
a way to gain salvation, then of course
we do cry down good works.
We say to you that all your good
works are as rags.
All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, the
scriptures say.
And as a matter of fact, the rags
have the best of it then, because they
are better than our good works before the
Lord.
We do not cry down good works.
But we do cry down good works if
they are made the basis for salvation, because
salvation is something accomplished apart from works.
Those who truly believe in the sovereign grace
of God, like Daniel and the three Hebrew
companions, when time will pass by, they'll prove
to be healthier and fatter than all those
that sit at this world king's table.
So we don't cry down good works.
We say that the faith that we have
in a sovereign God produces good works.
And we have a right to expect that.
Abram is a man whose faith does work.
Thomas Adams, one of the Puritans, expressed it
this way, from the point of justification, works
cannot be sufficiently commended.
Into the cause of justification they must not
be admitted.
Now the ratification of the covenant follows in
verses 11 through 21, and what a striking
event this is, and what a striking answer
it is to Abram's question, O Lord God,
how may I know that I shall possess
it?
The circumstances of the ratification of the covenant
are interesting, and I want you to notice
three features of these circumstances.
First of all, in the very way in
which this covenant is ratified, there is evidence
that there is to be delay and a
disciplining of the people of God in the
light of the future.
Now remember that Abram was given the promise
at night.
He was called out of his tent and
told to look, and he saw stars in
heaven.
So it was nighttime.
But now we read in verse 12, now
when the sun was going down, a deep
sleep fell upon Abram.
So evidently he had gone out, he had
obtained his animals, he had laid, he had
slain the animals, he had divided them, he
had placed the sacrificial pieces in order, and
then he sat down to wait.
And he waited, and he waited, and he
waited.
He must have waited at least 12 hours,
perhaps longer.
And God did nothing.
Now that was designed to teach Abram patience,
and also to teach him that there would
be a delay in the fulfillment of these
promises.
It was God's object lesson again.
Incidentally, we have the same experience that Abram
has.
The promises of God are given us in
the Word of God, but we are not
told that we shall have them now.
We are told that we have them.
And sometimes the promises of God take many
years.
I've been saved now over 40 years, I
think.
No, not over 40.
Almost 40.
And the promises of God that I have
are promises which I have now still as
promises.
Some of them I have already received, but
many of them I'll still look forward to.
There is delay.
And one of the reasons for these long
waiting hours is that our own spiritual life
may be built up, that we may learn
what it is to have patience, that our
faith may be purified and become gold, silver,
and precious stones, so that it may become
a thing of beauty, and not a mixture
of dross and precious metal as it is
so often in our life here.
Now, we are also told in the words
that follow that Israel shall go down into
Egypt and they shall serve another people, so
they were to be disciplined.
In fact, before they received their promises, they
were to have some very terrible experiences.
This is the experience of every Christian.
If we live godly in Christ Jesus, Paul
says, we shall suffer persecution.
Now, that doesn't mean we shall suffer persecution
from the Arminians, but it includes that.
And so, we shall suffer persecution.
We should not be surprised if we preach
the grace of God that we have difficulties.
Why should we be surprised when the word
of God warns us over and over again
that through many tribulations we shall enter into
the kingdom of God?
So Abram is told that by this long
delay.
The second feature is the terror and great
darkness.
We read in verse 12, Now when the
sun was going down, a deep sleep fell
upon Abram, and behold, terror and great darkness
fell upon him.
This was a supernatural kind of thing.
It was a sense of gloom that fell
upon him.
It must have been something like a nightmare.
It was the, when the sun went down,
it was like the sun of grace going
down.
And Abram and the people whom he represent
pass into a time of darkness and gloom.
It represents the future of the nation Israel
as they go down into Egypt and suffer
the service of the Egyptians for four centuries.
Furthermore, it seems clear that this deep sleep
and the terror and great darkness is designed
to represent the impact of holiness upon sin.
So it is a figure by which we
are reminded of the fact that if there
is to be any blessing from God at
all, there must be judgment upon our sin.
Now if we do not have a Redeemer,
then we must bear the judgment ourselves.
But if we have a Redeemer, He bears
the judgment.
And so isn't it striking that in the
great moments of the divine revelation, we often
have holy God, terror and darkness and judgment
upon the earth, representing the impact of this
holy God upon unholy men.
Even in the giving of the law, what
characterized it was the terror of great darkness.
Darkness and gloom God was having, making a
covenant with His people, and it was the
impact of holiness upon sin.
When the new covenant, which is really simply
an expansion of part of the Abrahamic covenant,
is consummated by the Lord Jesus, what characterizes
the saving work of the Lord Jesus?
Darkness.
There came darkness over the land for three
hours.
That was the impact of holiness upon sin.
Furthermore, an earthquake.
So just as at the giving of the
law, and so here in the ratification of
the covenant and in the new covenant, characteristic
is the shaking of the earth, the darkness
and gloom, the impact of holiness upon sin.
Now this is all typical of Messiah's death,
for He is the true servant.
He is the true Israel, even called that.
And so His experiences and Israel's experiences are
experiences that are similar, for Israel in her
experiences is typical of the experience of the
Israel, the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's also interesting to me that this word
for deep sleep is used previously in this
book, in chapter 2, verse 21.
There it was used of the deep sleep
into which Adam was put when God operated
upon him and took his rib out and
made a woman from the rib.
And we said that many Bible teachers feel
that that is illustrative of the death of
Christ and the fact that out of our
Lord there is created the new creation, which
is to be His bride, the church of
Jesus Christ.
So this deep sleep, this word, teredema, is
a word that is suggestive of the death
of Christ in chapter 2 and suggestive, I
think here, also of the death of Christ.
We say this of that which is typical
and illustrative.
The final of the features of the circumstances
is the theophany described in verse 17.
And it came about when the sun had
set that it was very dark and behold
there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming
torch which passed between those pieces.
Now this follows immediately after the words of
the prophecy that came when we read of
the terror and great darkness that fell upon
him.
God had interpreted something of the darkness by
saying, know for a certain that your descendants
will be strangers in a land that is
not theirs, where they will be enslaved and
oppressed four hundred years.
He says that He will judge that nation.
He's referring to the Egyptian sojourn of Israel.
He will judge that nation and afterwards you
will come out with many possessions.
All of this was fulfilled, we know.
And as for you, Abram, you shall go
to your fathers in peace.
I say I love those expressions, the older
you get.
I look forward to going to my fathers
in peace.
I want to see my own father who
was a believer in Christ.
I never got to know my grandfather who
was a Presbyterian elder and when they didn't
have a preacher in the Somerville Presbyterian Church
and then in some of the others where
he was an elder, he would preach.
I never got to know him and I'm
looking forward to getting to know him and
the other members of the family who were
Christians.
Some of their possessions I have in my
possession now which I inherited from my father
when he died.
I'm looking forward to it.
Again, I say I'm sorry I have to
leave you but nevertheless I'm looking forward to
it.
So this particular statement that he was going
to go to his fathers is a tremendous
spiritual blessing.
Abram, you're going to go to your fathers
in peace and you shall be buried at
a good old age.
Now then, in verse 17, he speaks by
the action of the oven and the flaming
torch and this I think is the climax
of God's answer to Abram's, Oh Lord God
how may I know that I shall possess
it.
There would be total confusion in this passage
were it not for these covenantal, this covenantal
action and the covenantal promises that follow in
verse 18 through verse 21.
You see what is happening here is simply
this, Yahweh is ratifying a covenant and the
visible features are symbolical of the spiritual significance
of this covenant.
Now let's stop for just a moment and
notice what is taking place.
The animals were all set, the pieces of
the animals, there is a place between them.
Incidentally in the Mari tablets, the inscriptions, the
expression is found to slay an ass and
that was idiomatic of entering into a compact.
Evidently even among the heathen, asses were slain
and the pieces were of the animal were
separated as the animal was cut and individuals
then walked down between the pieces of the
animals in token of the fact that they
would be faithful to the words of their
compact or covenant unto death.
Now after the message this morning one of
my friends who was at the 8.30
service reminded me of another old practice which
many of us have experienced in the past.
Probably every one of you in this auditorium
if you are anywhere near as old as
I am know what a blood covenant is.
You used to make these blood covenants with
your best friends in which you would cut
your own hand and mingle your blood and
I have forgotten exactly what you would do
besides mingling your blood but you would mingle
your blood in token of the fact that
you would be faithful to some particular agreement
to death.
It was the way of expressing total commitment
to a covenantal agreement.
Well that is what we have here.
We have the animals, it was the custom
then for those who were parts of this
covenant the two parties to pass down between
the pieces of the animals.
This ancient testimony or this ancient custom I
should say has a testimony to it that
is a very interesting example in ancient history.
Immediately after the death of Alexander the Great
when troubles arose over how his empire would
be divided up the horse guards and the
rest of the cavalry under Perdiccas got into
a disagreement with Maliga and the infantry.
And the result was that this disagreement between
them became so great that it appeared as
if the two parts of the army would
go to war with themselves.
But they had an ancient summit conference and
as a result of this ancient summit conference
they determined that they would settle their particular
agreement and they would go through a ceremony
in order to symbolize it.
And so they obtained a dog.
Sorry those of you who love canine animals.
They took the dog and they cut the
dog in half.
And they put one half of the dog
over here and another half of the dog
over here and then the infantry and the
cavalry and the horse guards passed down between
the pieces of the animals in token of
their agreement.
Now almost all of these agreements were reciprocal
agreements.
That is they were agreements in which both
parties had responsibilities.
That was a very common kind of covenant
and incidentally in the Bible we do have
some covenants like that.
The Mosaic covenant was a conditional covenant.
There were responsibilities that God says are his
responsibilities and certain responsibilities that were supposed to
be man's responsibilities which he immediately of course
failed in.
But nevertheless there are conditional covenants.
Jonathan made a covenant with David and so
on.
There are conditional covenants in the Bible.
But now in the light of that let's
just think about this covenant for a moment.
Abram now it's dark and suddenly in this
experience that he had that was something like
a nightmare.
He's been waiting for something to happen for
hours.
Suddenly in the midst of the darkness he
looks and there is a smoking fire pot.
Something very familiar to the Easterners because that
was something that they cooked with.
And then the smoking fire pot was moving
and out of the smoking fire pot there
came a flaming torch all suggestive of the
pillar of cloud and pillar of fire by
which the Lord God directed Israel through the
wilderness.
It was a symbolic picture of the presence
of God.
And so it was God's way of saying
to Abram this represents what I do.
And so when Abram looks and he sees
the smoking oven and the flaming torch passing
through the pieces.
In other words as those animals were laid
out in sacrificial form here that which is
symbolical of the presence of God moves down
slowly between those pieces.
Now this is the characteristic thing that is
this is uncharacteristic thing that is important about
this unconditional covenant.
Abraham was not invited to follow that fire
pot and the flaming torch.
In fact Abram stands off in vision as
an astonished spectator at what God and God
alone is doing.
You see he is speaking about an unconditional
covenant.
A unilateral covenant in which God promises to
do certain things and these things will be
done.
Now someone may immediately say oh well Abram
must have had some responsibilities.
Didn't he have the responsibility of faith?
Wasn't faith a condition?
Well we know from the teaching of the
Bible that it is those who believe who
are the sons of Abraham.
Those who are Abram's seed of which we
are a part are believing seed.
That's true.
But you see the responsibility that they have
is something the responsibility of faith which they
have is something that God has taken upon
himself also.
In other words he is determined to fulfill
his covenant and he will fulfill it and
therefore he will fulfill the human responsibility of
faith for that too will be given to
us as a gift.
That's why salvation the Bible says is of
the Lord.
The whole thing is of the Lord.
It is guaranteed by him.
For by grace are you saved through faith
and that not of yourselves.
This whole salvation by grace through faith is
not of yourselves.
It is the gift of God.
The whole bit is the gift of God
inclusive of the faith.
It is not of works lest any man
should boast and so you won't get to
heaven and say Christ did it all but
I believed and I have a little bit
of merit for that and I believed out
of my free will.
No you won't be saying anything like that
in heaven.
If you were the angels would throw you
over the walls but when you get there
you'll be sound in your theology and so
you'll be ascribing grace and salvation to the
Lord God alone.
Now you may have a little persecution when
you're down here but all they who would
live godly shall expect to suffer some persecution
but praise the Lord Arminians who get to
heaven won't be Arminians there.
Now anyway you see the point.
The point is that this is an unconditional
unilateral covenant guaranteed by the Lord.
Now when we read through the rest of
the Old Testament and into the New Testament
we find that they still anticipate that this
Abrahamic covenant will be fulfilled.
The Virgin Mary in the first chapter of
Luke sings of the fulfillment of the Abrahamic
covenant in the birth of Jesus Christ.
The Apostle Peter preaching in Acts chapter three
sings also of the certainty of the fulfillment
of the Abrahamic promises and so on through
the New Testament.
They regard that covenant as still in force
and to be fulfilled.
It is a promise that God has never
repealed since the day that he made it
to Abraham and it has never been perfectly
fulfilled in history.
It still remains to be fulfilled.
The land is to be given as a
permanent possession for them to dwell in.
And even those statements in the Old Testament
which suggest a kind of partial fulfillment when
looked at carefully will be seen to be
not permanent nor complete nor fulfilled in the
same sense in which Abrams is told of
it being here as a place for Israel
to dwell in.
What a magnificent thing this is.
For you see the New Covenant is the
same kind of covenant.
When the Lord Jesus Christ consummated the New
Covenant and went through the first Lord's Supper,
took the bread and said, and wine and
said, and the Lord said, and said, this
is the New Covenant which is shed for
many for the remission of sins, he was
speaking of an unconditional covenant in which all
who are in him, in the mind of
God shall ultimately enter into their blessings.
Well our time is up.
I must close by saying simply this.
Remember that our blessings rest upon the same
covenant with its expansions.
And since that is so, notice the extent
of the blessings that are now ours.
We have the forgiveness of sins.
We have a king, a messianic king who
has come and is coming again.
We have the communion of the saints.
In thee shall all the families of the
earth be blessed.
All the great communion of all the saints
of God.
What a tremendous blessing that is.
And we have justification.
That is we have a standing before God
which enables us to have the sense of
assurance that we are secure because we rest
in Christ.
If you are here this morning and you
have never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ,
you are under divine condemnation.
You not only have inherited your guilt from
Adam, but you have proven your lost condition
by your disobedience to the law of God.
You have not kept the law of God.
You have not pleased him by your life.
You are guilty.
The requirements are that you present God with
a one hundred percent righteousness.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, with all thy mind, with
all thy soul, and thy neighbor as thyself.
Have you done that?
Have you done it from the time you
drew your first breath to the time that
you shall draw your last?
No, we have broken God's law and therefore
we are guilty.
But Jesus Christ has come and has offered
the atoning sacrifice in which forgiveness of sins
is offered.
And through the imputation of the righteousness of
God which comes to us through faith we
may stand before God with a righteousness that
is acceptable to him.
Remember what I said last Sunday, the righteousness
of God is that righteousness which God's righteousness
requires him to require.
And it's that that we have when we
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
What a tremendous thing it is to know
that we have been justified freely by his
grace.
Thomas Watson said, God does not justify us
because we are worthy, but by justifying us
makes us worthy, for we stand in Christ.
Do you have him?
Is your trust in him who offered the
sacrifice by which you may have a righteousness
that avails?
And what glorious security this covenant affords.
The fulfillment is not dependent upon our wavering,
failing faith but upon his unfailing faithful grasp
of us.
He who foreknew us foreordained us.
He has called us and justified us and
he shall glorify us.
It is so certain, Paul puts it in
the past tense in Romans chapter 8 verse
30.
And then as if awed by the blessing
of God and the certainty of our blessing
he says, what then shall we say to
these things?
If God be for us who can be
against us?
Abram must have said that.
If God be for us who can be
against us?
Lord God, if Yahweh, if you are with
me, who can be against me?
Well the story of the Bible is that
through Jesus Christ he is with the saints.
No one can be against us.
Come to Christ.
Put your trust in him.
Believe in him.
By the grace of God if you have
been shown your sin, the Savior has offered
the sacrifice for sinners.
Plead the sacrifice.
Plead his merits.
You have none.
Come to him.
Receive the gift of everlasting life.
Shall we stand for the benediction?
We are so grateful to thee Lord for
the answer that thou didst give to Abram.
Abram who out of weak and perhaps to
some extent of failing faith received this magnificent
expression of a sovereign faithful God.
How mighty thou art.
How loving and gracious thou art.
We praise thee for the accomplishment of the
work of salvation.
And now O God, save the saints.
Through the word of God bring them to
Christ.
If there are some here in this audience
elect in ages past who have not yet
come O move in their hearts.
Cause them to see their sin and cause
them to see the blood that was shed
as the sufficient atonement.
Bring them to repentance and faith and trust
in Christ.
May if it please thee Lord they join
the company of the saints today and rejoice
as they make their way toward the presence
of God.
Go with us for Jesus' sake.
Amen.