Will you kindly turn in the scriptures to
the book of Genesis chapter 15, where we
are going to read verses 1 to 6
as the basis of our meditation this morning.
I shall read the passage from the New
International Version.
After this, the word of the Lord came
to Abram in a vision.
Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield, your very great reward.
But Abram said, O sovereign Lord, what can
you give me since I remain childless?
And the one who will inherit my estate
is Eleazar of Damascus.
And Abram said, You have given me no
children, so a servant in my household will
be my heir.
Then the word of the Lord came to
him.
This man will not be your heir, but
a son coming from your own body will
be your heir.
He took him outside and said, Look at
the heavens and count the stars, if indeed
you can count them.
Then he said to him, So shall your
offspring be.
Abram believed the Lord.
Please notice that.
Abram believed the Lord, and he, that is
the Lord, credited it to him as righteousness.
This is a vitally important chapter in the
progressive revelation of God.
And that, of course, is a statement of
the obvious.
Anyone aware of the progressive revelation as we
have it in the Old Testament, culminating in
the New, will understand that we are treading
on very sacred ground just now.
It records certain events and principles which were
not only of the profoundest significance for Abram
himself as the father of the faithful or
the friend of God, but also to his
spiritual seed throughout the ages.
We are not surprised, therefore, to find that
this passage and what is taught here figures
as the background in a number of New
Testament passages, in a number of key New
Testament passages, such as Romans 4, Galatians 3,
Hebrews 11, and James 2.
Now we this morning are going to look
at two things.
One, the initial conflict in Abram's mind as
we come on to this scene in chapter
15.
And then following that, the settled confidence that
crept into Abram's heart as we come to
the end of the passage.
It is a pilgrimage, if you like, from
fear to faith, or as I would rather
put it, from inner conflict to settled confidence.
Now let's look at the first.
The conflict in Abram's mind.
Look at verses 1 to 3.
Let's grasp this.
It's very important by way of a link
with what went before and what Mr. McLeod
was talking to us about from chapter 14,
Last Lord's Day.
After this, after all that happened in chapter
16 with that mighty victory over the confederacy
of kings, after this, the word of the
Lord came to Abram in a vision.
And listen to what it says.
Don't be afraid.
And that seems to take us by storm.
This is the very moment when we wouldn't
be expecting Abram to be afraid.
He's experienced one of the greatest victories in
his life.
But Abram was afraid.
With all the great victory over the kings
and then over himself because he refused to
take anything from the king of Sodom, even
to a lachet of his shoes or a
drink of water as far as he was
concerned.
He said, I don't want anything because I've
sworn I'll not take anything from you lest
you turn up and say that you made
me rich.
Not anything do I want from you.
You see, Abram had a spiritual victory as
well as a military victory.
And then we come suddenly to this and
we find that as God saw Abram, he
was still trembling.
He may have worn the face of a
soldier, but at this moment he had the
heart of a person who was afraid.
Reassured by God that his unspecified fears were
wholly groundless and unnecessary, Abram momentarily glosses over
the reason that God gave him.
God says to him, don't be afraid, Abram,
because I am your shield.
And not only am I your shield, I
am your very great reward.
Now there are two thoughts lying there which
are most precious that I cannot deal with.
I can only refer to them.
God says to Abram, Abram, I am the
shield standing between you and any possible harm.
Any harm that comes to you has to
come through me.
I'm standing on guard.
I'm a wall around you.
I'm your shield.
And before anything can touch you mentally, spiritually,
physically, as a family, before anything can come
to you, Abram, it's got to pass through
me.
I've got to allow it.
And as if that were not enough, Abram,
I want to tell you that I am
your exceeding great reward.
If I allow anything to pass on to
you in terms of suffering or loneliness or
whatever, I want you to know, Abram, that
it is only a channel in and through
which I give you more of myself.
If I permit you to be lonely, if
I permit you to go here to do
that, if I permit this to happen to
you and you don't explain it, Abram, just
bear this in mind.
I am your reward.
I'm finding a better way of giving more
and more of myself to you.
I'm your shield to keep things off that
can bring you no harm, no good.
And I am the one who is giving
himself to you in the midst of the
circumstances that I shall choose for you.
This is what Paul means when he says
in Romans chapter 8 that all things work
together for good to them that love God.
God is not only a shield to keep
away the things that cannot do us any
good, but God is the one who can
transpose the evil to work out his good
purposes.
Now, God told Abram that, but you know,
it's funny, isn't it?
Sometimes you don't hear what's told you because
your heart and your mind are on other
things.
And you've got one little problem in your
mind and you miss a promise like this.
And Abram had one problem in his mind
at that particular moment so that, believe it
or not, despite this marvelous promise, I suppose
it's one of the most precious in holy
writ, Abram didn't get the glory of it.
As Abram saw it, there was reason for
fear.
As Abram saw it, on the one hand,
there was the amazing goodness of God.
He couldn't deny that.
The God who gave him victory over those
five confederate kings, as recorded in the previous
chapter, together with the incalculably precious promise just
received, however much he has recognized of the
value of that.
But now, on the other hand, you see,
there is this, and this is the thing
that's coloring his mind and shaping his thoughts.
He hasn't got a child.
Sarah's barren.
And so many of the promises of God
yesterday, even the promises that he has repeated
about tomorrow, there's no possibility of their being
fulfilled until Abram has a boy.
Abram has a child.
Sarah dandles a little one to her bosom.
And they haven't a child.
And because they haven't a child, you see,
this one solitary experience casts its ugly cloud
over everything that God has done for Abram
and everything that God says to Abram.
There's the basis of the conflict.
It is that God should have proved himself
so wonderfully mighty and gracious on such a
wide front.
But on this key front, and it is
a key front, he's so slow.
Why doesn't he hurry up?
If he means to give us a child,
why doesn't he do so?
Because the days are creeping in and the
years are passing on.
And Sarah's barren.
And it was hopeless from the beginning, but
it's becoming ten times, a thousand times more
hopeless as the days go by.
The storm raged then around the apparent inconsistency
between God's evident grace on so many fronts
and this one thing that he just doesn't
seem to do.
It seems as if God doesn't understand that
this is so key to the situation.
As man in his folly would say.
Now, this is by no means a dead
issue.
I've no doubt at all if we were
to talk heart to heart this morning, we
would find that many of us are there.
If we dare give in to our feelings,
many of us may be plagued by the
very same kind of thing as we sit
in this church this morning on this Thanksgiving
Lord's Day.
You see, God has been too kind to
us.
On myriad levels, in a myriad ways.
We can't, we can't deny his goodness.
Look at the clothes you wear.
Look at the food you eat.
Look at the homes you and I live
in.
Look at the cars we drive in.
Look at what we have.
Look at the country around and about us.
Hear the birds sing.
Listen to the rippling brook.
There are men and women in the world
today who've never heard a rippling brook.
Who've never heard the birds sing.
Who've never seen the beauties of an Ontario.
God has been so good to us on
a thousand fronts.
And then there's this one thing that he
said he would do, and he's never done
it.
And it's the key to everything.
And I just don't understand him.
Has he got a blind spot?
Perish the thought.
Why is he lingering?
Then I think it's time he did something.
Isn't that how we talk?
Because of all that, we too, like Abram
of old, are found making alternative arrangements in
the event of God's failure.
You know, we're as crazy as crazy can
be.
We too are pointing to some Eleazar of
Damascus, whom we anticipate to be the heir
after us when God has promised an Isaac.
Now, let me explain just briefly here.
You see, in Abram's day, this is exactly
what would have happened.
He had a slave in his house, Eleazar
from Damascus.
I don't know how he got him from
Damascus, never mind.
But here he was, Eleazar of Damascus.
He was his slave.
Now, in the event of there being no
issue, no natural issue, or adopted issue, or
adopted child, the natural thing to take place
was that this slave, who had proved faithful,
would inherit everything.
Now, Eleazar of Damascus was evidently a good
slave.
There's no question about that.
He was a good man, and perhaps speaking
humanly, he highly deserved anything that God or
Abram could heap upon him.
At least nothing is said against him here.
But you see what Abram is doing?
He's afraid that God is not going to
keep his original promise, which seems too good
to be true.
And therefore, Abram is taking some steps to
cover up.
And so, if there's no Isaac coming, well,
he'll fall back on Eleazar of Damascus, and
God may fulfill his promise through him.
This is the cause of the rumbling in
his spirit, and the questioning in his mind,
and the conflict.
And you know, the wonderful thing is that
the story doesn't end there.
Neither need it end there for you and
for me.
Let's pass on to the second main strand
woven into this rich tapestry of truth.
The scene changes, that the emerging confidence.
The word is faith, but I'm using the
word confidence because we've become so accustomed to
the word faith, that really we don't see
the glory of it, real faith.
Faith is confidence, and that's why I use
it now.
We know what confidence is.
If somebody has no confidence in you, well,
you know what that means.
If somebody has confidence in you, that bolsters
your ego and mind, doesn't it?
We know what confidence is.
Okay, the emerging confidence in God.
The scene changes then.
The sun rises upon Abram again.
Faith comes to its own, and the spectacle
is well worth seeing.
It was placed on record, I believe, for
our eternal prophet.
Three things.
One, God rejected Abram's alternative.
I'm referring to the alternative which fear and
doubt, which are two close relations, had together
suggested in place of what God had promised.
It's not going to be Eliezer of Damascus
who's going to be the heir, but the
child out of your own body.
Let me read it.
Then the word of the Lord came to
him, This man will not be your heir,
but a son coming from your own body
will be your heir.
God had to take away the second best
which Abram's timidity was grasping at, as if
the whole future depended upon that.
God had to take that away and say,
Abram, no, not Eliezer.
Pinning his hopes upon Eliezer was not God's
plan.
He had something far, far better for Abram
and Sarai and for posterity.
And so, the first thing that God has
to do is to get his eyes away
from Eliezer.
God has always to get our eyes away
from the props that we have made to
replace God.
Or as eventualities in case God lets us
down.
To prove him in all his glory, those
props have got to be taken away.
And that's part of the divine strategy in
sicknesses and weaknesses and trials of this earthly
life.
It's to take away our props.
Oh, the multitudes of men and women who
have acted in the same kind of self
-willed way as Abram, simply because they could
not wait God's time.
Some of us may be there in precisely
that situation this morning.
And self-appointed alternatives which fear and doubt
have devised, simply have to be relinquished before
we can experience the best that God has
planned for us.
Have you a self-chosen Eliezer?
An insurance policy that is meant to come
out just at the point when God will
fail.
Your Eliezer will not be accepted as an
alternative for God's Isaac.
Whilst you are only throwing dust and confusion
into your own eyes and mind by thinking
that God's original promise, a promise that he
made, clearly made, unequivocally made, unconditionally made, cannot
be fulfilled.
I want to stress this.
It is very necessary for us always to
remember that God never needs to revise his
unconditional promises.
He may withhold his gifts, his promises, the
fulfillment of the promises for a while, but
he never revises his plans relative to his
unconditional promises.
God rejected Abram's alternative.
He rejects mine, he rejects yours too.
We'll have to, and we'll have to put
them one side.
But now, the second thing.
God renewed his promises in still more specific
terms than those previously employed in speaking to
Abram.
This is precious.
God disqualifies this dear Eliezer of Damascus, this
faithful slave.
God disqualifies him and says, look, there may
be a place for you in my will,
but this is not the place.
You're not to be the heir of Abraham.
Abram's heir is to be a special gift.
Look at verse 4.
Then the word of the Lord came to
him, this man will not be your heir,
but a son coming from your own body
will be your heir.
The King James Version says, he that shall
come forth out of your own bowels, a
son coming from your own body.
What music those words must have conveyed to
the consciously aging saint.
His heir was not to be Lot, his
nephew.
We saw a little earlier that there was
a tendency perhaps to believe that God would
fulfill his promise through Lot.
Lot went out of the way.
He separated from Lot.
Now when there was still no child coming
into his own family, he thought of Eliezer
of Damascus, his slave.
No, no, no.
The heir is not to be Eliezer of
Damascus's slave either.
God says no to both.
Perhaps the general nature of the promise given
to Abram a little earlier on gave him
leeway to doubt a little.
The promise of God previously had been perhaps
a little general.
In chapter 12 and verse 7, God had
said that he had referred to his seed
and to his descendants, and that such seed
or descendants would become as great in number
as the dust of the earth.
That's chapter 13 verses 15 to 16.
Now those terms were rather general.
And maybe, maybe Abram had seen that they
were a little bit general and was a
bit afraid to turn the whole thing in
upon his own situation and to see that
he must be the father of the seed
to whom God had referred.
Maybe that he was afraid to turn the
general principle in upon himself, as we so
often are.
To turn the vast general comprehensive principles of
the word of God, turn them in upon
ourselves and say, this applies to me.
Perhaps the general nature of the promise then
gave some room for Abram to wonder whether
in the absence of a child by Sarai,
he should look elsewhere, but God had better
things for him.
There is something at one and the same
time comforting and humbling in the way God
has to repeat his promise to Abram.
And spell it out a little more and
make it more specific.
You see, doubt so easily sets in.
But what does God do when doubts come
in, into the lives of his elect, his
chosen ones, as Abram was?
Does God abandon those whom he has called?
Does God leave and forsake those whom he
has chosen as he chose Abraham?
Does he leave him to fend for himself
and withdraw and say, all right, Abram, I
give you a good chance and I put
you on the start of the race.
Now, if you can't go on yourself, I
leave you to it.
Is that our God?
If it were, my friends, all of us
would be in the mire this morning.
Faith needs to be as divinely sustained all
through to the end, as divinely imparted or
ignited at the beginning.
And what God does, you see, to deal
with this man whose faith was lagging or
lapsing or waning, I don't care what picture
you use, what God comes is, what God
does is this.
He gives him a more specific promise.
He brings him his promises.
And he presents him with a promise and
a clearer promise.
And he feeds him with a promise.
And dear old Abram at last sees it.
This is what brings him to a point
of crisis.
God pursues the half-believing saint with his
promises.
And this is always the way to advance.
It's take the promises of God.
Take the word of God, not as a
dead mechanical word, but as the word of
someone speaking.
I find that there's a great difficulty here,
you see.
These Bibles have been printed by machines, printing
machines.
And we tend to think of them as
dead things, dead letters, dead books.
And there is nothing which is more tragic
to faith than this, that I should read
the Bible as just a book that's come
from the press.
It's not that, my friend.
Curse the press if we're going to look
upon it like that, precious though its value
may be.
This is God's speech.
This is a personal message.
This is God speaking.
This is God addressing us.
And if we do not hear the voice
of God, the speech of God, the word
of God, God speaking in his word, well,
we'll soon either become bibliolators or heaven knows
what.
We need to hear and heed the voice
of God and know that it is always
in his word to be heard.
He is still speaking in the word in
which he has once spoken.
That brings me to the last point.
Having rejected Abram's alternative to the seed of
promise, renewed his own promise very specifically, God
graciously reassured his servant by giving him a
second object lesson.
Does God give you object lessons?
I hope he does, though their need is
not quite as great now as in the
days of old.
And perhaps, generally speaking, this kind of object
lesson may not be as relevant today, or
as needed today, with our full text and
canon of scripture as in Abram's day.
But look at what God did for Abram.
It was night.
At least in Abram's vision, according to the
first verse, if not in fact.
The Lord took the reassured man outside the
tent and bade him look up at the
sky, studded with a myriad stars, smiling in
solemn silence upon Abram and the world around
him.
And then God said to him, he must
have felt stupid.
God said to him, Abram, count the stars.
Now, this is not a hobby with him.
Don't know whether he ever tried it before.
But the voice of God came to him,
Abram, look up, count the stars.
Me, count the stars, what for?
What do I mean to count the stars
for?
I can't add to them, I can't take
away from them.
Why should I count the stars?
Abram, count the stars.
What a strange task to be given.
And evidently there must have been a long
pause during which Abram was looking up and
wondering what to do, where to start and
how to end the business.
Where do the stars begin and where do
they end?
And then we got them all in and
I don't know how far he went.
But of course the whole point of it,
the whole point of the exercise was to
prove to him that he couldn't do it.
Because the Lord says to him, as the
numbers of the stars cannot be counted, cannot
be counted, neither will the number of your
seed be counted in due course.
The wonder of it began to dawn upon
Abram at last.
Just as on an earlier occasion God had
said to Abram, his seed would be as
countless as the dust of the earth.
3rd chapter 13 verse 16.
See God wants to get this message right
across.
As countless as the dust of the earth.
So now he resolutely reaffirms that the seed
will emerge from Abram's own body, will be
countless as the stars above.
So whether you look down upon the dust
under your feet or upwards to the sky
at night, there are testimonies to the multitude
that will proceed out of your own body.
Now we shall not pause to consider whether
the one reference to the stars, for example,
is to Abram's spiritual seed and the dust
a reference to his natural seed.
Actually the Bible mixes the metaphors.
It uses the one for the other.
I don't need to go into the details.
The fact is that Abram was given countless
natural seed, according to Deuteronomy 1 10 and
elsewhere, as well as a multitude which no
man can number, out of every kindred and
tribe and people and nation, to be his
spiritual seed and to come and sit down
with Abram and Isaac and Jacob in the
kingdom of God.
Matthew 8 11.
The consequences of that divine object lessons were
profound and far-reaching.
Abram seems to have got the point at
last.
And if you can only see it at
this point, at this stage, when the message
gets through that he can't count the number
of the stars, yet he's going to have
more seed than the stars in number.
And as it begins to come home, we
read, Abram believed the Lord.
Now, if some of the translators of the
Hebrew at this point, if they are right,
then there is a very suggestive translation.
And it should go like this.
Abram steadied himself upon God.
Now, I really like that.
Because, you see, this is how Abram was.
God had given a promise and he was
staggered by the promises.
And he was staggering a little bit, spiritually,
if not physically.
He was tottering.
What on earth do you make of a
promise like this?
And I haven't got a child.
And you can understand it.
Can't you?
The man is flummoxed, as we say.
Do you use that word here?
Well, if you don't, get to know it.
He was completely outwitted.
He didn't know what was happening.
But now, at last, the message is coming
through.
And he steadied himself, leaning upon the Lord
who had spoken.
The Lord of all creation, El Elyon, Jehovah,
Elohim, the great God of creation, and the
great God of the covenant, and the great
God of history, the Lord God Almighty.
Abram leaned upon him and said, I rest
in you.
And God counted it to him for righteousness.
This was Abram's moment of justification.
Now, this is said in the New Testament.
This is where the New Testament makes use
of this passage.
Abram believed God and it was counted to
him for righteousness.
Abram became a justified soul at this time.
Now, someone may say, well, I'm terribly confused.
God called Abram of old and he came
out from Ur of the Chaldees, and he
obeyed and went a thousand miles, settled down
in Haran.
God called him again, and he came.
God revealed himself to him again.
Is this the moment of his justification?
Well, it would seem so.
The point is, you see, that all these
other elements were aspects of God's grace, his
prevenient grace, his preparatory grace, grace leading up
to great grace, grace leading up to saving
grace.
But it was at this point, apparently, that
he became a justified man before God, and
God counted his faith equal to his righteousness.
Isn't this a very precious thing this morning?
Oh, there are so many lessons here on
this Thanksgiving morning.
You and I know something of the faithfulness
of God, but is there something in our
heart of hearts concerning which we just cannot
trust?
Now, God is far too slow for our
liking.
This passage says to us that it is
better to wait God's time than to try
and force the issue.
Abram will have to learn this lesson again.
When we read this passage, we think he's
really got it at last.
I'm sorry to have to tell you he
didn't get it at last.
And by the aid of his not quite
believing wife, he tried another means.
We shall come to that later on.
But the fact of the matter is this.
For the moment, Abram was trusting in the
Lord, and God in mercy responds and says,
I count this to you as your righteousness.
Is there someone here this morning who would
want to be righteous, to be right with
God?
There never was a more blessed, more perfect
illustration of it than this.
Is there someone among us this morning who
has come in, and really you know that
in your heart of hearts, this season of
the year makes you more conscious of it
than perhaps than any other.
The goodness of God to you brings out
from your soul a sense of total unworthiness.
Why am I kept in life?
Why am I provided for?
Why do I see yet another harvest time
in these parts of the world?
Why should I?
And I'm a rebel against the throne of
God.
And every gift he gives me, I misuse.
Why should he?
Why should he care for me?
You need to be justified to use the
Pauline phrase.
You need your sins to be forgiven you,
and you need righteousness so that you can
be accepted by God on the basis of
justice.
There's only one way.
Steady yourself on the Lord.
Listen to his promises.
Let them come through.
Have him feed upon them, and repeat them
to yourself, and say, man, woman, these are
for you.
I will believe.
I do believe that Jesus died for me.
I will believe.
I trust my God.
The Bible tells us that this is justifying
faith.
Whom thus trust in the faithful God and
his faithful promises cannot, cannot be lost.
I covet, therefore, for God's glory this morning,
something like Abram's faith in my own heart
and in yours, dear people.
Oh, it is good that we should bring
our offerings and our thanksgiving offerings.
It is good.
It is great.
It is wonderful.
It is, it is of a peace, surely,
with the will of God.
But there is something more that is required
of us, and that is that we should
bring our confidence in God, born out of
his faithfulness, born out of his word, repeated
and reiterated a thousand times, and sealed with
the blood of Christ and his resurrection and
ascension and the coming of the Spirit.
Let us have faith in God.
Let us pray.
Oh, Lord God Almighty, faithful, faithful under all
circumstances, though we so often doubt.
We bemoan our doubts.
We confess our sins.
We acknowledge the carnality of our most spiritual
efforts.
Yet, oh God, we thank you that because
Jesus died, you forgive us.
And he was raised again for our justification.
And by trusting in him, we have righteousness
that makes us acceptable in your holy eyes.
Oh, to be clothed in him.
Oh, to have confidence in him.
In a world that believes not, through Jesus
Christ we pray.
Amen.