Two Journeys

If God has a small wrath against sin, then you need only a small salvation. If your sin was a minor thing, then you need only a minor Savior. If Judgment Day is a light thing, then you do not need much righteousness to survive it. If God constantly changes, then Genesis 19 has nothing to say to us today. But if God never changes — if He is the same yesterday, today and forever — then Genesis 19 speaks to us today. Genesis 19 tells us that God has a great wrath against sin; therefore we need a great salvation. Our sin is a great matter in His sight; therefore we need a great Savior. The righteousness needed to survive Judgment Day is a great and perfect righteousness; therefore, we need Christ.

I have pulled out seven timeless lessons from this passage, though there are many more,. We looked last week at the first one.

This narrative, which changed the course of human history, unfolded in eight acts, forever removing two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, and smaller cities in the whole region, turning it into a salty desert wasteland, a land of death rather than a land of life.

In act one, verses 1-3, the angels arrived, and Lot extended his hospitality to them.

In act two, verses 4-11, the Sodomites attacked and Lot sought to protect the guests who had come into his home, but he failed to do it. Rather, it was the angels that protected him by striking these evil people with blindness and preventing them from finding the door they were seeking to invade.

In act three, verses 12-14, Lot tried but failed to rescue his extended family. They thought he was mocking and joking. He had no weight, no moral authority with them. They blew him off. We saw also that Lot was lingering in Sodom, not wanting to leave.

In act four, verses 15-17, the angel strongly rescued Lot, his wife, and his daughters from Sodom, from certain destruction.

In act five, verses 18-22, the angels graciously allowed Lot to stay in Zoar, a small city on the way. God also graciously spared the city of Zoar because one righteous man was in it.

In act six, verses 23-26, finally the wrath of God poured down from Heaven above on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, destroying them forever. Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt because she turned and looked back and lingered and disobeyed the angel’s command to flee.

In act seven, verses 27-28, Abraham beheld the destruction the next day and the smoke rising from the plain like a densely boiling furnace, a pillar of smoke of destruction.

In act eight, verse 28, Abraham saw the destruction but he could not see Lot’s rescue, his salvation, in Zoar.

Next week, in the epilogue, we will see Lot and his daughters in the cave, the end to a sordid descent for Lot.

We began to look last week at seven timeless lessons. The first lesson that I emphasized by itself is that God has a passion against evil. Our God is a passionate being. He has a great wrath against sin, and He has not changed at all. God has an anger against every sin. God’s wrath against Sodom and Gomorrah is meant to be put on display for all time, so we can see that this is the kind of God that He is. Scripture reveals that we would not know if it had not told us and if we did not know what to look for. Scripture tells us that God reveals His wrath in some display every day.

Romans 1:18 says, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” God is pouring out his wrath in some hidden way every day. But Sodom and Gomorrah was different because it was not a hidden pouring out of the wrath of God. It was an open display of God’s holiness. “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.” [Habakkuk 1:13] He had tolerated Sodom and Gomorrah long enough. But we saw also last week how this great, fearsome wrath of God was metaphorically put into a cup and handed to Christ to drink, and how Jesus drank it to the bottom at the cross.

Hallelujah! What a Savior, that He drank in, spiritually speaking, fire and brimstone for you and me so that we could go to Heaven and not Hell. You will have a light appraisal of what Jesus did for you if you have a light appraisal of the wrath of God. The more you feel in your heart that you deserve what the Sodomites got in Genesis 19, the more grateful you will be to Jesus for drinking your cup for you, the more joyful you will be, the less you will complain about the circumstances of your life, the gladder you will sing hymns and praise songs to him. If you feel the weight of your own guilt, and the burden of God’s wrath which hung over you apart from Christ, and then you realize that Jesus stood in between you and the wrath, and drank it completely, what joy is yours and what great salvation. But if you have not trusted in Christ, then all of that wrath still remains on you — all the wrath for what you have done, for the sins that you have committed.

The second lesson has to do with Sodom’s open sinfulness, recorded in Genesis 19, mainly related to sexual perversion, namely homosexuality. The last year in America, this issue has really forced itself upon us. The activist mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, took it upon himself, contrary to the laws of the state, to issue 2000 marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He was lauded as a courageous hero by some, the same people who wonder why the present Attorney General does not uphold the law of the land on abortion. This law of the land was openly flouted and those marriages were permitted in San Francisco. Not long after that, on May 17th, 2004, with a court order, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts became the first state to authorize same-sex marriage. This is all part of a vast plot originating from the mind of the devil, but also intelligently advanced by people to change the way we think about homosexuality. The agenda here is not merely tolerance, not merely acceptance, but rather a celebration of what the Bible calls perversion. We are to celebrate it, and if we do not, we are labeled homophobes or narrow-minded bigots or other names.

This is a great concern. There is a group called Gays and Lesbians in Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), whose stated strategy is to be positive and cheerful. They actively seek to train media outlets — news stations, for example — on how to handle stories about gay people. Realizing that the strange behavior and bizarre clothing worn by people at Gay Pride parades is not the image they want to project, they urge local media stations to do special interest stories on gay people. Getting dressed, going to work, shopping, everyday life, to normalize what the Bible presents here in Genesis 19 as shocking and evil. TV programs, movies, songs, popular culture controlled by the media elite in Hollywood and others seek to brainwash us to think differently than what the Bible says.

My first concern is that those who are caught up in this lifestyle may think that it is actually something good, something to be celebrated, and as a result, will not turn to Christ, will not trust in Him, will not believe in Him, will not repent. Therefore, they will stand under the wrath of God that all sinners stand under if they do not turn to Christ and repent. There may even be somebody here in the sanctuary today who thinks it is alright, who has accepted the agenda, the brainwashing message, and therefore will never flee to Christ, and therefore will spend eternity in Hell, apart from God.

My second concern is that both those individuals and people in the church will think of homosexuality as an unforgivable sin or something from which one can never be transformed, that it is permanent, built into your genes, there is nothing one can do. That is false as well. I would rather you embrace Jesus Christ and the transforming power of the Gospel and realize the very same Gospel that saved you can save somebody out of that lifestyle.

My third concern goes to the nature of what the human heart does with conviction. Whenever we read a story like this, we seek a way of escape where we are not standing under it. It is easy, in Genesis 19, if you do not struggle with the sin of homosexuality, to think it does not apply to you, that the lessons of Sodom and Gomorrah do not say anything to you at all. I found a single verse in Ezekiel which changed forever the way I looked at Genesis 19. Do not misunderstand — it is clear from the way Moses wrote Genesis 19 that he intends to connect the homosexual perversion of the Sodomites to the judgment that comes, but it was bigger and broader than that. Ezekiel 16:49 says, “Now, this was the sin of your sister, Sodom, and of her daughters. They were arrogant, overfed, unconcerned and did nothing for the poor and needy.” It is about so much more than homosexuality.

I come to deal with the text and the entire account biblically, to try and understand everything that is here. But the first lesson that we need to draw out today after the lesson we learned last week is that there was an open sin of homosexuality in this account in Genesis 19. Some people, apologists for that way of life who somehow try to use the Bible to support their lifestyle, question whether Genesis 19 has anything to do with homosexuality at all.

The NIV typically tries to explain what the text means rather than just simply translating it in this case. But the ESV has done a good job stating what it simply says: “And they called to Lot, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.’” (ESV Genesis 19:5) That is all it says. I saw this on a website that unfolded this whole way of thinking, saying that the residents of Sodom simply wanted to be hospitable and friendly, and Lot was hoarding them all to himself. It is amazing to me that this is what people do with Scripture. They say, “OK, you want to be literal, that is literally what it says, ‘Bring them out to us that we may know them.’” They will even go so far as to say that God brings down terrible wrath and judgment on people who will not accept those who are different than themselves, who are afraid of them or ignorant or bigoted or biased. They are setting the table then, for the wrath to fall down on homophobia rather than on homosexuality. They turn the whole thing around.

But that does not make any sense. Is the issue in Genesis 19 failed hospitality? Does that not pervert the way you would read any text? The Bible is using a euphemism. It is a common Hebrew word, “To know.” But it says very plainly in Genesis 4, “Now Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived and bore Cain…” They were not simply getting to know each other, out on a date night. They had marital relations, and as a result, Cain was conceived. Even plainer, verse 8 says that Lot brought out his daughters and said, “Here, you can have them. They have never known a man.” It uses the exact same Hebrew word right in the text.

But if that is not convincing enough, the despicable, wretched parallel account in Judges 19. This happened in Israel. Judges 19:22, 25 says, “As they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, worthless fellows, surrounded the house, beating on the door. And they said to the old man, the master of the house, ‘Bring out the man who came into your house, that we may know him.’ … But the men would not listen to him. So the man seized his concubine and made her go out to them. And they knew her and abused her all night until the morning. And as the dawn began to break, they let her go.” That is not about hospitality. It is about great perversion and wickedness, and it is clearly meant to be a parallel. In those days, Israel had no king and everyone did what was right in their own eyes, and they ended up just like Sodom. The clincher is in Jude 7 (ESV): “…just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.” Literally, the Greek in Jude 7 is, “To go away after other flesh.” The context is one of great judgment and the rejection of God.

But we do not need all these, you need only the simple biblical teaching on these issues, the very straightforward statements that God makes in other places. For example, Leviticus 18:22 says, “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.” It can be no plainer than that. Leviticus 20:13 says, “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” Romans 1:26-27 says, “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.”

Scripture cannot be twisted to make homosexuality righteous. It is not. It is a great sin. It is portrayed in the middle of Romans 1 as the great example of the way humans pervert what God has ordained, to say, “No, we will do what we want. We are kings, we are queens of our own lives.” That is a great example of the attitude of sin that is in all of our hearts, taken out to that degree. These activists try to find establishment for their lifestyle by twisting Scripture.

I would urge them to do something different — the way out is found in Scripture through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Not one of us did not need saving. Not one did not need to have the heart of stone taken out and a heart of flesh given. Not one did not need the Scripture, the law of God, written on our hearts, the indwelling Spirit to help us live that righteous life. Not one did not need Jesus to drink the cup of God’s wrath on our behalf. Not one. But the answer is not to deny sin, to say it is not sin, to say that the Bible calls it righteous — not at all.

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 says, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: [Do not buy into the propaganda going out today]; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God [if that is what you are, you will not go to Heaven]. And such were some of you [Conversion transforms sinners and makes them righteous — “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) There is great power for transformation]. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

God has power to transform sinners and make them righteous. He has power to give them a great and comprehensive salvation, to take away everything sin has done — the corruption of the mind and heart, the standing before God under His wrath, the fact that there is no righteousness with which to survive Judgment Day, the things that sin does to the body, the things it has done to the world around us — salvation in Christ can transform all of that and make it perfect. That is the way out, not by twisting scripture.

That is Sodom’s open sin, but then there was the other sin. Ezekiel 16:49 says, “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” Arrogant and over-fed literally means too much bread in Hebrew. They were unconcerned, and did not help the poor and needy. That has been a convicting passage for me. This passage screams “America!” more than the sin of homosexuality does, although that is part of the problem as well. In Genesis 13:10, Lot saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered and lush like the garden of God. The ancient irrigation systems resulted in bumper crops year after year, resulting in an abundance of food. With the trade routes passing through, the people became materially prosperous, with plenty of food and plenty of everything the world had to offer.

As a result, they became lazy, indolent, and complacent. Their hearts grew hard. They were looking for the next big thrill, because that kind of life leaves you numb. They found it in sexual ways, but they also found it in other ways. The back side of that is that their hearts were hard and callous toward the needy. They never thought that the abundance they had was meant to supply others who had need, never been meant to be kept and hoarded. They never thought they had enough. They were meant to be a conduit, a pipe of blessing to the poor and needy. The passage in Ezekiel says they did not think that way.

An ABC news report from December 8 said that nearly two-thirds of Americans are overweight and almost one in three is obese, according to the Federal Government. Physical inactivity and being overweight account for more than 300,000 premature deaths annually in the US, second only to tobacco-related deaths. One preacher I heard said, “More people die with a fork in their hand than a knife in their back.” That is a testimony in reference to what is going on in America today. The Center for Disease Control reports indicate that diabetes increased by 33% among American adults during the 1990s, reflecting a surge of obesity during that same period. Juvenile diabetes is on the rise. More youngsters are overweight.

The residents of Sodom were also arrogant, prideful, boastful. “Surely we are the people and wisdom will die with us. Surely, it is because we are so good at farming that we are so wealthy.” There is an arrogance there. I see it in our country too. God hates arrogance wherever he finds it. I hate the word pride; rather, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. Let us boast in the Lord, not in ourselves. We see arrogance and pride, and we call ourselves the greatest nation on earth. Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political philosopher who lived 200 years ago, reflected on his travels through America: “I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world of commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” That is appropriate when you look at what was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah. It is not in the wealth and prosperity that the greatness of a nation lies.

It also says that the residents of Sodom were unconcerned. The ESV says they had prosperous ease. There is an old familiar saying that idle hands are the devil’s workshop. When you have plenty of time, you get into trouble, but the Lord meant for us to be busy about the work of the Kingdom; there is no room for idleness. America also has a common unconcern, a prosperous ease, a luxurious comfort, making our hearts unresponsive to the goads of conscience and to the word of the Lord. As a result of all of their unconcern, the people of Sodom did nothing for the poor and needy, unresponsive to their cries.

Randy Alcorn of Eternal Perspectives Ministry said, “If you have enough food, decent clothes, live in a home that shields you from the weather and own some kind of reliable transportation, you are in the top 15 percent of the world's wealthy. Add some savings, a hobby like hunting or fishing that requires equipment, two cars (in any condition), a variety of clothing and your own house, and you have reached the top five percent” in the world in terms of wealth. You may not feel wealthy, but that is only because you are comparing yourself to someone else who has more than you do.

To get a better handle on this reality, consider that more than 1.1 billion people in the world live on less than the equivalent of $1 US per day. 500 million people are hungry, and another 500 million people are so poor that they do not get enough food to be fully productive. Every day, nearly 75,000 people, most of them children, die because of dirty drinking water, disease or malnutrition.

These statistics will give you an idea of what the church could do about it. In the year 2000, American evangelical Christians collectively made $2.66 trillion in income. Over the next 50 years, statistics show that between $41 trillion and $136 trillion will pass from older Americans to younger Americans, suggesting that roughly $1 to $3 trillion a year in wealth changes hands. The average donation by adults who attend US Protestant churches is about $17 per week. Read that again.

Among church members of 11 primary Protestant denominations or their historical antecedents in the United States and Canada per member giving as a percentage of income was lower in the year 2000 than either in 1921 or 1933. In 1921, per member giving as a percentage of income was 2.9%. In 1933 at the depth of the Great Depression, per member giving grew to 3.3%, but by 2000, after a half century of unprecedented prosperity, giving had fallen to 2.6%. Isn't that incredible? It is as though the more prosperous, the less is given percentage-wise.

Overall, only 3-5% of Americans who donate money to a church actually tithe, or give a 10th of their incomes, though many more claim to do so. 33% of US born again Christians say it is impossible for them to get ahead in life because of financial debt — credit card and other — that they have incurred. If members of historically Christian churches in the United States had raised their giving to the Old Testament minimum standard of giving the tithe, 10%, in 2000, an additional $139 billion would have become available per year. 80% of the world’s evangelical wealth is in North America, right where we live. The total represents more than enough to fund the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

I find that convicting. Honestly, I find it shattering. This was the sin of Sodom and her sisters. They were arrogant, over-fed, unconcerned, and did nothing for the poor and needy. Let that not be said of you, and if you fear that it might rightly be said of you, repent and say, “Lord, from this point forward, I want to live differently. I do not want to be like that. I want to live for Your kingdom and for your glory, not for myself.”

The fourth lesson comes from Lot’s dreadful descent, which I will talk about next week. I will say this though — Lot did not understand what was happening in his heart. He did not realize how little by little he was being corrupted by Sodom and Gomorrah. As a result, he descended to a level he probably never could have imagined he would get to. He did not see the hardening happening in his heart. Week by week, month by month, year by year.

But Lot was called righteous elsewhere. 2 Peter 2:7-8, which talks about Lot, is one of the more surprising passages, if you know anything about Old Testament history. If you read the story of Lot in Genesis 12-19, would you have concluded he's a righteous man? Someone once said, “Could it be my whole life is only to serve as a warning for others?” It seems that is how it was for Lot. But the Bible calls him righteous.

2 Peter 2:7-8 “…and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men, (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard).” Peter called him righteous three times.

It is hard to believe, given how polluted we see him by the end of the account. What was the nature of his righteousness? It is that he was tormented in his soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard. He seemed powerless to change it and paralyzed to move out from it, but he was tormented by it within. He hated where he was living. These are strong words — tormented means distressed or oppressed, like a form of slavery with a wicked master. He was tormented like the paralyzed man that Jesus healed in Matthew 8. He was tormented like the demons of the Gadarenes who were afraid to be thrown into the pit lest they be tormented before the appointed time — same Greek word. He was tormented like the boat that was tossed to and fro in the waves when Jesus stilled the storm. He was ripped apart by what he saw in Sodom and Gomorrah. Why is this important? You may feel powerless to do anything about America, paralyzed to move in any way, but the question is, what is going on inside you? Are you tormented by what you see, does it bother you?

The account indicates that it was solely this attitude that saved Lot’s life, the fact that it deeply bothered him the way Sodom and Gomorrah was. Ezekiel 9 gives a parallel account. This is a time when Jerusalem was corrupted, when there was great wickedness, and God sent Ezekiel, the prophet, to speak to the people. He took Ezekiel on a tour in the Spirit of the underbelly of life in Jerusalem; He showed him all of the wickedness. In Ezekiel 9:4-6, three angels stood before God, one with a writing kit by his side. God commands the angel, “‘Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.’ As I listened, he said to the others, ‘Follow him through the city and kill, without showing pity or compassion. Slaughter old men, young men and maidens, women and children, but do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary.’” They began with the elders who were in front of the temple. In other words, those who were grieving and lamenting would survive, but those who did not would be destroyed.

At that moment Ezekiel fell down and said, “Oh Lord, will you really destroy all the remnants of Israel?” He interceded. The account ends in Ezekiel 9 with the first angel, the one with the writing kit, coming back to report that God’s command had been accomplished. It may not have taken long to mark everyone in Jerusalem who grieved and lamented over the things that were going on. It took the other two angels longer to do their work; they did not come back in Ezekiel 9. You may feel paralyzed and powerless to do anything about America. But at least this much is so — if you are a believer in Christ, you should grieve and lament over wickedness, beginning with your own, saying, “Lord, transform me and make me like Jesus Christ.”

The sixth lesson is that God knows how to rescue people from the city of destruction. Verse 16 says,“When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the LORD was merciful to them."

Do you realize how much you depend on God doing this for you? You get yourself into trouble with sinful habits and thought patterns and behaviors that are not good, and the Lord through His grace, by the indwelling Spirit, or by a brother or sister in Christ, or perhaps even by an angel, grabs you by the hand and says, “Oh no, you’re not going that direction” and gets you out of trouble. Lot did not want to go. He wanted to stay right where he was. The angel was in effect saying, “You will thank me in the morning. Let’s go!” Praise God for that. So Lot fled. How sweet is the grace of God to reach down into your life with his powerful hands and say, “No, you will not do that anymore.” He will frustrate your sin nature, and He will sanctify you and give you new desires and move you in a different direction, for he knows how to rescue the righteous from the day of destruction. He knows how to get you through this world, this Vanity Fair.

The seventh lesson is Jesus’ whole application of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Three words: Remember Lot’s wife. She did not want to leave. She lingered, she disobeyed, she turned back. And she was turned into a pillar of salt. The full of context to Jesus’ statement is Luke 17:32-33: “Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” If you are willing to take up your cross daily and follow Jesus, you will save your life. If, on the other hand, you do not want any part of that — the Christian life is too hard, you have no interest in following Jesus, the gate is too narrow, the road is too straight — then you will lose your life. Remember Lot’s wife. Do not become enamored with your earthly life. Give it up. Give up the money, give up the ease, give up the comfort, give up anything that makes us like Sodom.

Flee to Christ. Christ is better than Zoar. He is better than the two angels that were sent to rescue Lot and his family. Christ is the incarnate Son of God who came down to take hold of you and never let you go until he is done saving you. He said, “I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and has eternal life, everyone who looks to the Son has eternal life and will not be destroyed. I will raise them up at the last day.” Trust in Christ. If you wrestle or struggle secretly with the sin of homosexuality, Jesus has the power to deliver you, he has the power to rescue you. He has done it to other brothers and sisters, he can do it to you.

Even if you do not struggle from that sin but you struggle from the four that are listed in his Ezekiel 16:49 — “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” — he has the power to deliver you from that too. Trust in him.

Second, remember Lot’s wife. Be suspicious of the corrupting power of the world around us. It is working on us all the time. Get brothers and sisters to pray for you to be accountable to them. Be part of a good, healthy church. Fight sin at every turn in the road. Confess sin to God frequently. Read His Word, saturate your mind with it, lest you be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

Third, I'm gonna speak quite directly to the members of First Baptist Church. At the present time, we do not have an organized inner city ministry. We have people who have done things, but some of the leaders in our church are not able to continue that ministry. We have no leadership for reaching out to Northeast Central Durham to the poorest people in this area. That cannot stay the same. We cannot have no ministry to the inner city. I know there are people who are listening to me today who want to serve and reach out to poor people in this community.

If you want to help us, we have opportunities. We have a tutoring ministry that is non-existent right now. It has been fruitful up to this point, but we need laborers. Even more than that, we need leaders who will organize this ministry of bringing in inner city kids for tutoring. This is a great opportunity to build relationships and lead folks to Christ. We have the opportunity, with Child Evangelism Fellowship, won for us in the Supreme Court of the United States, to go into the public schools after hours to conduct Bible clubs for kids who have never heard the name of Jesus. Trust me, there are many in the inner city who have never heard of Jesus. We have the opportunity, but we need 10 to 15 laborers at least for each club. We have other inner city opportunities.

If you are interested in doing this, meet with me and the other pastors in the parlor after the service. We will take down your name and your information. It could be anything from some smaller ministry to a larger one. This is an opportunity for you, a chance for you to serve the Lord. If you are called to other ministries, do not feel ashamed that you are not able to do those that I have mentioned. Serve in those other ways, but if you feel a calling to work in the inner city, please come and talk to the ministers at the end of the service.

We come now in our exposition of Genesis to a most sobering chapter, Genesis 19, one of the most dramatic moments in human history, and also one of the most disturbing.  In Israel, there is a place, one of the most remarkable geologically on earth, called the Dead Sea Valley.  It is the lowest spot on the earth’s surface, 1,286 feet below sea level.  It is a strange place, the Jordan river feeds it constantly, but nothing flows out of it, and so there is a constant accumulation of minerals and salts. 

I have heard from people that have been there that you almost can't sink in the Dead Sea, it is so salty and so strange.  As you look around in the area, there is nothing living there at all, there is just interesting geological formations, there is a mountain of rock salt, 700 feet high, called Jebel Usdum in Arabic, Mount of Sodom.  There is a great deal of evidence of volcanic activity from the past.  Amazingly, however, archaeology shows that at one time in that region, there was a vast and extensive irrigation system, and I find this fascinating because it corroborates what we learned in Genesis 13:10, that at one point this whole region was one of the most fertile on earth, maybe the most fertile, it was lush and beautiful and fruitful, like the garden of God, it says.

But now it looks like death, that is all.  It really is the valley of the shadow of death.  What happened to that region?  Well, Genesis 19 tells us what happened, how it was transformed from a lush and fruitful ground to a place which just screams death.  Genesis 19, however, is not merely a story of the destruction of a region or a two-city Sodom and Gomorrah and the smaller cities that surround it.  Rather, it is a timeless tale of the very nature of God, the character of God, of the passion of God for holiness, of his zeal for His law.  And for me as a Christian, the only hope I have when I read this account is to realize that there is also a passion for my salvation in Christ, and were it not for both together, we would despair because God hasn't changed any at all, and we are no better, we are no better.

I have been greatly challenged by the study I have done, and it's not just in one week that we will be looking at it, there is too much in here, but today, I want us to understand the people of Sodom are not sinners out there.  This is not just about sexual perversion, about homosexuality, it is about that, but, it is about many other things besides.  And, I found myself convicted, especially by a passage in Ezekiel which told me why God did this, which Genesis 19 doesn't tell me.  We are going to learn that there, but for the grace of God go I, that I deserved that as well; but in Christ, we have salvation.

And so, it is a sobering tale, but in the end, it is the tale of a salvation of a single sinner who is called righteous by grace, Lot, out of a place of destruction and wickedness, and that's my great hope, and I hope it is yours as well.  

Now, this drama, perhaps one of the most stunning in all the Bible, has a fascinating cast of characters, the created characters start with Lot.  Lot was righteous, but polluted.  Lot was righteous, but he was affected by the surroundings.

1 Corinthians 15:33 says, “Bad company corrupts good morals.”  And, Lot is a living example in the scriptures of that.  As you look at the life of Lot, you see exactly that that is what happened.  Now, remember the story of the degeneration of Lot.  Lot was Abram's or Abraham's nephew, traveled with him, he was with him step by step until there came a conflict between their herdsmen, and it became reasonable it seemed for them to separate, but that separation was a major fork in Lot's road, and from then on it was a descent into degeneration.

As he looked out and Abraham said, "Look, the whole land is in front of you, if you go right, I'll go left.  If you go left, I'll go right."  Very magnanimous of Abraham.  Lot looked down over the plain where Sodom was, and he saw that it was well-watered and lush like Egypt, like the garden of God, it says.  And then in Genesis 13, it says, this is before (and in parentheses almost) God destroyed the cities of the plain, so there is some foreshadowing there.  But, Lot in Genesis 13, looks down and he is attracted and selfishly chooses the best for himself, and he goes down.

And then in Verse 12 of Chapter 13, it says “Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents toward Sodom.”  You see, there's a kind of a pull there, there's like a gravitational pull almost into a black hole or a sink hole, and he is just getting drawn into the lifestyle of Sodom.  And then in Genesis 14, he's abducted in the story of the nine kings, he's abducted along with the other inhabitants of Sodom, and Abraham has to go at night and rescue him and get all of his people and his possessions back.  That would have been a good time for him to leave Sodom.

He knew better by then, he knew what was going on, but instead he goes back and lives there still, and eventually now, as we see him in Genesis 19, he's sitting it seems almost like a gatekeeper in the community.  The gate is a place where official business is transacted and there he sits, he's worked his way into the society, into the culture, he's accepted there at one level, although that doesn't last long as we'll see in this account.  Little by little, this is one of the most sorted and despicable tales of a descent from righteousness into corruption, and Lot is an example of that.

A terrifying journey in sin and, oh, the end of a life like that, it ends for Lot at the end of our account, which wasn't read this morning, but we'll get to, God willing, in due time.  With him and his two daughters in a cave, a perverted and sordid tale, a very sad descent, and yet for all of that, the Bible calls him righteous.  Frankly, if it weren't for Peter’s inspired statement in the 2 Peter 2, I wouldn't think of Lot as a righteous man.  I think of him as an anti-example, something you don't want to be.  And his life still is that, it is a warning.

But it says in 2 Peter 2:7-8, that “He, God, rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard).”  Three times in two verses, he is called righteous.  What a surprise!  But that is how God saw him, He saw him as righteous, and yet he was in some way polluted.  We also have in our cast of created characters, Lot's family, they are corrupted to the core.  His wife was totally enamored by the life of Sodom and didn't want to leave it, and she testified to that by lingering, by hanging back, by looking back in direct contradiction of what the angel had warned her not to do, and in the end, she was consumed.

His sons-in-law perished in the city, they never made it out, they didn't take their father-in-law seriously at all.  It shows how little respect they had for him, and that testifies again, negatively, about Lot.  He was not a man worthy of their respect, and they thought he was mocking.  His daughters were morally corrupt, as we'll see in the episode in the cave, and no wonder because look how he treats them in the story.  I actually think Lot may be one of the worst believing fathers in the entire Bible; he should have led his family to safety morally but instead he corrupted them and ends up in a cave drunk with his two daughters.  Lot's weakness and his desire to stay in Sodom destroyed his family, destroyed them.  He was a terrible father, and he failed to see the spiritual dangers and what it was doing to his wife and to his children; he didn't leave as he should have done.  

Then you have the angels, they are holy and they are disguised, and they are powerful, and they come into the scene, and Lot doesn't know it.  It seems in the text that they are angels, and just like Abraham had entertained the angels without knowing that they are angels in Genesis 18, the same thing happens here.

It says, remember in Hebrews 13:2, “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”  Angels are servants of God to those who are inheriting salvation.  That is what it says in Hebrews 1:14, “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who inherit salvation?”  And, here they are serving Lot, but they are also serving us as the account is written, and we can learn about the nature of God and His holiness, and so they are serving.  They are servants of God to bring blessing or wrath, whatever God chooses.  They simply do His will and they obey Him gladly.

Now, the wrath that is poured out on Sodom and Gomorrah is God's wrath.  Look at Verses 24 and 25, it says, “Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah−from the Lord out of the heavens.”  Do you see how strongly it is stated there, this is God's wrath from the Lord out of the heavens, thus, He, the Lord overthrew those cities and the entire plain including all those living in the cities, and also the vegetation and the land; however, it was the two angels who were the effective instruments of that wrath, they brought the wrath to Sodom and Gomorrah.  Look what the angel says in Verses 12 and 13, 'The two men said to Lot, ‘Do you have anyone else here−sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you?  Get them out of here because we are going to destroy this place.’"  Did you see that?

And so, God is doing His work through the angels, they are His servants.  “The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.”  And so, we see the angels.  Angels always do with gladness and joy anything God tells them to do, because they trust Him and they trust His purposes, and they are glad to carry them out.  They do not hesitate.  They are doing His will; they are simply here to carry out God's commands.  

And then finally, concerning the cast of created characters, we have the inhabitants of Sodom.  They are perverted, they are violent in this text, and in Ezekiel, we find out that they were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned and did nothing for the poor.  It isn't just about homosexuality, you see.  It is about the whole thing; it is about the whole way of life.  They hated God, they hated the things of God, they were filled with their own lust and with their own desires.  They were violent, they were wicked day after day, and the outcry went up from Sodom and Gomorrah up to God.  The outcry for justice.  Now, that's the cast of created characters.  But the central character in this chapter is the character of God.  God is the center of all Scripture, and He is the center of this account.  What does this account tell us about God?  That's the question, because he never changes.  He is the same yesterday and today and forever.  He never does anything wrong but He is perfectly just and righteous.

And so, for me, I want to know, what does this chapter teach me about God, the God before whom I will stand on Judgment Day?  That's what I want to know.  What is God like?  Now, this drama unfolds in eight acts, and you've heard it beautifully read by Ryan.  The first act, the angels arrive and Lot extends his hospitality in Verses 1-3.  It says, “The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city.  When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground.  ‘My lords,’ he said, ‘please turn aside to your servant's house.  You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.’  ‘No,’ they answered, ‘we will spend the night in the square.’  But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house.  He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate.”  So, here we see the beginning of this drama, and it starts with an act of hospitality.  Note, also, as I've already alluded to, Lot's possible position of authority, to sit at the gate.  In Proverbs 31, the Proverbs 31 woman, her husband sits at the gate, he takes his place at the gate along with the elders in the community; it's a place where business is transacted.  And so, it is possible that Lot had reached a position of authority in the community.  Note, also, Lot's remarkable commitment to hospitality.

Notice humility, he bows low to the ground as they come.  Now keep in mind, he doesn't know that they are angels, as I read the text, he is entertaining angels without knowing it, and yet he's humble, he bows low to the ground.  He insists that they spend the night.  Now, the angels fascinatingly are determined to spend the night in the town square.  Wouldn't that have been a fascinating night?  Wouldn't that have been an amazing thing?  The angels, untouchable, powerful, sent by God to destroy, and Lot, not knowing that they are angels, not knowing their power, was terrified for them, and said, "No, my Lords, but please stay with me in my house," and he begs them and pleads with them not to stay in the town square.

“Doesn't it occur to you Lot, why are you staying there?  Doesn't it occur to you, get out of there, leave the city, what are you doing living there?  Nobody's forcing you to stay, go back with your uncle, it's better with him, even if your herdsmen argue a little, work it out,” but there he is.  And so, Lot is humble and he is insistent and he completes the hospitality by feeding the men, the meal is only simple, it's unleavened bread, very much like the bread that was eaten by the Jews the night they escaped from Egypt in the Exodus.  The night of the slaughter of the first born, the night of the Passover, it is a meal eaten in haste, not a special meal, and that's what he fed to them.

The second act, the Sodomites attack.  Lot tries but fails to protect his family and the angels, but the angels don't fail, they protect Lot and his household.  Look at Verses 4-11, “Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom−both young and old−surrounded the house.  They called to Lot, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight?  Bring them out to us,’" and it literally says so that we can know them.  We're going to talk more about that God willing, next week, but that is what it literally says, “so we can know them;” the NIV gives us the insight “so that we can have sex with them.”

Verse 6, “Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, ‘No, my friends.  Don't do this wicked thing.  Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man.  Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them.  But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.’  ‘Get out of our way,’ they replied.  And they said, ‘this fellow came here as an alien, and now he wants to play the judge!  We'll treat you worse than them.’  They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.  But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door.  Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.”

Now, I don't know how news got around in Sodom, that these two men had come, but it went fast and it wasn't long before the house was surrounded, and these Sodomites inflamed by lust want to know them.  Now, next week, God willing, we are going to talk about how this cannot mean anything, but what the NIV translates it to be, there's no question, it's not that they are surrounding the house and they want to be hospitable.  "We just want to get to know them.  Don't keep them to yourself."  That is not what is going on here.  Lot doesn't react as though that is what is going on, he says, "Don't do this wicked thing."  And it would not be wicked for them merely to know who the angels were and be hospitable, there is no question about what's going on here.

It's so strange how people will twist the Scripture and try to get it to fit their lifestyle.  We can't do that, but rather all of us, not just one category of people, but all of us, we need to mold our lives to what the Scripture says, not one of us that is righteous.  There is no one righteous, not even one.  We must be transformed by the Scripture rather than trying to twist it so that it fits what we do.  I have been transformed by this story, not in this one area, the area you talk about first, but in other areas as we will discuss God willing.

Notice, also, Lot, while he has a deep commitment to hospitality to the protection of those that are under his roof, at the same time he has a twisted morality on how he's going to go about doing it.  He says he offers his daughters who haven't slept with a man and you could do whatever you want with them.  What kind of father is this?  It's a father's job to protect his daughters, to protect them, to keep them safe, to keep them chaste until marriage.  That's a father's job.  What is he doing?  I don't understand this, I don't know what's going through his mind.  That is why I say, if Peter hadn't told us that he was righteous, I would not have assumed it, but instead he tries to push his girls out the door to protect these that have come under his roof.

Well, the violence of the men reaches a fever pitch, they are about ready to break down the door, they are ready to kill, see the wickedness that is involved here.  And Lot has tried to protect the angels, but the angels don't need protecting.  It's Lot that needs protecting.  And that's one of the jobs of the angels there, they are there to rescue Lot, they are there to get him out of trouble, and they do that in a minor way, at this moment, they reach out and go "whoosh" and in he comes and the door shuts.  The power of the angels, and that's a little picture of exactly what God is doing for Lot that night.  He is there with a forceful arm, an outstretched arm rescuing the righteous out of wickedness.

This is what God does for sinners who are righteous.  This is what He does to save us.  And so, the angels rescued him and then supernaturally struck these men with blindness as they are surrounding the door, they can't find it.  Now, I don't know, reading between the lines, perhaps there was a blinding light that just took away their ability to see, like the glory of the Lord that is shown around the single angel on the night that Jesus was born, but it doesn't say that.  All it says is that the angel struck them with blindness and they groped around trying to find something.  The time for judgment is almost at hand.

Act 3, Lot fails to rescue his family and lingers a little while longer in Sodom.  Look at Verses 12-14, “The two men said to Lot, ‘Do you have anyone else here−sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you?  Get them out of here, because we are going to destroy this place.  The outcry to the Lord, against His people is so great that He has sent us to destroy it.’  So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters.  He said, ‘Hurry and get out of this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city.’  But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.”  Notice the urgency on the part of the angels, basically saying, "Flee the wrath to come.  Flee the wrath to come."  Did Lot believe them?  Oh yes.  He believed it.  He's a believer, he's a righteous man, he believed the word of God.  Yes, destruction was coming and he tried to go out and evangelize a little bit, but they were having none of it.  His sons-in-law thought he was joking; they didn't take him seriously.  And so, there's an urgency here, on the part of the angels and there's an impotence on the part of Lot, completely unable to persuade his extended family to flee the wrath to come.  

Act 4, the angels strongly rescued Lot, his wife and his daughters.  Verses 15 through 17, "With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, 'Hurry!  Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.’"  Verse 16, "When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them."

I find my salvation in that verse; I find my salvation in the fact that God is willing to overcome my hesitancy to trust in Christ.  He is willing to overcome all of my will, which was heading the opposite direction.  He is willing to grab me strongly and rescue me out of the city.  Praise God, He is merciful to me and to all of you who have trusted in Christ, and He was merciful to Lot and to his wife and his daughters.  Again, intense urgency.  The time has come for destruction.  The night is nearly over, the day is almost here.  The time for judgment is at hand.  And notice the incredible grace of God through the angels, a persistent grace, an overcoming grace, a conquering grace.  He is there to rescue Lot.  Now, once safely out of the city, Lot, his wife, his daughters are commanded to run for their lives.  The terrifying urgency must have electrified these people.  Imagine getting a command like that, "Run and don't stop till you get to the hills."

It must have electrified them, terrifying.  Note also the command not to look back, "Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain!"  Disobeying these commands would cost Lot's wife, her life.  

Act 5, angels graciously allowed Lot to stay in Zoar.  Verses 18 through 22 say, “But Lot said to them, ‘No, my lords, please!  Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life.  But I can't flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I'll die.  Look, here is a town near enough for me to run to, and it is small.  Let me flee to it−it is very small, isn't it?  Then my life will be spared.’"  Verse 21, “He said to him, ‘Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of.  But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.’  (That is why the town was called Zoar.)”  Zoar means small, in Hebrew.  And so, it's a small, little place.  One commentator I read on this whole account, said that the account breaks into two sections, Lot in Sodom and Sodom in Lot, and here we see how Sodom has taken a hold of Lot.

He doesn't want to leave, he's hesitating.  He doesn't want to leave the area, he thinks, "Well, maybe I can go to one of these smaller towns and kind of resume something like the life that we had in Sodom.  It's just a little town.  Can we just stay there, please?"  He just doesn't want to leave, doesn't want to let it go.  And so, Lot begs for an accommodation to his weakness.  Rather than obeying and fleeing to the mountains as he was commanded, he wants to stay in a small town besides.  Lot lacks faith and he's focused on his own limitations.  He should have trusted the angel's command.  Note also, two things about the angels.  First of all, how constrained they are.  Look what the angel says, "Flee there quickly because I cannot do anything until you reach it."  Why not?  Why can't the angel do anything until Lot is saved?  Because God told him to rescue Lot.  God told him, and also because Abraham, his uncle, was praying for the righteous in Sodom, that they not be swept away.  And so, God is protecting Lot, and the angels are constrained, they can do nothing until Lot is safe.  Note also how powerful the angel is, in that he grants the request and says, "Alright, because you are there, I will not overthrow Zoar."

Do you remember in Genesis 18, how Abraham was interceding?  “If there are 50 righteous people, if there are 45, if there are 40 righteous people in Sodom, how about if there are 30, Lord, how about if there's 20?  How about 10?  Will you spare the city if there is 10?”  And remember how I said, one commentator said he should have kept going until there was. . .  He should have just asked for one, right?  Well, isn't that what happened to Zoar?  How many righteous people were there, in Zoar?  Well, by the time Lot got there, there was one.  And what happened to Zoar?  It was spared, God spared the city of Zoar because there was just one righteous person in it.

Act 6, last, the wrath of the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and it consumes Lot's wife too.  Verses 23 through 26, "By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land.  Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah−from the Lord out of the heavens.  Thus, He overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities−and also the vegetation in the land.  But Lot's wife looked back and she became a pillar of salt."

The sun rose on Sodom's last day.  Usually, God's mercies are new every morning.  The sunrise is a picture of the mercy and the love of God.  It says in Matthew 5:45, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."  That's an example of how the Lord is loving to His enemies, and so we also should love our enemies because that is how God treats his enemies.  But that day would be the last day that Sodom would ever experience.  And it's a fascinating thing, how life just kind of goes on and the people who lived in Sodom got up and never imagined it would be their last day, never imagined what the events of that day would hold, never thought for a moment that the events that would actually take place, were even a remote possibility.  They were just getting ready for their business, perhaps they had some way to pursue their lust or their pleasures planned out that day, perhaps they just were sitting down to get a regular breakfast.  Who knows?  It was just another day, as far as they were concerned, but it wasn't just another day, as far as God was concerned.  It was the last day of Sodom's history.

Now, scholars, archaeologists, experts have looked at the region, they have looked at the seismic activity, they have seen some fault lines there, and they imagine that probably what happened, as one unbelieving archaeologist said, is that at some point there was an earthquake and some other things, there is a lot of pitch, a lot of sulfur in the air, it kind of ignited, and that is what happened.  Is that what it says?  I think it is pretty clear what it says, but in case there is any question, we as Christians can just take Jesus' word for it.  It says in Luke 17:29, "The day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all."  It wasn't coming from the ground up, it was coming from heaven down, and the reason was, as we'll talk about, God willing, next week in more detail, God wanted to make Sodom and Gomorrah an example for us, and, therefore, He doesn't leave any doubt as to who is acting here.  It is God who destroyed these cities.  No question about it.  And He did it so that we would fear Him and turn to Him in repentance and trust in Him.  That's why he did it.

It was the last day.  And it's interesting how He says that he destroyed the vegetation, too.  Don't you find that interesting?  Well, I actually think that was part of the whole problem.  It was a lush area, it was green, it was lavishly appointed, lots of rivers, lots of irrigation system, the whole thing.  And the lush land led to a series of bumper crops, one after the other, successful harvest, plenty to eat.  I am sure they probably tore down their barns and built bigger barns.  They had everything they could need, and probably with it being a major thoroughfare, if you look at the geography, you kind of have to go through Palestine to get down to Egypt and back, the fertile crescent, the whole thing, they probably were fabulously wealthy, trading, getting everything they needed.  And so, lush land led to bumper crops, bumper crops led to material prosperity, material prosperity led to a luxurious and comfortable lifestyle.  Comfort and ease, and that led to hardened hearts, especially toward the poor and toward the needy, and that led to corruption and wickedness, which eventually had a sexual expression, and all of that, all of it, led to judgment from God.

Now, can you see why it is important for we Christians, not to just think this is about homosexuality?  Do you see it?  Because if you do that, you're going to say, "That's those strange people out there and God's going to judge them," and you'll forget that there were other issues going on right in here, right in here, and that God wants us to repent as well.  And so, God poured down fire and burning sulfur.

Act 7, Abraham, the next morning, that morning, got up and beheld the destruction, but he did not see Lot's salvation.  Verses 27 through 29, "Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord.  He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.  So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived."  This must have been a devastating experience for Abraham.

Clearly, in Genesis 18, when he's interceding back and forth over the fate of the righteous in Sodom and over the cities, I don't think this is what he was hoping for.  And as I mentioned last week, sometimes you may feel that this is the nature of your prayer life.  You may pray for something and get the exact opposite and the evidence is like a smoking cauldron coming up from the plain.  And Abraham looks down, but he only can see with eyes of physical sight.  God had answered his prayer.  Do you see?  That when God rained down burning sulfur and destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham and brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.  Let me ask you a question.  Does God need to tell you every time, when He answers your prayer?  Does he have to say, “Oh, by the way, go send an angel to Andy and say, I answered that prayer, this is what I'm doing?"  No, He hears the prayer and He acts, but He does not need to send the feedback loop.  He doesn't need to send the angel back and say, "Oh, by the way, Lot's safe in Zoar, thanks to your prayer."  He didn't say that, but Lot was safe.  God remembered Abraham and answered his prayer.

Now, the final act is beyond our text section here, but it's Lot and his daughters in the cave, in Verses 30-38, and God willing, we'll see that.

Now, I've drawn out seven timeless lessons from this account.  I just wanted to go through the account with you, for all of its poignancy and power today, and God willing, we'll go through these lessons next week.  But I want to draw out just the first one, and talk about it, because I think it's the central lesson.  The central lesson is that, our God is a passionate God, He's not a machine, He's not unfeeling, He's not like a computer controller or something.  He is a passionate being, He's a person.  And we who have emotions, we who have feelings, we are created in the image of God, and our feelings are a dim reflection of His.  Our God has passionate responses to evil and to sin, and Sodom and Gomorrah are a display of God's passion concerning wickedness, it's a display of the wrath of God.  And God intended it to be a display, He wanted to put Sodom and Gomorrah on display.  Again and again in the prophets and in the writings, Sodom and Gomorrah are examples of the wrath of God.

For example, in Deuteronomy 29:23, when Moses is warning the people of God not to sin, or else their land will become like Sodom and Gomorrah, they knew exactly what he was referring to.  Or in Zephaniah 2:9, when Zephaniah was talking about the Moabites and the Ammonites, He says, "'As surely as I live,’ declares the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, ‘surely Moab will become like Sodom, the Ammonites like Gomorrah−a place of weeds and salt pits, a waste land forever.’"  Well, they knew what that meant.  There was a benchmark of wrath, so that you could understand what God meant.  He did it in history.  Or Isaiah 13:19, “Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the glory of the Babylonians pride, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah."  And so, He gave an example of His wrath so that we might know what it was like.  Ultimately, however, it's not just an example of what God does to ancient cities, it's an example of what He will do to all who do not believe in Christ.  It's an example of what He will do to the wicked, on judgment day.  He says in Matthew 10:15, "I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town,” that heard the gospel and rejected it.

So, it's worse for the rejectors of Christ than it ever was for Sodom and Gomorrah.  Ultimately, therefore, Sodom and Gomorrah are a picture of what hell will be like.  That is why it was given.  It's a picture of hell.  2 Peter, 2:6 says, "That God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes," listen, "and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly."  Did you hear that?  That means Sodom and Gomorrah are an example, a picture of what will happen in the future, to the ungodly.  What is hell going to be like?  It's going to be a little bit like Sodom and Gomorrah.  The only difference is, it was just one morning in Sodom and Gomorrah, and then it was over.  Hell is eternal.  It lasts forever and ever and ever.  A place of wailing and gnashing of teeth.  We also see in this, just a picture of the wrath of God, His passion, His initiative, the devastating power of it.  And it says in Romans 1:18, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness."

God still has wrath against sin.  He hasn't changed.  He is very patient.  He is very long suffering.  You don't see it every day.  Not like this.  But it is there and it is real.  It is a display of His holiness; it is a display of the passion He has for His righteousness.  It says in Habakkuk 1:13, the prophet, looking out over the wickedness of Jerusalem, he says, "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.  Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?  Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?"  Why?  Well, the answer to Habakkuk is, God isn't silent.  Sooner or later, the judgment comes.  And therefore, John the Baptist, when he came preaching and saw the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing said, "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath.  There is a past wrath."  Genesis 19 says, "But there is a future wrath.  It is yet to come."  But amazingly, this is the very cup that Jesus Christ drank for us, at the cross.  He drank a cup of fire and brimstone, that's what He drank.  And you couldn't see it in Mel Gibson's Passion movie, there's no way to show it.

It's a spiritual reality.  Do you remember how in Gethsemane, Jesus shrank from the cup?  Do you remember that?  He said, "Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken away from me, yet not as I will, but as you will."  What was the cup?  It was not merely physical death; it was the active aggressive wrath of God against sin.  That's what Jesus drank.  Oh, the courage of Jesus Christ, oh the incredible love of Christ, that He would drink that cup for me and for any of you who have trusted in Him, that He would drink your cup of Sodom and Gomorrah's share, that He would stand in between you and the wrath of God and absorb it.  That He would drink your wrath.  And having drunk it, that it's gone.  There is therefore now, no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.  Oh, there is a passion in Genesis 19, the passion of God for holiness and righteousness, a passionate hatred for evil, but there is another passion, too, in the Cross of Christ, it is the passion that people like you and me could be saved, that we would not be swallowed up by the wrath of God.

I want to conclude by looking at a passage in Romans.  Look at Romans Chapter 5, and we will finish there.  Romans Chapter 5, Verse 6 and following, it says, "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly."  Do you see that?  Verse 6.  Ungodly.  Does that offend you?  Does it bother you, to be called ungodly?  Well, that is what we are, we are ungodly.  And those are the ones for whom Christ died.  He didn't die for the godly, they don't need any help.  But He died for the ungodly, at just the right time.  When we were powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die.  Verse 8, "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."  You see, Genesis 19 is a demonstration of the wrath of God, timeless demonstration.”  The Cross of Christ is a demonstration, both of the wrath of God and of the love of God.  It's all in one place.  You can see the wrath of God in that Jesus suffered and died in torment, but you can see also the love of God in that He died and you didn't.

He, in effect, went to hell for three hours on the cross, and you won't, for eternity, if you trust in Him.  That is the display, the demonstration.  Continue.  In Romans 5, Verse 9, "Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through Him!"  Can I say to you with all the love in my heart, there is a wrath to come?  There is a future wrath, it's coming, it's coming.  I don't know when.  I don't know the exact circumstances.  It's not for us to know the times or dates the Father set by His own authority, but it is coming.  And in Romans here, you find the only salvation from that wrath to come.  There is no other way.  Jesus, by His blood, saves us from that wrath to come, if we will simply trust in Him.  Since we have now been justified by faith, it says in Verse 9, "Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath, through Him!  For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life?"

I don't have any idea of your spiritual situation.  There is a lot of people here today.  A lot of you have heard what I've had to say.  One of the tendencies with Sodom and Gomorrah is to say, "Oh, those wicked people out there, how awful are they.  May God whip up on them."  Okay, if you get that out of this, you've missed the point.  Rather, what you need to say is, "That's me, maybe not that exact way but I am called wicked.  I am called God's enemy.  I am called ungodly."  In Romans 5, "I needed a savior and Jesus has come."  Can I urge you to flee the wrath to come?  If you have never trusted in Christ, flee the wrath to come.  Trust in Jesus today.  You don't know how much longer you're going to be alive and you don't know when that wrath will come.  Trust in Christ today and if you do, He will stand in your place between you and the judgment and the wrath of God and He will drink your cup to the bottom.

Look with me if you would, at Genesis Chapter 18.  We are looking at a most remarkable passage of Scripture, you just heard it read, and it really is a passage that teaches us about faithful prevailing intercessory prayer.  One of the great ministries of the church, one of the great privileges of the church, that we can stand in the gap on behalf of those in our generation, and we can intercede as Abraham, our father in faith did.  You know, Scripture gives at least 190 exhortations or commands to prayer.  Isn't that incredible?  One hundred ninety times God has said, “Draw near to me and ask.”  In James 5:16 it says, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”  Abraham gives us a display of that in Genesis 18.  Or, in 1 John 3 it says “whatever we ask we receive from him.”  What an incredible exhortation of prayer that is.  And how about this one?  John 15:7 says, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you.”  What a blank check from heaven, of course, tempered by the will of God, but why would we want anything that is not in the will of God.  And so, we stand, we intercede, we ask, and God has lavished to bless.

Matthew 21:22 says, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer,” and many other such exhortations.  Prayer is a proven active effectual reality in this world.  Now, it is a mystery, and we see that mystery somewhat in the encounter between Abraham and God.  God's plan and Abraham's initiative and his view of the thing as he stands on that ridge and looks down over those cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.  But because it is proven and powerful and effective, and because there are so many commands and exhortations to prayer, the great men and women of God throughout time have taken up this prayer burden and have been faithful with it.  Athanasius, for example, prayed five hours every day.  Five hours every day.  Bernard of Clairvaux would not begin his daily activities unless he had spent at least three hours in prayer.  Augustine once set apart 18 months to do nothing but prayer.

Now, you can do that when you are a monk and you don't have to hold down a regular job, but that's all he did, 18 months focused on prayer.  Charles Simeon devoted the hours from 4 till 8 every morning to prayer.  John Wesley spent two hours daily in prayer beginning well before dawn.  John Fletcher frequently spent all night in prayer and would greet his friends saying, do I meet you in prayer?  In other words, I don't want to interrupt your prayer time.  Martin Luther once commented very famously, “I have so much work to do that I have to give myself to an extra amount of prayer, perhaps three hours today.”  Oh, that speaks to our busy 21st century, doesn't it?  What do we do to prayer when it gets really busy?  We pitch it.  We don't have time for it.  But not Luther.  Now you say, “Well, I'm busy.”  Now, Luther, he was just running a reformation, the local church pastor, meeting with heads of state, writing letters and the commentaries, and all of that. 

But I know you are busy and so prayer is a challenge for you, and that's the very reason we're looking at Genesis 18 today.  Francis Asbury rose each morning at 4 to spend time in prayer.  John Calvin, John Knox and Theodore Beza covenanted together that they would hold each other accountable to pray at least two hours every day.  And so, we see also in our text this morning, Abraham, our father in faith, in prevailing intercessory prayer, and that is what is in front of us.  Now, what is the context of this account?  Well, we began last week with Genesis 18, it is I think the context of intimacy with God, that is I think what holds the whole chapter together.  We saw last week, the intimate fellowship meal as the Lord was there, I believe, with two angels and Abraham set before them a meal.  And so, there is an intimate fellowship meal there, God with Abraham.  And then, also God's intimate personal revelation to Abraham concerning Sarah, that this time next year he would return and Sarah would have a son, Isaac.

And so, there is an intimate personal revelation there, and so that is the context, and now thirdly, we see this intimate public revelation to Abraham, this time about Sodom.  Look at Verses 16-21, it says “When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way.  Then the Lord said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do?  Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.  For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.’”  Verse 20, “Then the Lord said, ‘The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me.  If not, I will know.’”  And so, there is this angelic mission to Sodom and Gomorrah, the two men look down towards Sodom and they go on their way.

This is God initiating a personal investigation into the situation in Sodom and Gomorrah.  God says, “I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry, then I will know.”  This is what we call anthropomorphic language in which God kind of is speaking like we do.  I'm going to take a trip and find out and see.  We see this again and again in Genesis.  You remember in Genesis 3, how Adam and Eve heard the sound of God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, is what one translation says.  It's this sense of the physicality of God or God kind of coming down to our level in a way we can understand.  See the same thing in Genesis 11 with the Tower of Babel, you remember?  You remember how God is looking down at this mighty tower that is rising up to the heavens, and God says, “Let's go way down and see that tiny little tower that they're making.”  And so, down they travel to see.  They had a long way to go to reach him.  But it is again, this anthropomorphic language, and we see the same thing here, we'll go down and see if the outcry is as great, and if not, I will know.

So, there's a sense of immediacy here, a sense of involvement, God is intimately involved in this judgment.  Now, it is not because God was near-sighted.  It wasn't like he had to get closer to see.  Have you ever seen somebody near-sighted and they're trying to read and they have to hold it just at the right length, or they have to get a little closer and squint?  Oh, that isn't God.  God knew everything, He knew every inclination of the heart of Sodom, He knew the whole history, He knew all of their wicked deeds, He was intimately aware of every filthy excruciating detail.  Job says in Job 31:4, “Does he not see my ways and count my every step?”  And it says in Proverbs 5:21, “For a man's ways are in full view of the Lord, and he examines all his paths.”  Why then does God speak like this?  Why this kind of language?  I will go down and see, and then, if not, I will know.  Well, I think the first purpose is to show God's absolute commitment to justice to Abraham and to us.

What He is going to do to Sodom and Gomorrah is noteworthy, to say the least.  The cities are going to be erased by fire and brimstone, and immediately the sense of injustice may rise up, as it did with Abraham, and hence the intercession later on in this text.  And so, God wants to show above all things a commitment absolutely to justice.  God does nothing in wrath and judgment except what is deserved, and He is meticulously careful about preserving his reputation as a just judge.  And so, he's going to investigate openly and clearly.  It says in Romans 3:4, “Let God be true, and every man a liar.  As it is written: ‘So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.’”  And it says later in that same Chapter, “. . . so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.”  And so, God uses this kind of language to show, “I have thoroughly and completely investigated this matter, and this is what the matter calls for.  I have looked into it, and I am not going by hearsay, I will know intimately the situation in Sodom and Gomorrah.”  That's the first reason.

The second reason is, I think, to involve the angels.  He himself doesn't go, but through the two angels he does the investigation.  Now realize that God doesn't need to use the angels, but He chooses to, and why?  Because they are fellow servants with him.  They are involved in the redemptive history as it unfolds, God wanted them involved.  You know, interesting text in Revelation 19:10, John writing the Book of Revelation, after he had received this overwhelming vision from an angel.  God had sent the angel to show His servants that says what must soon take place.  John says “At this I fell at his feet to worship him.  But he said to me, ‘Do not do it!  I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus.  Worship God!’”  Did you hear what the angel called himself?  A fellow servant.  “I'm just doing a job; I'm serving just like you.”

And so, God wanted to involve the angels and so he sends the two of them down, and we'll see what happens to them in the next Chapter.  But for this reason, we see this language and the outcry against wickedness.  There's an outcry coming up from Sodom and Gomorrah, a clamor of wickedness, the boisterous noise of parties, or screams of wounded brawlers who are too drunk to know what's happened to them, or groans of sick drunkards or squeals of wild laughter, even worse, the outcry of blood from the ground of innocent victims.  That's the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah, and God will investigate.  He will come and see if the outcry, if their deeds are as bad as the outcry, is it true?  

And here ends very soon, God's misunderstood silence.  You know, the wicked of the earth misunderstand God, don't they?  When day after day is like the previous day, it seems as though God consents.  The Scripture says that “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God,’” and they assume that there is no God.  God says in another place, “you thought I was entirely like you because I didn't do anything but remain silent in heaven.  And you thought I didn't exist, or you thought I was like you, wicked.”  It is misunderstood silence.  Rather, God is patient and He is waiting.  His quiet encounter with Abraham is actually the calm before the storm of Genesis 19.  And there comes a day, a day in which all things are made right.  

We see also in this text, God's incredible desire for intimacy with his people.  God cannot hide from Abraham what He is about to do.  Look at Verse 17, “Then the Lord said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do?’”  Now in Shakespeare's plays and in other plays, you get these things called soliloquies, an actor or actress goes off to a part of the stage or perhaps is completely alone on a stage, and they just speak for a while to the audience.  It is the playwright's way of letting you know into the mind of the actor to find out what they're really thinking.  And so, you get these soliloquies, because we can't read the mind of the actor or actress.  And so, Hamlet gives a soliloquy about whether he wants to go on living or not, or other actors or actresses in these plays, they give these soliloquies, and this way we can read the minds of the actors or actresses.  That's exactly what's going on here.

It's interesting that not only can God not hide from Abraham what He is about to do, He couldn't hide from us what He was thinking at the time.  And so, through the pen of Moses, He says, “I want you to know the deliberations that went on in my mind right before this prayer encounter.  I can't hide from Abraham what I'm about to do.”  Realize that God is under no obligation to share a thing with us.  He doesn't need to speak to us, He doesn't need to tell us a thing.  He could have just erased Sodom and Gomorrah, He created it and everything in it.  He doesn't owe us an explanation.  Nebuchadnezzar said this in Daniel 4:35, “All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing.  He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth.  No one can hold back his hand or say to him: ‘What have you done?’”  No one has the right to question God.  And do you sense that Abraham feels that too?  Again and again, he's saying, “Oh Lord, don't be angry with me,” or “I'm only dust and ashes.”

And so, there's this sense, I don't have the right to ask these questions.  But you see, God opens himself up, He reveals Himself to us.  It says in Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.”  In other words, there are two categories of things in the mind of God, the things concealed, and the things revealed.  And he decided that this judgement on Sodom, he would reveal beforehand, ahead of time.  “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?”  It says in Amos 3:7, “Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.  That's an incredible thing, God wants us to know.  He wants to open himself up, He wants intimacy with you.  And so, He has told you the most vital things you need to know about today and about the future in the Scripture.  He's opened up his mind and his heart; He has told you what's going to happen.

Jesus Christ is coming back someday.  The second coming of Christ, He is coming.  And on that day, there will be a great judgment, and just like Abraham called God here, the judge of all the earth, He is the judge of all the earth and you will stand before him.  More on that in a moment.  You see, God reveals his secrets to us through His servants, the prophets.  Now, what are the reasons for intimacy?  Well, we've talked about this and we discussed it last week, but it bears repeating and looking at in detail.  Look at Verses 18-19, it says, “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.”  Verse 19, “For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”  God has a generational or multi-generational view.  He's looking down the road, and He has a purpose that He is unfolding here.

Now, what is the ultimate purpose?  What is the focus of the redemptive plan of God?  Is it not Jesus Christ?  Is Jesus not the focus of everything God is doing?  It says that he will become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through Abraham.  And so, Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, a descendant of Abraham, has come to bless the earth.  But God knows there is a long journey to travel from here to there, and so he describes how that redemptive plan is going to unfold.  It isn't here yet.  The time for Jesus is still 2,000 years away.  And so, there's a plan here, Abraham will become a great and powerful nation.  At this time next year, I will return and Isaac will be born.  And so, He has got a view down the road, and so, He has got to reveal Himself.  And what does he reveal?  Well, He says, first of all, “I have chosen Abraham so that he will direct his children and his household after him, to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham, what He has promised him.” 

There's a chain here, like a chain link, one after the other.  First personal election, “I have chosen him.”  The end result, all nations on earth will be blessed.  But in the meantime, what?  Well, “I've chosen him so that he will direct his family after him, to keep the way of the Lord, so that the Lord may bring about what he has purposed.”  And so, we must be faithful just as Abraham was in training Isaac.  We must be faithful with our children.  I'll say more to fathers at the end of the message, but this is such a direct word to us, isn't it?  The need for fathers to be faithful, to entrust to their children a godly heritage.  And so, part of that is that God wants Abraham to know what he's doing in Sodom and Gomorrah.  It wasn't just an anomaly of Nature, it wasn't just an accidental earthquake that just happened to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, no, this is direct judgment from God.  And it's important for Abraham and his descendants after to know the heart of God in this matter.  It's important so that they could be warned and protected from sin.

It says in Ephesians 5:3-7, “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people.  Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.  For of this you can be sure:  No immoral, impure or greedy person−such a man is an idolater−has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.  Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.”  Don't you think He wants us to know that?  

We are Abraham's children by faith.  And so, it's important that God draw near to us and warn us concerning the situation in Sodom and Gomorrah.  That is why he reveals himself intimately to Abraham.  He involves Abraham; He initiates prayer with Abraham.  I think it's important as we look at this prayer encounter between Abraham and God, that God was both the Alpha and the Omega of this prayer encounter.  It was God who drew near.

And so, He opens up his heart and He says to Abraham, look at Verses 20-21, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin is so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me.  And if not, I will know.”

And so, God reveals Himself, He shows himself to Abraham.  You know that God doesn't need to use angels and He doesn't need to use people.  He didn't need to use Noah's ark to save the animals, but He chose to do so.  He involved Noah and his hammer and his saws and his sons in His redemptive plan.  He didn't need to do anything with Moses.  He could have rescued the people directly without Moses, but He chose to use Moses, his staff and his leadership; He chose to involve people.  And in the same way, God doesn't need to send missionaries to the ends of the earth.  He doesn't need to send missionaries to East Asia, He doesn't need to send missionaries to Greece or to Africa, but He has chosen to involve us in His work.  And one of the number one ways we can be involved with God is, the same way Abraham was here, through intercessory prayer, that God initiates.  Realize that we would have no access, no prayer life, if God had not granted it.  It says in Verse 22, "The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord."

God looked at Abraham and saw properly what he was.  He was a sinner, saved by grace.  He was justified by faith in a Christ who would come later and realize that none of us has access into the very presence of the holy throne room of God, except that Jesus shed His blood.  He provided for us a new and living way into the throne of grace, and with it a command to come near, to draw near and let our consciences be sprinkled by the blood of Christ, to not stay distant.  And we know that that's the problem in intercessory prayer.  We are sinners and He is holy.  It says in Isaiah 59, 1 and 2, "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.  But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear."  Only in Christ is that taken away, that obstacle to intercessory prayer.  And so, Abraham stands before the Lord.  The Lord has initiated, and Abraham is ready, and he stands before the Lord, to intercede.

There are three great concerns on Abraham's mind as he stands before them, and they are not equal.  One is greater than the next and the next is greater than the third.  Abraham's first and greatest concern is for the honor and glory of God and for his reputation as a just judge.  That's his first and greatest concern.  Abraham's second concern is for the righteous in the city of Sodom and Gomorrah.  That's his second concern.  Abraham's third concern is for the city generally, as created by God, and a concern that the city be spared on behalf of the righteous, that the wicked might have more time to repent.  Those three are not equal in Abraham's mind.  First and foremost, that God's reputation might be established.  Look at Verse 25, this is Abraham speaking to God, "Far be it from you to do such a thing−to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.  Far be it from you!"  And then he says, a fascinating thing, "Will not the judge of all the earth do right?"

I was in a class at MIT, it was a Bible class.  I have mentioned it before.  I took two Bible classes at MIT.  Just a word to those of you that are interested in pursuing theological education, MIT is not the place to go.  Okay.  If you're interested in engineering or pure science, whatever, look at it.  It might be for you.  But theology, no.  And so, I took these two classes with some other Christian friends, and there are two different classes on the Bible, blasphemy and heresy 101, blasphemy and heresy 102, first semester, second semester.  And the professor, it seemed like his number one job was to separate us from any confidence that the Bible was actually the inspired word of God, and it seemed like every class, all it was, was just finding details and issues in which he was bringing up problems with the Bible.  And one of the things he brought up was Genesis 18:25, I'll never forget it.  He said, "Now, it's an interesting question as Abraham stands before God and he says, ‘Shall not the judge of all the Earth do right?’”  It's almost like there is a standard of rightness above God, and that God needs to bow the neck to the standard of righteousness, that God has got to yield to it, He's got to follow the rules, too.  Now, that's an interesting thought, isn't it?  Is there a standard of righteousness above God, that God has to follow, too?

Does He have to meet that standard or else He's not righteous?  Well, let's put it this way.  God is the standard of righteousness and God cannot behave contrary to His own nature.  That's the issue, Abraham wants God to behave according to his own nature.  That's all.  Now, where did Abraham himself get the sense of what's right and wrong?  Is it not because he was created in the image of God?  And, therefore, is this not the moon reflecting rays back to the sun that gave it?  The moon has no light of its own, only a reflected light.  It came from the sun to begin with.  And so here is this created being, created in the image of God, speaking back to God concerning righteousness.  “Shall not the judge of all the Earth do right?”  God does right all the time, everything He does is right, just as everything God does is loving, because God is love.  Understand, God is not merely loving.  You and I can be loving.  We're not always loving, but we can be loving; but we cannot be love.  That's something only God can be.  And, we can behave righteously, but we cannot be righteousness.  That's God.

“Shall not the judge of all the Earth do right?”  That is Abraham's first concern, that the judge of all the earth's reputation as a righteous judge would be established here.  Abraham's second concern is the righteous in the city.  People misunderstand here.  They say that he's interceding for lost people.  Indirectly, he is because there's a concern for sparing the city.  Would you spare the city for the sake of the righteous?  You understand that.  And so, the city is in his mind, but his request is focused on whom?  Focused on the righteous.  Are you going to sweep away the righteous with the wicked?  Far be it from you, to do that.  And so, his concerns are first, God's reputation as a just judge.  Secondly, the salvation of the righteous.  And who does he have in mind there?  Well, like they say, blood is thicker than water.  He's concerned about his nephew, Lot.  Is Lot going to be swept away or is Lot going to be saved?  I think he's counting Lot's family among the righteous.  He's got a wife, he's got. . .  If you start to add them up, you could get up to 10 people.  I think he got to that point and said, "Okay, well, we've got Lot's family."

Well, apparently not, because the city got destroyed and God had promised He would not destroy it if there were 10 righteous people found in it.  But there was Lot.  And so, Abraham was concerned for the salvation of the righteous, and then thirdly, concerned with the city itself.  He is interceding that the city would be spared for the sake of the righteous.  God is concerned about that, too, because they are His created beings.  It says in Jonah 4:11, "But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well.  Should I not be concerned about that great city?"  Yeah, He's concerned about the cattle because He made them, but He's especially concerned about the 120,000 Ninevites who needed to repent.  And so, there is a concern in that order.

Now, as you look at this time of intercession, it's really quite remarkable.  Someone said it's like kind of a Middle Eastern bazaar, where there's a kind of a dickering back and forth, there's a bargaining.  I don't think that's what's going on here, at all.  I think there's a passion and a fear on Abraham's part.  Do you see the fear?  How he's afraid that he's asking too much, he's venturing forward timidly, kind of a step at a time?  I think that's what's going on here.  I don't think it's that he's trying to bargain with God.  There is no such thing.   

And as we look at Abraham's revealed character in this prayer, we see a number of things.  First, I see faith.  It's not directly mentioned, but what is faith but a response to the word of God.  Faith doesn't generate anything.  Faith responds to God's revealed Word.  And so, God unfolds his purpose concerning Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham responds in faith by praying about it.  Secondly, we do see intimacy, look at Verse 22, it says, "The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord."  There's a sense of standing before God, an intimate relationship.  And then in Verse 23 it says, "Then Abraham approached him and said: ‘Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?’"  Do you see the intimacy in Verse 23?  Abraham drew near to God.  Oh, is this only perfected through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross?  Only by what He did on the cross, when He shed His blood and died, can there really be Immanuel.  God with us or near us or in us, and us close to Him as well.

It says in Hebrews 10:22, "Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.”  Let us get close to God.  Let us lay aside everything that hinders intimacy with God.  So, we see intimacy.  We see also compassion.  He is concerned about what is going to happen to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.  There is a compassion there.  He feels their pain and their agony before it even happens.  That is what motivates his prayer.  And so, he is compassionate.  He is also bold, isn't he?  Do you see boldness in this?  Boy, is he courageous.  He just keeps coming at it again and again, he even feels it.  Look at Verse 25, he says, "Far be it from you to do such a thing−to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.  Far be it from you!  Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?"  What a bold thing to say to God.  And then he feels it in Verse 27, "Then Abraham spoke up again: ‘Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes.’"  Do you see the boldness in prayer?  Do you see also the humility?  He calls himself dust and ashes.

Is that hyperbole?  Is that beyond what is really the case?  Don't you remember what God said to Adam?  "Dust you are and to dust you will return.  I made you out of the dust of the earth."  And Abraham accepted that, didn't he?  He said, "I'm just dust, I'm just ashes."  And so, there is a sense of humility and there is a sense of perseverance, isn't there?  There is a relentlessness here−50 people, 45 people, 40 people, 30 people, 20 people, 10 people−six times he comes back to God with the same matter.  Oh, this convicts me in my prayer.  Are you this persistent in your prayer?  When you ask and don't receive right away, do you keep on asking or do you give up quickly?  Abraham kept on going, kept pressing on, persevering in prayer.  And then finally, there's that reverence, the sense that Abraham standing there, is standing before the judge of all the earth, and now he's standing on behalf of some others.  He is interceding on behalf of some others, but someday, he will stand himself before the judge of all the earth and he will be judged.  And so, there is a reverence there, a sense of humility.

This is the character of Abraham in prayer, faith-filled, intimate, compassionate, bold, humble, persevering, reverent.  That's the way we need to pray, isn't it?  That's the way we need to pray.

Now, I want to take up a matter concerning Abraham's failure in prayer.  Abraham's failure in prayer you might say, well, there is a godly man, E. M. Bounds who wrote a lot of books on prayer, perhaps you have seen them, “Purpose in Prayer,” or “Prayer and Praying Men,” some of these things.  He was a godly man, lived in the 19th century, Christ-like in his demeanor, Methodist pastor in the 19th century in Tennessee and Alabama.  He woke every morning, 4 a.m., for prayer.  Once when he was visiting a friend and his family in Brooklyn, New York, the family was awakened by sounds in the middle of the night, it was 3 in the morning, and it was E. M. Bounds, crying out for the lost and for the needy in prayer.  This is the way he was.  Prayer just saturated his life.  But as you sometimes get with that kind of theological approach with the Methodist in particular, there was too much, I think, a man-centered focus in prayer.  And listen to what E. M. Bounds wrote about Abraham's encounter with God here, in Genesis 18.  He said, "Sodom's fate was for a while, stayed by Abraham's praying, and was almost entirely relieved by the humility and insistence of the praying of this man who believed strongly in prayer and who knew how to pray."

Listen to this, "Perhaps the failure to ultimately rescue Sodom from her doom of destruction was due to Abraham's optimistic view of the spiritual condition of things in that city.  It might have been possible, who knows, that if Abraham had entreated God once more and asked Him to spare the city if even one righteous man was found there, for Lot's sake, He might have heeded Abraham's request."  Now, what is the basic idea?  Abraham stopped too soon.  He should have kept praying because we know there was one righteous man there, 2 Peter tells us that Lot was righteous, and so the city would have been spared.  And so, there is almost a subtle blaming of Abraham for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Now E. M. Bounds would say, "Certainly not, because it was their own wickedness, but perhaps God might have extended the stay of righteous or of grace and mercy if he had only asked one more time.” 

Well, I think there could be some confirmation of this in Abraham's own heart the next morning.  Look over at Genesis 19, the very next chapter, 27 and 28, it says, "Early the next morning, Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord."  So, the next morning he goes to the place where he prayed.  Verse 28, "He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace."  Have you ever felt like that was your prayer life?  You asked for something and you get exactly the opposite, it seems, of what you asked for.  And so, it seems as though perhaps he felt he had failed in prayer.  But did he really fail?  I think not.  There is a clear statement, the very next one in Verse 29 of Chapter 19, look what it says, "So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived."  He remembered Abraham.  I don't think He just remembered that Abraham was related to him, I think directly, it's connecting to the previous chapter.  He remembered his intercessory prayer; it was in response to the prayer that Lot was rescued, that he was delivered.

And also, did Abraham get what he was asking for?  Were all the righteous saved from Sodom and Gomorrah?  Seems that way.  He got the second thing he asked for, namely that all the righteous would be delivered.  They were.  And actually, some who were not righteous were delivered out, Lot's daughters came out with him and his wife, although she didn't make it the whole way.  We'll get to that, next time.  But some that were not righteous made it out, too, so he got even more than he asked for.  And at the moment when Abraham was standing there on the ridge, looking at the smoke rising up from Sodom and Gomorrah, where was Lot at that moment but in Zoar, that little city, safe with his daughters.  God had answered his prayer even though he didn't know it.  The whole problem I have with E. M. Bounds' approach is that, he forgot who the alpha and the omega of prayer is.  Isn't that the problem?  Who began this prayer encounter?  God did.  Yes.  And who ended it?  Well, let's look and see, Verse 33.  It says, "When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home."

Who ended the prayer time?  God did.  He stopped at 10.  Right?  Now, when a servant is standing before a king, who gets to end the encounter?  Who gets to turn and walk away?  Is it not the king?  And what happens to the servant, if the servant turns and walks away, ending the encounter?  He might get in trouble, serious trouble.  And so, the servants stood before the king until the king was done, and the king was done at Verse 33, and He went back and ended the prayer encounter.  It was God's purpose to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.  And so, he did not wait.  But one more thing.  Was not little Zoar spared in the exact way that Abraham had in mind?  Lot went out to Zoar, and there was one righteous person in the little city of Zoar, and it was spared.  All of it was spared because of Sodom.  Now what, because of Abraham.  

What application can we take from this?  Well, more than anything.  Prevailing, passionate, intercessory prayer.  How many of you would say you are satisfied with your prayer lives?  How many of you can read this through and say, "Now, that's what I do on a regular basis?"

I have been deeply convicted by Genesis 18, and I have been convicted on behalf of our church.  Can I urge you to take part in our corporate prayer life with our church?  There is power in corporate prayer, there is power in coming together.  Be at the next quarterly corporate prayer meeting, Sunday evening, the end of the month, be there.  Pour out your heart to God in prayer for mission work and for lost people around you, and for the righteous people you know that they would stand firm in the day of temptation.  Be there and pray.  Be there with us on Sunday morning.  We pray every morning, 9 o'clock in the parlor.  I like to see that place so packed out, we have to come in here.  I guess you got music, things going, we will work it out.  Just pack it out, let's come and pray.  We pray for half an hour, for the service and for mission work and for anything that we feel led to pray for.  Come and pray at 9 o'clock, pray on Wednesday evening, but then let's fill out into other times.  Yes, you can pray on Tuesdays, with brothers and sisters in Christ, you can get together and pray.  Let's intercede.  Let's be bold and courageous.

Let me speak also, to fathers.  I have said this last week, I will say it again.  Fathers, take responsibility for the spiritual welfare of your homes, take responsibility.  Even if your kids are grown, still you have an influence over your grandkids.  Fathers, take the lead as Abraham, our father in faith did.  And mothers, you too.  Parents are entrusted with the responsibility of training their children in godliness, the Book of Proverbs is clear on this.  And so, have a multigenerational view.  Lead your children to walk in a way that is right, don't leave it to the church ministry to do it.  We are not here for that.  We are here to exhort you to be faithful in your calling.  And finally, all of you, but especially those of you who sit here today and don't know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, think of what Abraham said in Verse 25, "Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?"  This is the God before whom each one of us will stand on Judgment Day, and only by the blood of Christ, will we survive that scrutiny, only by the blood of Christ, will we not be condemned for every careless word we have spoken throughout life.

Jesus shed His blood, that we might be able to stand before the judge of all the earth, blameless and unafraid.  Trust in Him today.  And those of you who have already trusted in Christ, remember, there will come that day when you stand and give an account for your life, for the things done in the body, whether good or bad.

We are looking this morning, as you have just heard, at Genesis 18, and as I look at the whole chapter in Genesis 18, we are only going to deal with part of it today.  As I look at all of the things that happened, namely this meal together, as I read the text between the Lord and two angels and Abraham, the incredible intercession of Abraham and the Lord, and the encounter they have over the destruction of Sodom, I just see the whole thing in terms of intimacy; that God desires to be intimate with Abraham and He draws near to Abraham in intimacy and that is something we need.  You may not be willing to admit it, but you need intimacy, you need relationship.  There are people that right now, through acute loneliness, the sense of isolation, know that intimacy is the thing they need the most.  Others don't know that perhaps, caught into the busyness of life.  They may not know that what they really are is lonely.  I've seen a 90-year-old woman with no living relatives and no friends sitting and waiting with a pack of cards in her hand, waiting for my weekly visit.  She wasn't much of a conversationalist at that point in her life, but she knew how to play cards and we would get together every week, and she was waiting for that.  I was always convicted when I came around the corner to see her ready and waiting.  She wanted a relationship.  

I've seen a picture of teenage orphans standing in a line, looking at yet another set of prospective parents, hoping, the look on their faces, you can't describe it, hoping that this might be the time that they would be adopted, but they have been through this so many times before and so they are hoping against hope that today they might be adopted into a family.  I've seen in another country, another culture, men who are so married to their work that they are never home during the workweek at all.  They spend more time with their company employees and with other people, they come home late at night while the wives are left at home to raise the children.  Not this culture, but another one, but a total lack of intimacy between the husband and wife.  I've sat and prayed and cried with and talked to a very overweight seminary student in his mid to late 30s who thought he would never get married, and that there was no one out there for him to share life with, and that broke his heart.  I've seen a picture of a Norman Rockwell painting, perhaps you have seen it, of a married couple, still relatively young, sitting at breakfast table and the woman is looking toward you, the observer, and the man has got his face buried in the newspaper.

She's leaning close to the table, her hands close to his, but his hands are on the newspaper and she is looking dejected and rejected, and she wants intimacy with her husband, but he is interested in the current events.  I've seen these things, but I've never seen the perfect and absolute intimacy that the Father and the Son enjoyed before the foundation of the world.  I've heard about it, I've read about it, but I've never seen it, and I'm hungry for it.  Aren't you?  I want to be drawn into the very presence of God, I want to know Him, and I want to love Him, and I want to feel back the love that He intends to give.  And you know, He created the world not out of need, there was no need, and the Trinity, they were eternally blessed.  All of their needs for intimacy and friendship, all of them met, but they created male and female, they created man in the image of God, able to receive and give that kind of intimacy, but sin entered in didn't it, and destroyed everything?  It's been God that has been working to bring us back into relationship, one with another, yes, but ultimately with Him.  That we would be reconciled to our Creator, that we would be intimate with Him, and I see that in this chapter and many other places, but I see it here.

If you look with me at this chapter, beginning at Verses 1 and 2, it says, "The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day."  Now to me, Verse 1, is very important.  There are lots of different interpretations about who these three individuals are.  Some say they are just three angels, some two angels and the Lord, perhaps the angel of the Lord, perhaps Jesus Christ before He was incarnate through the Virgin Mary.  That is the way I read it.  I read that this is the Lord and two angels.  Now, if you have a different interpretation in the text, and if the Lord gives you a chance to preach a sermon on Genesis 18, you can do it differently then, but I'm going to read it that this is intimate fellowship between the Lord and two of His angels and Abraham, because the Lord appeared to Abraham.  Do you see that right there in Verse 1?  And it is the Lord that remains standing there, or Abraham remains standing before the Lord when He intercedes.  There is a continuity in the text here of encounter between God and Abraham and so it says, "The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day.  Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby.  When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed down low to the ground."

Now, the first thing I want to say about intimacy with God is you only get as far as God permits.  Let me say that again, you will only get as far in intimacy with Him as He permits.  You understand that, don't you?  And that's something in effect that works in all relationships.  You can only be as intimate with another individual as they open up and allow you to be.  And how much more is it true of God than it is of a king or an emperor in the world?  When I was living in Japan, you couldn't just get close to the emperor.  You couldn't wake up and say or make your New Year's resolutions, "I'd like to be the emperor's friend this year.  I'd like to get close and I'd like us to be friends."  Well, that's not going to happen if he doesn't want it to happen.  Well, if that is true of a figurehead emperor like that in Japan, how much more is it true of the Eternal God of the universe?  You only get as far as God permits and, therefore, what I say is in this text, and in other places, too, it is God who must take initiative in intimacy.  He's the one that comes to us, He's the one that sets the pace, He's the one that discloses Himself to us, He reveals himself or He doesn't.

It is God who takes the initiative here with Abraham.  And the beautiful thing is that God has taken initiative with us in Christ, hasn't He?  He has drawn very near, He is Immanuel, God with us.  He has come and drawn near to us.  He's tabernacled with us.  We have seen Him in the flesh, we beheld His glory.  He is God in the flesh.  He has taken initiative, and here He is with Abraham taking initiative.  

And so, the Lord comes, and we see immediately Abraham's model of hospitality, don't we?  This is a great textbook here in Genesis 18 on how to be hospitable.  There are many biblical commands on hospitality.  In 3 John 8, it says, "We ought therefore to show hospitality to such men so that we may work together for the truth."  One of the major themes, if not the only theme of 3 John, is how church people, Christian people should open their homes up and welcome those that are traveling for the sake of the Gospel.  There should be hospitality.  Elders in 1 John 3 are specifically commanded to be hospitable, to open their homes to strangers.  Titus 1:8 uses the word, which literally means loving the stranger, that we would cherish the stranger, the person we don't know.  And then Jesus in Matthew 10:11, when He sent the 12 disciples out two by two to do gospel ministry, He said, "Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person there and stay at his house until you leave."

And then at the end of the chapter, He talks about what that worthy person might get for hospitality.  And He said in Matthew 10:40-42, "He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me.  Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and anyone who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward.  And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will never lose his reward."  What an incredible incentive to hospitality, even a cup of cold water will never fail to be rewarded, eternally, God will remember.  And so, the key verse on this, I think Hebrews 13:2, which says, "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it."  Isn't that a little bit of a commentary here on Genesis 18?  Did Abraham know who these men were?  No.  This is just who Abraham was.  And if he hadn't been like this, the encounter would have gone differently, I think.  And so, he's hospitable, he's ready, and so he gets up and he serves.  Now, what are the qualities of hospitality that we see?  Well, first, eagerness and preparedness.  Look at Verse 2, "Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby.  When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground."

He's ready to serve, he's eager, he's prepared, he's got a mindset, and that is not just having all of the guest's linen out or having a guest room, it really is a matter of the heart, isn't it?  It's not a matter of how much space you have in your house, or if you have an extra set of china dishes, an extra place setting that you could put out.  That's not it.  It's a heart disposition of eagerness and preparedness.  He's sitting ready, and as soon as he sees an opportunity, he moves.  And so secondly, we see humility in Verse 2, "Abraham bowed low to the ground."  Now, keep in mind, if Hebrews 13:2 is talking about this encounter and perhaps the next one with Lot in Sodom, he doesn't know that they are angels.  He doesn't know who they are.  This is just who he is, and so, therefore, he's a very humble man.  Do you see that?  He bows low to the ground, he's ready to serve.  He's got an incredible heart, humility.  And then you see graciousness here.  Look at Verses 3 through 5, “He said, ‘If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by.  Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree.  Let me get you something to eat, so that you can be refreshed and then go on your way− now that you have come to your servant.’"

There's a graciousness here, isn't there?  A sweetness of disposition.  It's inviting, it makes you want to come in.  And along with that comes cheerfulness.  He says in Verse 3, "If I found favor in your eyes, don't pass me by, give me a chance to do this for you."  There is an eagerness there, a willingness to serve.  It is as though they are doing him a great honor and a big favor to come in and let him serve.  In 2 Corinthians 9:7 it says, "Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."  Oh, there's a big difference between being a giver and being a cheerful giver, isn't there?  Have you ever been on the receiving end of just giving?  It is not too pleasant, is it?  But on the receiving end of cheerful giving, now that's a blessing.  That's a great blessing.  So, it says in 1 Peter 4:9, "Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling."  That's another one of those verses that tells me that not only has God not changed at all, we haven't changed much, if at all.  Offer hospitality without grumbling.  Why would you be tempted to grumble when the time for hospitality comes?

Oh, come on, think with me.  Why would you tend to grumble, wouldn't it be because they're taking up your space, they're eating your food, you bump into them as you walk around the corner, they may just live differently than you do, they certainly do take up bathroom space.  There's no question about that.  And so, all kinds of things go on.  Your house is thrown into a different pattern when you are hospitable, and even more so as the time goes on.  And, therefore, it takes a certain graciousness and a spirit-filled mentality to offer hospitality without grumbling.  Proverbs 23:6-8, so incisive.  I love the Book of Proverbs, so honest about human nature, so honest.  It says, "Do not eat the food of a stingy man, do not crave his delicacies; for he is the kind of man who is always thinking about the cost.  'Eat and drink,' he says to you, but his heart is not with you.  You will vomit up the little you have eaten and will have wasted your compliments."  He is not thinking about, "I hope you are enjoying this.  I really want you to be pleased.  I want your needs to be met."  He is thinking about how much it costs to have you over.  I don't think there are many that can be thinking about that and not convey it subtly to the person who's eating.  But Abraham didn't do that.  He is a generous, cheerful, gracious giver, isn't he?

And look at his compassion as well.  He considers the physical needs of his guests, the heat of the day, their tired feet, the need for shade and rest.  That involves compassion, getting up out of yourselves, right?  Thinking about what somebody else needs, what their needs are.  It says in Verse 4, "Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under the tree."  Now, this is interesting to me.  "You may all wash your own feet," you see.  Isn't that interesting?  I'm not saying that that's intensive in the Hebrew, but that's what it says.  You may wash your own feet.  Do you remember another foot washing when Jesus did it for somebody else?  You see, even the lowest servant didn't do this for somebody.  "Let me provide some water and you can wash your feet," and it was not expected.  No servant would be expected to do this, and there is Jesus down on His hands and knees washing His disciple's feet.  What an incredible picture of lowliness.  In John 13:13-15 Jesus says, "You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am.  Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet.  I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you."

And so, the lowest of the low, that is what Jesus was, lower than any.  Even Abraham here didn't do that, but he said, "Let a little water be brought."  But he's compassionate, and he's a servant.  He uses terms like, "My Lord" and "Give me a chance to serve."  There is an attitude here of servanthood and of generosity.  Look at Verses 6 through 8.  "So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah.  ‘Quick,’ he said, ‘get three seahs of fine flour and knead it and bake some bread.'  Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf. . ."  Now, think about it, a calf.  That's a big animal really, and it's the best.  I mean, he's giving the best here, the choice, tender calf.  ". . .and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it.  He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them.  While they ate, he stood near them under a tree."  Now, I've thought a lot about this encounter and I wonder how long it took to take the three seahs of flour and knead bread and cook it, and how long did it take to slaughter a calf and prepare it and set it in front of. . .  This was not McDonald's, okay?  This wasn't six minutes.  This took a long time.  I just think we are in too big a rush.  Do you get that feeling?  We have become so hurried that we cannot show hospitality to one another, it takes too much time.  But these folks were there for hours, literally.

You almost have to go overseas to see this kind of thing, the hospitality, the generosity, the willingness to just be there and be together for a long time.  Well, all of that hospitality merely set the table as it were, or set the course for intimacy with God.  Hospitality set the door or opened the door for intimacy.  God is hospitable to us, and we reflect that to one another by being like Abraham here.  Abraham did not know who these men were, it didn't matter to him, he just wanted to treat them right, and so he opens the door for intimacy with God.  

Now, along the way, we also see some things about Abraham's family life too, don't we?  Let's take a minute and look at what glimpses we can get of the way his family was structured.  Okay, Abraham is in this account, the unquestioned head of his household.  Do you see that?  There's no doubt about it, he's the head of the house.  He gives orders to his wife, he gives orders to his servants, he takes responsibility for the guests, he doesn't leave that to his wife, he is out in front meeting the guests, and he himself is serving alongside them.  He's working just as hard as they are, but he's the head.  He's a servant leader in his house.  Sarah graciously submits to her husband.  There's no arguing back, like, "We're just out of fresh flour."  None of the give and take, you know what I'm talking about?  She just goes and she knows she wants to be as hospitable as he does.

They are on the same page here.  There's no difference.  And so, she's ready to go, and he says to her, "Quick, get three seahs of fine flour.  Fine flour, the best you have got, and knead it and bake some bread."  Later on in the passage, we are not going to get to it today, but just look at Verse 12.  Actually, we'll get to part of it today, but Verse 12, "So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought," it says, "After I am worn out and my master is old, shall I have this pleasure?"  Interesting what she calls him.  “Adon” is the Hebrew word from which we get the word “Adonai,” which is another word for God.  It simply means, “my Lord” or “my Master,” one in authority over me, that's what she calls him.  Peter picks up on this very title of respect here in 1 Peter 3, talking about wives, and he says this, "Your beauty should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.  For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful.  They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master.  You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear."  Sarah is a godly role model here, isn't she?  Of a woman who submits graciously to her husband.  And then you see Abraham's servants graciously submit also to his leadership, his authority.  He tells the servant what to do, and he obeys immediately.

Look at Verse 7, “Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it.”  Do you see the hurry?  Abraham is able to keep his servants moving along, there is no sluggishness here because the servant loves his master and wants to obey, it is important to the servant that the master look good here with these guests, and so his home is well ordered, do you see that?  And what a godly testimony.  What a godly testimony is a well-ordered home.  What a powerful weapon in the hands of the Lord for the advance of the kingdom.  A home like this, a man who is the head, not the passive male syndrome, hanging back, waiting, but he's leading, he's a servant.  The wife loves her husband, graciously submits, any that are in the household also submitting.  And so, we see Abraham taking an active role.  He's a hard worker and his home is well ordered.  Look at God's assessment of Abraham's family and future, Verses 18 and 19 say, “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.  For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him."

You know what I get out of this?  A well-ordered home was essential to the carrying out of the plan of God here.  Follow the logic.  Look at Verses 18 and 19, note the “so thats” and the “fors.” “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him,” that's the original Genesis 12 promise.  “For I have chosen him,” so God's choosing of Abraham is the ground of him being a great and powerful nation and a blessing to the ends of the earth, unconditional election for the purpose of blessing the ends of the earth.  Well, “I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and household after him, to keep the way of the Lord . . .”  Do you see the connection there?  In order for him to fulfill that role, he has got to direct his children to keep the way of the Lord so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham, what He has promised, do you see that?  How important and essential is a well-ordered home to the redemptive plan of God, and Abraham, our father in faith, an example of a godly home.

Then comes the fellowship meal.  It says in Verse 8, “He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them.  While they ate, he stood near them under a tree.”  And so, we see this fellowship.  The deepest desire of God as revealed in Scripture, in terms of our relationship with Him, is this kind of intimacy and fellowship; He wants to remove the sin barrier so that he can sit at table with us.  Isn't that incredible?  “God and Man at Table Are Sat Down.”  What a beautiful song, wasn't that incredible?  Encourage Connie later, it was just beautiful.  What a great message.  “God and Man at Table Are Sat Down.”  God has an interest in this over and over in Scripture.  For example, in Exodus 24:7-11, don't turn there, but just listen. “Then Moses took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people.  They responded, ‘We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.’  Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.’”  The blood, a symbol of the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross, making it possible for us to sit at the table with him.

You see what I'm talking about?  Without the shed blood, there is no reconciliation, there's no forgiveness.  And, if you are sitting today listening to me and you are not saved, you are not in a right relationship with God, there is only one way that that can happen for you.  The blood of Jesus Christ, what can wash away my sin, nothing but the blood of Jesus.  The blood of Jesus Christ alone can remove the barrier to intimacy and fellowship, and so this is the blood of the covenant.  Then it says “Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel.  Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself.  But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.”  To eat and drink.  Isn't that incredible fellowship?  They saw God and they ate and drank, a fellowship meal with God.   You get the same thing in Leviticus 3 with the fellowship offerings, portion gets burned up to God symbolically, that's the part He eats, He consumes it, and then there's a portion eaten by the priest that are taking part in the fellowship offering.

And then there's Psalm 23, in which the Psalmist says, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.  You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.  Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”  God and man, a table sat down forever, that's what David wanted out of his relationship with God, and then there is Christ's teaching, he taught much about this.  In Matthew 8, Jesus said, “I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.”  There's a feast in the kingdom of heaven, and then Jesus' parables, Matthew 22:2, “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.”  Do you want to sit at that table?  I do.  Oh, I want to be there.  Not just to taste the food, I wonder what that will be like.  I have an interest in that, but especially that the host of table would be adored, that we could worship the one who paid the price to get us there.

He's the feast, isn't he?  He's the feast, He is the one that we get when we die.  And so, Jesus, the night before he was crucified, “And he said to them, ‘I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.’”  That is Luke 22:15, an insight into Christ, isn't it?  I wanted to do this; I have yearned to eat this meal with you.  It's interesting to me, and I've noted before that after the resurrection of Christ, there are four encounters that have to do with food.  I find that interesting.  I don't just take it lightly; I think it is significant that Jesus spends a lot of time eating things after his resurrection.  For example, He takes the piece of broiled fish in front of them all in Luke 24 and proves that He has got a resurrection body.  He says, in effect, I am set to go for the wedding banquet, looking forward to it.  He has got a resurrection body.  He can eat fish and consume it before that on the road to Emmaus.  Remember, it wasn't until He took bread and broke it that their eyes were open and they realized who He was, a fellowship meal sitting at the table with Jesus, the resurrected Lord.

Then, in Acts 1:4-5, it says, “On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command:  ‘Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.’”  “. . .the Holy Spirit.”  So, He is sitting there eating with them, and then there is the fish broiling thing going on in John 21, as He was making breakfast for them, that is four post-resurrection eating encounters.  But how much more than the promise of eternal fellowship with God, Revelation 3:20, says, “Here I am!  I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”  Intimate fellowship is what that is talking about, and then the final Wedding Banquet, when it says that God Himself will be with them and be their God.  It says in Revelation 19:9, “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” and he added, “These are the true words of God.”  And so, we see the intimate meal, intimate fellowship between Abraham and God.  The second aspect of intimacy that we are going to look at this morning is the personal revelation to Abraham about Sarah, essential to intimacy is sharing knowledge.

The fact that we know things about each other, we know what we are doing, we lay our plans open, and we lay our hearts open to each other.  He says in John 15:15, "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business.  Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”  There is an intimacy, and that means I am going to share my plans with you.  

And so, there is an advancing knowledge here concerning the covenant.  Look at Verses 9 and 10, “‘Where is your wife, Sarah?’  they asked him, ‘There in the tent,’ he said.  Then the Lord said, ‘I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.’"  Now, this is the advancing of the Covenant, we have seen this, haven't we?  It is just being unfolded or perhaps like a scroll, just rolled out a little more, a little more.  A little more knowledge, a little more knowledge every time.  “First leave your country and your people, Abraham, Ur of the Chaldeans.  Leave your country and your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.”

Then once he gets to the land, He says, “I will give this land to you and to your offspring forever.”  And then when he comes back to the land after the time in Egypt, he comes back and He tells him more about the extent of the land after that conflict He has with Lot, or their shepherds have.  And then in the great chapter, the covenant chapter, Genesis 15, He reveals to him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of the sky.  He tells him specifically what tribes are going to be removed from the land so that his offspring can inherit it forever, and the covenant cutting ceremony is so powerful.  And then in Genesis 17, a little further with the Covenant, sign of circumcision and more things revealed, He said it specifically through Sarah's son, Isaac, okay.  Hagar?  No.  Ishmael?  No.  “It's specifically through Sarah and through Isaac that your offspring will be named.”  

And now, here in this chapter, we have more unrolling, “I'm going to tell you exactly when it's going to happen, sometime in the next year, I will return and Sarah will have a son.”  Oh, the light at the end of the tunnel. 

How long has this couple been waiting?  He's 99 years old, he's going to be 100 years old when Isaac's born.  Sarah is 90, they've been waiting an awfully long time, and so the time has come, well, not only is it an advancing knowledge of God's redemptive plan and his timing, but there is an advancing knowledge here of Sarah's heart.

Sarah reveals her heart a little bit here.  Look at Verses 10-15, it says, “. . .Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him.  Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of child-bearing.  So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, ‘After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?’  Then the Lord said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh and say, “will I really have a child now that I am old?”  Is anything too hard for the Lord?  I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son.’"  Verse 15, “Sarah was afraid, so, she lied and said, ‘I did not laugh.’  But he said, ‘Yes, you did laugh.’"

And so, we see the unfolding of Sarah's own heart, and this is what God's redemptive plan does in part as circumstances around you change, you are going to start to get to know who you are, and sin is going to bubble to the surface, and it's always painful, isn't it?  I mean, the greatest pain in my life and probably in yours, too, is our own sin, it's my own sin for me, isn't it?  It's the thing that hurts the most.  And we didn't know it was in there, but it's been there all along.  God knew it, he searches our hearts and our minds.  And so, what He does is He creates circumstances that causes stuff to bubble to the surface.  For me, it was a great learning time when I went on a mission trip, summer of '86 in Kenya.  I never realized how independent and how selfish I was in some specific ways until I went on the mission field and I saw the giving generosity and the hospitality of other people.  I saw how I responded to that in certain situations and at one point I was just broken, I really was, and I just got down on my knees and said, "God, forgive me for who I am.  Forgive me for being such a sinner."

And the Lord is so gracious to forgive because you know He is not looking at our righteousness anyway, that's a null said, there's nothing there, He's looking at Christ, but He has brought me to a deeper realization of how much I needed Jesus.  That's what is happening for Sarah here, the circumstances around, come and she hears the promise, but she doesn't believe it, and so she laughs about it.  Now, you may say, "No, this isn't fair.  Abraham got to laugh.”  It was a good thing in Genesis 17, remember how he falls face down and laughs, he's just marveling there, and God doesn't rebuke him.  The child is named Isaac, which means laughter, and so the whole thing is a positive thing in Genesis 17.  This is not positive.  And so only God can look at the outside, Abraham laughing, that's one thing, Sarah laughing, and it's something else, and only God can stand on the outside and say, "That's a problem right there.  What happened right there?  That was not right."  With Abraham, it must have been a laugh of joy, with Sarah, it was a laugh of unbelief, and so He is needing to unfold this and to show it to her.  She staggers in unbelief and she uses a terrible weapon of woman kind, and that is the mocking laugh.

And it isn't a light matter here, it's a serious matter, when God says something we believe and we trust, and so there can be no mockery when it comes to the Word of God.  She is laughing at Him.  And so, He brings it to the surface.  He confronts her, and I find it interesting here that He confronts Abraham about it, that is a detail you might have missed.  He doesn't talk directly to Sarah about it first, who does he talk to?  Sarah's husband?  "Why did Sarah laugh when I said this?"  That's something to ponder, isn't it?  But God always upholds the order in the home, something good to know about sin.  It says in Matthew 10:26, “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.”  I can tell you that discerning and uncovering a lie in another person is one of the hardest things you can ever try to do, it is very hard because all we can do is stand on the outside and try to get the person to confess or to reveal what has gone on, very difficult.  It's not so difficult for God.  Look at the encounter.

“Why did you laugh?”  Or, “why did Sarah laugh?”  Then she denies it.  She lies and says, "I did not laugh."  And what did He say?  "Yes, you did laugh."  End of discussion.  Isn't that interesting?  It reminds me of Judgment Day, right?  Is there going to be any way to deceive the Lord on Judgment Day, "I didn't do that."  "Yes, you did."  And that's it, there's nothing more after this in the text, right?  "Yes, you did laugh."  There is no need to go on because the Lord knows all things.  And so, it says in Romans 2:16, Paul, talking about judgment day, says, “This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my Gospel declares.”  So, our secrets are going to be laid bare, and then only the blood of Jesus Christ will suffice that we might have forgiveness of sins.  

Finally, we see advancing knowledge of God's incredible power, not only Sarah's heart unfolded and revealed, we also see God.  We see God's supernatural knowledge.  He knows the future, He knows exactly when Sarah will have her child, He knows the secrets of the heart, He knows what Sarah said in her own heart.

So, we see God's supernatural knowledge.  We also see God's sovereign power as a king.  God gets to decide when the child is going to be born; He knows the exact best time.  The best time was when Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah 90.  He set the time because He is a king, He is wise, He is sovereign, and He is powerful, and no one can stay his hand or toward his plan, that child will be born in due time.  And we see God's beautiful declaration of His own power.  Look at Verse 14, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?  I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son.”  Nothing is beyond God's capacity, nothing beyond his power.  He can do anything, He can raise the dead, He can save a sinner, and He can give a child to an aged couple, He can do anything.  Nothing is too difficult for the Lord.  Today, we have seen two aspects of intimacy between God and Abraham.  We have seen the intimate fellowship meal with Abraham and how it's replayed again and again in symbolic ways in scripture.  We are going to see in a moment, as we come to the Lord's table, we are going to see what Christ established as a repeated pattern, so that we would think about the intimacy that waits for us in heaven, our future intimacy with God Himself, and so we saw God's intimate meal with Abraham.

Secondly, we have seen God's intimate personal revelation to Abraham about Sarah.  Now, God willing, next week we are going to look at God's intimate public revelation to Abraham about Sodom, and then an incredible encounter of intercession between Abraham and God that you will not want to miss.  

Now, in terms of application, can I say first and foremost, as I've said twice already, draw near to God, don't stay on the outside, don't stay out in the cold listening to the clink of china and the laughter of a fellowship meal and you are not invited.  You are invited.  I am standing here as Christ's representative saying, "Come into the feast.  Repent, turn away from the sin that separated you from God, trust in the shed blood of Jesus Christ alone and come in to the fellowship meal."  The Lord's Supper is just a picture of that.  When we take the bread and when we drink the cup, we are thinking of a future fellowship meal in heaven with God forever, among other things, and we are thinking about the price that was paid to get us there, and so don't stay on the outside, and can I say to you, whether you're Christian or not, both. . . all of us need to come to Christ for the forgiveness of sins and restoration all the time, don't we?

Even if you have already trusted in Christ, you know that sin has separated you from God this week, and maybe as you are sitting in the pew this morning, you are feeling a lack of intimacy with God, you are feeling separated, and you know why, don't you?  You are going to have an opportunity while the elements are being passed out to bow your head before the eternal God and confess your sin.  Don't miss it.  Don't miss it, don’t pass up the opportunity to be right with God.

We come this morning to Genesis 17, and the institution of the covenant sign of circumcision.  As I come to this Scripture this morning in Genesis 17, I'm brought to another place in Scripture, Matthew 5:17, where our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ said this, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.  I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.  Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.  For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."

Well, that's what Jesus said about the written Word, and that includes here in Genesis 17, a command for circumcision, which in this Scripture seems established to be timeless.  And so, those that were inerrantist, those that wanted a literalistic interpretation of the Bible in the first century, were greatly troubled by those who said, "You don't need to circumcise your children."  They said, it says, it's timeless, it's an eternal covenant.  And so, it brought the early church into the flames of controversy.  The Holy Spirit led the church through that, so that we who are Gentiles by birth, are not required to be circumcised in order to go to Heaven.  Somebody say amen, praise God for that.  How hard would missions be if we were still required to undergo the old covenant ceremonies?  Very difficult.  There would be some that would be willing just like Abraham was at age 99, but God has not so ordained for us.

So that brings us to another question, doesn't it?  Why?  Actually, two questions.  Why did God establish circumcision in the Old Covenant for Abraham and for all his descendants?  What was He doing?  What was the purpose?  And, secondly, why did he remove the requirement in the new covenant?  Those two questions are going to be in the back of your mind, but first I want to just unfold Genesis 17, try to see what's in that text, and then we will come full circle at the end and try to understand those two questions.  

Now, the context for the giving of this circumcision sign, the sign of this old covenant with Abraham was Genesis 16.  Now in Genesis 16, as we looked last week, was Abram and Sarai's attempts in their own flesh to fulfill the promise of God?  It was pretty obvious that try as they might again and again, Sarai, her womb barren, the two of them just could not have children physically, it was impossible.  And so, they decided to take matters in their own hands, and Sarai said, “Now, here's Hagar, my Egyptian servant.  Now you go and marry her and have a son by her, and he will be reckoned as mine.”  And so, Abram fit into the cultural norms of the day and did a sinful thing, he did something that God did not intend.  We saw the outcome of that last week in Genesis 16.  

Now you are in Verse 1, it says, “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.’”  

Now, this ends 13 years of biblical silence between God and Abram.  We don't know for sure; the Bible doesn't say that there were no words from God during that time, it doesn't say that, but I think the silence is pretty stark here.  Thirteen years, God has not revealed anything in Scripture, at least to Abram.  After 13 years of silence, He comes and says, I am God almighty, walk before me and be blameless.

There is a sense of holiness here, a sense of the righteousness of God and of His purposes as well.  Now, I think the reason for the 13 years and for the strong word here is that God wants to reveal His power in human inability.  Really, in human impossibility.  God loves to say, “With man, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.”  And so, it's clearly established that the arm of flesh can accomplish nothing.  And so, He waits for 13 years as Ishmael grows up.  He waits to chastise Abram and Sarai, to train them and to teach them one central lesson, said later by the prophet Zechariah.  Zechariah 4:6 says, “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.”  You don't take matters in your own hands in God's kingdom.  You don't do it the way you think is best.  You wait on the Lord and let Him tell you what He says to do. 

And so, the Holy Spirit will lead.  It is the spirit that will work, it is God who will get the glory when human inability is so clearly established.  The human flesh has its own ways.  We have our own ways of doing things.  And so, Abram and Sarai took matters into their own hands.  God waited to put human strength and schemes at an end.  Until it became very obvious that “Abram's body was as good as dead−since he was about a hundred years old−and that Sarai’s womb was also dead.”  Romans 4:19.  Hebrews 11:12 says, “And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.”  So, God is waiting for the dust of their rebellion to settle.  And after 13 years, comes this word, this promise, again.  And so, God appears to Abram, and we see here, the working of God's grace.  God didn't cast off Abram and Sarai, he didn't throw them out because they were sinners or they disobeyed His patterns established from the very beginning concerning marriage, He didn't throw them out.  God redeems sinners.  God uses sinners. 

Anybody here not a sinner?  Anybody willing to come and tell us how to do it?  I think everybody I'm looking at here is a sinner and I'm a sinner too.  And yet, if I'm a sinner, I'm up here and God can actually use me and God can use you, too.  And so, he works through sinful people to accomplish His ends.  The grace of God.  Sometime later, Genesis 17:1 says, “When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.’”  He appears to him, and he gets a reaction from Abram.  Abram, it says, falls face down.  And so would you, if the Lord had appeared to you, wouldn't that be delightful to be just slain by a vision of God this afternoon, could you spend better time this afternoon than that, to fall face down before an appearance of God Almighty?  And the terror and the fear of the Lord came over Abram at that moment.  And he feared and he fell face down.  And then came the call, God's holiness, God's purity, His perfection.  Out of the perfection of His nature and His heart, He said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.”  This is a call for each one of us today.  Be holy because I am holy, says the Lord, it's a call in the old covenant, and it's a call in the new covenant as well.  God is a Holy God, He is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.  And when it says, “Walk before me,” it means live your everyday life in front of me, Abram.

Let me watch how you live.  Job says, “Does He not see my ways and count my every step?”  He knows the slightest inclination of my heart, He sees every word before it's on my tongue, He knows it all together completely.  He knows everything about us, and so walk before me, he says, live your life on a stage in front of me.  Let me watch you.  And as I watch you realize, my eyes are too pure to look on evil, I can't tolerate wrong.  Walk before me and be blameless.  This is a rebuke, I believe, for Genesis 16.  Don't do things your way.  Don't follow the cultural norms.  Find out what it is I want and do it, even if it's costly.

Having introduced this, then He refreshes or renews the covenant, this is the grace of God.  He comes again with the covenant, and you are going to see in the Covenant as it's renewed with some new tokens here, some new aspects, you are going to see the same two central promises, a multiplicity of descendants and the promised land, you are going to see those same two things reiterated here, but some new tokens.  Look at Verses 2 through 8, God says, “I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.  Abram fell face down, and God said to him, ‘As for me, this is my covenant with you.  You will be the father of many nations.  No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.  I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.  I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.  The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.’”

This is the covenant reestablished as it were.  Not that it ever went away because God's gifts and His calling are irrevocable.  But here He refreshes it, He renews and He gives some new tokens.  

Now, why does God keep refreshing and renewing this covenant?  Well, could it be that people are just forgetful?  We forget, it's been 13 years after all, and if it's been silence, 13 years of silence and realized, he didn't have the blessing we have, you realize what a blessing this book is?  We can read this day after day and refresh and renew our sense of the promises of God.  Abram didn't have the written scripture, all he had is the last word that God gave him, the last word to go on, the last vision.  And so, he comes and he refreshes and he renews his faith by means of the word.  It's the same promise again, faith, can I tell you right now?  Faith is a living thing.  It's like a plant, it needs fertilizer, it needs water.  My wife and I, I'm not trying. . . just me, let's put it on me.  We kill all the plants we get; we kill them all.  I don't know what it is we haven't killed.  I had a cactus once and it took me two years to kill that, and that was tough, but other than that, we can kill anything.  Christy is better than I.  I don't in any way, want to talk about this later this afternoon, but anyway, definitely.  I'm the one that . . . and the fertilizer, the water.  That kind of thing.  It needs it.  Your faith is alive, it's alive and it needs food.  You know what food it needs; it needs this, it needs the word.  You have got to feed your faith, if you don't feed your faith, it's going to wither, it's going to shrink up.  It's going to be fruitless.  You have got to feed your faith with the Word.  And so, God comes and He gives Abram his faith, a big meal here.  He renews the promises and He speaks to him.  But he also wants to establish Abram’s pattern of obedience, this could be translated in effect; “I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless, so that I may confirm my covenant with you.”  In other words, there needs to be a pattern of obedience, Abram, or I cannot confirm my covenant with you.

If Abram had become utterly faithless, if he had not believed the promise, if he had, for example, had no marital relations with his wife, it would have been literally physically impossible for this promise to be fulfilled.  He had to obey, he had to act on his faith, Genesis 18, 18 and 19, we're going to see that shortly.  But God speaking about Abraham says, “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.  For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just,” listen, “so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.”  You see, there's a connection between our faith-filled obedience and the fulfillment of the covenant promise.  And so, He says, “Walk before me and be blameless so I will confirm my covenant between me and you…”  And then, He gives him this remarkable token, the change of a name.  Now, as a preacher here, it was hard for me to change Abraham's name to Abram, but from now on, I have got to go back to what I've always known.  This man is Abraham, and so he gave him the new name, Abraham.

Names are significant in scripture.  They could refer to a character trait that could be like Jacob, He who grasped the heel, he's a con-artist, he's a deceiver.  There's a sense of name for Esau because he was reddy, a red or a ruddy, with his red hair, he was named Edom or Esau.  Many times, in scripture, there is also the sense of the changing of a name.  When Jacob went to Israel, he who wrestles with God, there was a change of the name there.  Also, for God's people in Isaiah 62:2, it says, “The nations will see your righteousness and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow.”  Isn't that marvelous?  And that very same promise is picked up in the Book of Revelation, in Revelation 2:17, listen to this, this is so wonderful.  “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.  To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna.  I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.”  What an incredible blessing that is, and God has the power to change a name.  And what was the change?  Well, Abram meant exalted Father.  Abraham meant the father of many nations.

Notice that God uses the past tense here in Verse 5, he says, “No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.”  I have made you a father of many nations?  That's exactly right.  God speaks and it is even if it isn't yet, you know what I'm saying?  It's as good as done because God said it.  “Let there be light,” He said, and there was light.  God speaks, and it is, or it will be most certainly in his good timing.  And so, it says in Romans 4:17, “As it is written: ‘I have made you a father of many nations.’”  He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.  And he does it right here in this verse, do you see that?  He said, “I've made you a father of many nations,” even though he is the father right now of just Ishmael, “father of many nations.” 

And so, Abraham was designated to be the father of many nations, even though his body was as good as dead, and Sarai's womb was also dead, yet God has the power to call things that are not as though they were.  And you know what?  That's what he does at the moment of salvation, isn't it?  He calls into your soul something that wasn't there before, a love for God, an estimation of the weight of the glory of Jesus Christ, the glory of God in the face of Christ.  In 2 Corinthians, Chapter 4, He called a light into your soul that didn't exist before.  It's called regeneration, being born again.  He can do that to anybody.  He has the power to speak to dead people as though they were alive and they come alive like Lazarus.  And you know what, He's going to do it to you when you're in the grave.  All who are in the grave will hear his voice and come out, he has the power to give life to the dead on that great resurrection day.  He can do that to whole nations, he can rise a nation up out of the dust and make them a world-conquering empire, and then he can send them back into the dust.  God does all these things.  He calls things that are not as though they were.

Then, He gives him the covenant sign of circumcision.  Look at Verses 9 through 14, this is the first covenant requirement, circumcision.  In Verse 10, it says, “Then God said to Abraham, ‘As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come.’”  Verse 10, “This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep:  Every male among you shall be circumcised.”  And so, here is the covenant sign of circumcision.  Now, up to this point, the covenant has been one way, God in effect saying, “This is what I will do for you.”  But now here is a covenant obligation or responsibility, a covenant command, you must be circumcised and all your males with you.  It is a sign, Verse 11, “it will be the sign.”  Look at that word in Verse 11, “You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.” 

Now, a sign is a symbol or something that represents a reality that already is.  And so, the covenant had already come, God had already made his covenant in Genesis 15.  This is so vital and so important, and Paul picks up on this in a major way in the Book of Romans.  The reality was already there, the sign was given later, and so circumcision is a covenant sign.  The same word is used in the Hebrew of the sign of the rainbow.  For the flood of Noah, in Genesis 9:12-16, God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:  I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.  Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant.”  So, here's another aspect of the sign, the sign causes remembrance.  When you look at this and you see the sign, you remember the covenant.  And that's the purpose of the covenant of circumcision.  It was a sign.  The same thing was true of the sign of the blood of the Passover lamb.  In Exodus 12:13, “The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you.  No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.”

Here's the thing, this is a covenant sign, this is a representation that causes remembrance, that when you look at it, there is a reality behind it.  There is a covenant promise.  God had said, I will not destroy any of your first born, if you obey this and paint the blood of the Passover lamb, it's a sign, and that's so important.  And yet in a strange way, it's also called a covenant unto itself.  Look at Verse 13, “Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised.  My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant.”  Oh boy, now we get into some problems, and we'll get to this in a minute, this word everlasting, but there it is, it's a covenant in the flesh, the covenant of circumcision that is given.  I can't go long in Genesis 17 without saying, Paul, tell me what it means, I need to understand.  And so, Paul gives us an inspired commentary on this whole thing in Romans Chapter 4.  Paul is dealing with the question of justification by faith alone.  What does that mean?  It's the way a sinner like you and me is able to stand before a holy God, righteous and unafraid on judgment day, and even before that, that today we can be, like Jesus said in John 13, the foot washing, we can be clean because of the word He has spoken to us. 

Aren't you hungry for that?  Don't you want to be clean before God today?  To stand before Him blameless and unafraid.  That's justification righteousness, that we can stand before Him.  Well, how does it come?  Well, how did it come for Abraham?  This is what Paul writes in Romans 4:9-12, "Is this blessedness” of forgiveness, of being clean before God, “is this blessedness only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised?” 

We have been saying that Abraham's faith was credited unto him as righteousness.  Under what circumstances was it credited?  Was it after he was circumcised, or before?  It was not after, but before!  And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.  So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised.”  That's us as Gentiles.  We believe, but we were not ceremoniously or religiously or covenantally circumcised.  We were not.  He is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness may be credited to them.  And, he is also the father of the circumcised,” those are the Jews, “who not only are circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that their father Abraham had before he was circumcised.”

Let me unravel all that very simply, okay, it's really this simple.  Genesis 15 comes before Genesis 17.  And in Genesis 15, God said, "You're righteous."  In Genesis 17, "Oh, by the way, be circumcised."  And so, we don't need to be circumcised in order to be righteous.  That's the point that Paul makes very simply, and he makes this whole argument on the ordering of the narrative in the Old Testament, that's the way that Paul argues.  The circumcision came after the righteousness.  Now, what is the extent of the covenant sign?  Well, look at Verses 12 and 13, "For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner−those who are not your offspring.  Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised.  My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant."

So first of all, every male among you, any male among you, part of your group, they must all be circumcised, it should be done for a newborn infant eight days old, that's when it's done at eight days, and it's to be done for generations to come, for it's an everlasting covenant.  We'll get to that in a minute.  Now, is there a penalty for disobedience?  Yes, there is, look at Verse 14, "Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."  Now, that is serious.  Do you see that as a covenant penalty, if you are not circumcised, you don't circumcise your children, you're cut off from Israel?  You are left out of the people of God, very serious.  That meant they were no longer a Jew, they were no longer a descendant of Abraham, as it were, because they are not circumcised.  That's how serious this is.  

Now, let's get to this question.  Was this covenant an everlasting covenant, the way it says the word is translated here, everlasting covenant.  Well, this Hebrew word “everlasting” is sometimes used to refer to God Himself.  It says in Psalm 29:10, "The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord is enthroned as King forever."  Is that like forever and ever and ever and ever?  Yes, you just can look and see it's eternal.  God is King forever.  He's eternally the king, or how about this one?  Isaiah 40:8, "The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God stands forever."  Is that forever and ever?  Yes, it's eternal, God's Word is eternal.  So, concerning God's throne and concerning His word, the same word means eternally.  But we get into problems when it comes to the Old Covenant issues, because the same word is used for things that became temporary when the New Covenant came, and so the word actually can mean until further notice coming from God.  And, I know that that's troubling to you, but that's in effect what it is, you must circumcise until I tell you to stop.  And we Christians have to accept that, because that's literally what happened.  We've got to circumcise.  You want to be part of the people of God?  You must circumcise until I tell you to stop. 

The same was true of the Old Testament sacrificial system, wasn't it?  You must do this.  You must do it; you must do it until I tell you, it has been fulfilled.  Now, here's the thing.  Jesus said in the quote that I gave you at the beginning, a Sermon on the Mount, He said, ". . .until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear. . ." until what?  "Everything is fulfilled."  Well, this has been fulfilled, brother and sisters, this has been fulfilled.  The animal sacrificial system has been fulfilled and so has circumcision.  So, the word can mean something other than eternally.  For example, look at Deuteronomy 15:17, don't turn there, but just listen.  Speaking of a servant who wants to become a permanent member of the family, it says, ". . .then take an awl and push it through his ear lobe into the door, and he will become your servant for life."

Now, is that a different forever than God's throne?  Well, yeah, I mean, servant until he dies, so at least that much is the case, not eternal.  Or how about this?  Exodus 29:9, "You shall gird Aaron and his sons with sashes and bind caps on them.  And the priesthood shall be theirs by a statute forever," or is that an eternal priesthood?  Aaron's priesthood, an eternal?  No, the Book of Hebrews said it was temporary.  How about dietary regulations?  Leviticus 3:17, "It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations, and in all your dwelling places, that you eat neither fat nor blood."  Jesus declared all foods clean.

Or the atonement sacrifice.  Leviticus 16:34, "This will be a statute forever," these are all the same Hebrew words for you, "that atonement may be made for people of Israel once a year because of their sins," blood atonement, animal sacrificial system.  And Moses did as the Lord commanded him.  These old covenant regulations were called eternal or everlasting, even though the New Covenant came and overturned them or ended them, fulfilled them really.  And so, the basic meaning here is that this is established as a covenant until I come and tell you otherwise.  And that's exactly what happened in the New Covenant.  

Well, God goes beyond that in Verses 15 through 22, He designates the covenant child.  He makes it very clear.  Now, apparently Abram, Abram, you did not know.  Let's call him Abraham now.  See, I have to learn.  See Abraham picked it right up.  He knew he was Abraham that same day.  But for me, it takes a little while to go back and forth−so Abraham.

You apparently are confused concerning who the woman is through whom you are going to have the promised child.  Well, let's make that very clear right here, and right now, Genesis 17, "God said also to Abraham, 'As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah.  I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her.  I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.’  Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, ‘Will a son be born to a man 100 years old?  Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?’  And Abraham said to God, 'If only Ishmael might live under Your blessing!'  Then God said, ‘Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac.  I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.  And as for Ishmael, I have heard you:  I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers.  He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation.  But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.'"  Verse 22, "When He had finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him."  It's very clear after that, through whom the child, the promise is coming, it's coming through your wife, Sarah.

So, God exalts marriage the way he originally established, one man, one woman, one flesh for life.  This is your wife, and it's through her that the child is going to come.  Now, Sarai’s name change, the new name means princess, is fitting for a mother of kings; the previous name Sarai, the meaning is unclear.  But in effect, this is a new start for Sarai, she is going to be Sarah from now on, and she is going to be the mother of kings, it's not going to be some rabble or some hoard, it's going to be an organized people with kings one after the other.  And so, it's an exalted name for her and a new start and a promise of fruitfulness and blessing.  Verse 16, "I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her.  I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations. . ." only with God's direct, supernatural blessing will this ever come.  Sarai's womb had been barren, Sarah's womb would be fruitful one time, she would have a son, and his name would be Isaac. 

Well, at this point, Abraham falls face down and laughs.  Now, you could think this is the laugh of unbelief, and in Genesis 18, that's what it was for Sarah, she couldn't believe it and laughed through unbelief, but this is not the laugh of unbelief, this is the laugh of joy.  This is what God does to you.  He blesses you so that you laugh with joy or maybe you cry with joy, but God is into filling your heart with His blessings, and so he just falls on the ground and laughs.  How do we know that he believed the Lord at this moment?  Well, it says so in Romans.  See, Romans is the commentary.  You say, "Well, what commentaries do you use?  I like to use Romans 4:19-21 to comment on Abraham's life.  I think it's a great commentary, and so it says right there in the commentary, it says, "Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead−since he was about a hundred years old−and that Sarah's womb was also dead.  Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised."

Isn't that marvelous?  And so, he was strengthened in his faith, and as I was going over this text this morning, God showed me an indicator right in the text that he believed the Lord right there.  Look what it says, "He falls on the ground."  And what does he say?  "Will a son be born to a man 100 years old."  And what does he say next?  "Will Sarah bear a child at age 90?"  He didn't say Sarai.

I mean, the news about Sarai to Sarah, that was just a few seconds old, he picks it up by faith, and the woman that he had known for all those decades as his wife, the wife of his youth, he had known her all her life as Sarai, he instantly changes her name in his mind to Sarah because God said so.  And if God says so, that settles it to him, he's a man of faith, and so he changes her name in his own mind to Sarah, he believes the Lord.  He also has a concern, and his concern is for Ishmael, like a good father, like Job who offered sacrifices for his sons and daughters thinking they might have cursed God in their hearts.  If you are a good father, you will pray for your children, if you are a good father, you will be concerned about the spiritual welfare of your children.

You'll intercede for them, and that's what he does for Ishmael here, "If only Ishmael might live under Your blessing," he knew in the providence of God and the sovereign will of God, Ishmael was not the child of promise, God's plans were going to go another way, but he said, "What about Ishmael?"  He said, "I have heard you: I will surely bless him.”  “But my covenant I will establish with Isaac.”  God is very clear about that.  

Well, in Verses 23-27, we see Abraham's faith in action.  He obeys Him.  To delay is to disobey, isn't it?  You don't wait.  If God tells you to do something, you do it.  If He wants you to be in the intensive evangelism workshop, for example, maybe.  To delay is to disobey.  Alright, if God is calling on you to do something, you have to do it.  And Verse 23 tells us, "On that very day Abraham took his son Ishmael and all those born in his household or bought with his money, every male in his household, and he circumcised them, as God told him."

Now, I doubt that God has asked you to do anything that difficult in the last year.  This is a 99-year-old man, a 13-year-old son, every male that is with them, he had a large entourage with him, he led his family in obedience, and it was costly obedience.  It was painful obedience.  It was humbling obedience, and he did it, and he did it promptly, and he did it completely.  True faith always results in complete and total obedience.  

Now we get back to our questions, I said at the end we would come full circle, what are the two key questions?  Well, why did God command circumcision for the Jews?  And why does He not command it for us?

Now, that's the question in front of us.  First of all, was circumcision commanded for the Jews?  Absolutely.  We've seen it right here in the text.  And you remember later in Exodus 4, when Moses had neglected to circumcise his own children, his wife, Zipporah, circumcises them and then basically chews him out saying, "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me. . .” because you've not obeyed in this matter of circumcision."  And it says right in that text, ". . .the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him” because he did not obey concerning circumcision.  So yes, this was absolutely required for the Jews, no doubt about it.  

Is circumcision required for Christians?  No, it isn't.  And why?  Well, they had a big meeting in Acts 15, it was the mother of all church conferences there, and they all met and everybody came and they discussed things out, and you think you've had some hard church conferences.  Well, this was very hot because you had some folks that read out of Genesis 17, now this is meant to be an everlasting covenant, it's meant to be an eternal covenant.  And so, unless the Gentiles are circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses, they cannot be saved.

Paul and Barnabas come into sharp dispute and debate with them that they have got to meet to settle it, and so they do.  And in Acts 15, we see a marvelous thing as both Paul and Peter stand up for what God wanted done.  And that was a gospel of grace, a gospel of no longer being under the ceremonial law.  And so, they wrote a letter to the Council of Jerusalem and refused to require Gentiles to be circumcised.  Acts 15:28 says, "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements."  It then gives a list of four things that help them not to offend their Jewish neighbors, but there is no sense of obligation or requirement to be circumcised in order to go to Heaven.  And so, they resolved it.  Meanwhile, the Apostle Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, wrote a whole book about it, the Book of Galatians, in which he takes on the circumcision party and says very plainly, we have freedom from the ceremonial law.  You are begun by the Spirit; you are not completed by the flesh.

Now that you have been born again by the power of the Spirit of God, you don't then go back under a bunch of rules and regulations that neither we nor our fathers were ever able to keep.  And so, it's an epistle of freedom.  Martin Luther called it his Katie Von Bora, that's his wife's name.  He loved Galatians because it freed him up from the legalistic system of Roman Catholicism which is so much like that circumcision group, freed up, and Paul establishes it very plainly.  As I've said in Romans 4, Abraham was justified by faith alone just by hearing the word long before he was circumcised.  And so, we do not need to be circumcised physically.  But the New Testament also gives us a new way of understanding circumcision, not just a physical circumcision, a cutting off of the flesh physically, but rather a new circumcision inwardly, by the Spirit.

Listen to this.  Romans 2:28-29 says, "A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical.  No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code.  Such a man's praise is not from men, but from God."  You must be circumcised, but not in the old way, you must be transformed by the Spirit, you must be given a whole new nature in Christ, you must be born again by the Spirit because neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.  What counts is a new creation, it says in Galatians 6:15.  Also, in Colossians 2:11, it says "In him you are also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ."  Now, why then did God command the Jews to do it if we don't have to do it?  Well, I was reading a book recently by Jay Wile called Reasonable Faith:  The Scientific Case for Christianity.  This man is a good speaker and I really enjoy the things he writes.  He says that circumcision was done for hygienic purposes.  Have you heard this before?  Dr. Wile shows how the rules regarding circumcision are based on medical knowledge that has only recently been uncovered over the last 30 years, showing that Jewish women have an amazingly lower clinical occurrence of cervical cancer than do non-Jewish women, and they trace it to the issue of circumcision.  Well, that's probably true, but I don't think it was God's main thought.  Okay.  And why was it probably not God's main thought?  Well, you know, I'm kind of offended that God would be so concerned for the Jews physically and not care about me as a Gentile.  Doesn't He care about my wife?  You see what I'm saying?  Why would he take it off in the New Covenant, if that was His reason, hygiene?  Same thing is true of the dietary regulations, they say it's because of pork.  There wasn't refrigeration and all that.  Have you heard this before?  I'm thinking, “What?  He doesn't love us.”  If the reason was hygiene, He should have kept it on.  Right, it wasn't hygiene.  That's not why He did it.  Why then?  Why the rule for circumcision?  Well, I believe that God put the ceremonial laws in there to carve out a people unto Himself, calling them Jews, a barrier as it were, a wall around the Jews that kept them Jewish until Christ was born.

And once Christ was born, once the Seed came, there was no longer any need for the ceremonial regulations.  Let me read to you.  That's what it says.  Galatians 3:19, "What, then, was the purpose of the law?  It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come."  Who's the Seed?  It's Christ.  Once Christ was born of a virgin, once He was born, you did not need animal sacrifice, you did not need circumcision, the dietary regulations, all that's done, because Jesus was born a Jew, and once the salvation is from the Jews, once the Jewish Savior was born in a Jewish nation, God changed what He wanted done with that barrier, that dividing wall.  There was a barrier, dividing wall−Jew, Gentile−He tore it down.  He took it down, and you know why?  Because in the New Covenant, He wants one new person.

Listen to this, this is Ephesians 2:14-16, speaking of Christ, "For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one, [Jew, Gentile] and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.  His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility."  Jesus at the cross tore down the barrier between Jew and Gentile, and so there wasn't any need for circumcision as a ceremonial regulation, and from then on it really is hygienic, it's not ceremonial, there's no purpose, ceremonially, there's no advantage and no disadvantage in your spiritual relationship with God concerning circumcision, and therefore decisions, if you have a boy baby, they really are hygienic, it really has nothing to do with religion, and frankly, it must not, because we're in a New Covenant now and the barrier has been torn down.

Now, what application can we take from this.  Well, first of all, just marvel at God’s ways.  I mean, only God could think up something like this.  Circumcision, it's not an easy sermon to preach, this is the expository kind of approach, and it's like the kind you want to skip, you know.  But at any rate, in Genesis 17, I want to understand, why did He do it?  I want to put my mind under His, because as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways higher than ours.  So, let's marvel at God's higher ways, at the fact that He wanted to carve out a Jewish nation.  And once Jesus was born, there was no need for the barrier any longer.

Secondly, understand the purposes and limitations of those ceremonial laws, like I just said, they are finished.  You don't ever need to go back to that legalism again, you must not.  We have freedom from all of those regulations, but we do not have freedom from the law of Christ.  We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and we are still to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Above all things, trust in God's higher promise in Christ.  You know, circumcision, uncircumcision, none of that means anything.  What counts is being born again.  If you're sitting and listening to me today, it doesn't matter how much regulations, how many of the rules you keep and all that, you'll never go to heaven that way, it's only by believing in Jesus Christ, the promised Seed, who was to come that you have eternal life, trust in Him today.  Trust in Him, follow Him, love Him.  And just like Abraham did, walk before Him and be blameless, and I'm speaking now to all of you who are born again, who call yourselves Christians, in effect, the Lord comes in the same way today as He did to Abram, Abraham, and He comes and says, "I am the Lord Almighty, walk before Me today and be blameless."

One of the favorite things that I used to do when I was growing up with my father was go hiking in the mountains of New Hampshire.  I really enjoyed going up to the White Mountains, and they are very high mountains up there, the ones in the presidential range.  I remember hiking up Mount Washington, which is the highest of those mountains up there, and as we were hiking, my dad would be telling me it wouldn't be long before we would break out above the tree line.  That was always a big moment, and I was always eager for it, because then the views just got spectacular and we could see all over that whole region, that whole district, once you are above the tree line.

But, as you're looking up the trail, you can always see some glimpses of blue sky and I'm thinking, "Is that it?"  And so, we would reach that place and there would be more trees beyond, and so we would keep on going.  As we would go, I would look up and then I would see, I thought, an opening and that wasn't it either.  It was a real test of patience for someone my age.  It was a test of the body for someone his age, but a test of patience for someone my age.  I was looking up and I kept waiting, when are we going to break above the trees?  Once we did, the view would get spectacular, and I would think, "We have got to be almost there, to the summit."  Then I would look and I would see the summit right up there, just as it was curving, and I would think, "Boy, not long, and we are going to be at the top."  I would reach that little curving place and there would be another little curving place further up.  This is what is known as the false summits.  They would go on for another hour and a half or two hours after I broke above the tree line.  What an incredible test of patience it is, and so also, I think in the Christian life, God is exercising our patience.  He can give you a glimpse of what is to come, a foretaste, and then it is back to the grind.  The grind more than anything is a wrestling with our own wickedness and sin, our own unbelief.  And so, we have what is known as the mountain top experiences, an encounter with God, something you would never forget.

It isn't long after that that you are back into sin, you are struggling, you are weak, and you are needing to confess.  And that's exactly what we have in Genesis 16.  Genesis 15, is one of those incredible mountain top experiences in which God reveals His eternal purposes to Abraham, to Abram.  He speaks a promise to him, the promise that he heard and believed, to the salvation of his soul, "So shall your offspring be."  He heard and he believed, and he was justified by faith.  And then, the incredible covenant cutting ceremony, the intensity of that moment, the darkness and the dread, the terror of the Lord that came over him.

The burning torch and the fire pot appearing, and then just moving between the pieces, an incredible picture, answering Abraham's question, Abram's question, "How can I know that I will gain the Promised Land?"  It sure doesn't look like it.  How can I know?  God answered the question, in effect saying, "It is as likely for me to cease existing as it is for me to lie to you about this covenant.  I can neither stop existing and nor can I lie, but I will most certainly fulfill everything that I have spoken to you."  And so, that is Genesis 15, an incredible mountain top experience.  But then we go into Genesis 16, and we see the relapse into unbelief of Abram, our father in faith.  

What a stunning contrast between Abram believed the Lord, and Abram listened to the voice of his wife, Sarai.  It's an incredible contrast, as he does something he should not have done, breaks God's pattern for marriage, all because of the expediency of the moment.  It's not working out the way he thought, and so he's going to take matters in his own hands, after Sarai's advice.  The Bible is consistently honest, isn't it, about the failings of its heroes?  We've talked about this before, but it's one of the great evidences of the truth of the Word of God is that it's very honest about sin, it's very honest about sinfulness.

For example, Noah, that great patriarch, he gets drunk and lies uncovered in his tent.  What a shameful picture.  David, to whom a great covenant had been made, and Jesus is called the son of David in some ways, in some places, he commits adultery with Bathsheba and conspires to kill Bathsheba's husband, Uriah.  And then there's Elijah, incredible man of courage and faith, takes on the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel.  And then after that, he has a run in with Jezebel and runs away, fleeing for his life and lies under the broom tree and says, "Take my life, I'm ready to die."  The weakness we see there in Elijah.  And then there's Hezekiah, able to stand and face a huge Assyrian army, undefeated army, and just take this letter and spread it out before God in prayer, and prevailing in God in prayer, he's able to stand firm and God sends out an angel, 185,000 Assyrian troops killed.  But in later years, Hezekiah grew prideful and arrogant and hard in his heart.

And then there is John the Baptist.  Jesus said, "No one born of women is greater than John the Baptist."  Greatest man that had ever lived.  And yet, he in Matthew 11, sends messengers to Jesus saying, "Are you the one who was to come or should we expect someone else?"  A moment of weakness for him.  And then there's Simon Peter, "You are the Christ, the Son of God," he confessed, revealed to him by Christ's Father in Heaven.  Yet, moments later, rebuking Jesus that he would never die and go to the cross, and Jesus has to say, "Get behind me Satan."

Again and again, we see the great men of the Bible and women of the Bible revealed to be sinners, because there is really only one true center, perfect center of Scripture, and that's God Almighty, the holy eternal God.  And we are all sinners saved by grace, even Abram.  The lesson is consistent and clear.  Jesus put it this way, “No one is good, but God alone.”  The apostle Paul put it this way, “There is no one righteous, not even one.”  And that includes Abram.  When all is said and done, everyone including our father in faith, Abram, Abraham, is saved by grace through faith alone, and no other way.  And so, we have this mountain top experience in Genesis 15, and then the trial of Genesis 16.  

Abram's faith is repeatedly tried, isn't it?  I mean, he gets the original call in Ur the Chaldeans, and he's got to have a wrestling of faith of whether he's really going to obey, and he does so it seems in stages.  He doesn't immediately obey, but it takes him a while as he kind of waits in Heron and finally separates from his father and moves on.  Then his faith is tested in the Promised Land.  When he gets there, a little while after that, there's a terrible famine and he and his entourage, his wife, have to go down to Egypt, so he thinks, in order to survive.  Down there they meet another trial of faith in which he is tempted and yields to the temptation to fear, and he has Sarai lie for him saying that “he is my brother.”  And so, that whole encounter.

Then, when they get back into the Promised Land and he's restored and he's back on track, then he's got the challenge with Lot and the herdsmen as they argue and bicker over grazing rights, it seems.  After that, he's got to go and gird on his sword and become powerful and strong and go rescue Lot when Kedorlaomer king of Elam, and his allies invade.  Right after that, there's another test in that the king of Sodom wants to give him some of the loot, the plunder from Sodom, and he doesn't want anything to do with it.  So, it's just one test after another, and here we have another test. 

What is this test?  The most severe test of all.  It is waiting on the Lord to fulfill His word.  Is that not the test of your life?  Waiting and waiting and waiting for something you don't have yet.  Waiting for heaven, waiting to see Christ face-to-face, waiting for freedom from sin forever, our full salvation.  We don't want just the down payment, the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance, we want the full inheritance.  And so, we're waiting and waiting.  It's amazing how much we need to be on our guard, because as these trials of faith come, they come at the worst moments sometimes, don't they?  A.W. Pink put it this way, "It is God's usual pattern to bless and then to test."  Let me say that again.  "It is God's usual pattern to bless and then to test.”  It is thus highly necessary for us to take the lesson to heart.  It is when we have received some special mark of the Lord's favor, or immediately after we have enjoyed some unusual season of communion with Him, that we most need to be on our guard."

And so, Abraham has to face, or Abram has to face his severe test.  Now, what is the nature of this test?  Well, here in this chapter, it is two things.  It's Sarai's barrenness and Sarai's bad advice.  

First the barrenness.  It says in Verse 1, "Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children."  In Verse 2, “so she said to Abram, ‘The Lord has kept me from having children.’"  Now, like Abram, she considers children to be a direct gift from God, and so they are.  Therefore, the absence of children, the inability to have children, barrenness, is a direct act of God.  Both Abram and Sarai see it that way, and so it is.  Now, in this way, we need to understand that God doesn't completely lavish us with blessings 100% with no trials, neither does He overwhelm us with curses or trials or challenges, but there is always a wise kind of mixture in our lives, isn't there?

There are blessings and there are challenges, and so it is.  Look at Sarai.  She's got incredible physical beauty, she's got a strong faith, she's submissive to her husband, and therefore a pattern of all godly women that follow after her.  She has a wonderful husband who loves the Lord and who is greatly blessed by God.  She has all of this, but she doesn't have a child, and so this is the trial, this is the burden for her.  And so, she says, "The Lord has kept me from having children."  And it is true.  We need to understand that it is the Lord that gives and it is the Lord that chooses not to give.  It is the Lord that gives, as Job said, and the Lord who chooses to take away.

Think of what God said to Moses in Exodus 4, Verse 11, “The Lord said to him, ‘Who gave man his mouth?  Who makes him deaf or mute?  Who gives him sight or makes him blind?  Is it not I, the Lord?’”  “I the Lord do all these things," he says, and says the same thing in Isaiah 45:7, "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things."  And so, she is right to bring this issue to God and say specifically “it is that God has kept me from having children.”

Now, why is this?  Why did he do it?  Well, that His glory and His power might be revealed in a far greater way.  He's waiting, you see, for Abram's body to be as good as dead, He's waiting for Sarai's womb to be proven to be totally dead and hopeless.  He's waiting so that there is no doubt about it whatsoever.  And why?  So that he can show us that He is the God that gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.  And why?  So that we who come later may trust in Jesus Christ to raise us from the dead.  That's right.  Amen.  We are all waiting for resurrection from the dead, and we are trusting in the same God who was able to give a child to this barren couple.

And so, in Romans 4:17, this is exactly what Paul says, "We're trusting on God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were."  And so, Sarai's barrenness is the first aspect of this trial, but then comes the bad advice, Sarai's bad advice.  Now, Sarai had a female servant named Hagar, who was an Egyptian.  Probably, she was among those servants that had been given to Abram and Sarai by Pharaoh in that earlier encounter in Genesis 12.  You remember I just alluded to it when Abram said to Sarai, "Lie for me so they don't kill me."  And Pharaoh is about to take Sarai into his harem, about to take her as a wife, and God judges Pharaoh and the household.  Abram has to pray for Pharaoh and Pharaoh gives them all of these possessions to get them out of there, among them were male and female servants, and I believe Hagar was one of those.

So, to some degree, Hagar is a little bit of a shameful reminder of a bad moment in Abram's life, and there she is, Hagar, the female servant from Egypt.  Sarai saw that she continued to be barren and she wanted to take matters in her own hands, she wanted to act.  Let's get this thing going.  If you have got all these great promises and if I'm not the one, then let's move on.  She is willing in a way to some degree to get out of the way.  But along with this is a common practice of the day, of the culture.  This idea would be strange to us, but back then not so strange.  The idea was that if a mistress had a servant girl, a servant woman, if that one bore to her master any children, they are really accounted or reckoned to be Sarai's in this case

Now, that is a strange thought to us, but it was common in the culture of the day.  You remember that later Jacob had two wives, Rachel and Leah, and each one of them had a maid servant, and so in effect he had four wives and each one bore eventually the 12 patriarchs of Israel.  So, this was a common thing back in the day, but just because it is common doesn't mean it is godly.  Just because it was the common practice of the culture of the day, doesn't mean it was what God intended.  There are many examples of polygamy in Scripture, and none of them ever turn out well.  Ever.  God's pattern for marriage is established in Genesis Chapter 2, Verse 24.  "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh."  It was the evil man Lamech who first took another wife to himself and was a polygamist.  Watch out for this one, folks, it's coming soon to a country very near you.

If they are going to redefine marriage, soon polygamy will come.  I'm not speaking just theoretically, I'm saying it's coming if we don't define marriage by Genesis 2:24.  One man, one woman, one flesh union for life.  And so it was, that was God's pattern.  And so, we have this bad advice from Sarai, it was not from the Lord.  Now, it's bad enough to get bad advice, but it's especially tough to get it from your wife.  I'm not meaning in any way to be insulting to you ladies or to my own wife who I love very dearly, I'm just executing the text.  I'm just saying it's just not good to get bad advice from your wife, because it goes right to the heart.  A godly wife is among God's greatest earthly gifts to a man.  It's an incredible gift to get a wife who loves the Lord, who fears the Lord.  “Her worth is far greater than rubies,” it says in Proverbs 31.  The heart of her husband, it says, trusts in her.  He can rely on her to give him good advice.

She's a fountain of blessing to him in every way.  She meets his physical needs, she meets his relational needs, she cares for him, she's involved in every aspect of his life and ministry.  An incredible gift, a fountain of blessing.  And one of the greatest gifts that she can give to her husband is godly, sound advice.  Pointing to the Lord, saying, "What does the Lord want us to do?"  

But here, you can see the danger of bad advice from a wife.  Matthew Henry said it this way, "It is the policy of Satan to tempt us by our nearest and dearest relations, for those friends that we have an opinion of and an affection for, the temptation is most dangerous when it is sent by a hand that is least suspected.  It is our wisdom therefore to consider not so much who speaks, but what is spoken."  You have to take each one to the Lord and to His revealed word.  And so, we have barrenness and bad advice.  This is the test of faith, and Abram caves in.  We see his failure of faith in Verses 3 and 4, specifically in that Abram acts without prayer. 

Abram's failure of faith is that he listened to Sarai and not to God.  God clearly defined marriage, He had clearly established the pattern.  Furthermore, He had made His promise clear, and so from the Genesis 2:24 standard, coupled with the fact that through his own body there would be an offspring, to me, it is clear that he needed to wait on the Lord and not go for this expedient, this culturally acceptable expedient.  Sarai's barrenness should have been a cause for greater faith and more prayer, not for giving up and giving in and going some different way.  In effect, he should have said, "The God who made the stars, and I'm going to have descendants as numerous as the stars, is able to make my wife fruitful.  He's able to give me a son by my wife."

Now, we have some hints at the problem in the text.  It says, "After Abram had been living in Canaan 10 years. . ."  Why does it say that?  Well, I think there's a sense of a chronology here and that's fine.  But also, could it be the ideas of the Canaanites were getting in his mind?  It's so easy for us to be influenced by a surrounding culture, to just take in as acceptable what our neighbors are doing because everybody is doing it.  Note that God in the text kind of establishes the way it really should have been.  Look at Verse 3, "So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife," note that, "took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar" that's who she is, "and gave her to her husband to be his wife."  Do you see how this whole thing is confused and how God establishes Abram, Sarai, husband, wife, Hagar, servant in the household.  That's the way it should have stayed, but instead they went across, they transgressed the boundaries that God had established.

Now, what was Abram thinking?  Do you ever wonder that?  You think to yourself, "What was I thinking?  How could I have done it?"  Well, this I think is probably his train of thought.  It seems to me that God has promised an heir, I'm going to have an heir, and it's not going to be Eleazar of Damascus, learned that last chapter.  They didn't have chapters back then, but anyway, we learned that.  It's going to be a son from my own body.  So, there's an unfolding here.  Sarai's barren, so culturally it's acceptable for me to be with Hagar.  And the clincher is that Sarai's even suggesting it, and so, therefore, I'll do it.  And that's kind of how it worked.  It went right to his heart and he acted.

Now, I think his son, eventual son, Isaac, gives a superior example.  In Genesis 25, Isaac had the same problem as Abraham.  He had a wife, Rebecca, who was barren.  But you know the interesting thing about Isaac, he doesn't get a lot of play in Scripture.  We don't learn a lot about him, but one thing about him is he was a one-woman man, he never went in for polygamy unlike his son, Jacob, or his father, Abraham.  He just had Rebecca.  Furthermore, Rebecca was barren, as happened so frequently.  And what did Isaac do?  He prayed to the Lord and asked that God would open her womb.  This is in Genesis 25:21, “Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren.  The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebecca became pregnant.”

Now, that's what he should have done.  Abram instead had a failure of faith, and look at all the problems that come as a result, the fruit of faithlessness in Verses 4-6, and it really is, more than anything, broken relationships, that's what always comes from a failure in the area of marriage and sex and it always comes with broken households, broken relationships.  That's where the price gets paid.  

Initially, you could say there's good fruit, Hagar is pregnant, and so she's expecting a child, but trouble comes soon after that, the first broken relationship is between Hagar and Sarai.  Look at Verse 4, it says that “He, Abram, slept with Hagar and she conceived.  When she, Hagar, knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.”

Now, probably Hagar thought that her position in the household had now changed, now that she was expecting the heir that everyone was waiting for, it could be that she saw herself now as Sarai's equal, perhaps even as her superior.  Perhaps she is going to take Sarai's place.  Now, how did it manifest itself?  Well, the Hebrew says that she despised, she disdained or made light of her mistress, maybe she was a little sluggish to obey at one point, maybe she sighed or rolled her eyes or made a comment under her breath.  Maybe she was overheard in a tent saying something disparaging or maybe even mocking Sarai for her barrenness.  I don't know, but we do know that she despised her mistress.

It says in Proverbs 30:21-23, "Under three things, the earth trembles, under four it cannot bear up; a servant who becomes a king, a fool who is full of food"−watch that one−"an unloved woman who is married, and a maid servant who displaces her mistress" and, that's what I think is going on here.  Hagar has ambitions to displace Sarai in the household, broken relationship number one.  Broken relationship number two is Abraham or Abram and Sarai.  Look at Verse 5.  “Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering.’”  It's your fault.

Now, how did she figure that?  But we'll get to that in a minute.  At any rate, it is Abram's fault.  I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me.  May the Lord judge between you and me.  Well, obviously, this is what is known as a marital discussion.  Now, maybe you have had marital discussions and maybe you haven't, but here is a marital discussion, and the two of them kind of have to work this thing out.  To some degree, it may be that Abram is playing what is known as the passive male syndrome role, you're kicking back, laying back, just kind of letting it happen in the household.  He's not taking the lead, he should have stepped in when he heard Hagar disrespect her mistress and done something about it, instead he's passive.  He's just kind of watching the two ladies.  I don't know if they are having a cat fight or what's going on, but he's just letting it go, he's just passive in this situation.

Now, I think Sarai is unfair.  She unfairly blames Abram for the conflict she is having.  It's not Abram’s fault directly.  You could ask Sarai, "Can I ask a question?  What did you think was going to happen?  This is exactly what you wanted to happen.  Now it has happened.  Now you don't want it?”  So, I think it's very clear that Sarai didn't think through what she was doing, she wasn't ready for it.  But there is nothing but trouble here, broken relationship number two.  Broken relationship number three is Abram and his household as a whole.  Look what he says in Verse 6, "Your servant is in your hands."  Abram said, "Do with her whatever you think best."  Now, there are different ways to read this, okay?  But I read this as more passive male syndrome stuff.  Basically, "Hey, look, don't involve me, it's between you two ladies.  Work it out, everything is fine."  What he should have done is step to the fore and resolve this issue and said, "You are Sarai's servant and so you will remain."  But you see that he is on uncertain ground because he is already stepped outside of what God has ordained, and so he is losing his authority.

Whenever you turn away from God and his commands as a leader in your home, a husband, a father, you lose your moral authority, it becomes very difficult to lead your home.  And so, we see a broken home here, and then Sarai, it says, mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her.  It's interesting this word “mistreated” in Verse 6 is the exact same word that is used concerning what the Egyptians will later do to the Israelites when they are in bondage.  Isn't it ironic?  Before the Israelites were harshly treated in bondage to the Egyptians, the thing was reversed, and an Egyptian was harshly treated by an Israelite in bondage.  And so, we have it, and finally the ultimate and the most significant broken relationship is Abram, Sarai, Hagar and God Himself.

He is a holy God, and there is a real problem in their relationship with Him at this point.  Well, God moves and acts to restore and to redeem.  Praise God, He doesn't let this decay go on.  Our God is a God of restoration, He is a God of forgiveness, a God of grace and mercy, a God who can pick up the broken pieces in your life and put them back together.  And that's exactly what goes on in Verses 7-14.  

In Verses 7 and 8, we see the angel of the Lord and it says, "The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.  And he said, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?"  She answered, "I'm running away from my mistress, Sarai."  Now, here we meet the angel of the Lord.

Now, this angel of the Lord is an amazing person in the Book of Genesis and also in Exodus.  It is my belief that the angel of the Lord here is none other than the second person of the trinity, Jesus Christ himself.  Well, why do I say that?  Well, look what it says here in Verse 10, or Verses 9 and 10.  It says, "Then the angel of the Lord told her, 'Go back to your mistress and submit to her.'"  Well, that is fine, angels can give commands, but Verse 10 is a little unusual for an angel.  The angel added, "I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count."  Now, can I submit to you, this is not something an angel usually does?  This is something God does.  God is speaking to Hagar through the angel of the Lord.  The angel of the Lord, I believe is the second person of the trinity, Jesus Christ himself.  

And so, the angel of the Lord appears to Hagar out in the desert.  Now, she is fleeing in the desert, it says, in the desert, that she's meeting with him and she comes to an oasis, a spring.  Water is life, especially out in the desert, and there Jesus meets her.  

You know it reminds me of another woman in sin that Jesus met so much later, the Samaritan woman at the well.  Do you remember what Jesus said in John Chapter 4, Verse 10, to the woman at the well there?  Jesus said, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.  ‘Sir’, the woman said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.  Where can you get this living water?  Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?’ Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’"  This is Jesus meeting the woman in the desert, this is Jesus meeting Hagar and pointing ultimately to himself, this is the grace of restoration.  It's an incredible thing that God does for us, isn't it?  When we are venturing out on a sinful path, a sinful course, the worst thing that God can do in this world is to give us over to that sinful course and let us go.

That's the worst thing.  And that's exactly what he does to some unbelievers.  He gives them over to their sin and to the hardness of their heart to continue doing that very sin.  In fact, He confirms them in that wickedness and that sin, but for us, He interferes, He gets involved, He says, "No more, you've gone far enough down this road.  Turn back and go where you need to be."  This is the grace of restoration.  Aren't you glad for it?  Aren't you glad that God won't let you go in a free fall to just keep on sinning and sinning, but instead he meets you and says, "Stop, this is far enough.”  And so, He comes and restores her.  And how does He do it?

Well, the first thing He does is He humbles her.  Look at Verse 8, He said, "Hagar."  Does he say, "Wife of Abram?  The one carrying the promised child," does he say that?  No, He says, "Hagar, servant of Sarai,” stop there.  You know, before He restores you, He humbles you.  He makes you see your sin; He makes you see what you really are.  And so, it says in James Chapter 4, Verse 6, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."  The second thing He does is He asks her two probing questions, "Where have you come from and where are you going?"  Now, can I submit to you that when the devil wants you to go ever increasingly faster and faster down a road to sin, these are two questions he never wants you to ask or face?  He wants you to live in the moment.  Live for right now because he knows if you take a step back and look, what was it like before with the Lord?  How was it then when you were obeying?  What was it like in your walk with Him?  And the course you're on now, where is it going to end up?  Do you really want to go where you're ending up?  Let's look at Hagar.  Alright, Hagar, where are you going to go?  You're going back to Egypt?  You're going back to the gods of the Egyptians, back to Anubis, the jackal-headed god?  Where are you going to go?  And how are you even going to get there?  You're going to go across the burning sand pregnant as you are?  This is the last water stop for a long, long time.  Where are you going?  And where have you come from?  How has it been?  Don't you know that God's hand is on Abram, your master?  Why are you running away?  Where have you come from?  And where are you going?"  And thirdly, He commands her to repent.

Look in Verse 9, the angel of the Lord told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her.”  “Oh no, no.  That's one thing I won't do.  Alright, we've had it, we've said some things to each other and I'm moving on."  "No, you're not.  No, you're not.  You go back and you make it right.  You make it work the way I originally established.  You submit yourself to her."  And so, she did for 13 years, she went back and she obeyed and she submitted, she was commanded here to repent.  And fourth, the angel of the Lord encouraged her with astonishing promises about the future.  And so, he humbles her, he asks her probing questions, "Where have you come from and where are you going?"  He commands her to repent, and then he makes some promises to her.

Look what he says in Verses 10-12, “The angel added, ‘I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.’"  The angel of the Lord also said to her, "You are now with child and you will have a son.  You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery.  He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers."  So, he promises, the angel of the Lord promises numerous descendants.  It turns out in Genesis 25 that Ishmael would give birth to 12 tribal chieftains, 12.  The angel of the Lord promises therefore a son and gives him a marvelous name, Ishmael means “God hears.”  God hears.  And then the promise of God's ongoing concern; the Lord has heard of your misery and the Lord will continue to hear him and continue to see him, and so he gives promises.

Now, let’s take a moment just on the side and try to ask who are these Ishmaelites?  Verse 12 describes them, "Ishmael will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers."  Amazing statement, a wild donkey of a man.  Now, what does that mean?  Well, Job 39:5-8 describes the wild donkey.  "Who let the wild donkey go free?" says the Lord.  "Who untied his ropes?  I gave him the wasteland as his home, the salt flats as his habitat.  He laughs at the commotion in the town; he does not hear a driver's shout.  He ranges the hills for his pasture and searches for any green thing."  So, this is a man who can live where the wild donkey lives out in the desert in the salt flats.  And he is a free man, his ropes are untied, he can go wherever he wants, he can do whatever he wants.

Hagar is chafing under the yoke of servanthood, Ishmael will not, he will be a free man.  He will live in the desert, free from all human relationships, he will make his living in the desert.  And so, we see two things about the Ishmaelites, we see striving and surviving.  Those two things go on with them.  First of all, their hand or his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers, striving.  We also see surviving.  He will live.  He's going to survive.  Now, ultimately, these folks settled in what we call Arabia.  The question then is, were the Ishmaelites the fathers of the Arabs?  Are they the Arabians?  Listen to what it says.  In Genesis 25:13-15 Ishmael's included, “Nebaioth, the firstborn of Ishmael, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah.”

Now, again, and again, when some of the names in this genealogy are listed, they are linked with Arabia.  For example, caravans of Tema look for water in Job 6:19.  Isaiah 21:13 and 14 says this, "An oracle concerning Arabia:  You caravans of Dedanites," that's one of the descendants of Ishmael, "who camp in the thickets of Arabia, bring water for the thirsty; you who live in Tema, bring food for the fugitives."  Ezekiel 27:21 says, "Arabia and all the princes of Kedar" that's one of the descendants of Ishmael, "were your customers; they did business with you in lambs, rams and goats."  Joseph, as you remember, was sold into bondage at the hands of the Ishmaelites.  There was a caravan of them when they were going down to Egypt to trade.  They roamed freely in the desert, they lived in Arabia, and they traded with people in the surrounding areas.  Almost every time in the Old Testament that Arab or Arabia is mentioned, it is tied to one of the descendants of Ishmael.

A modern note is that the first Muslims were Arabians who lived in that exact same area, and so there is a connection here between the descendants of Ishmael and the eventual Muslims.  Verse 12, "He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers."  

Well, Hagar has an awestruck response to what the angel of the Lord has told her.  First of all, she names God.  She says, "You are the God who sees me."  Isn't that remarkable?  You are the God who sees me, you see my past history, you see my sin, you see my present desperate circumstances, you see my responsibilities, you see what I'm going to go back to, and you see into my distant future.  You are the God who sees me.  Reminds me so beautifully of Psalm 139, Verses 1-10, "O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.  You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar; you discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.  Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.  You hem me in−behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.  Where can I go from your spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?  If I go up to the heavens, you are there.  If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.  If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast."  This is exactly the God who confronted Hagar, the God who sees me, the God who sees every one of us.  

Now, what is the ultimate lesson of faith here in Verses 15 and 16?  Well, the name Ishmael ends up being a rebuke to Abram.  What's his name going to be?  Ishmael.   He's the God who hears, He hears prayer.  Maybe next time, before you do something really, really important, you should ask God about it.

George Muller, who looked after thousands of orphans in the mith century, cared for 2,000 orphans all by faith in God and by prayer.  He laid out some patterns for knowing the will of God, and steps 5-8, I think are pertinent here.  He was asked how he determined the will of God on any matter.  Muller listed the 10 steps.  Number five, he said, "I ask God in prayer to reveal his will to me."  Number six, "I make sure I have a clear conscience before God and man."  Listen to number seven, "Every time I listened to man instead of God, I made serious mistakes."  Have you ever made an important decision?  Leaving a job, taking a job, getting married, buying a home, any major purchase without bathing the thing in prayer?  Perhaps you can testify with George Muller, "Any time I listened to man instead of God, I made serious mistakes," and I think that is what happened to Abram in this chapter.

And number eight, "I act only when I am at peace after much prayer, waiting on God with faith."  And you know, the name Ishmael is not only a rebuke, it's also an encouragement.  This is the way God deals with us from here back, as we look back, we get rebuked for our sin and we have to learn from it, but from here forward, we get encouraged to do the right thing.  God's mercies are new every morning.  And so, the God who you should have spoken to yesterday is the God who will hear you now, and so He is the God who hears.  And so, therefore, pray and ask for wisdom.  God hears prayer.  

Now, what application can we take from this?  First and foremost, the angel of the Lord, the second person of the trinity, Jesus Christ, He is the savior of the world.  And He, to some degree, may be confronting you right now as you are running away from God.  It's not really that you are running away from some earthly situation, some job you don't like, or some other thing, you are really running from God, and it could be that today, just like Hagar in the desert, the Lord is meeting you and saying, "Trust in me."  The Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of your soul, trust in Him, because if you do, He will become for you a spring of water welling up to eternal life inside you.  But you know the principles are the same even if you are a Christian, first and foremost, He is the God who hears.  Therefore, don't make any important decision or even any unimportant decision without asking Him for wisdom in prayer.  Learn to wait on God and not to take matters in your own hands.

Secondly, learn that the end, does not justify the means.  Just because Abram was trying to achieve God's plan, God didn't give him permission to do it any way he chose.  The end doesn’t justify the means.  Do it God's way.  Thirdly, test cultural norms by the Word of God.  Do you sense any pressure in our society to redefine marriage, any pressure in the exact same area that we are facing here in Genesis 16?  We've got to test what our neighbors are saying on talk radio shows, and our co-workers are saying around the water cooler and around the coffee pot about what marriage is, we need to test it and say, "No, God has already told us what it is."  In Genesis 2:24, "One man, one woman, one flesh for life," that's what marriage is.  And when we digress, we have problems.

Fourth, test all advice you get on a key issue against the word of God, even if it comes from a wife or a husband.  Test all things by the word of God.  And fifth, God is a God who sees, He is searching your heart now, He sees you; nothing is hidden from Him, everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom you must give an account.  And God hears, so speak to Him, tell him what is going on in your life.  We don't use prayer enough.  And finally, be in awe of God's specific prophecies about Ishmael.  The scripture says some more things about the Ishmaelites.

In Isaiah 60:7, it says that “. . .the rams of Nebaioth,” one of the descendants of Ishmael, “will serve you; they will be accepted as offerings on my altar, and I will adorn my glorious temple.”  They will be offered up in the eternal temple of God, the Holy City.  What does that mean?  It means that there are going to be Ishmaelites who will trust in Jesus Christ for the salvation of their souls.  They will repent, they will believe, and they will be there on judgment day, praising Jesus Christ, the Savior of their souls.

This is Genesis 15 and our second week in studying this incredible Chapter.  When our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross and his blood was shed, He was fulfilling a covenant promise made thousands of years before to our father in faith, Abraham.  He came and took on a body in fulfillment of the covenant promise that God made to Abraham.  In Acts Chapter 3, when Peter was preaching to the Jews, he said, "You are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with Abraham.  We, who are gentiles and not naturally Jews by birth,” −"we," it says in Romans 11−"have been grafted in us though we were wild olive shoots grafted into a tree, a Jewish tree, and Abraham is our father in faith.”

Our God is a covenant-making and covenant-keeping God, and when in the end, you stand before him blameless, free of all of your sin, holy and righteous, you will do so on the basis of a covenant promise that God made and that He fulfilled through his son, Jesus Christ, and that is what is in front of us today.  And if I were to have 30 hours, I wouldn't have enough time to plunge the depths of Genesis 15.  For two months, I've been excited to preach this sermon, and now at last it's come.  Now last week, we looked at the first six verses of Genesis 15, and they were deep and rich enough.   

We saw God's promise of present protection for Abram, which he needed because he had probably made some very stern and serious enemies by defeating Kedorlaomer and his coalition of kings.  

And so, God spoke to Abram and said, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield.  I'll stand between you and anything that would come to harm you, I will protect you.  I'll take upon myself the burden of keeping you safe and you will be protected."

Secondly, He said, "I am also your very great reward."  Oh, is there a richness in meditating on that?  He is what we get at the end of a life of faith in Christ, nothing less and there can be nothing more.  We get God, He's our reward, our eternal portion, and He was also for Abram.  And then Abram bringing his complaint to God, you remember, he said, "What can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?”  And He said, "This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir."   

And then He said, "Come on outside, I want to show you something."  Well, I don't know if He said that, but something like that.  He took Abram outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars−if indeed you can count them.”  “. . .So shall your offspring be."  The word of promise.  The key to it all, the key to your soul is that God speaks promises, and if you believe them, He will justify you, He will declare you not guilty of all of your wickedness and sin, and if you don't believe them, then you will stand accountable for all of your wickedness and sin.  It's just that simple.

Everyone who gets saved, gets saved the same way, by hearing the promise and believing it.  And so, also Abraham was our father in faith.  He heard the promise and he believed it.  Abraham believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was justified by faith alone.  Okay, that was last week's sermon, I really would enjoy preaching it again, but I want to go on now into the rest of Genesis 15.  In this He makes a magnificent covenant.  

We've already seen His promise in the stars, “so shall your offspring be,” you will have numerous and glorious offspring.  Your descendants will be numerous and they will be glorious.  By the way, I always find it interesting that Abraham's descendants were likened to two different things, the dust of the Earth and the stars of the sky.  And I really think that is speaking of two different categories, those that are earthy and dusty, the physical descendants of Abraham, and those that are of the heavens, the spiritual descendants, both Jew and Gentile, but that's a whole other message for a whole other day. 

I told you, if I had 30 hours, we couldn't go into all the depths here.  But He said, "There's the promise up in the stars, but now I have another promise for you."  God made two basic promises to Abram, a multiple of descendants or offspring, multiplicity of offspring, so shall your offspring be, you'll have many a numerous offspring, and you will inherit the land.  These are the two basic promises, and he makes them again and again and again.  And here He is going to make the promise again, Verse 7.  He also said to him, "I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it."  Now, we know from archaeology and from study that frequently treaties and covenants were made in the ancient world and they would always begin the same way, I am the Lord who did such and such for you, or I am the Mighty King who did this and who did that.  There's a historical prologue, so that we know who we're dealing with.  And here He says, "I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans. . ."

Now, later on in redemptive history, there's going to be more.  For example, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of your fathers.”  Or, “I am the God who brought you out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”  Or, “I am the God who spoke to you at Mount Sinai saying. . .” etcetera.  But none of those things have happened yet.  So far, all that's happened with Abram is, I am the Lord, who led you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, but that's who I am.  And then He says, "I am going to give you this land to take possession of it."  Now, this is not the first time He's made this promise.  We see the same promise in Genesis 12:7, where it says "The Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’"  And so, at that time, Abram built an altar there to the Lord.  And so, this is what the Lord does, He makes a promise for the future, but He links it to his past, He links it to past history. 

And I'm telling you today, this is why Genesis 15 is relevant for you today.  You who sit in the pews and listen to me, why does it matter to me what God did with some Bedouin 2,000 years before Christ?  Well, the reason is, the reason it's relevant is that God has kept all of his promises to Abraham, and so He is going to keep all of his promises to you.  That is why it is relevant for you today.  I am all about one thing today, actually two things.  If you are a believer in Christ, I want to encourage you in your faith, that is my goal today.  I want you to be greatly encouraged, if you are not a believer, I want you to become a believer, so that you can become greatly encouraged.  I want you to trust in Christ, that is my goal today.  And so, that's why it's relevant, God is a covenant-making and a covenant-keeping God, He keeps his promises.  And so, He comes and says, "Now I am the historical God, I'm the one who has led you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, the things that happened in the past are important.  I'm the same God today, I'm the one, and I'm telling you, I'm going to give you this land to take possession of it. 

Now comes the key question for the whole rest of the chapter.  If you understand this question, you'll understand everything that's going to come after this.  Look at the question in Verse 8, “But Abram said, ‘O Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?’"  This is a matter of assurance, it's a matter of certainty, it's a matter of knowing something that hasn't come to you yet, right?  How can we know?  Is that important to you?  Do you ask questions like that?  How can I know that I'll go to heaven when I die?  How can I know on that great judgment day, when you whose eyes are too pure and holy to even look on evil and I feel foul and full of sin now, how can I know that you will accept me on that day?  How can I know that I'll have a resurrection body?  How can I know that I'll gain possession of these promises?  How can I know?  It's a question of assurance and certainty, isn't it?

Now, I don't think this is a faithless question on Abram’s part.  I think it's more like, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.  Can you give me some help here?  Yes, I will give you all the help you need.  I'll give you everything you need so that you will know that I am a faithful covenant-keeping God.  So, he's not rebuked.  God doesn't rebuke him for his question.  Not at all, actually, He lavishly blesses him.  I think you will not understand the somber covenant ceremony that's going to follow if you forget Abram's question, “How can I know?”  He's answering the question, keep that in mind.  The animals, when they are laid apart in the path and the torch, and that whole thing is the answer to Abram's question, this is how you can know.  He is answering the question, okay?  

Now, as we come to this, we come to the issue of why God makes covenants at all?  What is the Biblical significance of covenants?  First of all, what is a covenant?  A covenant is a binding agreement between two or more parties.

The most common form of covenant today is marriage, where two individuals, a man and a woman stand before God and before witnesses, make promises to another that they will be one flesh, and that they will be husband and wife to each other, that is a binding covenant.  Now, in ancient times, ancient Near East, the kings would use covenants to bind themselves to their people.  An invading powerful king who would conquer the land would say, I am king so and so, Amel-Marduk or whoever, and I took over your land, and if you give me 100 cores of wheat and a bunch of wine and all that, if you do that, I won't invade you again.  And more than that, I will protect you from your enemies.  These were covenants that they would make one with another.  God also uses covenants again and again at key moments in Biblical history to communicate His purpose and his plans to people.  For example, God made a covenant with Noah to protect him and all that were with him on the ark.  He made a promise, a covenant, I'll keep you safe.

After the flood, God made a covenant with all living creatures that He would never again destroy the world with a flood, and He put the rainbow in the sky as a sign of that covenant, which God has kept faithfully to this day.  In Verse 18, He calls what He's doing here a covenant, look at it.  And it says "On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said. . .”  So, there's a covenant, He is making a covenant.  In Genesis 17, He is going to give the sign of circumcision, a seal of the covenant, and that is what it is going to be, a constant reminder in the flesh of the covenant that God made with Abram.  At Mount Sinai, He will make a covenant of a different sort, with Israel concerning the promised land, the Mosaic covenant we call it where the Ten Commandments and other commandments were given.  Later on in redemptive history, He would make a covenant with David saying, “One of your descendants, I will see on your throne forever and ever.”  The son of David is the son of God, it's Jesus Christ.  These are all covenants.

And the night before Jesus died, He took bread in his hand and broke it and said, "This is my body," and He took a cup in his hand and said, "This cup is the blood of the New Covenant.  In my blood, which is poured out for many for their forgiveness of sins."  There Jesus spoke of a new covenant, and on the basis of that New Covenant, we who have trusted in him stand holy and blameless before God, that is our only hope.  That is our salvation.  And so, our God is a covenant-making God.  Now, there are two different kinds of covenants, there are conditional covenants, and there are unconditional covenants.  A conditional covenant runs like this, “Son, I'm going to give you the car tonight, but if you get back at 11:01 or later, and if the car isn't filled with gas, or if there are any dings or scratches or crashes, whatever, you will never drive the car again for at least a year anyway.  Okay?”

That's a conditional promise, I'm giving you the car, and if you meet these criteria, then these blessings will come, and if you do not, then these curses will come, you'll not get to use my car, conditional covenant.  An example, probably the best example of a conditional covenant in the Bible is the covenant with Moses made at Sinai.  I'm giving you the promised land, and if you fully obey all of the stipulations and the statutes of the covenant, then you will live long in the land I'm giving you, but if you do not obey me, I will evict you from the land and you will lose the promised land.  That is a conditional covenant.  A great example of an unconditional covenant is the one made with Noah after the flood in which He said, "I make this covenant with all living creatures.  I will never again bring a flood on the Earth, as I have done to destroy every living thing."

There are no conditions, there's nothing that has to be met, there's no obeying needed, it's just something God is doing, and so is that covenant here.  There are no commands given to Abram, there's nothing he needs to do.  Later on, he's going to need to circumcise his children and himself, but here there's nothing for him to obey.  This is a unidirectional covenant, a covenant that God made with Abram.   

Now, what are the mechanics of this covenant?  Well, first there is the sacrifice.  Look at Verses 9-11, remember the question, how can I know?  How can I know I'll get the land?  What does God say?  Bring me a bunch of animals.  That's an interesting answer, isn't it?  How can I know, well, go get me a heifer, a goat, and a ram, each three years old along with a dove and a young pigeon.  That's an interesting thing, isn't it?  Go get some animals and bring them.  The covenant that He would make with Abram would be made at a price, it would be expensive, and the price would be blood, it would cost blood to make this covenant promise.

Let me tell you something, God does nothing with sinful people, apart from a blood sacrifice.  He is not going to deal with you, and why?  Because your sins have estranged you from a holy God.  And if you hope to get back in good favor with God, you only do it by blood, because apart from the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness for sins.  However, the book of Hebrews which told us that, also tells us that the blood of bulls and goats can in no way take away sin, it's just a symbol, it's a picture of a sacrifice that one day would come.  And so, this sacrifice, this animal sacrifice, as all animal sacrifices ordained by God did in the Old Testament, point ahead to Jesus Christ.  He is the Lamb of God whose blood takes away the sin of the world.  He died on the cross.  Jesus paid the price for this covenant.  God's going to make some lavish promises to Abram, Jesus paid for them, He paid in his blood.  And so right away, God wants Abram to know this covenant that He is making would be expensive.  It would cost blood.

Well, what else does he do?  Well, he cuts them in half, probably right down the middle, and he separates the pieces apart.  He makes, as it were, kind of a pathway between the pieces of the covenant, although the birds, he does not cut.  Now, this is a very interesting thing and we will talk more about it in a moment.  Then in Verse 11, it says, "Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away."  More about them later.  And so, he waited.  Abram waited on the Lord.  And then in Verse 12 comes the awesome moment, the terrifying moment really.  The incredible moment.  Verse 12, it says, "As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him."  God is coming near.  The awesome and eternal God, the one whose eyes are too pure to look on evil.  The eternal God, the Ancient of Days, the one who spoke and universes came to pass.  This God is meeting with Abram, and the first thing that this God does is He makes Abram terrified.  Horror comes on his soul.  And so, it is always when a sinner comes in the presence of God.

There's not a single man or a woman who would not have felt terror at that moment, the terror of being a finite sinful person.  Like Isaiah said, "Woe is me, I'm ruined," and Daniel on the ground trembling can barely stand up, and Ezekiel the same way.  It's always the same.  Terror, horror came over Abram.  Now, I find this interesting, you know?  Because the scripture says that Abram was God's friend.  He was his friend.  Is this how God treats his friends, by making them terrified?  Well, if his friends are sinners, yes.  And Jesus says, "You are my friends."  So, we are his friends and yet, yes, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  The first thing God does to save you and to work in you is to make you afraid, fearful of the eternal God, fearful of what it will be like to stand before him on judgment day.  Horror came over him and darkness.  When God descended on Mount Sinai, it says in Exodus 20:18-20, "When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear.  They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, 'Speak to us yourself, and we will listen.  But do not have God speak to us or we will die.'  Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid.  God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.’"  And so, God was blessing Abram that day when he caused a horror to come over his soul, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  And the fear of the Lord comes and keeps us safe from our real enemy.  The real enemy is sin.  And after the terror of God's presence came over him, the fear of the Lord, then He makes a series of covenant promises, remarkable, astonishing predictions one after the other.  Look at it in Verses 13-16, "Then the Lord said to him, ‘Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years.  But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.  You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age.  In the fourth generation, your descendants will come back here. . .’"

This is astonishing.  I mean, notice the details, the specificity, even the time frame given.  It is so clear and so detailed that the liberals tell us it must have been written after the Exodus.  There's no way we could be this specific about something that far in the future.  Oh, yes, there is.  Our God knows the future.  Amen?  And, He can tell you what's going to happen tomorrow and 2,000 years from now.  That's how well he knows the future.  And so, He gives specific predictions, specific prophecies.  Look at them, seven and all.  First, your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own.  This is fulfilled by their time in Egypt.  They were strangers in Egypt.

Secondly, they would be enslaved and mistreated.  This is very specific.  They wouldn't just be strangers, but they would be enslaved and mistreated.  Thirdly, the enslavement and the mistreatment would last for 400 years.  Also, He says, four generations.  For He says, "In the fourth generation, your descendants will come back here” and take possession of this land.  By the way, that was literally fulfilled if you look at Moses's genealogy.  Remember that it was Jacob who brought his family in.  Jacob's son was Levi, Levi’s son was Kohath, Kohath's son was Amram, Amram's son was Moses, that's four generations.  The specificity is incredible.  Now you think 400 years, four generations?  But they live longer back then.

And that's exactly what it was.  Specificity, fourth.  “I will punish the nation they serve as slaves.”  This is literally fulfilled in the 10 plagues.  Fifth, afterward, they will come out.  So, they are going to come out of that land, that is the amazing prediction of the Exodus, the great events of the Exodus.  Six, with great possessions, they will plunder the Egyptians.  And so, this happened in Exodus 11.  The Lord made the Jews favorably disposed, or the Israelites or the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the Jews and gave them many possessions, gold and silver, and all kinds of valuable things.  This is highly unusual.  You would think there would be great animosity, but there wasn't.  There was the lavish generosity, and I think a small payment for all those years of service.  And then seventh, you, Abram will go to your fathers in peace and you'll be buried at a good old age.

So now these details are given for a specific reason.  This is what I'm saying, Jesus, the night before He was killed, He had an intimate time with his disciples.  And in John 16, He says, "There will come a time when they will persecute you, put you out of the synagogues and even put you to death, and they will think that they are serving God by doing that.  I have told you now before it happens, so that when it happens, you will believe that I am He.”  Okay, why did God tell Abram beforehand?  Very simple.  Because halfway through, it's not looking very good for the promises, is it?  We're going to talk more about that in a minute.

This is the specific reason He gives the detailed specificity of the promise.  Now, why the delay?  Why 400 years?  Why not now?  Abram's like, "I'm ready. I'm ready to go.  I'm ready to take possession of the land.  Can we do it now?"  No.  Why?  Because “the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”  Oh, is there depth here.  The sin of the Amorites isn't finished yet.  This is incredible.  In effect, God has a measure, like a measuring cup, of sin for the Amorites.  And when it's full, when it's full, according to God's measure, judgment is coming.  The judgment will come by the sword of Joshua and the Israelites.  When God has had enough of their child sacrifice, the stench of the sacrifice burning in His nostrils, when He is borne it long enough, enough is enough.  And when He sees all of the wickedness of their immorality and their idolatrous wicked religious systems, He will bring judgment.  But it will come when He says.

And note the incredible patience of God and realize the patience of God means salvation for people, that's why God waits.  That's why you all aren't in heaven yet, because there's still some unsaved people that have to be saved.  And God is waiting and working so that they will be saved.  And meanwhile, He is willing to put his people through misery, 400 years of slavery in Egypt, until the sin of the Amorites can reach its full measure.  That is our God.

And I can tell you one Amorite, Rahab, the harlot, who's glad that God waited.  Right?  Because she got converted.  She was saved, and her household.  Right?  And so, God waits for the sin of the Amorites to reach its full measure.  This is a dreadful thing.  I want to talk more about it in a moment.  But, do you realize that God has a measure of sin He will put up with in the life of a wicked unbeliever and He doesn't tell you how big the measure is?  He doesn't owe a wicked person another day on this earth, not one.  But yet, He is patient.  He waited 400 years for the Amorites.  He is a patient God but He doesn't owe you another day.  If you're sitting here today and you have never trusted in Christ, don't presume that you will have an average lifespan.  Only God knows the measure of sin that He will put up with.

It says in Romans Chapter 2, Verses 4-5, "Do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?  But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when His righteous judgment will be revealed."  That's the measure that's going up, and at some point, the wrath gets poured out.  Now, the beauty of the Gospel is that there are two choices on where it can get poured out.  It can get poured out on you eternally in hell, or it can get poured out on His own dear Son at the cross.  Praise God that there's two options, and not just one.  Praise God that Jesus was willing to drink my wrath, the measure of my wickedness and my sin, and all those of you who are listening to me today that have trusted in him.

And so, the reason for the delay is given.  The sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.  Then in Verses 18-21, God gives the clear boundaries for the Promised Land.  This is the most extensive list of “ites” that you are going to find.  No list is longer, I've checked.  All the other “ites” lists are shorter.  This is the longest “ites” list, okay?  And Alan did a phenomenal job.  Where are you, Alan?  Wonderful job on all the “ites.”  But this is the extent, the boundaries of the land.  "On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates− the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.’"

Alright, that's the covenant promise, but now comes the covenant warning.  Now again, remember the question that God is seeking to answer.  What is it?  How can I know that I'm going to get the land?  God is about to answer.  Verse 17, it says, "When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces."  Now again, understand what's happening.  A dreadful, horrible darkness, darker than any darkness he could ever imagine has come over him.  Blinded, really, by the darkness.  And there's a horror there, and then suddenly there's a light.  As if God said, “Let there be light.”  The Scripture says, God is light.  And again and again, when God reveals himself, He uses fire to do so.  It says, our God is a consuming fire.  When He appeared to Moses, it was in the flames of the burning bush.  When He appeared to the Israelites and led them through the desert, it was with a pillar of fire by night, and a pillar of cloud by day.

And so, at a smaller level, this blazing torch and smoking fire pot represent God himself.  This is the appearance of God.  Now, no man has ever seen God at any time, it says in John 1.  God spoke to Moses and said, "No one can see me and live."  So, God uses representations to show himself.  The smoking fire pot and the torch represented God in His holiness.  And so, there was God.  Now the question is, why did He pass through the pieces?  Now, in English when we speak, we say, we make a covenant.  The Hebrews cut a covenant.  They cut a covenant.  And so, again and again, they understood the ceremony.  What they would do is, they would take an animal and cut it and separate its pieces.  And then those who are making the covenant promises one to another, would walk between the pieces.  It was symbolic representation.

In your bulletin, I have a quote from Jeremiah.  It was so important to me that I didn't want you to take the time to flip to Jeremiah, so I printed it there in the bulletin.  Look what it says in Jeremiah 34.  I'm going to read Verses 18-20, although I only gave you, I think, one verse there, but listen.  "The men who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces."  Do you see that?  They're going to be like the calf.  That is not good, okay?  You don't want that happening to you.  Blown to bits, sliced up into ribbons.  I will cut you to pieces because you haven't kept my covenant.  Well, that's the symbolism of the covenant.  May God, the holy God, the eternal God, do this to me if I don't keep this covenant.

Reading on in Jeremiah, it says, "The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests and all the people of the land who walked between the pieces of the calf, I will hand over to their enemies who seek their lives.  Their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth."  This is a serious covenant warning.  May this happen to me if I don't keep this covenant.  Now, here's the amazing thing.  Abram did not walk between the pieces.  It was God who went between the pieces.  What was the question that God was seeking to answer?  How can I know that I will get it?  Our God never lies.  And in effect, He says, “If one thing that cannot happen to me happens, then may another thing which cannot happen to me happen.  I cannot stop existing.  I am who I am, and may I stop existing if I don't keep this covenant promise to you.  May I be blown to bits.  May I stop existing as God.  I swear by myself.  I swear by my person.  I swear by my deity that you will get this land.  It's more than just, ‘Because I said so.’"  God swears a curse on himself if He doesn't keep this promise.  Now, it's incredible to me that Jesus paid the price for all this.  Because the curse came down on him, of course.  He didn't cease existing, but He drank the cup of wrath that this covenant promise might come true.  But I can say to you today with all reverence that God is as likely to stop existing as you who have trusted in Christ will be to end up in hell.  God is as likely to stop existing as that He will not keep every one of the promises He has made to you in the new covenant.  He's going to keep them all.  Every one.  He did this so that you would know with a certainty that He is a covenant-making and keeping God. 

That is why God made this dramatic covenant.  The fact is, God had right in his sights, right in his cross hairs, He had our faith, our hope, our confidence, our assurance.  He wanted us to be confident.  He wanted us to be certain.  He wanted us to be sure and not waver through unbelief.  That's why.  And the reason is because God's plan is not our plan.  God's ways are not our ways.  He does strange things.   

His providence seems so often to run contrary to his promise.  In effect, He says, "Okay, here's where you are today, Abram.  Here's where you're going to be in the future, Abram."  Okay, you understand?  Here's where you are, this is where we're going.  Ready?  Okay, here we go.  Whoosh, this way.

He's saying, "Wha. . . No, no, wait a minute.  Slaves in Egypt for 400 years?  That's not what I had in mind.  I was thinking maybe my son could get it.  If I don't get it, at least Isaac can get it."  No, no, no.  We've got a long, long journey to travel.  A long journey to travel.  And, therefore, you've got to cling to a covenant promise and believe it day after day, because the things that are going on in the world around you and in your life just seemed to run so opposite of what God says He is finally going to do for you.  You see, God had in mind a long delay.  And that delay was going to be rigorous and tough for people He loved.  This, I believe, is the significance of the buzzards, the birds of prey.

I thought, "God, why, in such a thick, dense chapter that it's going to take me six hours to preach, why the birds of prey?  What's going on there?"  And it came to me, okay?  Because God wanted to come at night.  He wanted the darkness.  But Abram cut the beast up during the day.  And what did that mean?  It meant a delay.  God doesn't come when we think He should come.  He makes us wait.  And so, Abram had to get out there and fight for the pieces, you see?  He had to knock the birds away so that God could do what He is going to do.  If the birds eat them up, the symbolism is lost.  It's horrible, actually.  What does the birds eating the beast have to do with anything?  And so, he's going to get up there and he's going to fight the birds of prey, get the vultures away.  They're picking at the animals.  We can't have that.  Well, I don't want to go allegorical here, folks, but that's what happens to your faith.  Have you noticed?  Because God's making you wait.

And these vultures come in and your faith gets weak, your sin attacks and picks at it, and you've got to get up there aggressively and say, "No."  God makes us wait.  Now, how important is all this?  Well, I want you to imagine a descendant of Abram.  Think with me for a moment about one of Abram’s precious descendants, 250 years after Jacob went down to the promised land, I mean down to Egypt.  Another Pharaoh came who didn't know anything about Joseph, and they enslaved these people.  You're 250 years in.  Well, alright.  You know enough about the Bible to tell me, that Israelite who's in Egypt, what is his job?  What does he do for a living?  Go ahead, tell me.  What does he do?  He's a slave.  He makes bricks, okay?  What did his father do for a living?  He was a slave, he made bricks.  What's his son going to do for a living?  Well, he's a slave.  He's going to make bricks.  Moses isn't even born yet.

How does that Israelite get saved from his sin?  By hearing a promise and believing it, same as you, same as me.  And so, as he's halfway through this stern providence from God. . . he's a slave, and that's all he will be.  God is not going to send Moses in his lifetime.  He's already told him it's going to be four generations.  He needs some sustenance, doesn't he?  He needs something to feed on.  And so, what does he have?  The ancestral story of a promise that God made, and of a smoking fire pot and torch that passed through the pieces.  And he could believe or not believe, just like you today.  You see, Jesus Christ came as the fulfillment of all of this and God sets before you a simple choice.  You can either believe that your sins are paid for in his blood and by simple faith have eternal life, trusting in Christ or not.  Just like that Egyptian or that slave in Egypt had a choice to believe.  He could believe or not.

And how dreadful to spend your whole life in slavery and then go to hell.  But if he had refused to believe the promise, that's exactly what would have happened to him.  God intended salvation for slaves, but He intended more than that.  He intended encouragement for you and me.  There in your bulletin, I have a magnificent text of scripture from Hebrews.  Actually, I wouldn't mind if you took a moment and opened to Hebrews 6, because I only could give you part of that incredible assessment.  Why?  It's answering the question why.  God, why the pieces?  Why the path?  Why the smoking fire pot and the torch?  Why?  Why?  Why?  This is strange.  Why did you do it?  God answers the question directly in Hebrews 6, 13-19

When God made his promise to Abram, since there was no one greater to swear by, He swore by himself.  Saying, I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.  Are you with me?  Look at Verse 15, Hebrews 6:15, “And so after waiting patiently, Abram received what was promised.”  Is God making any of you wait?  Are you in heaven now?  I'm not.  I'm waiting on some things.  I'm waiting to be free of my sin nature.  I'm waiting to be free of this body of death.  I'm waiting for the great resurrection day.  I'm waiting to see Jesus face to face.  I'm waiting for glory.  I'm waiting to be united with brothers and sisters in Christ who have gone before us and who are glorious now in their spirits, though they don't have resurrection bodies yet.  I'm waiting for a lot of things.  Are you waiting?  How's your hope this morning?  Is it strong?  Does it make a difference whether your hope is strong?  I think it does.  Because you know you are a pilgrim, if you are a child of God.  And if you are weak in your faith and your hope, you are going to sit down and stop making progress.

You are going to stop walking.  You are going to say, "Enough is enough.  I can't take it anymore."  And so, after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised.  Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument.  Now here he answers the question, why did you do it, God?  Verse 17.  Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His purpose very clear to the heirs of His promise.  He confirmed it with an oath.  Verse 18, “God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we. . .”  Do you see that?  You could circle it.  He did it for me, He did it for you.  “. . .we, who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.”  Now just stop there for a moment.

Why did God cut the covenant with Abraham?  Why the smoking fire pot and the torch?  Why?  So that you and me who have fled to take hold of Jesus Christ may be encouraged.  That's it.  That we might have courage in our journey, because without the courage and faith, you're not going to keep going.  You are going to stop witnessing, you are going to stop putting sin to death, you may stop going to church.  You may just crumble and fall in your Christian life, and God doesn't want that.  And so, He does these kinds of things so that you can see God's track record.  Can I tell you something today?  This is incredible.  God has kept his two promises to Abram.  He did it.  He gave him descendants as numerous as the stars, and He gave him the promised land.  But that is nothing compared to what He is promising you in Christ.

We have Verse 19 of Hebrews 6, “. . .this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”  Does your soul need an anchor today?  Does it need an anchor?  Do you ever feel blown and tossed by the waves of the circumstances around you?  God wants you to be anchored to a promise that cannot move.  It can't change.  And so, He did this ceremony with Abram.

What application can we take from this?  First, your reward.  After a life of encouragement and faith and trusting in Christ, you get God.  That's what you get.  Is that enough for you?  It's enough and more for me.  And oh, am I looking forward to that?  Secondly, notice God's faithfulness to his promises.  I just said it a second ago, He's done it.  He kept his promises to Abram, and He is going to keep His promises to you.  But what incredible promises is He yet to fulfill in your life?  Completely freeing you of all sin inside, owning your salvation on judgment day, having the judge of your case speak up for you and say, "She's mine, he's mine.  Forgiven through blood that I shed."  Oh, that's incredible.

Thirdly, I want you to notice God's incredible patience to sinners.  You are surrounded every day by people who do not know Jesus Christ.  The Scripture says, every day they are under wrath, that God doesn't owe them another moment to live.  He doesn't owe them another breath.  They are filling up the measure of the sin of the Amorites every day.  And every day, some of the measures get full and they die and they go to hell every day.  I don't know who they are by name.  That's not for us to know.  He's the judge.  I don't know anybody by name in that category, but there are many.  Because the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven every day against all godlessness and wickedness.  And so, I think we have an obligation to warn the Amorites around us.  You know something?  God isn't going to put up with it forever.  There comes a Judgment Day.  It's a solemn warning.  Also, notice how much He is willing to put us through while He waits on them finally to repent. 

Fifth, notice God's astonishing knowledge of the future, with what great detail he knows the future that will come.  And six, can I say, be greatly encouraged.  Jesus Christ, who died on the cross, shed his blood for you and for me.  He will never let you go.  He will work in you and on you until He has finished his covenant promise to you.  Be greatly encouraged today.  Don't let your faith grow weak.  Get strong, feed on the Word.  Get strong.  And then finally, can I urge you?  Not just be greatly encouraged, but be greatly encouraging to one another.  I mean, look around.  Just take a minute and look around.  Do you see?  It's not just me talking.  There's a bunch of brother and sisters, you are all still looking at me.  Look around, look around, okay?  There are other people in the room.  These are brothers and sisters.  There may be somebody on the pew with you or seven rows back who needs some great encouragement today.  You know why?  Because they're struggling with sin and sin is deceitful.  It's tricky.  And you need to encourage them, don't give in.  Be strong, stand firm.  God is with you; He will help you.  Love and good deeds, be faithful, even as you see the day drawing near.

We are looking today, as Mac read so beautifully, at Genesis 15.  And, I've already decided we are only looking at part of Genesis 15.  It's a magnificent chapter, full and rich.  Every night, God puts an incredible display of His glory out for people of every tribe and language and people and nation to see, in the starlight.  All you have to do is get away from the city areas, go into the higher areas where the air is a little cooler, and all of a sudden, all of the mist and the haze is gone, and the starry night is spectacular and dramatic.  Some of you can even remember some nights maybe when you were camping out under the stars or up in the mountains, when you saw the Milky Way, perhaps, for the first time.  You didn't know that it existed because you lived, perhaps, in an urban area but God puts that display of His glory and His splendor for all to see.  It is the portion it says, in a scriptural text, of every nation.  It's for all of them to look and to see the glory and the majesty of God. 

Now, if you were to study the sky and look at the stars at any length of time, you would start to notice that some stars are brighter and stronger and clearer than others.  Some are bigger than others.  It says in 1 Corinthians 15:41, "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in splendor."  And so it is.  Some stars are more glorious and show more of God's radiant power than others.  And so, it is also with Scripture.  All Scripture shines as starlight in a dark place, revealing the nature and the character and the quality of God.  But not all star has equal glory, and neither does every chapter of Scripture equally reveal the glory and the purposes and the plans of God.

And when we come to Genesis 15, we come to one of the brightest stars in the cosmos of Scripture.  In 1995, astronomers using NASA'S Hubble Space Telescope identified what is probably the most luminous star known to man, the celestial mammoth called the Pistol Star.  It releases up to 10 million times the power of the sun, 10 million times the power of the sun, is over 100 times bigger than our sun, and it's big enough in its size to fill the space taken up by the orbit of the earth around the sun.  Can you imagine one star that big?  The star unleashes as much energy in six seconds as our sun does in one year, six seconds equal to one year of sunlight.  The Pistol Star is probably the brightest star in the cosmos, and so rightly did the Apostle Paul say that star differs from star in splendor.

It's amazing for me to think that God knows each of the stars by name, and because of His mighty power, not one of them is missing.  Pistol Star wouldn't be able to give off any more light if God didn't give it energy and strength to do so.  Oh, how mighty and powerful is the God we serve, how immense and how beyond knowing.  But just as star differs from star in splendor, so it is with Scripture.  Not all Scripture equally testifies to the glory of God.

Now, it says in 2 Timothy 3:16, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness."  But not every passage of Scripture is equally glorious.  And as we come to Genesis 15, I think we come to one of the greatest and most spectacular chapters in all the Bible.  Here we see God make the eternal promise to Abram, which Abram is today enjoying.  "Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward."  He's still enjoying that today.  Here in this chapter, we see a series of glorious topics, one after the other.  Not only the promise of Abram’s eternal reward, which is mine, too, through faith in Christ and yours as well if you are a believer in Jesus today, but also God's promise of Abram's glorious offspring.  "So shall your offspring be," that Abram would have numerous and glorious descendants.  Also, Abram's faith in the promise of God.  He believed the promise and it was credited to him as righteousness.  We see also God's solemn and serious covenant in the blood of an animal concerning the Promised Land.  We see God's remarkable seven-fold promise concerning the future of his descendants, and God's somber warning concerning the sin of the Amorites, that it has not reached its full measure.  All of these serious and weighty topics we see in Genesis 15.  

We see also some of the significance of Genesis 15.  It is the first time here in Genesis 15, the first time it's ever said, "The word of the Lord came."  Now, you think about how significant that phrase is and the concept, that the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.  It's the first time it was ever said in the Scripture, “the word of the Lord came.”  It's the first vision ever recorded in Scripture.  It's the first time it is ever said, "Do not be afraid."  Over 170 more times it will be said.  How many times do the angels come and the first thing they say?  It's always the same.  "Do not be afraid."  But this is the first time that God speaks this comforting, encouraging word, "Do not be afraid."  It's the first time that God is ever called a shield.  It's the first time that the double name of God, Adonai Jehovah, or sovereign Lord or The Lord God, is used.

It's the first time we find these words "believe" and "credited" or "reckoned" and "righteousness," these weighty theological ideas, the first time here in Genesis 15, the first time we get the mention of our eternal reward.  Most of all, we find in this chapter, or the apostle Paul finds for us, the very way that each one of us sinners has hope to stand before a holy God blameless and unafraid.  Where it says in Verse 6, "Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness."  Can I speak directly to you as an individual?  Each of you, I hope, knows you are a sinner, that you have broken the laws of God, and that you have no hope of standing before a thrice holy God apart from His work.  But if in the end, you are to stand blameless, unafraid, righteous in the sight of God, He whose eyes are too pure to look on evil, the one whose eyes are like a fiery furnace, if you hope to stand in front of that God, it will be on the basis revealed in this text: a credited righteousness, a righteousness given to you by faith, a righteousness that is not your own, but it's just given to you by faith.

I can say directly, the righteousness that Jesus Christ won for you by a holy and blameless life and by His perfect sacrifice on the cross, that is your only hope.  You have no other hope except that you can believe the Lord and it will be credited to you as righteousness.  All of that is in Genesis 15.  Can we do all of that in two hours?  Probably not.  Just joking.  I know you're a little startled.  No, we're not preaching for two hours.  There's no way we could even do it in two weeks, but we can touch on some of these ideas and I hope to whet your appetite for all the glory there is in this chapter.

Abram refused the riches of this world, but God gave him something far more valuable in Genesis 15.  He gave him words.  That's all.  Words.  When all is said and done, Genesis 15 is about a bunch of words that God speaks to a man.  That's all.  Not much happens in this chapter, except that words are spoken.  But it's not just any words, it's the words of promise from God.  And believing those words made an eternal difference in the life of Abram, and so it is also with us.  You know something, if words mean nothing, our faith is worthless and you're still in your sins.  If God treated words the way we treat words, your faith is worthless and you're still in your sins.  But God doesn't.  These are not idle words for you.  They are in fact your very life because God is faithful to His word, because He is faithful to His promises, we have an eternal security.  All that's just by way of introduction.  How are we going to look at this chapter?

Well, I break it up into five portions, the message is over the next two weeks, this week and next week.  First, in Verse 1, God's promise of present protection and eternal reward in Verse 1.  Second, in Verses 2 through 6, we see God's promise in the stars, Abram's glorious offspring.  Third, we see Abram's justification by faith alone in Verse 6.  Fourth, we see, and we will not cover it this week, but we see God's covenant with Abram in blood, Verses 7 through 21.  And fifth, next time God willing, we're going to talk about why God made this dramatic covenant and what it signifies to us.  So, let's begin at Verse 1, God's promise of present protection and eternal reward.

In Verse 1, it says, "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.’"  Now, let's not forget the context.  It begins in Verse 1 with the phrase, "After this."  After what?  Well, after the great events of Chapter 14.  Genesis 14 is strongly linked to Genesis 15.  What happened in Genesis 14?  Well, you remember that Abram and 318 of his choice soldiers, some night raiders, went out and took on Kedorlaomer, that regional tyrant, and the kings with him, and defeated them and rescued Lot, brought him back, he and all his possessions.  Sometimes I think these chapter divisions hinder rather than help our understanding of Scripture.

So, it was immediately after the interaction and the encounter with the king of Sodom, in which Abram swore that he would take no possessions or no booty, no loot from the plunder.  He swore an oath, and we'll talk about that in a moment, that he would take nothing from the king of Sodom.  Right after that, God speaks and says, "Do not be afraid, Abram.  I am your very great reward."  What a beautiful connection, the context is.

Now, it says, "The word of the Lord came to Abram."  Now, that means that Abram was a prophet.  When the word of the Lord comes directly from God to an individual and they hear it and they can tell you what God said, they can say, "Thus says the Lord," this is the work of a prophet.  And so, Abram was a prophet, the word of the Lord came to him.  God spoke directly to Abram.  This is the foundation of the Scripture.  If this cannot happen, we have no Bible.  But it can happen.  God, the eternal God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, he can speak to an individual human being.  God can speak.  The word of the Lord came to Abram.  This is the foundation of our faith.  Now, we're going to see this phrase again and again in Scripture, the word of the Lord came also to Samuel and to David and to Nathan and Solomon, to Elijah and Isaiah and Jehu.  The “word of the Lord” comes to each one of these prophets, 24 times it is said, "the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah."  Fifty times it is said, "the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel."  The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the reluctant prophet, and to Haggai, to Zechariah, and to all of the prophets.  The “word of the Lord” came here to Abram. 

The foundation of my faith is this, Isaiah 1:2, "Hear, O heavens!  Listen, O earth!  For the Lord has spoken."  If this is just the word of man, we're wasting our time.  But if this is in fact the word of the Lord, I want to hear it.  And notice that the word of the Lord came in a vision.  The word of the Lord came in a vision.  He spoke to Abram in a vision.  Now, Isaiah later would see God in a vision.  And not just one vision, but a series of visions.  It says in Isaiah 1:1, “The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah."  And so, the Lord sometimes comes to prophets in a vision, some kind of a spiritual communication, something they can see in their mind's eye.  Ezekiel saw dramatic visions of the glory of God, and he traveled distances within himself, I guess, in visions given by God.  It says in Ezekiel 1:1, “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God."  What an incredible thing, the visions that God gave to Ezekiel there.

Later on, in Ezekiel 11:24, it says, "The Spirit lifted me up and brought me to the exiles in Babylonia in the vision given by the Spirit of God.  Then the vision I had seen went up from me. . ."  So, he's traveling somehow mysteriously in a vision.  So, also, John in the apocalypse saw visions of heaven.  And so it is, we have God speaking to Abram somehow in a vision.  Now, what was the word that the Lord spoke to Abram?  Well, understand again the context.  After the defeat of Kedorlaomer, after the military conquest of the kings in Genesis 14, there were two issues on Abram's mind.  First of all, Abram's need for protection.  And, second of all, Abram's desire for reward.  Let's look at the first one, Abram's need for protection.

Now, Kedorlaomer was an awesomely powerful king from hundreds of miles away in Babylonia.  He had been ruling over that area, and he came with his allies and defeated the Rephaites and the Zuzites and the Emites and the Horites and the Amalekites.  And then he defeated a powerful coalition of five kings.  It seemed nothing could stop this man, Kedorlaomer, a minor tyrant.  That is, until he took one person too many.  He took Lot.  And Abram saddled up 318 night raiders and they went and attacked Kedorlaomer and crushed him, destroyed him and defeated him.  But here's the problem.  After doing that, Abram could very well be afraid.  He's now made some very powerful enemies.  He doesn't have a very big force.  Three hundred eighteen men is pretty small.  And so, he could be wondering, "Gee, what have I done?  What have I done?  What's my life going to be like?  Are all these surrounding people going to be afraid of me?  Are they going to come after me?  Am I safe?"  And so, God comes to him in a vision and speaks right to that fear.

"Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield."  And when we think of a shield, we think of something powerful and strong that a soldier would carry out onto the battlefield and with it, he can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the enemy, or he can block the attack or the strike, the blow of a sword.  It can save his life.  And so, that's one sense of the word shield, that God stands between Abram and his enemies.  Nothing is going to hurt you.  I'm going to protect you.  Don't be afraid.  The name of the Lord is a strong tower.  The righteous run to it and are kept safe.  We are such fearful beings, aren't we?  Do you have anything you are afraid of this morning?  Do you have anything outside of you that you wonder if it's going to come and attack you and harm you?  "Do not be afraid, Abram.  I am your shield.  I stand between you and what can do you eternal damage."  He is the Good Shepherd who goes out and meets the wolf and is willing to lay down His life, less the sheep be harmed or damaged in any way.  He is your shield.

But the word shield can also mean something else.  In the ancient Near East, it can mean a benefactor king.  And the way it would work is a powerful king like Kedorlaomer would come and take over an area and all the minor kings will be under his authority.  And the major king would say, "Look, I'm going to protect you and provide for you.  I'm going to be your benefactor." Well, if he's a good king, you're in good shape, you never need to be afraid again, you have it made.  And so it is.  I am your benefactor king, Abram.  I stand over you and I provide for you.  I keep you safe from all your foes, and I will bless everything that you do.  And so that's Abram's need for protection.

We also have Abram's need or desire for a reward.  Abram had refused to share in the plunder.  This is pretty much unheard of.  When you saddle up and go out to win a military conquest, there is an old saying, to the victor goes, what?  The spoils.  You get the plunder.  That's what you get.  That's your pay.  But Abram had made a solemn vow.  In Genesis 14, you can just look back a few verses, in Verses 22 and 23, Abram said to the king of Sodom, "I have raised my hand to the Lord, to God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth," that's an oath, I “have taken an oath," Verse 23, "that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the thong of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, ‘I made Abram rich.’"  I don't want anything from you, King of Sodom.  I don't want anything; I want nothing earthly from you.

Now God is strongly motivated to come and make a promise to Abram.  In Verse 1, he says, "Do not be afraid, Abram.  I am your shield, your very great reward."  Now, other translations will turn it around and say, "Your reward will be very great."  If you have the NAS open on your lap or the ESV, you're going to see that kind of translation.  But I think the NIV and the KJV, King James Version, both have it right.  "I am your very great reward."  It's also theologically accurate, isn't it?  Isn't that what we get?  Don't we get God after all of this?  What higher or better reward could there be?  Psalm 73:25 says, "Whom have I in heaven but you?  And earth has nothing I desire besides you."  Is that not Abram?  I don't want anything on earth.  I'm an alien and a stranger here just moving through.  Naked, I came into the world and naked, I will leave it.  I can't bring any of these things with me.  And all of them are under an earthly curse, all of them are going to get rolled up and thrown away like an old garment when Jesus remakes the heavens and the earth.  Amen and amen.

And so, there's nothing here on earth I really want.  It says in Hebrews 11:13-16, "All these people” including Abraham, “were still living by faith when they died.  They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.  And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.  People who say such things show that they're looking for a country of their own.  If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.  Instead, they were longing for a better country−a heavenly one.”  So, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.  It's the city of the living God, where God will be with His people and they will see him with unveiled face.  Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your very great reward.  Do you realize that you need to yearn for a reward if you want to be pleasing to God?  Oh Lord, I don't want anything for my life of service to you, I really don't want anything just that you would get all that you need.  You know, that sounds so pious, doesn't it?  As though God were the needy one and we are fine, we have all of our needs.  Don't come to God that way.  Because it says in Hebrews 11:6, "Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."

So, within Verse 6, you have the reward, don't you?  What is the reward?  Him, because you're earnestly seeking Him your whole life.  And what do you get after a life of earnestly seeking God, what do you get?  You get Him, "Do not be afraid, Abram.  I am your very great reward.”  Steve Green and his beautiful song, “God and God Alone” put it this way,

“God and God alone will be the joy of our eternal home. He will be our one desire, our hearts will never tire, of God and God alone.”

And earlier you sang this, didn't you?  In “Be Thou My Vision,” I took the time to write it down while I was singing it.  Didn't sing the fourth verse, sorry, but I wanted to take the time and write it down.  The third verse of “Be Thou My Vision:”

"Riches I heed not, nor vain, empty praise. Thou mine inheritance, now and always. Thou and thou only first in my heart. High king of heaven, my treasure thou art."

That's what God is saying to him here, "I'm your reward, Abram," and there's nothing the king of Sodom can offer that compares with that, amen?  And so, that is the reward that he gets, God Himself.

Secondly, God's promise in the stars.  Pagan astrologers, from time immemorial, have sought to look up at the celestial, the skies, the starry host, and to discern the future.  Millions of Americans read their horoscopes everyday thinking that the future can be predicted in the stars.  Please don't tell me you do, okay?  I don't want to know what your sign is, I don't really care because there is no information like that up in the stars, nothing.  But it's interesting to me.  And, by the way, the center of it all was Babylonia, those Babylonians, they could look at the Chaldeans, they could look at the stars, and they had whole elaborate systems of interpretation of the future based on the starry alignments.  And it was out of that, that Abram came.  And yet, it's interesting when Abram wants to know about the future, what does God do but bring him out and say, "Let's look up at the stars."  Isn’t that an interesting thing, but it's different, okay?  The stars don't represent Pagan deities that we are going to bow down and worship.  Oh no, the stars were created by the God who's about to interpret them to Abram.

So, He said let's come out and look at the stars and He makes him a promise.  Look at Verses 2-6, it says, "But Abram said, 'Oh, Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer 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 up at the heavens and count the stars−if indeed you can count them.’"  And then He said to him, "So shall your offspring be."  Verse 6, "Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness."  

Now, first we see Abram turning his sorrow and his grief over to the Lord.  He said, "Okay, Lord, you are my shield and my very great reward but what can you give me?  Because I've got a problem.  Okay, you told me that my descendants, through my offspring, all peoples on earth will be blessed.  Well, right now, I don't have any offspring.  Okay, I've got Eliezer of Damascus, and he's a good guy.  But how far is Eliezer going to take me?  Did you really have Eliezer in mind when you made that great promise to me?  Is that what's going on here, he's going to be kind of my adopted son, and then he's going to be fruitful and multiply?  Is that what's going to happen here?"  And so, God in a progressive revelation, clarifies very strongly what is going to happen.

And I think this is a good example for us, isn't it?  There is a grief in Abram's heart, there is a grief in Sarai's heart, it's the grief of childlessness.  You know, Americans don't look on that as a major tragedy, but we should because children are a blessing.  And you know, there are perhaps some in our midst that are yearning for children and they can't have them, there is some kind of physical problem, and that is the way it was for Abram and Sarai.  It was a great grief to them, a great sorrow.  And what does Abram do here, but bring that grief back to the sovereign God and say, "You have chosen not to give us any children," and he's not being disrespectful, he's being theological.  “You are the creator of the ends of the Earth.  You can easily open my wife's womb and give us a child, but you've chosen not to do it.”  I think this is right and respectful, bring your grief to God.  

Can I just stop for a moment and give you a word of application?  If you're facing some kind of grief today, it may be a chronic illness, or the chronic illness of a loved one, it may be a broken relationship, it may be joblessness, it may be some other bitter struggle that you are going through in your life, bring it back to the sovereign God.  Bring it to Him in prayer as Abram does here.  Ask Him for help, ask Him for insight.  And that's exactly what he does.  “What can you give me since I have no heir?”  And then God makes a very plain promise to him in Verse 4.  He states it directly.

The word of the Lord came to him, "This man, Eliezer, will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir."  What could be plainer than that, you are not going to have an adopted son is the first link in this chain of faith and promise, I'm going to give you your own son, a child coming from your own body, even at your old age, Abram.  I can do this.  And so, he unfolds in a progressive revelation, little by little, the plan of God.  This was God's original intent in the first promise in Genesis 12, in which he said, "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing."  In Verse 7 of Chapter 12, "The Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘to your offspring, I will give this land.’"

Well, this is what he had in mind.  You are going to have a physical child, a son, coming from your own body.  But that's not enough for God, is it?  He doesn't just say it.  He says, "Come, let's go for a walk.  Let's go for a walk."  Now, I imagine that he was just reading between the lines, he was in his tent, it was night.  It was late at night.  Maybe Sarai was sleeping, I don't know.  And Abram's brain was filled with glorious light, a vision from God as God was speaking to him.  And he said, "Get up and come out of the tent."  That's a beautiful thing when you think about it. 

This is one of the most significant moments in the entire Bible.  Now, how much we miss by not seeing with spiritual eyes.  If you lived back then, you would have said the defeat of Kedorlaomer, the big splashy events of Genesis 14, now, that's bigtime stuff and if there had been a Time magazine or New York Times back then, they would have covered the Kedorlaomer thing.  Alright, thank God there weren't.  But anyway, it would have covered those events, but Genesis 15, a man out looking up at the stars, hearing voices in his mind, no coverage on that one, no photographer, and yet, which of the two is more significant for Abraham and for all who have followed after the quietness of God, you see.  God's ways are not our ways.  Yes, He cares about the big splashy events, Kedorlaomer and the defeat, World War II, all these big events.  Yes, he cares and he uses them.  But here it is, one man and his God, and God speaking to him in his heart.  He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars−if indeed you can count them."  And then He said to him, "So shall your offspring be."  Note the intense personal love relationship between Abram and God, He took him outside.  What did that look like?

What did that look like?  I think it's a lot like Enoch.  You know how it says of Enoch in Genesis 5:24, "Enoch walked with God; and then he was no more, for God took him away."  You know, there's just that intimacy.  Are you walking with God today?  Are you walking with him today?  Is he your friend, is he the lover of your soul?  When he leads and says, "Come out here, I want to show you something."  Do you follow or do you miss it?  Abram got up and followed, he got out of the tent.  And so, it was said of him in James 2:23, “Abraham was called God's friend.”  There's an intimacy in this relationship, and so he goes out and he looks at the night sky, and what did Abram see as he looked up in the sky?  Well, he saw what he had seen countless times before, but it would never look the same again after that night.  The stars would never just be stars anymore, from now on, the stars would be promise, the stars would be prophecy, not the way the Babylonians, the Chaldeans saw it.  But in a whole different way, because God had assigned meaning to the quantity and the glory of the stars.

Now, if you went out and looked at the stars, if you got away from the city and got up to a mountain, maybe in the western part of the state, how many stars do you think you could count?  Well, I know it depends on your character, doesn't it?  Some of you have a long attention span and some of you a little bit shorter.  Alright.  So, you'd get to about 100 and say, "Gee, that was fun.  What are we doing next?"  Okay, but others would stick with it, and they tell me I've never done it, being of the shorter attention span in this matter.  Okay, but they say you can count several thousand stars with the unaided eye.  Now, if you were looking and you could see the Milky Way, you would have a sense that there was more here than met the eye, right?

I mean, yeah, I can see these distinct points of light, but there's more here, isn't there?  And, suppose your friend Galileo was standing next to you and said, "Here, try this," and hands you, his telescope.  Oh boy, all of a sudden, a lot more stars, and you count and count and count and count, and you get up to the tens of thousands now.  But then there's this same phenomenon, again, there are these hazy areas and you just can't make it out, and so it goes, and so it goes, Mount Palomar, Hubble Space and we keep seeing the same thing.  It never ends.  We have no idea how many stars there are.  You know there is a lot, but you feel there might be more, and so it is also with the promises of God, "I don't have any idea, God, what are you going to do in my life but I know it's going to be glorious."  And so, God used the stars to display His promise to Abram, "So shall your offspring be."

And now, in Verse 6, we come to the pivotal moment of his eternal existence.  I'm talking about Abram.  It says, "Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness."  The central question of your existence is this.  You may not know it is, but it is, how can a wicked sinner stand righteous before a holy God?  That's it.  Now, there are different ways to phrase it, but bottom line is, how can a sinner stand righteous before God on Judgment Day?  Does that question matter to you, does it make a difference to you how a sinner can stand holy and righteous before God on Judgment Day; if you're a Christian, you better believe it matters to you.

And the answer is in this one verse, a simple statement in Genesis, and frankly, I have to tell you, I'm not so great a Bible scholar that if Paul hadn't given me a commentary on this, I would not have noticed how significant it was, I would have read right over it.  “Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”  

This is the doctrine of justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law.  Justification is the doctrine of a perfect righteousness being credited to your account, and in that perfect righteousness, you will stand on Judgment Day and not your own filthy rags.  Think if you're traveling in Europe and you are a college student and you run out of money, you know it's been known to happen.  And let's say you had a wealthy father, and so you go to the bank in Zurich and you make a call and you say, "Dad I'm just plumb out of money."  "Well, what happened to the $20,000 I wired you last week?"  "Well, you know, it's gone.  I need some more."  He is able to wire some more money to your account if he wants to.  Alright.  And so, he would make a call to his bank and they would credit to your account there in Zurich, another $20,000.  And so, it is also, Abraham believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness.  Now, where did that righteousness come from?  Well, it came from the perfect life of Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ, God's only begotten son, lived a holy and blameless life.  Every moment He did the will of His Father.  He never sinned, he turned back every single temptation that came His way, and He could say rightly at the end of His life, not at the end of one hour or at the end of one day, but at the end of His life, "Father, I have brought you glory on Earth by doing everything you told me to do." 

"I always please Him," He said another place.  That righteousness was consummated and made perfect on the cross, when He obeyed his father even to death, death on a cross.  That righteousness can be credited to your account.  Isn't that incredible?  And He will see you on Judgment Day as perfect and holy and blameless as His own son, or He will send you to hell.  Those are the two options, there is no third option.  And so, we will stand in Christ's righteousness alone on judgment day, or we will be spending eternity in hell.  And the scripture says, "The smoke of their torment rises forever and ever.  There is no rest, day or night, for those who cling to their own righteousness."  This is the doctrine of justification.

Now, if you had been there with Abram watching, what would you have seen Abram do that night?  What muscles would he have moved?  Answer, none.  What works did he do to get this gift of righteousness?  None.  What sinner's prayer did he pray?  None.  How then was it credited to him as righteousness?  Inside his mind, he heard the word of God, the promise of God, and he believed it.  That was the work.  And it is no work.  Frankly, I believe that faith is the eyesight of the soul by which we receive from God what He's wanting to give.  Just like the eyeballs can look up at the stars and see distant starlight coming into our eyes, and we see it, and we receive.  The eyes, don't make the stars be there, the eyes don't make the light be there, they just receive what's emanating out from what God has created, and so it is with faith.

You don't make anything be there that God isn't giving, but when God opens up your blind soul and gives you sight like He did to the man born blind, all of a sudden, "Wow, God is giving me something," and you receive it.  And Abram that night, the eyesight of the soul was opened up, and he saw and believed, he heard and believed.  It was credited to him as righteousness.  And he stood holy and blameless at that moment.  

Romans 4, Verses 1-5 says, "What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered in this matter?  If in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about−but not before God.  What does the scripture say?  Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.  Now, when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation.  However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.”  It's a gift of righteousness, folks.  It's our only hope.  It's our only hope.  And it saved Abram that night.  

Now, you may ask, "Didn't Abram show faith before that night?"  Yeah, he did, he did.  It took faith for him to get up out of Ur of the Chaldeans and follow, it took faith for him to build altars to the Lord, it took faith for him to call on the name of the Lord.  But I think that this was his justifying night, others disagree, but I think it was this night.  That he saw by faith the Son of God.  I think that's what happened this night, he saw by faith, the Son of God.  Why do I say that?  Well, in Galatians 3:16, it says, "The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed."  The scripture does not say, unto seeds, meaning many people, but, unto your seed, meaning one person who is Christ.

And so, Jesus stated openly that Abraham's joy was focused on the person of Christ, whom he saw by faith, I believe, that starry night, it says in John 8:56, "Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad."  I think that happened, that starry night, God spoke to Abraham in a vision and showed him Christ, and he believed, and he was justified.  Now, next week, God willing, we'll talk about the covenant and blood.  I want to apply, however, just these first six verses. 

First application, trust in Christ alone to make you righteous, give up on any works, give up in trusting your good things, they will get you nowhere.  If you are sitting here today thinking, "I'm basically a good person and in that basic goodness, I will stand before God," you are lost.  But if, on the other hand, you say it is because of Christ and what He did on the cross, that I have any hope of salvation, you have eternal life.

Second, feed your faith in God's promises.  Read the promise.  You know what?  You have better promises than Abram got that night.  He got, “So shall your offspring be.”  “Look up at the heavens and count the stars, so shall. . .”  We have got “all your sins will be forgiven.”  “The Holy Spirit will come live within you.”  “I will take you to be with me so that you also may be where I am.”  “My father will come and eat and dine with you.”  We've got John 5:24, which says, "Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life."  We've got John 11:25 and 26, "I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?”  We have so many good promises from God, feed your faith on those good promises.

Third, marvel at God's amazing track record.  He is faithful.  When Israel took the Promised Land, it was said that they were as numerous as the stars in the sky.  God fulfilled his promise to Abram that night, didn't He?  And He is going to fulfill every one of His very great and precious promises to you in Christ. 

Fourth, focus on God and God alone as your eternal reward, give up on earthly idols, they don't mean a thing, they are not going to bring you any eternal joy.  Focus on God, and on God alone.

And finally, fifth, bring your griefs to Him in prayer, as we've already talked about.  It may not be childlessness, it may be something else, bring it to Him in prayer, say, "Sovereign Lord, you have chosen that I not get a job yet," or, "You have chosen that I have this illness that just won't go away," or, "You have chosen that I have this relational difficulty in my family, help me with this."

We are looking this morning at Genesis 14, a fascinating chapter.  And, one that perhaps is not as well-known as some of the other stories and accounts in Genesis, but very rich, nonetheless.  Throughout the history of the church, artists have depicted Christ, they have made portraits or artistic renditions of Christ.  There's something compelling about the scriptures and about the accounts of Jesus, and the artists want to depict it, and so they will drop paintings, make paintings of Christ or sculptures.  One of the most famous was done in 1475 by Leonardo Da Vinci.  He painted a scene entitled The Baptism of Christ, oil, and tempera on wood, kept in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.  Priceless.  Absolutely priceless.  And an incredible picture through the eyes of Leonardo Da Vinci.  Twenty-five years later, perhaps the most famous sculpture of Christ, was done by perhaps the greatest sculptor ever, Michelangelo.  In 1499, he did the Pietà, which is a moving picture of the dead Christ across the lap of his grieving mother.  It really is an incredible thing as you say, I've never seen it in person, but the picture, the ripples of the fabric almost seem alive, like a breeze could move them, and yet they are made of marble.  An incredible depiction of Christ.  Greek and Russian Orthodox churches have icons by the thousands, paintings of Christ, that focus their worship in a way that we do not do here.

Some people believe the most accurate portrait of Christ is found in the Shroud of Turin, a mysterious kind of image of a bearded man, which will be very familiar to us.  You look at somebody who looks like that and say, "He looks like Jesus."  We don't really know what Jesus looked like.  There are no physical descriptions of Christ in the scriptures, but I think it's not far to imagine that the Shroud of Turin when it first began making its circuit in Europe, greatly influenced Western art and its depictions of Christ, and they all started to look like that image one after the other, perhaps the most famous picture and portrait of Christ physically.  For me, however, I enjoy seeing the portraits of Christ that come off the pages of scripture.  It's not so important to me the shape of his nose or the set of his eyes, but I want to know about his character, I want to know about his great actions and deeds.  And therefore, for me, the clearest portrait or picture of Christ is going to be descriptions of those, the person of Christ, and the work of Christ found in the scriptures.  I believe the whole Bible gives portraits of Christ, not just the New Testament.

In the Old Testament, we have Christ in prophetic relief.  You are going to see portraits of Christ in the Old Testament, and they're going to come in two different types, one of them would be what we call verbally predictive prophecy, like "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son."  Or the prediction in Micah 5:2, that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel.”  These are what we call “verbally predictive prophecies.”  Then there is a different category of portrait or a picture of Christ, what we call “types” or typically “predictive prophecy.”  Now, the way this works is that things are acted out in life.  They are just acted out in history, and they capture a vignette, a little snapshot of Christ in his work and in his person.  The animal sacrifices are great types of Christ.  Typically, “predictive prophecy,” we call it.  Every time an animal was sacrificed and its blood shed on the ground and poured out before the Lord in the fire of sacrifice, it was a picture of Christ who is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, that I think the best typical predictive prophecy of Christ.

But also, you see in redemptive history, the unfolding of redemptive history, certain vignettes or stories that depict some aspect of the work of Christ.  For example, later in Genesis Chapter 22, when Abraham and Isaac go up the mountain and God has commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loves.  You hear very much the pre-echo, I think, of the gift of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, and that, "What Abraham was asked to do," says Michael Card, "He's done.  He's given his only son."  So, that's an acted-out type or picture of Christ.  And I think we have two of those portraits in our account today.  Two portraits of Christ.  One portrait as a mighty conqueror who rescues the captive and delivers him, that we see in Abram as he mounts up with 318 soldiers and rescues his nephew, Lot, from his abductors.  It is a portrait of Christ.  And then, also in this mysterious Melchizedek, the Priest King, we see a portrait of Christ who is both king and priest, and that's what we're going to unfold today.  Two portraits of Christ.

Now, the portraits you could imagine are kind of woven into a tapestry.  God likes to kind of weave in pictures of Christ by his sovereign control of historical events.  Things don't just happen in God's world.  He's too much of a king for that.  And so, the unfolding of human history, the tapestry of history provides the basis for the portraits of Christ that are unfolding in redemptive history.  They are woven into a tapestry of history, and a lot of that comes with the consideration of pagan wars, the wars of the pagans, and of the Gentiles.  Jesus talks about this in Matthew 24:6, "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars."  Well, that's kind of a summation of human history, wars, and rumors of wars.  It's not all there is but certainly very important.  Not only is human history the unfolding of the tapestry of God's plan of salvation, redemptive history is unfolding generation by generation.  But also, we are seeing unfold before us in history, the wickedness of the human heart.  We learn more and more about just how wicked we are and how much we need a savior.  So how does it work?  Well, a small king finds himself to be a little bit more powerful than some of his neighbors, he mounts up with some strength and he conquers his neighbors, takes their land, takes their flocks and their possessions.  Then he allies with them, and he gets ever stronger and so it builds and builds.

So, the Pagans, through their lust for power and glory and possessions, build these miniature empires.  They get stronger and stronger.  Eventually, one kingdom rises up and takes over for another kingdom.  The other one falls and the second takes its place.  It enjoys its heyday, its time in the sun until it falls and the next one comes along.  And yet, God is ruling over all of this.  He is controlling it, it seems to make no sense at all, to be chaotic, but it isn't, and God is weaving in that tapestry, redemptive history.  God uses wars to accomplish his redemptive purposes.  For example, because of the conquest of the Greeks under Alexander the Great and the Romans under the Caesars, there was an infrastructure of highways and common language and economic unity that enabled the Gospel to travel very quickly in the first 200 years of its existence.  So very quickly the Gospel spread through the Greco-Roman world because of the wars that the Greeks and Romans had fought.  Later, because of the conquest of the Roman empire by the barbarians, the Gospel made it up into the forest of Germany and across the English Channel into England, because the barbarians had broken apart the Roman Empire.  God used it. 

Then later, because of the conquest of the vicious and cruel Vikings, the Gospel spread wherever they went, because the Vikings had no power to withstand the Gospel itself.  They could come and conquer the lands of the monasteries and kill the Christians but, eventually, they would be conquered in a sweet way by the Gospel and they would take the Gospel where they had traveled.  Because of the worldwide empire-building ambitions of the English, you know the sun never set on the English or the British Empire.  The Gospel eventually made it to places as far as India and China, along the coasts and the depths of Africa.  And so, God uses military conquest for his purposes.  Because of World War II, American soldiers left the security and safety of small-town America and went and fought in places they couldn't even pronounce, in the steamy jungles of the South Pacific, and then went home.  But the world was never the same for them again, and some of the Christians went back to Papua New Guinea and led many of those to Christ because they had been near there and were not afraid to go.  And so, God used that tragedy of World War II to accelerate the gospel. 

 Even in our time, we have seen how God has used the conquest of the Taliban in Afghanistan to open up missionary opportunities that absolutely would not have come if the Taliban were still in power.  God weaves redemptive history against the backdrop of pagan wars and rumors of wars.  If God controls sparrows, and not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of God, how much more does he control the rise and fall of nations?  Now, also the backdrop of this is Lot's faithless choice.  The last time that we talked about Genesis two weeks ago, we saw how Lot decided to break away from Abram and go down in the fertile land near Sodom.  And so, he “pitched his tents," it says, "toward Sodom."  This brought Lot under the swirl of events surrounding Sodom and Gomorrah, and he would never have been abducted and never have been sucked into this whole maelstrom of events if he had stayed with Abram.  So, the faithless choice of Lot is also a backdrop.  

Now, what's going on here in Palestine in Genesis 14?  Well, I read kind of like a rising up of these miniature city-states, like we had in ancient Greece.  There are these little areas like Sodom or Gomorrah, little towns, and there are kings of those cities and the regions around them.  They were miniature city-states and were all kind of under the power of a regional king named Kedorlaomer.  He was king of Elam.

Now, Elam is east of Babylonia, near Ur of the Chaldees where Abraham had originally come from.  So, it really is a kind of precursor to the Assyrian and the Babylonian empires.  These conquerors were forever curving up around the Fertile Crescent, and then coming down what they called the King's Highway through Palestine and on into the fertile areas of the Nile in Egypt.  And so, Palestine was desirable, it had good arable land, it had good natural resources, but it was also strategic because it was the crossroads of history where people could go down and cross into Egypt.  Now, look at Verse 1.  This man, Kedorlaomer, is allied with Amraphel, King of Shinar.  Shinar is the place where the Tower of Babel had been built.  It eventually became Babylon.  So, he's aligned with the King of Babylon, with Arioch, King of Ellasar, and Tidal, king of Goiim.  They are all coming from the place where Babylon would eventually be.  This is a precursor, the Babylonian empire.  Now in Palestine, there are these vassal kings, these little smaller kings who paid tribute and money to Kedorlaomer.  They would give some of the harvest or some money, etcetera, and, basically, Kedorlaomer would leave them alone or protect them.  This kind of thing.

But in the 13th year, these vassal kings said, enough of Kedorlaomer.  If we can ally ourselves together, the five of us the king has gotten together, we can throw this guy off and we can run the thing ourselves.  And so, they allied and they rebelled.  Well, Kedorlaomer is not going to take this lying down.  He whistles up to his three allies and the four of them march, they come along the Fertile Crescent and down into Palestine to fight.  They were powerful and successful.  Frankly, they were undefeated.  It was a strong military conquest.  Look at Verses 5-7, "In the fourteenth year, Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him went out and defeated the Rephaites in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzites in Ham, the Emites in Shaveh Kiriathaim, and the Horites in the hill country of Seir, as far as El Paran near the desert."  Now, after the service is over, I want you to find Steve Carrell and thank him from the bottom of your heart for reading this text.  You did a wonderful job, brother.  When I was reading over it this morning, I said, "Woe to the person who has to read these verses this morning."  So, we compromised and thought to begin at Verse 8, and he did a wonderful job, there's no escaping all these Hebrew names, but I thought he did a fine, fine job.

There are these five kings, they're allied, and the four kings come, Kedorlaomer leading them, going from place to place, conquering, conquering and conquering.  Everywhere they go, they are succeeding.  Kedorlaomer seems unbeatable, and now the time has come for him to draw up the battle lines against these four or five kings that have risen up against him.  In Verses 8-9, it talks about the battle of the four kings against the five, nine kings altogether.  Well, Kedorlaomer wins decisively.  His armies destroyed the armies of the five kings and some of the men fell into the terrifying pits of the Valley of Siddim, the rest fled to the hills.  And now Kedorlaomer gets to plunder.  That's the thing the army has always to do.  Napoleon, when he escaped off Elba and was gathering his army again for one final push that ended in the Battle of Waterloo, what was his big promise to them?  "Plunder, the cities of Europe are waiting for you."  Oh yes, they were loyal to Napoleon, but more than anything, because he could fill their pockets.  And so, the armies have a chance to plunder the rich cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and others, and so they did.  So, in Verse 11, "The four kings seized all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food; then they went away."  But they took one item too many.  Now, they took Lot and that was a big mistake.

Look at Verse 12, "They also carried off Abram's nephew Lot and his possessions, since he was living in Sodom."  Now, notice that additional comment.  He was living where?  Oh, he's living in Sodom now, I guess he's moved.  Last we heard about Lot, he had pitched his tents toward Sodom.  Now he's actually living in Sodom.  Notice the degeneration of Lot as Sodom has its pull on him and draws him away from righteousness, away from the godly life with Abram.  Now he's living in Sodom.  Well, somebody escapes in Verse 13, and Abram is told, "One who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew.  Now Abram was living near the great trees of Mamre the Amorite, a brother of Eshcol and Aner, all of whom were allied with Abram."  And so, Abram had made an alliance with some Amorites.  I don't know if he had led them to personal faith in the Most High God, maybe he had, I hope so, but the text doesn't say anything about that.  It does say that they were allied together with Abram.  So that sets the table for the first portrait.  And, the first portrait is a picture of Christ as a military conqueror, as a rescuer, as a powerful king who comes to deliver us from our captivity.

Look at Verses 14-16, "When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan.  During the night Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them, pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus.  He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people.”   

Now look at Abram's courageous rescue of Lot and notice some things here.  First of all, note Abram's gracious attitude toward his nephew.  Lot has been selfish.  He's grabbed the best part of the land for himself, but Abram doesn't hold it against him.  He's risking life and limb and his own men to go rescue this nephew, this wayward nephew.  And so, notice his gracious spirit toward this nephew.  Notice also Abram's courage and leadership.  A relatively small force.  Now, it says they were trained men, but a relatively small force going after an undefeated army of four kings.  Incredible courage.  Incredible boldness.  Notice also Abram's skill as a general.

The incredible boldness and initiative, the nighttime attack, the division, the tactics, the division of the men in the middle of the night into groups, the surprise factor.  You could probably study this at West Point and see some of the techniques that Abram the general used.  And notice also then how beautifully as you put all this together, Abram stands as a type or portrait of Jesus Christ.  You know, Jesus Christ rescued us, it says in Colossians 1:13, from the dominion of darkness and brought us over into his own kingdom.  He in effect came over or went through the walls of the devil's kingdom, and he rescued, he plundered us.  Now, Jesus talked about this contest in Luke 11:21-22.  He said, "When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe.  But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils.”  Jesus is the second one.  He comes and takes away from the devil what the devil thought was his, namely you and me.  Colossians 1:13 says, "For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves."  It also says in Galatians 1:4, Jesus Christ, “who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age."  And so, he rescues us.  Jesus, a portrait of Jesus here in Abram.

Listen to what Charles Spurgeon said, I think this is so beautiful.  "What a splendid type is Abram, in the narrative before us, of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Let us read this story of Abram in connection with our Savior, and see how full of meaning it is.  Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the abundance of his love, had taken us to be his brothers, but we, through our sin, had moved into the land of Sodom, and Jesus Christ dwelt alone in his safety and his happiness, enjoying the presence of God.  The hosts of our enemies, with terrible force and cruel fury, carried us away as captives.  We were violently borne away with all the goods which we possessed, into a land of forgetfulness and captivity forever.  Christ, who had lost nothing by this, nevertheless being a brother born for adversity, pursued our haughty foes.  He overtook them, he smote them with his mighty hand, he took their spoil, and returned with crimsoned clothing, leading captivity captive.  He restored that which he took not away.  Abram was that righteous man raised in the East, to whom God gave his enemies as driven stubble to his bow, and so the Lord Jesus has driven our enemies like chaff over to the wind, for they fled at the presence of Jehovah Jesus, and by the valor of the atoning Lamb they have been utterly broken in pieces forever."  Amen and amen.

Jesus is a conqueror.  He is a mighty King, and he came after us to rescue us.  So, also, Abram did for Lot.  Notice also God's commitment to rescue his own.  He's going to, in the account in Genesis, rescue Lot twice.  First through Abram, this military rescue, and then second through the two angels that he sends to rescue Lot from the real danger, namely the wrath of God about to be poured out on Sodom and Gomorrah.  And so, we see that God has a total commitment to rescue his own and to get them out from danger.  The great grief to me in this story and you really have to read between the lines to get it, is what in the world did Lot do, moving back to Sodom after the first rescue?  See how stubborn our hearts are, how much we love to live in Sodom, and how he should have taken some good advice and gotten back with his Uncle Abram at that point, but instead, he goes back to Sodom for more and God has to send the two angels and rescue him later.  Oh, how wicked and wayward are our hearts, and we don't take the escape that God gives to us.

And so, Abram goes out, he goes out boldly, he goes out courageously.  It says in Proverbs 28:1, "The wicked man flees though no one pursues, the righteous are as bold as a lion."  Why was Abraham so bold?  Well, he had a promise from God, "I will make you into a great nation."  That kind of makes you immortal until it happens, right?  And so, he's like, nothing is going to happen to me.  And it also said in Genesis 12, "I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse."  And so, let's get 318 guys, which may even be too many for this job, 318 guys and go take on four kings with an undefeated army, and we are going to win.    Note the boldness and the courage of Abram as he trusts in God's word and goes out and rescues.

Now, what did it cost Abram?  Well, in the end, it didn't cost him anything.  It could have gained him a lot of wealth.  But what did it cost Jesus to rescue you from your captor?  It cost him his very life.  He had to pour out his lifeblood on the cross to rescue you from sin and death, and from the accusing law which stood over against you to condemn you.  He had to give his own life to rescue you.  It says in Matthew 20:28, "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."  That was the price for him, that's what he paid.  Far more expensive than what Abram paid in his type, or his picture of Christ, to rescue Lot.

Now, this image or picture of Christ as a conquering king who comes to rescue his own will only be fulfilled in the future in Revelation 19, when the heavens will be open, and Jesus leads the armies, the legions of heaven on a white horse, it says in Revelation 19, "He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords,” and he will return to earth as a mighty conqueror, not riding humbly on a donkey as he did the first time, but coming in a military fashion to conquer and to destroy and to rescue his own.  And so, this image, this type, awaits its final and complete fulfillment when Jesus returns to the earth a second time.

One final note concerning this aspect here, and that's Abram's faith-filled pledge to the king of Sodom.  Verses 17, 21-24, look at it with me.  "After Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the valley of Shaveh (that is, the King's Valley).”  Verse 21 and following, "The king of Sodom said to Abram, ‘Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself.’"  Tempting offer, a tempting offer.  "But Abram said to the king of Sodom, ‘I have raised my hand to the Lord, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, and have taken an oath that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the thong of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, “I made Abram rich.”  I will accept nothing but what my men have eaten and the share that belongs to the men who went with me −to Aner, Eshcol and Mamre.  Let them have their share.’" 

But for himself, he takes nothing.  He does not want their stuff.  It doesn't hold any attraction to him.  And why?  Because the love of the world is adultery against God.  For everything in the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, the stuff of Sodom, he has no interest in that.  "The world and its desires pass away," 1 John 2:17 tells us, ". . . but the man who does the will of God lives forever."  I don't think it's an accident that the very next verse after that is Genesis 15:1, look at it.  "After this," right after this, it says, "the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: ‘Do not be afraid, Abram.  I am your shield, your very great reward.’"  You don't need the stuff of Sodom, you are going to get something better, you are going to get me.  I will be your very great reward.  It's an incredible promise from God, and that is exactly what Abram wants, God and God alone, that's all he wants.  And so, we see a beautiful portrait or a picture of Christ in Abram, the conqueror.

We also have a mysterious portrait of Christ in this man Melchizedek, and we get just a brief mention of him here.  But look at Verses 18-20, "Then Melchizedek King of Salem brought out bread and wine.  He was a priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying, ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.  And blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.’  Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything." 

Now, who was this man?  Well, his name “Melchizedek” literally means king of righteousness.  His city was Salem, or Jerusalem.  So, he's the king of Salem, or the king of Jerusalem.  Now, the word Salem is the Hebrew word for peace.  So, he's the king of righteousness, and he's the king of peace.  He's the king of Jerusalem.  Now, it's a little bit of an ironic name, Salem.  Peace.  Is Jerusalem a city of peace today?  How long has Jerusalem not been a city of peace?  David conquered it from the Jebusites, and then Nebuchadnezzar conquered it from the Jews.  And then Cyrus the Great conquered it from the Greeks for the Persians, and then Alexander conquered it, and then the Romans conquered it, and then the Muslims conquered it from the Byzantine Empire.  And then the Crusaders came and tried to conquer it and got it for a little while, but the Muslims took it back until World War I when the British conquered the Ottoman Turks.  And then in 1948, during the partition of Israel, Jerusalem was set up to be a Muslim/Christian/Jewish city, and it's been nothing but trouble ever since.  Hardly the city of peace.

Jesus himself spoke about this in Luke 19:42, "As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace −but now it is hidden from your eyes.  The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side.  They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls.  They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.’"  Jesus alone is the peace of Jerusalem, and it will have no peace until they recognize Jesus as their Savior.

But here is Melchizedek, he's the king of Salem, the king of righteousness.  And it's interesting because he is both a priest and a king.  It says he was a priest of God Most High.  He is a king, king of the city-state of Salem, and he is also the priest of God Most High.  

Well, what did he do?  Well, first he brought out bread and wine.  Why did he do that?  Our Catholic friends would say this is a precursor of the Lord's supper.  I don't really find the Lord's Supper here, even though the name Melchizedek is mentioned every Sunday at mass.  When I was growing up as an altar boy, I wondered who Melchizedek was.  It wasn't until after I came to Christ and read the Book of Hebrews that I learned who Melchizedek was.  But he brings out bread and wine to refresh Abraham and his troops.  That's all.  It's not a precursor of the Lord's Supper.

But also, it says he blessed Abram.  "Blessed be Abram by God Most High” and he blessed him with authority."  There's a sense of his authority even over Abraham or Abram, and he received a tithe, or a tenth, of Abram's plunder.  Now, we wouldn't know much about Melchizedek if it weren't for two other scriptures:  Psalm 110 and Hebrews 7.  Look with me at Psalm 110 for a moment.  Psalm 110.  Psalm 110 is a messianic Psalm, a prediction written by David.  Jesus quoted it in Matthew 22 and said that David was speaking by the spirit in Psalm 110, and he was writing about Christ.  Now, look just with me, if you would, at Psalm 110: 1-4.  It was read earlier, Eric read it, but look with me if you would.  Psalm 110:1-4.  It says, "The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’  The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion; you will rule in the midst of your enemies.  Your troops will be willing on the day of your battle.  Arrayed in holy majesty, from the womb of the dawn you will receive the dew of your youth."

Now, verses 2 and 3 speak of a mighty scepter, of a conquering king coming forth from Zion.  This is the kingship of the Messiah, and he will be a king.  He's the son of David, he's the lion of the tribe of Judah.  And it says in Genesis 49:10, "The scepter will not depart from Judah . . .  . . .until he comes to whom it belongs. . .”  And so, Jesus will be from the tribe of Judah and He will hold the scepter, for He is the son of David.  But He is greater than David because David calls him Lord.  "The Lord said to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’"

So, here's the king of Judah, he is the king of Zion, a picture of a king.  But then out of nowhere in Psalms 110, Verse 4 it says, "The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’"  So here you have a king from the tribe of Judah, a descendant from David, the son of David, and He is a ruler, He's got the scepter in his hand, and yet He is sworn, God swears to him a promise and an oath, "You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek."  Well, for us, that's not a problem because we're not Old Covenant people, but back then there was a strong division between the priesthood and the kingship.  The kingships were from the line of David, from Judah.  It was from Judah that the scepter would never depart.  Judah.  But meanwhile, the priesthood is a Levitical priesthood.  From the priests, they were all of the Levites, and there could be no mixture of the two.  Indeed, any kings from the line of Judah who tried to be priests received the curse of God like leprosy in one case.  There could be no mixture of the two under the Old Covenant.

But he says, "You're not a priest in the order of Levi or Aaron.  You're a priest in the order of Melchizedek."  And Melchizedek from Genesis 14 was both king and priest, and the two were together and there's no division between the two.  And so, this is the picture of Jesus.  The kingly power of the Messiah, and also, the priestly ministry of Melchizedek.  

Now, look over at Hebrews 7, and we'll see the full understanding of this.  Take a minute and look at Hebrews 7.  In Hebrews 7, the author of Hebrews unfolds the mysteries of this issue of Melchizedek.  

Look at Hebrews 7:1-4.  "This Melchizedek" it says, "was King of Salem and priest of God Most High.  He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything.  First, his name means ‘king of righteousness;’ then also, ‘king of Salem’ means ‘king of Peace.’"  Verse 3, "Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, like the Son of God he remains a priest forever.  Just think how great he was:  Even the patriarch, Abraham, gave him a tenth of the plunder!” 

So, Melchizedek is a picture of Christ, a type of Christ.  He is a priest and a king, and so was Christ.  The name “King of Righteousness” will only be fulfilled perfectly in Jesus Christ.  The name “King of Peace” is only fulfilled perfectly in Jesus Christ.  The symbolic eternal origins.  It says, "Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days" that's only fulfilled in the eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ.  His symbolic eternal priesthood, in that he never dies, Melchizedek never dies in the Scripture, is only symbolic but fulfilled ultimately in Jesus Christ.  "Whoever lives," it says, "To make intercession for you and me."  He is higher in rank than Abram, therefore Abram gives him a tenth of everything.  He rules over him, and that is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  As Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing Jesus' day, he saw it and was glad.  And so, we have a glorious composite portrait of Christ.   

Jesus Christ, the perfect king and also the perfect priest.

Now, the question comes, was Jesus actually or was Melchizedek pre-incarnate Christ?  Was this really Jesus showing up here?  Some scholars think so, but I don't.  Notice that it says in Hebrews 7, "like the son of God, he remains a priest forever."  Well, what would you be comparing?  It would be Jesus like Jesus and it doesn't make any sense.  Therefore, I think Melchizedek was really a man, really a king, he really lived, he was flesh and blood, he had a life, he was a king of Salem, he was also priest of God Most High, and he came out physically and blessed Abram.  But there is in his life a portrait of Jesus, the priest-king.  

Now, what is the theological significance of this?  Well, first of all, the superiority of Christ and the New Covenant to the Old.  We live in the New Covenant, and therefore we don't have to bring animal sacrifices, we don't have to pour out blood on altars, we have a New Covenant, and Jesus is the priest and the mediator of a superior New Covenant.  And as a result of that, as Eric did earlier, we have an invitation to come right to the throne of grace and receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.  The Old Covenant told you to stay away.  Barriers.  You couldn't get into the Holy of Holies.  You couldn't draw near.  But the New Covenant says it's wide open. 

In the body of Jesus, we have a new and living way open for us right into the very presence of God.  And what do we find when we get there?  We find a merciful and faithful high priest who became a man and was tempted in every way, just as we are.  Yet, He never sinned.  And therefore, when you're tempted, when you are weak, when you are struggling in your Christian life, you go to the throne of grace and say, “Oh, merciful, faithful high priest, help me.  I'm struggling.”  And if you've already sinned and you wonder, “Can God ever forgive me?”  You come to the throne of grace and you receive full cleansing through the blood of Christ, far superior to anything the Old Covenant could ever do.  We have opened up for us a priestly ministry through Jesus Christ, and he invites us, and he offers the perfect sacrifice once for all, his own blood shed on the cross, and he stands at the right hand of God and is constantly speaking into his Father's ear on your behalf.  And oh, does the Father love the Son.  And on the basis of that, you are forgiven and protected, and you'll be brought ultimately into the very presence of God. 

Now, what kind of application can we take from Genesis 14?  Well, first of all, worship Christ, honor him.  It says in Philippians 3:3, We are those “who worship by the Spirit of God” who boast or “glory in Christ."  Boast in Christ.  Jesus rescued you from your captors.  Far more powerful than Kedorlaomer was Satan over you.  Far more powerful than Kedorlaomer was sin and death.  Could you ever have wriggled yourself free from them?  No.  Death stands like an undefeatable enemy, and it mocks everything you do if it's not for Jesus.  But Jesus comes and rescues you from death, He rescues you from sins, so honor him, worship him, give Him thanks today for your salvation.

But don't forget that He's a king.  Melchizedek is a priest king; He is a king.  Jesus is Melchizedek's king.  He is the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords.  And before him, every knee will bow.  And so, bow your knee to Jesus the King.  Could it be that, speaking in the language of Genesis 14, you are like Lot and little by little getting sucked towards Sodom?  What's going on in your life?  What are you watching?  What entertains you?  How do you spend your time?  Are you enamored with this world?  Would it be hard for you to give it up?  Are you kind of acting more like Lot or like Abram, a man of faith who saw through it all and raised his hand and said, I took an oath.  I'm not taking anything from you.  I don't want anything from you.  And if you find the Lot principle inside you getting sucked toward the world more and more, then come near to the throne of grace and say, "Lord, rescue me."  That's what he came for, to deliver you from sin and bring you close.  And trust in your eternal high priest.

His priestly ministry is perfect, he pleads his own blood.  The Father is open-hearted toward hearing the intercession, it will not fail, and he will not stop pleading for you that your faith will not fail until the day he sees you face-to-face and until the day you receive your resurrection body perfected in him.  So, trust in him, your High Priest.  If you're feeling right now because of your sinfulness or things that you've done, that you're separated from God, you are far from Him, then come close, confess the sin.  He's inviting you to come close.  He's saying, “Just as I am, without one plea, I come to you, Lord.”  We come close to him.  Then come.  Don't try to rid yourself of one dark blot, but let him do it and cleanse you.

And then finally, look at the courage of Abram.  It may be that you don't have a sin problem, you're not feeling distant from God, you're walking with Him, but are you being courageous in your life?  When was the last time you got scared for Jesus?  When was the last time you went out on a night attack for the Kingdom of God?  Are you doing anything that calls for valor and courage and boldness?  Let me speak especially to you fathers on Fathers' Day.  How are you modeling courage to your sons and daughters?  How are you a man, standing firm like Abraham did when he said, “Let's go get him.”  Are you displaying courage?  Are you bold in evangelism?  Are you bold in putting sin to death in your own life?  Are you bold at the workplace to stand up for Christ?  Are you bold like Abraham was?  Remember, the wicked flee though no one pursue, but the righteous are bold as a lion.

Please open your Bibles to Genesis 13.  We are looking at this chapter that has already been read for you this morning, and continuing in our study in the Book of Genesis.  As we come to Genesis 13, we come to a story of human conflict and we also come to the beginning of a contrast.  So, I look at this as a chapter of conflict and of contrast.  I was reading recently about a tragedy that happened in the summer of 1986.  Two ships collided in the Black Sea and sank, both of them, bringing hundreds of passengers to the cold depths with them. This is a great tragedy in any case, but it became even more bitter when the cause of the tragedy of the two ships crashing together became known.  It turned out that each of the two captains knew of the presence and the direction of the other ship, but neither one was willing to divert their course.  And so, they continued steaming toward one another, charging the other to turn, until it was too late to stop the momentum of the ships, and they crashed into each other and both sank.

Now, you might say, "What kind of stubbornness would result in this kind of a tragedy?"  But all you have to do is look in your own heart and realize how much each of us plays the role of one of those ship captains from time to time.  How we are unwilling to divert our course even if it brings suffering and tragedy to ourselves or our family, because we're just not willing to turn, we're not willing to yield, we're not willing to avoid the conflict for the sake of the relationship.  I think as we come to Genesis 13, we see the way not to do a conflict on the one part, and then the way by Abraham's faith that a conflict can be avoided and by faith, overcome.  I think we have a wonderful role model and example for us through the faith of Abram.  We also see in this, I think, the beginning of a contrast, and it's not a major theme in these chapters in Genesis, but it's there.  It's the contrast between the faithlessness of Lot and the outcome of his life, and the faithfulness of Abram, and this is a constant theme in scripture.

In 1986, when I was on route to a mission trip I was taking in Kenya, I had the opportunity to visit one of the old diamond houses there in Amsterdam with some friends of mine and we wanted to look at some diamonds.  It was unforgettable.  I remember they served us ginger ale in goblets and all this kind of thing, and it was all very classy, and that's the way we spent our 20 hours in Amsterdam.  It was a very exciting time.  I remember that the salesman as he was bringing out the diamonds, first laid down a black velvet cloth and then sprinkled the diamonds onto the cloth, and the black velvet behind the glistening diamonds provided the perfect backdrop so that the diamonds could catch the light and by contrast, display their characteristics.  And so, we see this again and again in scripture, how God will lay out the blackness of someone's sin and of their character, and then contrast it with the faith and the obedience and the love of someone else.  So, by contrast, you can see what God wants you to see.

Later in Genesis, you will see, for example, the contrast of the bickering selfishness of the sons of Jacob and the character of Joseph, as he stands under the plan of God and is willing to take anything that God sends his way.  His arm staying limber to the service of God.  Or, you could see, for example, the craven disobedience of King Saul against the man after God's own heart, David, as he was willing to obey God, no matter what God said.  Probably best of all, you see this in John 18, the contrast between Peter and his repeated denials of Jesus, and Jesus, the sublime King who is in control of everything and who is totally courageous at every moment.  The narrative is interwoven there in John 18 and 19, the faithlessness and cowardice of Peter, and the courage, boldness and the love of Jesus Christ.  I think we see the same thing here in Genesis 13, by contrast.  We see the faith-filled example of Abram and the faithless choice of Lot.

Now, what's the context here?  As we look in Verses 1 through 4, I see a story of restoration, of Abram's spiritual restoration.  It says in Verses 1-4, "So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, with his wife and everything he had, and Lot went with him.  Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold.  From the Negev, he went from place to place until he came to Bethel, to the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier and where he had first built an altar.  There Abram called on the name of the Lord."

Now, Abram's sojourn in Egypt had been a spiritual disaster.  A spiritual disaster.  It was prompted, I believe, in my reading of the text, by his lack of faith in leaving the Promised Land, to begin with.  Remember that God had called Abram to leave his country and his people and his father's household, and go to the land that God would show him.  And so, Abram, by faith, left Ur of the Chaldees and then later, by faith, left Haran and eventually ended up in the Promised Land.  There God spoke to him and said in Chapter 12, Verse 7, “To your offspring I will give this land.”  And so basically, spiritually, you've come home.  This is the Promised Land.  Well, we see no word of command from God in the text to leave the Promised Land when the famine got severe.  Look at Verse 10 of Chapter 12.  It says, "Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe."

Well, was that reason though to leave the Promised Land?  Was that reason to turn his back on God and to believe that God could not provide for him?  Was there any spiritual order from God to leave the Promised Land now and go down to Egypt?  I don't think so.  Could not the God who created heaven and earth have provided for Abram and for his household in the Promised Land, even despite the famine?  Now, later on, once Abram's faith has been so sharpened and developed through all of these experiences, when his little son Isaac says to him, "Here's wood and fire, but where is the sacrifice?"  You remember what Abram said at that point?  "God will provide the sacrifice, my son."  So, he's reached a different level at that point, but his faith wasn't there.  He could have said God will provide food here in the Promised Land, but he didn't.  And so, not by faith, but by lack of faith, he left the Promised Land and went to Egypt, and it was nothing but a disaster.  It was lack of faith that prompted Abram at that point to say to Sarai in Chapter 12, Verse 13, "Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”

The whole thing is so craven and cowardly.  It doesn't seem befitting a man of Abram's spiritual stature.  And, it was lack of faith in God that led Abram immediately into spiritual or physical trouble with Pharaoh.  He really had to escape Egypt with his life, it seems, he's evicted almost from the country.  The whole thing had been a faithless exercise and a spiritual disaster but the beautiful thing is, where we are faithless, God will remain faithful.  It says in 2 Timothy 2:13, "For he cannot disown himself."  How many of us count on that, for God to be faithful even when we are faithless?  That really is the story of my salvation and yours as well.  A faithful God who never forgets what He's about, and who continues to work with sinners like us, even when we make great mistakes and commit sins.  And so, this has been a spiritual disaster.  

As Abram comes out of Egypt, he's bringing some baggage with him.  He's bringing some baggage with him.  Abram is literally heavy with wealth.  Look at Verse 2, it says, "Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold."  Now, the Hebrew literally is heavy, heavy with wealth.  Gold, for example, is among the densest metals known to man.  I calculated this out if my Bible here, which I'm lifting with one hand, if it were made of gold, it would weigh 42 pounds.  Forty-two pounds.  A 42-pound Bible, how would you like that?

Or this podium here, I calculated this out, you wonder when I have time for this, and I really don't, but as you're looking this podium would be well over a ton if it were made of gold.  And here is Abram coming out of Egypt, heavy with wealth.  Well, it's one thing if you have a house with a foundation and you don't have to move much to be heavy with wealth.  It has its own problems.  But here is Abram traveling about in tents by camels, I guess, going from place to place.  Wealth can be a crushing burden and can be a big problem as much as a blessing.  John Lippett said, "I've been more bossed by my fortune than I've bossed it."  I love that quote.  Sometimes the wealth can be in charge of you rather than you in charge of the wealth.  God sometimes does permit godly people to become wealthy.  It does happen, but even then, it's a great burden and it comes with a warning.  In 1 Timothy 6:17, it says, "Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment."  And so, that's a command and a warning in 1 Timothy 6, concerning wealth. 

Matthew Henry said this about this account in Genesis 13.  It says, "Abram was very heavy, so the Hebrew word signifies; for riches are a burden, and those that will be rich do but load themselves with thick clay.  There is a burden of care in getting wealth, fear in keeping wealth, temptation in using wealth, guilt in abusing wealth, and sorrow in losing wealth, and a burden of giving an account at the end on Judgment Day concerning the wealth.  Great possessions do but make men heavy and unwieldy.  Abram was not only rich in faith and good works, and in the promises, but he was rich in cattle, and in silver and gold."  Now, Henry goes on to say that God does sometimes in His Providence make good men wealthy for His own reasons, and it is a blessing.  But, it is also a burden that he carried with him from Egypt.  Soon this wealth and Lot's together will be the cause of their parting ways.  If you look at Verses 6 and 7, it says, "But the land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to stay together.  And quarreling arose between Abram's herdsmen and the herdsmen of Lot.  The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land at that time."

Because of their wealth and because of all of their possessions, they were not able to stay together, we'll say more on this in a moment.  So, Abram has gone through a spiritual disaster.  He's gone down on that sojourn to Egypt; it turned out terribly.  He comes back burdened with additional wealth, but he does the right thing.  He goes back to his spiritual roots.  He knows that he needs restoration.  He needs spiritual renewal and refreshment.  Abram needed his soul restored, and the text stresses this in a number of ways.  Look at Verse 3 again, "From the Negev he went from place to place until he came to Bethel."  Now, the word Bethel means literally, House of God.  House of God.  So, he came to Bethel, the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier.  This is harkening back to the earlier days of his time in the Promised Land, and the text does this on purpose.  He's returning to his roots; he's going back to where he started.  In Verse 4, it says, "where he had first built an altar."  That's very important.  That was the place where he called on the name of the Lord after he had received the promise of receiving the Promised Land.  He built an altar and he lifted up holy hands in prayer to God, and his faith was strong then, but now it's not.  Sin has brought him low, he's weak spiritually, and he needs to go back and start over again.

And aren't you glad God lets you do it?  Aren't you glad that He restores you and doesn't cast you off?  I praise God for that.  And so, he does the right thing, he doesn't give up on his walk with God, he doesn't give up on the promise, but he goes back and he looks to his roots.  He looks to his spiritual foundation.  He goes back to where he had first built an altar and there it says, "Abram called on the name of the Lord."  The fact of the matter is, in our sojourning with Jesus here in this world, every day is not sweeter than the day before.  Sometimes we get ourselves into spiritual deserts through sin and through bad choices like Abram, and we need to be renewed and restored.  It says in Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters."  And what's the next part?  "…he restores my soul.  He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake."  And that's exactly what's going on here in Genesis 13.  Abram's soul and his vision are being restored by God.  He's being renewed.  Now, it could be that that is what you need today.  I have no idea what's going on in your life.  I have no idea what spiritual state you came in through the doors with today.  I don't know what you did last week, over the last few months.

I don't know if your quiet times have been what you want them to be.  I don't know if your moment-by-moment walking in your obedience is where you think it should be.  But perhaps you, like Abram, need to be restored, you need your vision renewed of why it is you're even here in this world.  Go back to your roots.  For Abram, that meant going back to a physical place.  Going back to a physical place.  Now, realize God is omnipresent, but yet at the same time, there are certain places that are spiritually significant.  Like when God spoke to Moses in Exodus 3:5, and said, "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground."  And later on, and I believe another Bethel, God spoke to Jacob, that's where he had his vision, at Luz, it says, of a ladder reaching up to heaven and angels ascending and descending.  And Jacob awoke from his dream and in Genesis 28:16-17 he said, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.   . . . This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”  And so, he went back, Abram did, to the place where he had his vision and where he had called on the name of the Lord, and he was restored.  And he called on the name of the Lord.

This is more than simply prayer.  It really has to do with a faith-filled, crying out to God, the God of history, the God who's done all of this up to this point, whatever that point is in redemptive history.  The God whose reputation has been built through creation and through the flood of Noah at that point, and through His very call from Ur of the Chaldees, that God, he called on His name.  We have a far better understanding of the name of the Lord, don't we?  We have a far greater history of redemption and revelation, and we call on the name of the Lord, and this very phrase is the one that Paul picks out and that Peter did at Pentecost and that Joel did to say how we get saved.  For it says in Romans 10:13, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."  And so, it's simply by calling out to God, the God of Abram, Isaac, and Jacob, I say the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God who sent Christ in the world to die on the cross, calling on His name, saves our soul.  And that's what Abram did.  And we don't do it just one time, I believe once saved, always saved, and I know about walking the aisle and praying the prayer and all that, but we call on the name of the Lord all the time, don't we?  We keep calling and we keep calling and we trust.  And Abram went back and called again.  He resumed calling on the name of the Lord.

Now, in Verses 5-13, we see the conflict coming and the contrast.  Abram has been restored, he's been renewed in his walk with God, he's returned to his spiritual roots, he's healthy and strong again.  And now it's time for a conflict.  That's just the way it is, isn't it?  Just when you're getting back on your feet the next trouble comes, but by faith, you can overcome them all, by faith, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us, and Abram carries himself so beautifully through this conflict.  He does so well.  The conflict comes as a result of their wealth, as we've already seen, it started with a conflict between the servants who are watching the flocks and herds.  I think it had to do with grazing and with water, and there were only so many of these resources because the Canaanites and Perizzites are still in the land at that point.  They are getting squeezed for grazing rights.  I love history and I love reading about the history of the American West, and I've been reading a book recently about that.  During the great cattle drives going up from Texas, up north so that the meat could be distributed throughout the country, the cattle herdsmen constantly got into land battles with the homesteaders, and literally, they became almost shooting wars that would happen between the cattlemen and the homesteaders.

It's just a bloody chapter of our history and not well known.  Eventually, they had to make corridors with fences so that the cattle could go on and keep them away from the homesteads. You could see the passion that would arise over these kinds of things, the anger and frustration, and I think at a different level, perhaps that's what's going on between the herdsmen of Abram and Lot.  They are having constant conflicts over where the cattle get to graze and the water, this was life, the wells were life.  Throughout the Book of Genesis, there are struggles over wells and who dug them and who had the right to drink from them, and I think that's what was going on here.  What was the cost of their conflict?  Well, realize, God said to Abram from the beginning in Genesis 12:3, "I will bless those who bless you."  So, Abram is a missionary.

That whole sojourn in Egypt was a spiritual disaster, because what kind of missionary can you be as a con artist and a liar, we need to be restored so we can get away from that.  And now, what kind of witness is it that you're arguing with your family and you can't find a place to graze your cattle, you can't get along, and so their testimony is greatly hindered by this conflict.  Remember the Book of Philippians, way back when.  Philippians 2:14-16 says, "Do everything without complaining or . . ." What?  "Arguing."  Some of you memorized that verse and said, it's one of the hardest verses of your life.  Working on it, some days you do well on the complaining but not the arguing.  Some days better on the arguing and not on the complaining.  Some days better or neither.  But it's a struggle.  Do everything without complaining or arguing, and why?  "So that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life." 

Well, what kind of star were they as they were arguing and having conflicts?  How could they hold out the word of life to the Canaanites and Perizzites as long as they were having this conflict, and so we see Abram, his faith-filled example of peacemaking.  Actually, truth be told, Abram never did argue in this account.  It was the herdsmen that were having conflicts and it went right up to the top, and so Abram and Lot met together to try to resolve it.  Abram gives us an excellent answer of how to end a conflict.  Look at Verse 8, it says, “So Abram said to Lot, ‘Let's not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers.  Is not the whole land before you?  Let's part company.  If you go to the left, I'll go to the right; if you go to the right, I'll go to the left.’”  Now, when I was a child and we were arguing over the last piece of cake, we were told that one person would cut it and the other would get to choose, you see, and that way, there is no conflict.

Never has been a cake cut so perfectly as were cut in those days, it's incredible how accurate the cutting can be.  Well, why not try this?  Why not just cut it however and say, you take the biggest piece, I want you to have what's best.  That's about what Abram does here, he says, “Whatever you want.  You go ahead and I'll take what's left.  I'll take what's left.”  It says in Proverbs 15:1, “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”  If ever there was a marriage verse, that's a good one.  Okay.  A gentle answer turns away wrath.  So why should there be conflict between you and me.  Well, there shouldn't be disagreements.  “Tell you what, you choose, you go your way, you take whatever you want and we'll take the rest, and don't worry about it.”  We see his humility, but I think behind it is faith, because you know why?  He's going to get it anyway.

Abram's going to get it anyway, God already promised him he was going to get it.  So why should there be a conflict?  “I'm going to get it anyway.  And, if you stay with me, you're going to get it too.”  And so, I can just let go.  I don't have to have a conflict, you know, there was a problem in the Book of Corinthians, in which the Corinthians were arguing with each other and having divisions and in factions, and even some were suing the others, taking them to court.  And Paul says, “Why not rather be wronged?”  It's a shameful thing for a Christian brother to be in court with another Christian brother, and that the one is suing the other, it's wickedness.  What will the pagans think?  Why not rather be wronged?  “Why not rather be cheated” than to take somebody to court.  But he said earlier in 1 Corinthians 3:21, “. . .no more boasting about men!  All things are yours . . .”  You are going to get it anyway.  So let it go.  No more white-knuckled holding on to something earthly.  It doesn't matter.  Let it go.  I think Abram's faith was behind his generosity.  We see also his incredible humility here.  He says, “We're brothers.”  Lot was his nephew and Abram, his uncle, but he calls him a brother.  He says, “We are brothers together.”  There's a humility here that's very disarming and I think very attractive.

I was reading a story recently about Booker T. Washington, who was a renowned Black educator, a very powerful and strong educator and an important man.  Shortly after he took over the presidency of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, he was walking in a wealthy section of town and a White woman stopped him, and not knowing the famous Mr. Washington by sight, asked him if he would be willing to earn a few dollars by chopping some wood.  He said, well, certainly, and took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and began to do the humble task, and when he had finished, he stacked up the wood, did a great job, and took his pay.  Well, as he was doing that, he was recognized by a young girl in the house who told the wealthy lady who this man was after he had left.  She was absolutely humiliated by this and went and visited him at his office the next day, and came in and said, she was very, very sorry.  He said this, "Don't worry about it, don't worry.  I always like to get a little exercise anyway.  Besides which, it's always good to do something to help a friend.”  It was a very gentle and humble answer.  The lady went home, organized some of her wealthiest friends and gave thousands and thousands of dollars to the Tuskegee Institute as a result of his humility.

If he had carried himself like a king and said, "Don't you know who I am, I don't chop wood," etcetera, none of those good things would have happened, but he built a friendship and the Tuskegee Institute was blessed by his humility.  And, we see the same thing, I think, in Abram.  The sacrificial generosity, is not the whole land before you.  Let's part company.  If you go to the left, I'll go to the right, and if you go to the right, I'll go to the left.  Well, Lot at that point made his choice.  Imagine Lot standing up on that ridge and looking down and saying, “Okay, that's a good deal, so I get to choose first, wherever whatever I want.  Alright, let me go do it then.”  So, he looks down.

Look at Verse 10, it says, “Lot looked up and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, toward Zoar.  (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.)  So, Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east.  The two men parted company.  Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom,” is what it says.  Verse 13 says, “Now the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord.”  A. W. Pink in his comment on this text, made much of Lot's eyes.  See Lot looked up and saw that the land was watered, and he made a sensual choice, he made a choice based on sense, based on sight, but we walk by faith, the scripture says, not by sight.  And so, Lot looked down and saw only what he wanted to see, namely that it was lush and green, and I believe Lot probably at that point had caught a kind of virus from Egypt, the desire for a comfortable and easy affluent life, it's a spiritual virus that he's caught, and so he's led by his eyes there.

And this is the beginning of a decline or a descent for Lot, that will end up in incredible shame.  I mean, it's a long, long way down.  He looks down and he sees the land and sees that it's lush, but there are some things he cannot see.  For example, he cannot see the true spiritual condition of Sodom, he can't see what's going on there.  We get some hints in the text concerning God's feelings toward Sodom.  Look at Verse 10, “the land was well watered,” it says, but this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.  That's a bit of a warning, isn't it?  There's kind of a heaviness, like a sword of Damocles hanging over Sodom and Gomorrah, this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.  But Lot couldn't see that when he looked down at the plain, he did not see their great wickedness in the sight of God.  Look at Verse 13, “Now the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord.”

Allow me to paraphrase, Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and apply it to this situation.  There were black clouds of God's wrath now hanging directly over the heads of the Sodomites, full of the dreadful storm and big with thunder.  Had it not been for the restraining hand of God, it would have immediately burst forth upon Sodom.  The sovereign pleasure of God at that moment in history was staying his rough wind, otherwise it would have come with fury, and Sodom's destruction would have come like a whirlwind, and the Sodomites would have been like the chaff of the summer threshing floor.  The wrath of God was like great waters that had been dammed for the present, they increased more and more and rose higher and higher until an outlet was given at last.  The longer the stream was stopped, the more rapid and mighty was its course, when once it was let loose.  The floods of God's vengeance had been withheld, but Sodom's guilt was in the meantime, constantly increasing, and every day they were storing up more and more wrath.  The waters were constantly rising and waxing more and more mightily, and there was nothing but the mere pleasure of God that held the waters back, that were unwilling to be stopped and pressed hard to go forward.  If only God had withdrawn his hand from the flood gate, it would have immediately flown open the fiery floods of fierceness, and the wrath of God would have rushed forth with inconceivable fury and come upon Sodom with omnipotent power, and if the strength of each Sodomite was 10,000 times greater than it was, yes, 10,000 times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would have been nothing to withstand or endure.  The bow of God's wrath was bent and the arrow was made ready on the string and justice bent the arrow directly at Sodom's heart and strained the bow, and it was nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that kept the arrow one moment from being made drunk with Sodom's blood.  Jonathan Edwards reply applied to Sodom, and that's exactly what Lot could not see.  The wrath was coming.  Why live there?  What else could Lot not see?  He couldn't see the future, he couldn't see what would happen to his own heart by living there, the future cost of Lot's faithless choice, a gradual corruption enticed little by little by the life of Sodom.  At first, he saw it from afar, standing up there on the ridge, and he didn't see anything, all he sees is well-watered plain land where he can go down with his flocks and herds and be away from Abram and away from the conflict.  That's what he sees initially.  Then the text says he pitched his tents in the direction of Sodom, you see he is closer now, he's living, but he's not in Sodom yet, he's just moving in that direction.

And then in Chapter 14, the next account, he's abducted along with the other Sodomites and taken away by Kedorlaomer, and he has got to be rescued by Abram, and Abram does rescue him, but then. . .  Already knowing what the people were like, he chose to go back and live there some more.  The next time we see him, he is actually living in the city and seems to have a job as the gatekeeper or some kind of local city official.  The people know his righteous commitments and stand because he says, he is this foreigner come to judge us, so he's probably already said, “Hey, you shouldn't do this,” or “You. . .”  But it's not very strong.  He is getting watered down, he's getting weakened, his wife became totally enamored with the life in Sodom and could not bear to leave, and despite the angels warning, "Don't look back at the city," she looked and was turned into a pillar of salt.  And so, Jesus said, “Remember, Lot's wife.”

Lot's sons-in-law had absolutely no intention of leaving Sodom when the angels came.  No intention whatsoever.  They stayed there.  They mocked him and ridiculed him.  And so, they stayed in and perished.  Lot's daughters came with him though, with great reluctance, and they fled.  He ends up in a cave with his daughters.  I think they thought the entire world had been destroyed, and he ends up getting them pregnant after he got drunk.  He didn't know what he was doing.  It's one of the most shameful and despicable stories in the whole Bible and it began at that moment when Lot was just standing up there on the ridge looking down over the plain, and it looked good to him, and he figured he would travel there and see what it was like.  And yet, Lot is a story of God's redemption as well.  Frankly, if it weren't for 2nd Peter, I wouldn't know anything good to say about Lot, but it does say in 2nd Peter that Lot was a righteous man who was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard, and God sent an angel to rescue him, sent two angels to rescue.  The angel says in Genesis 19:22, “But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you're safe.”  That shows you something about God, doesn't it?  Praise God for His faithfulness to His own.

And so, we see the contrast, that is Lot's faithless choice, and we see how long the slide was, you talk about the slippery slope, it starts up here and it ends up down there, somewhere you don't want to be.  But in Verses 14 through 18, we see God's renewed promise to Abram; Lot's separation from Abram was significant.  Lot and Abram clearly had different agendas and different world views at that moment.  Lot wanted to live by sight, Abram wanted to live by faith, they had to separate, and so they did.  

But God makes his promise to Abram, again, faith must be restored and renewed.  This is one of the things that I've learned from studying in the book of Genesis this time, how many times God makes the covenant promises to him again and again and again, it's the same thing.

Always a little more information, but God restores and renews faith by the Word of God, and so all of you, if your faith is weak today, get back in the Word, read the scripture.  Saturate your mind in the word of God, memorize, meditate, fill your hearts with the scripture, if you came in today weak in faith, getting weary in your spiritual life, get back into the Word of God and in prayer.  That's how it starts.  And so, He made him the promise in Verses 14-16, “The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, ‘Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west.  All the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.  I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted.’”  Verse 17, I love, “Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.”

What an incredible thing, isn't it?  God wanted Abram to touch the soil, to smell it, to feel it, to walk around, to look at this little watered valley or to look at some trees or to look at something.  And just have his faith renewed.  Say, I'm giving this to you.  I'm giving this to you. What would you rather have?   Ten years living with Lot, near Sodom, in that well-watered land, or 10 minutes of a walk like that with God and saying, I'm giving this to you, I'm giving that to you.  Isn't that marvelous?  And yet it's all just words.  It's just promise.  It's just faith.  

And the same two promises again and again, I'll give you multiple descendants as numerous as the dust of the Earth, and I'm going to give you this land, north, south, east, and west, go walk through it, I'm giving it to you.  And so, He renews his faith, but in Verse 18, Abram has to live in a tent and build altars.  That's what he's going to do.  Verse 18, “So Abram moved his tents and went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to the Lord.”

You know, promised land is not possessed land.  Do you know how long it would take for Abram's descendants to get that land?  I calculated over 500 years.  Now I think back 500 years to what was going on in history, 1504, that's how long it would take for this promise to be fulfilled, 500 years.  The land was promised directly to Abram and his descendants, but the Canaanites and Perizzites are still there, and in Genesis 14, Abram is going to be told that his descendants will go to a land not their own and they will be there for 400 years.  But that's way down the line, even as it is, Abram died never having received the land, as the book of Hebrews makes plain.  Hebrews 11:13 says, “All these people were still living by faith when they died.  They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.  And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.”  

Abram lived in a tent, moved from place to place.  Now, I'm not recommending that those of you that have houses with foundations sell them and live in tents.  I'm not sure where you'd go, I don't think there's a lot of camping ground around here, and wouldn't it be interesting if all First Baptist members showed up there with tents.  But you could have a great witness, I'm sure, as people ask you what you're doing.  But there's a symbol here, the idea of a tent is movability and not being weighed down by any sense or illusion of permanence here in this world.  You have to carry everything you own with you, and so it kind of benefits you to give it away.  Alright, why be burdened by that weight. 

Abram, it says, built altars, in Verse 18, it says “he built an altar to the Lord.”  This was the ancestral altar, this is the father of the patriarch setting up the family altar, and there establishing patterns of family devotion that he would teach to his son Isaac and would be passed on from generation to generation, the family altar renewed and established.  Perhaps you, as a father, made a commitment to a family altar a short time ago or even a while ago.  Maybe you, like Abram, need to go back to the family altar, as it were, and clean the weeds off it, get the stones that have fallen down off it, put them back up, clean it up, and get it working again.  That's what Abram had to do with the altar when he came back after Egypt.  Maybe that's what you need to do as a father.

Now, what kind of spiritual lessons can we take from this story.  First of all, on wealth.  In this passage, wealth is seen neither as a blessing nor as a curse.  Just something to deal with.  We see it as a blessing from God for the sustaining of Abram’s family during a famine, because much of the wealth was in livestock and you can eat that and it can help you to survive, but it also was the reason for the quarreling and the parting with Lot.

Secondly, on resolving conflict.  Abram shows the way that a faith-filled man resolves conflict.  If you truly believe that you will inherit the earth someday, then you can say all things are yours, the meek will inherit the earth, let it go.  And, if God calls on you to be generous it's easier by faith, resolving conflict then becomes easier, too.  The relationship with that individual is more eternal than any of the stuff over which you're having a conflict.  A gentle answer turns away wrath.  Thirdly, on choosing by faith not by sight, try to make every decision, whether who you should marry, what job you should take, what church you should attend, what you should do with your time, based on faith and what the word of God says.  Which of these two choices will bring me closer and closer to the promise of God, and which one is going to lead me away?  And if you make a mistake, a wrong judgment like Lot did, have the wisdom to do a U-turn and repent and get out of there before it gets worse and worse and worse.

Lot was saved, but is it as if by escaping through the flames, what happened to his life and his witness?  What was the fruit of Lot other than a warning?  Live by faith not by sight, and on living near Sodom, if you live in the land that's characterized by ease and luxury and sexual perversion, be afraid and be on guard, because brothers and sisters, we do.  Are you shocked anymore by the things that are going on in our country?  I hope so.  I hope we are not numb to what's happening with gay marriage, I hope we are not numb to that, it's the same thing.  I hope we're not saying, “Oh, live and let live,” or “it's just the same old thing.”  Are we not shocked by some of the things that we see in America today?  And even more pointedly, what's happening in your heart as a result of living near Sodom?  What's happening in your heart?  Guard your heart.

And if you've compromised already, understand that the God of this text of Genesis 13 is the God of restoration and renewal, who welcomes sinners back to the promise He originally made to them, and who makes the promise even better the next time.  God is a God of restoring faith and grace, renew your faith in God's promises.  And finally, be willing to live in a tent, metaphorically.  If any of you are thinking of doing it physically, come and talk to me about it, and I'd like to find out what you have in mind.  But, basically, acknowledge that nothing here is permanent, there is nothing with a lasting foundation here in this world.  And establish the altar in the center of your life, not physically, but a calling out on the name of the Lord.  It could be that you are listening to me today and you have never committed your life to Christ.  Maybe you have never called on the name of the Lord at all.  Maybe Jesus is not your Savior, when you walked in the door, he wasn't.  Trust in Him, call on the name of the Lord.  Trust in Him for your salvation.  And then having done that, walk by faith and not by sight.