This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day 15 of our look together through the book of
Genesis, chapter 15 today. It is a chapter about how Abraham struggles his way
towards faith. There are some people, they struggle with faith.

Am I going to have faith? Am I going to not have faith? They never decide.

Other people struggle towards faith. They decide, but it's a struggle along the
way. The truth of the matter is, we all struggle.

There's no life where there is no struggle. There is no faith where there is no
struggle. If you're looking for that, there is no such thing.

It's like the painless dentist I was always looking for as a kid. No such thing.
If you're going to have a tooth worked on, there's going to be a little bit of
pain.

If you're going to have faith, there's going to be some struggle. And Abraham
struggled. Listen to what happened in Genesis 15, verse 1.

"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. '" God says to Abraham, "Do not
be afraid.

" Any time you see God saying that in the Bible, it's because the person is
afraid. Why would God say, "Don't be afraid," unless the person was afraid?
Abram is struggling with faith.

And we're going to see him in these next chapters moving back and forth between
trusting in himself and trusting in God a number of times, back and forth,
especially over this issue of whether he's going to have a son, this promise
that God has made. And here, Abraham in this struggle is coming to a place where
he's thinking, "Well, instead of having faith, I'm going to have to settle for
less. I'm going to have to settle for less than God's promise.

" Listen to what happens in verses 2 to 6. But Abram said, "O sovereign Lord,
what can you give me since I remain childless, and the one who will inherit my
estate is Eleazar of Damascus? " And Abram said, "You have given me no children,
so a servant in my household will be my heir.

" And 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, God took Abraham outside and said, "Look up to the heavens and count the
stars, if indeed you can count them. " And then he said, "So shall your
offspring be.

" Abram believed the Lord, and he credited to him as righteousness. This belief,
this faith that Abraham has begins with him thinking, "I'm going to have to
settle for less. Lord, let it be Eleazar.

He's a nephew. He's some kind of a relative in my household. I don't have any
children.

He's going to be my heir. God, maybe that's the one. Maybe that's what you
meant.

" And God says, "No. No, you don't have to settle for less. " It's as if in a
restaurant, I go into a restaurant, I'd like to have the prime rib because it
just really sounds good, but I'm on this diet thing that people want me to be
on.

And so I look at the menu and I think, all right, I'll have the lemon chicken.
And I order the lemon chicken. Nobody orders lemon chicken because they want
lemon chicken.

They're settling for less. That's okay in a restaurant. That's okay if you're on
a diet, but we do that with God's promise sometimes.

Let me just say this to you. Don't order lemon chicken from God. We see God
saying, "I promise you peace of heart and mind and soul.

" And we say, "Well, maybe what he means is I'll just be a little less anxious
today. " No, he promises peace. We see God saying, "I promise that I can lead
you in living a life of purity.

" And we think, "Well, maybe that means just being a little less nasty than the
person in the cubicle next door. " No, God is promising to lead me towards
integrity. We see God promising a better relationship with those in my family.

And we think, "Well, maybe that means just a few less arguments, one less
argument than last year. " Even best families argue, but God's promise means I
can work my way through those arguments to a deeper and better relationship.
What I'm saying is we often decide ourselves right out of God's promise.

Stop ordering lemon chicken from God. God has promises, and you and I need to
live out those promises. But I can't do it on my own strength.

I can't do it on my own power. I need his power in my life. So how do I get
that?

How do I change from settling for less to seeking God's best? God shows us here
in what he does with Abraham. In order to change, I have to see God's promise,
not just know it, not just hear somebody else talk about it.

I have to see it. I need a fresh vision of God's promise in my life. You see
what happens here.

God says, "Abram, you're struggling with whether this promise is real in your
life. Come outside. " Abram walks outside, and God says, "Look up.

" He looks up. God says, "You see those stars? Look at every one of them.

If indeed you could count them, that's your offspring. That's what I'm going to
do. " And Abram saw that.

Instead of shaking his head and saying, "Ridiculous, how could that happen? " He
has faith. Abram believed God, verse 6 says, "And God credited to him as
righteousness.

" That great verse that's quoted also in Romans about the faith of Abraham. We
have to see the promise. We need a fresh vision of God's promise.

You got to look at the stars. What has God promised in your life? And how can
you step outside and instead of looking at the problem or trying to settle for
the lemon chicken, the Eliezer in your life?

How can you look up in this moment and believe God? And I continue to read
through chapter 15. The Bible teaches us how we can look to God for the promise
even in the difficulty.

What I'm going to read to you in verses 7 to 18, there are some cultural things
that happen here that make us scratch their heads, but I want you to understand
them because they're all about Abraham asking, "How will I know, God? How do I
know that this promise is your promise? How can I see it?

" Listen to what happens in verses 7 to 18. 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. " But Abram said, "Oh, sovereign Lord, how can I know that I
will gain possession of it?

" So the Lord said to him, "Bring me a heifer, a goat, and a ram, each three
years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon. " Abram brought all these to
him. He cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other.

The birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the
carcasses, but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a
deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.

And 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
for a hundred years. But I will punish the nation that 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, for the sin of
the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. " When the sun had set and
the darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch appeared and
passed between the pieces. On that day, verse 18, "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.

'" Now what is happening in these verses? It's important for you and I to
understand. God is saying, "Here's how you know.

" God gave Abraham two things, a symbol of their covenant and a prophecy of the
future. And in those two things, God is saying, "Here's how you can trust.
Here's how you can know.

" Now I want to talk about symbol and prophecy and our lives in just a minute.
But before I do that, I want you to notice an incredibly important phrase in
these verses. It helps you to understand the entire Old Testament, this one
phrase.

Have you ever asked yourself, why would God allow the Israelite armies to come
against these peoples of God that already lived in the land and wipe them out?
Why would he allow that to happen? He lets the people of God come in and wipe
out these other good people.

Why would God allow that evil? When you ask that question, you've missed this
incredibly important phrase. The Bible says here in verse 16, "In the fourth
generation your descendants are going to come back.

" That's when they were going to take the land. And then this phrase, "For the
sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. " You see, God was
waiting.

He was allowing the people in the land the opportunity to repent. They never
did. God knew that they would not.

But he still allowed their sin to reach its full measure. Now I don't know all
that that means, but I expect some of what it means is the sin had become so
great that they would never change. And the nation had become so terrible that
the child sacrifices that they did were beginning to spread to other countries,
nearby lands, and they were taking children from there and sacrificing them.

And so God says, "It has to end. " So when you think that the people of Israel
coming in and taking the land, that they were taking it from good people, no,
God had allowed their sin to reach its full measure. So it was also the judgment
of God against these people.

This is just one phrase in the Bible that indicates the heart of God and what he
was doing and why he was doing it. But it's a phrase that reminds me I can trust
God. I can trust God, even with history that I don't understand.

God gave Abraham two things, a symbol of their covenant. That's what he was
doing with the birds and the animals and cutting them in half and the torch
going between them. Now, you and I, we don't understand all that was going on
there, but Abraham surely did.

He knew that it was God saying, "This covenant is sure. This covenant is
promised. This covenant can be counted on.

" Now, how about you and I? How do you and I know that we can trust God's
promise? Well, God has given you and I three things, a symbol, a prophecy, and
his spirit.

God is giving us symbols in his body, baptism and the Lord's Supper. When I'm
baptized as a believer, it's a symbol of the fact that I have faith in God and
that faith is real. And God says, "Here's a symbol to remind you.

" That's how you can know that what's promised is going to be true, that when I
say I'm going to have you with me forever in heaven, it's true. And then the
Lord's Supper, as we take it from time to time together, it is a symbol of the
fact that Jesus Christ gave his life for us, a reminder of that fact. Baptism
and the Lord's Supper are a symbolic way of remembering what Jesus Christ did
for us.

We have a symbol. We have prophecy. Jesus told us that he's going to come again.

Jesus told us what's going to happen when he comes again. He's going to judge
the world. He's going to take us home to be with him.

And just like Abraham had a prophecy, it was going to happen with his people in
the future, we have that prophecy that we can hang on to. We have not just two
things. We don't just have a symbol and a prophecy.

We also have a third thing, something Abraham didn't have. We have God's spirit.
God has sent his spirit to live inside of us, to remind us of the truth of what
he's doing.

How can I know that God's promise of salvation is true? How can I know that
God's promise in my life is true? A symbol.

I get together with God's people and I'm reminded of the truth of God's word, a
prophecy. I look at what Jesus has said and I'm reminded of the fact that he has
a future, a history that is already all planned out, and God's spirit. I ask
God's spirit to speak to me from within, to assure me of God's promise.

In fact, let's do that right now. Jesus Christ, we ask right now that your
spirit would speak to our hearts and let us know that we can count on your
promise. In those moments like Abraham when we're struggling with faith, I pray
that we would struggle toward faith and not away from faith.

In listening to you, I pray right now we'd hear your voice that your love is
real. We'd hear your voice that your promise can be counted on. We'd hear your
voice that even though we may not understand what's going on in our daily lives,
your promise will hold true.

Jesus Christ, thank you that we can count on you. Even when we can't count on
anything else, we can depend on you. Thank you in your name, amen.

And join us next week. We're going to continue the faith story of this man by
the name of Abraham.