God’s Promise to Abraham

To know for sure that you're saved is a growing process with most Christians as they exercise three things. First of all, a greater trust in the promises of God.

That's your bedrock of assurance. The second thing is by the inward evidences of grace or the marks or fruits of grace in your life. And then the third is a direct testimony of the Holy Spirit that he speaks directly to your soul through the word, I am thy salvation or bring some other promise to play into your life. In such a way that you can't deny that he is assuring you that you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to you. You take those three things, the promises of God, evidences of grace, testimony of the Holy Spirit, and then put over them all God's faithful track record over the years. And God's people can have full infallible assurance of faith. Assurance of faith by Joel Beeke.

Visit Ligonier.org slash teaching series to learn more. We read in Genesis that God made an incredible promise to Abraham that he would be the father of many nations, a promise that Abraham didn't fully understand. I expected to be the patriarch of a huge family with my descendants reaching throughout the world.

And here I am in my old age, and my heir is Eliezer of Damascus, my servant. I mean, Abraham's a little bit upset here because God had promised, and the promise was not fulfilled. Or so it seemed that the promise was unfulfilled. You've heard it said that our timing is not God's timing.

Well, this is a perfect example of that. Today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. R.C. Sproul helps us understand how the promise to Abraham guarantees the blessings we celebrate this Christmas. As we continue our preparation for the Advent season, we are looking at the promises of the gospel that were given by God to His people in the Old Testament. We've already examined what we call the proto-Evangel, that is, the first gospel, the first promise of redemption that was incorporated in God's cursing of the serpent in Eden.

When he said that the seed of the woman, that is, a descendant of Eve, would crush the head of the serpent, and in the process, his heel would be bruised. And we see how that in this earliest portion of the Old Testament, in the third chapter of Genesis itself, there is a promise of future redemption that focuses in the One who has come, whose coming we celebrate in Advent. Now, between the third chapter of Genesis and the twelfth chapter of Genesis, there were many more promises that God made to His people, not the least of which were the promises He made to Noah, that He would never again destroy the earth by flood. God made a covenant with Noah. But in chapter 12 of Genesis, a whole new dimension comes to the fore with the call of the patriarch Abraham. We know that Abraham was a pagan living in Ur of the Chaldees, and we stop and think about this, that of all of the people in the world who were pagans, why did God in His mercy and His grace choose Abraham? We don't know the answer to that question, but we do know that God came to a man in the midst of a pagan environment, and He gave this summons and this promise.

We look at chapter 12 of Genesis when we read this account. Now the Lord had said to Abram, get out of your country from your family and from your father's house to a land that I will show you, and I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you, and in you all of the families of the earth shall be blessed. Do you see that in this summons to this man called out of paganism, God made a promise? He made a promise not only to Abram or Abraham as an individual, but He made the promise to the whole world through the promise to Abraham.

He said to Abraham in the first place, I will give you land. I remember when I was a little boy, one of the songs that reached the top of the popular charts was a Western song entitled, Don't Fence Me In. And it went something like this, give me land, lots of land, beneath the starry sky above, don't fence me in.

That's the way it went. It was just enormously popular, but the part of the song that I remember was the request for land, lots of land. It's deeply rooted in every human breast to possess some piece of real estate that is our own. And God came to Abraham and said, I'm going to give to you and to your descendants land. And so much of the drama of the Old Testament centers on the fulfillment of that promise for land. In fact, the land in question became known as what? The promised land. Not just the land of milk and honey, not just the fertile valley in the Mediterranean, but it was known simply as the promised land. Going back to this incident in Jewish history where God said to Abraham, I am going to give you land. The drama of the patriarch Abraham is that he lived his whole life looking for that land, waiting for that land, trusting in the promise of God for that land.

And the only land he ever actually owned was Machpelah, a little piece of real estate that Abraham purchased for his grave. But he went to his grave in peace knowing that his descendants would inherit the promise. And God also promised to Abraham a blessing. I will bless you and your descendants.

I will make of them, He said, a great nation. And Abraham, I will make your name great. This promise was made over 4,000 years ago, ladies and gentlemen, and today we're talking about it. Because Abraham is known throughout the world, not only through the Christian world, but through the Muslim world, through the Jewish world as the father of the faithful.

His name has been made great. And through him, immeasurable blessings have flowed throughout this planet. There is not a hospital in America that can't either directly or indirectly find its roots in this promise that God made to Abraham. The whole foundation for humanitarianism in the Western world has its roots in this promise that God made to Abraham. And Abraham was promised that he would become the father of a great nation. Abraham became the father of Isaac and the father of Ishmael. And Isaac became the father of Jacob and of Esau. And Jacob became the father of the sons who became the twelve tribes of Israel.

Somebody once asked George Bernard Shaw, give me one proof for the existence of God. And he replied, the Jews. The history of Israel is one of the most fascinating and gripping stories of human civilization. And it goes back to the call of Abraham. But Abraham, we are told, is not to receive this promised blessing merely for his own benefit or merely for the benefit of his children and his children's children. But the promise of blessedness that is given to Abraham is to extend to the whole world whereby God says, I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and you will become a blessing to the nations. Some of you have studied the Bethel Bible series, which is an overview instruction curriculum for the Old Testament, and there's a chapter in there that deals with the call to Abraham. And the title of the chapter is simply, Blessed to Be a Blessing. Abraham not only received a blessing, but he became a vehicle, an instrument, a conduit through which blessing would flow and permeate the whole world.

Now that's the initial call that he receives. In chapter 15, we get further along in this promise where we read in chapter 15 of Genesis these words. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not be afraid, Abram.

I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward. Here comes another promise. Now remember, in between these chapters, Abraham had gone out. He had left all of the security of his homeland. He had acted upon the promise of God and looked for the fulfillment of it. But so far, he didn't have any children.

He didn't have any real estate. He had precious little blessing. And so God comes to him again and says, Abraham, don't be afraid. I am your shield.

I am your exceedingly great reward. What does Abraham say? Listen to his response. But Abram said, Lord God, what will you give me, seeing that I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? And Abram said, Look, you have given me no offspring. Indeed, one born in my house is my heir.

Do you see what he's saying? What happened to your promise? You said I was going to be the father of a great nation. I expected a quiver full of arrows, a house full of sons and daughters. I expected to be the patriarch of a huge family with my descendants reaching throughout the world. And here I am in my old age. My wife is barren.

We are childless. And my heir is Eliezer of Damascus, my servant. Where's this great reward you're talking about? I mean Abraham's a little bit upset here because God had promised, and the promise was not fulfilled. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, verse 4, chapter 15, saying, This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir. And then he brought him outside, and he said, Look now toward heaven and count the stars if you're able to number them. And he said to him, So shall your descendants be.

And he believed in the Lord, and he accounted it to him for righteousness. Then he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to inherit it. And Abraham said, Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it? Do you see what's going on here? God says, No, Abraham.

You have read it wrong. Eliezer, your servant, will not be your heir. Your heir will come forth from your own loins. It will be flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood.

I am going to keep my promise. Now Abraham gets his hopes up again, but he's afraid to really, really blame him. He already trusts him. He trusts him enough to be reckoned righteous in the sight of God, but he's still staggering at the promise. And he says, God, how will I know?

How can I know for sure that these things are going to happen? Now God's response to this, to our way of looking at it in the 20th century, sounds absolutely bizarre, and this is one of those passages we could read a hundred times and miss it altogether, but let's look at it. God said to him, Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. And he brought all these to him and cut them in two down the middle and placed each piece opposite the other.

But he did not cut the birds in two. And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram. And behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him. And then he said to Abram, Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, will serve them, will afflict them four hundred years, and also the nation whom they serve I will judge.

Afterward they will come out with great possessions. And then in verse 17 we read, And it came to pass, when the sun went down, and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. And on the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram.

What's going on here? God says, Abraham, get these animals, the heifers, the goats, and all of that. Slaughter them. Cut them in half. Arrange them in a bizarre fashion on the ground.

Take the pieces that you have hewn in two and set them over against each other as it is making a path, a gauntlet. So Abraham followed those instructions, and then God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Abraham. A sense of foreboding, of horror fell upon him. And in this night vision he sees a smoking oven that moves between the pieces.

What's going on here? What we have is a theophany, a visible manifestation of the invisible God. Throughout the Old Testament when God makes Himself visible, He usually does it through some kind of fire, a torch, a burning bush, a pillar of smoke in the wilderness.

In this vision the smoking oven represents God, and he sees God moving between these animal pieces that have been cut in half. There is a sacred ritual going on here that Abraham understood and every ancient Semite would understand. That God is making a covenant. Covenants were not written with pen. Covenants were cut.

There was always some kind of cutting right involved, like the cutting of the foreskin in the rite of circumcision. So these animals are cut in two, and when God walks between the pieces of these animals, what He is saying ritualistically and liturgically to Abraham is this. How will you know for sure, Abraham, that I'm going to keep my promise?

I'm not going to say, cross my eyes, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. I'm not going to swear by the heavens or the earth they belong to me. But as the author of Hebrews tells us later, because God could swear by nothing greater, He swore by Himself.

Symbolically what God is saying to Abraham here is this, Abraham, if I don't keep every detail of every promise that I have made to you, may I be cut in sunder just as you have slain these animals. Ladies and gentlemen, it's impossible to cut God asunder. God is infinite. God is a spirit. He's not made up of parts. He is immutable.

He cannot die. He is eternal. And what God is saying to Abraham here, He says, Abraham, if I don't keep my promise, may my immutability suffer a mutation. May my infinity become finite.

May my eternality cease. Abraham, I'm putting my very deity on the line here. I'm swearing to you by my holy nature. But if I don't keep this word, I will no longer be God. And God made a covenant with Abraham. He made a promise, and He backs up that promise, which is not just to Abraham, beloved, but it is to you if you put your trust in Christ. To all of God's people, He makes a promise that He seals with an oath based upon His own very nature.

There is no conceivably higher guarantee than that. And during this Advent season, this season of Christmas, we can look at all of redemptive history and see how God has kept His promises to Abraham perfectly. It's a great comfort to us, isn't it?

In fact, it's tidings of comfort and joy, as that great Christmas hymn says. Thank you for joining us today for Renewing Your Mind. The series we're featuring this week is called Promises.

In it, Dr. R.C. Sproul shows us God's promise-keeping nature through several Old Testament saints, including Eve, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. We'd like to provide you with a digital download of this five-part series when you give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. We will add all five messages to your learning library online, allowing you to stream them right away. We'll also send you the two-DVD set of Dr. Sproul's series, The Promised Keeper, God of the Covenants.

So request both resources when you call us at 800-435-4343. You can also give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org. Well, 2021 is winding down, and we here at Ligonier Ministries are looking forward to 2022 with great anticipation. We see our sovereign God opening doors to ministry around the world, so we would ask you to consider making a year-end gift to this global outreach. The deadline to give your gift is next Friday, the 31st, so make sure your check is postmarked by then, or you can give right up until the deadline when you go to ligonier.org slash donate.

And on behalf of all of my colleagues here at Ligonier Ministries, thank you in advance for your generosity. In our Coram Deo thought for today, I like to say to people that if I were ever cast into prison and were only allowed to have with me one book, the book I would want would be the Bible. And I said if I could only have one book of the Bible, I'd want the book of Hebrews because it is such a beautiful summary of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. But if I could only have one chapter in the Bible, it would be chapter 15 of Genesis. Because if I were thrown into prison, I would have reason to despair. I would have reason to lose hope.

I would be afraid. And I would want to go back and I would want to read every day of that event in history where God made a covenant with Abraham. Where God made a promise and consigned it by an oath in which He committed His own deity. When you think that God has not kept the promise to you, when you fear that His promises might not be fulfilled, go to Genesis 15 and read it and remember who He is and what He has said. And that's the end of the book of Genesis. Thank you for watching.