Sermon Nuggets Mon June 4b -God's Agreement
Verses Gen 15
God's Agreement
Alsie, and husband, Brian Iay were told of her infertility. She feared God was punishing her for the abortion she had when she was younger before she was married. Now to her dismay she was not able to keep the pregnancies. The doctor explained to them after years of trying to have a baby the child she was carrying was hydrocephalic, the condition in which an abnormal amount of fluid collects on the brain and causes mental retardation.
In rage Alsie screamed “How could you do this to me God?” When the baby was born she had less that 10% of her brain. Disillusionment and pain turned into anger at God.
There was nothing more that she wanted than a healthy baby. When she finally was able to conceive her hopes were raised and her feelings of praise and thanksgiving were strong. But knowing what happened to her made her hopes dash to the depths and instead of praise to God there arose bitter resentment.
Such disillusionment is not uncommon among Christians. There are many who face cancer, financial bankruptcy, job loss, church fights, divorce and other disappointments. We might be the victims of injustice or even various types of abuses by people in the church. There are times in the circumstances of life when our faith is challenged and we doubt God.
Waiting is hard. We delight when after much prayer or through many medical procedures someone finds healing. We are grateful. But it is so hard to keep the faith when it seems God’s blessings and promises are hidden from us. It is hard to wait for the blessings promised when you don’t see them come. But do you realize that doubts sometimes come when all is going well?
Abram’s encounter with God allows us to learn more about faith. When we focus on God and his power and truth, our doubts and fears change to faith and courage.
God established an covenant with Abram. It is an agreement that seemed never to have been fulfilled. It is hard to be patient when life’s circumstances just do not seem to be resulting in what we expect.
Where might you be doubting God today? What lessons are learned during the period of waiting?
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Tues June 5
Verse- Gen 15:1 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."
Foundations of Faith
God promises to be Abram’s shield and defender. Abram had taken on and defeated at least four nations from Mesopotamia. What if Kedorlaomer returned with reinforcements? Abram risked everything to deliver his nephew Lot, only to watch Lot return to Sodom. Had he made a mistake? Would the kings retaliate?
God is saying "Do not be afraid, Abram." You don't have to worry about Kedorlaomer, for I am your protector.” The safest place to be is in the will of God, for He gives us His spiritual protection from the evil one. Faith is recognizing that God gave Abram some promises and those haven’t been fulfilled yet, so he is not done with him yet. Nothing will happen to him.
We sometimes forget but as Christians we enter into battle. This battle is against our enemy the devil. We need to remember that Satan's strategy is to deceive. He wants to attack the church and the believers. He wants us to live defeated. But remember that our enemy the devil is a defeated enemy. He likes to put on a good show, but with God as our shield, we have won the victory. The result of faith is courage. He says we can have that courage as a foundation of our faith when we realize who it is who is in control. The sovereignty of God who loves his children and promises us that the evil one will not overcome us gives us confidence.
God not only promises to be our shield but also our reward. He gives us both protection and provision. Abram just said in chapter 14 that he would receive nothing from the king of Sodom. It would be to God’s glory that God gives him what he needs and any riches he gets is from above. God would be his reward. That is an important foundation of faith. We can have abiding peace in life only when the focus is away from ourselves and is on God.
When beggars came to Peter and John they were right to say to him. “Silver and Gold have we none”. But now came the reward- “In the name of Jesus, stand up and walk.” And he went walking and leaping and praising God. He is the rewarder of our salvation. He is the pearl of great price. He is the one who prepares for us a place in heaven of which no one can take from us. That is the foundation of our faith.
What does God need to do to get our attention? Sometimes it is precisely those moments when everything is going our way. Sometimes it is quite the opposite and we are brought to our knees in total dependence on God. With God at the center of everything we simply trust, not necessarily understanding everything. One day when we get to heaven we will see the whole panorama and understand God's perfect plan. But for now think of these truths. God is your shield and reward!
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Weds June 6 –
Verses: Gen 15: 2 But Abram said, "O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?" 3 And Abram said, "You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir."
8 But Abram said, "O Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?"
Disclosure of Doubts v. 2,3,8
After we are met with truth, life causes us to doubt our faith. Has that ever happened to you? That happened to Abram even after experiencing a great victory over the military powers of the North. He asked the Lord two questions…what can you give me since I remain childless? Secondly, he asked, “O Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” (that is, the land of promise.)
These are two questions that plague us as well. "What can you do for me God?" And
"How can I know?" Even though he had heard through the covenant in chapter 12 that he would be a father of a great nation and that he would be given the land of Canaan, chapter 15 leads Abraham back to doubting what God has already promised him. He looks more like a doubting Thomas rather than a father of a great nation
God had promised Abraham heirs but nothing was happening. And it began to look more and more as if nothing would happen. Abraham is really saying is something like this:
Look, Lord, the only possible heir I see in this house is my servant Eliezer. You haven't given me any children. Sarah and I aren't getting any younger, and it's not working out the way I thought it would. Is there some kind of spiritual answer to this that I just don't see?
Under the code of Hammurabi if Abram had remained childless all that he could have passed by his will and decree to a servant whom he had appointed his heir. Abram was trying to figure out a way for God to keep his promise and save face. Have you ever tried to do that?
It is easy as parents to doubt the Lord. It is easy as teens to doubt the Lord because you want answers right now. It is easy as new Christians to experience the closeness and power of God but then something happens that you don’t expect and you undergo a period of testing. He is having inner struggles which now he is expressing because frankly he doesn’t see anything happening in this baby business and he and Sarah aren’t getting any younger.
Abraham in other words could be honest with God. He knew that he could tell God the way he really felt as he communed with him. Faith is not having doubts, but expressing them to God and facing them honestly. Unless we ask some of the hard questions seldom we grow. It is in this questioning but still trusting that strengthens faith.
This is a scary reality isn't it? It's not easy to be honest with God. When we are honest with God we are not doing wrong. When we malign the name of God we are doing wrong. But there should be nothing wrong in going to God and casting our honest cares, questions, and doubts upon God.
Sometimes our doubts require us to get into the Word and change our thinking. I remember an older man who was an outspoken Christian. There was a friend of his who was dying of cancer. His friend was in his 40s but this older Christian not only prayed for healing, believing it would happen but claimed the promise that our lives as believers should be as the psalmist said, “Three scores years and 10 and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years…
When his friend died, this man’s struggled with deep doubts about the promises of God. He believed he would be healed and he believed the man was promised threescore years 60-70.
Job was a man of faith, but when he lost all his riches and lost all his family and lost all his resources and you couldn’t say much for his wife or friends who were attacking him, he had doubts and confessed he just didn’t understand God. That was Abrams experience too.
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Thurs June 7
Verses Gen 15:4-7 & 13,14 Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir. ” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars —if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
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.”
13 Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.
Perspective of the Promises
Do you remember how God approached Job and changed his whole perspective? It was recognizing and experiencing all the glory and vastness of God that one can hardly comprehend. God points to all his workmanship and asks what man knows about it. Yet Job was reminded again God made it all by his word.
Here is what God does with Abram. “Go outside if you don’t believe I can do something about your offspring and look at the stars in heavens.” God walked Abraham a little way from the tent and from the fire up on a small hill. “Now look! And Abraham looked.”
This was a time in our world when night was truly night. Not a single streetlight, electric bulb, car headlight, or bit of flashing neon could be found on the whole earth. No airplanes or jets or satellites winked across the sky. As Abraham stood there in inky darkness, the starry expanse must have been stunning. Whatever the Lord showed him, it was enough.
Look up and see! In that moment, when Abraham turned his face toward heaven, something happened in his heart. Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness There was an instance when Abraham obeyed, saw through God's eyes and suddenly accepted God's truth with childlike trust. God declared him to be righteous. It is this very verse that is central to the argument of Paul's writings. It paves the way to understanding faith as the sole means for being declared righteous in God's sight. Abraham believed the Lord… and took a giant leap in the will of God. The natural way to understand God’s promises is the way Abraham, as in the words of the song ‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus," literally took God at His word (15:6). He believed what God said to be true. In the words of a worn-out, but fitting, phrase: "God said it, I believe it; that settles it."
One writer has said, “The first sound we will hear from every throat when we get to heaven is ‘Ahhh, Now I see it. Now I realize why.’"
The difference between God’s promise and ours is that God has the power, the reason and the determination to do it. Do we trust God in all circumstances? Do we believe that God continues to work even in hopeless circumstances? God's timing is perfect and his will is perfect. He allows the events to unfold at his pace because ultimately he knows what is best for us and for his purpose. Why not look at the circumstances and the fears and the way we are paralyzed through the eyes of God who might be using these situations to get our attention. The important truth is this: In our instant society, when prayers don't get answered within a day, we assume we're undergoing some enormous test of faith. Many of us would profit by going back and helping Noah build the ark for a hundred years. Or waiting with Moses for 40 years in the wilderness, or watching the decades flip by without Sarai getting pregnant. The Lord always gets the job done but not always on our timetable.
Now that is the situation regarding your children, just keep looking at the stars and thinking if I can’t do it or not, and by the way that’s about as many as I plan to have who can call themselves the sons of Abraham, do you want to count them.
Now regarding your questions and doubts about your people inheriting the land look at where I’ve led you so far. Did this just happen? You came from Ur here. (jump to v 13,14. I want to give you a prophecy that is amazing. The promises of God to Abram and his descendants were not without pain and struggle. He makes 7 points of prophecy concerning the offspring of Abram.:
1. You will be strangers in another county. (Egypt).
2. You will be slaves in a country.
3. You will be mistreated 400 years.
4.God will punish Egypt.
5.Israel will be delivered with great possessions.
6.Abram will not live through this period of slavery.
7. In the fourth generation (or after 400 years), Israel will return to the land.
God revealed himself and his promises in these ways. Hindsight is always better than foresight. Look at the history of how God has led you and don’t you think he will continue to do so. He is faithful.
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Fri June 8
Verses- Gen 15: 9-24
Confidence of the Covenant.
A covenant is an agreement of God. It is usually secured with a sign. It was the Lord who initiates the covenants. He chose Abram.. Now this covenant is referred to in Chapter 12 and 17, as well as other places in the Old Testament.
The strange procedure described is called the cutting of a covenant. It is a legal contract between two parties in which each binds himself to fulfill certain conditions and thereby receives certain advantages. When two people signed a legal document, it was called cutting a covenant or ’cutting a deal’.
There were two kinds of covenants. One was a conditional covenant an agreement with certain conditions. An agreement to sell a car for an agreed upon money would be conditional based on the transfer of money. If someone buys a car with an agreement of getting so much money a month it is conditional as long as the money is paid. Once money is now longer paid the original owner can take back the car.
Then there was an unconditional contract. Whatever each party did or said, the agreement was final and binding. Back then they didn’t use attorneys. They didn’t have notary publics. They brought an animal or several animals and cut them in half. They laid pieces opposite each other in a row. Then the two people stood together, hand in hand and walked down through the middle of the animal pieces. They pledged in the face of death and suffering that they would honor that agreement. This is the procedure explained in this passage.
God revealed His program for the salvation of men that would culminate in the shedding of blood. The slain, broken animals were a picture of God's own slain, broken Son who would give His life for the salvation of the world. Then the birds of prey came down on the carcasses Abram chased them away. The fact is that whenever we deepen our relationship with God, Satan will attack. Any effort to step into a deeper, more profound aspect of God's working in our lives will bring vultures from the pit who will come to tear, spoil and devour. Satan will sweep down and try to destroy what the Lord is attempting to produce in your life.
When Abram awoke it was dark. But something strange happens. The smoking firepot with blazing torch represents the presence of God. He walked through the pieces alone. He is making an unconditional agreement with Abram. As he watched, two lights began to pass through the pieces of meat as God made a covenant with Abram. This was a one sided covenant in which God swore by Himself that He would give Abram's descendants the land from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates river.
When the encounter with God was over all that Abram had was his renewed faith. He didn't have a son or a title to the land, but he did have the assurance that God was in charge of the promise. Abram's faith is renewed and the promises are shining brighter than ever. Abram believed God.
Later circumcision was to be the sign of the agreement with the people of God, the Israelites. God wanted His people to love Him to serve Him and to obey Him. He wanted them to do those three things out of respect and honor for Him. Fearing God doesn’t mean being afraid of Him but desiring His company and approval so that we guard what we do. There is an external sign of an inner reality. In a very real sense that is also what baptism is. It is a sign outwardly of an experience inwardly.
When you summarize Abraham's life at the end, he'd had it all. He had everything God promised to him -- including another hundred years of life! At this time he was about seventy-five and thinking, "I'm getting old; I don't have much time left." But he would live to be one hundred seventy-five. He had more life ahead of him than he had behind him. The Lord was going to get it done, and there was plenty of time to see God's promises fulfilled in his life.
God spelled out the wonderful promises for him that far exceeded his questions. The Lord says, Here are the dimensions of the land. And My dear son, it's bigger than you ever thought… and it's for you and your children after you. He didn't know how God was going to deliver in his life-HE SIMPLY BELIEVED HIM.
Now it is 4,000 years later. When the promise was made the land was filled with other tribes and nations. It was not Abrams land yet. Today the Jews continue to exist as a people and they possess the land. Where are all the others? They’ve disappeared. Where at the Jews? All over the world and in the land. Why? Because God keeps his promises. No race has maintained over so long a period so emotional an attachment to a particular corner of the earth’s surface. It is also a curious fact that for more than ¾ of their existence as a race, a majority of Jews have always lived outside the land they call their own.
Who can number them? Galatians tells us we are the sons of Abraham also by faith. We can claim something better than a land between the rivers of Euphrates. We have a promised land that will never end and God will be our light.
Pastor Dale
