In Genesis 15, now Abraham, after God had promised to give
him that land and to give him the seed, Abraham asked God,
whereby, there in verse eight, whereby or how am I to know? How am I to know? that I shall
inherit this land. I don't believe Abraham Dowd
here had anything to do with the seed that was promised to
him, but he's talking about inheriting this land, this promised land
where he was. You'll remember he was a stranger
in a strange land. He had no relatives there, other
than what he brought or came with him. Even Blotto left and
his father had passed away. But I thought about this morning
as I was going back over my notes. Abraham didn't have a Bible that
you and I have to read every day. We can read of the promises
every day and take them to ourselves every day. In Christ, we can.
We can take these promises and read them, but Abraham didn't
have that. God would speak to Abraham and it may not speak
to him again for a while. But whatever the reason Abraham
asked this question, whatever the reason was, I know this,
the Lord did not chide him for it. He didn't chide him, he didn't
rebuke him. He didn't tell him or say to
him, why do you doubt me? He didn't do it, not at all,
not at all. Even if Abraham had doubted,
the Lord didn't point that out. And I thought as I was writing
this down that no faith in any believer is perfect. No, at no
time. We're never perfect in faith.
We have our doubts and our fears and then we have our days that
we believe. I mean, we just believe God and
then Like Peter, we began to look at the wind and the waves
and we began to sing. But whatever it was, God did
not chide him or rebuke him for it. Instead, God established
his promise of this inheritance by sacrifice. And this is why
the Lord allowed him and even probably moved him to ask that
he might reveal that this covenant is ratified by blood. This promise, this promise of
inheritance is ratified by blood. Now we know where this is going.
We know where it's going. It's going to the Lord Jesus
Christ. God has made a promise to all in Christ that they will
inherit glory. I believe someday I'm going to
stand on a new earth. I'm going to rejoice in the presence
of Jesus Christ as you are, you who believe. I believe that.
And I believe it based on the blood and righteousness of Jesus
Christ and no other reason. God made a promise to his son
and to us in his son. And that promise is ratified
by the blood of Christ. And it's going to happen. I'm
going to have it. And you're going to have it.
One day, instead of me standing here and you sitting there, you
and I are going to be in the presence of Jesus Christ on a
new heaven and a new earth. When I think of that, I think,
John, don't get too attached to these things. My soul, look
what's coming. Look what's coming. Let these things go. Let them
go. Enjoy them as God sends them
and let them go when he takes them. Because I have something
and you have something that's coming that cannot be taken away. Can't be taken away. And God
has made a promise to all in Christ that they will inherit
glory and He ratified it by the blood of Christ. And these animals
are typical of this covenant. Their blood didn't actually ratify
it, but the blood of Christ did. It did. Now in verse nine, note
what God says to Abram in verse nine. He says, let me get back
over here, in verse nine, take, and he said unto him, take me. Take me. A heifer, three years
old, a she-goat and a ram and a turtle dove and a young pigeon.
The sacrifice, first of all, the sacrifice is for God. Take me these sacrifices. He didn't say Abraham, take you,
no, take me. This is for God. The covenant
is made by God with Christ and his blood ratified that covenant
and it's for God and it's given to us in Christ. Take me, the
sacrifice is for God. We saw this over in Hebrews nine
here on Thursday night. It says in Hebrews nine in one
place, he offered himself up to God. He offered himself up
to God. Now notice here in verse nine, the animals, the animals. First of all, he says, take me
a three-year-old heifer. A heifer is one that's never
been bred before. Once you breed them, it's a cow.
They call it a cow. But a heifer is one that's unbred.
And it's young, three years old. He tells him the exact age that
he wants it to be, three years old. And then a she-goat, three
years old, youth. And then he says, the ram, three
years old. It can't be something old and
something ready to die of itself. If you leave it alone, it'll
die shortly anyway, but something that's in its full youth. Take me this heifer, this she-goat,
this ram of three years old. And if you'll remember, if you
go back over in Leviticus, they would take the horns off that
ram And they would put it on the altar. Christ is the horns of the altar.
He's our strength. That represents strength. Remember Abraham and Isaac? When Abraham was going to slay
Isaac, put him on that altar, and he looked over, and God stopped
him, and he looked over, and there was a ram caught in the
thickets by its horns. And then he took that ram, put
it on the altar, and slew it instead of Isaac, which you know
is an excellent picture of the substitutionary work of Jesus
Christ. And then he said, turtledove,
take a turtledove. Our Lord, if over in Song of
Solomon, look over in Song of Solomon chapter two, In verse two, look at verse 14. He says, the Lord speaks here
in verse 14, oh my dove, oh my dove, that are in the clefts
of the rock, but he calls her a dove. You can go throughout
that book and she's called a dove. And then he says, take me, let me go back here,
to young pigeons. Young pigeons. And a young pigeon. Everything here is young. Everything
here is young. A pigeon, why a pigeon? A pigeon was a poor man's sacrifice. If you couldn't afford a lamb,
a ram, or those things that the Lord established, you could bring
a pigeon. It's a poor man's sacrifice.
The Lord made provisions for all his people in Christ. But
there's something I thought of here, and you can see this over
in Leviticus 12 and Leviticus 1, where he said, take this pigeon,
And there's something I want to point out here that I thought
about it, and I think I'm right on it. He took this heifer, this
female heifer. He takes this female goat. He
takes this dove. But there's only one ram, one
male. When I looked at this in a study,
and I looked at it, and I looked at it, and I thought, and I can
see, here's what I can see in this. I can see Christ and his
church are one. And I can see that when he died,
she died. When that ram died, so did that
heifer. So did that she-goat. They're
one, they're not divided. And if you'll notice, look in
verse 10. And he took unto him all these
and divided them in the midst and laid each piece one against
another, but the birds divided he not. Now listen, all these
were divided except the birds whose heads, if you go back in
Leviticus, they didn't divide the birds, but they took their
heads and rang them off. and just twist their head off.
And I thought about that dove, his church, the head being cut off. What's
that represent? My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? The body was not divided, but
the head was severed. Christ was cut off. It says he
was cut off in Isaiah 53. He was cut off out of the land
of the living. He was cut off. But now listen,
even it says here, they were laid each piece one against another,
even though they were different animals, they were different. A heifer. A she-goat, a turtle
dove, a pigeon, although they were different animals, yet they
were one in sacrifice. It was one sacrifice. Christ represented many. He died
for the sins of many, the many that were given to him. He died
for some rich, some poor, some Pharisees, some just outright
rebels. But the sacrifice is one. God
has made us one in Christ through His sacrifice. We are one in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, how are we to have assurance? Let's go back here and give a
thought to Abraham. How are we to have assurance that we, that
I will receive the promise of eternal life. Are you interested? I'm interested, I'm getting older.
You know when you're young, you don't even think about these
things. You're so full of yourself. I was gonna say full of life,
but you're really so full of yourself, you don't really give
any thought to it. As you get older, you give more thought
to dying, to leaving this life. And what I wanna know, What I
want to know, and I know you want to know, is what assurance
do I have that I'll receive the promise? And when I say eternal
life, I'm not talking about how long we're going to live. I'm
talking about the life of God. I'm talking about being with
God, being with Christ on that new earth. But here's my assurance. Through the sacrifice and blood
of Jesus Christ, God has ratified the covenant of grace to all
who believe. That's my assurance. My assurance
has absolutely nothing to do with how I feel about it. That
changes from day to day. How I feel changes. But I tell
you what, this book, God's Word, the covenant, the promises He's
given us, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That never changes. That's my
assurance. My assurance rests on God who
gave the promise that He will not change. That's my assurance. Assurance
is based on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Christ and Him
crucified. Now verse 11, it's a good picture
of false religion. The fowls, it says, came down
upon the carcasses. The sacrifice was under attack. Those fowls, it was their nature
to devour the sacrifices laying on that altar. And that's false
religion. The nature of false religion
is to destroy this one. That is the nature and the very
purpose of false religion is to destroy the true one. To destroy the true sacrifice. That's the nature of it. And
it says, Abraham though, he drove them away. The battle, the battle
that we fight is not against drugs. I'm not fighting a battle
against drugs out here. The battle is not against alcoholism. The battle is not against immorality. It's not against things. It's
not against those things. The battle is over who Jesus
Christ is and how God saves sinners. The battle is over how can God
be a just God and save me and you? If God ever reveals that
to you and me, if He truly brings that home to my heart, This problem
of alcoholism, if I have it, drugs or whatever, it'll be taken
care of. Greater is He that's in you than He that's in the
world. It'll be taken care of. The Holy Spirit is able to deliver
us from the power of sin. Is He or is He not? That doesn't
mean we don't sin, it doesn't mean sin's eradicated, we know
that. We know that, you know that as soon as you get up in
the morning. It never leaves us. But the battle is not over
these things, it's over the gospel. It's over, what is God's chief
glory? It's the redemptive work of Jesus
Christ. That's God's chief glory. And that's where the battle is.
Now I can get off on these subjects. I can get off on these subjects
of abortion and drugs, and I can do that, but you're still going
to wind up in hell. If you miss Christ, if the gospel here turns
into nothing but more than what the Armenianism is out there,
you're going to perish. Salvation is a real relationship
with Jesus Christ, with God in Christ. And the battle is over
his glory. The gospel of his glory is what
Paul calls it. This is when the sun was going
down. Let's move on. When the sun was going down,
a deep sleep fell upon Abram and the horror of great darkness
fell upon him, upon Abram. We need to always stand, first
of all, in all of God's grace to us in Jesus Christ, lest we
get an attitude of a foolish familiarity. The man upstairs. God never became the man upstairs
with Abraham, never. When God would appear, Abraham
would hit the dust. I heard a man on television,
he's a television evangelist. Well, I don't want to call him
an evangelist, but that's what they call him. He had said he had
gone to heaven. He said he went to heaven. And
he was given this description in a very joking way. You know, when John was given
the revelation on the Isle of Patmos, he fell down like a dead
man. Every time God would appear to
one of his prophets, they would fall down like a dead man in
his presence. Let us never get this foolish
over-familiarity with God. It says, a horror of great darkness
fell upon Abram. And then not all revelations
bring joy. Not all revelations bring joy.
It's not joy to see how sinful I am. I don't rejoice in that. I don't rejoice in how wretched
I am. When Paul said, oh, wretched
man that I am, he didn't say that with joy and gladness. Not all revelations bring joy
about ourselves. The revelation of how God saves
sinners, that's joy. We can take joy in the Lord,
but God's gonna reveal something to Abraham here. He's gonna reveal
some dark days ahead. He's revealing some dark days
ahead. some dark days ahead for his
posterity. He said, they're going to go into bondage for 400 years. 400 years. Now, they were down there for
about 430 years. But you remember, they went down to 70 people.
And after a while, after about 30 years, they were put in bondage. And God foretells to Abraham,
your posterity, they're going to go into bondage. Everyone
whom God saves, He saves out of bondage. Now, if you were
not saved out of bondage, you've missed it. I've missed it. The
bondage of sin, the bondage of Satan, the bondage of darkness,
the bondage of the law. Everyone whom God saves, He saves
out of bondage. The road home, and he also, I
think, and this thought came to me, I thought the road home
is not smooth. Why should we expect it? Why
should I expect my road home to glory to be smooth? My Lord's
wasn't. His road home back to glory was
by way of the cross, by way of suffering, by way of death. Our Lord said this, in this world,
you shall have tribulations. You're going to be troubled and
tried. But boy, here's a promise. Here's
a promise. And this promise is ratified
by blood. It's ratified by the blood of Jesus Christ. But here's
a promise. Now, first of all, he says in
verse 12, I'll judge that nation. I'll judge that nation. And your people, thy people,
shall come out with great substance." How are we going to come out
of this thing? Seriously, how are we coming out of this? All things are yours in Christ.
everything now listen everything that we can't comprehend this
but it's true i can believe it though i can't comprehend it
everything that belongs to god is mine it's mine thy people abraham shall come
out with great substance Weeping, listen, weeping may endure for
a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Joy cometh in the morning. Now there's something interesting
here in verse 16. I gotta wind this up. In the
fourth generation, he says in verse 16, they shall come hither
again. You know, the vast majority of
them, Hadn't even been born yet. They
hadn't even been born yet. And he said, all your posterity
is going to come back here again and possess this land. And when I read that, it never
occurred to me before, but this scripture hit me in Ephesians
chapter one, where he chose us in Christ before the foundation
of the world. God chose us in Christ before the foundation
in the world, in Christ, I have already been to the promised
land. Seriously, I have already been
there. Every one of his people, every
one of the elect of God have already been there in Christ.
And then a little while, I'm gonna go back. He said, you're
coming back here again. And most of these hadn't even
been born yet. There's only 70 of them I think went down the
first time. See how one we are with Christ? In verse 17, after God did this, after he
gave this to Abraham, this promise, or ratified the promise, God is seen in the sacrifice.
He has accepted the sacrifice. He walked among them. His presence
was made known there. God's presence is made known
in the preaching of Christ and Him crucified. That's where the presence of
God is made known. He has accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ,
and it's when Christ is preached that God walks among us. God
walks among us. when Jesus Christ and him crucified
is preached. God owns that sacrifice. He owns
that sacrifice. And then verse 18, he tells him
here, he said, In the same day, the Lord made a covenant with
Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land from the
river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates. I've
given it. I have given this land. It's yours. It's not going to
be yours after we whip everybody, finally get them out of it. No,
it's yours now. It's yours now. Then he tells him all these names
here. These are all going to be service to you. You're going
to drive them out. You're going to overcome them. All is yours by way of a covenant. that's been ratified by the blood
of Jesus Christ. I have the promise. And my assurance
of that promise is Jesus Christ. He's it. He's it. All right.