So hi everyone. I'm spare Drew.
I'm dropping in for Pastor Drew. I'm sure he is missing being
here this morning. So what we're going to do this
morning, I'm actually going to cover.
We're just going to jump right into where Pastor Drew was and
roll with it. So good luck believing loyalty.
That's the title. Good luck with that too.
What do these words mean and what do they mean when we put
them together? I've intentionally chosen this
title. It was a favorite phrase of one
of my favorite scholars, Doctor Michael Heizer.
To fully understand it, or at least get a good understanding,
we'll dig into today's passage and it really will make sense to
you. So super quick summary, we're
doing Genesis 15 and Genesis 15 recounts God's covenant with
Abram, emphasizing Abram's faith as he believes in God's promises
despite his circumstances and God's unwavering commitments to
fulfill those promises. And what promises are those?
Well, there's two. There's a child and there's
land, right? So there is a promised heir and
land for that heir to live. There is a people to be a legacy
and a land for that legacy to be created.
So if you are able, please stand with me, willing and able.
And we'll read just the first 6 verses of Genesis 15.
After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a
vision. Fear not Abram, I am your
shield. Your reward shall be very great.
But Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me?
For I continue to be childless, and the heir of my house is
Eliezer of Damascus. And Abramson, behold, you have
given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be
my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord
came to him. This man shall not be your heir,
your very own son shall be your heir.
And he brought him outside and said, look towards the heaven
and Number the Stars. If you're able to number them,
Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be.
And he believed the Lord and it counted to him as righteousness.
Take a seat. Thank you, let's pray.
Almighty God, we come before you today to honor you, to worship
you, to learn about you. I pray that as we dig into this
passage today that you would highlight to us who you are.
You would reveal to us something about who you are and how we can
respond to that in Jesus name, Amen.
So at the start of this passages, we have promises and
we have problems, right? So first it seems that God
literally appeared to Abram and we should talk about that and
maybe we will because that's not our usual experience of God.
God appears with a promise and Abram gives a list of problems
like hey, yeah, right. So think about it.
Abram is 75. He's left his family, he's left
his land. He's even split away from his
nephew who came with him, right? So he still has his wife, He
still has his household, right? His servants, his donkeys, his
sheep, his cows, whatever. And God says to him, your reward
shall be very great. Thanks God.
I'm almost dead. But I love the thought, right?
Abram lists his limitations. I'm old.
I've got no kids, and really I'm just a gypsy, right?
I'm just cruising around this land.
I don't have a home, I don't have anything.
What reward could God give him that would be very great?
In his society, a big family was considered a blessing.
And Abraham's not doing so good here, right?
Some of us in Sunday school sung that silly little song.
Father Abraham had many sons. Well, he wasn't Father Abraham
just yet. So I have a side question.
Would you still be a Christian if there were no church?
I have a second side question. Why does our church not have a
view like this? That would be amazing.
Would you still be a Christian if the only way you could become
one was if the patriarch of your family was one and lived and
shared that in a good way? Look, not me anyway, right?
That's not how it would have worked.
So in our society today, especially in America, we're a
deeply religious country. We've churches on every second
corner. Side note, I think there should
be a battle for who gets to call themselves First Baptist.
Just saying, our politicians and our leaders.
Leaders, man, I cannot talk. What am I doing up here?
Use religious language and words, and we talk openly about
going to church or reading the Bible.
It's a common conversation on Monday morning.
What did you do on the weekend, Drew?
Well, I went to church on Sunday, hung out with some
people. We had a great time, right?
Want to go to church? There's plenty to choose from.
We've got a literal feast, right?
We can look online, we can listen to podcasts, we can talk
to people online. We can read those sketchy online
reviews about Pleasant View Baptist Church or wherever,
right? We can shop, we can search.
We have a feast of choices available to us.
When I grew up or where I grew up, I've never grown up.
So where I grew up, that was not the case, right?
So people accepted religion, but it wasn't an acceptable topic,
right? Politicians didn't talk about
God, whether well or poorly, right?
It just didn't happen. We didn't get either side.
We did have a Christian Prime Minister at one point.
I'm really not sure if that was beneficial or not.
Saying you went to church on the weekend created surprise and
even hostility. So I I looked up some numbers
just for the fun of it. So in America, 62% of Americans
say they are Christian. In the last survey that I saw,
20% of Americans go to church on a regular basis.
I don't know how they define regular.
Last time I looked it was like more than once a month.
Australia, 40% of people say they are Christians. 4% of
people go to church on a regular basis.
It's a different society, right? And it doesn't take much to
think of some other countries where it's worse.
But if you want to send some missionaries, I think Australia
could do with a couple. But there are other countries
that are worse, right? We could pick II.
Christianity is persecuted in some areas, right?
If you're not a Hindu, you're in trouble.
We can pick plenty of countries around the world where it is not
acceptable to be a Christian, mostly Muslim minority nations,
but there are plenty out there. And yet, all of that to say,
this is still miles away from Abram's time, right?
Would you like to worship the one true God, the creator of
heaven and earth? Well, there's no churches,
there's no houses of worship. There doesn't appear to be any
more than the occasional person who calls himself a priest.
The first one we hear of is Melchizedek, and he's also the
king of a city, right? There doesn't appear to be any
widespread scripture, though. Obviously some things are
carried along and there is oral tradition.
There's probably some things written down.
I don't know. There was no moral code.
So when we talk about the moral code and the law that we're also
used to talking about, that's 500 years away.
There's nothing, right? There is no example of how and
where to live. There's no information, no
building, no books, no podcasts, no advertising.
Amen. Sorry to everyone who works in
marketing. So if you know, you know, I
guess, right, that's about it. The best you can do is have a
great patriarch or for some of you, you can get married and
join a different family who might have a great patriarch.
That's literally it where it comes to religion in the time of
Abraham. So when we're talking about it,
it's a really weird place. So it's it's you know, it's the
world wide W people do what they do.
There are snippets of revelation around, but there's no formal
system. So, and this is going to get
into a side theme that I didn't mention, one of the main reasons
that God makes a covenant with Abram is actually to reveal what
he is really like to correct the fault of view of deity that
existed at that time. But this is projected to take
place in stages. We've heard of progressive
revelation, right? So we're starting with the
smallest little seed of God, correcting the view of who he
is. Maybe there was an early
attempt, right? We've got Adam, we've got Enoch,
we've got Noah, we've got other examples.
But we don't have any real view that at the time of Abram, God
was known. Some people clearly knew him,
right? But there's no formal system,
there's nothing written down, there's nothing going on.
So God is revealing himself. That's really what's happening
as we read this passage. So in our modern world, again,
we have 1000 ways to communicate with one another.
A day does not go by where I do not speak to someone on the
phone in person. Through 700 different apps,
especially those of us with friends and family in different
countries or different states or different places.
We talk about all sorts of things.
Sometimes they're deep and meaningful.
Sometimes they're practical. A few of us in this church have
a text group that's just full of pictures of kids, food, and
memes. You know?
We are constantly communicating and communication is open and
available to us. If I need advice, there's a
couple of you in this room who've heard from me at times
when I've needed a friend, right?
And I'm sure the same for you. We have easy access to
information. So question for the crowd who
would love God to just pop down and have a chat?
I got questions, right? We look at these passages in
Genesis and we see God just showing up and talking to people
and it's like, wow, that'd be cool.
Please sign me up, right? No, just half thoughts that
maybe God spoke to me, right? God shows up and speaks to Abram
and that's really why I'm, I'm sure I would love a good chat,
right? Sure, there are things I can
think of, except my brain would probably flood and I'd be like
everyone who gets to make an meet an Angel and I'd be on my
face on the floor. So let's be honest.
Abram, however, is privileged. Firstly, there is a part, right?
God is revealing himself and he has to choose a way to reveal
himself and so he chooses to work through Abram.
But this is the start of something new.
This is the start of something new for society as a whole.
This is the start of God revealing himself that will
culminate in Jesus, right? This is the beginning, if you
like, of that story. Obviously there are parts
before, but this is the beginning where God really
starts to speak and really starts to make himself known.
So before we get away from having God come down and say hi,
you know, again, please, anytime.
How old was Abram when God first came and said hi?
75 now I know some of you are closer to that than me.
None of you are past there. Fortunately.
That's half of my life away. I'm 50, right?
For those who don't know, I'm 5075.
That's half of my life away. I will have made pretty much
every consequential decision I'm going to make by the time I
reach 75 S OK, that's already, you know, not as good as it
sounds, right? If God's going to show up at 75.
Secondly, Abram, OK, lived a bit longer than some of us will.
He died at 175 S during those 100 years of his life from when
God first spoke to him, how many times did God pop down for a
chat, pop quiz? Any numbers?
No, No 8 in 100 years, God popped down 8 times.
Now that's still better than the count I've got, right?
I'm living on. I'm living on the big fat 0.
But what about the content of these conversations?
In this passage, Abram at least gets to state his fear.
I have no children. I have no land.
In some of these examples, he doesn't even get to do that.
It's not like Drew's Bible study.
Has anyone been to a Bible study with me?
I let you go anywhere. I love it.
I love to go down rabbit trails. I love to talk.
I love when people ask questions and we roll around like that,
right? That is not our conversation
with God. God doesn't show up and give a
rabbit trail Bible study, right? He doesn't show up and just have
a conversation over a cup of coffee.
He's showing up with a purpose. So, all right, even less
exciting than we thought. It's still be great, but don't
lose sight of that when you read that, right?
When we read these pictures of God showing up to people in the
Bible or an Angel showing up, it's extremely specific and
happens for a specific reason. What was that reason?
God is showing something about himself, and I think we'll learn
more about that as we dig in. So Genesis 15-6 And he believed
the Lord, and he counted to him as righteousness.
Now I could talk about this for ages, but it turns out this guy
called James talked about it in the New Testament.
So I'm just going to read 10 verses from James 2 verse 18 to
26. That's 8 verses for those who do
math better than I. All right, James 2 But someone
will say you have faith and I have works.
Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you
my faith by my works. You believe that God is 1.
You do well, even the demons believe in Shudder.
Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart
from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father,
justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the
altar? You see that faith was active
along with his works, and faith was completed by his works, and
the Scripture was fulfilled. That says Abram believed God and
it was counted to him as righteousness, and he was called
a friend of God. You see that a person is
justified by works and not by faith alone.
In the same way, was not also Rahab the prostitute justified
by works when she received the messages and sent them out
another way? For as the body apart from the
spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
Ouch. We could rabbit trail here all
day and dive into how this has been interpreted,
misinterpreted, argued, whatever through the centuries.
There's some super interesting stuff, but the one meaning is
clear, all right. Faith requires action.
This is how we see Abram being declared righteous.
Faith requires action. Abram had faith.
His faith worked in his life and change it.
He really did leave his land and become a gypsy in this land that
God called him to. He really did believe God would
act. He was willing to raise his
concerns and see how they would be addressed.
His faith had action. He took God at His word.
And look, honestly, we could just close down here.
We could end here. Do we take God at His word?
Do we trust Him? How does that work out in our
lives when things are good, when things are hard, when terrible
things happen? Can we retain our faith, our
trust, and our belief in God through these times?
Now, most of you know I haven't had the most amazing couple of
years, right? We're not going there.
I'm not ready for that and I may never be, but we sure have asked
God, where are you? Even in the hardest times of my
life, I can look back and see God working.
I can look back and remember the pain and remember the hard time,
hard times. But I can also see that God is
doing something. I have no idea what He's doing.
You know, again, pop down and say hi anytime, but I have faith
that God is working. And so I continue to live out
that faith. So this ties into our theme and
title, Believing Loyalty. Hopefully it will begin to start
to make sense. What is believing?
It's trusting God, It's trusting in who God is, trusting his
promises, and trusting in his revelation of Himself.
Easy. So what is loyalty?
It's remaining faithful to Him as the exclusive object of our
worship. We believe in one God.
We're loyal to one God. Not any God we see, not any
opinions we have, not anything that looks good or great or
amazing in the world. We are loyal to that one God
that we believe. As part of that loyalty, we
listen to what He says, right? Because we are loyal to Him, we
take it to heart. We do the things that He says
and we don't do the things that He says not to do, right?
That's loyalty. So believing loyalty is a theme
that exists throughout Scripture from Genesis to Revelation.
You can find this theme everywhere.
We are called to be loyal to the God we believe in because
believing loyalty is a relationship, right?
We not only believe, we respond with loyalty.
Our faith has action. We don't worship other gods or
no God at all. We return to God even when we've
failed or think we have right. We maintain our allegiance to
Him first and Him alone. There are other things in our
lives, right? But our allegiance is to God.
Our loyalty is to God above all and in all.
All other considerations fall under that first loyalty.
There's a lot we could unpack there.
Save that for another day. One thing, this is super
interesting and we won't go too far.
And it doesn't take a genius to find it, right?
I'm no genius. If you were just to read just a
little bit further and we'll leave that for Pastor Drew next
week. Congratulations, Pastor Drew.
Abram clearly has a promise. God has clearly shown up and
spoken to him. And Abram goes, I don't know how
this is going to work. I'll make it work myself.
It's fine, right? Isn't it amazing?
Apart from Jesus, all the heroes in the Bible are fallen.
All the heroes in the Bible have issues.
And that's the theme for another day.
We're not going to dig in. All right, Looks like Spare Drew
might need to come back someday. Let's finish out this week's
text. I'm just going to read 9 verses
this time. Look, I can do math from Genesis
15, seven to 16, and then we'll talk a little bit more about it.
And he said to him, I am the Lord who bought you out of ER of
the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.
But he said, Oh Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess
it? He said to him, Bring me a
heifer 3 years old, a female goat three years old, a ram 3
years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.
And he bought him all of these, cut them in half, and laid each
half over against the other, but he did not cut the birds in
half. And when the birds of prey came
down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and
behold, A dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.
Then the Lord said to Abram, No, for certain that your offspring
will be sojourners in the land that is not theirs, and will be
servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years.
But I will bring judgement on the nation that they serve, and
afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
As for you, you shall go to your father's in peace.
You shall be buried in a good old age, and they shall come
back here in the 4th generation. For the iniquity of the Amorites
is not yet complete. There's ton of stuff in there
too. But there's one thing I really
want to bring out. Abram says.
How am I to know? How am I to know?
God? You have made a promise.
How am I to know that you will fulfil it?
What a great question, right? How am I to know?
If I could only answer that every day of my life, I'd be a
genius, right? I'm not.
I see, you'll promise God, but how am I to know?
We've already discussed some of it, right?
This is a unique moment in God's revelation in how he's going to
receive, how he is going to reveal himself to the whole
world through Abram's offspring, again culminating in Jesus.
So we see a ceremony that we do also see in other non biblical
texts. It's normal.
We don't know all of the nuance anymore of this ceremony.
There's a few things we do know. It's formal, it's very specific.
It's solemn. It's expensive, right?
I've bought a cow before. They were expensive, right?
We're cutting up five animals, well, three animals and putting
two other birds at the front. It's an expensive ceremony in
passing between these animals that are cut in half.
The animals are laid out and the person giving the treaty walks
between them. In passing between them, they
are saying may I be like these animals if I fail in this
treaty, right? That's pretty serious.
May you cut me in half if I fail not signing any of those.
Sorry. Look, that's weird to us today.
We don't live in a even an agrarian farming society.
Most of us that have seen animals right, I can tell
stories there. We won't do that.
Everyone is a product of their own culture.
But the commitment is clear. God is saying I will fulfil this
promise and I'm enacting this sign that means something to
you, Abraham, in a way that you will understand.
So how are we to know? And this, I think, is the real
purpose of this passage. God has revealed something about
himself. God made a promise.
He made a vow that we would fulfil as people in the future
by just a few thousand years at least.
We can look back and say, Yep, it was fulfilled, right?
We can see that it's fulfilled. And so look, forget about Abram.
We just learned something about God.
So we've gone pretty far and wide.
We've talked about a lot of things.
I want to leave you with three points.
Nice and simple point #1 God is faithful.
The real point of this passage is to reveal that God is
faithful. He will do what He says.
One of the things that we do, and I'm sure we've learned it
somewhere, is we often look through these passages in the
Bible and we're like, be like Abraham, be like, be like, be
like. And we try and analogize the
person that is the main character of the narrative,
right? We look at this and we're like,
be like Abram, have faith, be like Abram, have faith that has
action. Sure, I guess we can go there,
right? But sometimes that's useful and
sometimes it's not. The point in this passage is God
is revealing something about himself to the entire world.
He's revealing that He is worthy of our loyalty.
So do you believe that God is faithful?
Can you look back into your lives or the lives of the people
around you and say God has acted?
Have you told people about that and shared that?
So we can encourage one another, right?
God is faithful. We can look back.
We can see these things. Two, God is the main character.
So have you noticed something? As we've been talking through
it, we continue to talk about Abraham, and I've already talked
about this a little bit to start with, but the passage is
actually about God. It's about how God acts, how God
is faithful, what God is doing, how God is revealing himself.
So I want to leave you with an encouragement.
Next time you're reading the Bible, ask yourself this simple
question. What is God doing here?
How is God acting? What's the purpose of this
passage? You know, especially in the Old
Testament, right? We read these narratives,
stories of interesting things that happen, right?
And you're like, wow, that was cool.
Samson grew his hair out long. And we're like, OK, I'll grab my
hair out long. Don't shave my hair out, right?
No, that's a terrible application of reading that
scripture. What is God doing in this
narrative? Ask yourself that question next
time you're reading the Bible, right?
You might learn something, you might learn something
interesting, but God is the main character, all right.
And I guess as we bring out awesome music team back up and
they're not awesome just because my daughter and friends are on
it, but they are just awesome. Let's pivot to our response.
Believing loyalty. It's a theme we see from Genesis
to Revelation. First, I will ask, do you
believe? Key point, right?
You can't have loyalty to something you don't believe in
if you don't believe. Yeah, Let's have a conversation.
It might be something we can talk about.
Are you loyal to what you believe?
Do you respond? Can you respond?
Does your faith have action? Are you loyal to your belief?
Or do you just believe? Is it just head knowledge?
Right. Lives up here.
Wow, You're really smart, right? But you do nothing with it.
I don't think that's wisdom, right?
Does your allegiance to the God you have faith in define and
drive every other area of your life?
It's a hard question. I absolutely come up short.
There are areas of my life sometimes I look at and I'm
like, Drew, fix yourself, right? Sometimes we find those areas in
our life that we like that is not in line with the God that I
worship. So what can you do about that?
Interesting question. So you can say this part of my
life is out of balance. I know it.
I've now been revealed that the Holy Spirit has just given me a
swift kick and let me know my loyalty in this area, maybe not
to God, but to my children, my spouse, my work, my money, my
whatever, all right, whatever that thing that is out of area.
So we need to consider that once we've been revealed.
So when is the best time to fix that?
Now, right now. All right, let's pray.
And as we pray, I want you to, we're going to take 20 seconds.
I want you to think about your loyalty, your life, your God.
Where in your life do you need to make that change?
And do you need to make Almighty God, we come before you
believing. We come before you humble.
We come before you knowing that you are the main actor in this
story and that you are revealing yourself to us.
I pray, I pray for me, I pray for everyone around me that our
faith can become action, that our believing can be filled with
loyalty, that we can respond to you and your revelation in such
a way that our life would reflect you and reflect what you
would have for it. Be with us, guide us, reveal to
us who you are in Jesus name, Amen.