Waiting on God

Intro- Raise your hand if you like waiting… We don’t like waiting do we? Waiting is what makes getting stuck in traffic so terrible. It’s what makes going to the doctor’s office so frustrating. Why did I schedule an appointment just to come here to wait another 30 minutes before you see me? It’s what makes going to the DMV feel like torture.

None of us like waiting, but sometimes waiting is exactly what the Christian faith requires of us. God doesn’t solve our every problem instantly, does He? He doesn’t answer all our questions right away. And this morning we are going to see that He doesn’t fulfill every promise He makes to us overnight. Sometimes God asks us to wait.

Turn in your Bibles to Genesis 15 (pg 11). I’ve titled this message “Waiting on God.” If you have been here the last few weeks, you know we’ve been looking at the life of Abram and that God has made some pretty major promises to this man. He has promised to make Abram into a great nation and to give him a great land and to bless all the peoples on the earth through him. And Abram has stepped out in faith and done what God commanded him to do, but God hasn’t kept His promises yet. And Abram is living in that tension, waiting on God to keep His promises.

Transition: But God knows where Abram is, so He comes to him with a word of encouragement at the beginning of Genesis 15.

Genesis 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.”

1. God is Our Shield

You may remember from last week that in Genesis 14 Abram’s nephew Lot was taken captive by a coalition of four kings when they defeated the city Lot was living in, and that Abram went to war and rescued his nephew. It’s possible that Abram feared retaliation. What if these kings came back to attack him? That may be why God tells Abram not to fear and says to him, “I am your shield.” He is promising to protect Abram. He is saying, Abram you hide behind me, you trust me to deflect the blows of the enemy and I will keep you safe. I will protect you.

I spent some time this week trying to understand how important a shield was in Abram’s day. Now, I am no expert on warfare, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t have armor in Abram’s day. So, without a shield a man had almost no defense or protection on the battlefield. If someone shot an arrow or threw a spear at him he had nothing to hide behind. All he could do was hope to dodge it.

Thank God that Christians aren’t so exposed! We have a shield, a fortress, a refuge that is close at hand wherever we go. God is our protector. We look to Him in times of trouble and are saved. Psalm 18:2–3 says, “The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and I have been saved from my enemies.” God is a shield not only for Abram but for all believers.

Transition: But God isn’t through comforting Abram yet. At the end of verse 1, He promises Abram that his reward will be not just great, but very great or exceedingly great. This promise seems to hit a sore spot for Abram though. What good does a great reward do him, an old man, if he has no child to pass it down to? Listen as Abram pours out his complaint to God.

Genesis 15:2–6 - But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.” 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.” 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.” Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

2. You have Given Me No Children/Abram believed God

Abram’s complaint can be boiled down to one statement he makes in verse three. “You have given me no children.” We don’t know exactly how many years have passed since Abram first received these promises from God and left his land and people. It’s possible that Abram has been waiting nearly ten years for God to fulfill His promises. And we know that Abram was 75 years old when he left Harran, so he is somewhere between 75 and 85 years old when he says this to God. So you can understand why he might be growing impatient.

Abram essentially says to God, “You promised to give me children and I obeyed you and left everything to follow You, but here I am all these years later with no child. If I were to die tomorrow, one of my servants would inherit everything I have. If I have no children, what good is any of this to me?”

Abram is frustrated with God. He’s tired of waiting. Have you ever been there?

God doesn’t get angry with Abram, He encourages him and bolsters his faith. He assures Abram that his servant will not inherit his estate. He promises Abram that he will have a son from his own body. Then He tells Abram to go outside and try to count the stars. I wonder how high Abram counted? How long did God let him count before he said the rest of verse five? We don’t know, We only know that eventually God said, “So shall your offspring be.” Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars.

And then verse six says simply, that standing there looking at the stars, “Abram believed God.” He decided to trust God to keep His promises. He was certain, confident that God would give him a son. Romans 4:18 puts it this way. It says, “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed...” It would have been easier for Abram to believe what seemed certain, that he and his barren wife would never have a child. But Abram made the decision to hope against hope. He chose to believe that God is faithful. He chose to believe that He would keep His word.

And the second half of verse 6 tells us that God credited this to Abram as righteousness. Abram wasn’t righteous mind you. If you read his story in detail, Genesis presents him as a flawed man. When he went down to Egypt he was so afraid of Pharaoh that he hid the fact that Sarai was his wife. He knew Sarai was beautiful and he was afraid they would kill him to marry her, so he let his wife be taken into Pharaoh’s bed to save his own skin. This was a despicable sin against God and Sarai. Then, years later, Abram did the same thing again with the King of Gerar, a man named Abimelech, only God intervened this time before Sarai was taken into the king’s bed. So, Abram wasn’t righteous. He wasn’t perfect. But he believed God. He had faith and God credited that faith to him as righteousness. In other words, because of his faith, God regarded him as righteous even though he wasn’t.

This verse, Genesis 15:6, is picked up in Romans 4:23–24 and applied to us. It says, “The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.”

You see, just like Abram, you aren’t righteous and you can’t be righteous on your own. But has chosen to credit righteousness to the accounts of those who believe. For Abram it was belief in the promise. For us it is belief in Jesus and the promises surrounding Him. Do you believe?

Do you believe that Jesus is more than just a man, that He is the eternal Son of God? Do you believe that He lived a sinless life so He could become the perfect, atoning sacrifice for your sins? Do you belief that Jesus died on the cross to pay the punishment for your sins? Do you believe He was raised from the dead on the third day? Do you believe He ascended to Heaven where He sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty? Do you believe that He can save even you? Do you believe that He can set you free from sin and make you a new creation. Do you believe that one day He will raise all who believe back from the dead to live eternally with Him on a new heavens and a new earth where He will wipe away every tear and where there will be no more crying, death or pain? Do you believe that? These are all promises that God has made to those who believe. But you have to believe to receive this reward. You have to believe to be considered righteous.

Just like Abram you have plenty of reasons to doubt. Everything in our world screams at you that it is foolish to believe that this could be true. Our world says it is foolish to believe in God. It is foolish to believe He would want to save you. These promises are for someone else. But look at the stars this morning. Try to count the number of people who have become Abram’s descendants over the years by believing in Jesus. Can you count all the believers throughout the centuries? Can you count all those who chose to endure a terrible death rather than let go of the promises of God? Can you even count just the believers alive in the world today? Look around you. You are surrounded by them even here. And everyone one of them is a reason you should believe.

Will you believe in Jesus? Will you trust God to keep Him promises?

Transition: In the next verses, we find God reminding Abram of the promise to give him the land. And we find Abram asking a pertinent question.

Genesis 15:7–8 - 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, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”

3. How Can I Know?

Abram asks, How can I know I will receive the land? Now many commentators think that land transactions in the ancient Near East involved a covenant ceremony and that Abram is asking God for that ceremony. [John D. Barry, Douglas Mangum, Derek R. Brown, et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Ge 15:8.] He wants some assurance that He will receive what has been promised. That’s why, if you read the rest of the chapter, you will find Abram cutting a covenant with God.

It was called cutting a covenant because it literally involved cutting animals in half. Here is how it worked. When two parties wanted to enter into a binding agreement with one another, animals were cut in half and then separated to create a lane or walkway with the animal carcasses on either side. The Faithlife Study Bible explains, “Ordinarily, the two men entering into the covenant with one another would walk through the halved carcasses—indicating that they should end up like the animals if they break the agreement. [John D. Barry, Douglas Mangum, Derek R. Brown, et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Ge 15:10.]

So, God tells Abram to take a heifer, a goat, and a ram and cut them in two. Then Genesis 15:17 says “When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces.” What’s going on here? Why are a firepot and a smoking torch passing between the animals? Most theologians think this represents God. In the Bible, fire often represents the presence of God. One commentary explains it this way. “The ritual here is dramatic. It is as if God is placing himself under a potential curse: ‘Abram, if I do not prove faithful to my word, let the same thing happen to me as has to this heifer and ram.’” [Victor P. Hamilton, “Genesis,” in Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, vol. 3, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1995), 21.] The CSB Study Bible puts it just as beautifully saying that God is “symbolically indicating that he would himself be split asunder if he failed to carry out his promises. Typically, both covenant partners would walk between the pieces, but here God was unilaterally obligating himself to fulfill his promise.” [Robert D. Bergen, “Genesis,” in CSB Study Bible: Notes, ed. Edwin A. Blum and Trevin Wax (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), 33.] Abram now had an outward sign, a covenant with God, that he could cling to as reassurance that his descendants would in fact inherit the land.

Like Abram, sometimes we ask the question, “How can I know? How can I know that Heaven is real? How can I know that God will keep His promises? How can I know that He will save me…that he won’t abandon me?”

Thankfully, we can know. We can know because God has made a covenant with us too. In Luke 22:20, while Jesus is eating the last supper with His disciples He says “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” You see, God has cut a covenant with you too. A covenant sealed with the blood of Jesus. Romans 8:32 explains how much confidence that should give us. It says, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

So, how can you know that God will keep His promises to you? Because He has already given Jesus on your behalf. If He didn’t hold back on Jesus, why would He hold back on you now? He won’t! Because of Jesus, because of His blood shed on the cross, you can know that God will keep His promises to you. The fact that He gave Jesus for you proves that He will do anything for you.

Conclusion:

Sometimes waiting on God to keep His promises is hard. Sometimes this fallen world can get us down. Sometimes we can get impatient and grow tired of waiting or even begin to doubt. But when you feel that way, remember who your God is. He is your shield and He promises that your reward will be exceedingly great. But He requires faith. If you will believe, He will credit it to you as righteousness. Will you believe? Will you ignore all that our world tells you and choose to hope against hope? If you do, you may still find yourself asking “How can I know? How can I know that God will keep all of His promises to me?” For the answer to that question all you need do is look at the cross. Jesus shed His own blood to make this covenant with you. He suffered and died to save you. He isn’t about to start holding out on you now.

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