On the way over here this morning somebody
button-holed me and says if they’ve learned something of Ken Jones biography and how Bob
Godfrey’s mom called him Bobby, and he said, this lady said, “Can you tell us what Sinclair
Ferguson’s mother called him?” I said, actually I don’t know for sure but
I can tell you one thing that she never called him, she said, “What’s that,” I said,
“precious.” Actually what she did call him was “precious.” He was almost named Sam but his father said,
“Does that mean we have to have 149 more children?” There are 150 Sam’s in the Bible. I hate it when I have to explain these…
oh mercy. When R.C. Jr. was a little boy his mother really did
call him “precious” in fact that’s his family name, but he was not named by his mother
he got that name from his sister growing up, because she would complain to her mother saying,
“precious never does anything wrong.” Well, when our precious went to Sunday school
as a little boy the teacher asked the class, “Who wrote the Bible?” And Jr. raised his hand; the teacher called
on him. She said, “Who do you think wrote the Bible?” He said, “My dad.” And I asked him, “Where in the world did
you get that idea that I wrote the Bible.” And he said, “Well, when all these people
come around here and ask you to sign your books, they ask you to sign the Bible too. So I figured you must have written the Bible.” Well, I don’t know how it ever began in
the Christian world to ask speakers to sign people’s Bibles, you know, after all we
really did not write the Bible. We have more than one charismatic hearing
this, getting carried away here. And there’s another tradition, and I have
no idea where this came from, but now people not only want you to sign their Bible but
when you do they ask for your life verse. The first time somebody asked me that, I said,
“What’s that?” And they said, “Well, you know everybody
is supposed to have a life verse.” Somehow when I read through the Bible, I never
learned that routine. So I have to think quickly on the spot and
come up with an important verse and I use different one’s just to confuse people. But recently at Knox Seminary where I teach
I had one of my students come up and ask me to sign his Bible and he wanted my life verse
so I signed my name and I wrote Genesis 15:17. And I explained to him that I’ve often said
that if I were in prison and could only have one book at my disposal the book that I would
want would be the Bible and if I could only have one book of the Bible the book of the
Bible that I would choose would be the book of Hebrews because it is so rich including
information from both Testaments and I said but if I were in solitary confinement and
only had one verse of the Bible --some of you who saw “The Count of Monte Cristo”
saw the statement about justice that he had in his prison wall— if I only had one verse
of Scripture with me in such dire circumstances, the verse I would want would be Genesis 15:17. So I said all of this to the student and he
thanked me and went away and the next day he came up to me and said, Dr. Sproul, I said,
“What’s that?” He says, “I don’t get it?” I said, “You don’t get what?” And he said, “Genesis 15:17, did I make
a mistake in reading your writing here, I read the fifteenth chapter of Genesis and
I read the seventeenth verse of Genesis and I thought this surely can’t be your life’s
verse.” And I said, “Well, maybe I did not remember
the right verse, let me look.” I said, “That’s really the one that I
meant.” And he looked at me like I’d lost my mind. So I begin this morning by reading to you
my life verse Genesis 15:17. The verse I would want with me in prison. “And it came to pass that 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 I can scarcely take it in every time I
read that verse or hear that verse literally I get chills up and down my spine. And I said that to this student and he through
even more that I had lost my mind. Until I said to him, we have to look at a
text like this and ask this simple question, “What is going on here? Why is that verse so vital?” So I think to get the answer to that we have
to go back to the beginning of chapter 15 of genesis where we read this, “After these
things the Word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not be afraid, Abram,
I am your shield and your exceedingly great reward. I’m your shield and your exceedingly great
reward.” Notice that Abram, the father of the faithful,
gave a somewhat strange response to this announcement that God said, “Don’t be afraid, Abram,
because I’m your shield and not only am I your shield, the one who protects you but
I am your exceedingly great reward.” Abram’s puzzled and he said, “Lord God,
what will you give me seeing that I go childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” Abram said, look you’ve given me no offspring
indeed one born in my house is my heir, my servant, Eliezer of Damascus. I mean I have all the cattle a man would ever
need I have all the possessions that this world can offer and you tell me of great reward,
and when I have no son. What could you possibly give me that could
make up for that deficiency? And behold the Word of the Lord came to him
saying, this one shall not be your heir but the one who will come from your own body shall
be your heir. Then he took Abram outside and he said, Look
now toward heaven, count the stars if you are able to number them. And he said to him. So shall your decedents be. I was standing here the other day and thinking
about our early days in Ligonier, because at Ligonier in our study center that we had
in the mountains of western Pennsylvania outside of the village of Ligonier, we had this great
big room where the lectures took place. And the lady who built this facility for us
installed, in the ceiling, what she described as “what’s it” lights, yeah, people
come in and say what’s it, what’s that? So I call it what’s it lights. They were little lights put in the ceiling
that looked like the stars at night and I was brought right back to that when I came
up here the other day, because look at the ceiling, they have what’s it lights here. Maybe whoever designed this sanctuary had
Genesis 15 in mind. When God took Abram outside on a starry night
and He said, “Look here Abram, look at the stars up there, look at the Pleiades, look
at the milky way, which appears to the naked eye as a dense cloud in the sky when in fact
it’s made up of billions and billions of individual stars. Try to count them because that’s how many
your descendents will be. You just think that you’re childless. Verse 6 is one of the most important verses
in Genesis, we read and he, that is Abram, “believed God and he counted it to him for
righteousness.” Beloved there’s the Gospel, this is the
text that the apostle Paul calls our attention to when he writes the letter to the Romans
and unfolds the Gospel and the doctrine of justification by faith alone when he wants
to demonstrate the truth of the justification by faith alone. He brings us his star witness as exhibit A,
Abraham. And he calls attention to this text because
before Abraham had done anything, before he had done any of the works that God had commanded
him to do, when Abraham believed God, God counted him righteous. The only bases that God ever accounts anybody
righteous, according to the apostle, is on the basis of the imputed righteousness of
Jesus Christ. And the moment that Abraham believed in the
promise of God, God transferred all of the righteousness of His Son to his account. And then God said to him, I am the Lord who
brought you out of Ur the Chaldeans to give you this land to inherit it. We know from the research even in the twentieth
century from the mid-twentieth century a scholar from Michigan, The University of Michigan,
by the name of George Mendenhall who wrote a monograph on the law and the covenant in
the ancient near east where archeological discoveries have unearthed what he called
suzerain treaties, treaties what were made between kings and their vassals. And their analysis of these ancient treaties
from the near east showed a repeated format or structure that occurs over and over and
over again that includes within it a historical prologue and the element of preamble followed
then by the stipulations of the covenant ad the sanctions and so on and we see this so
often in the structure of biblical covenants where the sovereign one, the suzerain, introduces
the terms of the treaty by first of all giving a preamble in which he identifies himself. So many times in the Old Testament we’ll
read this phrase, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or I am the God who brought
you up out of the land of Egypt.” And so the terms of the covenants the terms
of the treaty begin where the sovereign partner identifies himself, but notice when God speaks
to Abram here he doesn’t say, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob because Isaac
hasn’t been around yet nor has Jacob been born. But he does give a historical prologue where
the sovereign reminds the people what he has done in their behalf. So in the ancient and near east in the Hittite
king somebody would say, my name is yahabibi, I am the one who fills your granaries with
wheat, I am the one who defends your borders from enemy invasions, I am the one who did
this, I am the one who did that, and you can see that throughout the Old Testament. And here after God promises something to Abraham,
who’s still Abram, He identifies himself and he said, I am Yahweh, “I am the Lord,
who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it.” Remember in the New Testament, the Cesaera
Philippi confession, when the disciples are asked, who do men say that I am and after
that answer was given he turned to his own disciples and he said well what do you think? Who do you say that I the Son of Man am? And it’s Peter who gives the great confession;
thou art the Christ the Son of the living God. Which Jesus responds with his benediction
upon Simon saying, and blessed are you Simon Barjonah, flesh and blood hath not revealed
this to you but my Father who is in heaven and thou art Petra, thou art the rock and
upon this rock I will build my church and we see that the church is established on the
confession of faith of the person of Christ as the Messiah, God’s promised one. And here is Simon Peter being heroic in his
confession of faith and five minutes later Jesus tells his disciples that he has to now
go back to Jerusalem and suffer and die and what does Simon Peter say? We’ve already heard the ultimate oxymoron. “No, Lord.” “No, Lord.” No, Lord? Not, do Lord, it’s No, Lord and Jesus now
turns to the rock and says, I have another name for you, get thee behind me Satan. That’s how strong we are in our faith. Here’s Abraham the father of the faithful
just five minutes earlier, believing the Lord and has counted to him for righteousness and
now he says, when God announces that he will give him the land to inherit it, he says,
but Lord, God, how could I know that I will inherit it? Look, I’ve come a long way from Ur of the
Chaldeans and I’ve gone to cities where I did not know where I was going. I left my family, I did all these things,
I keep believing you, I keep trusting you and now you tell me I’m going to have all
these children and I’m going to have this land. I believe you Lord, but can you help my unbelief
a little bit. How can I know for sure? Have you ever lived there? Have you ever been there? You think you might be there if you were throne
into solitary confinement, in a prison? You think Joseph struggled with that question
when he was isolated and abandoned from his own family, sold as a slave and imprisoned. You think there were times when he was on
his knees trembling before God saying, Lord, I’m trying to trust you, but how can I know
for sure? How can faith move to full assurance and certainty? That’s Abraham’s question to God. And listen to God’s answer. Bring me a three-year-old heifer, three-year-old
female goat, three-year-old ram, turtledove and a young pigeon. Let me see if I have that right, Abraham says,
you want a heifer that has to be three years old, right? And you want a goat that has to be female,
it has to be three years old, right? You want a ram, three years old, a turtledove
and a young pigeon? All I ask was how can I know for sure that
you’re going to keep your promise, and you’ve given me a grocery list of livestock. And Abraham brought all these things to God
and he cut them in two down the middle and placed each piece opposite the other, but
he didn’t cut the birds in two and when the vultures came down on the carcasses Abram
drove them away. The heifer, the goat, the ram, Abraham cuts
them in half and then carefully places their bodies in a path, like a gauntlet. One have the body on one side of the path,
the other half of the animal on the other side of the path and he makes this arrangement,
he doesn’t cleave the birds in half, but no sooner does he lay out these slain animals
in this particular fashion but here come the vultures, the buzzards coming down to take
advantage of the carrion. And Abraham is busy shooing away the vultures. And in verse 12 we read this, “Now, when
the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram and behold, horror.” Deep sleep comes upon Abram and behold horror. “And a great darkness fell upon him.” You talk about the saints experience of despair,
which is called the dark night of the soul, when the light of God seems to be extinguished
from our presence and we are plunged into this seemingly bottomless pit or abyss of
darkness, which brings horror to us. Ladies and gentleman go through the pages
of sacred scripture and see what the characteristic response of human beings is always virtually
the same, when God comes near. They’re terrified
in this night vision. Abraham knows first only darkness and terror
and God began to speak to him. Listen to what God says to Abram. “Know with certainty that your descendants
will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will server them, and will server them
, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will
judge; and afterwards they shall come out with great possession. But as for you, you will go to your fathers
in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation they will return
here, because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” Boom! Now comes, my name is not John Madden, but
now comes, now comes, verse 17. Here it comes. I’ve given you the context for verse 17. “It came to pass, when the sun went down
and it was dark, behold there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between
those pieces.” In his horror, in his stupefied state, in
the night vision Abraham beholds, he sees this path of slain bodies and he looks and
here comes the smoking oven, a flaming torch, hovering and moving down the isle, down the
pathway, down the gauntlet between these pieces of animals. Ladies and Gentlemen when God makes a covenant
with His people he doesn’t just make a covenant, he cuts a covenant, and characteristically
when God makes a covenant and most occasions that he does it, it is a bloody covenant. And when he makes the covenant with Abraham
later on he tells Abraham, cut off the foreskin of your flesh and of that of you decedents
because in this cutting right you are swearing your fealty, your allegiance to me, and you
are saying to me, oh, God, If I don’t keep my part of this treaty, if I don’t keep
my part of the promise, if I do not respond to you in faith, may I be cut off from your
presence, cut off from your blessings, cut off from your benefits, just as I’ve cut
off the foreskin of my flesh. And I have in my own flesh the reminder of
my promise to you and the other side of that point is God has consecrated, cut out of fallen
humanity, a people for himself. And so the sign of circumcision also represents
God’s grace and blessing, blessing and curse are both incorporated in the old testament
sign of the covenant, that’s Abraham’s part but in the midnight vision, what is the
smoking oven? What is the flaming torch? Really I should say, not what is the oven,? Or what is the torch? But who is the oven, who is the torch? Abraham in this moment of dread and horror
comes this close to the theophany. A theophany is an outward, visible manifestation
of the invisible God, that’s what a theophany is. It was a theophany manifestation of himself
, that God gave to Moses in the Midianite wilderness when he spoke to him out of a bush
that was blazing with fire. It was theophany by which God manifest himself
in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of smoke in the wilderness. It is because the standard theophany of God
is liked to fire in the Scripture, that the New Testament writer says, our God is a consuming
fire. You see I’ve learned something from John
Macarthur. You know you turn the sermon into a dialog,
to fill in the blanks. Our God is a consuming fire. You see, the torch is God and this text is
understood by the author of Hebrews centuries later, when he reminds the people of the trustworthiness
of the promises of God, of the trustworthiness of the Word of God. Where the author of Hebrews says, you know
there are two things that the God can’t do. We say that with God all things are possible,
but that’s hyperbole. Because there are some things that even God
can’t do. He can’t die and he can’t lie. Satan can’t do anything but lie; God doesn’t
know how to lie. He’s incapable of lie because for him to
lie would be to violate his own nature. And so the author of Hebrews says, when God
swore His promise to Abraham because He could swear by nothing greater, He swore by himself. When Abraham said, “Lord how can I know
for sure?” God didn’t say Abraham I sear by the earth,
which is my footstool or I swear by the heavens. God didn’t say to Abraham, Abraham trust
me, cross my heart, hope to dies, stick a needle in my eye. Nor did he swear upon his mother’s grave. He didn’t even put his hand on the Bible
and say I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Now the promises of God that he makes in this
covenant with Abraham are sworn by himself. What is God doing here? He’s saying Abraham, he’s graphically,
dramatically, visually showing the truthfulness of His Word, when he allows that torch to
go between the pieces that he’s saying Abraham, if I don’t keep my promise, if you can’t
trust my Word, then may I be like these animals that you cut in half. May I the immutable, eternal, creator God
suffer a mutation, may the eternal be reduced to the temporal, the infinite destroyed by
the infinite or by the finite. What God is saying is may I be cut in half
just like you cut these animals in half if I fail to keep my Word. I’m promising you by my deity. This is my Word and I back it up with my own
person. There’s nothing higher Abram that I can
swear by so I’m swearing by myself. And every time my faith is weak and I struggle
with doubts and I vacillate with respect to the immutable trustworthiness of the Word
of God, I read Genesis 15:17, “Then it came to pass that when the sun went down and it
was dark that behold there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between
the pieces.” For on that same day, verse 18 says, Yahweh
made a covenant with Abraham.” Fast forward through the pages of history,
come to a peasant girl in a little village who is terrified, horror stricken by the visitation
of an arch angel that came out of no where. And tells this girl that she has been selected
by God to be the mother of the Messiah. She says, “How can this be?” I don’t even know a man. With God all things are possible, Gabriel
says. And it shall be that after the Holy Ghost
shall come upon you and over shadow you that you will conceive and the one in your womb
will be called Jesus and he will save his people from his sins. And as she contemplates this and as the Spirit
of the Lord comes upon her, what does she sing? My soul doeth magnify the Lord, my spirit
doeth rejoice in God my Savior, behold he has noticed the lo estate of his handmaiden
and from henceforth all generations will call be blessed. And then she goes no in this verse and what
does she say? God has remembered. Genesis 15:17, God has remembered the promise
that he made to our father Abraham throughout the pages of the Old Testament. This covenant that God makes with Abraham
is renewed, expanded, more and more of it is revealed. As God extends it through Isaac and then Jacob
who then brings his children down to the land of Goshen where they become enslaved in Egypt,
when the Pharaoh dies and the new one comes along, who doesn’t remember Joseph, and
these people who are the children of his promise are now in bondage and God says, I heard their
cries. You see God remembers His covenant with Abraham,
with Isaac and Jacob and he comes and he speaks to Moses and he said Moses you go and you
tell that Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” Why? Simply that we can remove them from this human
bondage? No, so that they can come out to this mountain
and worship me. Then God forms a nation and the terms of the
covenant are spelled out in even greater detail and added to the promises in the old covenant
are the ceremonies. And it seems like in our day we can’t wait
to say fast enough, how the ceremonial law of the Old Testament has been abolished. We want to flee from the Judaizing heresy;
we don’t tell people anymore that they must be circumcised as a religious right because
what we’ve done was cut ourselves off from the whole history of redemption. We’ve disconnected the New Testament from
the Old. And so we don’t even bother to read Leviticus,
Numbers or other arcane pieced of information that we wonder why they are still in print. But if we go through the Old Testament and
look at the pattern of their ceremony and how in a very real sense, as we’ve already
heard here every aspect of them was driving, driving, driving Christ. God redeems his people out of bondage, rescues
them from the avenger, from the angel of death. How does He know who His people are? Through the blood of the lamb that is placed
upon the lintel over the door. And God said, here’s what I want you to
do. Every year on the anniversary of this I want
you to sit down as families and I want you to take a lamb without blemish and I want
you to remember, I want you to eat this meal, just like they did, ready to go with their
staff and shoes and unleavened bread and all the rest. I want you to keep the Passover and say when
you celebrate the Passover, this we do to remember when God redeemed us from our afflictions. Not this we do to remember what God did for
generations of Jews a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. But in a magnificent covenant way the Passover
feast celebrates the redemption of every believer in the old covenant. As if to say, we were there too. This was our Exodus, this was our rescue from
bondage and that was carried on year, after year, after year, after year, after year,
after year, after year, after year, after year until the night in which our Savior was
betrayed. He sat down with His disciples because He
said that He yearned, that He longed one more time to celebrate the Passover with them. And in the middle of the Passover liturgy,
Jesus dares to presume to change the ancient liturgy when He takes the bread and He said,
this is now my body, which is broken for you. What? The most important celebration of the old
covenant is now going to be changed? He takes the cup and He said this is now the
cup of a new covenant which is in my blood, a new bloody covenant,
not by a lamb that is butchered so that you can rub the blood on the door, not by the
carcass of a three year old heifer or of a ram or a she goat, my blood is going to be
sacrificed. Now, when Jesus supped with his disciples
that was not the hour of His sacrifice. The eating of His body and the drinking of
His blood in the upper room was not a sacrifice, bloody or unbloody, the sacrifice would happen
on the morrow, which would be made once and for all. In the upper room and in the following time,
the disciples celebrated this event, they never offered Christ again to God because
he was offered once and for all. The celebration of the Eucharist in the early
church was never a sacrifice, let me tell you what it was. It was a sacrificial meal. And where does that come from? Turn for a moment to the book of Leviticus
chapter 7 verse 11. “This is the law of the sacrifice of peace
offerings: here God requires the people of Israel to have sin offerings, trespass offerings
and now he comes to the matter of peace offerings. “This Is the law of the sacrifice of peace
offerings which he shall offer to the Lord: if he offers it for a thanksgiving, then he
shall offer, with the sacrifice of thanksgiving, unleavened cakes mixed with oil, unleavened
wafers anointed with oil, or cakes of blended flour mixed with oil.” This is really exciting stuff folks. It really is. And besides the cakes with his offering he
shall offer leavened bread with the sacrifice of thanksgiving of his peace offering. And from it he shall offer one cake from each
offering as a heave offering to the Lord. It shall belong to the priest who sprinkles
the blood of the peace offering.” And so on, verse 15. “The flesh of the sacrifice of his peace
offering for the thanksgiving shall be eaten the same day it is offered. He will not leave any of it until the morning. But if the sacrifice of his offering is a
vow or a voluntary offering, it shall be eaten the same day that he offers his sacrifice;
but on the next day the remainder of it also may be eaten;”
And we get all these instructions, verse 18 “And if any of the flesh of the sacrificed
of the peace offering is eaten at all on the third day, it shall not be accepted, nor shall
it be imputed to him it shall be an abomination to him who offers it, and the person who eats
of it shall bear guilt.” The person who touches any unclean thing or
who eats the flesh of the sacrifice after touching an unclean thing or is unclean that
person shall be cut off from his people.” Does this sound familiar? Does that sound anything like what the theologians
call a monduceoindignorum? They have a name for everything. The eating and drinking unworthily where one
fails to discern the Lord’s body. Every time the people of God come together
at the Lord’s table, they don’t just remember something, this is not just a mental exercise. They come to the feast of the lamb to the
sacrificial feast where they are called to eat of the flesh of the sacrifice that has
been offered once for all. All of which is foreshadowed in the peace
offering of the old covenant, where literally, excuse my Bob, in the senses litteralis, in
the plain sense, what happened was that after the people offered the fat and the liver and
the enthralls that were commanded in the peace offering, after the priest offered that to
God, then the flesh that was left was to be enjoyed by the people who made the offering. They participated in the feast and participated
in the flesh of the victim that was sacrificed. And the Lord said unless you eat my flesh
and drink my blood you will not come into my kingdom. Now, I don’t have time this morning, I don’t
have time for the next ten years to explore all of the issues, theological and ecclesiological
that focus on the Lord’s supper, but whatever else the Lord’s supper is, it is a sign
and seal of the new covenant that Christ has made with us in his body and in his blood
and it is the law of my church never to celebrate the Lord’s supper, to have the sacrament,
without having the preaching of the Word. Yet we think nothing of having the preaching
of the Word, without it’s confirmation, without its sign, without its seal. That Christ himself institute in the first
century church the disciples came together on the Lord’s day to do, what? To study the doctrine of the apostles
to pray together and for the breaking of bread because they understood that when God makes
a promise in his Word, the verbal Word, he confirms that, with the sacrament. See we’re not only loosing the Word in our
church today but we’re loosing the sacraments as well. The War against the Word in our time has become
the war against the sacraments in our time, which sacraments are God’s sign, they’re
his vows, they’re his oaths, just as the ancient king, when he would disuse a decree
and the decree would be announced in the marketplace. What the people looked for was what? That waxed indentation, that waxed impression
that bore the mark of the signet ring of the king that indicated that this edict comes
form the authority of the monarch. And so God seals His Word with the sacraments,
which must be distinguished, my friends, but never separated. For on that day, the Lord made a covenant
with Abraham. Let us pray. Father how we thank you that your Word cannot
be broken. And that you have attached to that Word the
signs and the seals that have come to us from Christ himself who has offered himself as
the perfect sacrifice once for all. Therefore our Father let us keep the feast
of your Word and of your sacraments, for we ask it in Jesus name. Amen.
