Introduction:

Today we are going to talk about promises. Thinking about this theme, it occurs to me that we

have in most of our lives based on promises. When we buy a mortgage (sometimes called a

house), the deal is conditioned on us fulfilling our promise to pay them back (with interest) for

the loan that was given to us. We actually fill out what is called a “promissory note” saying as

much. The same goes with cars that we take out a loan for; even if you rent, you sign a lease for

a certain period of time, promising to pay this much for this long. It also occurs to me that we

have a world that isn’t real good at keeping their promises, anymore at least:

Booker T. Washington tells a story of a former slave he had met in Virginia not long after the

Civil War. It turns out the man had made a deal with his master that he could pay his master for

his own body over time which would eventually result in his own freedom. So the slave moved

to Ohio because he found the best work there. And indeed he paid his master as he earned

money. Well then, Lincoln gave his Emancipation Proclamation. Technically, the slave was now

a free man; nevertheless for even a few years after the proclamation, he continued to work

paying his master until the final day when he would walk miles and miles back to Virginia to

hand his former master every bit of money he owed him. Asked why he did that by Booker T.

Washington, the former slave said, “I did not have to pay my debt, but I had given my word to

my master, and my word I had never broken. I felt that I could not enjoy my freedom till I had

fulfilled my promise."

Unlike back then, when a man’s word was his bond, today we sign contract after contract filled

with legalese jargon that no one understands except a small handful of lawyers and politicians to

make sure that we actually fulfill the promises we make!

What does it mean then that God is a God of promise? In our text today, we are going to see God

as the God of Promise through the life of Abraham:

I. Like Abraham, God begins His promises to us graciously

a. That is to say, God is the initiator of our relationship to him. From all we

know about Abraham before the day God called Him to be his, he was bowing down

to idols in Iraq. Abraham was not deserving of God’s calling him at all. And yet, God

in His grace condescends and calls people, even in the midst of their sin to a new life,

a redeemed life, with Him. He says, ““Go from your country and your kindred and

your father's house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great

nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a

blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse,

and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God showers this sinner with

words of blessing.

b. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people tell me that the reason they

don’t come to church is because they need to clean up their life first. “Oh, I wouldn’t

darken the door of a church yet. Someday, when I’m older, but not yet.” This view is

the essential human view of religion: we clean ourselves up, present ourselves before

God and he says, “good job, you can stay.” Let me say in the nicest way I can:

Nonsense! If that was the way it is there wouldn’t be a single person in the world that

wasn’t on their way to hell, including Abraham in our story today! God is the one

who calls you, cleans you, makes you, guides you. Ephesians 2:8-10 says, “For it is

by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the
 gift of God. For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works,

which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

c. And now a word for those of you who are already in the Church: Abraham did

not pat himself on the back after God called him; he didn’t think well, it must have

been because of my behavior that God blessed me, or I followed the rules real well.

So too, God saved you by grace and don’t you ever forget it. This last week, I heard

one of my favorite Pastors in the world exemplify this as he was speaking to the

American Association of Christian Counselors. He began his sermon by just

confessing his sins: I don’t love my wife in any way comparable to how Christ loved

the Church; my singing is so fervent in times of corporate worship, but at home my

fervency for the Lord is almost non-existent, etc, etc. Now why could he confess

these things to so many thousands? Because he is keenly aware that he is a man saved

by grace alone.

II. Like Abraham, God keeps His promises to us unconditionally

a. Or in other words, God doesn’t keep His promises to us because of our

performance afterwards. His promises stand because He is the One that makes them.

As a matter of fact, if the promises God makes to Abraham were based on His

continued good performance, then Abraham and the rest of us would have been in

deep trouble.

b. Let me show you some examples of some of Abraham’s failures: Lying about

Sarah twice; Abraham offers Lot Canaan; has sex with Hagar (Sarah’s maidservant)

to try and accomplish God’s plan for him); laughs at God’s statement that the
promised child will come through his wife Sarah. All these and many more mistakes

by Abraham do not change God’s promise one bit to him.

c. Why? Because of what is recorded for us in chapter 15. In that chapter, what

we see is a covenant being made. God promises Abraham a son through his wife

Sarah, but Abraham asks how he can know this will come to pass. So God says,

“Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years

old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.’ And (Abraham) brought him all these, cut

them in half and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in

half. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.”

i. So what’s going on here? Well, God is preparing a covenant between

him and Abraham. It’s a sort of ancient contract, an old promissory

note if you will. What would happen is the people making the

covenant would cut these animals in half and lay the sides apart from

each other creating a path in between the carcasses. Then whoever

would make the covenant would walk through the pieces of animals

and say something to the effect of, “If I don’t hold up my end of the

deal, my promise, may what has happened to these animals, happen to

me.” Or in other words, “If I don’t do what I’ve promised then it’s my

life.”

ii. So Abraham’s got the pieces ready, no doubt ready to make a deal

with God, when all of the sudden we’re told something interesting

happens: He falls asleep (or rather he’s put to sleep)! He’s not going to

walk through the pieces at all. Normally this would be what’s called a
 bi-lateral covenant, two sides making an agreement; they’d walk

through the pieces and meet in the middle; each person had the

conditions they were required to meet. That’s the kind of covenant that

God would make with Israel over 400 years later: You do this, I’ll do

this. You don’t do this, I won’t do this.” This covenant with Abraham

would be entirely different; this covenant is unilateral. Only one

person is making a promise: God. And He is swearing by His own

holy name, the highest thing one might swear by that He will give

Abraham what he has been promised.

d. The Bible says that those who trust in Christ Jesus are not sons and daughters

of the conditional covenant He made with Israel, rather, we are sons and daughters of

Abraham’s covenant of grace!

III. Like Abraham, God will fulfill His promises to us

He does this 4 ways in Abraham’s life, and I believe in ours:

a. Through faith (Genesis 15)- It is our faith that apprehends the promises of

God; that faith we’re told in Genesis 15:6 causes God to credit Abraham with

righteousness. Luther put it this way, “Righteousness is nothing else than believing

God when He makes a promise.”

i. You say in response, “Simple enough,” but I will tell you that apart

from God giving us such faith, none of us would have it; it’s not so

simple at all. Abraham’s life exemplifies it for us as time after time,

there were things that seemed to get in the way of the promises of

God, and instead of believing still in that promise, he would turn to the
 side. Oh, how more than anything else today do we need people that

actually believe God promises are actually true for them. Christ lived

for me, Christ died for me, Christ rose for me!

b. Through patience (Isaac being born so long after the initial promise)- The

second way God fulfills His promises to Abraham and to us is through lots of

patience (or as the word could be translated “long suffering”). Learn this: When God

makes a promise, it does not mean that it will in any way immediately come to pass.

The pattern in Scripture is that God takes His time. For Abraham, he received the

promise that he would have a son at the age of 75, but it wasn’t until he was 100 years

old that the son actually came. That’s 25 years of waiting! His family would inherit a

great land one day, but that would be 400 years from then; One day from this nation

would come the Savior of the world, but that would around 2000 more years. And

today, two thousand years after his first coming, we still await our Lord’s return to

judge the living and the dead. This is the way God fulfills His promise to you: In His

time.

c. Through tests (God calling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac)- Just as God will

fulfill His promises to us through faith, and patience, so too God fulfills His promises

to us through various trials and testing. This means challenges, difficulties,

persecutions, strife are all part of God’s plan. It is through this cross bearing that God

accomplishes His purposes in our lives. One particularly strong example of this we

see in Abraham’s life comes well after God has delivered on the promise to give

Abraham a son. Isaac, the promised child, is now an adolescent and all seems to be

going well, when God tests Abraham in a frightening and strange way: “Abraham,
take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and

offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

Now Abraham had to have wondered what in the world was going on here. After all

the waiting, and all the promises about a nation coming from this boy and a Savior

coming from this boy, now God says, “I want you to sacrifice him to me?” But as

verse 1 tells us it was a test: Would Abraham follow God, obey God, even if it

seemed to make absolutely no sense to him? Well, he would. The next morning

Abraham would gather his son Isaac along with two servants and they would begin

their journey to the mountain. Isaac was probably a teenager by this time, and so he

would help Abraham carry the wood up the mountain. Not knowing that he was the

one to be killed Isaac asks the logical question, “We got the wood, the fire, the knife,

but where is the lamb?” “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering

my son.” Eventually they got to the top of the hill and there Abraham laid out the

wood, layed his son down on top of it, and with knife in hand was about to kill him.

At that very moment the Angel of the Lord stopped him: “Abraham, Abraham!” Do

not lay your hand on the boy or do anything, for now I know that you fear God,

seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son.”

d. Through Sacrifice (of another)- And this is where we see the final and most

important way that God fulfills His promises of grace and salvation to us: He

sacrifices another in our place. Indeed, Abraham was right, God himself had provided

the lamb for the sacrifice when they discovered a ram’s horns stuck in a thicket.

God’s mediator, messenger intervened before Abraham’s child would be killed; there

would be a lamb sacrificed in His place. Church, this is but a picture of how God in
Christ would save us His children from eternal death. Our mediator, the Son of God,

the Angel of the Lord would intervene with the Father, “Father, Father forgive them

for they know what they are doing!” He would become the lamb of God slain for the

sin of the world. And just as that ram’s horns were caught in thorns, so too our Lord’s

crown was made of thorns. God fulfilled his promise by providing Himself the Lamb.

And by His stripes we are healed.