Reasons to Trust God - Genesis - August 23rd, 2026 (Sermon Transcript)

When I was a senior in high school, my grandpa gave me $4,000 to get a new car. Very exciting thing, and obviously, it wasn't going to be a brand new car, but a new to me car.

And somehow, at the time, my friends had convinced me to get this special edition Ford Taurus. It's laughable even saying it, but it was this like special edition Ford Taurus with a more powerful engine.

And I was never super into cars, but a lot of my friends were. And apparently, these were great engines and pretty fast, but they were rare. They were pretty hard to find.

And so, I looked and looked and looked, and I ended up finding one that was available for sale in Texas. And it had everything that I wanted. It was a great deal.

The guy agreed to ship it out to me. And so, we made up a little contract, and I sent him part of the money, and I waited eagerly for this car to arrive.

I can still picture in my head the kind of foggy late spring morning, and the truck comes around the corner with my car on the back. And I remembered unloading it, and I started up, and I drive it, and it was a total piece of junk. It was terrible.

At first, it ran okay, but it clearly had some issues, including a very poignant smell of gasoline, and ended up taking it to a shop, and it needed $2,000 something in repairs. Back then, I think that's equivalent to $10,000 in today's money.

So long story short, I never paid the guy the rest of the money. He was very mad. He did not understand.

He thought his car was in pristine condition. Didn't matter what the mechanic said. So I never paid him the rest of the money.

He was mad. I was mad. I sold the car instead of getting it fixed, and it was a bit of a nightmare, but also a big life lesson for me.

If you're going to buy a car, sight unseen, you need a real contract. You need some kind of guarantee, and it should be a good one. It should be official.

Sadly, that's the reality in our worlds. Maybe it shouldn't be like that. You should be able to trust people and take them at their word.

We shouldn't need contracts and signatures on the dotted line, but that is the reality of life in our world. Life corrupted by sin produces a lot of disappointments and broken promises, so we often feel the need for contracts and assurances.

Well, for the past few weeks, we've been studying the life of Abraham, and Abraham was a man who trusted God. And yet, when God made promises to Abraham, he still needed assurances. He still needed sort of a contract, something official from God.

And in a minute, I'm going to read from Genesis 15, verses 7 through 21, and we'll see the official contract that Abraham receives from God. We'll see at the beginning how he expresses his doubt to the Lord.

He expresses to the Lord that he needs more assurance. And the crazy part is that God actually gives it to him.

This is, I've come back to this point over and over and over again throughout the life of Abraham, because it just blows me away each and every time. God actually responds kindly and favorably to his expressions of doubt.

You might think that God would be offended. Like, how dare you imply that I might fail to keep my promises? How dare you doubt me after all that I have done for you?

God had every right to respond that way, but he doesn't. In his great love and compassion, I believe because he understands what it's like to be human, he signs the contract. He gives the assurance.

He makes the covenant. So we're going to look at that covenant this morning, and there are two reasons at least why this is so important for us. The first is that we are the recipients of some of the promises that God made to Abraham.

The Apostle Paul makes this argument at great length in the Book of Romans and also in the Book of Galatians, saying that those who put their faith in Jesus are the true descendants of Abraham.

And therefore, the true recipients of some of these promises that are made to Abraham. So we ought to, as descendants of Abraham, spiritual descendants of Abraham, we ought to know what those promises are, what the covenant, what the contract says.

And the second reason is that there's another covenant that God has made with us, the New Covenant. Well, what this means is that there is a contract in heaven with your name on it. And God has signed that contract on the dotted line.

So have you read it? Have you read the fine print? Do you know what it says?

I think a lot of people don't know what it says, so we're going to look at that this morning. Please stand for the reading of God's word. I'll read the text for us.

Genesis 15 verses 7 through 21. And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur 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 hyphre three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove and a young pigeon. And he 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. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram.

And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be servants there. And they will be afflicted for 400 years.

But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward, they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age.

They shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.

On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, or with Abram, saying, To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river of Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenazites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites,

the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated and join me as I pray for us.

Lord, as we come to your word, I just pray for clarity, for truth, for your spirit to be at work in our hearts and in our minds. God, there are treasures here. There is life-giving hope in your word.

There is truth that is more precious than gold and silver and all the jewels in the world. Help us to see these things and to savor them and to find life and hope in them. We pray in the name of Jesus.

Amen. Now, I want to start with verse 8 because it really sets the scene for us. It makes sense of why God does what he does.

Abraham, or Abraham, God later changes his name from Abraham to Abraham. And I find myself just switching back and forth between the two. So just fair warning on that.

Abraham said, Oh Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? He's talking about the land that God has promised to give him. And this land is filled with hostile, powerful nations.

So you can understand his trepidation, his doubt. Like you've promised me this land filled with all of these powerful, violent people. How's this going to happen?

How's this going to work? They're not just going to give him the land out of the goodness of their hearts. And so Abraham expresses his doubt.

And God again is very patient and gracious. What he does in response is truly incredible. He makes this profound, eternal covenant with Abraham.

And the whole thing is amazing. And there's this one little detail in particular that is just astounding. We're going to save that detail for the end.

And it's more about what the text doesn't say rather than what it actually does say. The covenant process begins in verse 9, and this was their version of signing a contract.

So you know, Abraham brings out the animals and he starts cutting them in half. This is like equivalent to the moment when the notaries show up and there's lawyers and fingerprints and recorded statements.

This is their version of a bulletproof, ironclad, official-as-it-gets contract. This was how they did things. Notice what happens in verse 10.

This really communicates the serious consequences of breaking the contract. This is what it says in verse 10. He brought him all these animals, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other.

But he did not cut the birds in half. Some scholars speculate that they didn't cut the birds in half because they were simply too small to actually cut cleanly in half. But that's beside the main point.

The main point is that all of these animals are getting cut in half because that was their way of swearing on their own lives.

They were effectively saying, the members of the contract, whoever they might be, in this case, it's God and Abraham, they're effectively saying by cutting these animals in half, if I don't keep my end of the deal, let that be me.

If I fail to uphold my part of the agreements in this contract, I should be cut in pieces. Obviously, it doesn't get any more serious than that. We see this intensity, this seriousness, all throughout the passage.

Look again at verse 12. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. There's a sense in which it is ominous and foreboding.

And in verse 18, it says, on that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram.

That phrase, on that day, like when you're telling a story about a major event in your life, on that very day, when you remember your anniversary or the birth of your first child, on that day is a phrase in Hebrew that carries a weight to it, a

significance to it. And perhaps the most significant thing we see here in all of this is the appearance of God himself.

Verse 17 says that when the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. It's kind of mysterious or baffling at first, like what is this smoking fire pot? What is the flaming torch?

But what we learn throughout the entire Old Testament, even throughout the entire Bible, is that God often appears in the form of fire, some kind of fire. So for example, when God made the covenant with Moses and the Israelites, he appeared as fire.

Exodus 19, 18 says Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln and the whole mountain trembled greatly. We also see the same thing with the burning bush.

Everybody knows that story, right? When God appeared to Moses in the form of a burning bush and speaks to him from the midst of the fire. We see fire everywhere when the prophet Ezekiel first encounters God in Ezekiel 1.

And we see fire in the eyes of the pre-incarnate Christ in Daniel 10. This one gives me chills every time I read it. There's a very interesting parallel passage to this in the book of Revelation, chapter 1.

But Daniel 10 6 says that his body was like barrel, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude.

As the author of Hebrews wrote, our God is a consuming fire. Makes you think about God and who he is, doesn't it? And so it is God that we see here who's making this covenant with Abraham.

This is not the kind of thing. I think this is so important to recognize. This is not the kind of thing, this agreement that God makes with Abraham.

It's not the kind of thing that he sends an angel for. This is the kind of thing that he shows up for himself. This is how seriously God takes his promises to his people.

And that is a general universal truth throughout all of the scriptures. God's serious commitment to his promises to his people, including us, his flawed people, his doubting people, his undeserving people.

God is 1000% committed to keeping his promises to us, and he wants us to know that. He goes to great lengths to make sure that we know that. I think a lot of people fail to recognize the power that this can have in our lives.

When we are fully confident that God is never going to fail to keep any of his promises to us, when we are fully assured that his promises are ironclad, guaranteed to come to pass, that is an anchor for our souls.

And God does so much to demonstrate his faithfulness. He does so much to assure us. Look at verse 13, for example.

It's sort of mysterious at first. God is warning Abraham about the upcoming slavery in Egypt. And it almost seems off topic.

You're reading through the passage, and then all of a sudden he starts talking about Abraham's descendants getting enslaved in Egypt, and then it goes back to the Covenant part, and they finish making the agreement.

Like, why is the Egypt stuff in there? We all know how the story goes, how the Israelites end up enslaved in Egypt, and God then sends plagues and forces Pharaoh to let his people go, and they escape dramatically through the Red Sea and all of that.

But why is he telling Abraham about that here? Well, think about it. If he didn't warn them ahead of time, they probably would have lost all hope.

If he didn't warn them about this ahead of time, they would have lost all hope, because God is promising to give Abraham and his descendants the land of Israel and all the surrounding lands as well.

So imagine that you are a descendant of Abraham, and you are living in slavery in Egypt, and you've been living in slavery in Egypt for 300 years. That's older than America. 300 years of slavery in a faraway land.

Would you ever believe that your people were going to rule the promised land? Of course not. You're slaves.

You're hundreds of miles away. Never in a million years would you believe that that could happen, unless God had already given you a prophecy about that era of slavery and told you exactly when it was going to end.

What promises of God seem impossible to you? There are promises that all of us doubt, that all of us struggle to believe. What are they?

And what has God said in his word to give you confidence that you, that it will happen? Did you know that the Bible is filled with prophecies from God for you to help you get through the hardest of times?

God's word is filled with promises that are designed to be the anchor for your soul, because God understands our weakness. He anticipates our doubting. Therefore, he personally guarantees our future and guards our hope.

Romans 15, 13, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope. We all know how powerful hope is.

I can still picture in my head that, that poster of Obama from like 2012, I think it was, maybe it was 2008 or nine. One of those elections where it was like the four different colors, and it's his face, and it says, hope.

And that was powerful, but this is a hope that is infinitely more powerful than that. Now, if you think that God is going all out for Abraham, wait until you see what he does for his New Testament people.

Abraham represents the Old Testament people of God, and God is patient and gracious and faithful, and he gives them all kinds of wonderful promises with ironclad guarantees, but it's nothing in comparison to what we see in the New Testament, in the

New Covenant. I've said that there's a contract in heaven with your name on it, but a lot of Christians don't know what that contract says. It's called the New Covenant. As Jesus said in the Last Supper, it is the New Covenant in his blood.

And again, as the Apostle Paul shows in the Book of Romans, we are part of these covenants.

The New Covenant, the Covenant with Abraham, even though the Covenant with Abraham is addressed to Abraham, even though the New Covenant is addressed to the people of Israel, by faith in Jesus, we are brought in to these covenants.

Paul uses the analogy of a tree and branches getting grafted in to the tree. And so we receive the benefits here.

Jeremiah 31 verses 33 and 34, it says this, This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, us included, after those days, declare the Lord. Listen carefully. This is the fine print of your contracts.

God says, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.

For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. He will forgive your iniquity. He will remember your sin no more.

Each and every sin you've ever committed in your entire life, he will remember it no more. He won't hold it against you. He won't punish you for it at some point, but in the future he will forget about it completely.

All of your flaws, all of your mistakes. Whether you're rich or poor, slave or free, powerful or weak, popular or unpopular, white or black, Jew or gentile, the New Covenant says that you are known and loved by God. They shall all know me.

From the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. The people who were always really good and tried really hard and worked hard, and they took care of their families, those people will know the Lord.

The people who messed up 10,000 times and made a bunch of huge mistakes and alienated their kids and blew this opportunity and blew that opportunity.

And the people who just feel like total garbage and they have no business being in church, they will know the Lord. From the least of them to the greatest, we're all on a level playing field.

We are all by grace through faith in Jesus, invited into deep personal relationship with God. And his law, his commandments, the rules and regulations of the Bible are thereby transformed.

Because it starts with a relationship with God that we are brought into by grace through faith. The law, the commandments, then take on a whole different meaning and role. It talks about how his law is written on our hearts.

So the commandments are no longer some burden, burdensome list of rules that he gives to us that we will inevitably fail to follow. The commandments are no longer a source of condemnation. They become a source of light and life.

They're written on our hearts so that they become something that we naturally want to do. They become something that we desire ourselves to follow. God's law is written on our hearts and becomes a delight rather than a duty.

And when you fail, you are already forgiven. This is the contract. This is the agreement.

These are the promises. Unlike the Old Covenant, God does not hold your sin against you. The New Testament says that God does discipline his people.

If you're a Christian and you continue in sin, God may discipline you in a way that is painful, in a way that feels like punishment. But the promise is that it is not punishment. It is discipline for your good to train you because he loves you.

In the Old Covenant, it was punishment. It was retributive justice.

But in the New Covenant, it is restorative discipline because we are pardoned, we are justified, we are washed and sanctified and adopted and empowered by God's Spirit to live the lives that God designed us to live.

You as a New Covenant Christian have a glorious future and nothing can take that away from you. Are you certain of that? Are you confident in that?

Do you really know that and believe that? Our passage gives us all these details of God's Covenant with Abraham, and we see the intensity of it, the level of guarantee, but we can also see the same thing with the New Covenant.

And so I want to show you that here in the New Testament. I want to show you the reasons that we can be certain that God will keep his New Covenant promises to us. The first one is that God's Holy Spirit has been given to us as a guarantee.

Ephesians 1 verses 13 through 14.

It says, in him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, you were sealed, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to

the praise of his glory. The Holy Spirit is the guarantee of your inheritance, the guarantee that God's promises to you will be fulfilled. That word guarantee was used in business deals in the ancient world.

That's the kind of language that the Apostle Paul is using here. It was an earnest payment or a first installment that served as a binding pledge that the remainder would follow. That's what God has given to us in the Holy Spirit.

The second reason we can be confident in his promises is that Jesus himself is the personal embodiment and confirmation of every commitment that God has ever made. Jesus is the proof of God's past, present, and future faithfulness.

Let me say that again. Maybe you can picture Jesus in your minds. For one of the scenes in the Gospels, you can think about him and his love and his compassion towards people.

You can think about him and his fierce determination to go to the cross and save us. Think about Jesus and know this, that Jesus is the proof of God's past, present, and future faithfulness. Second Corinthians 1.20.

For all the promises of God find their yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory. So think about that next time you pray and you finish with, in the name of Jesus, amen.

It is through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory because all the promises of God find their yes in him. Reason number three, Jesus always lives to make intercession for us. Hebrews 7 verses 22 and 24 and 25.

It says, This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant. The former priests were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever.

Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. Think about it from the perspective of an Old Testament Jew.

As an Old Testament Jew, you were reliant upon human priests to intercede between you and God.

But what if you knew those priests were corrupt, and you were desperate for some sort of relationship with God, and you were desperate for somebody to carry your request to God for you, you were desperate for somebody to satisfy, appease God, to help

you obtain forgiveness for your sin, and you knew, well, that guy Tom is the one who's going to do it, and Tom is a dirtbag. I know he did this and did that, and it's like, how's Tom going to get my sins forgiven?

Or you knew this guy, this guy Joe, he was a pretty decent guy, but he died. Now, who's going to go to God on my behalf to obtain forgiveness of sins for me? What if they fall asleep?

What if they mess up? What if they do it wrong? What if God doesn't accept them because they have some secret sin that nobody knows about?

But Jesus always lives to intercede for us. Jesus is a better priest because we know that he is God's own son. We know that he has no secret sin, that he is the perfect spotless lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

We know that Jesus is perfectly righteous and perfectly effective in his intercession for us. That's what the apostles taught.

That's what we're seeing here in Hebrews, that Jesus, we can be confident in obtaining the promises of God because Jesus continues to go to bat for us. He continues to plead before the father on our behalf.

And if God is for you, who can be against you? If God's own son is advocating for you, do you think God is going to fail to give you what he promised? Of course not.

The fourth reason we can be confident that we will obtain the promises of God, that he will hold up his end of the bargain in the New Covenant, is that God simply cannot lie. It is impossible for God to lie. Hebrews 6 verses 16 through 19.

And I'm going to read this in the New Living Translation because it makes it so much easier to understand. There's a lot of reasons to use a lot of different translations.

And usually I use the English Standard Version, but this one's going to be in the NLT. And I just want you to let this wash over you, to soak this in. As the passage says, these truths are the anchor for your soul.

Now, when people take an oath, they call on someone greater than themselves to hold them to it. And without question, without any question, that oath is binding.

God also bound himself with an oath so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. So God has given both his promise and his oath.

These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.

Isn't that beautiful? But there has to be a catch, right? Every contract is between two parties.

Every contract says, you do this, and I'll do that. This is what you're agreeing to, and this is what I'm agreeing to. That's how covenants work.

But not here. This is the completely astounding detail that I mentioned earlier. Look again at verse 17.

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. God alone passed between the pieces. Abraham did not.

God alone swore these promises to Abraham, and in return, Abraham received them. That's it. He didn't earn it.

He didn't deserve it. There were no stipulations or requirements. It was nothing but grace through faith.

And if you look at the new covenant that I read earlier, Jeremiah chapter 31, it's the same thing. God says, I'll do this, and we receive it. And that's it.

He guarantees it. He promises. And with an unbreakable promise, it's impossible for God to lie.

He says, I'm going to do these things for you. And all you have to do is trust me. For by grace, you have been saved through faith.

And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.