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August 22, 2004
12th Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 15:1-6
Pastor Joel Zank

The LORD says, "Do Not Be Afraid!"

(Genesis 15:1-6) 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." 2 But Abram said, "O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?" 3 And Abram said, "You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir."4 Then the word of the LORD came to him: "This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir."5 He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars??if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be."6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

In Christ Jesus, who alone can take away our fears, dear fellow redeemed,

I wish you could have been there to see the look on their faces. I'm talking about the two boys who volunteered to help us out during a devotion at Vacation Bible School last month. Pastor Berger was teaching the children about faith. He asked the two volunteers if they trusted him. Both assured him that they did. So he said, "Let's find out." Pastor asked the first boy to stand with his back toward him, keeping his hands straight down at his side. With eyes shut, he was to show his faith by falling back into Pastor's waiting arms. The point being that a truly trusting soul would remain as stiff as a board during the entire experience. Can you guess what happened? Boy number one was no more than a half-second into free-fall when his body bent and his arms shot back as he prepared for impact with the ground. And as for boy number two, I don't think he even made it a half second. The look on their faces said everything - it was a look of fear and apprehension.

How often God sees that same look on our faces. Our trust in him gives way to fear more often than we'd care to admit. God knows it and so today he conquers our fear with a simple message, the same message he spoke to Abram so long ago. The LORD says, "Do not be afraid!" Because 1) I am your shield; and 2) your very great reward.

The LORD had shielded Abram or Abraham, as he would later be known, from a great deal of harm during the past several months. He had kept Abram safe from powerful kings, large armies and even a greedy nephew. After all this you might expect Abram's faith to be unshakable, but Moses tells a different story. "After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: 'Do not be afraid, Abram'" (Genesis 15:1). Even the strongest faith has it's weak spot. What was Abram's? Listen to his prayer: "O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damscus?" (Genesis 15:2). You might know that Abram was 75 years old when God told him to leave the only home he had ever known for a for a land he had never seen, a land God was promising to give to Abram's descendants. God's promise was packed with blessings beyond measure for Abram and his children. The LORD had told him: "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" (Genesis 12:2-3).

"All peoples on earth will be blessed through you..." This was the centerpiece of God's promise, for here was the assurance that one of Abram's descendants would be the world's Savior from sin. A wondrous promise indeed, and yet before it could be fulfilled, 85 year old Abram and his 75 year old wife needed to give birth to a child. No wonder Abram was afraid - the clock was ticking and for the life of him Abram couldn't seem to produce a son to save his soul, literally. In fact when he asked God, "...what can you give me since I remain childless?" he actually used a phrase in his own language that can be translated, "what can you give me since I am perishing childless."

Abram had experienced God's help every day of his life, but look at what fear does to the believer. It robs him of his trust in God, and so destroys both his desire and his ability to worship God. Here's a man who had built altars to God's glory, who had prayed to God boldly, and had proclaimed his saving name to others. But in no time at all Abram's joy has turned to sadness and his praise for God has been replaced by a bitter complaint: "You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir" (Genesis 15:3).

How can this happen? How can a person who has so many reasons to trust God, be filled with so much fear, so much sadness, and so much bitterness? By the way, I'm not talking about Abram now, I'm talking about each of us. How does it happen that with each new trouble in life we come down with a case of spiritual amnesia - completely forgetting who we are in Christ? How can bad news from the doctor, or the bank, or the boss, or the spouse, or the parents or the children suddenly wipe out all that God has done for us and all that he promises to do for us? How does it happen again and again that at the first sign of trouble you and I insist on snatching our problems right out of God's hands and trying to solve them ourselves? That's what Abram did. Since he had no children, he decided to adopt his servant, Eliezer as his heir. But this plan didn't make him any happier.

In this too we can relate to Abram. Think of all the hours we spend fretting over our troubles only to come up with solutions that leave us as miserable as we were before. That's because no matter how hard we work at it, we can't fix what's really wrong with us - we can't overcome our sinful unbelief. That's what worry is, you know - it's unbelief - the refusal to fear, love and trust in God above all things. Look at what this sin does to us. Have you ever spent a sleepless night, feeling completely lost and alone with a problem? Have your worries every left you feeling like you would never be happy again? My friends, if we insist on worrying, that feeling will finally become a reality, because worry is a sin, punishable by death in hell. God's Word tells us this, not to worry us some more, but to bring us to repentance.

Bring your worry to God today, not just the problem that has seemed to cause your worry, but the sin of worry itself. Confess it for the damning thing it is. Pray that God will not hold your unbelief against you. And now listen to your LORD who says, "Do not be afraid! Because I am your shield." Here's great news my friend! God is going to protect you not just from the problems of life, but even from your own sinfulness. He's going to do this for you just as he did it for Abram. He's going to do it with his Word. Again, listen: "Then the word of the LORD came to [Abram]: 'This man [Eliezer] will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.' 5 He took him outside and said, 'Look up at the heavens and count the stars--if indeed you can count them.' Then he said to him, 'So shall your offspring be'" (Genesis 15:4-5).

God overcomes our sinful unbelief with a word of promise, a word so powerful that it creates in sinful hearts like ours the very faith we need to believe it; and so both the promise and our faith are gifts from God. And what powerful promise does God make to us? The one he made to Abram - the promise that one of those many offspring that came from Abram's body is none other than our Savior Jesus, the God-man who went to the cross as our shield, protecting us from God's anger by taking in his body the punishment for our sins. God's promise to us is the promise of his forgiveness to us in Christ, the promise that thanks to Jesus we will never experience God's anger; we will receive only his blessings, not just through the good that happens to us, but through the bad as well.

But what if our faith is weak? What if we continue to be plagued by doubt? Is there ever a point when faith is too weak to receive God's promised blessings? God handles this concern too! The LORD says, "Do not be afraid! Because I am your shield and your very great reward!

Have you ever noticed that about the time you try to check up on the quantity or quality of your faith, faith itself seems to vanish? So rather than invite us to stare at our faith or measure it in terms of our feelings, God would have us focus on the object of our faith - the One whom our faith embraces - the Lord Jesus. This is the lesson we learn from the Apostle Peter that night he walked on water. With eyes of faith fixed on Jesus, Peter received the Lord's power to do the impossible. But what happened when Peter took his eyes off Jesus? What happened when he stared at the waves and thought, "I can't do this."? Immediately he began sink. The very same thing happens to our hope - it sinks whenever we try to focus on our faith rather than on our LORD. No wonder the inspired writer says in Hebrews 12:2: "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith." In other words, let's just keep looking at and listening to Jesus and he'll take care of our faith.

That's what God did for Abram. Moses tells us in verse 6 of our text: "Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness." The Hebrew word used here for "believe" tells the whole story. It's the word we say at the end of prayers to express our confidence that God will hear and answer us - the word "amen." This Hebrew word means "to support, or to cause to believe." It's the same word that is used in Hebrew to describe what a father does as he holds his infant son or daughter. His strong arms support the child; they cause the child to trust he or she is safe. The father does all the work. And so it is with our heavenly Father. He creates faith and grows it with the strength of his promise. And how does faith work?

God makes faith to be like a beggar's open hand, a hand that neither earns nor deserves what is placed in it, but rather receives it as a free gift. "Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness." The hand of faith God has placed in you and me, receives the gift of righteousness. Righteousness is the state or condition of being in a right standing with God. It is a condition created by perfect obedience to God's commands. Abram did not have and could not produce any righteousness of his own. The same is true of us. And yet we must have righteousness to gain entrance to heaven. So in his saving love God gives us righteousness in a very special way. Through the gift of faith, God credits us with the righteousness produced by Jesus' holy life. And so he who is our shield is also our very great reward. I know when we hear the word reward we think of something we have earned. This reward is different; it is one that Jesus has earned for us and so its power to save us will never be in question.

Oh there will be days when we doubt this, days when we will worry and fret, days when we won't feel saved. But when our faith is weak and our feelings fail us, God will renew our hope by renewing his promises. He will speak to us the very words we need to hear. The LORD will say, "Do not be afraid! I forgive you; all is right between us, for the sake of Jesus, your shield and your very great reward." And so by the power of his promise, the LORD will again give us the faith to say, "Amen!"