Will You Stand or Fall?

Genesis 15
Richard Spencer | Sunday, May 22, 2022
Copyright © 2022, Richard Spencer

My title this morning is also a question that each one of us must answer for ourselves: “Will you stand or fall?” We are told in Hebrews 9:27 that “man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,” and in 2 Corinthians 5:10 we are told that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” And so my question has to do with the final judgment that every single human being must face. Will you stand? Or will you fall?

There are only two possible outcomes to this judgment. Either God declares us to be guilty sinners and sends us to eternal hell, or he declares us to be just in his sight and welcomes us into heaven. And the Bible is clear that both heaven and hell are eternal. In Matthew 25:46, Jesus is describing the final judgment and says that the wicked, “will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” The same Greek word is used in both places. Heaven and hell will both exist forever. And in Psalm 1:5-6 we read that “the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” When the psalmist says that the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, he means that God watches over them for their good, as a loving Father. But as the psalmist declares, the wicked will not stand in this judgment; they will fall.

Given the inexpressibly vast difference between these judgments and the fact that the decision is irreversible and the consequences eternal, it behooves us all to find out on what basis this judgment will be made. What is it that leads to a person being declared guilty? What makes a person, as Psalm 1 puts it, wicked? And what makes a person righteous? There is no more important question that we can possibly ask, and our passage this morning provides the answer.

And not only is this the issue upon which each of us individually will stand or fall, it is, as Martin Luther said, the issue, or the doctrine, on which the church stands or falls. And the answer is not decided by a majority vote. The vast majority of people, including most who call themselves Christians, will say that we will be judged, ultimately, based on our own works. Now those who call themselves Christians will almost always say that we need God’s grace as well. But they will say that we then act on that grace and produce works that are, in the end, what justifies us. We add the crucial element, we make the difference, or so most professing Christians would say.

This view is called analytic justification and it is, for example, the view of the Roman Catholic church. God will analyze us on the day of judgment and, based on what he sees in us, he will declare us to be either just or guilty. And this is, in practice, the view of many modern evangelicals as well. They think that their work of faith and being a good person, aided of course by God’s grace, is what leads to their being justified in God’s sight.

But that is not the view taught in the Bible as we will see in our passage this morning. And so my first point is that we are justified by faith alone.

I.       We are Justified by Faith Alone

The Bible teaches what is called synthetic justification. We are not justified based on our own righteousness. We can’t be because the righteousness that God requires is perfect righteousness. In Matthew 5:48 we read that Jesus himself told us, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” And let me tell you the disappointing, yet obvious fact; none of us is perfect. We would have to have never sinned. Not even once. And that is not possible.

Paul tells us clearly in Romans 3:20-24 that “no one will be declared righteous in [God’s] sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

We cannot perfectly keep God’s law. The law condemns us. We can only be saved by grace. The bottom line is that we are all born sinners. As David said in Psalm 51:5, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” And because we are sinners, we sin every day. That is what it means to be wicked.

Sin is rebellion against the infinite, eternal and unchangeable Creator and Lord of the universe. Sin is wicked. Not just murder or whatever other sin you may consider wicked, but every sin. Your sin is wicked and my sin is wicked. Because every sin is rebellion against our Creator. And because we are born sinners; in other words, with a sinful nature, all we can do is sin unless and until our fundamental nature is changed. We must be born again to see or enter the kingdom of God as Jesus told Nicodemus in John Chapter 3.

Being born again changes your fundamental nature. It is a real, radical, permanent change. You go from being a fool, who says in his heart that there is no God to being a person who knows that the God of the Bible is true. Now I must warn you, don’t misunderstand this statement. There are many who will say that they believe in God who nevertheless fit the biblical description of a fool because they do not believe in the true and living God as he has revealed himself in the Bible.

But when a person is born again, he sees God as he has revealed himself and he sees himself as a guilty sinner. Therefore, he repents of his sins and trusts in God’s promise of salvation based on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And this placing all of your trust in Christ alone is what the Bible means by true, saving faith.

And now we are ready to see from our passage how this all works. The key verse is Genesis 15:6, which tells us that “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” The apostle Paul explains the great importance of that word “credited” in Romans 4:2-5. He wrote, “If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. What does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’ Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.”

That last sentence is crucial. God justifies the wicked! What an amazing statement. And what great hope for us! But how can God do this and remain just? God can’t allow our sins to go unpunished. That would be unjust. Perish the thought! As Paul argues, when I work, my wages are not credited to me as a gift. In other words, if we were truly righteous in ourselves on the day of judgment, God would be, as Paul says, obliged to declare us righteous, or just. But we are not righteous as I have argued. So, God must give us righteousness as a gift. But how can he do this? How can he credit righteousness to us and remain just?

The answer is that God himself came to earth and took our sins upon himself. He paid the price we owed and his perfect justice was satisfied. His people are called the bride of Christ. This is an incredibly important and vivid metaphor, because just as a husband assumes the debts of his bride when they get married, so Christ assumed the debts of his chosen people. And just as the bride gains a share in all that the groom has, so we gain a share in all that Christ has. His perfect righteousness becomes ours. Hallelujah! “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Now, of course, Abram didn’t know that this Savior is Jesus of Nazareth because Jesus wouldn’t be born for another 2,000 years, but he certainly knew of the promise given to Adam and Eve after their fall in the Garden. In Genesis 3:15 we are told that God said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Abram knew this promise. And he knew the promise God had made to him as well. In Genesis 12:3 we are told that God said to Abram, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” In other words, the Savior promised to Adam and Eve would be a descendent of Abram and that is how all peoples on earth would be blessed through him.

And Abram believed these promises, which means he believed in the Savior by looking forward to him, just as we are saved by looking back and believing in the work of that Savior, who we now know was Jesus of Nazareth. Saving faith is, at its core, trusting in God’s promises. Not all people have had the same knowledge of those promises, but the fundamental issue is one of trusting God and his Word.

And so, the Bible teaches that we are justified by faith alone and this is the doctrine on which the church stands or falls. And this is the basis on which each one of us will individually stand or fall on the day of judgment. Are you trusting in yourself? Or are you trusting in God’s promises? That is the issue.

And now let’s go back and look at the start of Chapter 15. It begins by saying, in Verse 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.’” Note that the verse begins by saying, “After this”. In other words, we must remember the things that took place just before this time.

In Chapter 14 we read about four kings defeating the five kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar, and taking the people of these towns away captive along with the plunder. Among these captives was Abram’s nephew, Lot and his family. And we read that when Abram heard about this, he went out with the 318 trained men born in his household and pursued these four kings as far as Dan, in northern Palestine. This was a distance of about 170 miles.  Abram then attacked these kings at night and pursued them another 50 miles or so to rescue Lot, his family and all of the others.

When Abram returned all of the captives to their own area, he was met by that enigmatic King of Salem that we heard about last week, Melchizedek. Abram gave him a tenth of everything and Melchizedek blessed him, saying, as we read in Genesis 14:19-20, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Abram then refused to take anything from the kings he had rescued.

It was just after all of this that God came to Abram in a vision and said, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”

The fact that God said, “Do not be afraid”, makes it clear that Abram was struggling with fear. One possible reason for his fear is obvious, he could have been worried that the four kings he defeated would regroup and come attack him and overpower him. God had enabled him to defeat this superior force once, but it would certainly be understandable for Abram to be afraid, and I think this is almost certainly part of the reason.

But I also think there is a deeper reason for Abram’s fear. He had just been in battle, which is a terrible thing to experience. Now certainly this battle was a proper one to fight, so there was no sin involved in choosing to fight. But fighting in a war necessarily means you will be trying to kill people and they will be trying to kill you. But even as you do this, you must not sin in your motives. There must not be any vengeance, or malice in your heart for example. Now I have never personally been in a war, but I can imagine how terrifying it would be, and it is almost impossible for me to believe that a person wouldn’t be aware of having malice or vengeance in his heart. And I think that having recently been in battle, and then having received God’s blessing through Melchizedek, Abram was very likely acutely aware of his own sin and the presence of the perfectly holy and just Judge of the universe. And anytime a person is aware of these things, there will be fear. And Abram was very concerned, as a result of this fear, to see God’s promise of a Savior be fulfilled. He knew that he needed a Savior!

And so God, in great mercy, comes to Abram and says, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” The Hebrew word translated here as shield has the same root as the word translated as delivered in the blessing given by Melchizedek, remember that he told Abram that God, “delivered your enemies into your hand.” God is our shield, our deliverer. He will deliver us from every enemy. He delivers us from sin, Satan and the world. He gives us the victory in Jesus Christ.

And God says even more to Abram. Not only is he Abram’s shield, but he is his “very great reward.” This world is not eternal and our ultimate reward is not here. We have an eternal home with God and our eternal reward is found there. It is in the new heaven and the new earth. And the greatest part of our reward is God himself. We will see him as he is and we will spend eternity with him. What a glorious thought!

And after God gave this great comforting statement to Abram in his vision, we read in Verses 2 and 3 that Abram responded, “O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus? You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

Some commentators think that Abram was complaining and grumbling against God in these statements. But I don’t think that is the case. Certainly, our faith is always a mixture and doubts assail us, but I think that Abram was saying he could not be satisfied with anything in this world. Given his fear and God’s comforting words, Abram was looking forward to the promised Savior and he didn’t understand how that promise could be fulfilled since he was still childless at this point and he and his wife were well past the age of childbearing.

But then we see God again coming with amazing grace and comforting Abram. God tells him he will indeed have a son of his own and then God has him look up at the stars and says, “So shall your offspring be.” Now I don’t think God was just referring to the vast number of stars, he was also reminding Abram that God had created all of them. And if God can create the heavens, then surely he can provide Abram with children and, more importantly, he can fulfil his promise of providing a Savior.

And then we come again to the verse I started with, which some have called the most important verse in the Bible, Verse 6. We read, “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”

Abram believed God’s promise of a Savior. In other words, he believed the gospel. And, as a result, God credited it to him as righteousness. We have already seen that Paul clearly explained that this means that Abram did not earn his righteousness in any way, it was credited to him as a gift, not something that he had earned by his own behavior.

In other words, the righteousness spoken of here is not Abram’s own righteousness, for Abram was a sinner just like every one of us. Even as great a man as he was, his righteousness was still like filthy rags in the sight of the perfectly holy God. It could never save him. No, the righteousness that was credited to him was, as I have already argued, the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is the only righteousness that can ever save anyone. It was the righteousness that comes from God, what Martin Luther called an alien righteousness. Remember that Romans 3:22, which I read earlier, says, “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe”.

Also notice that this verse tells us that this righteousness comes to us through faith. In other words, it becomes ours when we are united to Jesus Christ by faith. The New Testament speaks about this union by saying that we are in Christ. So, for example, 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

And while it is true that no one will repent and believe unless and until he is born again, it is also true that we must each personally make a decision about the gospel. God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility go hand in hand. Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1:23, “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” God calls us to himself using his Word, the gospel.

Regeneration, or new birth, is God’s work alone. But we should ask God to grant us new hearts to understand, believe and respond to his Word in faith. That is why Paul said, in Romans 1:16-17, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’”

Paul was quoting from the Old Testament, Habakkuk 2:4, when he said that “The righteous will live by faith.” The original Greek written by Paul can be understood in two ways. It can mean that those who have been declared righteous will live by faith, or it can mean that those who by faith are declared righteous will live, meaning have eternal life. And both meanings are true.

But getting back to Genesis 15:6, it is important to note that this is not the first time Abram had this faith. We know this for certain because we are told in Hebrews 11:8 that “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” And that occurred earlier in Abram’s life when he left Ur of the Chaldeans. But this is the first time the Bible tells us explicitly that it was Abram’s faith, in other words his trusting in the promise of God, that caused God to judge him as righteous. In other words, this is first place where the Bible explicitly teaches us the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The doctrine upon which the church stands or falls and the doctrine upon which each one of us will stand or fall.

If you come before God’s judgment seat trusting in your own good works, you will fall. You will hear those terrible words from Jesus, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matthew 25:41) But if you have truly seen God by faith, then you will know how glorious, and perfect, and holy and just he is and you will know, by contrast, what a wretched sinner you are and you will not even dare to look up, but will join with the tax collector of Luke 18:13 and say, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” And then you can look forward to the day of judgment when you will hear Christ say, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!” (Matthew 25:21)

The fact that you cannot be saved based on your own good works does not, however, mean that your works don’t matter. Quite the contrary, they matter a great deal!

Your works matter in two eternally significant ways. First, if you have been born again, you are a new creation as we saw earlier. The old is gone, the new has come. You have a fundamentally different nature and that nature will show up in how you live. You will not be perfect. We all still sin. But if you live in habitual sin, if sin characterizes your life, then you are not born again no matter what you say. Paul tells us in Acts 26:20 that after he was called by Christ he preached that people “should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.” To repent is to turn away from our sins, and to turn to God means to trust in him. In other words, to have saving faith. Repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin. They always come together. And your deeds prove whether or not your repentance and faith are real.

The second way in which your works are important is that there are different levels of reward in heaven and different levels of punishment in hell. That is why we saw earlier in 2 Corinthians 5:10 that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” That verse is not saying that we are saved based on what we have done, but there is an aspect of judgment that is based on our works.

But now, let’s move on in Genesis 15 because God gives Abram an amazing vision to strengthen and encourage him in his faith. God reiterates his covenant and takes a self-maledictory oath; in other words, he pronounces a curse on himself should he fail to keep his promise. And that leads us to my second point, God’s gracious covenant renewal

II.      God’s Gracious Covenant Renewal

In Verse 7 God says to Abram, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.” This is the prologue of God’s covenant with Abram. God had brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans, in other words, out of a land of idolatry. And God was leading him every step of the way. We see the same basic idea at the start of the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 20:2 God said, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” And the same thing is true of each one of God’s children. We were all slaves to sin, but God called us out of that slavery into the glorious freedom of the children of God. He made a unilateral covenant with each one of us. Moses tells us the heart of the covenant in Leviticus 26:12, where we read that God said, “I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.” The apostle Paul quotes this in 2 Corinthians 6:16, where he wrote that “we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’”

We must praise God for this marvelous covenant of grace. We did nothing to earn it. We didn’t even have to agree to it. God instituted it by his own love and authority and he brings each of his chosen children into it and he will complete all that he has planned. I’m not going to spend any more time speaking about the covenant in general today because it has already been covered. I encourage you to go back and read or listen again to the sermon Rev. Broderick preached on Covenant when we were dealing with Noah in Genesis Chapter 9.

All I want to do today is take note of God’s gracious guarantee given to Abram. Notice that after God reminds Abram that he called him out of Ur and promised him land, we read in Verse 8 that Abram responds, “O Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”

The obvious question that comes to mind when you read this response is, “Was Abram doubting God?” But we have already been told that Abram believed, so we know he had faith. Now our faith is never perfect. And, as I said before, we are all sometimes afflicted with doubts. But Abram was not doubting God’s existence or his power, he was looking for personal assurance. Abram was a great man and the father of the faith, but he was a man. And he, like us, had doubts and fears. He was asking God; “How can I know oh Lord? How can I – a weak, sinful man know for sure that your great promises will come true? Lord, I don’t understand how this can all work. I can’t see how this can be. Help me, oh Lord.”

Abram was looking at what seemed to him to be an insurmountable problem. He was very old, and Sarai was very old. They were well past the age of having children. So he couldn’t understand how God could keep his promise to give him children and, more to the point, for one of his physical descendants to be the promised Savior.

And God graciously gave Abram an answer in the form of a covenant ceremony. He had Abram cut some animals in half and separate the pieces. That seems fairly gross to those of us who purchase our meat wrapped in plastic from the store. But at this time in history, when men made a solemn covenant, they would cut animals in two and walk between the pieces. And the symbolism of this ceremony is very important. The parties to the covenant were each declaring that if they should fail to keep their part, they should be destroyed like the animals. We see this referred to, for example, in Jeremiah 34:18. And we see this ritual in the language used in our present text. In Verse 18 of our passage, where our NIV version says that “On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram”, the Hebrew actually says that the Lord cut a covenant with Abram, referring to cutting the animals in two.

But notice that in this particular covenant, God did not require Abram to walk through the cut animals. God only caused a smoking firepot and a blazing torch, representing God himself, to pass through the pieces. This was a unilateral covenant of pure grace. God was saying, may I be destroyed if I do not keep this covenant. And, of course, the point is clear. God’s promise is as certain as God himself. God simply cannot lie. He cannot fail to accomplish all that he has planned and promised. We can be absolutely certain of his promises.

Also note that God tells Abram some of what will happen in the future. In Verses 13-15 we read that God told him, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age.”

God does not lie and so he does not promise us a rose garden as the old saying goes. He tells us the truth. And the truth is that God’s people will have trouble in this life. That is a consistent message all through the Old and New Testaments. Anyone who promises you perfect health and prosperity if you become a Christian is not telling you the truth. They are not proclaiming the true gospel, don’t listen to them. In fact, run from them because they are offering a false gospel that cannot save anyone.

Jesus himself told his disciples in John 16:33, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

God uses trouble in the lives of his people for various reasons. We don’t understand all of them, but we know that he uses trouble to help us see our need for him and to turn us away from trusting in ourselves or the world. For example, in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 Paul wrote, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.”

God also uses trouble to stop us from turning away from him and to turn us back to the narrow path. In Psalm 119:67 the psalmist declared, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word.” And in Verse 71 of that same psalm we read, “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.”

God also uses trials to develop Christian character. Paul wrote in Romans 5:3-4 that “we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” Even Jesus himself grew in his ability to obey progressively more difficult commands through enduring trials. We are told in Hebrews 5:8-9, “Although he was a son,” referring to Christ, “he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him”.

And we are promised that, as Christians, we will have trouble in this life. In 2 Timothy 3:12 we are told that “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted”. But we are also given the great promise of Romans 8:28, which says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Even the suffering we are called to endure in this life is under God’s control and is, ultimately, for our good. We are told in Hebrews 2:10 that “Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.”

And notice also, that God tells Abram he will punish the nation that enslaves his people, which tells us about God’s sovereign control of history and his justice. He allows his people to endure suffering for a time to serve a good purpose, but he will still punish those who abuse them because they were not self-consciously doing God’s will, they were simply obeying their own evil desires.

And, finally, God tells Abram that he would die in peace at a good old age. What a wonderful and comforting promise. And we know that all of God’s promises to Abram came true! After Joshua led the Israelites into the Promised Land and they had conquered their enemies and settled in the land, he spoke to the Israelites before he died. We read in Joshua 23:14 that he said to them, “Now I am about to go the way of all the earth. You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the LORD your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed.”

And let me tell you, none of God’s promises will ever fail. Nor will any of his threats ever fail to be carried out. His Word is absolutely true. God cannot lie and he has all authority and power to bring about everything he has planned. So, the question remains for each of us to answer, “Will you stand or will you fall?” And that leads me to my final point, which is to draw some practical applications from this passage.

III.    Applications

The first and most important application for every one of us is to make sure that we will be able to stand on the day of judgment. We can only do that if we are united to Christ by faith. Therefore, if you have never surrendered to Christ, do so today. You cannot save yourself. If you are honest with yourself, you know that even your most noble works are tainted by selfishness, pride, laziness, lust and so on. You can do nothing that is perfect in God’s sight, but perfection is the standard that must be met. So give up! Stop depending on yourself and accept the gracious promise that God offers in the gospel. Romans 10:9 tells us that “if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

And if you have already done that, then the second point of application is to make your calling and election sure. Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Don’t trust in your former confession, look at your life today! Are you living a victorious Christian life? Or do you need to repent and change? Be very sure about this, because you don’t know when the day of judgment will come for you. It could be today. We not only stand or fall on the day of judgment; we also stand or fall on a daily basis when we are faced with temptations and trials. And God gives us the power to stand!
1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” So practice standing in the power of God each and every day.

And don’t let yourself be overly troubled as you look at your life and see your faults. Your ultimate trust is not in yourself! It is in God! He will save you. You cannot save yourself. Trust in him! Your being truly grieved by your sin and your desire to be rid of it is good evidence that you are, in fact, born again. So take heart. Examine yourself, but don’t let Satan use that to drag you down. Repent and trust in God’s promise to forgive.

The third point of application is to make sure that all of your family is saved! What a tragedy it would be to have a spouse, or a child, or a sibling, or a parent go to hell when you have not done everything in your power to bring that person to Christ. This may cost you dearly in terms of your relationships here and now. Family members may reject you and not speak with you. But love them enough to share the only thing that can save them. How terrible it will be if they go to hell and you know that you didn’t do everything in your power to prevent it just because you wanted to preserve friendly relations with them in this life.

But again, avoid the other ditch as well. If you have lost an unsaved relative, don’t dwell on that. Ultimately, you can’t save anyone. Only God can do that. And he will save everyone he has planned to save. Not one will be lost. You can’t thwart God’s plan.

The fourth point of application is to tell everyone that God brings into your sphere of influence about this gospel. They may not be your family members, or even people you know or like very well. But every single human being you will ever meet has an eternal destiny. Care about them enough to share Christ.

The fifth point of application is to walk without fear. You should fear God, but don’t fear men or anything men can do to you. Look at all God has done already. He created everything. He promised a Savior. He called his people. He has overseen every event in the history of the world, most importantly including the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is all being worked out according to the counsel of his own perfect will. And he brought you here this morning to hear his Word preached. Be strong in your faith. Don’t look at yourself. Don’t look at your troubles. Look to God! Cast your cares on him. Trust his promises and walk in joyful obedience all your days.

And, finally, be encouraged! We have not had the vision that Abraham was given, but we have in a sense so much more. We have all of the history proving the Word of God to be true and we have the work of many centuries of great men and women of God to help us understand and apply his Word and to build us up by their testimonies. We have the church, our brothers and sisters in Christ and the ministers God has appointed over us. We have the freedom to worship and share the gospel. Truly we are a blessed people! So trust in God. Trust in Jesus Christ, and you will stand on that day.