Connect with Skip - Skip Heitzig

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is Connect with Skip Heitzig, and we're so glad
you've joined us for today's program. Connect with Skip Heitzig
is all about connecting you to the never changing truth
of God's Word through verse by verse teaching. Before we
get started, we want to invite you to check out
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(00:22):
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(00:43):
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let's get started with today's message from pastor's Skip Heightsig.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Every now and then, it's good just to get perspective
because we get so narrowly focused in the look up
and wow, God did that. God can handle my situation.
So he expands on the promise he clarifies the promise,
and he repeats the promise verse six, key verse. So
he Abram, so he believed in the Lord, and he

(01:19):
the Lord God accounted it to him Abram for righteousness.
Once again, read that verse. It is one of the
key verses in all the Bible. In fact, circle it,
underline it, memorize it. At least memorize it. I won't
tell you to write in your Bible, but why not.
And he believed in the Lord, and he accounted it

(01:40):
to him for righteousness. Now the word believed is in
the Hebrew. A'min the same root, i'main, I'm in. God
made a promise, and it's like Abraham said, Amen, right on.
I believe that. Now this is so important because there

(02:01):
is a result that comes from Abrahm just listening to
God's promise after he repeats it, clarifies it, expands it,
and he just goes, Okay, I believe that promise. I
believe it because the result is God allows that small
act of faith to be counted to Abram as righteousness.

(02:28):
Now I'm making a big deal out of this. You
know why. The New Testament makes a huge deal out
of this. In Romans, chapter four, in Galatians chapter three,
and in James chapter two. Those three places this story
in this verse is highlighted as the pivotal verse to

(02:50):
explain the major doctrine that if you're a Christian you
hold to dearly justification by faith. That we're not saved
by good wie. We're not saved by keeping rituals. We're
not saved by belonging to some Christian organization. We are
saved made right with God purely by believing God. Like Abram,

(03:15):
who believed before the Law of Moses was in existence,
who believed before circumcision was in existence, who certainly believed
before there was baptism or churches or any of that.
He just believed. Now that's so important. You got to
look at just one of those passages. You ready, one
of those passages turned to Romans chapter four. What Paul

(03:38):
is doing is answering a question. Here's the question. How
was Abraham the father of faith? He is called the
father of those who believed? How was Abraham justified, saved,
made right with God? Was it by his works? Was
it by keeping the law? Was it by being a

(03:59):
religious person? Was it by trying hard and being sincere?
Because Once we find the answer to that question, we'll
be able to answer the second question. How are we
made right with God? How are we saved by the
keeping of the law by knowing all the law? Or
does it come by faith? So he begins, what then
shall we say Verse one, Chapter four of Romans, that

(04:22):
Abraham our father has found according to the flesh. For
if Abraham was justified by works, then he has something
to boast about. But not before God. For what does
the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was accounted
to him for righteousness. Not to him who works. The

(04:44):
wages are not counted as grace, but his debt. But
to him who does not work, but believes on him
who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.
You know how most people think that we're saved. Most
people think that salvation is sort of like putting a
frog in a panful of milk. Here's that poor frog

(05:10):
in the milk, and the milk is slippery, and he
can't get out of the pan because the sides are
too high. So he's struggling and paddling and paddling. But
if he paddles long enough, he turns that into butter,
and by his hard work over a long period of time,
the frog will be able to get on top of
a hardened surface the butter now and jump out. That's

(05:34):
how people think we're saved. And so what Paul is saying,
because it is what happened to Abram, is that's not
what happened. He just simply said, Amen, I believe that,
I really, in my heart believe that promise. And God said,
that's all that I will require to make you write
with me, to give you a relationship with me. It's

(05:57):
justification by faith, not by works. Lest anyone should boast.
You know how boring heaven would be if Abram or
anybody else got there by working hard and being zealous
and being religious, how boring heaven would be. You'd have
to listen to that for billions of years. Well you
know what I was, and I used to and then
this happened, and then I and say, oh, you know

(06:19):
what those conversations are like on earth. Imagine in heaven. Boh, no,
we're all gonna go. I'm here by his grace. He
did this. That man with the five wounds, That's how
I'm here. There's only two basic religions in the world,
there's only two. Every belief system can be divided into

(06:43):
one of two systems. I don't care how many cults.
I don't care how many different religions and different expressions
and different books. It can all be divided into two
separate categories. One is the religion of human achievement. I do,
I were, I practice, I pray. The second category is

(07:08):
the salvation by divine accomplishment. That's this. Jesus did it
all on the cross, paid the debt we could never pay.
And he says, do you believe that from your heart?
In your heart believe, which means to adhere, to commit to.

(07:30):
But it begins by saying, yes, I believe. Are you
willing to do that? Because if so, I will take
all of what Jesus did, and I will apply it
to your account. By the way, the word accounted in
Romans for lagidzumi, it's a banking term. It means to

(07:50):
put something to the credit side of your ledger. Okay,
so look at your life this way. Here's a picture
of your life. You've got two kick columns. One is
debit side. When is the credit side on the debt side,
it's our sins, our sins, our sins, and it fills
it all up. Our sins, our sins, our sin. We've
all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

(08:12):
On the credit side, on your own, what do you
have to put there that will balance out all of
the sin? You know a lot of people say church, sincerity,
good works, rituals, and God will say, I'm sorry. You
can pour all sorts of stuff into that category and
it won't balance out the debt side. The debit side

(08:33):
is too great. You can never buy your own cancel
out the debt. So what God says, I got the solution.
I am willing to count all of the sins ever
committed by every person, and I know what they are,
and I am willing to declare that anyone and everyone
can be made right with God by putting what my

(08:56):
son did to their account. And all they have to
do is believe that that's the one God sent, believe
in their heart that God raised him from the dead,
and they will be saved. And so Paul really makes
a big deal out of this in Romans four and
in Galatians chapter three, and also James will mention it

(09:16):
in chapter two. But I need to get back to
Genesis if I'm going to finish one chapter tonight. So
he believed in the Lord, and he the Lord adcounted
it to him for righteousness. So just remember this. This
is way before the Love of Moses. This is way
before he could circumcise his children. He hadn't done any
good works, he didn't do any ritual. All he did

(09:40):
is go, I believe that to us it would sound crazy,
I'm going to have a child, But I believe that
God said, you're right with me, You're righteous with me.
Verse seven. And then he said to him, I am
the Lord who brought you out of or of the
Chaldeans to give you this land and to inherit it. Question,

(10:04):
why in the middle of a dialogue is God introducing
himself in a normal conversation. This would seem out of place.
If I'm talking to you and we've already had introduction,
and I've talked to you for years, and we're talking
one day over lunch and I go, my name is Skip,
and you go, what did you just have? Like a stroke?

(10:30):
Why an introduction? They know each other? Well, this is important.
You're going to find this a lot in the Bible.
You're going to find that in normal conversations, after introductions
have taken place, that God will just sort of say, now,
I am the Lord who did this, and we'll do that.
It's called the otto charigma of God, if you want
a theological term for that, the atto charigma or the

(10:51):
self proclamation of God. Anytime God wants to underscore a point,
it's like me grabbing your face and go look me
in the eyes. Now, right now, I want to tell
you who I am and what I can do for you.
That's what God is doing. It's the autocarithma, the self proclamation.
I want you to know, Abram, who I am, who's
talking to you, and what I'm able to do. And

(11:13):
that's what he does here in verse seven.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
You're listening to connect with Skip Heitzig before we get
back to Skip's teaching. In his book Is God Real?
Lee Strobel, author of the New York Times bestselling book
The Case for Christ, provides a rational exploration the proof
of God's existence and the basis of our eternal hope.
Writing to skeptics and believers alike, Strobel turns his critical

(11:36):
mind and expert interviewing skills to perennial questions like how
do we know which God is real? And if God
is real, why does he seem so hidden? Is God real?
Along with two messages preached by Lee's Strobel at Calvary Church,
are our thanks for your gift of at least fifty
dollars today to help share biblical teaching with more people
around the world through connect with skip Heitzig. Go to

(11:59):
connect with goks dot com slash offer or call eight
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your resources when you give at least fifty dollars today
to reach people around the world through connect with skip Heizig.
Let's continue with today's teaching with pastor Skip and.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
Verse eight, he said, Lord God, how shall I know
that I will inherit it? Okay? Now, right about now,
you're thinking, I don't get Abram. I don't get this, dude.
God makes a promise to him. He goes, well, I
don't know how many kids? And then and then God
makes all these promises and goes, well, how'll I know?
So you're thinking this is not the man of faith. Well,

(12:40):
let me complicate it even a little further. I'm going
to just sort of stack the deck against me before
I answer that. Do you remember the father of John
the Baptist in the New Testament, his name was Zacharias.
He was in the temple. He was the guy who
would burn incense at the altar of Incense, and it
was his turn to do so. And he goes in
and he sees the Angel of the Lord. It's Gabriel.

(13:00):
He doesn't know it yet, standing there kind of hanging
out at the altar as he's going to light incense,
and he's afraid, and the angel says, don't be afraid.
And he says, your wife, Elizabeth is going to have
a child and you're gonna name him John, and he's
going to bring joy to your household. And he's going
to go before the Messiah and the power of the
Lord and turn the hearts of the fathers to the

(13:21):
children and children to the fathers. And he listens to this,
and he has an apparition, and Zacharias goes, how do
I know that this is really going to happen. The
Angel says, okay, you want to sign to you you
won't be able to talk for nine months until your

(13:43):
son is born. Now, I don't know what life was
like in the household of Zacharias and Elizabeth and their conversations,
But I do know that statistically, women do outnumber men
when it comes to their words. So now he can't
even answer anything back. And he would go home and
he'd be listening to Elizabeth like, MA, now, now what

(14:03):
happened and what did you say? And write that out
for me? And you know this would happen in so
nine months go by because the Angel said, you didn't
believe me, you doubted me, So you're thinking, ow, So
what's the difference between what happened? Was zacharison the temple
to Gabriel, who got like punished for it, and Abraham,
who says, how will I know this is going to happen?

(14:23):
This was not unbelief for Abram. It was not unbelief.
You know why, because we're told so in verse six.
He believed God and God counted it to him for righteousness.
So it's not an act of unbelief. He is simply
looking for pragmatic solutions. Because ten different Canaanite nations Amorites,
et cetera, have settled in the land of Canaan. It

(14:46):
is outnumbered. How is this going to happen? How am
I going to take over a land that is already
occupied by all of these people groups? That's that's the question.
But he believed, Okay, I know I'm going to have
a baby. I know it's going to come from my
own body. I believe that the house is all going
to work in this land with his nation and all
of these nations. So here's the answer. Verse nine, he said,

(15:09):
bring a three year old. Hefer a three year old
female goat, three year old ram, a turtle, dove, and
a young pigeon. And he brought all these to him
and cut them in two down the middle and placed
each piece opposite the other. But he did not cut
the birds in two. Now I'm going to warn you.

(15:30):
What you're about to read sounds like it comes out
of the Twilight Zone. It's in the Bible. It is
a weird story. And I read this and I picture
Rod Serling in the background, you know, picture if you will.
Bloody carcass is slain in the desert. An aged man
looks on. He has just entered the Twilight Zone. That's

(15:52):
what I'm picturing. It's just it's like, what is this
all about? Here's a hint at what's going on, to
give you the goods before we read it. It's called
a covenant a bert in Hebrew. If you look ahead
in verse eighteen, on the same day, the Lord made
a covenant, a pact, and agreement. A testament is another word.

(16:14):
And in those days, well, let's read it. You'll see
what they did in those days. And when the vultures
came down verse eleven on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
When the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell
upon Abram, and behold horror, and a great darkness fell
upon him. And he said to Abram, know certainly that

(16:35):
your descendants will be strangers in a land that is
not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict
them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they
serve I will judge. Afterward. They will come out with
great possessions. Now, as for you, you shall go to your
father's in peace. You shall be buried at a good

(16:57):
old age. But in the fourth generation they shall return here.
For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.
And it came to pass when the sun went down,
and it was dark, but behold, there appeared a smoking
oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. Today,

(17:18):
if you and I want to make a contract, we
might shake hands in agreement. We might sign a document
in a court of law. You might have to put
your hand on a bible and say, I swear to
tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
In those days, they cut animals in two and put
them in a path in a road, and the people

(17:40):
walked between them. The people making a covenant walked between
the carcasses of animals, and because there was shedding of blood,
it was more solemn oath. And as the two parties
walked between the pieces of the dead carcasses of animals,
they would state the terms of the contract. They would
save them out loud, why the dead animals, as if

(18:04):
to say, if you or I either break our end
of the bargain, may that happen to us? May that
happen to us? Let me read a portion of an
ancient Hittite covenant from around the same period of time.
They took in this covenant sinews or tendons of an
animal and salt, and threw it into a pan of

(18:27):
hot fire and here's what they said, and I quote,
just as these sinews split into fragments on the hearth,
whoever breaks these oaths shows disrespect to the king. Let
these oaths seize him and let him split into fragments
like the sinews. And so they would do that after

(18:48):
cutting the animals in two. That's how covenants were made
in ancient Canaanite Hittite days. And so the animals are
cut by the way. Some people think that the idea
at a ceremony, you know, when you cut the ribbon
that is in front of something, you take a decision,
you cut the ribbon comes from the cutting of the
covenant from way back when anyway he does it. Abram

(19:15):
cuts the animals, but he waits a long time, seemingly
it's early in the morning. You know, you got to
get a cow, and you got to kill a cow,
and you got to cut a cow in half and
lay one half of the cow here and one half
of the cow there. You know, holy cow. It took
a long time. So they did that, and then you
had to take a three year old a ram, a

(19:35):
male sheep who has never been gelded. You would take
these animals. It took some time to dress them and
cut them, so he presumably did it early in the morning,
and then he waited and he waited and he waited,
and the sun got hotter, and the carcasses started to
stink and decompose, and birds start to come down. That's

(19:57):
what the story says. So Abram now has to get
up and shoe the birds away, and he's like looking
at his sun dial on his wrist and he's going, man,
I've been waiting a long time. How come God it
in telling me anything. I'm waiting. Where's God? He told
me to do this? Where's God? And he waited and
he waited until it got dark, and he's falling asleep
and he's falling under this depression and dread again. And

(20:21):
finally God shows up when it's dark, and he's exhausted. Question,
why did God wait so long after giving him a
command to cut the animals? Why did God wait so
long to show up? Here's the answer, I believe. To

(20:42):
make Abraham so exhausted that he was unable to participate
in the Covenant, he had to watch it. So he's
watching as this burning torch just starts drifting between these
bloody car because he's just going WHOA. I thought the

(21:04):
vision was heavy. This is really heavy. And a smoking oven,
a firepod is smoke coming out of it, and a
burning torch. They're just sort of hovering and moving. All
of that was symbolic of the presence of God. A
burning torch was always a symbol of God's presence. The
Cherubim that guarded the garden of Eden with a flaming sword,
the children of Israel were directed by a pillar of

(21:25):
cloud and a pillar of fire by night. All of
these are symbols of the presence of God. God waited
for Abram to be so exhausted that he couldn't participate.
And here's why God was making a unilateral covenant, a
promise of the land, not contingent upon Abram keeping or
doing anything at all. God was saying, I'm gonna bless you,

(21:50):
I'm going to make your name great. And now God
is saying, I'm giving you a land. And it's not
a bilateral covenant where you keep your term and I
keep my term. It's a unilateral covenant. It's my promise
and I'm declaring it. And so that Abram wouldn't be
able to participate in this berit. He's just exhausted, and
God does it all. It's hard to wait on God.

(22:15):
You know, it's true, you hate waiting on him. We
all have in our minds a timetable when we think
this would be the perfect time for God to do something.
And God, you've discover, has his own timetable, and we
don't like it. And sometimes He will let it drag

(22:36):
on and on and on till we're just so exhausted,
and then God does something and you go, well, I
never could have done that on my own. Well, that's
the lesson you need to learn. Now, I work my
way into a corner. I work my way into a
problem with this one, because if we have a covenant
that is an unconditional covenant, here's the problem. In a

(23:02):
few books, when God has promised them and promised them,
and promised Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the Twelve Tribes, the land
called the Land of Israel, God makes another covenant, covenant
of the Law of Moses, in which God says, if
you obey me, you can stay here. If you disobey me,

(23:24):
I'm kicking you out. Does one covenant cancel the other covenant?
How can you own the land unconditionally, but occupy the
land conditionally. That's the big problem, and I'd love to
answer that that was a setup for next week. We're

(23:45):
not able to even finish the chapter except to read
the rest of it and just pick up on a
few thoughts as we tie in the next chapter. On
the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham,
saying to your descendants, I have given this land from
the River of Egypt, the Great River, the River Euphrates,
the Kenites, the Kenezites, the Cadmanites, the Hittites, the Perizites,

(24:11):
the Termites. Just making sure that you're following along the Refieem,
the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Gurgashites, the Jebusites, and the
turnout the lights. All these Heites are there. And we'll
pick up on this as we get into chapter sixteen
next time.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Thanks for listening to connect with Skip Heitzig. We hope
you've been encouraged in your walk with Christ by today's program.
Before we let you go, we want to remind you
about this month's resources that will help you confidently respond
to questions and challenges to God's existence. It's Lee Strobel's book,
Is God Real? And two messages he preached on the

(24:52):
topic at Calvary Church. Request your resources when you give
fifty dollars or more to support connect with Skip Heitzig
eight hundred ninety two two eighteen eighty eight. That's eight
hundred nine two two eighteen eighty eight. Or visit connectiskip
dot com slash donate and did you know that you
can get a weekly devotional and other resources from pastor

(25:14):
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Come back next time for more verse by verse teaching
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