So I have to think quickly on the spot and come up with an important verse and I use different one’s just

to confuse people. But recently at Knox Seminary where I teach I had one of my students come up and
ask me to sign his Bible and he wanted my life verse so I signed my name and I wrote Genesis 15:17.
And I explained to him that I’ve often said that if I were in prison and could only have one book at my
disposal the book that I would want would be the Bible and if I could only have one book of the Bible
the book of the Bible that I would choose would be the book of Hebrews because it is so rich including
information from both Testaments and I said but if I were in solitary confinement and only had one
verse of the Bible --some of you who saw “The Count of Monte Cristo” saw the statement about justice
that he had in his prison wall— if I only had one verse of Scripture with me in such dire circumstances,
the verse I would want would be Genesis 15:17. So I said all of this to the student and he thanked me
and went away and the next day he came up to me and said, Dr. Sproul, I said, “What’s that?” He says,
“I don’t get it?” I said, “You don’t get what?” And he said, “Genesis 15:17, did I make a mistake in
reading your writing here, I read the fifteenth chapter of Genesis and I read the seventeenth verse of
Genesis and I thought this surely can’t be your life’s verse.” And I said, “Well, maybe I did not remember
the right verse, let me look.” I said, “That’s really the one that I meant.” And he looked at me like I’d lost
my mind. So I begin this morning by reading to you my life verse Genesis 15:17. The verse I would want
with me in prison. “And it came to pass that when the sun went down and it was dark that behold there
appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.” And I can scarcely
take it in every time I read that verse or hear that verse literally I get chills up and down my spine. And I
said that to this student and he through even more that I had lost my mind. Until I said to him, we have
to look at a text like this and ask this simple question, “What is going on here? Why is that verse so
vital?” So I think to get the answer to that we have to go back to the beginning of chapter 15 of genesis
where we read this, “After these things the Word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not
be afraid, Abram, I am your shield and your exceedingly great reward. I’m your shield and your
exceedingly great reward.” Notice that Abram, the father of the faithful, gave a somewhat strange
response to this announcement that God said, “Don’t be afraid, Abram, because I’m your shield and not
only am I your shield, the one who protects you but I am your exceedingly great reward.” Abram’s
puzzled and he said, “Lord God, what will you give me seeing that I go childless and the heir of my house
is Eliezer of Damascus?” Abram said, look you’ve given me no offspring indeed one born in my house is
my heir, my servant, Eliezer of Damascus. I mean I have all the cattle a man would ever need I have all
the possessions that this world can offer and you tell me of great reward, and when I have no son.
What could you possibly give me that could make up for that deficiency? And behold the Word of the
Lord came to him saying, this one shall not be your heir but the one who will come from your own body
shall be your heir. Then he took Abram outside and he said, Look now toward heaven, count the stars if
you are able to number them. And he said to him. So shall your decedents be. I was standing here the
other day and thinking about our early days in Ligonier, because at Ligonier in our study center that we
had in the mountains of western Pennsylvania outside of the village of Ligonier, we had this great big
room where the lectures took place. And the lady who built this facility for us installed, in the ceiling,
what she described as “what’s it” lights, yeah, people come in and say what’s it, what’s that? So I call it
what’s it lights. They were little lights put in the ceiling that looked like the stars at night and I was
brought right back to that when I came up here the other day, because look at the ceiling, they have
what’s it lights here. Maybe whoever designed this sanctuary had Genesis 15 in mind. When God took
Abram outside on a starry night and He said, “Look here Abram, look at the stars up there, look at the
Pleiades, look at the milky way, which appears to the naked eye as a dense cloud in the sky when in fact
it’s made up of billions and billions of individual stars. Try to count them because that’s how many your
descendents will be. You just think that you’re childless. Verse 6 is one of the most important verses in
Genesis, we read and he, that is Abram, “believed God and he counted it to him for righteousness.”
Beloved there’s the Gospel, this is the text that the apostle Paul calls our attention to when he writes
the letter to the Romans and unfolds the Gospel and the doctrine of justification by faith alone when he
wants to demonstrate the truth of the justification by faith alone. He brings us his star witness as
exhibit A, Abraham. And he calls attention to this text because before Abraham had done anything,
before he had done any of the works that God had commanded him to do, when Abraham believed
God, God counted him righteous. The only bases that God ever accounts anybody righteous, according
to the apostle, is on the basis of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. And the moment that
Abraham believed in the promise of God, God transferred all of the righteousness of His Son to his
account. And then God said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur the Chaldeans to give you
this land to inherit it. We know from the research even in the twentieth century from the mid-twentieth
century a scholar from Michigan, The University of Michigan, by the name of George Mendenhall who
wrote a monograph on the law and the covenant in the ancient near east where archeological
discoveries have unearthed what he called suzerain treaties, treaties what were made between kings
and their vassals. And their analysis of these ancient treaties from the near east showed a repeated
format or structure that occurs over and over and over again that includes within it a historical prologue
and the element of preamble followed then by the stipulations of the covenant ad the sanctions and so
on and we see this so often in the structure of biblical covenants where the sovereign one, the suzerain,
introduces the terms of the treaty by first of all giving a preamble in which he identifies himself. So
many times in the Old Testament we’ll read this phrase, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or I
am the God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And so the terms of the covenants the terms
of the treaty begin where the sovereign partner identifies himself, but notice when God speaks to
Abram here he doesn’t say, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob because Isaac hasn’t been
around yet nor has Jacob been born. But he does give a historical prologue where the sovereign
reminds the people what he has done in their behalf. So in the ancient and near east in the Hittite king
somebody would say, my name is yahabibi, I am the one who fills your granaries with wheat, I am the
one who defends your borders from enemy invasions, I am the one who did this, I am the one who did
that, and you can see that throughout the Old Testament. And here after God promises something to
Abraham, who’s still Abram, He identifies himself and he said, I am Yahweh, “I am the Lord, who brought
you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it.” Remember in the New Testament, the
Cesaera Philippi confession, when the disciples are asked, who do men say that I am and after that
answer was given he turned to his own disciples and he said well what do you think? Who do you say
that I the Son of Man am? And it’s Peter who gives the great confession; thou art the Christ the Son of
the living God. Which Jesus responds with his benediction upon Simon saying, and blessed are you
Simon Barjonah, flesh and blood hath not revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven and thou
art Petra, thou art the rock and upon this rock I will build my church and we see that the church is
established on the confession of faith of the person of Christ as the Messiah, God’s promised one. And
here is Simon Peter being heroic in his confession of faith and five minutes later Jesus tells his disciples
that he has to now go back to Jerusalem and suffer and die and what does Simon Peter say? We’ve
already heard the ultimate oxymoron. “No, Lord.” “No, Lord.” No, Lord? Not, do Lord, it’s No, Lord and
Jesus now turns to the rock and says, I have another name for you, get thee behind me Satan. That’s
how strong we are in our faith. Here’s Abraham the father of the faithful just five minutes earlier,
believing the Lord and has counted to him for righteousness and now he says, when God announces
that he will give him the land to inherit it, he says, but Lord, God, how could I know that I will inherit it?
Look, I’ve come a long way from Ur of the Chaldeans and I’ve gone to cities where I did not know where
I was going. I left my family, I did all these things, I keep believing you, I keep trusting you and now you
tell me I’m going to have all these children and I’m going to have this land. I believe you Lord, but can
you help my unbelief a little bit. How can I know for sure? Have you ever lived there? Have you ever
been there? You think you might be there if you were throne into solitary confinement, in a prison? You
think Joseph struggled with that question when he was isolated and abandoned from his own family,
sold as a slave and imprisoned. You think there were times when he was on his knees trembling before
God saying, Lord, I’m trying to trust you, but how can I know for sure? How can faith move to full
assurance and certainty? That’s Abraham’s question to God. And listen to God’s answer. Bring me a
three-year-old heifer, three-year-old female goat, three-year-old ram, turtledove and a young pigeon.
Let me see if I have that right, Abraham says, you want a heifer that has to be three years old, right?
And you want a goat that has to be female, it has to be three years old, right? You want a ram, three
years old, a turtledove and a young pigeon? All I ask was how can I know for sure that you’re going to
keep your promise, and you’ve given me a grocery list of livestock. And Abraham brought all these
things to God and he cut them in two down the middle and placed each piece opposite the other, but
he didn’t cut the birds in two and when the vultures came down on the carcasses Abram drove them
away. The heifer, the goat, the ram, Abraham cuts them in half and then carefully places their bodies in
a path, like a gauntlet. One have the body on one side of the path, the other half of the animal on the
other side of the path and he makes this arrangement, he doesn’t cleave the birds in half, but no sooner
does he lay out these slain animals in this particular fashion but here come the vultures, the buzzards
coming down to take advantage of the carrion. And Abraham is busy shooing away the vultures. And in
verse 12 we read this, “Now, when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram and behold,
horror.” Deep sleep comes upon Abram and behold horror. “And a great darkness fell upon him.” You
talk about the saints experience of despair, which is called the dark night of the soul, when the light of
God seems to be extinguished from our presence and we are plunged into this seemingly bottomless pit
or abyss of darkness, which brings horror to us. Ladies and gentleman go through the pages of sacred
scripture and see what the characteristic response of human beings is always virtually the same, when
God comes near. They’re terrified in this night vision. Abraham knows first only darkness and terror and
God began to speak to him. Listen to what God says to Abram. “Know with certainty that your
descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will server them, and will server them , and
they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; and
afterwards they shall come out with great possession. But as for you, you will go to your fathers in
peace; you will be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation they will return here, because
the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” Boom! Now comes, my name is not John Madden,
but now comes, now comes, verse 17. Here it comes. I’ve given you the context for verse 17. “It came
to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, behold there appeared a smoking oven and a burning
torch that passed between those pieces.” In his horror, in his stupefied state, in the night vision
Abraham beholds, he sees this path of slain bodies and he looks and here comes the smoking oven, a
flaming torch, hovering and moving down the isle, down the pathway, down the gauntlet between these
pieces of animals. Ladies and Gentlemen when God makes a covenant with His people he doesn’t just
make a covenant, he cuts a covenant, and characteristically when God makes a covenant and most
occasions that he does it, it is a bloody covenant. And when he makes the covenant with Abraham later
on he tells Abraham, cut off the foreskin of your flesh and of that of you decedents because in this
cutting right you are swearing your fealty, your allegiance to me, and you are saying to me, oh, God, If I
don’t keep my part of this treaty, if I don’t keep my part of the promise, if I do not respond to you in
faith, may I be cut off from your presence, cut off from your blessings, cut off from your benefits, just as
I’ve cut off the foreskin of my flesh. And I have in my own flesh the reminder of my promise to you and
the other side of that point is God has consecrated, cut out of fallen humanity, a people for himself. And
so the sign of circumcision also represents God’s grace and blessing, blessing and curse are both
incorporated in the old testament sign of the covenant, that’s Abraham’s part but in the midnight vision,
what is the smoking oven? What is the flaming torch? Really I should say, not what is the oven,? Or
what is the torch? But who is the oven, who is the torch? Abraham in this moment of dread and horror
comes this close to the theophany. A theophany is an outward, visible manifestation of the invisible
God, that’s what a theophany is. It was a theophany manifestation of himself , that God gave to Moses
in the Midianite wilderness when he spoke to him out of a bush that was blazing with fire. It was
theophany by which God manifest himself in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of smoke in the
wilderness. It is because the standard theophany of God is liked to fire in the Scripture, that the New
Testament writer says, our God is a consuming fire. You see I’ve learned something from John
Macarthur. You know you turn the sermon into a dialog, to fill in the blanks. Our God is a consuming
fire. You see, the torch is God and this text is understood by the author of Hebrews centuries later,
when he reminds the people of the trustworthiness of the promises of God, of the trustworthiness of
the Word of God. Where the author of Hebrews says, you know there are two things that the God can’t
do. We say that with God all things are possible, but that’s hyperbole. Because there are some things
that even God can’t do. He can’t die and he can’t lie. Satan can’t do anything but lie; God doesn’t know
how to lie. He’s incapable of lie because for him to lie would be to violate his own nature. And so the
author of Hebrews says, when God swore His promise to Abraham because He could swear by nothing
greater, He swore by himself. When Abraham said, “Lord how can I know for sure?” God didn’t say
Abraham I sear by the earth, which is my footstool or I swear by the heavens. God didn’t say to
Abraham, Abraham trust me, cross my heart, hope to dies, stick a needle in my eye. Nor did he swear
upon his mother’s grave. He didn’t even put his hand on the Bible and say I swear to tell the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Now the promises of God that he makes in this covenant with
Abraham are sworn by himself. What is God doing here? He’s saying Abraham, he’s graphically,
dramatically, visually showing the truthfulness of His Word, when he allows that torch to go between
the pieces that he’s saying Abraham, if I don’t keep my promise, if you can’t trust my Word, then may I
be like these animals that you cut in half. May I the immutable, eternal, creator God suffer a mutation,
may the eternal be reduced to the temporal, the infinite destroyed by the infinite or by the finite. What
God is saying is may I be cut in half just like you cut these animals in half if I fail to keep my Word. I’m
promising you by my deity. This is my Word and I back it up with my own person. There’s nothing higher
Abram that I can swear by so I’m swearing by myself. And every time my faith is weak and I struggle with
doubts and I vacillate with respect to the immutable trustworthiness of the Word of God, I read Genesis
15:17, “Then it came to pass that when the sun went down and it was dark that behold there appeared
a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between the pieces.” For on that same day, verse 18
says, Yahweh made a covenant with Abraham.” Fast forward through the pages of history, come to a
peasant girl in a little village who is terrified, horror stricken by the visitation of an arch angel that came
out of no where. And tells this girl that she has been selected by God to be the mother of the Messiah.
She says, “How can this be?” I don’t even know a man. With God all things are possible, Gabriel says.
And it shall be that after the Holy Ghost shall come upon you and over shadow you that you will
conceive and the one in your womb will be called Jesus and he will save his people from his sins. And as
she contemplates this and as the Spirit of the Lord comes upon her, what does she sing? My soul doeth
magnify the Lord, my spirit doeth rejoice in God my Savior, behold he has noticed the lo estate of his
handmaiden and from henceforth all generations will call be blessed. And then she goes no in this verse
and what does she say? God has remembered. Genesis 15:17, God has remembered the promise that
he made to our father Abraham throughout the pages of the Old Testament. This covenant that God
makes with Abraham is renewed, expanded, more and more of it is revealed. As God extends it through
Isaac and then Jacob who then brings his children down to the land of Goshen where they become
enslaved in Egypt, when the Pharaoh dies and the new one comes along, who doesn’t remember
Joseph, and these people who are the children of his promise are now in bondage and God says, I heard
their cries. You see God remembers His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and Jacob and he comes and
he speaks to Moses and he said Moses you go and you tell that Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” Why?
Simply that we can remove them from this human bondage? No, so that they can come out to this
mountain and worship me. Then God forms a nation and the terms of the covenant are spelled out in
even greater detail and added to the promises in the old covenant are the ceremonies. And it seems
like in our day we can’t wait to say fast enough, how the ceremonial law of the Old Testament has been
abolished. We want to flee from the Judaizing heresy; we don’t tell people anymore that they must be
circumcised as a religious right because what we’ve done was cut ourselves off from the whole history
of redemption. We’ve disconnected the New Testament from the Old. And so we don’t even bother to
read Leviticus, Numbers or other arcane pieced of information that we wonder why they are still in
print. But if we go through the Old Testament and look at the pattern of their ceremony and how in a
very real sense, as we’ve already heard here every aspect of them was driving, driving, driving Christ.
God redeems his people out of bondage, rescues them from the avenger, from the angel of death. How
does He know who His people are? Through the blood of the lamb that is placed upon the lintel over
the door. And God said, here’s what I want you to do. Every year on the anniversary of this I want you to
sit down as families and I want you to take a lamb without blemish and I want you to remember, I want
you to eat this meal, just like they did, ready to go with their staff and shoes and unleavened bread and
all the rest. I want you to keep the Passover and say when you celebrate the Passover, this we do to
remember when God redeemed us from our afflictions. Not this we do to remember what God did for
generations of Jews a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. But in a magnificent covenant way
the Passover feast celebrates the redemption of every believer in the old covenant. As if to say, we were
there too. This was our Exodus, this was our rescue from bondage and that was carried on year, after
year, after year, after year, after year, after year, after year, after year, after year until the night in which
our Savior was betrayed. He sat down with His disciples because He said that He yearned, that He
longed one more time to celebrate the Passover with them. And in the middle of the Passover liturgy,
Jesus dares to presume to change the ancient liturgy when He takes the bread and He said, this is now
my body, which is broken for you. What? The most important celebration of the old covenant is now
going to be changed? He takes the cup and He said this is now the cup of a new covenant which is in my
blood, a new bloody covenant, not by a lamb that is butchered so that you can rub the blood on the
door, not by the carcass of a three year old heifer or of a ram or a she goat, my blood is going to be
sacrificed. Now, when Jesus supped with his disciples that was not the hour of His sacrifice. The eating
of His body and the drinking of His blood in the upper room was not a sacrifice, bloody or unbloody, the
sacrifice would happen on the morrow, which would be made once and for all. In the upper room and
in the following time, the disciples celebrated this event, they never offered Christ again to God because
he was offered once and for all. The celebration of the Eucharist in the early church was never a
sacrifice, let me tell you what it was. It was a sacrificial meal. And where does that come from? Turn
for a moment to the book of Leviticus chapter 7 verse 11. “This is the law of the sacrifice of peace
offerings: here God requires the people of Israel to have sin offerings, trespass offerings and now he
comes to the matter of peace offerings. “This Is the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings which he shall
offer to the Lord: if he offers it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer, with the sacrifice of thanksgiving,
unleavened cakes mixed with oil, unleavened wafers anointed with oil, or cakes of blended flour mixed
with oil.” This is really exciting stuff folks. It really is. And besides the cakes with his offering he shall
offer leavened bread with the sacrifice of thanksgiving of his peace offering. And from it he shall offer
one cake from each offering as a heave offering to the Lord. It shall belong to the priest who sprinkles
the blood of the peace offering.” And so on, verse 15. “The flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offering for
the thanksgiving shall be eaten the same day it is offered. He will not leave any of it until the morning.
But if the sacrifice of his offering is a vow or a voluntary offering, it shall be eaten the same day that he
offers his sacrifice; but on the next day the remainder of it also may be eaten;” And we get all these
instructions, verse 18 “And if any of the flesh of the sacrificed of the peace offering is eaten at all on the
third day, it shall not be accepted, nor shall it be imputed to him it shall be an abomination to him who
offers it, and the person who eats of it shall bear guilt.” The person who touches any unclean thing or
who eats the flesh of the sacrifice after touching an unclean thing or is unclean that person shall be cut
off from his people.” Does this sound familiar? Does that sound anything like what the theologians call a
monduceoindignorum? They have a name for everything. The eating and drinking unworthily where
one fails to discern the Lord’s body. Every time the people of God come together at the Lord’s table,
they don’t just remember something, this is not just a mental exercise. They come to the feast of the
lamb to the sacrificial feast where they are called to eat of the flesh of the sacrifice that has been
offered once for all. All of which is foreshadowed in the peace offering of the old covenant, where
literally, excuse my Bob, in the senses litteralis, in the plain sense, what happened was that after the
people offered the fat and the liver and the enthralls that were commanded in the peace offering, after
the priest offered that to God, then the flesh that was left was to be enjoyed by the people who made
the offering. They participated in the feast and participated in the flesh of the victim that was sacrificed.
And the Lord said unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will not come into my kingdom. Now,
I don’t have time this morning, I don’t have time for the next ten years to explore all of the issues,
theological and ecclesiological that focus on the Lord’s supper, but whatever else the Lord’s supper is, it
is a sign and seal of the new covenant that Christ has made with us in his body and in his blood and it is
the law of my church never to celebrate the Lord’s supper, to have the sacrament, without having the
preaching of the Word. Yet we think nothing of having the preaching of the Word, without it’s
confirmation, without its sign, without its seal. That Christ himself institute in the first century church
the disciples came together on the Lord’s day to do, what? To study the doctrine of the apostles to pray
together and for the breaking of bread because they understood that when God makes a promise in his
Word, the verbal Word, he confirms that, with the sacrament. See we’re not only loosing the Word in
our church today but we’re loosing the sacraments as well. The War against the Word in our time has
become the war against the sacraments in our time, which sacraments are God’s sign, they’re his vows,
they’re his oaths, just as the ancient king, when he would disuse a decree and the decree would be
announced in the marketplace. What the people looked for was what? That waxed indentation, that
waxed impression that bore the mark of the signet ring of the king that indicated that this edict comes
form the authority of the monarch. And so God seals His Word with the sacraments, which must be
distinguished, my friends, but never separated. For on that day, the Lord made a covenant with
Abraham. Let us pray. Father how we thank you that your Word cannot be broken. And that you have
attached to that Word the signs and the seals that have come to us from Christ himself who has offered
himself as the perfect sacrifice once for all. Therefore our Father let us keep the feast of your Word and
of your sacraments, for we ask it in Jesus name. Amen.