In this sermon, Pastor Chuck Smith continues his study of Abram's concern about not having any children. God reassures Abram that his descendants will be strangers in a foreign land for 400 years, but they will eventually come out with great possessions. God also reveals that a biblical generation is approximately 100 years, as it took four generations from Levi to Moses during the Israelites' time in Egypt. Pastor Chuck emphasizes that no one is perfect and that God sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins. By believing in Jesus, we can be accounted as righteous before God.

Oh, let the Son of God enfold you With His Spirit and His love Let Him fill your heart and satisfy your soul Oh, let Him have the things that hold you And His Spirit like a dove Will descend upon your life and make you whole Welcome to The Word for Today The broadcast ministry of Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, California Pastor Chuck is currently leading us on a verse-by-verse study through the entire Bible And on today's edition of The Word for Today We'll be continuing our look at Abram's concern of having no children As we pick up in Genesis, chapter 15, verse 13 So let's follow along as Pastor Chuck Smith begins today's lesson Then the Lord said to Abram, Know certainly that 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 shall come out with great possessions Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace You won't have this great period of great darkness and all in your life But your descendants, and of course we know that it wasn't long after Abram That Joseph was sold by his brothers And then he brought the family down into Egypt, the seventy souls And how that during that sojourn, total of four hundred and thirty years Of which four hundred years was affliction They multiplied and became a nation in Egypt Before God brought them out with a heavy hand into the land So you will be buried at a good old age But in the fourth generation they shall return here Now here's an interesting thing, how long is a biblical generation? Well here it happened to be a hundred years In the fourth generation, and we know they're going to be there for four hundred years Now, if you'll go to the genealogical records You'll find that Levi was in Egypt, one of the sons of Jacob And that Moses is the fourth generation from Levi So just as the Lord said to Abram, though it was four hundred years It was only four generations from Levi to Moses They shall return here for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete Now, it came to pass when the sun went down and it was dark Behold, there was a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between the pieces And on the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying To your descendants, I have given this land From the river of Egypt, or to your seed I've given this land From the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates The Canizites, the Kabbanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Riphim Amorites, Canaanites, Gergashites, and the Jebusites Now Sarah, Abram's wife, had borne him no children Abram was eighty-five years old, she was seventy-five She had an Egyptian maidservant, remember Abram went down to Egypt? Shouldn't have done that, that was a lapse of faith He didn't have confidence that God could sustain him in the land of promise And so he went down to Egypt, but oh, he came back stained, marked One of the things that they picked up in Egypt was a handmaiden for Sarah Hagar So Sarah said to Abram Inasmuch as the Lord has restrained me from bearing children Please go into my maid, perhaps I shall obtain children by her And Abram heeded the voice of Sarah And he took Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian, to be his wife And he went into Hagar and she conceived And when she saw that she had conceived Her mistress became despised in her eyes It somehow did something to Hagar There was something that transpired within her That she began to despise Sarah She began to look upon her with scorn Perhaps there was the question that Maybe it was an impotency on the part of Abram That they could not have children Maybe that was the suggestion But now here is proof that it was not Abram's fault But it was Sarah's fault If fault could be used there That he was prolific She was the one unable to conceive Whatever it was, Hagar began to look upon her In a disdainful way And she was despised by Hagar Then Sarah said to Abram, My wrong be upon you Now come on Sarah, you're the one that told him to do it But now she's blaming him Why did you do that? My wrong be upon you And she's now throwing the blame on Abram for what happened I gave my maid into your embrace And when she saw that she had conceived I became despised in her eyes And the Lord judged between you and me So Abram said to Sarah, She's your maid, she's in your hands You do what you want And when Sarah dealt harshly with her She fled from her presence Now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water Now this is the first mention in the Old Testament Of the angel of the Lord And we will find the angel of the Lord Appearing many times in the Old Testament And many Bible scholars do believe That this reference, angel of the Lord Is a reference to a theophany Actually the angel of the Lord is none other than Jesus Christ appearing in a form to man So whenever we come across the angel of the Lord Know that many scholars hold this to be none other Than Jesus Christ, one of the theophanies He found her by a spring of water In the wilderness, by the spring on the way to shore Actually she was heading back to Egypt And she had stopped at this spring of water And he said, Hagar, Sarah's maid Where have you come from and where are you going? And she said, I'm fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarah So the angel of the Lord said to her Return to your mistress and submit yourself under her hand Then the angel of the Lord said unto her I will multiply your descendants exceedingly So that they shall not be counted for multitude And the angel of the Lord said unto her Behold you are with child And you shall bear a son And you shall call his name Ishmael Because the Lord has heard your affliction Ishmael means God hears The Lord has heard your affliction He shall be a wild man His hand shall be against every man And every man's hand against him And he shall dwell in the presence of his brethren The Arab people today are the descendants of Ishmael God's promise That he would cause her descendants to multiply And not be able to be counted for multitude But they were going to be a wild man And his hand will be against every man Today much of the crisis that exists at the present time Centers around the Arab people So there are characteristics Ethnic characteristics That we are not really putting down A particular ethnic group Or elevating another or saying we're superior Not at all We're just recognizing certain characteristics and traits But you know when we come to Jesus All of that's erased Because now we have a whole new origin For our existence If any man's in Christ he is a new creature New creation He is neither Jew, Arab, Greek, whatever He now relates himself back to Christ And he's a Christian That's a whole new race of people And they also have their own ethnic characteristics Oh what love they have for each other What a caring, what a concern they have for each other What a sweetness and what a peace marks their lives What beautiful ethnic characteristics belong to Christians Thank God we can make a break with that past When we are in Christ Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her You are the God who sees For she said Have I also here seen him who sees me? So there she caught a glimpse of God The one who sees her You are the God who sees He saw the desperateness of her heart Here she's carrying the child of Abram She doesn't know what to do Sarah's really given her a bad time and she's fled Heading back towards Egypt But that's a long nigger desert to go through and perilous She's sitting there by the spring and the Lord comes and says Now turn around and go back You're going to have a son Call him Ishmael The Lord hears For the Lord has heard your cry And so the Lord not only hears, he sees And so she called him The God who sees Therefore the well was called Bir Lahai Roi Which means The well of the God who sees Lahai Roi Observe it is between Kadesh and Bered So Hagar bore Abram a son Abram named his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael He honored the name that was given by the angel God hears And he was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram When Abram was 99 years old The Lord appeared to Abram and said to him I am almighty God Walk before me And be perfect or blameless The last time God spoke to Abram was when he was 86 years old So there has been now an intervening time of 13 years He waits now until he is 99 years old before he speaks again And God is speaking to Abram again to inform him That Ishmael is not the child that God promised to give him That God was to give him a son through Sarai Now In Romans the fourth chapter as it talks to us of Abram's faith It declares first of all that he considered not his own body now dead Being a hundred years old Nor yet the deadness of Sarah's womb The indication is that he had become impotent His own body now dead The deadness of Sarah's womb is the statement of the fact That she had gone beyond the age of a woman bearing children She had gone through the menopause period God waited until Abram couldn't do anything about the promise himself anymore And so he allowed Abram now to get to the place where it was impossible for Abram to do anything Concerning the fulfillment of the promise himself It's going to take an absolute miracle of God for the promise to be fulfilled He allowed him to get to the place of human impossibility Now God often as he works with us does this very thing He allows us to come to the end of ourselves to the end of our resources Our ideas He lets us get to that place of hopelessness before he works Because God when he works wants the glory for what he has done And when God works in your life he doesn't want you boasting that you have done this marvelous work Paul said what do you have but what you have received If you have received it then why do you boast of it as though you had not received it And we're so prone to take credit for God's work We cry out into God and we ask God for help and God helps us and then we go out and tell what we did We're like Saul who Jonathan was out wiping out the Philistines and he was blowing the trumpet in Israel So all of Israel heard that Saul had done it And when we relate the stories of the victories and of the goodness we often just put ourselves in Well I really decided that I was going to trust God completely And even at that we try and make it my trust and my faith And you know God honored my consecration or whatever And so God lets you get into those totally impossible conditions where you throw up your hands and say that's it I've had it And we become totally desperate and then God works and there's no way that we can boast And there's no way now that Abraham can get in the way of God by trying to intervene and to help God out He's beyond that point now he's 99 years old his body is now dead as far as the possibility of procreation And now God does his miracle for which only God can receive credit and receive glory And so he appeared to Abraham and said unto him I am the almighty God The word almighty is El Shaddai The word Shadd is breast in Hebrew And it is the place of life and nourishment for the babe And so God is saying to him I am the place of your life and of your nourishment It all comes from me you're dependent upon me for life for nourishment I am God almighty I am the El Shaddai And you've got to look to me for life Walk before me now We read earlier that Enoch walked with God In Deuteronomy God said to Israel walk after me In Colossians 2.6 Paul said as we have received Christ Jesus as the Lord so walk ye in him And so four different prepositions used as the walk with God Walking before God is walking in his presence Conscious that God is watching me looking out over me Caring for me and I'm walking before him as I walk in the presence of God And awareness of that God is watching over me Walking after God is the position of the servant Walking after his master when God said to Israel walk after me He is actually calling upon them to serve him Walking with God as did Enoch And Noah indicates that fellowship that one has As we walk with God That beautiful communion and fellowship But walking in him Signifies that complete oneness and union That is ours with God Christ in me The hope of glory walking in Christ Jesus Walk before me how? Blameless or perfect God's ideal requirement for man is perfection And you wouldn't really expect anything less from God I'm not surprised that God would require me to be perfect In fact I would be shocked if God said Go ahead and be slipshod and cruddy Be as you want That would not be in keeping with the nature of God God would not require anything less than perfection And always know that God's ideal requirement for you Is perfection Walk before me blameless When Jesus finished the Sermon on the Mount He again required the same thing he said Be ye therefore perfect Even as your father in heaven is perfect Now when you tell me well God requires me to be perfect I say thank you But I'm sorry I can't I would love to I've tried to But I am far from perfect How I would love to be perfect How I would love to fulfill God's divine ideal But I can't Now the word sin Has as it's root meaning missing the mark And the Bible said all have sinned Now a lot of people get upset when you say Well you're a sinner man Well just a minute now I'm not too bad I do what I can And I help little ladies across the street But just a minute Missing the mark, what's the mark? Perfection Have you missed that mark? No one's perfect Now Because man could not fulfill God's divine requirement God sent his only begotten son Who took our sins Our missing of the mark And he died in our place So that God's actual requirement for me now Who am not perfect and could not be perfect God's actual requirement for me now Is that I believe in his son Who he sent They said to Jesus what must we do to do the work of God He said this is the work of God just believe on him Whom he sent And so God's actual requirement for me now Is that I believe in Jesus Christ And by my believing in Jesus Christ God accounts me righteous So I am God Almighty Walk before me blameless The power of walking before him blameless Comes to us through Jesus Christ Walking in him We'll return with more of our verse by verse study Through the book of Genesis In our next lesson As we learn more about Abram Abraham And the Almighty God And we do hope you'll make plans to join us But right now I'd like to remind you That if you missed any part of today's message Or perhaps you'd like to order a copy for that special friend or loved one You can do so by simply contacting one of our customer service representatives And they'd be more than happy to assist you with the ordering details Simply call 1-800-272-WORD And phone orders can be taken Monday through Friday From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time Once again our toll free number is 1-800-272-9673 And for your added convenience You can order online anytime When you go to the wordfortoday.org And while you're there be sure to browse through the additional resources That include Bible studies, commentaries, CDs, DVDs And so much more Once again that's the Word for Today Online at thewordfortoday.org And for those of you who still prefer to write You can use our mailing address Which is The Word for Today P.O. Box 8000 Costa Mesa, California 92628 And be sure to include the call letters of this station With your correspondence And now on behalf of the Word for Today We'd like to thank all of you who share in supporting this ministry With your prayers and financial support And be sure to join us again next time As Pastor Chuck Smith continues his verse by verse study Through the book of Genesis That's right here On the next edition of The Word for Today Now once again Here's Pastor Chuck Smith May the Lord be with you and strengthen you and bless you And keep you in all your ways As you walk in fellowship with Him May your life be enriched in the fullness Of that mercy and grace That He has extended towards us through Jesus our Lord God bless you and give you a beautiful week Strengthened by the Lord May you abound in all things in Christ The glory and the praise and the honor of our God Our Savior and our Lord In Jesus name In the light of God's special gift to us Why not celebrate this Christmas With a gift that acknowledges our Lord's birth When thinking of gifts this year Consider the Word for Today's selection of resources This season give the gift of God's Word Call the Word for Today for assistance in finding materials That share the Gospel and reflect the true meaning of Christmas Bless other believers and share your faith Let's get the Word out in these last days Right now the Word for Today has drastically reduced the prices Of many of their resources Including free and discounted items to help you financially When considering gifts for loved ones For more information please contact us By visiting our website at thewordfortoday.org Or call us at 1-800-272-WORD Again the number to call is 800-272-9673 This program has been sponsored by The Word for Today In Costa Mesa, California