GENESIS 15:5-6 25 YEARS 25 years from the time that he really got the promise of a son waiting. originally until that son came, 25 years of hoping and

- B. NOT WEAK IN FAITH

NO DOUBT, NO HESITATION The word "weak" means, obviously "without strength." It can mean to doubt or to hesitate. But he wasn't that way, he was strong in faith. And it wouldn't be easy to be strong in faith when you never had had a child and you were as old as this and God waited 25 years from the time of the promise to its fulfillment. Some people have been praying for something for a few years and they've lost hope that it will ever happen. But this man for 25 years is strong in faith and it's hard to understand why, unless you look at verse 17. You see, here's the key. He believed in a God who could give life to the dead, and who could call things which are not as though they were. He believed two things about God. God could create something that didn't exist, and two, that He could revive something that had existed and ceased to exist. He could raise the dead and He could create out of nothing. And when you believe in a God like that you can be confident that what He says He'll do. If you believe that God could bring into existence what doesn't exist and revive what used to exist, you don't have a problem. So if he doesn't have a son, that's no problem for his God because his God can make one, right? And later on, isn't it interesting? When Isaac was born that God asked him to do what with Isaac? Kill him, take him up on the mountain Moriah, put him on an altar, run a knife through him, take his life, burn him up as an offering. He believed that God could raise Isaac from the dead. Hebrews 11:19 ROMANS 4:17, GENESIS 17:4 100 YEARS OLD, BODY AS GOOD AS DEAD He knew he would not be able to contribute anything. His procreative power is dead. SARAH’S WOMB DEAD Sarah at 90 had never had any children and definitely could not do it now. She was of no help either. Genesis 18-11 says that Sarah's womb was dead and she was unable to produce a child. He couldn't produce the seed and she couldn't carry it in a fertilized egg, no artificial insemination, no surrogate mothering, no nothing NOT DISCOURAGED OF HIS OWN INABILITY He knew that God could make something out of nothing.

- C. NO WAVERING IN HIS FAITH

DID NOT VACILLATE , NO STAGGERING No vacillating, the word means "to stagger, or waver,” or vacillate. It's the word krinō, which means "to judge," with dia at the front of it, which has to do with two — to judge between two things. He didn't flip-flop back and forth unable to make an opinion.. PS 57:7 If this is the kind of faith that saves, who in the world can come up to this? Who can say that he never wavers in faith against all human inability? Well, I certainly can't say that. And neither can you. And I don't think that's what it intended to say here. GENESIS 17:15-19 GOD REITERATED THE PROMISE God reiterated the promise"But isn't Abraham wavering?" Yes, here's the point. Watch this. All faith works through the struggle, but the kind of faith that saves is the kind that lands on the confidence side. You see, the ultimate end of Abraham's struggle was that he was confident. Oh, there was a time when he had to deal with the options and the opinions and he had to land firmly. In fact, it was the struggle that strengthened his faith. Oh it was battered around but in the end it did not waver. He worked through the difficulties; he worked through the famine and the pharaoh and the fear and all the other elements. He worked through even the folly of the thought that they could bring a child into the world. And when it was all worked through and the struggle was over, he was unwavering, strong in faith.

- D. STRONG IN FAITH---GIVING GLORY TO GOD