> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.eastonbc.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Whereby Shall I Know - Part III - URL: https://www.eastonbc.com/blog/whereby-shall-i-know-part-3/ - Published: 2026-11-03T17:53:19.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-03T17:57:05.000Z - Description: Part 3. In Genesis 15, Abram asks how he can know that God will give him the land He has promised. Pastor Jake Reid explains that assurance rests on God Himself, and considers how obedience, distractions, and the believer’s battle with the flesh affect our experience of that assurance. - Author: EastonBC - Tags: #blog-col, Genesis Genesis 15 · Pastor Jake Reid · November 1, 2026 --- In Genesis 15, Abram asks the Lord, “Whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” God has promised him a land and an inheritance, but Abram cannot see how that promise will become a reality. Pastor Jake Reid explains that Abram’s question moves from the need for provision to the need for assurance. It is a question believers face when they know what God has said but struggle to rest confidently in what He has promised. How can we have assurance when we cannot see how God will bring His promises to pass? The Lord answers Abram by directing him back to Himself. God commands Abram to prepare the animals for a covenant, demonstrating that the fulfillment of His promises rests on who He is and all that He is. Abram obeys, but then must drive away the birds that threaten the sacrifice. Pastor Jake uses these actions to explain that assurance and obedience go hand in hand. We must walk in the light God has already given us and be willing to fight against the distractions, anxieties, habits, and desires of the flesh that turn our attention away from Him. These struggles do not make God’s promises uncertain, but they can hinder our experience of the assurance we seek. The message calls believers to take their walk with Christ seriously rather than continually asking for greater assurance while neglecting what God has already shown them to do. This requires an ongoing battle against self, fought in dependence on the Holy Spirit. Pastor Jake concludes by directing attention to Christ, who gave Himself for us, and to the Lord’s Table, where believers remember His broken body and shed blood. As we consider what Christ laid aside for our sake, we are called to lay aside what hinders our obedience for His glory. Hear the complete sermon to follow how Abram’s question, God’s covenant promise, and the struggle to drive away the birds speak to our own need to trust and obey the Lord. #### Read the Full Sermon Transcript If you'll turn back with me to Genesis chapter 15 this morning. Couple of things, as we get started here been working, this passage in Genesis 15 first really kinda came on my radar as far as a significant biblical text 13, 14 years ago, something like that at this point. And I mean, you read your Bible, you can tell, like, the events that are happening there are important, but I've been looking at this passage somewhat consistently now for going on 15 years, and I've never gotten and understood more out of it than presently what I'm getting out of it as I'm studying it. And so, what I hope happens today is that what the Lord is bringing me along to understand can come out of my mouth and be a help to you. so I say that, but then I'm gonna say this as well. The more I'm looking into this, the more I see, there's just truths that we need to keep unpacking, especially kinda in the season that we are in collectively and individually. learning to walk with the Lord, learning to trust Him, learning to navigate the seasons of life. And so as I was working through this this week, I think, probably two or three more messages in this series kinda like materialized in my thinking. So, I know some of you are like "Yeah, so what? We expected that." and that's good. I'm glad you expected it 'cause if w- we may be in this through the end of the year. but, there's just a lot to learn to. So a couple things. Number one, we will, we will, we will get back to Ephesians, I promise. We are gonna come back to Ephesians. We'll pick up right where we left off. and second is, I will, I promise, hand it back over to James and Alex for a couple weeks and let them just plow on and preach like wild men who've been pent up. but for a little bit here, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep kinda digging through this and, I hope that, - Well, here's what we don't... You never have to hope, okay? Here's something you never have to hope for. You never have to hope that the Lord is working because he's already working, okay? Philippians 2:13, "It is God who works to will and to do of his good pleasure." So he's always working in your life to create the desire and the ability to do what pleases him. So you don't even have to pray, "Lord, work in my life." He's already answered that prayer. You can move on and just start looking for what he is doing. It's never... You know, there's times we see-- we think God is silent, and we don't see him moving, and we- we're prone to look at the silence and the calmness of the moment and think, "Well, maybe God's just kinda stepped back." No. He promised. He's always working in the believer's life. You can never get away from it. we have to turn our attention to him. That's the battle. That's the battle. And so let's get into this, and let me kinda catch you up on what we've been looking at. - Two weeks ago, we started this passage in what I really thought was just gonna be a one-off, one Sunday, we'll take a break, go to Genesis, and then we'll get back, right back to Ephesians. And, in that introduction, we just covered verse number one, but we were look- we got to digging into the idea of God's providence. We understand God is sovereign. He rules over all. He decrees what will happen. And his providence, though, is where he brings into reality what his sovereignty decreed, okay? So we can look at God's promises with Abraham here, and we can see what God had sovereignly decreed, and we see that all the way back in chapter 12\. God had made a sovereign decree in chapter 12 to Abraham to get out of your country, verse number one, from your, family, from your father's house to a land that I will show you. And he says, "I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curses thee, and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." That is the sovereign decree from God regarding Abraham. This is what God was going to do. The problem came because we know what God has said, especially as we've just studied in Ephesians 1, all the things that are true for believers, but yet we live day in and day out, and we don't necessarily see it or the excitement of it all maybe kinda dampens a little bit or maybe God's working behind the scenes, and we're confused as to the direction and the steps to take. Abraham is in that similar moment, coming off a great victory, but comes a moment of depression to him, and it all is summed up here in his fear. He is afraid. He's afraid that what God has promised will not become a reality for lots of reasons. But remember what God said to him in verse number one when Abraham is full of fear. He says very simply, "I am thy shield, and I am thy exceeding great reward." Abraham, you know what I've told you in my sovereignty, and I will bring it to pass, but you need to first remember, get your eyes off of the lacking and look to me. I am your shield. I'm your protection. I am your reward. I am your provider. So Abraham, when you start thinking about the fulfillment of all these things God has promised, remember, it's not you that brings it into a reality, it's the Lord. He does it. Last week, we got into where that really kind of hits the rubber on the road by looking at the first question that Abraham asked. Verse number two, he says this to the Lord, "What will you give me, seeing I go childless?" Remember that great nation that God promised to bring from him? Well, there's a problem. The problem is Abraham is unable to have children. He and Sarah are unable to have children as in the natural process, and they've been together many years at this point, and it's not happened. It's been 10 years since God gave that promise, and it still has not happened. And it brought us to think about a question that we have to do some serious business with. That question is, what happens when God's promise requires a provision that is completely absent from my life? You know what God wants, but you look at yourself and you think, "I cannot bring this into reality. My resources are inadequate." And so what did Abram do? He did exactly what you and I do. We looked at this last week. He went to scheming. He went to planning. He said, "Well, Lord, we could change, we could do this, we could fulfill this if we go just use Elimelech, my servant, and let him be the heir, and then we could go from there." He offered God a substitute plan. God does not need our substitute plans. He is well able to bring His will into reality His own way. He requires that we stop. Stop all the scheming, stop all the planning. And we saw as God told him and confirmed that it's not going to be this Eliezer, but you are going to have a son the natural way And he takes him on that walk, and he shows him the stars, and he makes him a promise that, "I'm going to make your seed as plentiful as the stars in the sky." And at that point, Abraham had a response to make. He could either keep leaning on his own plans and trying to bring God's sovereign will into reality, or he could choose to rest on the Lord. And that's when we get to verse number six, "And he believed in the Lord." What does that mean? It means he stopped trying to do it his way, and he got out of the way by leaning himself completely on the Lord How's God gonna bring into reality what He's promised in our lives? It's not by our might, it's not by our power, but by His And that's a tough lesson, but it's one we have to learn. We have to stop scheming, and we have to trust Him. So the answer to the question, as we looked at it last week, was we must cease from trying to make it happen ourselves and allow the Lord to redirect our perspective and choose to rest our whole weight and the weight of what we hope will happen on Him to produce what He promised. We must place the fulfillment in God's hands. So this impossible thing, Abraham having a son, he had to give that all to the Lord, put it all in the Lord's hand. Well, now we come into verse number seven, and we're gonna pick up in the second question posed by Abraham to the Lord that turns into a very dramatic scene that we'll try to walk through today with you. So pick up in verse number seven, and before this question comes, I want you to see that God provokes this next scene. We coulda had a chapter break right there at verse number six, short chapter. but God provokes the scene that follows right on by saying to him, verse seven, "I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees to give thee this land to inherit it." Now, this sounds exactly like how the chapter started, right? the word of the Lord comes to Abram with a statement, "I am your shield, and I am your exceeding great reward." That then came a question. Now, God again gives another one of those I am statements. He says, "I am the Lord." That's who He is. He's the all ex- the totally sufficient one, Jehovah God. "I am the Lord." What did that God do? Who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees. I'm the one that sustained you and provided for you. All these 10 years since you came out, I'm the one that's been taking care of you and pr- and take, moving you along and fighting your battles and doing all these for, things for you. I am the Lord, and I brought you out to do what purpose? To give you this land to inherit it. Why is God doing this? Because He's gonna give him the land that he's in. We'll look at it in a little while. It's from the, from Egypt to the Euphrates. He's gonna give him this entire land as an inheritance to be passed on to him of grace. And that immediately provokes another question in Abram. Verse number seven. Or verse number eight, excuse me. "And he said, 'Lord God, whereby shall I know that I will inherit it?'" That question is one that I think every one of us have to reckon with as we look at our lives and try to figure out where are we going with the Lord here? What is God doing? Can I, can I just boil this down to a very simple application of this that, kind of builds off what I talked about last week, and then we'll go forward with more specifics here? Let's take salvation as it's presented in the scriptures. there's only one right answer to this question. There's only one right answer to this question, okay? And the answer is no. But here's the question. Have you ever seen Jesus Christ? No. There's only one right answer. If you have, then you probably set the record for 2,000 plus years old, right? none of us have seen Christ. All of these things that we believe are passed down to us as the word of God preserved and settled, but passed down generation after generation. These are truths that we have embraced, but we've embraced them by faith. See, all of where we stand and what we hold true come out of faith. And the popular themes today of evolution and things like that are presented as though they are absolutely and thoroughly based in science. There's no faith r- involved in any of them. I would heavily argue that it takes more faith to believe that nothing created something than a God created everything. To think that we just put all these elements in a box and shook them up and gave it billions of years and poof, we have order, is a much larger leap than a all-existent God who decreed all of this into existence. So no matter where... But understand, we're all coming at that issue on the grounds of faith. By faith, Hebrew tells us, that we know that the worlds were framed by the word of God. So our view of creation and all that's around us has to come out of faith, and that's not a hill to, like, be afraid of because everybody else is on the same hill because no one else is old enough. No one else was there. And, and Christians like to back down when all these terms and science get thrown at us and there's a rational answer to questions. It comes through the scriptures. But we never need to back down from we believe God created as He said. We don't have to back down from that. Because at the end of the day, the evolutionist is really just holding on to faith that what they have been inheriting from others is the reality It's all of faith. Okay back to the text But even the idea that the salvation we have in Christ, okay? Every bit of that is faith-based We think of loved ones who go on to be with the Lord I bet every one of us in this room have been touched in that way. Our lives have experienced a loved one who has gone on to be with the Lord. Our hope, our confidence is that we will be with them again in Christ. But that rests on faith, does it not? And you ever have those thoughts and those moments where you stop and you say, "Man, the assurance of the, that" Sometimes it's a little stronger, sometimes it maybe weakens a little bit, but it ... We're all, we're all clinging to the assurance that we have. And so we get in the Word, and we study these things, and knowledge is built, and trust in the Lord is coming, but it really all comes down to assurance. That's why the Apostle John wrote, the epistle or the, his letter to the church, and the text verse, the center idea of the whole letter he wrote was, "These things that I have written unto you, that you should know that you have eternal life." In other words, "I'm writing to give you assurance that you possess life in Christ." But it comes down to assurance. In this text, in this question, Abraham is asking the Lord, "How can I be assured that you're gonna do what you've said?" Now, believer, which of you have not asked the Lord that question in your own heart? How can I have assurance that you're gonna do what you've said to do? You ever gone through just, like, a rough patch, and everything seems to be crumbling, and, and you're wondering like, "How are my needs gonna be met? How are my ... Is my family gonna be protected?" All those kind of things. You ever, you ever, like, go through those seasons and you're just, like, you're, you're shaking because you know God has said he's gonna take care of you know that. And if you don't know it, how about I just remind you of one of those promises. Turn with me to Matthew chapter six The text I wanna give you is the words of the Lord Jesus himself And when we worry and fear and are up in the air about are we gonna make it through a season like this? Are we gonna be okay? We come and there's words like this Where the Lord Jesus says that in Matthew chapter six, verse 25, he says, "Therefore I say to you, take no thought for your life, what you will eat or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than meat and the body more than raiment? Behold, the fowls of the air, they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they? And which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature? And why take you thought for clothes? Why- Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don't toil, neither do they spin. And yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which is today and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall not much more Shall not he much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or, 'What shall we drink?' or, 'Wherewithal shall we be clothed?' For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow. For the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." I just read to you a passage where the Lord Jesus specifically addressed the various needs that humanity has. What we eat, what we will drink, what we're gonna clothe ourself with. All the, all the real needs, they all fit in that same thing. And what are, what's his closing argument on the whole thing? He says, "Your Father knows that you have need of all those things. And if he's willing to clothe the grass of the field that is there today, but in a couple of weeks is gonna be gone, aren't you much better? Aren't you his people of a higher place to him, a higher priority? So if he cares for the lesser, do you not think he's gonna care for the greater?" Well, the resounding answer would be, "Yes." Okay, that's the Lord Jesus' promise. If that doesn't come true, friend, if that's not true, then hear me, Jesus Christ is a liar But if it is true And he is who he says he is, and that's what we believe, then friend, that's a promise you can rest on But we say, "How can I know?" That's what... Because look, we're, we're like the guy that says, "Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief," right? We struggle. We're, we're doing battle with this. We're trying to figure it out. I trust you, Lord. I do. I know what you've promised. I understand it, but I struggle in this i- area of being assured. That's where Abraham is at. He knows what God has promised him. It's clear what God has said, "I'm gonna do all these things for you." And he's already addressed the idea of having a son, and now he comes to the idea of the land, and God instigated this. Because I think the Lord was clear in, in pointing this out that in Abraham's heart, there was an area where when it came to the fulfillment of this promise, Abraham wasn't quite locked where he needed to be, and the Lord is addressing it. And so he reminds him, "I'm the Lord that brought you out of the land of Ur of the Chaldees. I'm the one that's provided for you. I'm the one that will give you this land." And Abraham looks to the Lord and say, "I know that. I know it. I believe, God, that you are able. I know that you can do all things. There's nothing beyond your power. I know that God is the only one who can be said is all-powerful, all-knowing, eternally true, and can meet every need. I know you're the one that is, that is, beyond all the seasons. You're the one that is the creator. You sustain it all. I know all those things are true." How can I possess assurance? And so the Lord takes him on a journey. Let's pick up in verse number nine. It says, "And he said unto him," this is the Lord speaking, "'Take a heifer of three years old, and a she-goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.' And he took unto him all these and divided them in the midst and laid each piece one against another. But the birds he divided not. And when the fowls came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away. And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and, lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him. And he said unto Abram, 'Know of a surety...'" In God's first statement there, do you see how he's addressing his question? Whereby will I know? How will I know you're gonna do this? And God says, "You know, you can know perfectly, totally, and completely." "'Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them. And they shall afflict them 400 years. And also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and afterward they shall come out with great substance. Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace, and shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation, they shall come again, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.' And it came to pass, that when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces." In the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, "Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the river, the, unto the great river, the river Euphrates." In this passage, we have the cutting of the Abrahamic covenant. The Abrahamic covenant. God formally, or God as formalizes this covenant he has made with Abram for what he will do in giving him descendants, and a land, and a blessing. Those are the core components of the promise. And in this second question, we are moving from a question regarding provision to now a question regarding assurance. God reminds him in this section who he is, and what he's done, and what he will do. That's the verse number seven. Before we get to all of that, "I am the Lord that brought you out of the Ur of the Chaldees to give you this land to inherit it." That's, that starts this whole section. I am. God says to him, "Remember me." That remembering me prompts this question. Okay, well, how can I know? What assurance can I have to rest as a guarantee I can rest on that you're gonna give me this land? What is that assurance? And the Lord will very clearly, powerfully make the point through this section That the guarantee that Abram will receive from the Lord is this: You can rest on me and all that I am to give you this land. Now, maybe Abram in his mind is thinking, "Well, Lord, why don't you just... It w- maybe if... Could you just, like, create a coin or something for me out of nothing? And I'll keep it in my pocket, and knowing that you created that coin, I'll have it in my pocket, and every time I get a little upset, and every time I'm worried if it's gonna become a reality, I'll pull that coin out, and I'll hold it in my hand, and I'll say, 'All right, I got this token. God made this. He gave it to me, and that's what I'm gonna rest my hope on, because I have this token.'" It's not what the Lord does. The Lord does something completely different here, but it's something that's far bigger. In essence, he says to Abram, "You can rest. You can be assured that the promises I've made to you will become a reality Because they rest in their fulfillment on me and all that I am My friend, you don't need anything else When God says it will happen because I'm gonna do it and all that I am is gonna bring it into a reality, that's enough. That promise I just read from you, read to you from Matthew chapter 6, the fact that all those things become a reality, what does it rest on? It rests on him and all that he is. Everything that we hope to happen, our hope of heaven, our hope that God's gonna meet our needs, the care that we need in our lives, that our children will be protected, that our loved ones will be watched over, that all those promises we've learned, all those things that are ours in Christ, that we've been redeemed and we stand holy and blameless before God now, that our sins have been forgiven, our debt is clear. Every one of those things rests on one enduring reality. They are true by him and all that he is. That's it. And that's all we need. But the problem is we run around thinking we need more. "God, do this big thing in the sky, and then I'll trust you. God, provide this miraculous thing, and I'll trust you." And he says, "You're looking in the wrong place, friend." Because you want this showy thing to happen to confirm his reality, the, to give you assurance. When he says, "Stop looking for the showy things, and look to the God who is and was and forever will be." Remember when Abraham believed? He did not believe in a promise in verse six. It says, "He believed in the Lord." His confidence went from looking from God to provide the things to saying, "No, I'm gonna rest my trust on you." So God takes him through a process of proving to him that the Lord is trustworthy. Now, this promise has developed. In chapter w- 12, we saw that God's gonna show him a land. Later in chapter 12, he says, "I will give you the land." In chapter 15, here we see that God's gonna give it to you as an inheritance. And then ultimately, in chapter 15, the end of it, notice he says, he said, "I've already given it to you." Already given it to you. It's already a possession. It belongs to you. Interesting. But Abraham has to gain assurance. So here's the question for this week: How can I possess assurance when I cannot see how God is going to bring it to pass? How can I have great confidence when I don't know the way it's gonna become a reality? Last week was I c- I can see I can't make it happen, but now I can put myself for making it happen on the Lord. But I need hope, I need strength, I need endurance to live in a wicked world that's constantly drawing me away and, and attacking my God and putting thoughts all around me that says, "He's not able. He can't do it. He can't provide." By me and all that I am is the guarantee for God fulfilling His promise So let me show you, how does God build assurance in him? The first, in verse number nine, is he gives him a command He gives him a command. So let me say it like this. Assurance is the result of obeying the light we've already been given. You wanna have greater assurance of God's fulfillment of the promise? You have to begin obeying what you already know to obey. Assurance and obedience go hand-in-hand. God gives him something that was a very familiar way of making a covenant in those days. To us, it's extremely graphic. Like, our covenants look nothing like this, but in this day, this was a common way of doing, making a covenant. And they take these animals, and what they would do is they would cut the animals in half. And when they cut them in half, they made a path out of their bodies. So just bear with me for a second. They would take the cows, and then they would take the ram, and then they would take the birds and the other things that are part of all of this, and they would lay them out in a way to make a path for them. If we're gonna have assurance, it comes first from obedience, okay? So God commands him to take these animals and to set up a familiar way of making a covenant. It's bloody. It's hard work. Those animals didn't die supernaturally. Abraham had to put them to death. He had to do the splitting work of their carcasses to lay them out. But here's the familiar thing that that communicated It made a covenant the most serious thing of life. Because it said, "If I don't live up to my end of the bargain, then you, the other party, have the right to do the same to me." My life is my word, is the, is the source of this covenant. So what happens? God commands him to take these things. Verse 10, "He took all them and he cut them in the middle, and he laid each piece one against another, but the birds he divided not." So in other words, Abram takes these animals and lays them out and makes a path, because he knows how this covenant works. Two parties come together, they join arms, and they walk between the pieces. And it says, "If I don't live up to my end of the bargain, you are right to do," which that... So if it's a transaction of land, a house, whatever it was, this is the way they went about making covenants in that day. 'Cause they couldn't go to the bank and e-sign things. Not... They didn't exist yet. Okay. So Abram lays it out and he does what God has said. One of the reasons we struggle so much in having assurance with what God has promised is we know we need to be acting, but we're not Some people have this idea that they need greater information if they're gonna progress with God. No, we already have what we need right now. We just have to be walking in obedience to what we already know is true. Why is God gonna move on to lesson three, four, and five if we can't get lesson one down? You know what lesson one is? Obedience. But if we're not walking in obedience before Him, is it any surprise that we don't have assurance that He's gonna fulfill His promise? No. It's very clear. Obedience is an absolute necessity if we are going to progress with the Lord. He's not looking for your sacrifices. He's not looking for your offerings. He wants your obedience. We have to walk in the light we have. Lord, show me something new and I'll do it, and He just responds by saying, "I've already showed you plenty of new. I want you to walk in obedience to my Word." But look at the next verse. Because if we're gonna walk in obedience, we're gonna have to do some hard work. Verse 12, "And the hard work was just the start at cutting the carcasses." Verse, excuse me, verse 11\. It says, "And when the fowls came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away." You ever get s-- you ever come to those seasons of life where it's like, "All right, I need to, I need to give the Lord better attention," and you immediately start, "Okay, I'm gonna get in the word, pray, be part of the, be part of the gathering. I, like, I, I need to get on track with the Lord," and so you take off, okay? And man, you do those, the first things, the first steps, like, "All right, I'm, I'm wa- I'm obeying the light I've got. Things are marching on." And then all of a sudden, two weeks, three weeks, five minutes, whatever it is, all of a sudden, it's like, "What happened? As soon as I started to give my attention to the Lord, like, everything in my life fell apart. It all broke all, just like that. Why did that happen?" And the first thing we're tempted to think of is, "Well, that's just the devil. The devil's just fighting me. The devil's..." Look, the devil is fighting you. He is fighting you. But if it, if that decision to walk in obedience is gonna bear fruit, it has to be tested, and God permits that trying of your faith. So does he allow Satan to attack? Yeah. But can we just be honest that most of the stuff that we give Satan the credit for doing is really just the messes that you and I make? He's just an easy party to catch the blame. It's really just you and I messing up, and we don't wanna blame ourselves, so what do we do? "Oh, the devil's just really at me." No, we just don't wanna put self to death. And does he attack? Absolutely. And does he fight you? Absolutely. But he's not my greatest enemy. I look him in the face every single morning. I struggle and battle with him all day long, and his name is not Satan. His name is Jake Reed. And it is a war to put Jake Reed in his place, and some days are better than others But let's understand, when the battle begins, the Lord wants you to do the fighting. So get this picture. Here's Abram, he lays this out in the sacrifice. You gotta imagine, he's done all that work and he thinks, "Oh man, God's getting ready to bless and do something big." Can you identify with that? You start walking in obedience, you're like, "Oh man, the Lord's getting ready to break through. It's gonna be fantastic. This is gonna be awesome." And then all of a sudden, those dead carcasses start attracting something very natural. Birds of prey. We're not talking about like the little things that are just like, shoo. These are like the birds that hang out here on the dumpster in the summertime that are like 10-feet pterodactyls And they're coming for those carcasses. They don't know nor do they care that that is his dedication offering to the Lord. They don't care that that's his obedience. They see a meal, and it's an easy meal because there's just some crazy dude out there trying to protect it So what do the birds start doing? They start trying to swoop in. And I imagine Abraham looked up in the sky, and he saw that first bird coming. And as it's swooping around, that very first bird, as it starts to swoop down, he sees that it's got this, like, placard on its chest. It, it's got this, like, thing on its chest. As it swoops down, it turns. And when it turns, he could look up, and he saw the very first bird that was coming. It had this placard that said, "I am TikTok videos. I am reels. I am shorts. I am distractions, social media, noise in your life. I am, I am politics." I am your preferences. I am all of these distractions You know what Abraham had to do? He had to take his jacket off, and he had to look like a wild man out there fighting this bird away because the bird's not backing off until he really knows he can't get to that sacrifice. And he looks like a wild man. To the world around him, those people that lived on the outskirts of where Abraham was, those people thought he has lost his ever-loving mind. He's off his rocker. Why is he putting such a fight up against these birds that are swooping in? Why is he doing that? Because he has asked God to give him assurance, and God gave him a command to obey, and he obeyed it. And now he has to drive away the birds. Do you and I not have a lot of birds to drive away? Maybe, I don't know, some of those birds are anxieties and fear. We start out doing what God wants us to do, and before long, the voices in the back of our head and in our heart start saying, "Well, it can't be this, and it's not gonna work, and that's not gonna work." And we rob from the offering and the obedience, and we shortchange getting to the assurance because we didn't deal with the thoughts in our mind and the feelings in our heart. He said, "I didn't, I didn't believe that, like, walking with the Lord and trusting him like this was gonna demand that kind of work." The Lord Jesus said we must bring every thought and imagination to the captivity of himself, every single one. If we want our minds to be right, we have to set our mind on good things, true things, right things, and that may be the greatest battle you are ever gonna face in trying to walk with the Lord the right way And guess what? We all got baggage. Some of the things that we earned, some of the things that were done to us. And that baggage starts to creep in, and it's all birds trying to rob from the sacrifice Sometimes it's just our own habits It's our own habits And then the New Testament record tells us that we have to lay aside every sin, right? Every sin, things clearly forbidden in the scriptures, and the weights that easily forsake us or easily turn us away. Well, the sins we can identify. We're like, "Yeah, we should, we should run sin of our-- out of our lives But we don't wanna get rid of the weight, 'cause the weights are things that aren't necessarily bad. They're not necessarily outright condemned in the scriptures. But the weights are things that have to be run out too What do those look like? The indulging of our flesh This is about as far as we're gonna get in the message today, so if you're waiting for the rest of it, come back next week. But I do wanna help you with this Much of the birds that you and I are dealing with are birds that are just the flesh, our wicked heart that still we possess that's swooping in. Paul dealt with this in great detail in 1 Corinthians 9 and 10\. He explains how Israel blew it, how they failed to realize on the promise of God. And it wasn't because God was unfaithful, but it was because they failed to keep their wicked flesh in check. They wouldn't deal with the lust in their heart. They wouldn't deal with the cravings for natural things. They wouldn't deal with pursuing the things of this life and all that it brings. They wouldn't deal with that. They let themselves set their identity on what they have and, and how smart they were and what they could produce. They let all of those things start to shape them, and when they did It was just flesh. It was just carnality The bird that you and I deal with every single day is our carnal self trying to draw our attention away from what God's given us to do And I'm just gonna tell you, there's no doubt in my mind about this, and I believe it's absolutely supported in the scriptures. We can beg and plead, "God, give me assurance. God, give me assurance. God, give me assurance. Give me assurance." And then we can get started doing what we're supposed to do and get going and get going. But I'm telling you, if you and I don't have a practice of driving those birds away like everything depends on it You're never gonna get the assurance you're looking for. You're always gonna be saying, "Well, I wish God would really show up in my life You're, you're gonna look back and you think, "Man, I hear people tell me stories like where God really moved and He did these things, but I don't see it. Where, where is that realness to my faith?" My friend, stop blaming everybody else. Stop pointing the finger anywhere else, because it's nobody else. It's us. You don't take your walk with Christ seriously. Don't be surprised when its fruit aren't present in your life There's just no getting around it, my friend. But when you do take your walk with Christ seriously, when you are willing to fight the battles to make sure that what he's doing in your life is getting the right attention, when you are saying no when you just need to say no to the outside voices and people with other opinions about how you need to do things and what direction you need to go and their thoughts and this group and that group and, and even maybe good intentioned people that don't know the actual circumstances or situation. If you're not willing to say no to all of that other stuff, you can't have the assurance I'm just gonna ... I can speak for me. I can't speak for you, but I'm gonna tell you, I know the greatest need in my life It is that foundational pillar of assurance fully resting in the Lord, knowing that what he has promised is gonna become a reality because of who he is and everything that he promised. That's the... That assurance, it, when that assurance is strong, doesn't it affect how the decisions you make? Notice when your eyes are in the right place, a lot of the foolish decisions we all go and making, we stop making them. Because we know like, "Hey, I'm looking to him," and that needs to change because that's not honoring to him But friend We are our own worst thief of that assurance Remember when Christ talked about what it meant to follow him? He says, "If you're not willing to take up your cross and follow me, if you're not willing to identify with and practice death to self, you cannot really be a follower of me." You may be in name, but you won't experience what he said about, "My burden's easy, my yoke is light." You won't experience when he said, "I came to give you life and give it to you more abundantly." You won't be able to taste and see that that's good because you're too busy grabbing onto things that are preventing it, thinking, "Well, this just makes me happy. This is comfortable to me. This is what I wanna have." And all the while, in not driving the birds away from what God is doing, in not driving them away, not fighting the battles Dependent on the Holy Spirit. I need to, I wanna make that clear. We do our part, He's doing His part But his part doesn't go forward unless I participate obediently in sanctification Say, "Well, yeah, I need to do better at driving the birds away. How do I start? How do I, how do I... Like, do I just start getting r- do I go get a flip phone? And do I detach myself from the world around me, and do I do all these things?" If that's where the Lord drops you, man, have at it. Do it. I'm all for it But let me take you scripturally to the place where you'll get the right horizon set We come to the table. Because as we look to the cross, as we look there, all of the direction for the steps we need to drive the birds away becomes reality We look to the one who was God and is God, but laid aside his right for our benefit And when that's the case, is it not easier to lay aside what we could do now For His glory, knowing that a little present suffering, a little present uncomfortableness is not worthy to be compared with the glory that will come. As we close the service out today, we come to the Lord's table. And as we do so, if you are a believer, you know Jesus Christ as your savior, I invite you to come to the table with me. But we dare not come to this table in a way that is not fully recognizing that these elements are just that. It's just bread and it's just juice. But this is a memorial that marks who Christ is and what He's done on our behalf. He is God who took on flesh to give His broken body and shed blood for the forgiveness of our sin and the institution of a new life in union with him We do not believe these elements become anything more than what they actually are But they picture what Christ did. And we memorialize his sacrifice by coming to the table today. So if you are a believer, you know Christ as your savior, you're a Christian, we invite you, come to the table today. But believer, I caution you, don't come flippantly Don't come carelessly. If the Lord has prompted your heart on things today to deal with, don't push those off and say, "Well, I'll deal with those later." No. Humble yourself now, and let's come to the table together to rejoice in what Christ has done for us. Our Father, as we bow before you and come to remember all that you've done and the great sacrifice of Calvary, today we thank you and we praise you for such a great salvation you've offered to us And we know though it has come to us by grace It costs you great suffering and even separation from the Father We rejoice that though the body was broken and the blood was shed, that was not the end Because on the third day, you rose again, and you are now seated and ruling and reigning forever I pray as we come to the table And our eyes and heart and mind, our whole focus turns to Calvary. Help us to be assured as we walk in obedience. In Christ's name we pray [Whereby Shall I Know - Part IIIDownload Sermon NotesWhereby Shall I Know - Part III.pdf55 KBdownload-circle](https://www.eastonbc.com/content/files/2026/11/Whereby-Shall-I-Know---Part-III.pdf "Download")