The Story Through the Bible Gen 15
The Story through the Bible • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Abram and the promise
Abram and the promise
Quick recap - Abram has just defeated these other kings of city/states made his declaration of following the lord and renounced making a profit off any of it returning all the wealth except the tithe he gave to Melchizedek to praise the Lord.
That takes us to Gen 15 which starts with an “After these things” which is why we needed a quick recap.
The covenant is formally established.
After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
Eliezer is El - which means? and Ezer which is help or assistance.
God reassure’s Abram and says he’s going to get a great reward but what’s Abram’s objection? Abram is wealthy, he has everything he could want that man can obtain.
Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold.
What he doesn’t have is children. So any of his possessions won’t even benefit a relative because his top helper will be the heir if he has no children. The Lord has already essentially promised these things before and we’re now going to codify and expand.
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
and
The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.”
Abram is promised an heir from his own blood and that his offspring will be as plentiful as the stars in the sky. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a very dark sky and magnificent night full of stars but as a child I grew up in the big city. There were stars but it was not a lot. Once my parents took us late at night to be what was still to this day the most eventful meteor shower I’ve ever witnessed. We drove about an hour outside of Fort Worth and put out blankets to watch the sky. I remember how cool it was how many more stars there were and how amazing it was that we could see shooting stars every second or more for a brief period. Even that though was not a dense sky of stars. My house now is fairly dark and gets some really good skies, you can see the milky way on clear summer nights very well. It’s even darker in other places at night and I can’t imagine how much more the stars fill the sky. Scientists counted stars in the visible night sky. Sort of… they didn’t actually count they took a database of stars and estimated.. it’s a lot ~4500 visible from one spot on earth. I got curious and did some math… with an initial couple and average offspring of 6 children per couple it would take about 4 generations to get to 4500 people. I think 4 generations is interesting here just because we see that number of generations mentioned later. I should also note I don’t think this part of the text was intended to be read like this with actual numbers and calculation but that it is a metaphor for more than you can count. Just fascinating that things work out like this for the context and I do think it’s something God probably did intentionally as a cool thing to discover for anyone able.
OK the important part of this story is Abram BELIEVES God and that belief is counted (reckoned) to him as righteousness. It didn’t make him righteous because he believed God. God is still the one to impute the righteousness on Abram who didn’t deserve it. But Abrams faith is accounted as if he is righteous because he has faith. Rom 10:17 faith comes from hearing Eph 2:8 faith is a gift from God
And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
Abram wants a conformation for this and the Lord gives it through a formal treaty in a way the ancient world would make one but this one goes further. God tells him to bring 5 animals. A cow, a goat, and a ram all 3 years old as well as a turtledove and a young bird. Anyone know the age of animals for Mosaic law sacrifices? (1 year old) Abram then does the killing and splitting apart of the animals. The ancient custom was for both parties to walk between the split open animals which signified what would happen to either party should they break the treaty being made. Split in two that is.
The cow is not a common sacrifice in the Bible but it does happen specifically for David being appointed king and in a purification ritual for an unknown murder. The goat is used on the day of atonement and can be one of the two animals acceptable for passover. The ram is also used on the day of atonement and in the ordination of priests. The turtledove is a common offering and purification sacrifice. The ‘young bird’ is only used one other place and it’s in reference to a baby eagle still in the nest.
With the prep work done God puts Abram to sleep.
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
So God lays out the future that is hundreds of years away then makes his move.
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
The “smoking fire pot” (smoke and furnace) and flaming torch (fire and lightning) contain 4 words we should note as these things are representing God right in this verse. We see the four words come up again other places that God appears. Like Mt. Sinai where the people and Moses are before the Lord. These things all imply the power of blessing and curse. Protection and punishment. Note also Abram is asleep although also somehow aware of what’s going on. Abram does not participate in the promise portion here. There is nothing for him to uphold. This is on a one way unconditional promise that Abram’s offspring will get land and will be a multitude.
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”
These two rivers give us the southwestern and northeastern boundries. This isn’t the Nile, there is a word for the Nile and it wasn’t used here so the better estimate is the Wadi of Egypt which would also have been the western border of Canaan. The northwest border is the Mediterranean Sea and I don’t think anyone cared about the desert of the southeast border.
This is a very important chapter and like I said back when the initial promise to be a blessing to all nations came up it is foundational. This is the formal version of that. This promise we see fulfilled in Christ. The blessing to all nations by his death burial and resurrection.
