Covenant Promises

In the readings, we have today were a choice between the nice fluffy New Testament passage about Jesus or an icky Old Testament passage unsuitable for vegetarian. I have chosen the OT passage because it is simply fabulous: a wonderfully rich passage containing a richness of theology.

I think that this Genesis chapter has much to teach us about the good news brought to us by Jesus!

In the vagaries of time and the drift of the lectionary, it is getting on for nearly 20 years since I last had the pleasure of preaching on this passage. That was in a different church and I had a pantomime cow

This passage from Genesis is fabulous and fundamental to our faith. is discussed at least 4 times in the NT twice by Paul (See , ) and by James () and the writer of Hebrews (, ). This is a passage that the NT writers delved deeply into.

Abram, God and honest conversation

Abram (His name hasn’t changed to Abraham yet) has been through a lot. God has asked him to leave his home and his family and tribe. He has left his land. There have been battles and victories, a lot has has happened and here he is speaking with God.

opens:

Genesis 15:1 NRSV

After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”

The commentaries get very excited with the phrase “the word of the LORD came to”. This is apparently the first time that it is used in the bible and first uses excite theologians. First uses indicate the important meaning of a phrase, and in the this first use shows that God is about to do something history changing.

This ‘History Changing’ opening is quickly followed by what have to be the most underrated words throughout the whole bible:

God’s Covenant with Abram

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15 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.

Do not be afraid

Whenever in the bible have the words ‘Do not be afraid’ almost always been accompanied by something about which something that would be genuinely scary?

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

God told Abram:

The New Revised Standard Version God’s Covenant with Abram

I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.

Do you have the spiritual capacity, the spiritual maturity to dwell in the on the glorious revelation that God, God will be your very great reward? Because Abram didn’t, he was less than impressed! So what God is his reply, so “what will you give me”?. ‘What does this mean LORD? It is all very well you telling me that you are my shield and my very great reward, but here in the now my life isn’t that great.’ Abram has no children to be heirs (a big thing in his day), he is contemplating adopting a servant to be his heir. So for all God’s promises, Abram really want to know from God what is happening right now i the every day of Abram’s life.

And! God is fine with that honesty. God does not rebuke or correct Abram. How honest with God are we with God? Do we take heart that like Abram we can be honest with God in our conversations that our home lives are chaos and mostly we are concern with how God is going to get us through each day??

God understands Abram’s heart, takes him outside, and shows him the stars and says as many as there are of these so shall be your descendants. And then in , we learn that Abram “believed the LORD”. Note he didn’t believe ‘IN’ the LORD, he believed God. He trusted him; he accepted that God had said he would do something and so it would be done. Abram had not come to some intellectual understanding that the entity with whom he was communicating was the “THE” God!!. Instead, he came to understand that he could trust in the person who god was, and this was reckoned to him as righteousness.

Here, at the beginning of the Old Testament we have the clear declaration of the Gospel truth that our salvation is by faith and not works.

And he believed the LORD;

This is why this particular part of scripture is so discussed in the New Testament.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (Ge 15:6). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

God’s Covenant with Abram

God then makes Abram another promise – not only will he have descendants, God is going to give him a land for those descendants to live in. However, again Abram wants more assurance, more convincing. “How can I know this?” How can I know that these will happen, Abram asks God? The promise is a great one and not just a spiritual hope but a very real and practical promise of a land in which to live. Maybe it was the fact that God had promised something real and tangible that made it difficult for Abram to accept. Would we be the same?

And so we arrive at the confusing and icky OT part of the passage. Abram is told to get a cow, a goat, a sheep and two birds. Note that God does not have to explain to Abram what to do with these animals. This alerts us to the fact that though it seems deeply strange to us it was entirely common back in Abram’s day.

We know from a passage in Jeremiah and many accounts from non-biblical literature that this is how in these days a convent or contract was made between people or tribes. In modern times, we put a signature on a piece of paper and that little squiggle of ink says both we expect to gain the benefit of the covenant and expect to suffer the consequences if we break the contract.

Pen and paper would be entire alien to this 4000 year old culture! How their ritual worked was that the animals where cut in two and laid out as described. Then the parties making the covenant, making the promise, would walk through the centre of the animals. The symbology of the ritual is to say ‘if I break this agreement then may what has happened to these animals be done to me’. It was their way of showing that making and breaking covenants was a serious business.

God, the covenant maker

But now note that Abram falls into a deep sleep and as darkness falls the scene changes and ‘a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces’. Think forward to the story of Moses and the Israelites escaping Egypt and recognise that this smoking pot and flaming torch are the visible signs of the presence of the LORD in a place. But now have your mind blown that it is only God that passes through the pieces! Only God is required to accept the curse if the covenant is broken.

This is unique in all the records we have of this type covenant making. Nowhere else is there a record of the more powerful party unilaterally absolving the other from the consequences of the covenant. Image, two tribes have been at war, and seek to establish peace by way of a covenant. Either both Kings would pass through the animals or if one king was more powerful, he would force the weaker to pass through alone as a sign of submission.

The covenant was God’s idea. The covenant was God’s to make. The covenant was given with no conditions placed on Abram.

God, the covenant fulfiller

God did fulfil his part of the covenant with Abram. It took a long time for it to be fully realised, more than 400 years but the promise of a land was kept. And it is this fact that enabled the writer of Hebrews to declare “We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” () when discussing this story.

Perhaps, though we struggle to share this hope. Not because we doubt God but because we doubt ourselves. We are happy that he will keep his side but we are afraid that we can keep up our end of the bargain. We are afraid of what will happen if we let God down.

So as we approach Lent and begin to reflect on Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. This story from Genesis widens our understanding of the grace of God. Grace where God would take upon himself the curse of a broken covenant.

Amazing love! how can it be

That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

1. When did Jesus first know that he was going to go to die on the cross?

2. Read and . What conclusions does Paul draw from Abram’s faith? How does he apply them to New Testament believers?

3. Have there been occasions when you, like Abram, have waited a very long time to see God fulfil his promise or answer a prayer? What did you learn during those years of waiting? Or are you still waiting? And what can you learn from observing Abram during the twenty-plus years between God’s promise (ch. 12) and its fulfilment?

4. Does it make sense in that God took on himself a curse of death? How can an all-powerful God become powerless? How can an immortal God become mortal? Does the cross help make more sense of ?

5. You may like to use the words of the Charles Wesley hymn ‘And can it be’ to guide a meditation. Does the poetry here help in the understanding of the topic?

6. We are members of a new covenant instigated by Jesus. You may like to look at and around these passages - , , , , and . Discuss what is the new covenant like?

[1] Strassner, K. (2009). Opening up Genesis (p. 79). Leominster: Day One Publications.

[2] Strassner, K. (2009). Opening up Genesis (p. 79). Leominster: Day One Publications.

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