A Foreshadow of God's Great Love
Notes
Transcript
Some time later, the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and said to him, “Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you, and your reward will be great.”
But Abram replied, “O Sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don’t even have a son? Since you’ve given me no children, Eliezer of Damascus, a servant in my household, will inherit all my wealth. You have given me no descendants of my own, so one of my servants will be my heir.”
Then the Lord said to him, “No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own who will be your heir.” Then the Lord took Abram outside and said to him, “Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can. That’s how many descendants you will have!”
And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith.
Then the Lord told him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as your possession.”
But Abram replied, “O Sovereign Lord, how can I be sure that I will actually possess it?”
The Lord told him, “Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” So Abram presented all these to him and killed them. Then he cut each animal down the middle and laid the halves side by side; he did not, however, cut the birds in half. Some vultures swooped down to eat the carcasses, but Abram chased them away.
As the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a terrifying darkness came down over him. Then the Lord said to Abram, “You can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, where they will be oppressed as slaves for 400 years. But I will punish the nation that enslaves them, and in the end they will come away with great wealth. (As for you, you will die in peace and be buried at a ripe old age.) After four generations your descendants will return here to this land, for the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction.”
After the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. So the Lord made a covenant with Abram that day and said, “I have given this land to your descendants, all the way from the border of Egypt to the great Euphrates River—the land now occupied by the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”
This is not the first time God has come and spoken to Abram
I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”
God makes a promise that all the earth will be blessed because of Abram. This promise gets fleshed out more in
After Lot had gone, the Lord said to Abram, “Look as far as you can see in every direction—north and south, east and west. I am giving all this land, as far as you can see, to you and your descendants as a permanent possession. And I will give you so many descendants that, like the dust of the earth, they cannot be counted! Go and walk through the land in every direction, for I am giving it to you.”
Here we see the promise for the land and for numerous offspring. So, the promise that we read in Chapter 15 is not a new promise, but there is something different about the stating of the promises that we read today.
Sometime after these promises Abram (who later becomes Abraham) and God are in a dialog.
There is a promise to be a shield a reward
The shield most likely has to deal with the protection of God coming from the rescuing of Lot in the previous chapter. The reward has to deal with what God will give Abram; the children and land.
Abram is childless still. He has not yet been blessed with children and he has begun to wonder about this reward that God has promised. Being childless was seen as a curse. God has promised children, but Abram is thinking he’s not getting any younger, and nothing has happened.
Abram has made provisions for his future heir as a servant in his household that he has adopted.
God reminds Abram about the promise that He made with Abram that the heir will come from his body.
Abram asks for a sign and God shows him the stars (v.5)
Abram is satisfied with this sign
Then God reminds Abram of the promise to give his descendants the land that he is seeing.
Abram asks for a sign. Abram needs something tangible to remind him of this promise.
God says bring me a heifer.
What is God doing? Abram knows
God is setting up a covenant. Not just any covenant, but a blood covenant.
There were many different types of covenants in the Ancient world. Some were not severe. Think of our handshake. Others demanded that the covenant partners actually swap identities with each other so that they both became one person. They shared weapons and clothing and sometimes their first born son. Then there was also this blood covenant. God did not have to describe this covenant; Abram knew what this covenant entailed.
The blood covenant was one of the most detailed expressions of making promises. It was a covenant and there fore binding. One must enter into this covenant and be able to keep the covenant perfectly.
The blood covenant was set up with animals. Animals would be sacrificed by being cut in two. The two halves of the animal would lie facing each other, creating a pathway in between the animals.
Sometimes they would cut the animal open, similar to field dressing a deer. They would leave the animal in the field.
The covenant partners would state their promises of what they would uphold. Then they would walk through the pathway created by the dead carcasses, or they would walk through the guts and glory of the field dressed animals.
This was them saying, “I will keep these promises that I have made to you. If not then may I become like these dead animals.” This is why someone had to be able to keep the covenant perfectly.
Abram sets up this covenant. I wonder what he was thinking.
Was he kicking himself for opening his mouth?
Was he worried?
Was he saying, “Oh God, I didn’t ask for this, I asked for a sign. Why not use a rainbow or thunder or something? Why do you want this?”
None the less Abram sets up this covenant
God causes Abram to fall into a deep sleep. God states His promises, His end of the bargain.
Then symbols of God pass through the animals. God made His covenant.
It is at this time that Abram is to walk through.
I am on the edge of my seat saying, “Don’t do it Abram! I know your story. I know how you behave with Hagar in the next chapter. I know how your descendants did not uphold the covenant. I know how your spiritual descendants did not and do not uphold the covenant. Don’t walk through it! Don’t do it! Back out!”
At this time Abram is to walk through, and you know what, he doesn’t. God made a covenant with Abram, but God did not expect Abram to covenant with God.
Abram asked for a sign, and God gave him a covenant. A sign saying, I will do what I said because if I do not may I cease to exist, may I become like these dead animals.
This covenant is foundational to the Bible. God’s actions are based on this covenant throughout the story in this Book.
This covenant is revealed again in Genesis 22 when Abraham is asked to sacrifice Isaac, the child of the promise, and God provides a ram.
A people grieving in slavery cry out to God, and God answers their pleas because of this covenant. (Also, this was mentioned in the covenant with Abram)
A people are brought into the Promised Land because of this covenant. God teaches these people faithfulness to Him through the exile.
And, this covenant is a foreshadow of God’s great grace! It’s not JUST that God walked through and not JUST that Abram didn’t have to walk through… There’s more...
Look back at 15:17.
After the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses.
Two things pass through the halves of the animals. Both of these have been signified as God. This week I read something that helps us here.But, it’s not that simple...
The first symbol, the smoking firepot, is a symbol of God the father. This is a symbol of God in the OT.
The second symbol is what gets me excited - the blazing torch. Some have said is the second member of the trinity; God the Son.
His head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow. And his eyes were like flames of fire.
“Write this letter to the angel of the church in Thyatira. This is the message from the Son of God, whose eyes are like flames of fire, whose feet are like polished bronze:
His eyes were like flames of fire, and on his head were many crowns. A name was written on him that no one understood except himself.
These all talk about the “eyes of blazing fire.”
Someone had to pass through the halves. A covenant was made.
Abram had to walk through, but he wasn’t made to. Something/someone else walked through on his behalf. God does for us what we cannot, should not, and would not do for ourselves. God KNEW Abram and his offspring would fail. God knew the covenant would require to death of Abram. So, the covenant, although made with Abram had a proxy in Abram’s place. God the Son walked through on Abram’s behalf.
God the Son still walks through on Abram’s descendents behalf.
When God the Son became flesh he was a descendent of Abram - he fulfilled Abram’s part of the covenant perfectly. However, because Abram and his descendents did not fulfill our end of the covenant God the Son walked through Death on our behalf!
God the Son walked through on behalf of Abram. God the Son took the place of Abram, his descendants, and us his spiritual descendants.
This covenant is the gracious covenant of God. God comes to us and does for us what we cannot, should not, and would not do for ourselves! This is how great the love of God is!
God made a covenant that He promised to keep.
Jesus walked through on our behalf because we could not keep it.
We did not keep the covenant, but Jesus did.
Because Jesus was our placeholder, he suffered the consequences of our not keeping the covenant.
GOD FORESHADOWED/PROMISED THIS IN GENESIS 15.
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.
When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.
For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.
This is why we have hope! Not because we are great and do great things. We have hope because God is gracious and does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
GOD FORESHADOWED/PROMISED THIS IN GENESIS 15
This is the message of Salvation. That Jesus did not only take Abram’s place - he took our place too!
For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.
Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Even though we all have sinned, we have salvation and grace through Jesus Christ!
GOD FORESHADOWED/PROMISED THIS IN GENESIS 15!
May we know and receive this salvation today!