Hear now the Word of God from the book of Genesis chapter 15 verses 1 through 12 and 17 and 18.
“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.’ 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, ‘You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.’ But the word of the Lord came to him, ‘This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.’ He brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are about to count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Then he said to him, ‘I am the Lord who brought you 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.’ He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
As the sun was going down a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him….When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants 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 Raphaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.’”
This is the Word of God, for the people of God. Thanks be to God for it.
There are many things in life that are uncertainties, and for some of us our bank account is one of them. How many of us balance our checkbooks anymore? I know that I do online banking, trusting that the bank will keep their promise and is keeping track of what I’m spending, and I just check and make sure we’re not bouncing. But there are times I wonder – hmmm…..can I trust what’s in my account? Do I really know what’s in there? Will they keep their word? Call it the paranoid in me, I sometimes have doubts. Especially in the middle of the night, when all of those worries creep in. If you can identify with this, you know something of what Abram felt as he struggled to believe in God’s promise in the midst of his doubts.
Before we dig into the story wondering about trust and promises, what was going on with Abram before this happened? Well, you know the story of Abram, later called Abraham. In chapter 11 of the book of Genesis we move from looking at the world as a whole and its various acts of disobedience, to following the story of Abram. In chapters 11 and 12, God called Abram, saying “Go from your country, and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you. 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 who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”[1] Wow. Leave all that you have known and go to this new land that God will show you and God will make you, who has no children, a great nation. That was pretty unbelievable. You’re 75 years old, with no children, and God tells you go and I’ll make you into a great nation. Yeah right. But what does the text say “Abram left, just as the Lord had told him.” So Abram begins this new journey. He steps out in faith. They really should make a movie like The Ten Commandments a la Charlton Heston about the story of Abraham because of the large scope of it all.
In chapter 13 God again makes a promise to Abram. “Raise your eyes now 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 like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Rise up, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” So again, God promises Abram two very big things – the land and the offspring to inhabit it. Not just a handful of offspring, but descendants like the dust of the earth never to be fully counted, because who in the world could count the dust? I wouldn’t want to begin to count even the dust in our house. So yes, again, God had promised this childless man not only land but descendants as numerous as dust.
Right before we met Abram in today’s passage there had been a battle and to make a long story short, with God’s help, Abram won. When you win, you take the loot. Our family plays the game of Risk a lot, and in that game, when you win a battle, you take that person’s land. The goal in the game is world domination. Just like in anything else – if you win, you get the reward. Abram realized that God was the one who had delivered his enemies into his hand and after giving the priest ten percent of all the spoils, he didn’t take anything else for himself. That was a whole heck of a lot to turn down, but God had been faithful to Abram delivering him from Egypt and helping him win this battle, and he didn’t want to owe anyone anything, he and his allegiance belonged only to God. Since he gave God credit for the victory, the spoils weren’t his. His refusal was a sign of faith.
This is where we are in our text today. Abram has just turned down this handsome reward and God comes to him in a vision and says, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” God says look I’ve got your back, I’ve got you covered. You may have given up that loot, like in The Goonies, “the rich stuff,” but I’ve got an even greater reward for you.
What does Abram do? He, a little on the angry, maybe even on the sarcastic side of things, asks what can you give me when I’m childless and everything I have will go to a servant in my house. What can you give me? Doesn’t that sound like a question you hear today all too often. What can you give me? The Message says it this way, “God, Master, what use are your gifts as long as I’m childless…?”[2] What use are your gifts? That’s a pretty straightforward and forthright question. What good is all this stuff if I can’t take it with me and I can’t leave it to my children? Abram has heard God promise to make him this great nation, and he’s heard God say he’ll make his descendants as many as the dust of the earth, but yet, he hasn’t seen anything yet. It’s a show me the money kind of moment. He’s tired of the talk; he wants to see some action. Don’t we get like that sometimes? We’ve been given this promise, this word from God, and it seems that nothing is happening or that our prayers are going unanswered. Sometimes we start to worry if God’s taking a break or if we’ve misunderstood God’s will. In our fast-paced society, we often want things right NOW, and if they don’t come fast enough, we begin to think they’re not coming. We get discouraged. Abram had some of these same fears and questions.
What did God say to Abram, even before he began to ask his questions? “Do not be afraid Abram.” God cuts at the core of his fear. See in Abram’s day, being childless was a big deal. Some thought it was a sign of judgment or wickedness and as it is today, your children are who hopefully care for you as you get older, so Abram’s concern was not unfounded. God knew Abram’s thoughts and he gave him the proof he needed. God knows us, and God knows where we are and what we’re feeling even before we articulate it. God is a big God, and a gracious God and God doesn’t slink away from our questions, God doesn’t hide or back down from them, God doesn’t smite him down for questioning and God doesn’t get angry at his doubt – God reassures him. In the movie Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise’s character, a sports agent, has just made a huge stand professionally and he’s trying to rally all of his sports clients around him. Cuba Gooding’s character, a pro football player is who he calls first. Over and over again he reassures him that he is on his side, looking out for his best interests and working hard for him. And the classic scene shows Cuba yelling back and forth into the phone “Show me the money.” With Cruise responding emphatically assuring him as he yells into the phone, “I will show you the money!” He puts everything he has into it at the loss of all else. He assures him and puts his fears at ease. He steps up to the plate. God does the same thing. God meets Abram where he is, and answers him.
God says that Abram’s heir won’t be this servant, but a child of his own from his own body. God doesn’t give a general speech about keeping God’s promise, but God addresses Abram’s actual fears, the doubts and worries he has about his own specific situation – having an heir or a legacy to pass on. After he answers his doubt, God provides him with another image, another symbol just like the dust in his earlier promise. He says, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them, so shall your descendants be.” Again, he gives him something so huge that it can’t even be counted. Can you imagine it? If you were Abram in the days, weeks, and years to come as you go through your every day life, in the daytime seeing the dust and in the nighttime seeing the stars and thinking about this promise that God made you, this crazy and unlikely reality that God has promised you, would you believe it? Would you keep the faith? Does Abram have concrete evidence that this will happen, that God will keep God’s word? Not really. But we have heard how God had called him and had provided for him, and how God continues to make the promise. We have heard how God answered his fears. And because of these things, through God, as our Covenant Keeper, Abram believed. Verse 6 says, “And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Through his faith, Abram was made right with God.
There is a story about Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China, going to a bank in England and opening up an account for the China Inland Mission. As he was filling out the application he came to a question asking him for his assets, or in other words what you got. Taylor wrote in the blank, “ten pounds and the promises of God.”[3] You can take God to the bank! If you know the story of Taylor and the China Inland Mission and all of the great, faithful work that they did, you know the foundation for his life was God’s promise: That God has begun a good work and would bring it to completion; faith that God would keep God’s covenant. When you have received God’s promise, it is something you can take to the bank.
Abram had seen God at work in his life and as unlikely as the promise sounded, he believed. He trusted that he could stand on those promises. And what about those words, “reckoned it to him as righteousness?” Paul would later allude to this verse in Romans 4 and Galations 3 when he begins talking about justification by faith. He uses Abram as an example to the early church saying that through his faith Abram was set in right relationship with God, not by anything that he earned or worked, but just by his belief. What Paul was trying to communicate was that it is the same with us. We’ve seen all the ways that God has worked in our lives, just as Abram saw, and just like Abram, all we have to do is believe to be reckoned as righteous, or counted as good even though we obviously don’t deserve it. We believe that God loved us and drew us to God even when we didn’t know it and that by grace God gives us the opportunity to believe. Through this faith and belief, we are saved.
In verse 7, God again reminds Abram of who God is, the God who has brought him to this place, and the promise. Here Abram goes again questioning God, “How am I to know that I shall possess this land?” Although in verse 6 it says that he believed, he is now asking for some sort of sign. Just like us, sometimes even when we do believe, we have questions and doubts. Again, God answers him. God provides the assurance that he needs both in word and deed. God makes God’s self vulnerable by making a cutting covenant with Abram. I know it sounds a little gross, but this is where we get our saying of “cutting a deal with someone.” The way it works is that you walk between the animals sealing your agreement and if you break the agreement then your fate is that of the animals. Covenants are serious, being cut in half is serious. These are not just promises, but something far more-weighty and binding. Marriage is one of these things, where it’s not just a promise made between two people, but it is a pledge, an oath that should not be taken lightly. It’s a covenant.
God’s covenant with Abram isn’t quite like a marriage where there is an equal partnership in the covenant-making. This is a special kind of covenant, a royal covenant, where a king rewards a servant for loyalty and faithful service. All of the responsibility and pressure is on the king to uphold the covenant because he is the one of greater stature.[4] In other words because of God’s love for us and God’s knowledge of our human limitations, God puts God’s self on the line, knowing that this is not an equal partnership, but that the majority of the risk is God’s. In the form of a smoking fire pot and flaming torch, God covenanted with Abram to fulfill both of his promises – to give him all of this land and to give him descendants to inhabit it.
What an amazing God we serve, that God has staked God’s own life on this promise. This is not a promise that Abram initiated, but it is a unilateral decision and covenant made by God. It is not something we have to do or initiate, but it is part of the nature of God. That’s the important point. God’s promise is certain not because of anything that we have done, but because of who God is. Yes, Abram has been faithful, but so has God and so God will be. God is not a distant God who watches from afar, but God is a present God who has entered into the fray with humanity. God seeks relationship with us and has covenanted with each of us in the greatest of all sacrifices on the cross. God doesn’t pull back or go half way, but as in popular games of Texas Hold ‘em, God goes all in. God, Emmanuel, became one of us. God is a personal God that seeks us, that woos us, that draws us to God’s self. On the cross God provided the greatest sign and gave us the opportunity to join in the greatest covenant.
What is our response? Our response is that of Abram’s, to believe. To have faith in the God of the universe that covenants to be in relationship with you and with me, sinners redeemed by the love and grace of Jesus Christ. To trust God’s promises – promises to never leave nor forsake us, promises to give us abundant life, promises to walk with us, both assuring us and answering our questions and fears, but also calling us to grow and trust and respond in faith.
An old man and woman were driving down the road, with the man behind the steering wheel and his wife of many years sitting next to the passenger-side door. They came up behind a car in front of them that had a very young couple riding side by side, almost looking like a two-headed monster because they were sitting so close together. The woman looked over at her husband and pointed at the young couple in front of them and asked, “Why don’t we do that anymore?” He slowly looked over at her and replied, “I haven’t moved.”[5] There have been times, like Abram, we have moved back and forth sometimes trusting, sometimes doubting and questioning God’s provision for us. At times we’ve even gotten out of the car, but God hasn’t moved.
In closing, one of my favorite hymns, perhaps because of the words, perhaps because of the gusto, is “Standing on the Promises.” Listen here to the second verse, “Standing on the promises that cannot fail, when the howling storms of doubt and fear assail, by the living Word of God I shall prevail, standing on the promises of God. Standing, standing, standing on the promises of God my Savior, standing, standing, I’m standing on the promises of God.”[6] You can stand on and trust the promises of God. God’s a sure thing. Bank on it!
[1] Genesis 12:1-3, All scripture references unless otherwise noted are from The New Oxford Annotated Bible – New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
[2] Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 2002), 39.
[3] Patrick Mead,“Standing on the Promises of God,” www.sermoncentral.com, February 20, 2006.
[4] David J. A. Clines, “Genesis-Esther,” HarperCollins Bible Commentary (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2000), 93.
[5] King Duncan, King’s Treasury of Dynamic Humor (Knoxville: Seven Worlds Press, 1990), 173.
[6] The United Methodist Hymnal: Book of United Methodist Worship (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 2002), 374.
Blessings on the Journey 