1. Delay is not Denial (1-5)
Your Shield & Reward
In the previous story, we saw Abram acting in faith by refusing to accept the gifts of the wicked king of Sodom. In faith he trusted God to bless him, and didn’t become dependent on this worldly king. 

Now, I don’t know whether you have experienced the same thing in your walk with God, but sometimes I’ve found in my own life that after some great spiritual triumph, after the initial elation, there often comes a time of fear and depression and doubt. And the way God reassures Abram at the beginning of this chapter makes you wonder whether that isn’t perhaps what’s happening here. 

Why do you think God chooses these particular words to encourage Abram with? “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” Normally you only say “Don’t be afraid” to someone who is fearful. And why would God remind Abram that He is his protection and his reward, unless Abram was being tempted to fear for his life and to regret what he had given up? Think of what he had just done.

First of all, in the heat and fervour of faith and love for his nephew Lot, he set out to rescue him from the alliance of the four kings. In defeating the armies of those kings, he had opened himself up to the possibility of swift and deadly reprisal. He had taken a tiger by the tail. Next time they crossed the Euphrates, they might come with redoubled strength, and attack Abram to avenge the loss he had inflicted on them. These fears must have played on Abram’s mind.

And then, there was the matter of the booty. After the battle, Abram had given up his share of the booty, so the king of Sodom could never boast that he had made Abram rich. Abram trusted God to do that, and not any man – certainly not a man like the king of Sodom. But maybe, just maybe, he was now having second thoughts. Was that perhaps a little rash and hasty? 

We can of course have the same kind of regrets. You may have prayed about a particular course of action and taken a step in faith only to doubt later whether it was all worthwhile. A Christian may  decide to give up the chance for advancement in their particular field in order to pursue a ministry the Lord has called them to, or for some other godly reason. Or they may decide to give up a romance with one whom they know would lead them away from the Lord. They may refuse a promotion which comes with strings attached or would make them less able to spend time with their family and be involved in their church. There are decisions in our lives that we may make when we are on the crest of a spiritual wave, when our zeal for the Lord is strong, and that we make with confidence, knowing it is the right decision…only to have doubts and fears later, when the rubber hits the road and reality bites.

The word translated here as “reward,” (I am your great reward) means a payment or just compensation for something you have done. God is saying that he will compensate Abram for the reward he had just given up. The Lord himself is the compensation. My Hebrew is not very good, but I know enough to know that the phrase here translated in our English version as “your very great reward,” is really emphatic language. The word for “very” is a word that in Hebrew conjures up images of red hot pokers and burning zeal. I am your exceedingly great reward, I am better than the hottest, most burning desire of your heart, is what God is saying to Abram. There is nothing brighter, nothing better, nothing to compare with the relationship the Lord has with his people.

The Lord gives the same promises to us. Jesus assured his first followers that no matter what they gave up for the sake of the gospel, knowing God and following Jesus was more than compensation. Mark 10:29 records his words: 
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.”

Nothing you give up for the sake of the gospel, no comfort you forgo, no enemies you make because you are faithful to the Lord, no worldly gain you lose, should make you fear or regret. Because the Lord is your shield and your very great reward.

“That’s All Very Well God, but…”
Well, Abram is very like us, isn’t he? Look at his response in verse 2: But Abram said, “O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

Abram reveals what is dearest to his heart. Where his real fears and dreams lie. What matters most is that he have an heir to inherit his name, a descendant to give the great wealth the Lord has given him. And that is a very common and natural human desire. Aren’t we often tempted to think the same way? Yes, I know you’ve given me all these wonderful spiritual promises, God, but why haven’t I got a life partner? Or why aren’t I better looking? Or more talented or smarter? Or, why don’t I have children? Or why did you take my spouse from me so soon? Or… any number of other situations and regrets that really cut to the heart of who we are and who we want to be in this world. What is it that you really desire and that you think God has withheld from you or taken from you? And have you allowed that to make you bitter or resentful? Has it dulled your spiritual zeal and your love for God’s people? 

If you recognize yourself in Abram’s doubts and fears and bitterness here, then take to heart God’s words to Abram and his promises to us. He really does long to be our protector and our compensator for anything and everything we lose or fail to gain in this life. He wants to bless us with his love and his presence and his fatherly goodness, and to make us a blessing to others.

An Ancient Custom
How often do our faith and our unbelief live in us in an uneasy tension? On the one hand, Abram was trusting God to keep his promise to bless the world through his own offspring. But time was marching on, and it seemed as though other arrangements would have to be made. Perhaps Abram began to re-interpet God’s words. Just like those who can no longer believe in miracles, or that Jesus rose from the dead, or that he is returning again in glory. And they say, “well maybe God really meant this instead.” Maybe the resurrection was just the faith of the disciples, by which Jesus continued to live in their hearts. Maybe Jesus’ promise to return really means that he just lives in his church, and there is no earthly second coming of the Messiah. And they spiritualize away all the other promises of scripture like that. Abram was doing a similar thing here, by falling back on an ancient custom of adopting a servant as his heir.

Now this is very interesting, because it’s yet another small example of the hundreds of times that archaeology has backed up the bible stories as history and not just myth or legend. Letters on clay tablets dug up at Nuzi, specifically mention this practice amongst the Hurrians, a nearby people. When a man was childless, he would adopt an official heir, who would be his servant during his lifetime, and then become his heir when he died. However, he was a kind of second-best heir, and had fewer legal rights than a normal heir. And should the man subsequently have a son of his own, then the right of the servant to be the heir lapsed. That was Abram’s contingency plan. Just in case God didn’t come up with the goods. And as the years went by, it looked more and more as though that was the case.
The Promise Clarified
The Lord’s response to Abram’s doubts and whining is one of great patience and forebearance and love. He reassures Abram and confirms the reality of the promises. Yes, Abram, I really did literally mean that you would have a real son of your own, not a surrogate heir. Verse four says:
“Then the word of the LORD came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.””

2. The Heart of the Gospel (6)
Abram Believed & Was Justified
What was Abram’s response to God’s Promise confirmed? Verse six is one of the most significant in the whole bible, for within it we see the heart of how God saves his people. The heart of the gospel of grace. It says with simple eloquence: “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness”

The word for believed in Hebrew, the word Aman, comes from the same root word as Amen. Abram gave his amen to what God had said. He knew for sure it was right and trustworthy and true.

Faith in Jesus Our Justification
The New Testament says a lot about the faith of Abraham and how through Jesus we exercise the very same faith with the very same result. Paul says here in Romans 4:
“Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law [that’s the Jews] but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all [that is, of all Jewish and non-Jewish Christians].”

And Paul go on to say in Romans 4:23, “The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. 25He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”

There has never been any other way to get right with God than by his grace, that is, his undeserved mercy, that we receive simply by putting our trust in his promise, like Abraham.

3. Cutting the Covenant (7-21)
What’s Happening Here?
We move on now to verses 7 to 21, where God again meets Abraham at his point of need in a special way.

The imagery of these verses is bizarre to us, living as we do four thousand years later and eight thousand miles from the Middle East. Verse 9 says “So the LORD said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

The Promise Confirmed
It doesn’t make much sense to us, but in his culture Abram knew what this meant. It meant God would confirm his promise with a binding oath to Abram in the form of a covenant. It’s the same as if he had said to us, okay, bring me a pen, a contract, and a lawyer. That’s why Abram didn’t need to be told what to do with the animals the Lord instructed him to get.
“Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.”

Since the Fall, people have needed to formalize agreements and contracts with a binding oath and a solemn ceremony. Sometimes they even made covenant oaths to God. What a person was saying when they sacrificed the animals and made two piles from the carcasses and walked between them, was in effect, “if I do not keep this covenant, may what has happened to these animals happen also to me.” This is why they called it “cutting a covenant” when you made this kind of agreement.

There is a later example of this in Jeremiah 34. The people of Judah had responded to Jeremiah’s message by celebrating the year of Jubilee, when they were supposed to free all their slaves. And they even made a covenant with God in the Temple that they would do this. But then they went back on their word, and this is what God said to them through Jeremiah:
“…each of you has taken back the male and female slaves you had set free to go where they wished. You have forced them to become your slaves again.
 “Therefore, this is what the LORD says: You have not obeyed me; you have not proclaimed freedom for your fellow countrymen. So I now proclaim ‘freedom’ for you, declares the LORD—‘freedom’ to fall by the sword, plague and famine. I will make you abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth. The men who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces. The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests and all the people of the land who walked between the pieces of the calf, I will hand over to their enemies who seek their lives. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.”

A Bond in Blood
That’s the meaning of the pile of carcasses here in Genesis 15. But the remarkable thing is that it is not men cutting this covenant, but the everlasting God. What incredible condescension and mercy and grace, for God to come down and symbolically to walk between the carcasses – that’s what the flaming firepot and the smoking torch are about – they are symbols of God, who is described by the New Testament as “a consuming fire”. 

So, God is here cutting a covenant with Abram. There can be no covenant without the shedding of the blood, because the blood symbolizes the penalty for breaking the covenant. A covenant is a bond in blood. The idea survives in some of our colourful Aussie language. If you ask a real true blue ocker whether something’s true, he sometimes answers, “blood oath it is, mate.” Well, this is God’s blood oath to Abraham. “God the Creator binds himself to man the creature by a solemn blood-oath. The Almighty chooses to commit himself to the fulfilment of the promises spoken to Abraham. By this divine commitment, Abraham’s doubts are to be expelled. God has solemnly promised, and has sealed that promise with …[an] oath.”1 

There is of course another, even deeper significance to the bloody sacrifice. Paul says of Jesus, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” God did not break the eternal covenant at any time. But we have continually broken faith with our creator and judge, and we are under the covenant curses. Yet, for those with the faith of Abraham, the faith that simply accepts God’s free gift of salvation in his promise, Jesus has taken the covenant curse upon himself. He is the one whose blood has cut for us a new covenant, and obtained for us all the promises given to Abraham. Let us respond to those promises in repentance and faith, trusting in the Lord Jesus, through whom we have become the children of Abraham the man of faith.

1 O Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, p.131
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