9 GOD AND ABRAM’S COVENANT

“After  this . . .” After that famous act of generosity which Abram had done, in rescuing his friends and neighbors out of distress . . .  After this, God made him this gracious visit. Those that show generous kindnesses to men find favor with God. This development happened after that victory which he had obtained over four kings. Perhaps so that Abram should not be too much elevated and pleased with only that, God comes to him, to tell him he had even better things in store for him. Hope of spiritual blessings is an excellent means to keep us from being taken up with material and temporary enjoyments. The gifts of common earthly life are not comparable to those of covenant love.

God spoke in a vision, not a dream, which supposes Abram was awake evidently seeing some visible indication of the presence of the divine glory. The methods of divine revelation are adapted to our state in a world of sense. God knows how to communicate. God called him by name—Abram—which was a great honor to him and was also a great encouragement and assistance to his faith. God’s good word does us good when it is spoken by His Spirit to us in particular and brought to our hearts. The word says in Isaiah 55:1 “Come, all of you,” but God’s Spirit can personally call us by our own name and say “. . . you (using your name).” He can do that for you.

God cautioned Abram against worry and fear. “Do not be afraid . . .”  Did Abram fear the four kings might return to attack him? “No,” says God, “don’t fear their revenge, nor your neighbor’s envy; I will take care of you.” It is possible to have great faith and simultaneously have normal fears. 2 Corinthians 7:5 tells of Paul’s experience, “For when we came into Macedonia, we had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn—conflicts on the outside, fears within.” God knows and understands our secret fears too. “I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul” (Psalm 31:7). Sinners fear and have no comfort. God’s children fear, but have God’s comfort.

How does God comfort Abram? God said, “I am your shield” (1). He is present with us protecting us. In a later generation He says in 1 Chronicles 17:24 “so that it will be established and that your name will be great forever. Then people will say, ‘The Lord Almighty, the God over Israel, is Israel’s God!’ And the house of your servant David will be established before you.” This was from not only the God of Israel, but a God to Israel. God is a shield ready for us and a shield round about us. This should be sufficient to silence all our perplexing, tormenting fears. And in addition to that, God offers the best in the universe to Abram (and us) when He offers Himself. “ . . . your very great reward” (1). God is not only a Rewarder, He Himself is a Reward. Abram had generously refused the rewards which the king of Sodom offered him, and here God comes, and tells him he shall be no loser by it. The rewards of believing obedience and self-denial are exceedingly great—God Himself.

Nevertheless, Abram seems to be distressed. He wanted a son. “I remain childless.” Though we must never complain about God, yet we have permission from Him to complain to Him, and to be urgent and particular in the statement of our grievances. It is some ease to a burdened spirit to open its case to a faithful and compassionate friend such as God is, whose ear is always open. “I pour out before him my complaint; before him I tell my trouble” (Psalm 142:2).

Abram’s complaint has four parts. 1. He has no child. 2. It seemed unlikely that he would have a child. 3. His servants would likely receive his inheritance, and 4. The lack of a son was so great a trouble to Abram that it took away the comfort of all his enjoyments: “And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir” (3). “All is nothing to me, if I have not a son.”We might assume that his neighbors’ homes were full of children, his servants had children born in his house. God had told him he should be a favorite above all. Those that are childless must see God as making or allowing it so. Sometimes God withholds those temporal comforts from his own children which He gives plentifully to others that are strangers to Him.

Even the great man of faith, Abram, had a complaint. We should not be too critical of ourselves in our doubts. While promised mercies are delayed, our unbelief and impatience are apt to conclude them denied like Abram did.

If we suppose that Abram looked no further than a material, earth-oriented hope, this complaint was worthy of blame. God had given him some good things, and more by his promise; and yet Abram makes no account of them, because he has no son. It did not look good for the father of the faithful to say, “What can you give me since I remain childless?” immediately after God had said, “I am your shield, your very great reward.” We do not rightly value the advantages of our covenant with God if we  do not think them sufficient to more than balance the lack of anything of earthly value whatever.

On the other hand, if we suppose that Abram, here, had an eye to the promised seed, the strong urgency of his desire was very commendable: all was nothing to him, if he had no hope for that great blessing, and an assurance of his relation to the Messiah which God had already promised. He has wealth, and victory, and honor; but, while he is kept in the dark about the main matter, it is all nothing to him. Until we have some reliable evidence of our acceptance in Christ and the new covenant, we should not rest satisfied with any thing else. “This, and the other, I have; but what will all this avail me, if I don’t have Jesus?” If Abram’s desire was material we cannot commend it, but if it was heavenward, it is an excellent example. Take the whole world, but give me Jesus.

God’s gracious answer to this complaint. If we continue instant in prayer, and yet pray with a humble submission to the divine will, we do not seek in vain. 1. God gave him an express promise of a son, “Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir” (4). God makes heirs; He says, “This shall not, and this shall;” God is often better to us than our own fears, and gives the mercy, grace and hope we had long abandoned. To impress Abram more with this promise, God took him outside, and showed him the stars (this vision likely appeared early in the morning rather than late at night because after this Abram is busy until evening making preparations for the next thing), and then tells him, “So shall your offspring be” (5) So numerous; the stars seem innumerable to a common eye: Abram feared he should have no child at all, but God assured him that the descendants from his loins should be so many as not to be numbered. Was God’s instruction to look at the stars only a reference to number or was it also to glory—symbolized in the glories of the heavens? Abram’s descendants, according to his flesh, were to be like the dust of the earth but his spiritual seed are to be like the stars of heaven, not only numerous, but glorious, and very precious. God’s promises to us are numerous and glorious, a good quantity and quality.

Abram believed the truth of that promise which God had now confirmed to him, resting on the irresistible power and the changeless faithfulness of Him that made it. Verse 6 is one very powerful and meaningful statement: “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” If we want to have the comfort of the promises, we must mix faith with the promises. See how the apostle Paul magnifies this faith of Abram, and makes it a standing example, “Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised” (Romans 4:19-21). Oh Lord, work such a faith in every one of us! “. . . he credited it to him as righteousness.” Hebrews 11:4 further emphasized the significance of the relationship between faith and righteousness: “By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.” This is urged in the New Testament to prove that we are justified by faith without the works of the law. If Abram, that was so rich in good works, was not justified by them, but by his faith, much less can we, that are so poor in them. This faith was imputed to Abram for righteousness. Abram had just verses earlier struggled with unbelief even though, coming off a conqueror, was now crowned and honored. Faith and belief is evidently so much acceptable to God that through it we can be considered righteous. All believers are justified as Abram was. It was his faith that was credited it to him as righteousness. And so is our’s.

God also gave Abram an assurance of the land of Canaan for an inheritance. “He also said to him, ‘I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.’” (7). Abram made no complaint in this matter, as he had done for lack of a child. How was this? Those that are sure of the fulfillment of the greater and comprehensive promise, many offspring, will see no reason to doubt receiving the lessor, the promised land. If Christ is ours, heaven is ours. When Abram believed the former promise then God explained and ratified the land to him. To him that has more shall be given. God reminds Abram of three things. One, what God is in Himself: “I am the Lord” He can do what He wants to. He is not like man who can change his mind. I can give it to you. And we see today that God kept His promise. The land still belongs to Abram’s descendants. Two, God had brought him out of Ur of the Chaldees, God brought him by an effectual call, brought him with a gracious violence, snatched him as a brand out of the burning. This was a special mercy. We could say “It could be said, ‘I brought you, and left thousands of others to perish there.’

God brought one man, Abram out. “. . . look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth. When I called him he was only one man, and I blessed him and made him many.” Three, still God had more intended for Abram. God was giving the land to Abram not only to possess it, but to possess it as an inheritance. God has secret and gracious designs towards good people; we cannot conceive/imagine the projects of God until the event shows them in all their mercy and glory. Since God is good we can expect good.

Abram understandably wanted a sign. This most likely did not proceed from distrust of God’s power or promise, as Zacharias did, but Abram desired this for the strengthening and confirming of his own faith; he believed God according to verse 6, but here he prays as another man did in Jesus’ day, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” He believed, but he desired a sign like Gideon did, to be treasured up against an hour of temptation, not knowing how his faith might, by some event or other, be tested. We humans all need, and should desire, helps from heaven for the confirming of our faith, and should keep the ceremonies which are signs instituted by God, for that purpose. It surely is not wrong, by faith,  to ask for signs even if only for the ratifying of the promise to his descendants, at they also might be brought to believe it. Even if we are satisfied ourselves, we should desire that others also may be satisfied of the truth of God’s promises. John the Baptist sent his disciples to Christ, possibly not so much for his own satisfaction as for theirs.

God’s response to Abram’s request for a sign was to direct Abram to make preparations for a sacrifice and Abram makes ready accordingly. Genesis 15:9-10 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.’ 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.” Perhaps Abram expected some extraordinary sign from heaven; but God gives him a sign in a sacrifice—Abram’s own ceremony. If we want to receive the assurances of God’s favor and have their faith confirmed, does it not make sense to keep the ordinances/ceremonies? Maybe we will meet God in them. God appointed that each of the beasts used for this service should be three years old, because then they were at their full growth and strength: God must be served with the best we have, for He is the best. God must have assumed that Abram knew how to manage these beasts and fowls. After all, Abram had built altars everywhere he went. Abram did what God told him to do even though he did not know yet how these things might become a sign to him. This was not the only instance of Abram’s implicit obedience.

He divided the beasts into two halves according to the ceremony used in those days to confirm covenants such as is recorded in Jeremiah, “Those 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 . . . ”  (Jeremiah 34:18-19). Abram, having prepared according to God’s appointment, now set himself to wait for the sign God might give him.

Abram waited and drove away every hindrance, in this case, the birds. “Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away” (11). A very watchful eye must be kept upon our spiritual sacrifices, that nothing be suffered to prey upon them and render them unfit for God’s acceptance. When vain thoughts or doubts, like these fowls, come down on our sacrifices, we must drive them away, and not allow them to lodge in us, but focus our faith and prayers on God. If we want to be a spiritual leader like Abram we need to learn these lessons from the example of Abram. God is more eager to communicate with us than we are to hear from Him. Will we wait? Will we listen? Will we, by faith, obey? These are the matters about which we need to be concerned.

We can bring our complaints to God, but we do not want to doubt. God will help us believe.