Abraham believed God
START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
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OBSERVE:
This is the third of Abram’s direct encounters with the Lord. The first was his initial encounter when the Lord directed Abram to leave his father’s home in Haran in Mesopotamia and embark for a new land of promise where he would become a great nation (Genesis 12:1-3). The second encounter occurred when Abram and his nephew Lot parted ways and the Lord assured Abram that he would possess the land that he had been promised (Genesis 13:14-17).
Immediately preceding today’s passage, Abram has experienced some challenges. Pharaoh attempted to take Sarai into the royal harem. And Abram has had to rescue his nephew Lot from an abduction by a coalition of five kings.
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.”
God seems to be reassuring Abram that he is not alone — God himself is with him and will bless him.
But Abram seems to be experiencing some doubts about the promises he has received.
The tone of Abram’s response suggests that he is beginning to question God’s promises (Genesis 15:2-3). He complains that he is childless — the promises God made in the first encounter are not yet fulfilled.
In the ancient world, a man’s immortality hinged on his family and descendants. Since Abram still has no biological children, all the wealth he has amassed and all the livestock he owns would be inherited by his slave, Eliezer. And Abram may also be mindful of the fact that he is not a young man. He was seventy-five when the initial call from God came. He’s not getting any younger!
None of the promises that God initially made have really been fulfilled yet:
- Abram is not a great nation.
- He isn’t a great name yet.
- He has no offspring.
- He is still a nomadic sheepherder — he doesn’t yet own even one parcel of the land that he has been promised in Canaan.
God’s answer is decisive. First, the Lord assures Abram that he will have an heir. Second, he provides Abram with a kind of “celestial vision.” God takes Abram outside his tent:
He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
God uses the heavenly skies to provide a concrete reminder of his faithfulness. The numberless, glittering stars are proof of what God can do; and God will multiply the descendants of Abram.
Abram’s response is crucial. At this point he firmly confirms his faith:
And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.
This is a pivotal moment in Abram’s life. He has transitioned from doubt to faith.
Perhaps, though, there is still just a smidgen of doubt left. God assures Abram,
“I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.”
Still, Abram seems to want some kind of evidence that this will be so:
But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?”
The Lord’s response is to invite Abram to offer a sacrifice of a heifer, a female goat, a ram, a turtledove and a young pigeon. This is an act of worship which is accompanied by some unusual phenomena.
Abram must first protect his sacrificial animals from birds of prey. And then he falls into a deep sleep and seems to have a kind of nightmare:
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.
We should remember that any real encounter with the Lord in Scripture is frequently accompanied with great fear and awe — simply think of Moses and Isaiah. And dream-visions are also a means of communication from God — think of Jacob, Joseph and Daniel.
The Lord confirms his promises to Abram not with outward signs, but deep within in his spirit.
It is difficult to know for sure what Abram saw, and how much of it was waking or dreaming. What we do know is that he is given a sign:
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
And the Lord prescribes the boundaries of the land that will be given to Abram’s descendants:
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 nation of Israel in Scripture achieves its greatest geographical extent during the reign of Kings David (1010-970 B.C.) and Solomon (970-931 B.C.), which included not only the areas of the twelve tribes but also the vassal states conquered by David, and those lands under the influence of Israel, from the Nile to the Euphrates.
However, Moses received a conditional promise from the Lord around 1230 B.C.:
If the Lord your God enlarges your territory, as he promised on oath to your ancestors, and gives you the whole land he promised them, because you carefully follow all these laws I command you today—to love the Lord your God and to walk always in obedience to him—then you are to set aside three more cities (Deuteronomy 19:8-9).
The full extent of the inheritance is contingent on the faithfulness of Israel.
APPLY:
It is often said that Abraham is the father of three great world religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
From the Christian perspective, our spiritual inheritance from Abraham derives from this one great verse:
And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Our heritage from Abraham is not based on genetics, but on faith. This verse becomes an important pillar of Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith:
For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” (Romans 4:2-3)
And in Galatians, Paul makes clear that those who have come to faith in Christ receive their righteousness from Christ alone, and are the true descendants of Abraham:
Just as Abraham “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.” For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed (Galatians 3:6-9).
All who believe in Christ are reckoned as righteous, and are regarded as the spiritual descendants of Abraham by their faith.
RESPOND:
I must confess that there are times that my faith wavers. Like the father whose son was afflicted with a demonic spirit, I sometimes have to admit to Jesus,
“I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)
And then I consider Abram — who was renamed Abraham later by God (Genesis 17:5). He was called to leave his homeland and his father when he was seventy-five, and go to a land he had never visited. He was told that his aging wife would be the mother of his heir. He was told that he would possess the land.
By the time he was almost one hundred years old, none of these things had come to pass! And yet, he affirmed his faith that God would fulfill his promises, despite setbacks and uncertainties!
That is a reproach to me when doubts begin to arise in my mind about difficult circumstances in the world, or uncertainties in my own life.
From time to time, I remember God’s promises to Abraham, and I go outside and look at the stars and reclaim this simple truth:
And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Lord, your Word is full of promises that can only be claimed by faith. I do believe. Help my unbelief! Amen.
PHOTOS: “Abraham believed God” by Ted is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
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