DAY SEVEN:

God's Covenant With Abraham

Genesis 15:1-21

Good morning! Yesterday we met Abram, a man who answered God's call. Your comments from yesterday are really interesting. Abram did what he did because he heard and obeyed God. How can anyone who hears God's voice like that NOT obey? Very easily, I'm afraid. I know that from my own life. Faith is something that is entirely opposite of how we normally operate. We have senses that tell us what is real. We have minds that can calculate risk and potential benefit. Faith tells us to ignore all of that and do what God asks.

Abram's faith is strong, but he's still human. He left his home to follow God to a new home, but he's still a nomad living in tents. He embraced God's promise of descendants more numerous than the sand on the beach, but he doesn't have even one child. His name, Abram, Exalted Father, is so ironic!

God came to Abraham to encourage him. "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." God told him this before. But where's the beef?  "O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless...Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir." This takes place more than ten years after Abram obeyed God, and while he's prospered materially it's all meaningless without a son to carry on the promise.

God told Abram that he will have an heir, a child of his own. Then God repeated His outrageous promise: "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Then he said to him,"So shall your offspring be." Say what?!?!?! Abram is about 85 years old, and his wife Sarai is 75. They're way past childbearing and don't have even one child. God will make Abram's descendants as numerous as the stars in the night sky? It's utterly ridiculous and laughable!

But we read in verse six, "And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness." Abram put aside what his senses and his mind told him and believed what God told him. And God accepted Abram's faith and counted it as righteousness. It wasn't what Abram DID that made him righteous. It was what he BELIEVED, and WHO he believed in.

This is another very simple yet deeply profound statement. God does not accept us for our good works We're so used to thinking of things in economic terms that we can't grasp the fact that with God's grace we actually DO get something for nothing. We earn our wages, we pay for what we buy. But you can't by God's love and mercy at any price. It's free to any and all who will believe, thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, "For our sake he (the Father) made him (Jesus, the Son) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

God hadn't given Abram much detail about how He will fulfill all those promises we read yesterday. But that night God gave Abram another vision. The promised land will belong to his descendants, but not for a long time. They'll spend time in a foreign land (we know that it was Egypt) for 400 years and be oppressed. Then God will bring them out of bondage and into the land to posses it. And you, Abram, will live to a good old age and die with the knowledge that I will do what I have promised. "On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying,'To your offspring I give this land, fromthe river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.'"

Tomorrow we'll look at the birth of Isaac, the child of promise, and at how Abraham faced the greatest test of his faith.  I look forward to your comments and questions!