After completing such a big feat by God’s grace, the silence sets in. Lot is taken care of, at least for now. And Abram returned home to continue his life. Things seem to return to normal, and Abram still awaits his promise. “A worthless person digs up evil, and his speech is like a scorching fire.” (Proverbs 16:27) This proverb is commonly translated or quoted as ‘Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.’ If idle hands, meaning hands that have nothing to do, do the devil’s work, then an idle mind, one that doesn’t have anything to focus on, thinks the devil’s thoughts. If we have nothing to do and nothing to focus on or think about, we are more likely to sin. For some of us who have overactive minds, there is always something to think about and focus on. But for those who don’t have overactive minds, there is still always something to think about and focus on—God. If He should be first in our lives, He should be the focus of our thoughts. The first and greatest commandment states this, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). Of course, no sinful human can keep their thoughts focused on God, but that should be our goal. If we don’t have anything to focus on, we focus on Him, our stable rock.
Abram’s thoughts got the better of him. “After these events, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield; your reward will be very great.” (Genesis 15:1). God knows our thoughts. He knew Abram’s thoughts and what he was feeling. Humans are emotional creatures, and the Psalms, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Job all display this. We can’t conceal our emotions but can’t let them get the best of us, either. So, God reassures Abram that He is in control and that Abram is on the right path. Many times, we can feel this way. We think we’ve ventured off the right path, and God reassures us through various methods that we are still on the right path. We just need to trust Him. This is the first occurrence of the phrase ‘the word of the Lord came.’ We not only need to trust in Him, but we need to trust in His Word. His Word is His revelation to us. We learn about Him from His Word. We learn about His promises from His Word. God assures Abram by saying that He is Abram’s shield. David also refers to God as His protection and comfort. Again, God says, ‘I AM.’ The great name of our God. He is what we need. Abram needed a shield and protection; God was that shield and protection. Abram needed comfort; God was that comfort. People always talk about offering protection and provision—always at a cost. God is the only one who can give proper protection and provision. The only thing it costs is our old life, our old self.
“But Abram said, “Lord God, what can you give me, since I am childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” Abram continued, “Look, you have given me no offspring, so a slave born in my house will be my heir.” Now the word of the Lord came to him: “This one will not be your heir; instead, one who comes from your own body will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look at the sky and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “Your offspring will be that numerous.” Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:2-6) Abram was told he would have an heir, a son, and many descendants. He was told that the whole world would be blessed through him. But nothing seemed to be happening. He and Sarai were getting older, even though she was already past childbearing age. The only heir Abram had was his 2nd in command, Eliezer. So he voices his grief to the Lord. I think many people today try to shy away from this. God knows our frustrations and concerns. And we need to be honest with Him and with ourselves. David was a man after God’s heart, yet he still expressed distress, frustration, and doubt throughout the Psalms. Job voiced his opinions, as did Jeremiah in Lamentations and Solomon in Ecclesiastes. It’s through this pain, through this doubt and questioning, that we can come closer to God. By being in the Word and reminding ourselves of His promises, who He is, and what He can do. This can be taken to an unhealthy level, resulting in complete abandonment of faith, so we must always cling to the Word, forge that relationship with Him, and rely on Him even when it doesn’t make sense and nothing seems to be happening. David, Jeremiah, Solomon, and Job did.
But one of the things we must remember is that God’s will shall be done in God’s time and in God’s way. This is where much of our frustrations come in. We can become impatient and want the promise now. Abram had everything against him. The kingdoms that he defeated most certainly were against him. The climate and the desert were against him. As an outsider, the people of Canaan were against him. His own body and age were against him. His wife’s body and age were against him. But God was for him. “What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?” (Romans 8:31) Romans 8 is one of the most beloved chapters in the Bible, and for good reason. Paul brings up the question that Abram was facing and needed to learn. If God is the only one who is for us, that’s all we need. He is the only one we need to be for us.
Everything can be against us, the whole world can be against us; in fact, the entire world is against us. But God is for us, and He has the final say. God would not have had the glory if Abram and Sarai had a child in their younger years. This is important. When God promises something, He will have the glory. We cannot boast about it unless we boast in Him. We can’t say, ‘Look what I did!’ We can only say, ‘Look what God did!’
Abram wasn’t expected to figure it out. And we aren’t either. But we are expected to trust Him and be ready when He calls. He will work out the rest. And so God assures Abram that his heir will come from his own body, meaning his heir will be his child. Remember to look up. When things are lousy, look to the one who can help. God told Abram that his descendants would be innumerable like the grains of sand, and He told him that they would be numerous like the stars. The grains of sand could represent his biological descendants, while the stars could represent his spiritual descendants. Whether he looked down or looked up, he could see and remember that his descendants would be many, and he trusted that God would fulfill that promise.
Abram believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. So much theology comes from this verse. “For the vision is yet for the appointed time; it testifies about the end and will not lie. Though it delays, wait for it, since it will certainly come and not be late. Look, his ego is inflated; he is without integrity. But the righteous one will live by his faith.” (Habbakuk 2:3-4) This is the root of all the verses on this subject. Abraham lived by faith, and he was counted to be righteous. He leaned entirely on God and His promises. Psalm 14, as echoed by Romans 3, indicates that no human being is righteous. We cannot become righteous by our own means. We must be credited with God’s righteousness. And we can only receive this credit by faith.
“He also said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”” (Genesis 15:7). God then tells Abram who He is. It almost echoes Jeremiah’s “Is there anything too great for the Lord?” Nothing is too complicated for God. If He says it, He has the power to do it, and He will do it. This is also very similar to what God says to Israel in Exodus. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery.” (Exodus 20:2). Again, telling them who He is and what He just did for them.
“But he said, “Lord God, how can I know that I will possess it?” He said to him, “Bring me a three-year-old cow, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” So he brought all these to him, cut them in half, and laid the pieces opposite each other, but he did not cut the birds in half. Birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, a deep sleep came over Abram, and suddenly great terror and darkness descended on him.” (Genesis 15:8-12) Abram believed that he would possess the land. But he didn’t know how. So God creates the covenant between Him and Abram. This was something familiar at that time. Two people would generate a covenant, bind themselves to a promise, and mark the pledge with the sacrifice of animals. The animals would be killed and cut in half, and the halves would be on opposite sides, so there was a path between them. The two people would walk through this path between the carcasses, binding them to the promise, and if either of them broke that promise, they deserved the same fate as the animals. You can see this in Jeremiah 34:18-19, “As for those who disobeyed my covenant, not keeping the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat them like the calf they cut in two in order to pass between its pieces. The officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the pieces of the calf—” In the context of Jeremiah, King Zedekiah and the people tried to bargain with God by making a covenant like this. They pledged to free their slaves after many sabbath years of disobedience. In exchange for freeing their slaves, they wanted God to stop Babylon from invading. During the brief pause in Babylon’s siege, the people tried to force their newly freed slaves back into slavery, and this was God’s response. This is gruesome, but it happened in cultures thousands of years ago.
The two people walked through the path, binding them to the promise made. Scripture doesn’t say that either Abram or God walk through this path in these verses. It says that Abram did as God told him and spent the rest of the day fending off birds of prey from eating the dead animals. When Abram went to sleep, God spoke to him again. “Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain: Your offspring will be resident aliens for four hundred years in a land that does not belong to them and will be enslaved and oppressed. However, I will judge the nation they serve, and afterward they will go out with many possessions. But you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”” (Genesis 15:13-17) God tells Abram about the Exodus. Jacob and his family went down to Egypt, while Joseph was the second in command there. They would end up slaves for 400 years, but God would bring them out of Egypt and into this promised land. Egypt would be judged, as would the rest of the nations in the land of Canaan. But in the meantime, Abram would live to a good old age. He’ll live to see his promised son grow up. He will also father other children before he dies.
“When the sun had set and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch appeared and passed between the divided animals. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “I give this land to your offspring, from the Brook of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River: the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hethites, Perizzites, Rephaim, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”” (Genesis 15:18-21) Here, the covenant is made. But in a different manner. Instead of two people passing through the path of dead animals, only one did. It was God who bound Himself to the promise. God promised it and showed Abram that He meant it by binding Himself in the covenant. Abram was not bound, but God was. It’s a one-person show. God alone offers salvation because He alone made it possible for us out of His goodness and love for us—His grace. Abram wanted a sign or some kind of assurance that the land would belong to him and his descendants. God gave him that sign and assurance. God says, ‘I AM,’ to show who He is. He says, ‘I Will,’ to tell us what He will do for us. And He says, ‘I give,’ to show what He did for us. He is the Lord our God, the living and true God. He said He would correct the problem in Genesis 3:15, and He corrected it in John 3:16. He gave His Son so that we would be saved.
“From the Brook of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River,” has left scholars slightly divided. The location of the Euphrates is well known in Iraq. But the location of the brook of Egypt is where the confusion is. Some say it’s the Nile River. However, this is unlikely. The more likely locations would be the Wadi El-Arish or the Nahal Besor, both rivers in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. So, the land God is talking about would be from the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, all over to Iraq. This won’t be a square of land; it will be like the land of Israel, now a strip, but it will run from the northeast Sinai Peninsula to the Euphrates. The Israelites have never possessed all that land, not during the Old Testament times or now. But they will, after the second coming. Ezekiel 47 details more about the land at that time.
Compare Abram’s doubts and questions here to your life. Many believe that once they give their lives to Christ, everything is easy and there is no pain, sorrow, or suffering for them. This will be the case in the new heaven and earth, but it is not now. God’s plan for our lives includes many detours, which look like detours for us, but they were planned and have a purpose. During these detours, we think He gave up on us, or His plan is for our ultimate suffering and loss. But we have something Abram didn’t have: a fully fleshed out and established theology and Scripture. Scripture tells us that God will never leave or forsake us; He works all things, even these detours, for His glory and our ultimate good. The spiritual war that every Christian is fighting has a significant battlefield in our minds. When doubt sets in, we must remind ourselves of God’s promises, His great love for us, and that He sees and hears and cares about us. He will deliver us, when the time is right and everything is worked out for the next step in our lives.