But the task at hand for today is delving into Genesis 15 and a rather peculiar interaction between Abram (later to be renamed Abraham, the father of the Jewish race) and God. The chapter begins with two reminders. God reassuring Abram that he is treasured and loved (verse 1) and Abram reminding God that his greatest desire (to have an heir) has yet to be fulfilled. (verse 2) In fact, if his life were to end on that day, his estate would be given to a servant who isn't even part of his family. (verse 3)
This is the first (yet not the last) time that God directs Abram to try to count the stars in comparison to the amount of descendants that he will one day have. I love how NASA agrees that counting all the stars in a night sky is impossible (See for yourself). Other websites suggest that there are somewhere between 5,000-10,000 stars that can be seen with the naked eye. However, you must consider that the patch of sky that we see on a starry night is NOT the whole sky. We are only seeing one patch of sky that is visible from our vantage point on earth, so the total number of stars in the sky that could be seen with the naked eye is astronomically (pun intended) greater than just 5-10k!No doubt, what God promised has come to pass since there are just over 13.7 million Jews as of 2012. Fun side fact: Did you know that nearly 40% of all Jews live in the USA? (Source: Jewish Virtual Library)
Ok, let's get back on track here.
As if Abram believing God wasn't wild enough, the latter half of verse 6 should arouse your attention. Due to his belief that God was worthy of trust, God counted Abram as righteous. In our southern, Bible belt vernacular the equivalent would be, "he just got saved!" Paul, the writer of more than half of the New Testament mentions this phenomena of God's grace in his letter to the Romans (chapter 4, to be exact) to prove that its grace by faith in which God saves us, not in response to any physical act, good deed or lifestyle.
God promises something further. Abram would receive the land they were standing on as his own. (verse 7) Ironically, after believing God could give him innumerable descendants, he seems to doubt the possibility of owning this land; something seemingly much more plausible, in my opinion.
Yet, instead of ridiculing Abram, God did something amazing. I've said everything above to get you to this point. This blew my mind once I realized the implications of what happened next.
God instructed Abram to gather a few animals and a couple of birds, to cut them in half and lay the sides opposite one another to make an aisle in which to walk in between the halves. (verse 10)
Such as this:
Enter
1/2 calf 1/2 calf
1/2 goat 1/2 goat
1/2 ram 1/2 ram
Dove Pigeon
Exit
After Abram shooed away scavengers for a while, he fell asleep (verses 11-12). This is the cool part, because the set-up for this ritual was, let's just say, weird. For some reason, God decides to reveal Himself as a "smoking firepot with a blazing torch." (verse 17)
Why a firepot and torch? No one knows for sure but one could reasonably assume that this could be a foreshadow to how God would reveal Himself in the wilderness as He leads the Israelites; as a cloud during the day (similar to a "smoking" firepot) and pillar of fire by night (compared to a torch which lights a footpath) as seen in Exodus 12:21-22. It seems to fit perfectly.
That's cool but I haven't gotten to the coolest part yet.
To truly grasp the magnitude of what God did here, you have to understand what this little ceremony or covenant display meant. In ancient Mesopotamian culture, it was customary to perform this ritual as a way to bind individuals into a lasting covenant. If one party were to break this covenant, they were giving the other party permission to cut them in half and experience the brutality of these particular animals.
That's some raw stuff, eh?
"So, what?"
Let me ask you question that will commence the blowing of your mind:
Who walked down the aisle and participated in this covenant?
"Abram and God, right?"
WRONG!
God alone walked between the animals. Check the text! In verse 17 God passed between the animals and, in verse 18, Scripture reads "the LORD made a covenant with Abram."
The text does not read they entered into a covenant, it says that God alone made the covenant.
God is promising Abram and God alone is the only one that would face punishment if He failed.
I can hear some people saying, "TJ, that doesn't make any sense. How can you kill God, especially if He's invisible and immortal?"
Fair question. (Are some of you starting to follow along?)
God wouldn't kill Himself, would He?
Let me ask you a slightly different question that may clue you in on my dropping of hints:
How could God die?
If we couldn't do it, would He kill himself?
"That's impossible! The Bible is against suicide, isn't it?"
While most Christ-followers believe that suicide is utterly sinful and disrespectful to God it isn't directly prohibited in Scripture (at least that I know of).
Its not a coincidence that Abram's salvation was mentioned just a few verses prior to God committing to this covenant. If we fast-forwarded through the historical narrative of the Bible, the story of God wooing His creation to Himself, then we would see that Jesus, indeed, went on a suicide mission for our salvation. God in the flesh subjected Himself to that, once thought impossibility, of dying.
And that Jesus did.
For us. Not just for the Jews but for everyone else, too.
Even though humanity deserved the punishment of straying from God and sinning against Him, there was no way that humanity dying was an option since Abraham was not part of this covenant.
)Yes, I do know that the Israelites would later covenant with God after the creation of the Mosaic Law in Exodus but it wasn't this type of do-or-die, cut-throat covenant in Genesis 15.)
To me, this obscure, mostly ignored story provides a glimpse into the reckless love that God has for humanity. Have you experienced the lengths, depths and measure of God's love? If you haven't, the life of Jesus is the full-expression of God's intent to commit to His end of the bargain, which was completely unfair for Him to even have to uphold in the first place.
The Israelites eventually inherited the Promised Land (only to lose it) and all of humanity now has the chance of a relationship with the Creator, but in doing so, Jesus had to die.
Let me leave you with two Scripture verses that may let this sink in better than I could ever say:
But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
- Romans 5:8
Though he (Jesus) was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.
Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
When he appeared in human form,
He humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
- Philippians 2:6-8
As always, I'd love your thoughts.
thanks TJ!
ReplyDeletevery inspiring..
best,
ruangguru