and we're going to be reading
Genesis chapter 15. We'll read from verse one. After these things, the word
of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram,
I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. And Abram said,
Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and
the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus? And Abram
said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed, and lo, one born
in my house is mine heir. And behold, the word of the Lord
came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir, but he that
shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad
and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be
able to number them. And he said unto him, So shall
thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord,
And he counted it to him for righteousness. And he said unto
him, I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees
to give thee this land to inherit. And he said, Lord God, whereby
shall I know that I shall inherit it? And he said unto him, take
me an heifer of three years old, and a she-goat of three years
old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle dove and a
young pigeon. And he took unto him all these,
and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against
another. But the birds divided he not.
And when the fowls came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove
them away. And when the sun was going down,
a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and lo and horror of great darkness
fell upon him. And he said unto Abram, Know
of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that
is not theirs, and shall serve them, and they shall afflict
them for hundred years. And also that nation whom they
shall serve will I judge. And afterward shall they come
out with great substance, and thou shalt go to thy fathers
in peace. Thou shalt be buried in a good
old age. But in the fourth generation
they shall come hither again, for the iniquity of the Amorites
is not yet full. And it came to pass that when
the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace
and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. In the
same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, unto thy
seed shall have I given this land from the river of Egypt
unto the great river, the river Euphrates, the Kenites, and the
Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites,
and the Rephaims, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites,
and the Jebusites. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading. We've seen how that the Lord
protected Abraham and Sarah when they went down into Egypt during
the famine. We have seen how the Lord made
Abraham great in the land of Canaan after a victory over a
number of kings, a confederacy of kings. and we've seen something
of that curious meeting that Abraham had with Melchizedek. And this little chapter opens
with a reference to after these things. We have seen how promises
were made and how Abraham believed God and worshipped him. And now
we are told that God makes a covenant with Abram. Now this is not the
first time that we have had mention of the word covenant because
Noah also in the earlier chapters of Genesis had reference to a
covenant made with him. But it's interesting, I think,
that here we are in Genesis chapter 15 and repeatedly we are being
told about covenants. This God whom we worship is a
covenant God. And if we are going to learn
anything about God, it is good that we learn about the way God
speaks to us and the way God reveals himself to us. And he
reveals himself as a covenant God, a God who makes promises
and a God who is faithful to the promises that he has made. And here God uses this covenant
to confirm to Abraham what he planned to do for Abraham. And as we read about this event
in this chapter, we read about animals, we read about darkness,
we read about a furnace, and we read about a lantern or a
light. The first thing I want us to
notice here is that there is a reference to something that
we haven't seen before. And it is this, a lovely little
phrase. It is the word of the Lord. The word of the Lord came to
Abram. Now I take that to be a reference
to the Lord Jesus Christ, because you'll know that John especially
calls the Lord Jesus Christ the Word. At the beginning of his
gospel and also the beginning of his first epistle, he speaks
of the Lord Jesus Christ as being the living Word. And of course,
we also remember that in John chapter five, The Lord Jesus
Christ tells us that Moses, who wrote this book of Genesis, wrote
of him, wrote of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is an example
of where Moses is writing about the Lord Jesus Christ. He doesn't
call him Jesus, he doesn't call him the Christ, the Messiah,
but he calls him the word of the Lord, the living word, the
word of God. And it is a blessed thing to
have God speak to men, to speak to men and women, to come and
to say to us, fear not. It must have been a fearsome
thing to be in the presence of God and yet how blessed to hear
him saying to us, fear not. I am your shield. and I am your
exceeding great reward. These are important words of
protection and right at the beginning of Genesis here we are finding
that God is revealing himself both as a covenant God and as
a God who is a shield to his people, a protection to his people,
who keeps them safe and who blesses them and gives them good gifts,
good things, graces and mercies and rewards. So the Lord Jesus
Christ is our shield and our reward because the Lord Jesus
Christ is the word of the Lord that came to Abraham and the
Lord Jesus Christ says, I am thy shield and thy reward. And
of course, the Lord Jesus Christ is the unchangeable God. And
so he is still a shield and reward to the people of his choice.
And Abraham seems to take this as a confirmation, but he wonders
how it can be that God is going to bless him in the ways. This
is not unbelief that's speaking in Abraham's heart, but rather
wonder and anticipation. It's a little bit like Mary at
the beginning of the New Testament who says to the angel, Gabriel,
how is it possible that God is going to do these wonderful things
by me? when I know not a man, when I'm
not married. How is it going to be achieved,
says Abraham? The Lord told Abraham that he
would have a son. He showed him that he, although
he was getting old in years and his wife was old and there was
no child, yet the child would come and it would be a child
from Abraham's own body. And then the Lord took Abram
out and he showed him the stars. And he spoke to him about the
number of stars. When we go out on a cloudless
night and a dark night, maybe there's no moon, and we look
up into the sky and we see all those stars and we think, look
at how many there are. And of course, what we realise
is that if you were to get a pair of binoculars or a telescope
and look a little bit closer, there are so many more and more
and more and more. More able we have got in science
to look at the heavens, the more we can see that there is just
an innumerable number of stars. And this was a picture to Abraham
that there would be a great people would come from him. And that's
both a physical people, like in nations of the world, but
also a spiritual people because Abraham was the father of those
who believe. And verse 6 here is a very significant
verse in this little passage because it speaks of Abraham
believing God. and that God gives righteousness
to Abraham. God blesses Abraham with a righteousness
and he justifies Abraham because that's what that word righteousness
means. It means that he makes him as righteous as God himself. Now Abraham was not a righteous
man in his own nature, in his own flesh, as none of us are. but God made him righteous and
Abraham believed God. God gave Abraham a righteousness. And later on in the Bible we
learn that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord our righteousness. So here the Lord Jesus Christ
gave Abraham himself and he made him fit for the presence of God
and the company of God with a righteousness which didn't flow from Abraham's
own works or his own righteousness or his self-righteousness but
was a gift from God. And Abraham believed. It's not
Abraham's faith that was meritorious, but rather he was blessed in
being able to believe and having the gift of faith given to him. And Abraham was accepted by God
in Christ. and then he has a picture given
and this vision is given to him. Animals are brought and there's
going to be a confirmation, as it were, of this covenant that
God and Abraham now spoke about. The animals were brought and
they were slain and they were set before the Lord. And we're
told that the birds came down and the birds of the air tried
to peck away at these animals, at the carcasses of these animals.
and Abraham had to chase them away. Now I think that's an interesting
little thing and I wondered what that might mean and I think that
sometimes when we're worshipping God we get distracted don't we? We find that things come into
our minds and things that aren't to do with the message that we're
hearing or aren't to do with the passage that we're reading
or aren't to do with the prayers that we're praying. They're like
the birds of the air and Abraham had to chase them away. Here
was God blessing him in this wonderful way and yet Abraham
was still distracted. We have to chase these thoughts
away as well. The sign that was given to Abraham
was a sign of what would happen in the future. And here we speak
about these animals and the blood and we speak about a horror of
darkness that came upon Abraham. Maybe that was a glimpse of his
own sin and hell and judgment and separation. He speaks, Moses
writing about this, speaks about a furnace and a lamp, perhaps
talking about heat and light, wrath and spiritual wisdom. You know, one of the things that
is worth remembering when we read about these Old Testament
passages is that we're not just inventing these ideas, but the
Holy Spirit by the New Testament prophets lead us into understanding
what these mysterious meetings and revelations from God were
all about. And I agree with you that what
we've read today, it's a strange event and we often wonder what
it means. But what it does tell us is that
God was revealing his purpose to his people. If I were to take
you to a building site and showed you the foundations that were
being put in on the ground, you would have very little idea what
the final building was going to look like because all you
could see were the foundations and the ground. And that's a
little bit like what Moses is telling us here. We are beginning
here in these early chapters of the Bible to see the foundations,
God revealing the foundations. And we don't yet understand fully
what God is going to do. That would be many years to come
before the Lord Jesus Christ would come and we would see the
fullness of God's purpose revealed. But here in these early days,
we see the beginning of God's plan. Abraham is speaking to
God, God is speaking to men and women, a covenant God, a loving
God, a God who is a shield and a reward and we see the purpose
of God being fully revealed later in the coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ and the way of salvation and blessing and glory and grace
being revealed in the fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ's revelation. Here in these early chapters
of Genesis, we hear the word of the Lord dimly. But then as
history unfolds, we see more clearly how we are to discern
the hand of God in the salvation that Jesus brought. What a blessing
it was for Abraham and a blessing for us to read of his experience.
in knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ, the living word, is the
shield and the defence and the reward of his people. I think
we've read about a couple of shields already today in our
readings and these are to encourage us and to bless us as we reflect
upon what the Lord has done. Amen.