Promised child, a child with a promise and who should you be listening to?

Genesis 15 – 17

With so much to examine we will just hit highlights, be “Bereans” and check it out for yourself.

-       God makes a covenant with Abram; you will have a natural born son and your descendants will be as many as the stars if he could count them.

-      Abram believed God and it was counted to him as righteous.

-      Abram does a sacrifice that God asks for. Cuts most of the sacrificed animals in half and places them opposite each other separated by a gap of space. God in a vision to Abram proceeds to walk between all these pieces, signifying the covenant and that if it was broken the same thing that happened to the sacrifice would happen to the one who breaks the covenant, meaning God himself. There by showing the permanence of the promise God was making. 

-      God Prophecies that Abram’s descendants would be sojourners in a land which is not theirs and be afflicted for four hundred years.

-      God will bring judgement on that nation and bring out Abram’s descendants with great possessions.

-      They will return to this land (Canaan) in the fourth generation because the immorality of the Amorites is not yet complete.

I am going to park on this for the moment and mention that for 400 years a people suffered, they were used and abused, and we wonder where God is in all this and why judgement (justice) is taken so long.

 On the flip side we have the Amorites who are judged with death because of their wickedness and immorality. They are given a space, mercifully of 400 years to change or perish and God eventually exacts punishment on them through the Israelites. Thus, when we perceive that God is not responding the way we want he is taking too long. Conversely when judgment comes too quickly (400 years?) we say God is unfair and cruel. Remember this next time you do not like God’s timing, which by the way is always perfect.

-      Next Chapter Sari gives her Egyptian servant to Abram because up to this point, she has not been able to conceive.

Some notes of interest here is we get a rinse and repeat of Eden. Abram, knowing full well God’s promise to him (sound familiar), listens to the voice of his wife Sarai and sleeps with Hagar and she becomes pregnant with Ishmael. Sarai is jealous of a pregnant Hagar, treats her badly and she runs away.

-      The Angel of the Lord finds Hagar and is comforting to her and makes a promise to her concerning her soon to be born Son. She then returns to Abram.

-      The Lord appears again to Abram when he is 99 years old, he reminds Abram of the promise and Changes his name to Abraham (name it and claim it), for God will make him a father of a multitude of nations.

-      Abraham’s proof part of the covenant, of what he has to do to show they are in agreement is the circumcision (ouch), the outward sign of the inward truth that they are part of God’s covenant.

-      God also changes Sarai’s name to Sarah and says to name their son Isaac and God will establish the covenant with him as an everlasting covenant.

-      God tells Abraham he has not forgotten Ishmael and will bless him and his descendants too, but the covenant is with Isaac.

-      All the men of Abraham’s household, under his authority that day including Abraham who was 99 years of age were circumcised in the flesh of their foreskin. (ouch! ouch! ouch!)

-      Two great take a ways from this is 1) Circumcision doesn’t save anyone, don’t do it! (Ouch!) It is akin to baptism, an outward sign of an inward truth, but much less painful. 2) If you are not Jewish, which I am not, so again do not do it! (Ouch!)

Next – Triple A’s, A laugh, A test, an two Angels