Abram’s Assurance
Genesis 15:7-21
1 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”
2 But Abram said, “Lord GOD, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 Then Abram said, “Look, You have given me no offspring; indeed one born in my house is my heir!” 4 And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, “This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.” 5 Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” 6 And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.
7 Then He said to him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it.” 8 And he said, “Lord GOD, how shall I know that I will inherit it?” 9 So He said to him, “Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. 11 And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
12 Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him. 13 Then He said to Abram: “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. 14 And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. 16 But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
17 And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. 18 On the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates– 19 the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”
Are you sure of your salvation? A woman from Brooklyn, New York, once came to her pastor, the Rev. Ichabod Spencer, and asked him if he’d come with her to visit her sister who was quite distressed. So they went to see her and and the minister asked her why she was so agitated. “I’ve been converted three times,” she said, “and I feel as if I need it again.” He said to her, “Well, be careful that you don’t get converted again in the same way. All that’s happened so far has done you no good, has it?” “No,” she said, “none at all.” “Then don’t get converted like that again. You want a religion that will last.” We need a relationship with God that will endure. (Geoff Thomas). We need assurance that what God promises, He will do.
Even Abraham, our father in the faith, needed to be assured concerning God’s promises to him. By faith Abram had obeyed God’s call to leave his home in Ur and go forth to the land which God would show him. God promised to give Abram a son and to make of him a great nation through which all families of the earth would be blessed. God promised to give the land of Canaan to Abram and his descendants. But a few years had gone by and Abram still had no son and the Canaanites, not Abram, possessed the land. Abram faced a crisis of faith.
The Lord understood Abram’s fears and assured him, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward” (Gen. 15:1). But Abram humbly expressed his concern that he had no son, no heir. God had not given the promised seed. The Lord graciously confirmed His promise of a son by showing Abram the night sky, and promising that his descendants would be as innumerable as the stars (Gen. 15:4-5). Abram “believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). God assured Abram of the promised son. Abram believed. It was an experience of faith for the history books, a momentous event in the chronicle of faith. The New Testament uses this example of Abraham to teach justification by faith. We saw all that last time.
Today see in Genesis 15:7-21 a second aspect of Abrams crisis of faith and his struggle for assurance. We also see how the Lord God provided that assurance to Abram. God provides assurance to us in similar ways today. (I drew on thoughts from Steven Cole for this sermon).
First of all we learn that …
1. Assurance relies on God’s covenant of promise
In Genesis 15:7, the Lord reminded Abram, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it.” God reminded Abram that it was He who took the initiative to call Abram to leave Ur and go to Canaan. Abram didn’t simply decide one day that moving to Canaan might be a golden opportunity. Abram didn’t dream of starting a new religion. He had no strategy for conquering the land. God promised; Abram believed.
The Lord reminded Abram of His promise to strengthen his faith. And it evokes a similar response to God’s first word to Abram in this chapter. Abram asks another question of God, “Lord GOD, how shall I know that I will inherit it?” (Gen. 15:8). And so again the cry of faith asks “how shall I know?” Abram is asking, “Lord, how shall I know that this land will be mine? I have been here now for ten years. I have walked up and down the length and breadth of it as you told me to do. I’ve enjoyed portions of it, but I don’t own any of it. Lord, how can I own the land that you said you would give to me?” This is an expression of the great desire in Abram’s heart to possess what God has offered him. It is his by promise, but he longs to make it his by ownership.
Here God cuts a covenant with Abram. Genesis 15:9-10 says,
9 So He said to him, “Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds in two.
This procedure certainly sounds strange and gruesome to us. But in that day, there were no written contracts. When men or kings wanted to make a treaty or a covenant, they would take some sacrificial animals, split them in two, and the parties of the covenant would ratify it by walking between the split halves of the animals. This peculiar ceremony may have meant that the parties involved were swearing that the same thing that happened to the animals would happen to the party who broke the covenant. Or it could have signified that there is life and strength in unity, death in separation. By this ceremony the two parties were solemnly ratifying their commitment to the covenant by death.
The Lord adopted that cultural convention and used it to assure Abram of God’s promise about the land. God cut this covenant with Abram. Biblical covenants are God’s answer to the question of “how can I know?” The first covenant we saw in Genesis was made by God with Noah. It was the answer to the question that must have been on Noah’s mind, “How can I know God will not flood the earth again?” So God said, “Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth” (Gen. 9:11). How could the Israelites under Moses know that the Lord was their God and that He would take them into the promised land? Because God made a covenant with them. He ratified His promises by the covenant.
Why are Christians who believe in the doctrine of justification by grace through faith in Christ so confident that believers in this life can be assured of their salvation? How can we know? It’s not because we’re such wonderful people, but because of the promise of the new covenant in the blood of Jesus. It’s not what we have done but because of what God has done in Christ. God’s covenant is the answer to “how can I know?”
God didn’t negotiate the terms of the covenant; He announced them. The Lord again promised to give the land of Canaan to Abram and his descendants. And as we will see in Gen 15:17, Abram himself did not pass between the animal pieces, because this was a unilateral covenant, dependent only on the Lord. Instead, a deep sleep fell upon Abram (Gen. 15:12) and he saw “a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces” (Gen. 15:17). These are symbols of God. They would have reminded Moses’ readers of the pillar of cloud and fire which had accompanied them in the wilderness. A similar manifestation of God occurred when Moses went up on the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments: “there were thunderings and lightnings, and a thick cloud on the mountain” (Exod. 19:16).
The Lord went on to restate the promise concerning the land (Gen. 15:18-21) and even to expand it to include all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates River, boundaries which were approximated under the reign of Solomon (1 Kings 4:21), but which still await the return of Christ for their complete fulfillment. All this was God’s gracious assurance to Abram concerning His promise about the land. In Genesis 15:18 God affirms, “To your descendants I have given this land.” God’s covenant is the assurance of His promise.
Just as God gave Abram a graphic picture of His covenant and its ratification to assure him, He has given us a graphic picture of the New Covenant He has made with us through Christ. In the symbols of the Lord’s Supper, we have a visual reminder that God has entered into a covenant with us and that He will keep His promises. He initiated it by sending His Son to die for us. He sealed the covenant with Christ’s blood. All we can do is receive what Christ has done. Our assurance of salvation doesn’t depend on our performance, but rather on God’s promise.
“But,” you ask, “isn’t there something we must do to have assurance?” Yes, like Abram, we must believe in God’s promise.
2. Assurance comes by faith
God’s assurance to Abram is set in the context of belief. In Genesis 15:6 Moses commented about Abram’s faith, “And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.” As we said already, this means that Abram believed God’s promise concerning his seed who would be the Savior. And even though Abram asked for clarification, he wasn’t doubting God. When Abram questioned the Lord he reverently addressed God as “Adonai Yahweh” (sovereign master, Lord God). He wasn’t shaking his fist in God’s face, demanding an answer. He was submissively asking for the assurance he needed.
We see Abram’s faith in his obedience to the Lord. When the Lord commanded him to bring the animals and cut them in two, Abram does it (Gen. 15:9-10). He prepared the animals and waited. Nothing happened. Abram waited. Then Genesis 15:11 says, “And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.” Many commentators see symbolism in Abram driving away the birds. But I think Moses records this as more evidence of Abram’s obedient faith in waiting on the Lord, even when the Lord delayed His answer. By faith Abram did what God told him to do. By faith he waited for the greater confirmation of faith for which he sought.
Steven Cole writes an application for us here:
God gives greater assurance to believers, not to skeptics. God doesn’t meet the skeptic’s demand for proof, because the need of the skeptic isn’t for evidence, but for repentance. But He does give assurance to those who have put their trust in the Savior if they come to Him with a submissive, obedient heart, and ask Him for the assurance they need to go on believing.
In the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 Jesus said, “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away” (Matt. 25:29).
What the skeptic needs is to repent of his unbelief. Unbelief is sin; people choose not to believe because they don’t want to turn from their sin against God. Jesus told the Pharisees who refused to believe in Him, “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24). Assurance is for believers, not skeptics. Assurance comes by faith.
But what if, like Abram, we die not seeing the fulfillment of God’s promises? How can we know God’s assurance in the face of delays and trials?
3. Assurance receives God’s prophetic word.
Genesis 15:13-16 says,
Then He said to Abram: “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. 14 And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. 16 But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
God here tells Abram that he can “Know certainly” some things about the future (Gen. 15:13). Knowledge about the future gives assurance in the present. Abram could go on trusting God concerning His promises because he knew that God was working things out in His great timetable for history, which was far bigger than Abram’s life span.
God reveals to Abram that his “descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years” (Gen. 15:13). God prophesies to Abram about the Egyptian bondage. Very carefully, Egypt remains unnamed as the land where this bondage would occur. Not only did Abram not need to know this, but such knowledge could have been detrimental before this bondage came to pass. It was no problem for those who read these words of Moses to know the land of which he spoke. Indeed, they had just come forth from Egypt. They saw the judgment of God on Egypt in the ten plagues and they had the plunder the Egyptians gave them when they left (Exo. 12:35-36).
But the Lord tells Abram that he “shall be buried at a good old age.” (Gen. 15:15). Abram will die before all this takes place. There seems to be two reasons for the 400-year delay before Abram’s descendants would possess the land of Canaan. First, the children of Abraham would not yet be able (or numerous enough) to possess the land earlier. Also, the people of the land were not yet wicked enough to thrust out: “But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16). “Amorite” is here a general term for all the residents of Canaan which include all those listed in Genesis 15:19-21. God reveals to Abram that He has a predetermined limit to which He will allow these nations to go in their sin before He steps in and judges them. It shows us the awesome sovereignty of God, who knows in advance when the sins of a nation will be ripe for judgment.
How graciously patience is the Lord! Peter reminds us “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). Even though it meant that His chosen people would endure 400 years of hardship, God would not let them invade the land and wipe out the wicked people there until those people had filled up their iniquity in His sight.
Isn’t this a picture of our own day as well? The bible says that in the last days wickedness would increase (cf. 2 Thess. 2:1-12; 2 Tim. 3:1-9; 2 Pet. 3:3ff.)? You may look at our world today—with its growing hostility to God, increasing immorality, and violence everywhere—and think, “what is God doing?” God’s prophetic word tells us God know what He is doing. He is preparing this world for Christ’s return and His judgment. At the same time, God is purifying and preparing us for His return (cf. Eph. 5:26-27; Col. 1:21-23; I Pet. 1:6-7). 2 Peter 2:9 says, “then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment.”
What did this prophecy do for Abram’s faith? Abram could persevere in faithful obedience to the Lord even though he knew he would not see the promises fulfilled in his lifetime. Why? Because he was assured by God’s prophetic word.
This is why we study biblical prophecy today. We draw hope and assurance from God’s prophetic word even though we may not be alive to see it all fulfilled. Therefore we can suffer persecution or trials, because we can trust His sovereign plan and be assured that God will fulfill His promises to His covenant people. Christ will come again. He will judge the living and the dead. His kingdom will never end. We can trust the Lord and be assured that our salvation is secure because His Word reveals His great plan for the future!
How can you know? Believe God’s word; because our assurance rests on the covenant promises of God Himself. Humbly submit to the Lord, because assurance comes by faith. And be encouraged by prophecy, because God will certainly fulfill His prophetic word.
