Genesis 15:17-21

Revere the God who comes near

So then God begins this interesting covenant-making worship ceremony. to show how faithful he will be in keeping his promises. So this evening, as we walk through these verses, I want to point out three things that I think we learn about God from this worship ceremony. First, I think we can notice from this text that we should revere the God who comes near. God comes down to Abraham in this encounter.

Notice that the presence of God is symbolized by a fire pot and a flaming torch. This fire pot or oven is a picture used by the prophets to picture the judgment of God, God's righteous judgment that brings his justice to bear. So here, God is revealing himself to Abram as the God who works justice. And then the flaming torch is picturing God's presence as a consuming fire.

Think forward in your Bibles to the beginning of Exodus, where God reveals himself to Moses through the burning bush. And at that bush, Moses is confronted with the holiness of God, this God who is totally set apart in all of his moral perfections. And then God's presence is continued to be pictured as a flame as God leads Israel up out of Egypt and through the wilderness as this pillar of fire at night. God also reveals himself as a consuming fire in Deuteronomy 4, where he warns Israel that he is a jealous God who will not tolerate Israel's idolatrous worship toward pagan idols.

So this is the God who's drawing near to Abram. He's a holy, a just, and a jealous God. But notice the inherent graciousness of this act. God, the holy creator of all, is drawing near to Abram, a man who would doubt the promises of God numerous times.

Abram has already endangered the promised seed by trying to pass off his wife as his sister. And even just in this next chapter, Genesis 16, he will trust the plans of God over man, and he's gonna try to get a son through Hagar instead of his wife Sarai, the promised mother of the promised seed.

So this man that God is drawing near to in Genesis chapter 15 is a sinner just like you and me. He's a sinner who has doubts and who has fears, He's a sinner who often acts not in accordance with God's eternal plans and decrees. And he's a sinner who doubts the goodness and power of God and the way that he lives his life. But God, in his absolute grace, condescends. He comes down and reveals himself to him. He reveals himself to Abraham.

And notice here that there's nothing that Abraham does to please God. to then cause God to come down. So there are no works of charity that Abram accomplishes that pleased God so much that he comes down to meet Abram. No, the only thing in Abram's life that pleased God was Abram's faith in the promises of God. Look with me up at verse six. Despite Abram's failings and struggles, he puts his faith in the promise-making and promise-keeping God. And it was because of that faith that God then credited Abram as righteous.

So too, for us. Our worship is only acceptable to our holy God as we come to him in faith. God is not just pleased with our works, and he is not appeased by our best efforts. but he is only pleased as we look at him in faith. As we look to the final seed of Abraham, the Lord Jesus, the seed who brought the universal blessing to the nations, the seed who kept the law perfectly, on our behalf, the seed who stood in our place, taking upon our sins upon himself, the seed who died on the cross, bearing the full weight of God's judgment against our sin, and then the seed who rose again, and after three days, proved the effectiveness of his work on the cross, defeating sin and death on our behalf. So God is only pleased in us when we put our faith in the Lord Jesus, looking to him alone as our only hope of salvation and eternal life.

The God who keeps his covenant

The second thing that I want to draw out from our text in Genesis is that we can rest in the God who keeps his covenant. Notice with me the unique purpose of this unique worship service. The ceremony began up in verse nine, as a response to how God is going to keep his promises. And God provides a fascinating answer.

He tells Abram to bring three animals and two birds and to set them opposite each other with his path down the middle of the pieces Now this may seem like a very odd moment to us, but what is actually happening is a common ancient Near Eastern world covenant making ceremony.

And so they would refer to making a covenant as cutting a covenant. And so the split animals here are like this promissory notes that if I, the covenant maker, do not hold my end of this covenant, may I become like one of these gory split animals. So in this act, God is making a covenant with Abram, a covenant that he will give Abram his promised seed. And this promised seed will bring a blessing to the nations. And his offspring, Abram's offspring, will inherit and dwell in the land of Canaan. So in this moment, Genesis 15, God is putting himself on the line.

He is saying, in essence, Let me be cut in half just like these animals if I do not keep my part in this covenant. Let me be worse than these animals that are ripped apart before us if I don't live up to my promises. The amazing thing is that in these ancient Near Eastern covenant making ceremonies, usually both parties would walk down between the human animals. They are both promising to keep their end, each end of their covenant stipulations. So both parties are bringing upon themselves the full responsibility, the full weight of the covenant if they fail.

But here in Genesis chapter 15, only one person walks through the hewn animals. That is God himself. God alone takes upon the curses of this covenant. God is putting his reputation on the line. He's saying, let it be done to me and only me if I do not bring about the promises that I've made to Abram.

So Abram can rest in the covenant faithfulness of God. So we too, in our worship, can rest on the covenant faithfulness of God. We come to God in faith knowing that he will hear us. and knowing that he will bring to fruition the covenant that he has made with us, knowing that he will give to us all the covenant blessings that he has promised to us. Thirdly, notice that we can, from this text, rejoice in the God who secures our inheritance.

The God who secures our inheritance

Because God has put his reputation on the line for his covenant with Abram, It is he who is going to bring about this promised inheritance. Look at the inheritance that God is promising Abram in verse 18.

On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, to your offspring, I give this land, from the great river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

This is a huge promise. It's a huge tract of land. And look at all those nations that are currently dwelling this land. That's a long laundry list of nations. Each with their own king, each with their own army. So this would have seemed impossible to Abram to take possession of this land by himself. But it's actually It's God's character that's on the line. It's God's name. It's God's reputation. He's promising he will do it, and he will see it to completion.

So that's what Abraham can rejoice in, that he can walk in confidence before God, for he knows the God that he serves, that his God, the one true God, the almighty and all-knowing God, will accomplish what he has set out to do. To prove this, Abraham can look back at the testimony of his own life. Abram once lived in a pagan land, living with his family, surrounded by idols.

But then God spoke to him. And God called him up out of that land. And God brought him all these many miles to the land of Canaan. And then, in Canaan, God has brought Abram already through a famine. And he has enabled Abram to defeat an army that captured his nephew. personally has experienced the power and providence of God in his life. Abram knows of the faithfulness of God. And then this covenant ceremony is God's proof to Abram that he will give this land as an inheritance to Abram's offspring.

So there is nothing too hard for God. There is no laundry list of kings that will stand in the way of the purposes of God. And for us, we get to look back at the story from the other side of history, and we get to see the grand deliverance that God made for Israel, bringing them up out of the land of Egypt. With so many signs and wonders, he humiliates the Egyptians' false gods, and he leads Israel through the wilderness back into the promised land. all the while dealing with the grumbling and complaining of the children of Israel.

So if God can keep his promise to bring Abram's offspring out from their exodus in Egypt, through the wilderness and back into the promised land, how much more will God keep his promise to his only son? That he will rescue the people for whom his son died. He will rescue them out of their exodus. He will bring them out of their bondage to sin. out of their pilgrimage among the wilderness of sin in the world, and he will bring them into perfect communion with himself. Perfect communion in the final heavenly promised land, a land where there'll be no more weeping, no more grief, no more death, but only life and joy in the very presence of God himself.

In the Abrahamic covenant, God brought a curse upon himself in this covenant-cutting ceremony to show the surety of his promise of his new inheritance. But on the cross, God cursed his son. The judgment was not just shown he ripped apart animals, but the full judgment of God for our sin was poured out on Christ on the cross. Christ became a curse for us so that we can be reconciled back to the Father.

He drank the full cup of God's wrath so that we don't have to face the judgment of God for our sin. Instead, we get to receive His righteousness by faith. His perfection clothes us. It robes us that we can stand before the Father in full acceptance. So it's upon the foundation of Christ's work on the cross that we can rejoice with full hope that God will one day Bring us into our full inheritance where we can see him face to face.

Will you pray with me? Gracious God and Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are the covenant-keeping God. Oh Lord, that we can come to you in absolute dependence upon you, trusting in your promises, relying upon you, that you will see it to completion. Oh Lord, help us live out of that confidence and our reliance upon you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.