Genesis 15:7-21: When God is Bound...

Presented to each the Nipawin and Tisdale Corps 07 October 2007 by Captain Michael Ramsay

To view the updated 19 March 2012 version, click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2012/03/genesis-15-7-21-when-god-is-bound.html

I know that some of you have been coming out to Thursday night Bible study. This has been a lot of fun as not only have we dug deeper into the Scriptures but in past couple of weeks people have confessed old pranks they have pulled and I’ve confessed all the difficulties that I have had adjusting my speed to the straight open stretches of roads here in Saskatchewan. I’m getting much better by the way…

All these stories of pranks and cars got me thinking back to my teenage years. At the church youth group I went to it wouldn’t be uncommon to have fifty kids out on any given Friday night and even more of us came out to the big events. And we had some big nights where we would have some good competitive events – and, I must confess, my team had this terrible habit of… winning - mostly because we paid more attention to the rules than the others.

For example, we had these events called KGB runs. They were these games where you started in the university forest and had to make your way back to the church at night without being caught by the leaders, who would catch you by ‘tagging you’ with a flashlight. So everyone would start walking and sneaking through the woods trying not to get caught but MY team we would sneak (yes) but right to the parking lot where one of us would leave our car and we would drive to just outside the church and walk in – no one SAID we weren’t allowed to drive.

So, of course, once the organizers caught on, at the next event like this, they have all the rules written out and among those rules are –not surprisingly- no cars are allowed and the borders of the game are well-defined of where we are and are not allowed to go.

So with the new rules in place and the leaders determined to catch is, we have a new plan, not too far into the forest we have stashed … really big flashlights. So then when the people who are ‘it’ see the flashlights they just assume we are on their team and our whole team walks safely in without being caught.[1]

Now the planners are making it their priority to make their rules so air tight that know one can possibly misapply them. As they get ready for the next big event, they even brag that their rules are ‘Mike-proof’

Well this next event was a car rally. You know what those are? You drive around the city and are given clues that you have to solve in order to figure out where you are going to drive to next and as you figure it out, you drive to the next location and get the next clue to figure out and so on.

The people who are planning this event, like I said, are determined to stop any creative problem solving. So we are given the rules that include the normal no breaking the law or speeding, –after all this is a church group. To enforce this, they have each of the drivers put our driver’s licenses in a sealed envelope. If the envelope is opened, they know that you were caught by the police. We then had to show we agree to the rules by signing the envelope, along with the leaders, and this big fancy agreement.

Well, we are winning, as usual coming near the end of the rally – and there is this open stretch of road – now you don’t get these so much in Victoria, so we open it up to speed for the finish line and… you guessed it. The red and blue lights come on behind us. The officer asks for my licence and I hand over the envelope.

So we arrive first and they give us the prize and as all the other teams come in, they can’t believe that we’d won again. But then the leader remembers, “Oh, I need your drivers’ licences’, so one by one each team puts their sealed envelopes on the table. And then it is my turn… They were bound to beat us eventually and this is how they did it. They made this big fancy agreement, we failed to live up to it and as a consequence we lost our reward.

If you’ll turn with me to our text today, Genesis 15:7 – 21, we’ll look at Abram’s big fancy agreement with God. This agreement (or covenant) is a very significant one for us as we have just finished studying Luke-Acts,[2] and for all Christians today because you see it relates back to the good news of Chapter 12 –from our readings this week, where God has already promised Abraham that all nations of the earth will be blessed through him and, as well, it looks forward to Chapter 17 where the symbol of circumcision is introduced (17:11).

The promise includes us here and now also, even though neither we, nor our nation existed at the time of this agreement (cf. John 8, Mark 3, Luke 3, Romans 2). Genesis 12:3 is the first time that the Gospel, the ‘good news’ (that all the nations of the world will be blessed through Abraham) is presented in scripture and it is here in Chapter 15 that God ratifies he promises about inheriting the promised land with a contract (v.18) and a strange and significant, symbolic covenantal act.

Now I should probably take some time to explain exactly what a covenant is and was. The Hebrew word for covenant here, berit[h], is the most common term translated 'covenant' in the Hebrew Bible: it appears 286 times making it quite an important word.[3] This word in all likelihood is also associated with the older Akkadian word ‘biritu’, which means literally “to fetter”, “to shackle” or to “bind” and when it is used in the sense it is here, it designates the beginning or the end of a contract.[4] The image then is of two people being fettered or bound together by this covenant.[5]

This particular contract, in the text before us today, is only one of three in the entire Hebrew Bible where God himself is bound[6] - the others are with Noah, (Gen. 17, Num. 25:12) and the Davidic covenant (II Sam. 23:5, Pss. 89:3, 28-29; 110:4) which we will come to in a couple of weeks.

The word image for us here then is clear. It is that of God, in this contract, actually shackling himself to a promise to Abram and in so doing, of course, not only is God bound to the promise but He is bound to the consequence of a broken covenant – which in this case –as we’ll see in a bit – is possibly even death (cf. Jer 34:18-20).[7]

Now let’s take a look at this whole contractual ceremony here because it is, well, peculiar. In verse 9, it is recorded that God asks Abram to bring him a number of different dead animals of varying (and mostly forgotten)[8] significance and has him cut many of them in half and Abram does.[9] And Abram stays by these bodies guarding them from other animals that want to eat them (v.11) and then he falls asleep into a ‘deep and terrifying darkness (v.12).’

Abram is terrified as the Lord approaches him and says, verse 13, “know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. Wow, this is ‘good news’! (sarcasm) – Abram is terrified (v. 12) and the Lord meets him with the comforting words of, ‘your descendants will be slaves for 400 years.’

This is great (sarcasm) and there is even more: look at the contractual ceremony here. After God tells Abram that his family will be slaves and then those who enslave them will be punished - at the same time that all this is happening, another people will be allowed to run wild in the promised land until their sin reaches its absolute full measure (v. 16). There will be 400 years of sin and 400 years of slavery and now, verse 17, “when the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and walked between the pieces [of the dead animals]. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram… (vss. 17,18)”[10]

And this is interesting: the 400 years of sin and slavery are signs of the covenant or contract. They are not the contract itself. This section highlights a portion of the covenant and that portion states that his descendants will eventually possess this land that he is on.[11] And what is the sign that they will possess this land? The sign is that they will be in slavery for 400 years and - none of this sign will Abraham see ever actually see.[12]

Further, remember how we said that this is one of the few times in scripture where you will find that it is actually God who is bound by the contract. Here it is ONLY God who is bound by the contract. It is God (represented by a smoking firepot with a blazing torch[13]) who walks between the halves of the dead animals here – not Abram. This is interesting because in so doing, God says that he will pay the consequence for the broken covenant. He says he is bound and he will pay for it, if our interpretation of the ceremony is correct, with His own life. This ceremony has other parallels in ancient customs and literature but only in Jeremiah (34:18-20) in the Scriptures is this type of a ceremony mentioned and there it says:

"...all the people of the land, which passed between the parts of the calf; I will even give them into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of them that seek their life: and their dead bodies shall be for meat unto the fowls of the heaven, and to the beasts of the earth."

If the covenant fails after this ceremony, the one bound by it here, dies. This is serious and this is like the ceremony that God is voluntarily taking upon Himself here. And it says that Abram does believe Him (and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness, v.6) EVEN BEFORE the Lord goes to these great lengths to bind himself to his promise.

So then Abram believes God, even before God covenants up to even His own life. Abram believes God that he and Sarai will have kids and that they will inherit the promised land, and then God makes this deal that may EVEN risk His own life, and then Abram, at his wife’s insistence… has sexual relations with his wife’s slave. And she becomes pregnant. Aarrgg!

This is reminiscent of earlier in Genesis isn’t it?[14] There, Adam takes matters into his own hands at his wife’s prompting and she blames the serpent (Gen 3) and sin and death enter the world and here Abraham takes matters into his own hands and Sarah blames God (16:3) after God has just entered into this most serious covenant.

God has put a lot on the line. In the contract he may be bound, to die, if it is not kept…and instead of relying on God, Abram, a hero of Hebrews 11’s walk of fame, takes matters into his own hands…just like Adam…and just like the People of Babel who we looked at a couple of Chapters previous (Gen 11:1ff).

Well, what about us? Are we any more faithful[15] than Abram with God’s life on the line? Years ago, before I ever met Susan, I met a lady at a place I used to frequent. I felt the Lord prompting me to give her $500; she, I was led to believe, needed it to go up north and gain the custody of her infant son. I gave her the money – and that was a lot of money for me in those days – actually it’s a lot of money for me in these days too – but I give this stranger the money at what I feel at the time is the Lord’s prompting and she tells me she will meet me there again on a certain date with the money and – well – the time comes and goes and I continue to go to that place a few times over the next months still with faith but I confess each time this faith is intermingling with more doubts until it get to the point that I am thinking of calling friends of mine and tracking her down on my own, in my own strength, and retrieving the money. My thoughts drift from faith to frustration…

I also think of a friend of ours – I think Susan has told you his story – he is a godly man and the Lord taught me lots through him. Before I ever met him, he felt the Lord telling him to witness to one of his employees, to tell him the good news of Jesus Christ. He believes the Lord but he does not tell his employee and the next day, he hears that his employee is dead.

From the Bible again, remember the Israelites with Moses on the edge of this land promised to them by God. Ten of 12 spies come back saying that they are afraid; they don’t have faith and they won’t invade (Deut 1; Num 14). The Lord is angry and tells them that because they did not act in faith their generation would not inhabit the land; so the people get up early in the morning and say, “We know we have sinned, we’ll go do it now”…but it is too late…God is not with them…and they are defeated by their enemies.

And Abram, righteous Abram, now has chosen to act on his own instead of trusting God. God pledged his life so that we may have faith and faithfulness (Romans 1-3) but we are faithless many times over and what is the consequence of our faithlessness? God dies. God dies.

God is fettered and bound in this covenant for Abram. As a consequence of Israel’s sin in the dessert a whole generation dies outside of the promise and as a consequence of our sin today, God dies: Jesus dies on the cross.

God didn’t need to make this promise to us? He didn’t need to make this promise to Abram. Abram believed Him before He put his life on the line. But God did make this promise and the thing about God is that, even if we are unfaithful to our promises, He remains faithful (Romans 3:3,4).[16]

And look ahead in our text from Genesis with me, God is not unfaithful, and in Chapter 21, verse 2, it says, “Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.”

So now here it is…even though Abram may not have acted in a manner consistent with faith, ONLY God was bound here and as the covenant is fulfilled, God lives!

God promised children to Abraham and God provided children to Abraham. God promised that his decedents would inhabit Canaan after 400 years of slavery, and God provided that they inhabited the land after 400 years of slavery. Like the Apostle Paul says emphatically, centuries later, in his letter to the Romans, “What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God's faithfulness? Not at all! …( Romans 3:3,4)” No way. No! No! God is faithful even and especially when we are not!

God promised Israel that they would inhabit the land and, even though they were faithless at the border, God still fulfilled his promise a generation later.

My friend who did not pray with his employee the night before he died, went on to be a pastor and never forgot the lessons the Lord taught him that night in the whole time I knew him anyway.

And my other friend…the lady I met…just when I had almost given up hope that she would ever find me and return the $500, she did and that’s not the end of the story. Years later, I almost came to tears. I came out of my house and there she was with her son. He was now 5 or 6. She knew our tenants and was visiting them. The Lord let me meet her son – the Lord let me see how He used His $500 to help a child be raised by his mother. She, in her excitement at seeing me, grabbed her now school-aged son and said, “This is the man from the story I told you…” THIS child KNOWS the stories of the MIRICLES of GOD. Even though, after I believed I had my doubts, The Lord used even me to do His will.

And he rewarded me in such a way that day that I will never forget it.

And isn’t that the same for all of us? Jesus died on the cross because of our sin. Jesus died because of our faithlessness but God is faithful to His promises and Jesus is alive. Jesus rose from the dead! Jesus defeated death. He died for us and he rose again. Nothing we do can change that! Now all we need to do is not reject him.

So then let’s not be like that generation of Israelites who rejected his invitation to the promised land and died in outside of the promise. Rather on this day of thanksgiving let us be thankful for to God for his sacrifice, inherit the promise, and come to and delight in the free gift of eternal life.
[1] These three stories are based on real events.
[2] These sermons are available on-line: www.sheepspeak.com
[3] G.E. Mendenhall. “Covenant.” In The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, edited by George Arthur Buttrick. (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1962), 715.
[4] G.E. Mendenhall, P. 715.
[5] Michael Ramsay, “Berit[h].” In the Journal of Aggressive Christianity.
[6] G.E. Mendenhall, P. 718.
[7] Death is the penalty meted out to those who violate this ceremony the only other time it is recorded as being enacted in the scriptures: Jeremiah 34:18-29. See Sarna, Genesis, PP. 114-115, Terence E. Fretheim, The Book of Genesis, 446. cf also, Anet, p.532 and John H. Sailhamer Abraham and the covenant (15:1-21).
[8] Terence E. Fretheim, NIB, P. 446.
[9] John H. Sailhamer Abraham and the covenant (15:1-21)

[10] The fire and the smoke are interesting symbols here. They cast the reader’s mind ahead to the fire and smoke with which God led the Israelites out of Egypt and to this same promised land. Those who have been studying Acts along with us will also note the pillars of fire that settled above the peoples heads in Acts II, which may or may not be making reference to the Exodus and by extension this passage as well.
[11] The Holiness Code in Leviticus (esp. Lev 25), as well as the prophecy of Amos (esp. 3-4) and numerous other portions of scripture testify that yes indeed the Lord was faithful in fulfilling this agreement but as the covenantal talks are re-opened with future generations who are looking for a permanent territorial blessing for their genetic offspring, it is granted to them albeit with conditions (pertaining to caring for the poor and the land) which they did not fulfill (cf. Gen 18:19; 26:5; Amos 3:1-2; Lev 25:2; 26:34-35; cf. also N.T. Wright, “Romans and the Theology of Paul,” Pauline Theology, Volume III, ed. David M. Hay & E. Elizabeth Johnson, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995): 37.) The blessing to the nations (12:3) that was offered through Abraham, however, still stands to this day. Remember also that the messianic prophecies to David are not tied to the physical land (2 Samuel 7) and of course are ultimately fulfilled in Christ. We should neither forget that God that he can raise up decedents of Abraham from stones if need be (cf. John 8:31-41; Hebrews 11:8-12). and indeed he does graft all the nations into the promises of Abraham (cf. Matthew 3:9, Luke 3:8, John 8, Romans 11). It is also interesting in this passage that God promises on his own life that Abraham’s decedents will receive this land; Abraham’s decedents are unfaithful and God pays with the life of his Son.
[12] Compare this to Moses’ sign the LORD is speaking to him (Exod 3:11-12) and the sign of the Lord’s faithfulness re: the provision of his people around the sabbatical year and the year of jubilee (Lev 25:19-20).
[13] This does cast our minds tangentially ahead to the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire with which God will later lead the Israelites around the desert.
[14] Cf. Chapter 11. This is the chapter where Abram is introduced. He is introduced ironically enough after the people from the city of Babel are dispersed for (pridefully) taking matters into their own hands.
[15] I am using the term ‘faith’ in the rest of this document in a manner that is consistent with the so called ‘New Perspective on Paul’
[16] Cf. N.T. Wright, “Romans and the Theology of Paul,” p. 37. See also NT Wright, “The Law in Romans 2.”