After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” But Abram said, “O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.” Then the word of the LORD came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars — if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. He also said to him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.” But Abram said, “O Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I shall gain possession of it?” So the LORD said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the LORD said to him, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and ill-treated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterwards they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking brazier with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates — the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.” “Your servant is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai ill-treated Hagar; so she fled from her. — Genesis 15-16:6 NIV
WE come to our second OT ‘pray-er’: Abram. Sometimes people say that prayer seems like a one sided conversation.
For Abram at least the conver- sation was all from God’s side up till this chapter. It is here for the first time that Abram utters words.
God had called Abram and promised him a future as a great nation. Abram believed God and started the great trek from Ur to Haran, fromHaran to Canaan and from Canaan to Egypt, then he separates from Lot (who sees the prosperity of the cities of the plane: Sodom and Gomorrah) then he has to rescue Lot from the seven kings, meets with Melchizedek, who blesses him by God most High, creator of heaven and earth:
Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything (Gen 14:18–20 NIV).
Then God speaks with him again.
This second call prompts Abram to speak what is on his heart: namely that he has no heir.
This was a vital matter, for how could God fulfil His promises without an heir?
Well he did have an heir of sorts: Eliezer of Damascus.
But Abram knew that this was not from his seed, not in direct line.
So what was God going to do about it? Well that suggests a demand, which is not in Abram’s respectful prayer.
But it is a prayer without waffle! It is to the point.
The matter was serious.
Now this is our first lesson from Abram:
To make our prayer to God direct and to the point. There is little reason to do otherwise, as God knows our hearts anyway.
Abram was only beginning to discover the true nature of the God who had called him.
In chapter 12 Abram knew very little — only that God was real. But he was used to a culture that believed in many gods, a different god for each family, each locality or even for each need: a bit like Hinduism today. It looks, for example, as if Abram didn’t quite realise that God’s remit ran as far as Egypt!
It is only after his strange meeting with Melchizedek that he makes the astonishing discovery that God is the Creator of everything.
We know from the New Testament that Melchizedek was a foreshadowing of Jesus:
Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad. “You are not yet fifty years old,” the Jews said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!” “I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:56–58 NIV)
We cannot but wonder whether Melchizedek, in some sense is a pre-incarnational appearance of Jesus the Son.
Now that Abram knew that the God who had called him was THE God, he knew that this God could be asked this question.
When we come in prayer to God, are we aware of just who we are talking to?
The incredible privilege of being able to have a one to one with the God who created all things?
Maybe our prayers should be a little more solemn and reverent. God answers Abram clearly, that he will have a son, and that from the one son his people will eventually be without number.
How many stars are visible to the naked eye on a clear dark night?
I do not know, but it is quite a lot!
The second part of the prayer is about the Land.
God makes a special covenant with Abram, in the form of covenant
*1 (
ABRAHAMIC) understood in his day; the Greater with the lesser; the divided animals (blood sacrifice) and the Greater walking between them. Abram could have no greater assurance than this. Just as today we can have no greater assurance of our inheriting a kingdom with Jesus than the blood of the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.
But as with Abram, we have yet to enter God’s rest:
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This is our first lesson from Abram: To make prayer to God direct and to the point. There is little reason to do otherwise, as God knows our hearts anyway.
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There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from His. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no-one will fall by following their example of disobedience. For the Wordof God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account (Hebrews 4:9–13 NIV).
Notice the allusion to the experience of Abram. But let us return to the matter of the son and heir to be.
Abram had God’s promise. He would have a son. But how?
He was getting old himself. Sarai was also too old — as he thought. It was presumably up to him. After all God had said his seed, so maybe a surrogate son was to be the answer.
The consequences of Abram’s next action have been huge down the millennia!
How true about the butterfly in Tokyo
*2 starting the thunderstorm in New York. The ripples started then have since become a tidal wave.
Yet Abram is not blamed exactly. But here is a big lesson for us. How often have we been told, quite rightly, that God’s answer to prayer is “No”, “Yes” or “Wait”?
It is this last one that concerns us here.
WAIT.
God had made a clear promise, but had not indicated HOW it would eventually be fulfilled. With insufficient information Abram acts.
He assumes God means NOW. Why?
Because Abraham had asked at that moment. God’s timing is not ours.
We asked today so we expect the answer tomorrow, but God may intend the answer to be in three years’ time or whatever. If we have prayed about a matter (and maybe are still praying) and do not have a clear answer yet, we are so often tempted to ‘find’ that answer for ourselves.
Our dilemma is well expressed by Jesus in Luke:
He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Lk 18:2–8 NIV).
On the one hand Jesus speaks of speed, but also in the very same breath almost, of extreme patience required which may try the very faith of every person in the church.
To say we are living in an impatient time is a truism. But it infects our ver y prayers: “give me patience and give it to me now!” Abram is too young in the knowledge of God to be held accountable for his mistake. But Paul reminds us that Scripture was written for OUR instruction: so we do not have that excuse. Yet the wider church suffers from the Abram syndrome:
For example, God promises justice, so we rush around trying to get it or give it, only to find we are fighting a forest fire of enormous propor tions, no sooner have we tried to sort out Northern Ireland, when Albania erupts, no sooner have we tried to deal with that when illegal immigrants are the issue, then Ireland erupts again...
Or churches believe that we must spread the gospel:
RIGHT!
But then rush about thinking we must actually convert people — God does that, we are to be faithful in preaching. There are no formulae or techniques for ‘gathering a great har vest’ — the harvest for us may be great or small. It’s of no matter AS LONG AS we are being obedient to God and not running ahead of His answers to prayer.
There are ‘Ishmaels’ being born all over the place!!
Now God will bring good, His good, from these errors, but that is not to endorse condone the errors! God is not man to frustrated by them.
But none the less, let us in our praying be patient and faithful. Yes, we will get things wrong, and God will bring His purposes about none the less. But if you are waiting for God’s answer even now, patient:
Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carryout their wicked schemes (Ps 37:5–7 NIV).
Wait for the LORD and keep His way. He will exalt you to inherit the land; when the wicked are cut off, you will see it (Ps 37:34 NIV).
I wait for you, O LORD; you will answer, O Lord my God (Ps 38:15 NIV).
That the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will (Romans 8:21–27 NIV).
Footnotes: [ Added by CWM -Ed ]
*1: The Abrahamic Covenant in 2004, is still in force. Israel will fully possess their land.
*2: This refers to a well known Science Fiction story about a Time traveller who accidentally destroyed a butterfly when on a trip into the past, resulting in a marked alteration in the traveller own Time.
http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/beffect.html
Ray Bradbury in "Sound of Thunder"
Homer Simpson in "Time & Punishment"
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Appeared in Issue CETF NR 30 2004
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-Last revised-
Monday, October 09, 2006
