Genesis 15

Do you ever look at someone else’s spiritual life and think, “why isn’t mine like theirs?” If that’s you, I want you to hang in there with me until the end - I have some words of encouragement specifically for you.

Genesis 15 holds a story of promises, patience, and faith.  We see how Abram not only believes God but brings his questions and doubts to the LORD as well.  We don’t typically get to set the timeline when it comes to God’s plans for us and Abram is no exception.

Transcript

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Do you ever look at somebody else's spiritual life and think, why isn't mine as good as theirs? If that's you, I'm inviting you to hang in there with me to the very end of today's episode. I have some words of encouragement specifically for you. Welcome to Meet Me in the Word. I am genuinely glad that you've joined in with us today. We're in Genesis chapter 15, so go ahead and open up your copy of the Word, and it'll make it easier for you to follow along. It's a story of promises, patience, and faith. We're going to jump straight into it, but before we do that, let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much that you meet us in exactly the way that we need. Thank you that you your plans for us are specific to us. Lord, that we can simply look to you and trust you. God, be with us now. We're here to meet with you. Amen. All right, Genesis fifteen, let's start together. 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, Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless, and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliasar 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 who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir. He took him outside and said, Look up at the sky 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 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, Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will 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 for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your ancestors 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 firepot 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 wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates, to the land of all of these nations. Let's be quiet before the Lord for a moment, and you can pause this if you'd like. All right. Let's uh make a few observations, and I wanted to share with you just things that help me when I'm processing just a little bit of a longer uh story-like passage, uh, and actually as this applies to other ones as well, but I paste the text uh into a Google Docs so it's easier for me to read when I'm recording this for you. But also I changed the color of different parts of the text to help me just see all of it differently. Uh even when I uh speak or preach, I do the same thing. I just use an iPad and I'll color code different things. It just reminds me and keeps it uh really, really present. So in this case, I made all of Abram's stuff in blue because he's a man, felt like blue was a good color, and all of God's stuff is in purple because he's the king of kings and royal. And it helps me to see things like who is leading the convo. And like you could just kind of step back for a moment and see it all on one spot, and I can do that like right now. And in this case, it's very, very clearly God who's leading things. So I'm gonna give you just a quick summary of what we just read, and it might help to just kind of you know condense it and put it together. God says to Abram, I'm your defender, your covering, and your reward. Abram says, What about an heir? What about my descendants? God says, There'll be lots. Abram believes God. God says, You'll take possession of this land. Abram asks, how can I be certain? And that's when God goes to this really elaborate and significant moment where he makes a covenant with Abram, and it really is quite compelling. So we're going to focus in on that section. It's not to say that the first sections aren't helpful for us. Uh, in fact, I think they can be a good reminder that Abram, who is credited with this faith, and we've talked about this before with him, he brings his questions and his doubts to the Lord, and I think that's a really healthy, good thing, actually, for us to bring all of what we are thinking about and contemplating into the Lord's presence. And he certainly does that, and the Lord continually reassures him in different ways. But I wanted to focus in on this part because it it's it's compelling, right? It's it's an interesting moment. God, God tells him, really in no uncertain terms, how long uh this will this will be, like how long it will take, and how hard it will be for his descendants. When we pick it up here in verse 13, know for certain that for 400 years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they'll be enslaved and mistreated there. He says, But then I'll I'll take care of that, I'll punish the nation, and they're gonna move into this land, this land that I have promised you. And so as Abram is contemplating those two pieces, will I actually get to have an heir? Because I don't have any kids yet. And also, like, what about the land itself? Like those two pieces were a pretty big deal for all of this to work out. And Abram brings those questions to the Lord, and and now God is clearing all of that up. He said, Look, this is going to happen, but it might look different than you wish it would. Like, probably Abram would have loved to have seen it happen during his lifetime, or at least signs of it, right? Uh and and I think we can relate to that in a in a huge way. And and then God takes it a step further, and as he makes this covenant with Abram, he says, you know, bring me these animals. And Abram understood the assignment. He knew that this was a sacrifice moment, and so he he does what's asked of him. And then what's super compelling here is that God, represented by that, uh by that torch, right? That smoking fire pot fire pot with a blazing torch, he appears and he passes through the animals. It's God putting his own reputation on the line here. He's coming to meet Abram, where Abram's standing, rather than having them meet halfway or having Abram come towards God. It's God the is God is the one, easy for me to say. God is the one who moves towards Abram and pledges himself. Uh and it's just to me, it's an astounding kind of a moment because God promises to do this great thing, and and Abram's working out his own faith. We see that happening right there in the pages. And yet God is the one who just who passes through those animals, and it's as if he's saying, you know, if this doesn't happen, then let it be done to me as it's been done to these animals. It's sort of that picture that's that's there. And I think Abram would have recognized that and gone, oh, the Lord is in a certain way humbling himself and really putting himself on the line in that sense. He will follow through on his word, and he's demonstrated it to me not just by saying encouraging words, but actually giving me this picture of a pledge, uh, this incredible moment of making this uh this covenant with with him. And I was thinking about Abram and the first time that we met him in the scriptures. And you may or may not remember this, and that's okay, but it's back actually in Genesis 11, right at the very end. And we meet Abram, and it's just this short little description, because we, you know, we tend to remember, you know, chapter 12, that's where the big promise happens, and and that is amazing in its own right. But in chapter 11, we just see this description Sarai, his wife, is barren. And it just makes note of that, right? And the other thing that it says is they didn't make it to the land that they were trying to get to. They had left the land that they were coming from, they were trying to get to Canaan, but they don't make it there, they settle before they they get to where they're trying to go. And those two things, largely at this point in the story, still remain unfulfilled for him. Yep, he's settled in and he's in, you know, a portion of the land of Canaan, but but he, you know, the descendants aren't there and they haven't, you know, taken the land. All of those things still remain undone. And he brings all of that uh into his relationship with the Lord. And as I was processing this kind of for us, by the way, this is one of those chapters that it's well worth like looking up other preachers and those sorts of things, because there's there's a lot more detail we could get into, but I really wanted to focus it in on our uh our daily walk with God. And so the reflection point here is simply this. Am I willing to wait for the Lord like he waits for me? Am I willing to wait for the Lord like he waits for me? The Lord was being patient with Abram, but he was also asking Abram to be patient with him, to wait on that promise. I told you at the beginning that I had some words of encouragement for you, especially, it's for everybody, but especially if you find yourself in that place where you wish your spiritual life was in a better place than it is today. And this is a story really about blackberries and a pear tree. The place that we live here, we have all kinds of vegetation, maple trees, and we've got grass, we've got flowers, we've got all kinds of different things that are that are happening here. And and I was thinking about spiritual life and spiritual growth. You know, we have we have blackberries that are phenomenal, and we actually spend a lot of our time beating them back. And when you kind of stop and think about it, like if I wanted to be successful at growing things, I would just raise my hand and say, hey, I'm a blackberry farmer. And I promise you, I could fill my entire yard with blackberries, no problem at all. They are incredible, they grow super fast, and and they're just they're they just move in. It doesn't really matter what kind of you know soil is there, they're just gonna find a home, they're gonna, they're gonna grow, they're gonna be happy, and and they just kind of grow wild like that. But I also have these fruit trees, and there's one in particular that's the smallest of the bunch. It's our pear tree. And it was here when we moved in. Uh, and it's like I can stand up and and easily reach all of the branches on my own. It's not particularly tall, and it has different kinds of pears that have been grafted into it. Somebody before us really took time to to uh care for this particular pear tree. You know, that pear tree has been alive for quite a few years already, and it does bear fruit, but it's not growing like gangbusters, it's certainly not growing like the blackberries grow. And sometimes I think we we are kind of like that pear tree. And we're looking over at those blackberries and we're seeing growth that's just incredible, you know, vines that that reach out and and they they grow like feet at a time, it seems to be like, especially during the summer, it's it's a really kind of a crazy thing. But you know what else I've noticed? I don't always like picking the blackberries, picking the fruit of that vine. Why? Because it marks up my arms. I get thorns and scratches and cuts all over the place. Now the blackberries are good. It's not that they're not, but you know, I'm glad that I am not a blackberry farmer. As cool as it would be to say, hey, look, I grew all these blackberries. No, that's not what's happening here. And and sometimes we're more like that pear tree, and we're not growing all over the place. We're not reaching to the heavens with our branches, we're just there. But we are bearing fruit. And so if you relate more to the prayer to the pear tree, just remember that God is doing good things in your life. He's taking time to prune you so that you'll bear more fruit. I don't prune the blackberries, I beat them with a machete, like straight up, right? And and and so there's care that's taken there. Don't despise your journey. Your fruit is good. Be patient with the Lord, he'll be patient with you. I hope that encourages you. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for today. We love you and we desire to to follow you with all that we are. God, give us patience. Help us to believe your promises. And God, would you continue to grow us in exactly the way that you intended? Amen.