"Some time later, the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and said to him, “Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you, and your reward will be great.”
2 But Abram replied, “O Sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don’t even have a son? Since you’ve given me no children, Eliezer of Damascus, a servant in my household, will inherit all my wealth. 3 You have given me no descendants of my own, so one of my servants will be my heir.”
4 Then the Lord said to him, “No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own who will be your heir.” 5 Then the Lord took Abram outside and said to him, “Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can. That’s how many descendants you will have!”
6 And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith.
7 Then the Lord told him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as your possession.”
8 But Abram replied, “O Sovereign Lord, how can I be sure that I will actually possess it?”
9 The Lord told 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 So Abram presented all these to him and killed them. Then he cut each animal down the middle and laid the halves side by side; he did not, however, cut the birds in half. 11 Some vultures swooped down to eat the carcasses, but Abram chased them away.
12 As the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a terrifying darkness came down over him. 13 Then theLord said to Abram, “You can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, where they will be oppressed as slaves for 400 years. 14 But I will punish the nation that enslaves them, and in the end they will come away with great wealth. 15 (As for you, you will die in peace and be buried at a ripe old age.) 16 After four generations your descendants will return here to this land, for the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction.”
17 After the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. 18 So the Lord made a covenant with Abram that day and said, “I have given this land to your descendants, all the way from the border of Egypt to the great Euphrates River— 19 the land now occupied by the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”
Genesis 17.1-21 (NLT):
3 At this, Abram fell face down on the ground. Then God said to him, 4 “This is my covenant with you: I will make you the father of a multitude of nations! 5 What’s more, I am changing your name. It will no longer be Abram. Instead, you will be called Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations. 6 I will make you extremely fruitful. Your descendants will become many nations, and kings will be among them!
7 “I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation. This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 And I will give the entire land of Canaan, where you now live as a foreigner, to you and your descendants. It will be their possession forever, and I will be their God.”
9 Then God said to Abraham, “Your responsibility is to obey the terms of the covenant. You and all your descendants have this continual responsibility. 10 This is the covenant that you and your descendants must keep: Each male among you must be circumcised. 11 You must cut off the flesh of your foreskin as a sign of the covenant between me and you.12 From generation to generation, every male child must be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. This applies not only to members of your family but also to the servants born in your household and the foreign-born servants whom you have purchased. 13 All must be circumcised. Your bodies will bear the mark of my everlasting covenant. 14 Any male who fails to be circumcised will be cut off from the covenant family for breaking the covenant.”
15 Then God said to Abraham, “Regarding Sarai, your wife—her name will no longer be Sarai. From now on her name will be Sarah. 16 And I will bless her and give you a son from her! Yes, I will bless her richly, and she will become the mother of many nations. Kings of nations will be among her descendants.”
17 Then Abraham bowed down to the ground, but he laughed to himself in disbelief. “How could I become a father at the age of 100?” he thought. “And how can Sarah have a baby when she is ninety years old?” 18 So Abraham said to God, “May Ishmael live under your special blessing!”
19 But God replied, “No—Sarah, your wife, will give birth to a son for you. You will name him Isaac, and I will confirm my covenant with him and his descendants as an everlasting covenant. 20 As for Ishmael, I will bless him also, just as you have asked. I will make him extremely fruitful and multiply his descendants. He will become the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. 21 But my covenant will be confirmed with Isaac, who will be born to you and Sarah about this time next year.”
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In the first passage, no matter how many times I read it, I seem to pick up something that I didn't notice before, or that I just glanced over and forgot was there. The first noteworthy thing that I think is worth mentioning here is that Abram believed, and it's because of Abram's belief (faith) that he was counted as righteous. I find it so hard to understand sometimes why some Christians completely separate the fact that there are two parties to the righteous equation. There's us and there's God. It wasn't just counted to Abram because God said so (although I'm sure God could have done it that way if He wanted to, but from the text and other passages, it's clear He doesn't quite operate that way). It was the belief on the part of Abram that 'allowed' (if you will) God to count it as righteousness. But for the sake of this blog and of a more lengthy conversation, I'll move on to something else. =) The second piece of this text that really grabbed me was God's comments regarding the Amorites in verse 16. I've read this passage in other translations before, but I feel like this translation really helps grab a different picture. Reading it in a translation such as NIV, ESV, NASB, etc., tends to give me the picture that God is sitting up there with a little button ready to push the moment the Amorites have filled up the 'sin-o-meter' (just play along). But this translation kind of gives me a different possible view. God's words here, to me, almost express a hope (though God knows the future) that the Amorites will change. There sin hasn't gotten to the extreme point of warranting destruction as of yet (so there's a slight bit of hope). However God knows that in the end, if they continue on the path that they are on, they will eventually reach that point, and when they do, Abram's descendants will the be the ones God uses to execute judgement and take over their land. These are just two things that stuck out to me in the first text.
The biggest thing that sticks out to me in the second text that we have above, is found in verse 14. One of the biggest arguments that I've heard for a 'once-saved, always-saved' position, is that a covenant cannot be broken, or a least you can't get out of a covenant. Yet in verse 14, I find a very interesting reality. God has already said this was going to be an everlasting covenant (can't get much more permanent than that), yet He says in verse 14 that the one who doesn't obey the command He just gave will be CUT OFF from the covenant family. I don't know about you, but that sticks out to me as someone who has just been 'put out' of a covenant. Now I want you to notice something here though. God wasn't the one who 1) broke the covenant, nor 2) made the person get out. It was the one who failed to obey. What I see this text sharing with us about covenant, is that God will always be there and always be faithful to the covenant, yet it is the other party, us, that in the end will have the responsibility of determining whether or not we remain in it by our actions and obedience to God. I'm curious as to what some of you guys think! Feel free to post a comment or two! =)
"Father thank You for being faithful! Thank You for always loving us even when we don't deserve it! I pray that we would obey You in every area of our lives and that we would never forget the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. May we become stronger and bolder disciples each and every day, so that when the school year comes back, we could all join together with other brothers and sisters and really change the face of LHU's campus, bringing your Kingdom here just as it is in Heaven. We love You! It's in Jesus' name that I pray, amen!"
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