Gen 15
covenant & christ
(genesis 15)
Jason Procopio
Thanks everyone for praying for me this past week, and thanks especially to Arnaud for filling in for me on very short notice—it did me a lot of good to hear him preach again. I tested negative for Covid, but I got knocked out by the worst flu I’ve had in a long time, and I’m still not 100% back to normal yet; so please forgive me if I’m moving a little more slowly than usual.
I had planned on preaching this message last week, on Easter Sunday; and rather than modifying it, I decided it could be interesting to preach it exactly as I had planned—call it Easter Part 2. I was really excited about it too, because in our series in Genesis, which we started again two weeks ago, we would have been at Genesis chapter 15 last week; and Genesis 15 is a weird—but also weirdly perfect—Easter text.
So we’re going to just pick up where we left off.
Two weeks ago, we saw in Genesis chapter 12, that God called a man named Abram to leave his family and his country and go to a place where God would show him. God promised that he would bless the entire world through Abram’s descendants. And although Abram is old and his wife is barren, Abram trusted God, and obeyed him.
And it is after Abram’s obedience that we pick up where we left off last time, in Genesis chapter 15. We’re going to read the whole chapter right now; then we’re going to look a little closer to see what’s going on; then we’re going to take a step back and try to see why on earth we’re reading this text at Easter (because it is a strange text).
Genesis 15:
After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
7 And he said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” 8 But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9 He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. 14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”
God’s Covenant with Abram
The first two thirds of the Bible—the Old Testament—tell the story of the people of Israel. The people of Israel were God’s chosen people—the people through whom God would accomplish the plan for which he created the world. Last week we talked about the fact that Moses wrote this book, and that his primary goal in writing this part of the book—the story of Abram—was to explain how the people of Israel became the people of Israel, how the people of God became the people of God.
In chapter 15, we see the beginning of that explanation.
Abram has left everything important behind to obey God. He has left his family, his home, his country—which at the time was a very big deal, because you didn’t leave your family and go out and get a job when you turned eighteen. In this culture, your identity was found in your family, in which tribe or community you belonged to; and you stayed in that community, living together, your entire life.
Abram has left all of that, because God told him to; God told him he would make him a great nation, and that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12.2-3).
And here in chapter 15, we see God set that promise in stone, so to speak.
What happens when we get married, officially? We don’t just move in together and begin our lives; that’s not marriage, that’s cohabitation. In a marriage, there is a legal aspect involved; you go to the town hall, and you get a certificate, and there are witnesses, and you make vows, and the mayor puts his seal on that certificate. From that point on, you are legally married; and there are legal ramifications if you decide to stop being married. You can’t just pack up and leave, because (to use the biblical term) you have entered into a covenant with your spouse.
The same thing happens when you have kids. You don’t just get a kid; you get a birth certificate. That certificate states that you are legally this child’s parent; and you are held legally responsible for taking care of that child. If you don’t—if you abuse or neglect the child—there are legal consequences.
Essentially what we see here is similar, but even more extreme. In chapter 15, God establishes a covenant with Abram. God tells Abram that from now on, he is his God (or as he puts in v. 1, I am your shield). Abram finally asks the question we’ve been asking for three chapters now, in v. 2: “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” Abram and his wife can’t have children; what good will this “reward” be if he can’t share it with his kids? (At the time, you were always thinking about what you’d pass on to your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.) We have no idea who this Eliezer is, but he is apparently the one who stands to inherit everything from Abram once he’s gone—and that’s not what anyone at this time would hope for.
So God responds that no, this Eliezer won’t be Abram’s heir, but that Abram will have his very own son. Even though he is old, and his wife is barren, he will have a son.
Then God does something incredible: he takes the promise he has given Abram, and he tells him just how far he’s going to extend that promise. V. 5:
And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
So we’re not just talking one child; we’re talking about his kids too, and their kids, and their kids, and their kids, and on and on, with no end. This is a bold promise to make to an old man whose wife is barren.
And yet, we read in v. 6,
And he [Abram] believed the Lord, and he [the Lord] counted it to him as righteousness.
Verse 6 is quoted several times in the New Testament, and yet somehow people still miss the point. Often people will say that there is a disconnect between the Old and New Testaments, saying, “In the Old Testament we see a God of law, and in the New Testament we see a God of grace. In the Old Testament, what saves you is obedience to the law, and in the New Testament what saves you is faith.”
That’s not true—not for a moment. Even here, at this very beginning, belief in God’s promises is what saves Abram. If we wanted to be saved on our own, we would need to be righteous—that is, we’d have to be morally perfect before God.
Who in here is morally perfect? Anybody in here who’s never told a lie? Never had an impure thought? Never done anything wrong in their entire life? I didn’t think so.
Since no one is righteous on our own—we have all rebelled against God, none of us on our own want to serve him—the only solution we have is for God to declare us righteous, even though we’re not. I was born and raised in the United States. I can’t just decide to be French—I have to receive a certificate of naturalization to be declared French.
The question is, what does God require to declare us righteous? He requires faith. [Abram] believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
Once it is clear that Abram has faith God to fulfill his promises, God establishes his covenant with him; we see the ritual of the covenant played out in v. 12-20. The ritual we see here seems really barbaric to us today—Abram cuts animals in half, lays each half over against the other, and sacrifices two birds along with them. Abram falls asleep, and God tells Abram what will happen to his descendants later on—which we see play out in the book of Exodus—and promises to give them this land.
Now there’s a lot we could see here, but we need to see something really important in particular. In v. 17, we see the final step in the ritual. If someone were making this kind of covenant with someone else, the person receiving the promise would cut the animals in half and lay them out, like Abram did; and the person making the promise would walk between the pieces. This was a way of saying (symbolically) that if he doesn’t keep his promise, his fate will be the same as that of these animals.
So Abram sets out the pieces, and then in v. 17, God’s presence appears in a symbolic picture: in the form of a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. (Fire often represented the presence of God, as we see even more clearly in the book of Exodus.) The smoking fire pot and the torch pass between the separated pieces of the animals. God promises to take the penalty on himself if he doesn’t fulfill his promise.
Remember that, because we’re going to come back to it later.
Jesus Fulfills the Promise
This promise God gives to Abram looms large over the rest of the Bible. This is the promise the people of Israel always have in mind…and throughout the entire Old Testament, it never quite seems to be fulfilled—not completely. True, God gives Abram a son, and he has many grandchildren, and he brings them out of Egypt, and he gives them his law on Mount Sinai, he renews his covenant with Abram, and applies it to the people as a whole, telling them that if they obey his law and follow him faithfully, then he will continue to be their God, and fulfill for them the promises he had made to Abram.
But very soon after, things seem to unravel. Never, at any point in their history, are they too numerous to be counted. At their absolute largest, the people of Israel grew to be several million people—big, but not that big. And eventually, nearly everything they have is taken away from them. After the glory days of King David and King Solomon, the kingdom of Israel is divided, and the people are defeated by foreign enemies and sent into exile in Assyria and Babylon. When they finally return to Jerusalem, the holy city, after the Babylonian exile, the city is a shell of what it used to be. And even after their return, their independence doesn’t last long; they are quickly taken over (like the rest of that part of the world) by the Roman Empire, and at the time of the New Testament they are living under Roman occupation. Israel’s king is a powerless figurehead; their religious leaders are arrogant and selfish; their prophets have long since gone silent.
By the time we arrive in the New Testament, it would appear that God has all but abandoned his people.
And it is in that situation, in that context, that we see the coming of Jesus.
Jesus is born in a small village to humble parents—of the family of King David, but not in any position to take the throne. He is trained as a carpenter, like his earthly father. He lives a humble life, seemingly without much incident (between the ages of 12 and 30, the Bible doesn’t say anything about him).
And yet it is this humble, seemingly simple man, who will change everything for God’s people. Because he is not a simple man. He is God himself, the second person of the Trinity, made human. God takes on a human nature and human form, and lives among human beings. Completely without sin (even though he was tempted), completely without corruption (although he is constantly surrounded by corruption), encased in a weak human body (although he is all-powerful).
Why is it important that this happened? Because God had made a covenant with his people—that if they followed his law, he would be their God. It was a sacred pact between God and man; and both parties had to fulfill their obligations for the pact to be maintained. But the people of Israel didn’t fulfill their obligations. They constantly wandered; they constantly disobeyed. And so did all of us. We don’t need to belong to the people of Israel to reject God—sin (which simply means rebellion against God) came into the world long before the people of Israel even existed. The covenant between God and his people, and their breaking the covenant, are a kind of microcosm of what’s happening on a global scale.
So the people didn’t fulfill their obligations to the covenant. And because of their constant disobedience, punishment had to be given. Remember the animals cut in two? The fate of God’s people, and all of humanity, should have been the fate of those animals—as Paul says in Romans 6.23, The wages of sin is death.
So we have two problems. We have humanity’s obligations to the covenant, which had to be fulfilled. And we have the penalty for our disobedience, which we should have received.
And here we see the incredible news of the gospel.
God took on a human nature, became a human man…and fulfilled our obligations for us.
And God took on a human nature, became a human man…and suffered our punishment for us.
Jesus fulfills God’s promise to uphold his end of the covenant…and he pays for the fact that none of us upheld ours.
His punishment began the moment he set foot on this earth. Surrounded by sin on all sides, surrounded by corruption and temptation, although he was perfectly holy, perfectly righteous, perfectly just. He suffered the attacks of sin from without and physical human weakness from within. For the first time in eternity, God became tired. He could get hurt. He was afraid. He was troubled. He wept.
And from the moment he began his public ministry, he faced significant opposition from the religious leaders in Israel, who saw him as a threat to the ordered establishment, and repeatedly sought to accuse him or arrest him or have him killed. But every time, he managed to slip away from them.
His sufferings came to a head the night that he was betrayed by one of his closest friends.
That night he celebrated a feast with his closest friends, his disciples, during which he took the bread and the wine and told them, “This is my body…this is my blood...” He was speaking symbolically, but they didn’t get the symbolism; and one of them, after taking the bread and the wine, left quickly to betray him to the authorities.
He took his disciples to a garden to pray with them. He knew perfectly well what was coming, and so he was in anguish and fear at the idea of having to go through it. But his disciples—again, his closest friends—weren’t in it with him. While he prayed, they slept. He was completely alone.
Then Judas, the disciple who left the dinner, arrives trailing guards behind him. He kisses Jesus on the cheek, a sign of friendship…but also the signal he had given the guards that this was the man they should arrest. They arrest him; they mock him; they beat him. They bring him before the religious leaders, where the beatings and the false accusations of blasphemy continue.
Finally, they appeal to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the region, because he is the only man who has the power to do what they want to do with Jesus. Pilate can’t find any reason to condemn him, so he hands him over to King Herod, the Jewish puppet king. Herod doesn’t know what to do with Jesus either, so he sends him back to Pilate.
The religious leaders tell Pilate that Jesus is inciting the people to insurrection against Rome, and seeing he will have a riot on his hands if he does nothing, Pilate agrees to have his soldiers flog Jesus—a tortuous beating in which they whipped him with leather cords in which bones and pieces of metal were inserted. It flayed the skin and ripped muscle from his back—flogging in itself often killed its victims. Finally, when he sees that even this extreme torture won’t satisfy the crowds, Pilate agrees to have him crucified.
Jesus is forced to carry a heavy wooden cross on his ruined back through the streets of Jerusalem, to a hill just outside the city. And there, they crucify him between two criminals. They drive heavy steel spikes into his hands and feet, and suspend him on the cross. Hanging from his hands, he is unable to breathe, so he has to push up on his feet to be able to take a breath. But his feet are nailed too, so he can’t hold it for long, so he has to drop back down until he is once again unable to breathe. (The crucified always die from either blood loss or asphyxiation.)
Finally, after hours of physical and emotional torture that we can’t even imagine, Jesus died. He was taken down from the cross, buried in a borrowed tomb. They rolled a large stone in front of the entrance of the tomb, sealing him in.
Now of course that’s not the end of the story, and that’s not all there is to say about that part of the story. But we need to take a moment to go back to Abram, because this is where we can begin to see how his story points to Christ’s.
Remember the ritual. Abram cuts the animals in half, places the halves apart from one another, and the smoking fire pot and the flaming torch—representing God’s presence—pass between the halves. This was a symbolic gesture, the meaning behind this ritual: by passing between the animal halves the person doing it promises to bear the penalty—as strict and bloody and brutal as what happened to these animals—if he does not do what he has promised.
Later, God renews his covenant with Abram’s descendants; God and the people both commit to upholding their part—the people will obey God’s law, and as a result God will continue to protect them and to provide for them. God never faltered in his commitment, but the people constantly broke theirs. They constantly went against the promise to obey God’s law. So according to their covenant with God, they deserve punishment; they deserve to receive the same fate as those animals.
And we all do. God has written his law on our hearts; as our Creator, we owe him everything. We owe him our allegiance, our worship, our lives. And we have rejected him. Every person in this room has desired to be their own master, to be their own god. And although it may not seem like a big deal to us, the punishment we deserve for rebelling against God is death—it is eternal separation from the God who made us in his image.
But instead of giving us the punishment we deserve, God takes that punishment for us. Although God was faithful to his promise to Abram, he bore the penalty for our disobedience. He took on the fate of those animals, and died, so that we don’t have to.
That, by itself, is incredible, but it can’t be all. Because God didn’t promise Abram to take the punishment for our sins; he promised him that through Abram’s descendants, all the nations of the world would be blessed. The people who followed Jesus thought that he was this descendant of Abram who would bring this blessing. They thought that he was the One whom God had promised to send to fulfill his Word.
But instead of that, Jesus died like a criminal. How could God bring blessing to the world through a dead man?
Imagine the despair they must have felt; the disappointment of having placed all their hopes on this man, and then seeing their hopes shattered when he is crucified.
All day Saturday, they sat in mourning. They waited. They prayed. They wept. They were disillusioned and broken.
Then Sunday dawned.
A group of women who knew Jesus and had followed him came to the tomb, to put ointments on the body (used for preservation). But upon arrival, they found the tomb already open, the stone rolled away, and the tomb empty.
They ran back and told the other disciples, who didn’t believe them (except for one, who went and saw for himself and was amazed). But lo and behold, Jesus appeared, alive and well, to one of the women first; then to two disciples on the road, then to the other disciples—and over the next forty days, to more than five hundred others, who served as eyewitnesses. He was clearly dead when they put him in the tomb, but now here he was, alive and well.
Jesus’s resurrection was proof that God’s promise to Abram had been fulfilled, that Jesus’s sacrifice for his people had been accepted, that he really was who he claimed to be.
He sent out his disciples to spread the good news of his life, death and resurrection, and to proclaim to all who would listen that if they placed their faith in him and repented of their sins, they would receive eternal life—the same eternal life Jesus has, the same resurrection he received.
And the craziest part is that this good news didn’t just go out to the people of Israel. Of course many of the apostles (the disciples who were sent out to establish the church) ministered primarily to the Jews; but in his last words in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says this:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
And in the book of Acts we see it again: God explicitly forbids the apostles to only go to the Jews. He commands them to go to all people.
So up to this point, God’s people were the Jews; this wasn’t just a religious reality, but an ethnic one. Those born into the people of Israel belonged to God’s chosen people.
But now, in Jesus Christ, the door is flung wide open, and all peoples, from all nations—from every country, every background, every culture, every language—are invited to come, to repent of their sins and place their faith in Christ. And all people, from all nations, receive this promise that if they come to Christ in faith, then they will be adopted into God’s family—that they will become part of God’s people.
Remember what God said to Abram? Genesis 15.5:
“Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
THAT’S US. We are Abram’s offspring, if we share Abram’s faith.
The apostle Paul says in Romans 4.3, 11:
3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”… The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being [members of the people of Israel], so that righteousness would be counted to them as well…
This is why we celebrate Easter, friends. Because God is writing a story. Abram’s part of the story began over 4,000 years ago—more than 2,000 years before Jesus Christ came. But Jesus did come. And he was the fulfillment of the promise God made to Abram.
And today, for those of us who have placed our faith in Christ we are living the fulfillment of the promise that Christ made to the church, 2,000 years ago.
As much time has passed between Jesus’s death and today as there was between God’s promise to Abram and Jesus. And yet, God has not changed. Just as he was faithful to fulfill his promises to Abram in Jesus, he is still faithful to fulfill his promises in Jesus for us.
