Chapter 15 is one of the great chapters in the Bible upon which much of the whole of Biblical revelation hinges. Ch. 15:6 “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness,” forms the main body of the doctrine of justification by faith, expounded by the Apostle Paul in his epistles.
This chapter has a couple of ‘firsts’ in the Bible: “The Word of the LORD”; “Fear not!”; “I am your shield” and “Sovereign LORD,” all in the first two verses.
According to Adam Clarke some commentators make quite a bit of the expression “The Word of the LORD,” comparing it to John 1:1 where Christ is introduced as “ho logos.” I do not think this thought merits that much emphasis since all the Old Testament “theophania” are appearances of Christ before His incarnation. But the expression is remarkable. In this context, however, I do not think it means more than that Abraham heard the voice of God speaking to him.
Obviously, the content of this chapter is spread out over at least two days. In vs.5 God shows Abraham the stars, which means that it was evening and in vs.12 the sun was setting, which must have been the next evening, if not later.
The chapter starts out by reminding us of the events described in the previous chapter. “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.’“ “After this” refers to the victory over the Babylonian kings. We would expect that Abraham would be riding the crest at this point. But human nature, being what it is, has a tendency to feel down after reaching a summit. We gather from the way God addresses Abraham that he felt depressed. Satan knows that the best time to attack is after a victory. There is no better remedy for a depression than an encounter with the Word of God.
God addresses Abraham very tenderly with “Do not be afraid.” Fear is the fruit of sin. That is why every confrontation with the holiness of God causes fear in a human heart. When Isaiah saw God’s holiness he cried out “Woe to me! .... I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” (Is.6: 5) But John says in I John 4:18
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” All demonstrations of fear come from a lack of love. But perfect love is a fruit that can only grow as a result of forgiveness of sin and justification.
There are many instances in the Bible where the sentence “Do not be afraid” occurs. I count seven in connection with the appearance of God or of an angel to men: Dan.10: 12; Matt.28: 5,10; Luke 1:13,30;
2:10; Rev.1: 17. Since our reaction as a sinful human being to God’s holiness is fear, He assures us of His love and takes away our fear.
One of the most striking examples is perhaps when Gideon realizes that the person he talked with is the Angel of the LORD in Judges 6:22-24, where we read: “When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the LORD, he exclaimed, ‘Ah, Sovereign LORD! I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!’ But the LORD said to him, ‘Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die.’ So Gideon built an altar to the LORD there and called it The LORD is Peace.’“
So Abraham must have had that most human reaction to the encounter with the LORD, feeling as if he was about to die. And the LORD wrapped His arms of love around him and told him not to be afraid. I presume that this experience must have done more for Abraham’s faith then anything else. That is why he came to believe God and had God’s righteousness imputed to him. So he became the father of all who believe.
Secondly God proposes to cover Abraham with Himself. He says: “I am your shield.” In the book of Psalms the LORD is several times represented as a shield that covers the believer. Some examples:
Psalms 3:3 “But you are a shield around me, O LORD; you bestow glory on me and lift up my head.”
Psalms 5:12 “For surely, O LORD, you bless the righteous; you surround them with your favor as with a shield.”
Psalms 7:10 “My shield is God Most High, who saves the upright in heart.”
Psalms 18:2,30 “The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” “As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.”
Psalms 28:7 “The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song.”
Ps 84:11 “For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.”
Psalms 119:114 “You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word.”
Psalms 144:2 “He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.”
I do not think we will ever fully understand what it means that God covers us with His own person.
It means that every arrow that is shot at us will hit Him instead of us. It means perfect protection and safety.
It also means that when people see us, they see God. Unbelievable!
Both the NIV and the KJV say, “I am.... your very great reward” or “I am.... thy exceeding great reward.” The RSV translates “I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” Needless to say that I favor the first two translations. God does not only gives us a reward, He Himself is the reward. A greater gift does not exist.
Not only does God protect us; He gives Himself to us. What this means we see in Jesus Christ. As I John 3:16; 4:9 and 10 state: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” What more could we wish for?
Abraham’s reaction to God’s offer of Himself sounds rather negative. He does not seem to realize the eternal character of God’s promise and the heavenly quality of it. He is more concerned with the situation on earth. It seems that there is incongruence between things in heaven and things on earth. God promises Abraham, so to speak, to be seated with Him in the heavenlies. But Abraham is concerned with what will happen with his possessions on earth. Yet Abraham is right. Things on earth will have to be congruous to the heavenly reality. Abraham was more right than he knew himself. If Abraham would not have a son, born from his own wife, the Word of God would not become flesh and the earth would remain an unredeemed planet.
That is why God answers Abraham seriously and promises him that he will not have to name Eliezer of Damascus his only heir. This promise is confirmed by an object lesson in astronomy. God takes Abraham outside. So the previous conversation must have taken place while Abraham was sitting in his tent, having his devotions. An inner chamber is ideal for quiet time. It is a good place to hear the voice of the Lord. If we can spend time alone with the Word of God, like Abraham did, we will also be healed of our fear and receive the assurance that God pledges Himself to us, imparts Himself to us as our reward.
We do not know what Abraham saw exactly when he looked up into the starry skies. The oriental skies are sometimes overwhelmingly clear and beautiful. In Abraham’s time no pollution impeded the view.
We do not know how much knowledge of astrology Abraham possessed. He came from Babylon, where the art was advanced and probably practiced popularly. He may have seen and understood more than most modern men would, looking up in the sky. He did not know David’s poem yet, but he must have had similar feeling as David when he sang: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Ps.8: 3,4). Somehow we see more of God and of ourselves in the dark than in broad daylight!
In spite of our present knowledge of the universe is it hard for us to keep before our eyes the relationship between ourselves and the rest of creation. We have come far indeed if we realize that what we have in common with the rest of the universe is our Creator. Man is as much ‘the work of your fingers’ (as David puts it) as the moon and the stars. David felt small and insignificant because the immensity of the universe, but in a certain way man is greater and more significant. The Word did not become a star or a planet; it became flesh, that is man.
I do not know if Abraham had an inkling of the fact that his offspring would be the fulfillment of God’s promise to Eve. Probably the hope for the return of eternal life as we see it presently still alive in the primitive tribes of the world was the predominant part of man’s hope in Abraham’s day. So I would not be amazed if Abraham had identified “the son coming from his own body” with the Messiah.
“Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Ch. 15:6). This is one of the most amazing verses in the Bible. Paul uses it in Rom.4 and Gal.3: 6 in connection with our justification before God. First we have the fact that Abraham believed that God was going to give him what He had promised. We do not know his exact age at this point, but he was probably in his eighties. The writer to the Hebrews says that Abraham was ‘as good as dead’ when Isaac was born. That was of course more true poetically than in any other respect; but still it became more and more unlikely that Sarah would get pregnant through Abraham as time passed by.
The most amazing part of this verse, however, is the word “righteousness.” The Pulpit Commentary says here: “neither for merit and justice, nor as a proof of his probity; but unto and with a view to justification, so that God treated him as a righteous person, not, however, in the sense that he was now
‘correspondent to the will of God both in character and conduct,’ but in the sense that he was now before God accepted and forgiven, which ‘passive righteousness,’ however, ultimately wrought in him and ‘active righteousness of complete conformity to the Divine will’“.
The word righteousness has acquired a broader meaning for us through its New Testament context.
What we attribute to the concept was undoubtedly present in root form in the Old Testament, but it would have been impossible for Abraham to completely understand what we understand it to mean in the light of the atonement by our Lord Jesus Christ at the cross of Calvary. That is why we should try to go back and ask ourselves what Abraham understood when God told him that he was righteous.
God must have told Abraham that he was acceptable to Him because of his righteousness;
otherwise, this verse would never have appeared in the Bible. Moses could not have made it up. It is too surprising to be a human invention. The experience of fear being taken away, the covering with God’s presence as with a shield and the knowledge of the fact that the eternal, omnipotent and holy God would be his reward, must have awakened in Abraham the realization that God accepted him as equal. His faith seems an insignificant token payment in this context. How could anyone do anything but believe if being spoken to by God in such an unmistakable way?
So justification must have been for Abraham an experience. It was not a theological concept and nothing more, like it is often for us.
It was also related to the very practical issues of his life. He lived as a stranger in a foreign land.
He had received the guarantee that his offspring would possess that land, but there was a missing link: he had no child. A missing link means the end of the chain. If one ancestor is missing, then there is no further generation. Justification for Abraham meant that God was going to solve this particular problem. If justification does not relate to our present problems, if it is not practical, it is not justification. To be justified by faith in God’s promise means that we have the ability to unburden ourselves on God. As I Pet.5:
7 says: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
Vs.7 takes us probably to a different scene, at a different time. It may have been the next day, but that is hard to tell. Abraham has had time to think things over. And when God speaks to him again, he has evidently been assailed by doubts. He may have thought that the previous experience was too good to be true. This is a common phenomenon. At the moment God speaks to us, there is no doubt in our minds, but then the enemy comes and starts poking sticks in our conviction. He tells us that it must have been a dream.
There is no connection between the spiritual and the physical reality of our daily life. And since the latter is the only thing our senses can observe, we start wondering if he may be right.
I remember the story of the farmer who was recently converted. While ploughing his field Satan came and told him that he had imagined things, so he started doubting. But then the joy of his newly found salvation broke through again. At the spot where he knew it was true, he planted a stick. A moment later the enemy tried again, but the farmer showed him the stick and told him to go away. Sometimes our faith needs a stick. Abraham asked God for such a token.
Vs.7 is the clearest proof that Stephen was right, when he said in Acts 7:2 - “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’“
In saying this God goes back to the very beginning when Abraham heard the voice of the LORD for the first time when he was probably still a young man. He sees the many years between Ur and Hebron pass before his eyes, when God tells him that he has arrived at the place to which God called him that far back.
But after those many years he still does not possess one square foot of this land. There is just an oral promise; nothing is on paper. So he asks God to give him something in writing.
I do not think Abraham’s request was necessarily a sign of unbelief. It did not fit in the same category as Zachariah’s refusal to believe when Gabriel told him about the birth of John the Baptist in Luke 1:18-20. where we read: “Zechariah asked the angel, ‘How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.’ The angel answered, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their proper time.’“ Zechariah did not believe in spite of the fact that he saw an angel who talked to him. Abraham knew that what God said was true, but in his spiritual struggle caused by the visible realities of every day life he needed some token to hang on to. That is why God did not reproach him his lack of weakness. God understands the limits of our faith.
The assurance Abraham is given is overwhelming. The ritual that follows seems to have been borrowed from the culture of that time. When a treaty or a covenant was made between parties one or more animals were taken and cut in half; and the people making the treaty would walk between the pieces to confirm the veracity of their promise. The Pulpit Commentary refers to the covenant between the sons of Jacob and the Shechemites in Ch. 34 and to a story from Homer’s Iliad. In Ch. 34, however, we do not find a description of the ritual as it is given here.
The animals Abraham has to bring are those that were later used in the sacrifices prescribed in Levituc ch. 1-7: a heifer, a goat and a ram, a dove and a young pigeon. This is another proof that the Levitican law was no Mosaic invention or a new ordinance given at that time; it confirmed existing customs, which had been approved by God before.
The animals represent all the offerings mentioned in Leviticus, starting with the guilt offering, the sin offering, the fellowship offering to the burnt offering, which are given in the reversed order in Leviticus.
They also emphasize the social status from poor to rich. How much Abraham was able to differentiate, we do not know; but evidently Abraham knew what God expected him to do because without being told, he cuts
They also emphasize the social status from poor to rich. How much Abraham was able to differentiate, we do not know; but evidently Abraham knew what God expected him to do because without being told, he cuts