Chasing The Vultures Away

Genesis 15:14 "But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve; and afterward they will come out with many possessions.

Genesis 15:15 "And as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age.

Genesis 15:16 "Then in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete."

Genesis 15:17 And it came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces.

Genesis 15:18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates:

Our text details the covenant that God made with Abram and all that was involved with that process.

We are going to look at the part where the birds came after his sacrificial offering and he had to chase them away. First a little background.

Abram asks how can he know that He will possess the land, God’s response is - this is how you will know:

Cut some animals up and I will walk between them, and by doing that God is saying that even as the animals have been cut in two, may I be cut in two if I don’t keep my promise/covenant with you. Now that is an ancient practice of covenant making well understood to Abraham and practiced in many cultures of the world at that time.

But there is an added element that Abraham may not have understood, but we know because as the bible unfolds from Genesis to Revelation God reveals to us that it is on the basis of an acceptable blood sacrifice that He enters into covenant with us.

Said another way God is saying, “I accept the sacrifice of these animals as the basis on which I will give you and your descendants the promised land.” When we enter into covenants today in general there is almost always I will give you this and you will give me that. God said give me an animal sacrifice and I will make my covenant with you.

I will dig into this much deeper next week, but for this week just grasp this truth, God says give me what I want and here is what I will give you in return. That is a biblical understanding of the basis of being in covenant relationship with God.

Now we are going to look at the vultures in our story. But I need to put them in a biblical context for you to see what God is teaching us here. It is a literal story, but it has a very spiritual understanding and application.

The literal is birds came after dead meat. Nothing new about that in the natural world. The spiritual is that birds in scripture represent the forces of evil that try to keep us from understanding spiritual truth, or from letting that truth grow inside of us. Parable of the sower, if you don’t understand this parable you won’t understand any of Jesus’ other teachings. The parable of the sower is God’s cypher key for all the parables, it is perhaps the most important of all the parables. And what it teaches is that God wants us to understand His truths and have them grow in us, but that there are enemies that will first try to steal truth from us, and if they can’t other methods and strategies will be employed to lesson or remove its growth in us.