ABRAM’S SMOKING FIREPOT & BLAZING TORCH
Gen. 15:5-17
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR
1. An elderly wife said to her husband, "Why don't we eat something sweet. Get us both a bowl of ice cream."
2. The husband said, "We only have a little ice cream, but I don't want to eat it without chocolate syrup.” So he volunteered to run to the store and buy some ice cream and syrup.
3. The wife said, "You need to write that down; you know how forgetful you are." "No,” he said, “it's only two things; there's no way I’m going to forget that!”
4. Later, the husband came home from the store with a can of soup. The wife said, "I told you! I told you that you would forget to buy both items! You forgot the crackers!"
B. TEXT
5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. 7 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.” 8 But Abram said, “O Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” 9 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.” 10 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. 11 Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. 12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” 17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces.
C. THESIS
1. This strange scene was one of the most hallowed and significant moments in all human history. This was the moment God signed His name on the dotted line of salvation, at least, from our perspective.
2. We’re going to look tonight at what a covenant is, what aspects of this account are parts of the covenant, and what is the meaning of the smoking firepot and the blazing torch.
I. WHAT IS A COVENANT?
A. DEFINITION
1. The Hebrew word, ‘B rith’ is translated "covenant," but it's root meanings are "to bind" (Acadian ‘baru’) and "to cut" (Hebrew).
2. A covenant is a legal compact or agreement between two parties in which each binds himself to fulfill certain conditions and is promised certain advantages.
3. In making covenants, God was solemnly invoked as a witness (Gen. 31:50) and the breach of a covenant was regarded as a heinous sin (Ezek. 17:12-20).
B. EXAMPLES OF COVENANTS
1. COVENANTS BETWEEN GOD AND MEN
a. With Adam, Hosea 6:7.
b. With Noah, Gen. 9:8-17.
c. With Abraham, Gen. 15:9-21; Isaac, 17:21.
d. With the Israelites at Sinai, Ex. 19-24.
e. Levi, Mal. 2:4; Aaron, Nm. 18:19; Phineas, 25:10-
31.
f. With David, 2 Samuel 7:5-16.
g. The New Covenant, Jeremiah 31:31-34.
2. COVENANTS BETWEEN MEN -- there are at least 13 covenants mentioned as between people in the Bible.
3. OTHER TYPES OF COVENANTS
a. Marriage is a covenant, Prov. 2:17, Ezek. 16:8, Malachi 2:14.
b. Covenant of Brotherhood, Amos 1:9
C. WHY COVENANTS ARE VALUED
1. What good is it? Does a covenant strengthen one's position with the covenanting party? Does it give an additional basis of appeal? Yes!
2. In our passage tonight, God promised Abraham that he would inherit the land of Palestine. Yet Abraham still questioned whether God's promise was binding. “O Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” (vs. 8).
3. In answer, God tells Abraham to prepare the elements necessary for a covenant to be performed. By means of a covenant God makes his promise certain.
4. Later, when Moses was trying to dissuade God from destroying Israel, Moses quoted the covenant that God made with Abraham and was able to turn back God from destroying them (Exodus 32:13). See also 2 Kings 13:23. Clearly, covenants have a strengthening effect on later decision-making, even by God.
D. HUMOR – PROMISE KEPT?
1. A man loaned each of his 3 best friends -- a lawyer, doctor and clergyman -- $25,000 in cash. He asked that it be repaid at his death.
2. At the funeral, each of the men placed an envelope in the coffin. Afterward, they met and had coffee. The clergyman confessed that he only put $10,000 cash in the envelope.
3. Then the doctor hung his head and confessed that he’d only put $8,000 in cash due to hard times.
4. The lawyer was outraged, "I’m the only one who kept my promise. You are both witnesses that I put a check for the entire $25,000 in there!"
II. ELEMENTS OF COVENANTS FOUND HERE
A. TERMS AND OATH OF COVENANT
1. Moses summarized God's promise to Abraham as “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever” (Exodus 32:13).
2. The conditions, though unstated at this point but later stated to the Israelites, was that they were to obey the Lord and He was to be their God.
3. Hebrews says that God swore an oath to Abraham that day; “He swore by himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.’” (Heb. 6:13-16).
B. CUTTING OF ANIMALS IN TWO
1. The cutting of animals in two was one of the oldest rites of the covenant, emphasized by its very name "to cut." The bloody halves were laid upward.
2. The covenanting parties would walk between the cloven animals invoking the curse; "If I fail to fulfill this covenant, may God do to me as is done to these animals."
3. Binding one's self with a curse was considered one of the strongest assurances that the covenant would be fulfilled. For another instance, see Jeremiah 34:18-20.
C. SYMBOL OF THE COVENANT
1. With the covenant of Noah, where God promised to never again flood the world, God gave the token of the rainbow as evidence that He would keep His promise.
2. When God made the covenant with Israel on Mount Sinai, he gave them the Sabbath as its remembrance.
3. With the covenant of Abraham, God gave the Israelites the symbol of circumcision (Genesis 17:11). This was the symbol that the Israelites were in covenant with God.
D. CHANGING OF NAMES
1. Abram and Sarai were given new names in keeping with their new status under the covenant God was making with them (Genesis 17:2-5, 15, 16).
2. Abram would now be called Abraham, "Father of Many." Sarai would now be called Sarah, "Princess, Queen."
III. SMOKING FIREPOT & BLAZING TORCH
A. THE SMOKING FIREPOT
1. A brazier is a portable container for fire, usually a metal bowl or box . (One devoted to burning incense is called a censor.)
2. Abraham took a brazier with him when offering Isaac on Mt. Moriah (Gen. 22:6).
3. The “smoking firepot” may represent the Father’s involvement in the covenant, or it may be a censor offering incense at the time the holy Sacrifice is promised.
B. THE BLAZING TORCH
1. God’s presence is always seen as a bright Light surrounded by cloud (Ex. 3:2; 14:24; 19:18, etc.). The shekinah.
2. The “blazing torch” is undoubtedly Jesus Christ, preincarnate, covenanting to be the Sacrifice to atone for, and fulfill, all the promises God was entering into.
3. As David was called the “Lamp of Israel” (2 Sam. 21:17), so Jesus is the greater Lamp of God. He’s the “Light” that shined in the darkness (Gen. 1:3), the “radiance (out-raying) of God’s glory” (Heb. 1:3), the Morning Star (Rev. 2:28), the “Star out of Jacob” (Num. 24:17), the “Sun of Righteousness” (Mal. 4:2), the “Light of the World” (Jn. 8:12), and the Lamp of New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:23).
C. THE BEAUTIFUL MEANING
1. We are in a covenant with God, the New Covenant. Jesus is the mediator (Heb. 8:6; 12:24). When we take the Lord's supper, Jesus told us to say, "This cup is the new covenant in [Jesus’] blood" (Luke 22:20;1 Cor. 11:25).
2. The terms are Jer. 7:23, "Obey Me, and I will be your God and You will be My people."
3. The "Token" of the covenant is the "earnest of the Spirit" Eph. 1:14;2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5.
4. Our Covenant Meal is the Lord's Supper.
5. The sacrificial animal -- Christ was that sacrifice.
6. Sprinkling of blood -- Christ's, Heb. 12:24.
7. Changing of names – Rev. 2:17.
8. Exchanging of clothes -- He took our sin and we take His righteousness, Rom. 13:14; Eph. 4:22-24
9. The blood covenant makes us part of God's family, were of ONE BLOODLINE, so that we can also cry, "Abba Father!"
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION
1. Eric Hesse tells that in Scotland, there are large flocks of sheep. When a ewe (mother sheep) dies, the orphaned lambs frequently die, because other ewes won’t share their milk with a lamb who’s not their own.
2. Mother ewes recognize their young by their scent; if they don’t recognize a lamb as their own, they butt it away.
3. So the shepherds there have developed an ingenious method for helping the orphans. When one of the ewes in the flock has a lamb that dies, the shepherd skins that dead lamb and makes a fleece out of the skin & fur.
4. He then finds an orphaned lamb and puts the fleece on it and leads it to the mother. The ewe smells the fleece of her own lamb that has died and accepts the orphan as her own and allows him to nurse.
5. What a beautiful type of what God has done for us! We have become accepted by God because we’re clothed with Christ. Paul said, “Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature” Rom. 13:14.
6. When God justifies us we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ and we become acceptable to God.
7. Orphaned by sin, and left for dead, God makes us His own. He adopts us into his family. Through Jesus, God makes us His sons and daughters.
B. THE CALL
1. God made a covenant with us because He wants us to be confident and unafraid that we will receive all the benefits He has promised.
2. You can pray and ask for things confidently in the name of Jesus; God will not deny His Son anything.
3. Have you accepted God’s free gift of eternal life that’s in His Son? Let’s pray & invite Him in!
