Have you ever been around someone you think you know really well, and suddenly they do something totally out of character?
It may be something good or it may be something bad. If you’re married, you’ve no doubt had that happen! Or maybe we’ve stereotyped somebody and found out they’re nothing like what we thought.
A tough looking biker cuddles a kitten; a sweet teenage girl erupts in a string of obscenities. It’s so unexpected. It’s unsettling.
That’s the kind of reaction I had when I first read this passage. It is such a violent, gruesome ritual. “What kind of a God would come up with such a gory ritual?” It seemed pretty disgusting to me, to be honest.
Most of us tend to avoid such passages, because they are confusing and unsettling. But I’ve discovered that if I find out what is happening in these confusing passages, I often gain a deeper understanding of who God is and of His relationship to us.
As we look at this passage more carefully, I think we will make just such a discovery.
Abram had been waiting several years for God to fulfill His promise that Abram would have so many descendants, they couldn’t be numbred.
Abram was 75 when God made that promise back in chapter 12
But at 75, he had left his home and family and moved to a strange place because God had told him to do so.
And he had waited for God’s promise to come true
And he waited. And he waited.
In the next chapter we’re told he was 86, and we don’t really know how much time there was between the two chapters, but it had probably been several years.
Most of you know that it was shameful in that culture not to have children.
All their lives, Abram and Sarai had endured that shame
What joy Abram had had when God had made this wonderful promise, that not only would they have a child, but that their descendents would become a great nation.
But God appears to Abram again, and Abram is ticked!
You can hear the anguish in his voice as he says,
"Sovereign Lord, what good will your reward do me, since I have no children? … You have given me no children, and one of my slaves will inherit my property."
Have you been in Abram’s shoes?
“Lord, You promised you would give me: ____” a job or children or … but where is it?
I trusted You – & You haven’t come through
Have you questioned his care for you?
Have you doubted his love?
Abram did – and dared to voice his frustration and his doubt to God.
He asks very pointedly, “How can I KNOW that you’re going to fulfill your promise?”
In answer to that question, God tells Abram to bring five animals to him
Abram apparently knows just what to do
And he takes the animals, and cuts up the large ones, and lays the halves across from each other with a space in between.
Again, Abram waits, chasing the vultures away.
He falls into an exhausted sleep and the Lord reveals the future of Israel – a nation which of course didn’t exist at the time – to Abram
It isn’t a rosy picture
The Lord reveals how Abram’s descendants will be enslaved in Egypt
But also how He will free them from bondage and eventually give them the land on which Abram is standing.
Then “a smoking firepot and a flaming torch” pass between the halves of the animals and God repeats His promise to give Abram and his descendants the lands of many of the tribes of Canaan.
What on earth is going on? Why the gory ritual? And God does all this AFTER Abraham believed what God says (v 6)
First of all, God didn’t invent this ritual.
It was very common between nations who had made a covenant with one another.
There were all kinds of covenants, but the one that is most like the covenant between God and Abram was what we call a “Suzerainty Covenant”
A Suzerain was the King of a tribe or nation which had just conquered another tribe
When one tribe conquered another, an official document (sort of like a treaty), called a covenant, would be drawn up between them.
Obviously, the winners pretty much got to write the terms of the agreement.
The Losers became the Vassals, that is, they would come under the authority – and the protection – of the Suzerain.
The vassal would normally pay large sums of money to the Suzerain
And the Suzerain would protect the Vassal from anybody else who tried to attack it.
So the covenant established an ongoing relationship
In order to insure that the agreement would be upheld, a covenant would be drawn up
It would include the blessings that would result from keeping the covenant and the curses that would come from breaking it.
The gods of the nations would be called upon to enforce the covenant by bringing about the blessings or curses, depending on what was appropriate.
Then there would be a ceremony something like what we see here.
The animals would be cut up and the vassal would have to walk between the halves.
The idea was, “Let this be done to ME if I don’t fulfill this covenant.”
It’s a pretty vivid encouragement to keep your promises, don’t you think?
Whenever you’d consider breaking the covenant, you’d remember walking in the midst of those animals.
There was usually a covenant meal, too.
The meal, sharing of an animal sacrifice, would unite the parties.
“Since we’ve eaten from the same piece of meat, we’re one, we’re connected.
So God didn’t invent this ritual, rather, he took a ritual that was very familiar to Abram and used it to assure him that He would keep the promises he made.
But there is one very significant difference between a normal covenant ritual and what happened here;
If you’re incredibly observant you might’ve caught it
Who walks between the carcasses of these dead animals?
Do you think it’s the Suzerain? The winner? The powerful one?
Of course not!
It’s the Vassal! The Servant!
But who walked between them here?
God – the Suzerain, the King of kings, the Lord of Lords
As the firepot and the torch pass between those animals, God is saying, “Let this be done to ME if I don’t fulfill my promise.”
We are SO used to broken promises – a promise means almost nothing any more.
During his first presidential campaign, Bill Clinton said this:
No wonder Americans hate politics when, year in and year out, they hear politicians make promises that won’t come true because they don’t even mean them - campaign fantasies that win elections but don’t get nations moving again.
Much later, George Stephanopolous, who directed Clinton’s campaign, defended his boss with these words:
The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.
In this world, it seems that promises really are made to be broken.
But not God’s promises.
Conclusion
So what does all this mean to us?
God made a covenant with Abram that he would have descendants as numerous as the stars, and that he would give those descendants the land of Canaan.
What does that mean to us right here and now?
Well, probably not very much.
What it does tell us is something of the nature of God
It tells us a great deal about how he views His promises.
When God passed through those animals, he was saying, “I stake my very existence on the dependability of my promises.
“You can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I keep My promises.”
In a few moments, we will remember another covenant – the New Covenant in Jesus’ blood.
He became the sacrifice
He became the covenant meal
His blood is God’s assurance that He keeps His promises.
And what is this New Covenant?
As the Lord says through Isaiah, “Though your sins were like scarlet, I will wash them as white as snow”
God has promised us forgiveness and cleansing from sin
And the blood of Christ is our assurance that He keeps His promise
We can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no sin we have committed that His blood cannot cleanse
The only unforgivable sin is to refuse His forgiveness
The New Covenant also promises that those who have put their faith in him, belong to Him forever.
Once you have become God’s son or daughter, you remain His son or daughter
Not because you’re worthy, but because His love never varies, never wavers, never fails
The blood of Christ assures us that we belong to Him
And we can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He will never leave or forsake us.
As we eat the bread and drink the cup, we can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that
we are loved
we are forgiven
we belong to God, our King and our Father
