After the word of the Lord
came to Abram in a vision, Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus? You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.” Ugh! When I first read this I thought to myself, “Man - God must be so tired of our doubt!” Instead of taking God at His word, We question Him and focus on what our eyes can see in this dark world. Then the word of the Lord came to Abram and said, “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” God was patient and answered Abram’s question. In essence He said, “I am going to give you a son who is your very own flesh and blood.” This means that Abram and his wife Sarai would conceive a son - because a marriage covenant is based on a man and his wife becoming One. God took Abram outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars - if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be.” Perhaps when the Lord showed Abram what he had already done in the earth and the heavenly realm - Abram believed the Lord - and this is when the Lord counted it to Abram as righteousness. Righteousness- Obviously man has also got this wrong. God does not focus on our morality, or what we think is right or wrong. He does not focus on the works of the flesh, but to the one who trusts and believes that God justifies our wickedness. God said, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.” That means when Abram’s father, Terah, left the land of Ur, and took Abram, Sarai and Lot with him, then settled in Haran - it was all part of God’s divine plan. But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” There he goes again! Doubting God for what He says. Or maybe, Abram is just looking for a little confirmation. 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.” That’s interesting - instead of God giving Abram a direct explanation, He gives him a command to bring animals to Him. "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. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away." Now, how did Abram know to bring the animals dead? We have to go back to when man first doubted God, and look at how God responded to them. When Adam and Eve had doubted God, and noticed there, naked they stood - they tried to use fig leaves to cover their sin. But their man-made hiding was not that good. Fig leaves could not cover up the guilty sinner and make him right with God. God, however, has great compassion for man, and he chose animal skins to cover up Adam and Eve. "And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them." Genesis 3:21 God was willing to use animal life blood, to cover the sin that separated man - At least until the Lamb of God Who would be the final sacrifice for all of mankind. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. The darkness was not an evil presence as one would think, the darkness was the God sharing a troubling thought. He gave Abram a brief timeline of future events. Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for 400 years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” Let’s not forget what we have already learned, King Og of Bashan, will be the Amorite King who is called the last of the Rephaim, a descendant from the Nephilim - produced during Genesis 6, when the sons of God possessed daughters of men. The land of Canaan must not have been some coincidence. The land of Canaan was inhabited by evil men, and God used Abram to take possession back. We are either vessels working for God, or against Him. Man - God is so good! In a second, Holy Spirit unfolds spiritual wisdom! Scripture says, “When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates - the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites will be yours.” Genesis 15:1-21 Do you remember what Paul says in Ephesians 3:10 about Gods marvelous plan for the Gentiles? “I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” Ephesians 3:7-12 God has a plan and purpose for every single thing! He made the beginning with the end in mind. The scripture is very clear - We either participate with God and become a vessel for Him, or we take things upon ourselves and remain a vessel of evil covered by fig leaves.
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