Free Bible Commentary
“Genesis 15:1-6”
Categories: Genesis“After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, 'Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; your reward shall be very great.' Abram said, 'O Lord God, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?' And Abram said, 'Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.' Then behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, 'This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.' And He took him outside and said, 'Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.' And He said to him, 'So shall your descendants be.' Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.”
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“The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision...” This chapter is comprised of God reaffirming his promises and covenant with Abram. In this first part God reconfirms His promise to bless Abram with innumerable descendants (verse 5), and in the second He guarantees their future inheritance of the Land of Promise (verse 18). The Lord communicated these promises to Abram by his “word” through the medium of “a vision”. What is not perfectly clear is whether the whole chapter constitutes the transmission of one continuous vision, or if it is broken up into two different, consecutive experiences. Whichever view is accurate, the two promises are interdependent and indivisible.
“Do not fear, Abram...” (verse 1) Abram had just recently saved Lot from the powerful alliance of eastern kings. It would have been perfectly understandable if he had feared a retaliatory strike. The Lord appeared to him in a vision to comfort and reassure him and allay his fears. God told Abram that he had no reason to be afraid because He would serve as a shield of protection over and around him. Abram also took no compensation for the energy, time and resources he had expended in saving the prisoners of Sodom, but the Lord told him that He would be all the reward that he would ever need.
“O Lord God, what will You give me, since I am childless...” (verse 2) Another thing that Abram feared greatly was that he would die before God ever blessed him with a biological child. He and his wife were advanced in age, and the closest thing to an heir in his household was “Eliezer of Damascus.” It was customary for a childless man living in the ancient East to adopt a servant, but God promised Abram that an heir would be born to him from his “own body” (verse 4). “According to the usage of nomadic tribes, his chief confidential servant, would be heir to his possessions and honors. But this man could have become his son only by adoption; and how sadly would that have come short of the parental hopes he had been encouraged to entertain! His language betrayed a latent spirit of fretfulness or perhaps a temporary failure in the very virtue for which he is so renowned—an absolute submission to God's time, as well as way, of accomplishing His promise.” (Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary)
“This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.” (verse 4) We see here God's response to Abram's despair and impatient attempt to preempt the plans of God. Abraham and Sarah's impatience would escalate in the next chapter to an attempt to produce Abraham's biological son and heir through Sarah's servant Hagar. “Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him” (Genesis 16:16), making it just over a decade after God's original promise to bless him with great posterity (Genesis 12:1-4). A common characteristic of human weakness is impatience and discouragement at the delay of a thing greatly hoped for. Abraham was a great man of faith, but like us, only human and subject to the weakness of the flesh.
“'Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.' And He said to him, 'So shall your descendants be.'” (verse 5) God's promise to Abram was not to have as many children as there are stars in the universe or as there are grains of sand on the seashore. The promise was, just like the stars and the sand, his descendants would be too numerous to count. He was in his eighth decade of life, and still childless. And still, “he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abram believed that which was difficult to comprehend. This does not indicate that his belief would never be overshadowed at times by doubt, and the same is true for believers to this very day. Sometimes we have doubts, but we must never turn lose of our faith and trust in God and the recognition of our complete dependence upon Him.
Because Abram accepted God's promise as true by faith, the Lord “reckoned it to him as righteousness.” The Apostle Paul tells us that we, as Abraham's spiritual descendants, are considered righteous through Christ Jesus in just the same way: through our believing, trusting faith. “What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? 'Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.'” (Romans 4:1-3)
We must be obedient as Abraham was if we want to be acceptable in the sight of God and works of righteousness are absolutely critical to our eternal salvation as James 2:21-25 tells us. “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, 'And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,' and he was called the friend of God. You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” But, like Abraham, we will never be perfectly righteous, and we will never be able to do enough works of righteousness to make us righteous in the sight of God. Only through a continuing faith in Christ, through all of life's valleys and mountains, upsets and victories, blessings and disappointments, can we hope to be accounted as righteous in the sight of the righteous Judge on that great and final day. It is only through faith in the righteousness of the only One who was perfectly righteous that we have hope of being declared righteous on the day of Judgment.
Please read Genesis 15:7-11 for tomorrow.
Have a blessed day!
- Louie Taylor
