Sometimes the horror of what is coming is just too much for us, so God helps us sleep. In our sleep maybe we can deal better with what is to come. Our minds need to be strong and our faith in the one who is all and in all.
‘And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him’ Genesis 15:12
What was the horror?
Genesis 15 to Chapter 19
Link to Online Bible to read Genesis 15-19 is here.
This man who we have just been told ‘believed in the Lord and he counted it to him for righteousness’ (v6).
This man whom God had just promised a family coming from him that would be more numerous than he can count.
This man who God had just said to, in a vision, ‘Fear not Abram, I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward’ (v1).
Not to mention in Chapter 14, we have just witnessed Abram encountering Melchizedek – priest of the most high God – as if in a special moment, no one else witnesses, with those emblems of Christ, and he swears an oath to God and gives him tithes of all.
What happened between Abraham and God?
So what horror was coming?
Why so many animals offered as a sacrifice? Abram did not pass through those sacrifices, not at all, he was asleep, but a smoking furnace and a burning lamp passed between the pieces. What is going on?
Abram is told, your people are going to end up slaves and they are going to have a horrible time of it for 400 years but don’t worry, those persecutors are going to end up judged, and your people are going to come out of that with great substance.
Abram had been promised the land. He had been promised generations, without number. But for that to be accomplished, there would be a process.
Would they have the faith to sustain?
‘For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full’. Those people had become an enemy of God, and dealing with them was on the agenda.
God does not delay, everything serves a purpose
When you meditate on these two chapters, what do you see? What can you learn? What does it provoke in you? How does it shape how you pray?
Even Paul refers to this time when he is making the point the basis of Christianity is a promise, not the laws of right and wrong.
‘Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul that it should make the promise of none effect.’ For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise.’ Galatians 3:16-18
Don’t you love the way scriptures work? It’s like a mysterious algorithm and a thread throughout history with one purpose – the salvation of the whole of mankind.
Abram, the man who becomes known as the Father of Faith, is a man worth studying very carefully. Those principles, his faith, is still a legacy some thousands of years later.
