So, we talked about the incredible lesson that God is teaching Abram here. God encourages Abram by telling him that He is his great reward. Abram responds in frustration that God's promise will have to be fulfilled through his servant, now that Lot is gone. After some persistent prodding by Abram, God hesitantly tells Abram that his descendants will come from his own seed and shows him the stars as a metaphor for his future descendants. We are told that Abram trusted God and God responds by telling him that he will also acquire a chunk of real estate. Abram (maybe thinking this is too good to be true) wants some form of collateral to hold God to His word.
Again, I think we see Abram being human here — wavering and struggling between trust and self-security.
God responds by setting up the covenant agreement and passing through on Abram's behalf as well as His own. This incredible statement on God's behalf serves as a reminder of God's character, His patient love, and His reckless pursuit of the redemption of His creation.
But there's something that's not right in the story.
What about verses 13–16?
Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred 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.”
What's that all about? I mean, the content is true and useful, but it doesn't really fit, does it? Kind of “kills the mood”, in my opinion. And what in the world just happened that provoked that kind of response from God? Why has this simple interaction with Abram resulted in all of those promised descendants suffering in Egypt for 400 years?
I'd like to use Abram's story to make some observations:
God got Abram out of Egypt (chapter 12), but He still has to get Egypt out of Abram. You see, Abram brought a lot of things out of Egypt. Gold, silver, livestock, many forms of wealth — and servants. One of those servants is an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar. Abram is going to take God's inside information about the descendants coming from his seed — the information that God didn't seem interested in sharing — and he's going to try to write his own future from his own perspective. Obviously, with Sarai being barren, Abram must need to procreate with someone else; so he and his wife decide to pursue a family through their maidservant, Hagar. Abram brought some of Egypt with him (quite literally) and now we have a significant problem on our hands for the next few chapters of Genesis.
There are consequences to our actions. We have mainly been showing how Abram is a man of great trust. But even his moments of struggle have consequences. Not only does Abram bring material goods and physical possessions out of Egypt, but he also brings a mentality out as well. He's been affected by the lure of self-security and self-production. He's going to write his own future. Not only does God have to get Egypt out of Abram's descendants, he has to get Egypt out of Abram's heart. The ways of the empire run counter to the ways of God's peace.
Sometimes we don't need to have the answers. God didn't seem to want to share His plan with Abram, because of the possibility of what Abram would do with too much information (combined with his limited perspective). I think there is a huge lesson for us in the story of Genesis 15. There are moments in our lives where we feel like shaking our fists toward the heavens and demanding answers from God. And there are also moments where God won't tell us the answer, because if we knew it, we'd misuse the information and screw up the story that God's trying to tell through us.
Abram HAD to know how God could possibly be his great reward. So God gives him a peek into His plan and Abram takes that little slice, writes all the rest of the chapters in his head, sleeps with Hagar, and writes the wrong story.
And so God, in His great patience and love, says to Abram (in my own words), “Here is my promise. And here is my collateral. And here is me showing you my selfless love for you, again. But, know that we are going to have to deal with this ‘Egypt in your heart’. The only way for me to get Egypt out of you and your children is to let you go back to Egypt and have all the empire your hearts could desire. I'll let you have empire until you're sick of it. I'll let you get it all out of your system; and when it's all gone — when all you want is Me, again — I'll bring you out.”
You see, when we put our trust in the “Egypts” of the world, it matters. Whether it's a nation, a political party, a paycheck, a retirement fund, an education, or a benefit package — when we put our faith in empire, it does something to our heart. There are consequences to our actions. God has to work to get our own “Egypt” out of us.
And it's hard sometimes when we don't have all the answers. But sometimes, we wouldn't want the answers, anyway. And so we look to the future and we remember the past. We remember that we stand on the shoulders of great men like Abram and we try to learn from their stories. We try to learn in order to write better stories for our descendants.
We try to learn to trust the story.
To trust that God really did love Abram and had his back.
To trust that God really does love us and is for us, too.
And we look to a future that is unseen and unknown and we set sail with obedience, trusting in God's way, knowing that we already have everything that we need, knowing that we are free to look out for the barren woman, the outcast child, the homeless veteran, the hungry, the alien, the orphan, the widow. We set sail knowing that we are free to lay down our lives for others, trusting our security to God and not to the empire.
Because God is up to something in the world.
He's tiptoeing through the back alleys looking for orphans.
He's comforting the widow and sustaining the hungry.
He's tucking in His robe and running to greet prodigals.
And it brings Him great joy to restore.
And there is so much to do.
And He's still looking for partners.
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