God’s Covenant with Abram

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Introduction

In the last lesson we saw God’s justice and mercy demonstrated in the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abram knew God’s character and pleaded with him to spare the cities for the sake of the righteous—but not even 10 righteous people lived in Sodom.

God showed his mercy toward Lot and his family as the angels led them out of the city. God showed his justice in destroying the people of the cities for their wickedness.

Because God is a righteous, or just, Judge (Psalm 7:11), he must punish sin. Yet, in his mercy, he has provided Jesus to act as a substitute to take the penalty for sin on the behalf of those who place their faith in him. God has spared his children from sin’s penalty through the promised Savior who came through Abram.

God Promises Abram a Son and Many Descendants

Today we are stepping back to Genesis 15–16 to examine the covenant that God made with Abram. Back in Genesis 12, God had promised to make Abram a great nation, to bless him, and to bless others through him. Now, God repeats that promise and makes a covenant with Abram.

Let’s read Genesis 15:1–21 together. Divide the passage (vv. 1–7, 8–16, 17–21) and have several people read each portion aloud.

We certainly don’t have time to examine the entire passage, so our questions will focus on the nature of the covenant that God made with Abram.

• How did Abram hear from God? In a vision.
• How did God identify himself? As Abram’s shield (v. 1).
• What was Abram’s response to God’s appearance? Abram reminded God that he did not have his own heir.
• Who did the Lord tell Abram his heir would be? His very own son (v. 4). Abram suggested his only heir was his servant Eliezer, but God said the heir of promise would be his own son from his own body.
• How many offspring would Abram have? As many as the stars (v. 5).
• Where did Abram’s righteousness come from according to verse 6? God credited him with righteousness because he believed God.
• When Abram looked for a sign regarding inheriting the land, what did God instruct him to do? Abram was to bring five animals, some of specific ages (v. 9).
• What did Abram do with the animals? Abram cut the heifer, goat, and ram in half and kept the birds whole. He then placed them in a row with the halves opposite each other. This would form an aisle between the two rows.
• Once it was dark, what happened? Genesis 15:12. Abram fell into a deep sleep while God talked to him. A smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the halves of the animals while Abram was in a deep sleep.
• How long would it be before Abram’s descendants would possess the land? They would be strangers in a land for 400 years before possessing the land (v. 13).
• What was the extent of the land they would possess? From the river of Egypt (not the Nile) to the Euphrates (v. 18).
• What figures, symbols, or practices do we need to understand or interpret from this passage? Understanding the dividing of the animals and what the fire pot and torch represent will be important in understanding the passage.

Discover the Truth

Now that we have asked questions about the text, let’s talk about the main idea and try to understand this ceremony that might seem to be a bit odd to our ears.

As Abram responded to God, he reminded God, as if that were necessary, that he had no children to carry on his name and become the great nation that God had promised. God, again, used the idea that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars and that his heir would be his own son, not his servant.

Let’s examine this act of cutting the animals in half. Abram had asked for a sign—he was looking for a contract with God. When we sign a contract today, the two parties each present their names in ink in the presence of witnesses. In simpler times, a handshake was sufficient for securing a loan or purchasing some property. Other cultures exchanged items or mingled their blood together in various ceremonies before the community or elders of a town.

In Abram’s culture, they would cut animals in half and make a passageway. The two parties would walk through to signify that if they did not keep the conditions of the covenant, they deserved to be treated just like the animals—as in, you can kill me if I don’t uphold my end of the covenant. You may have heard the phrase, “to cut a covenant.” That’s what this is.

God was making a covenant, or contract, with Abram; and while Abram slept, God, in the form of a smoking fire pot and a torch, passed through the middle of the animals.

• Was this contract based on Abram’s performance? Did he have to keep his end of the bargain? No. God was making a unilateral covenant with Abram. Abram had nothing to do but to place his faith in God’s promise. This is evident in the fact that Abram did not pass between the animals, but God did so alone.

  This idea reminds us of the independence of God—he does not need mankind, but chooses to use humans to fulfill his plans. Refer to Independent on the Attributes of God poster.

  Apart from what God had done for Abram, or had given to him, nothing special about Abram caused God to choose him. Abram was worshipping false gods when he was called to be the father of the Israelite nation to come. We know the storyline and the outcome, but Abram didn’t. He followed God, awaiting the promises. But he was not a perfect man, which we will see affirmed as we move to chapter 16.

• Another important point of this passage is a section that foreshadows the future of the descendants of Abram. What event is foreshadowed in verses 12–16? The bondage of the Israelites in Egypt for 400 years before they took possession of the land of Canaan is foreshadowed. This will be examined in a later lesson.

Abram’s Impatience

Abram left Haran when he was 75 years old (Genesis 12:4). He had traveled through Canaan, had sought refuge in Egypt for a time during a drought, and had then returned to settle in Canaan. While Lot had stayed in the fertile plains, Abram had settled with his household near Hebron. Remember that we already talked about Abram’s rescue of Lot, but that actually occurred after God had made the covenant with Abram (Genesis 18–19).

Let’s read Genesis 16:1–16 together and see how Abram and Sarai faltered in their trust of God’s promise. Have someone read the passage aloud.

• What type of literature is this passage? Historical narrative.
• How long had Abram been in Canaan? Ten years (v. 3).
• How old was Abram at this point? Since he left Haran at 75, he was 85 years old because verse 3 says he had been in Canaan for 10 years.
• What was Sarai’s age? While this text doesn’t tell us, we know from 17:17 that Abram was 10 years older, so Sarai would have been 75 at this time.
• How long had Sarai been waiting for a child? She had been barren her entire life (v. 11:30).
• What was Sarai’s proposition for providing Abram a child? She proposed that Abram should “go in to” (v. 2) her maid, Hagar, to have a child. A common custom of the day was for a man to take a wife’s servant as a concubine, or secondary wife. This made the child part of the household of the man. We see this same scenario played out later in Jacob’s life.
• How did Abram respond? He “listened to the voice” of his wife, agreeing with her proposition.
• What does “go in to” mean in this context? This is a euphemism for sexual relations. It is repeated in verse 4 as “went in to” and echoed in “your embrace” in verse 5.
• What was Hagar’s ethnicity? She was Egyptian. It is possible that Sarai took her as a servant during their time in Egypt.
• How did Sarai acknowledge God’s sovereignty? She noted that God had prevented her from having children (v. 2).
• How did Sarai discount God’s sovereignty? She sought to use human devices to bring about God’s promise rather than wait on his timing
• Did Sarai’s plan succeed? Yes, in the sense that Hagar conceived a child by Abram, but not in the sense of “obtaining a child.”
• What happened to the relationship between the two women after the conception? Hagar began to despise Sarai, creating tension in the relationship.
• Whom did Sarai blame for this situation? In the phrase “may the wrong done to me be on you” in verse 5, she acknowledged her own error, but she tried to place the blame on Abram for agreeing with her and carrying out the actions. It was a form of blame-shifting.
• How did Abram handle the situation? He allowed Sarai to deal with Hagar however she pleased.
• How did Sarai deal with Hagar? She was harsh with her.
• How did Hagar respond? She fled from Sarai’s presence into the wilderness, stopping at a spring on the way to Shur. This was on the way to Egypt from Hebron, so she was apparently on her way home to Egypt.
• Who appeared to Hagar? The Angel of the Lord.
• What clues in the text help us understand who this angel, or messenger, was? Because the angel used a first person pronoun in verse 10 (“I will surely multiply . . .”), and because the text says that the Lord (Yahweh) spoke to her and that she saw God, we can understand this to be a theophany and identify the Angel of the Lord as God the Son in pre-incarnate form.
• What two names of God do we learn in this passage? “You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees” is the Hebrew El Roi; Beer Lahai Roi is translated “well of the Living One who sees me.” God is a living God who sees all things.
• What three main things did the Son communicate to Hagar? She should return and submit to Sarai, she would have a multitude of offspring, and she should name her son Ishmael.
• Did the words of the Angel come to pass? Yes, verse 15 describes how the son was born and Abram named him Ishmael.
• Does anyone know what Ishmael’s name means? Encourage the students to look in the margin notes or footnotes related to verse 11. Point out the root “el” in the name, which almost always refers to God. Ishmael means “God hears.” His name would be a reminder to Hagar that God heard her and responded.
• What function do verses 15–16 serve in the narrative? This is an encapsulation of the entire chapter, and serves as a time marker in the narrative. If we read on to 17:1, we learn that 13 years pass between these chapters. Here we recognize a literary feature in the text used to help the reader transition to the next account.

Discover the Truth

For a long time God has been promising Abram a multitude of descendants. We can understand how both Abram and Sarai would be getting restless, wondering if they had missed something. We might imagine them asking if, in a senior moment, they had forgotten some part of the promise.

And, to bring about the fulfillment of the land inheritance, Abram had to get up and move. God brings about his plans through the actions of men and women throughout history. So maybe Sarai was trying to obey and Abram was thinking that God would want him to take the initiative. Under the circumstances, we can surely be sympathetic to their desire to act.

• By seeking to have a child through Hagar, was Abram directly violating any command God had given him? Not necessarily. God told him that his heir would be his own son (15:4). Abram was acting to bring an heir from his own body following the legal customs of the day. However, God’s design from creation was marriage to be one man and one woman, so Abram’s taking another wife (Hagar) was not God’s plan, though it seems God allowed polygamy during this time.

  Abram and Sarai, as faithful as they were, doubted God to some extent. Their failure to wait on God and to take matters into their own hands demonstrate this doubt. We don’t see the couple looking to God in prayer and asking for his wisdom, but simply acting in their own strength to accomplish God’s plans.

  Of course, it’s easy for us, 4,000 years removed and having the whole counsel of God to study, to pass judgment on the couple. We can see their impatience and read ahead to chapter 18 where Sarai is directly given the promise, telling ourselves that we would have done better. But would we have?

• In what way does this scene of blame-shifting between Sarai and Abram in verse 5 harken back to the garden? In Genesis 3, we see Eve shifting the blame to the serpent and Adam shifting the blame to Eve—and even to God—in an attempt to remove the consequences of their actions. This is what plays out as Sarai blames Abram and seeks relief from the consequences of her actions.

  Abram and Sarai were humans with a sinful nature. If we are honest, I bet each of us can look in our own hearts and understand their temptation to do things in their own strength and in their own timing. But even in the midst of our failures, we know that we can admit our sin to God and find perfect forgiveness in our perfect Savior.

Abram’s Error Activity

As we consider Abram’s actions, no doubt his intent was to bring about the promise God had given him. He wasn’t violating a direct command from God (as far as we know from the text), and it probably seemed to him that he was acting in a way that would bring about God’s promise. So where did he go wrong? Answer the questions in your Student Guide in the “Abram’s Error” activity to see if you can understand this idea better.

Have the students work in small groups or do the activity as a large group.

Connect to the Truth

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  Let’s think about these questions together.
• 1. What action had Abram previously taken that demonstrated his lack of trust in God’s promise of an heir? (Take a look at Genesis 12:10–13 if you need to.) Abram had lied to Pharaoh about Sarai being his wife, fearing that he would be killed for her sake. In this act, he was not trusting that God would give him the land and a son since he believed he would be killed. Dead men can’t inherit a land or have a son.
• 2. What part of God’s created order did Abram violate in trying to bring an heir into the world through Hagar? God intended marriage to be one man and one woman. It seems that they bowed to the culturally accepted practice of producing an heir through a second wife rather than trusting God to provide through their legitimate marriage.
• 3. Abram allowed Sarai to do whatever she wanted after Hagar conceived. What consequence might have happened had God not intervened and told Hagar to return? Abram probably didn’t think this through very well. Had Hagar returned to Egypt, his son may have been lost to him. The son he believed was the promised heir may have been lost without God’s intervention (though Ishmael was not the son of promise).
• 4. How would you explain how Abram went wrong in not waiting for God’s timing? Abram and Sarai sought to bring about God’s plan in their own timing and by their own methods rather than waiting on God’s timing and trusting him to bring about these promises.

  So, let’s not be too hard on Abram and Sarai since I doubt any of us would have done better. However, we do have them as an example of what to not do. This account gives us a reminder that we should seek God’s wisdom by prayer and counsel as we consider our actions. We shouldn’t think of our life as a puzzle that we have to solve so that we know exactly what God wants us to do. We need to seek God’s wisdom through prayer and studying his Word, and through godly counsel, taking action under the guidance of the Spirit and trusting in God’s power to fulfill his promises. And we must be sure that we never act sinfully to try and bring about what we believe God’s will to be.

Application

I hope that you can see how God has orchestrated his plan to bring salvation to all nations. Rather than providing a plan that depended on Abram keeping his half of the contract, God was pleased to guarantee the completion of his promise to Abram based solely on what God would do. This should give us great confidence. In the same way, our salvation was orchestrated by God, not us.

If you know the history from Abram forward to Jesus, you know there were many times where the people who were in the line of Jesus messed up. They made sinful choices and there were many consequences. But God didn’t change. His plan was in place, and he worked through many broken vessels to bring about his promise in the person of Jesus Christ. God is independent and faithful. He uses men and women to accomplish his plans, even when they disobey or try to do things their own way.

God used Abram’s error in his plan of history. We are sure to make mistakes in our own lives. Even when we think we are doing what is right, things can go wrong. But God redeems these things and uses them to conform us to the image of his Son (Romans 8:28–30). As we seek to grow in wisdom, patience, and trust, God is pleased to use us. We need to be careful to not act in our own strength, but trust that God will bring about his promises as we walk faithfully in obedience to him.

Abram was given a very direct revelation from God and a very specific promise, but the promises for us are different. No passage in Scripture promises you, by name, that you will have a son or inherit a certain property. But there are many promises God has given to us. In Philippians 1:6 we are promised that God will complete the work of salvation he has begun in us, but he doesn’t tell us all the details of how he will do that. We know Christ will return to restore all things, but we don’t know exactly when and how all the details will play out. How to act in the meantime is the question that requires study, fellowship, prayer, and walking in step with the Holy Spirit.

I hope this lesson has reminded you how much God has done for us through Abram and, ultimately, through Christ. Let’s think about how we can take what we have learned today and apply it to our lives as we seek to become more like Christ.

• What truth from the Scriptures we looked at today has helped you see God’s grace in the account of Abram? Accept various answers, but try to draw attention to how God showed Abram kindness apart from any goodness in Abram—it was God’s free gift to him. Even when Abram made mistakes, God was pleased to redeem those mistakes.
• How does knowing that God is unchanging and absolutely faithful give you peace and assurance of your salvation (if you have trusted in Christ’s work)? If God is faithful to his promises to forgive us of our sins, then we have no fear that this will ever change. The immutability of God offers us great security and assurance.
• What does it mean to “wait on God” and his timing? Why is this so challenging at a practical level? Discuss various answers. To wait on God is to have a certain hope that God will fulfill his promises, but not know his timing or exact methods. We are prone to want things to happen quickly to improve our circumstances, so we act in our own strength. We know we are called to live our lives and not just sit around and do nothing, so it can sometimes be difficult to discern how to act and when.
• In what areas of your life do you find it hard to wait on God’s timing? Discuss various answers and allow people to share their struggles. This could be an opportunity to pray for one another. Common issues may be: infertility, marriage, jobs, schooling, suffering through an illness or disability, etc.
• How do we maintain hope in the midst of circumstances where God seems to have forgotten us? Discuss various answers. Focus on the God who sees (El Roi) and knows our circumstances and the promises he has given us. God is faithful to fulfill his promises and all-powerful to do so. Consider reading Psalm 27 as an example of waiting on God while trusting in him.

Group Prayer

Be sure to pray with your class and take requests if time allows.

• Praise God for his unchanging character and his faithfulness to fulfill his promises.
• Ask God for wisdom and boldness to proclaim the good news of the gospel of Christ.
• Thank God for giving us his Spirit to guide us in truth.