NUMBER ONE-Gen. 15:7-21

 

      Leave it all!  Leave everything that you have ever known.  You will leave your home, your family, your history and take it on the road.  That's it...  That's what Abram heard one day.  An unfamiliar but powerful voice registers in his minds eye and ear.  And so it starts, an awesome journey of faith begins with this call.  Some calls really get our attention don't they?  So in our more modern sense this call isn't staggering, or is it?  How many calls have you argued?  Some calls really anger us, especially in consideration of the term 'Number One.'  In our lives, we question a lot of calls when it threatens our favorite team and/or sport; do we not?  Our goals, the goals of our favorite team are Number One, right.  We see that forefinger wagging almost daily for some team by some fan, which is short for fanatic.  And how do we react when someone else's call threatens those goals?  Goals;... this goal relayed to Abram by a strange and powerful voice is really unspecified, as one Study Bible says.  "This goal is strictly a test of faith."  And remember, this test came from an unseen source.  Yet, this goal in God's call will force Abram to test everything that he knows, everything that he places as sacred.  It will test him to the core of his being.  However, we realize that this is the beginning of every beginning.  God calls each of us into covenant relationship modeled and initiated by this staggering, mind-stretching, incredulous Leap of faith.  One Commentary reminds us of the fullness and scope of God's Number One covenant, given to Abram.  God promises Abram land.  He promises him a great territory.  And God promises to make him a nation; a great nation.   And God promises that he will become a blessing; a blessing to everyone.  Remember how important blessings are, especially in ancient times.  The oldest adult male was to receive his father's blessing before death; always.  This ensured the bloodline, the property, and the care of the remaining family members.  Abram's covenant is actually a tripartite promise or treaty.  Yes, Abram is called to leave every relative, everything that he has ever known, to follow God.  Abram packed up all that he could carry and followed his faith.

      God's promise beckoned and his covenant reassured this visionary man.  Don't get me wrong, it had its' perks.  As we have mentioned, God will make Abram's name great, just his name will be a blessing.  Those who bless you will be blessed and those that curse you will be cursed.  Pretty strong stuff for a beginning dialogue, don't you think.  And, Canaan must have been an amazing place as God's promise would indicate.  But, Abram has never seen it.  Still, he agrees to go where he has never been.  This covenantal land has always been there since the Creation, but Abram had no knowledge of it.  Here is the 'Promised Land.'  And isn't this aspect the most important meaning of Covenant;... a promise from God?  Indeed, at this very juncture, the fate of the world is decided.  God aligns himself with all of his children, through Abraham; so closely that whoever curses Abram is guilty of cursing God.  That's a pretty tight relationship.  So on the journey, the first stop comes.  God could have left him there, Abram wouldn't have known.  I wonder, how long had they been on this road when they reached that first area.  How many of his family could have complained?  Sarai was still childless, but Lot and his wife had offspring.  The journey has just begun, but they didn't know that.  Abram builds an altar and continues the journey to Bethel.  Paul journeyed here later and we know a lot more about those travels.  But his covenant will come later.  Faithfully Abram keeps his part of the covenant and continues on.  He builds another altar and invokes God's name, yet we don't even hear that name in Scripture; not just yet.  The KJV does shed a little more light here, "He built an altar in Canaan for the Lord appeared unto Abram."  I wonder if Abram told his family about this compelling voice in his head and the vision that he had seen.  I wonder if he told them about this appearance, and remember; Abram never saw God directly.  You couldn't and still be alive.  It's probably, a good thing that they didn't have psychologists yet.  I can just hear his family, "Great, we move on into a wilderness."  Now remember, Abram was seventy-five years old when this began. Can't you just hear Abram's family?  'Okay, God has promised you the moon and we get a wilderness.  Super, it's about time for a vote on a new leader for our group; did you really see God?  Abram dear, I believe that you've been in the sun too long.  You don't need to continue drinking that fermented cactus juice, dear.'  But the move is far from being over, Abram moves on to the Negeb, a desert, in additional stages of their journey.  The KJV Study Bible says a lot here also.  The Hebrew word for covenant is berith and it means a promise, but a deep, fulfilling, engulfing promise.  God promises and Abram signs the covenant with his obedience and unquestioning faith.  Unquestioned faith finds Unconditional grace.  And this unconditional grace will lead to the blessing of children and their children and their children's children.  God promised a blessing, but it's a long time before completion.  Indeed, Abram's covenant begins in Chapter Eleven of Genesis and doesn't reach completion until Chapter 25.  As we know, Isaac and Jacob received this same berith from God.  But when the call to faith came, Abram didn't know that.  The KJV continues, "The greatest attribute of Abram was his determination to be obedient to the Lord, whatever the cost.  In fact, the expression which forms the final phrase of v. 2 is a mandate.  Abram is instructed to be a blessing; it is therefore a missionary mandate encompassing all people."  This was a mandate, but a mandate of covenant with unconditional love and promise.  Again we are reminded of Paul's faith and journeys.  Why, because there wouldn't have been a Paul or mission work or journeys or any new covenant without this original from God.  All that ensues in the history of Israel and the world turned on the faith of this one man; this one promise.

      I mentioned the breadth of this covenant earlier.  Let's look a little farther along Abram's journey of faith.  This part of the continuing covenant in Chapter fifteen turns a little dark.  God promises Abram that his descendants will own Canaan but not for four generations.  Why, because the Amorites were not yet done.  God promises that Abrams' heirs will inherit the Promised Land, yet he hasn't turned it loose for God's children live there already.  The Amorites receive God's patience for four hundred years to abandon their gods and worship him.  Unfortunately, the only one that we know received this grace is Rahab and her family.  God had not finished his judgment with these Amorites.  And the sun went down and the covenant was sealed with a sign; a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between the pieces of Abrams offering.  The KJV Study Bible mentions that this torch is the column of fire that will light their way out of bondage those four generations later in Egypt.  God granted a continuance of divine acceptance of their covenant through Abram's continued obedience and sacrifices.  Now this new sacrifice is extremely important and a little uncomfortable for the males.  The Hebrew verb, karath, in this covenant means the cutting of flesh.  The flesh of the sacrifice had been hewn into pieces.  And now the sign of covenant with God becomes one of a cutting and this begins the requirement of circumcision for all males in relationship with YHWH.  OUCH!  Yet this is the return from Adam's sinful end into complete relationship with God-COVENANT RELATIONSHIP!  God didn't stop his promise of covenant in Eden-we did! 

      One scholar reminds us, "Though a human covenant usually assumes a reciprocal relationship between two free parties, this covenant made by God with man is one in which the man was not given conditions or placed on an equal plane with God, who, in fact, must condescend in grace to come to the man.  Man is merely a recipient of the gift of YAHWEH, and his sole qualification is a willingness to receive God's gift of mercy."  Yes, covenant involves a return of promise from ourselves, doesn't it?  And doesn't this remind you of another covenant that comes for us much later in the Scriptures?  But remember, Christ was there for the beginning of Covenant!

      Everything we've talked about this morning has spoken of promise.  And, as we have seen, covenant is an enduring and fluid process.  Abram's story and journey with God's covenant lasts for the greater part of Genesis, which means beginning.  So, what does this say about our covenant with God?  Abram went to the Promised Land, the land of covenant.  And millennia later, Christ went to prepare a place, a room, for us completing the Promise of God.  And all of this takes place before the blessing that was Isaac; even before a man becomes named Abraham and a woman becomes Sarah.  Where do we stand on our promise?  How far are we willing to go on our journey?  God's promise stands open and beckons us.  How will you and I answer this call to Covenant?