Day 16 – Genesis 12-15

Talking Points

• God calls Abram and tells him to leave the land of his father. God promises that He would give him a land, that he would become a great nation, that he would be great, and that through him many would be blessed. Abram naturally wonders how he will be a great nation when he does not have an heir.
• Abram’s response showed great trust. To leave his father’s land was to forfeit the security and future that were tied to it.
• In chapter 15, God makes a blood covenant with Abram. The peculiar thing is that God Himself guarantees both sides of the covenant. By doing this, God declares —

If I break it, I will die.
If you break it, I will die.

• This covenant is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus. Men break the covenant, and God responds through the cross of our redemption. Praise the Lord, our covenant-keeping God. Through Him we are saved.

Thoughts

Do you ever feel like God must be totally disappointed in you? Like for every good thing, there are 10 more where you just blow it? What impresses God? Can we impress God?

In Abram’s life, we see great steps — really great steps. We also see places where Abram fails miserably — crazily blows it. Like the day he gives his wife away to save his own skin! Poor Sarah. What in the world?! Here is the truth — it was not his works, good or bad, that impressed God. It was his faith. In Abram’s faith, he is declared right with God, in spite of his failings. “Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness” (15:6).

Our good news is that we are also made right with God, not by doing things or not doing things, but by faith. (See Ephesians 2:8-9.) Here is the thing that has been growing in me — it’s not that I’m so impressed by salvation by faith (I do love that), it’s that I’m increasingly impressed by our God who is totally trustworthy and worthy of my faith. We don’t have a blind faith, but a faith in our God who is perfect and faithful in every way. He is worthy!