Abram believes the Lord is going to give his descendants the land, but in his human weakness he also wants proof he can hold onto as the years grow long and as he waits for the Lord to do what He's promised. When we closed yesterday, he asked the Lord, "How can I know that I will gain possession of it?"
The Lord has no rebuke for Abram. He knows Abram needs tangible proof that the promise will come true, so in today's passage He makes a legal agreement with Abram that grants Abram and his descendants the deed to the land.
"So the Lord said to him, 'Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.'" (Genesis 15:9) The Lord is about to perform a practice that in ancient times was known as "cutting covenant". The two parties who desired to make an irrevocable covenant with each other would sacrifice an animal, cut the dead animal into two pieces, and walk between the two pieces in the blood. I know this sounds gruesome, but in those days there weren't yet any lawyers to draw up legal contracts like we have today. There weren't any notary publics to attest to the fact that both parties had signed a legal contract. There were no judges before whom two parties could stand and enter into an agreement with each other under oath. Walking through the blood together made a statement about the seriousness of breaking the covenant. It was the same as saying, "If I should break this covenant, may my blood be shed like this sacrificial animal's."
When many of the people of the prophet Jeremiah's day refused repeatedly to repent and turn away from idolatry, the Lord referred to the covenant He and the nation had made with each other. By turning away from the living God to useless idols, the people had broken their side of the bargain. Because they had done this, the Lord said, "Those who have violated My covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before Me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces." (Jeremiah 34:18)
Whenever the Lord makes a covenant with humans, He makes it with blood. In Exodus 24 we find Moses reading to the people all the Lord's words and laws. They replied, "Everything the Lord has said we will do." (Exodus 24:3) When they accepted the Lord's words in this way, Moses wrote all the Lord's words down, then the following morning he read the book to the people and gave them a second chance to either accept or reject the covenant. Again the people replied, "We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey." (Exodus 24:7) Upon their acceptance of the Lord's word, Moses sprinkled the people with the blood of animals that had been sacrificed to the Lord earlier in the morning, saying, "This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words." (Exodus 24:8) This was the old covenant.
We are now under the new covenant---the covenant God made with us through the blood of His own Son. This is why, when blessing the cup at the Last Supper, the Lord Jesus said, "This is My blood of the new covenant." The Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter pointed out that we who believe in Christ are symbolically "sprinkled" with the blood of the new covenant. (Hebrews 10:22, Hebrews 12:24, 1 Peter 1:2) By accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, we are entering into a covenant with the living God. This covenant was sealed not by the blood of animals but by the blood of the perfect Son of God.
In all of these situations, we find God making an offer and humans accepting His offer. The deal is sealed by blood. Blood is the life of the body, so its use in these matters signify how serious the covenant is and how serious the breaking of the covenant is. Tomorrow we are going to take a look at the actual process God and Abram go through when sealing the covenant regarding the promised land.
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