Abram has asked for a sign that the Lord is really going to give his descendants 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.' Abram brought all these to Him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half." (Genesis 15:9-10) We discussed yesterday the ancient practice of "cutting covenant". The parties to a very serious, irrevocable agreement would sacrifice an animal swiftly and humanely, then cut the body in half, then walk together through the blood. This signified that if one of them broke the covenant, he owed his own blood (his life) as the penalty for his treachery. We know Abram sacrificed these animals before he cut them in two, so we need not worry that this was done while they were alive. For proof of this, the birds were dead just like the rest of the animals, but unlike the other animals he didn't cut the birds in two. This shows us that the sacrificing was all done first, then the cutting in two.
Several hours must have passed after Abram did what the Lord told him. "Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away." (Genesis 15:11) Abram has to wait for the Lord to perform His part of the transaction. I think the Lord makes him wait so that he will understand that a period of time is going to pass between Him making the promise of the land and Him fulfilling the promise. It's human nature for us to want things to happen right now, but things don't always happen right now. This is because we are not the only people involved in what the Lord is doing. Sometimes He has to work on the hearts of others to soften them toward us. Sometimes He has to keep urging someone to repent and do the right thing so He can use them as a blessing in our lives. It's not all about us. Every time the Lord works out one of His plans for our lives, He involves other people in it. Sadly, sometimes these people resist His will for a time before doing what He wants them to do. Worse yet, they may reject Him wholeheartedly and then He has to remove them from their role in His plan for our lives. But we have to remember that there are things going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. What seems to us like an unnecessary delay is very necessary from the viewpoint of God.
The long day has taken its toll on Abram. As darkness falls, he can no longer hold his eyes open. "As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him." (Genesis 15:12) The Lord is going to speak to him while he's in this deep sleep, but why is the darkness so dreadful? I think it may be because of the news the Lord gives him in verse 13: "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.'" (Genesis 15:13) This is not good news. But during the four hundred years Abram's people are in captivity, the Lord will be dealing with the hearts of the people of the land of Canaan. He will be urging them to turn back to Him from useless idols. They won't turn back, and He knows it because He's already promised Abram's descendants the land of Canaan, but God is so faithful and righteous that He must give them every opportunity to repent even though He knows they won't. The people of Canaan will never be able to stand before the great God and Judge and claim He never gave them a chance. They will never be able to say He was impatient with them. Instead they will have to admit He has been more than patient with them.
The Lord gave Abram the bad news first and now He will provide the good news. I don't know about you, but if someone asks me whether I want the bad news or the good news first, I want to hear the bad news first. That way, hopefully, the good news will make me feel better. "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." (Genesis 15:14-16) The Amorites are one of the tribes who inhabit the land of Canaan. Sin has a tipping point. It's like hanging a bucket on a rope and gradually filling the bucket with water. Eventually the water will start to spill over, tipping the bucket and causing everything in it to pour out. In the Scriptures we often find the Lord comparing sin to something that fills and overflows its container. It's at that point that He must judge sin. He was patient while the container filled up. He kept pleading with the people's hearts to stop filling the container with sin and to repent and be filled with the Holy Spirit instead. But if they do not listen, a tipping point is reached in time, and that is when He has to say, "No more!" A day will come when the sin of the Amorites reaches this tipping point, and then the Lord will call His people Israel out of Egypt and bring them to the land He has promised to them.
Abram himself will not live to see that day. I'm sure he longed to see that day, but the Lord makes i clear to him that he will die in peace, as an old man, before his descendants take possession of the promised land. There are far worse things, aren't there, than dying peacefully in our sleep in our old age? Though Abram won't see his descendants taking possession of the promised land, he must have felt comforted by the promise of a long and fulfilling life and a peaceful end to that life.
Now here is something we don't want to miss. When two men of Abram's day "cut covenant" with each other, both of them had to walk through the blood. This is because the keeping of the covenant depended on both of them doing what was required in the agreement. But in the covenant the Lord makes with Abram regarding the promised land, only the Lord walks through the blood. This is because the keeping of the covenant depends solely on the Lord performing His part of the agreement. Abram's descendants won't be perfect, just as Abram himself wasn't perfect. They won't always do what is right. They won't always be faithful to God. But God is going to give them the land anyway. There is nothing Abram can do that will prevent the Lord from keeping His promise. There is nothing Abram's descendants can do to keep God from calling them out of Egypt and helping them to take possession of the land. It's going to happen, and it depends entirely on God's unbreakable promise, so He walks through the blood alone. "When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces." (Genesis 15:17)
The Lord offers this covenant; all Abram has to do is accept it by faith. This is a beautiful picture of the Lord's glorious plan of salvation: the Lord offers it and all we have to do is accept it. The Lord Jesus Christ did all the work of salvation for us. Just as God the Father walks through the blood alone in today's passage, Christ walked through the blood alone (His own blood) in order to offer us redemption freely. He paid the price, not us. There was nothing we could do to save ourselves, so He did for us what we could not do, and all we have to do is accept it on faith. With His own body and blood on the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ "cut covenant" with us. He is the One who saves us and He is the One who keeps us saved.
The Lord concludes this legal and binding transaction by speaking the terms of the agreement aloud to Abram. "On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, 'To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates---the land of the Kenites, Kenezzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.'" (Genesis 15:18)
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