** This is Part 2 of my two part blog. **
There was this unbelievable darkness … and it came over him and it put him into almost a kind of trance. And out of that dark cloud God spoke about dark things that would happen in the future …
–> and he explains to Abram the future of his descendants … that they are going to be slaves, they’re going to be exiles, they’re going to be away from this land … they won’t come back for 400 years.
Now referring back to verse 17 …
(and) When the sun had set and darkness had fallen a smoking pot and a blazing torch appeared.
Now this smoking pot and blazing torch … nobody knows exactly how to translate this … it’s very hard to know. But here’s what we know. Something appeared … and in the original Hebrew text they used the same words for smoke and for blaze.
And it’s the same words used to describe the top of Mt. Sinai when God came down on it years later.
And the same words were also used to describe the pillar of God’s presence called a cloudy pillar.
It was the presence of God. The best way I found to describe this was when one scholar put it this way, he says …
“At that minute, suddenly in the midst of the darkness a searing streak appeared and held it’s shape. It spewed fire and smoke, and sparks. It was the presence of God, BUT it wasn’t just the presence of God that astonished Abram … but also what it did … LOOK at verse 17 again “it passed between the pieces.” It went down the aisle made by the pieces. And here’s the reason this was so strange, this was so incredible … THIS is the gospel. This is the whole gospel right here. And before you start thinking I’ve totally lost my marbles, stay with me. I don’t think there’s any place in the New Testament that gets as thorough going over as this.
Here’s what’s going on. You see, There’s always two problems with living a confident big life. I mean, why aren’t you and I living the same kind of life Abram lived? The first problem is … we do like Abram … when Abram says, “Lord, how can I know?” “How can I know all these great things are going to happen?” How can I trust your promise? How can I know you will come through?
What’s astonishing is when God does appear and he passed between these pieces. Do you now know what he’s saying? >>>>
What he is saying to Abram is, “I have promised to bless you, Abram … to bring salvation to the world. And if I don’t do what I say …
May my immutability experience mutation.
May my immortality suffer mortality.
May my infinity suffer limitation and finitude.
May my power suffer powerlessness.
May the impossible become possible.
May I be cutoff. May I be destroyed.
May my body be ripped to pieces.”
This is what God is saying to Abram … and to us.
Now if you think that’s amazing … and it is. But that’s not all, because Abram looks at God at this point, in a sense, and says what most of us say … “Wow, alright.” But that’s not the only problem that I’ve got with living a big life. I recognize you’ve made this promise. … and how amazing and wonderful that you pass between the pieces and you would make a promise like this, but you know I guess what it comes right down to Lord I never really thought you would break your promise. Not really. The real problem is how do I know Lord about ME?
Here you’ve given me this wonderful promise and I don’t think I can come through.
You said … you will be my people; I will be your God.
I believe you will be my God but how am I ever going to be your person? I will let you down. You will finally get tired of me. You will finally say, “urrrrgh, How many times will he break the promise? That’s it … this is the 50th time – that’s it.”
Finally, you will give up on me. How can I know about you … well, now I know because you’ve passed between the pieces. But how will I know about me?
And here’s the thing that Abram knew … and that we’ll all know in a minute once we realize this …
God walked through the pieces alone. He did not say, Abram, now you do it.
And let me tell you this is absolutely unique … and stunning. Because we know from history and archeology … that whenever a king would enter into a covenant relationship with a vassal … a lesser king, or a conquered king, or a servant … both the king and the other person would go through the pieces. Both would say, if I don’t do my part may I be as eaten by the birds of the air and the beast of the field.
But when God goes through by himself … he’s saying, Abraham I’m going to go through for both of us. Do you see how this is the gospel? Salvation and the Christian faith is not a cooperative effort … it is not God helps those who help themselves … it is not a partnership . God comes through and says, “I will take upon myself the curse of the covenant for both of us. Abraham, may I be cutoff if I don’t do my part of the bargain … BUT Abraham(!), may I be cutoff if you don’t do yours.”
Abram … I will bless you … Even if it means – and it did – that I will have to die.
Don’t you realize that century’s later (2,130 yrs) darkness came down again? You can read about it in Mark chapter 15 verse 33 where it says,
33 And at the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land and the ninth hour Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me.
And Isaiah 53 verse 8 says, … something that Abram didn’t know … Abram had no idea what it was going to cost God to make the promise he did. But Isaiah says about the Messiah, “he was cutoff from the land of the living for the transgression of my people he was stricken.”
His immortality did become mortality
His immutability did suffer mutation.
The impossible became possible.
God died … God was cutoff … God was trampled into the dust … the darkness came down on him.
Here’s how we apply this. First of all, you and I will see that all of our problems … and I mean all of our problems … I mean all of our problems come because we – you and I – don’t trust the promises of God. Our anchors are not all the way down.
You know why we worry? We don’t trust his wisdom.
You know why we get angry and maybe bitter? We don’t trust his justice.
Do you know why some of us hate ourselves, because we don’t trust his love and his grace.
In fact, do you know why we disobey anytime, ever? Why we ever do the wrong thing? Because we don’t trust … we don’t trust that God’s presence is better than anything we could possibly get by disobeying.
In other words, you I believe we will do better with what will make us happy because if I trust God … if I trust God … if I trust God all the way to the bottom, I might miss out. Our lack of self-control, our lack of self-esteem, our anxiety, our bitterness, whatever it is … our anchor is in the water … but we don’t have it all the way down to the bottom under something secure. That’s the problem. We need an anchor for our soul. How do you get it? Well first of all, very simple, very very simple … two or three ways to put it and we all know this answer. First of all, we go to God and say, “How do I know.” Isn’t that what Abram did? … Isn’t it wonderful? … Abram came and said, Lord I need to trust you more … I don’t see how I can. And what did God say … did he say?, “How dare you! How dare you question me!” Nooo, isn’t it wonderful, God says, I’ll show you. You know when the man came to Jesus and said, “Would you please heal my son?” And Jesus says, “Well of course I can if you believe.” And what did the man say, “I think I believe, help my unbelief.” And Jesus healed his son … because here’s the gospel … this is good news. Take the person who says, I believe but I’m afraid I don’t believe enough, but I want to believe more. That’s the beginning of belief because they are going to Him. Because you have to go and say How do I know? You have to go to him and just tell him you don’t have it. He isn’t going to clobber you. John the Baptist sent a messenger, remember … he says, Are you the one who is to come or should we look for someone else. And Jesus doesn’t say, How dare you for saying that … how dare you to question me. No, he sends a message back.
If we go into God and say, I know what my problem is I don’t trust you enough. And in all honesty, I don’t trust me … I don’t have this mastery that Abram had. Help me. I think God will respond.
And secondly, here’s something important I learned I think is helpful especially with today’s discourse. The way you get the anchor for your soul is to major in the majors, not major in the minors. Focus on living the big life like Abram … don’t get distracted by the minor issues?
- Forget about whether or not God invented the world in seven 24 hour days or whether he used evolution. Don’t worry about it. Sure it’s made the cover of TIME magazine and the front page of the New York Times a few years ago – Big deal!
- Let’s not talk about abortion …
- let’s not talk about homosexuality …
- let’s not talk about tongues …
- let’s not talk about denominations.
- let’s not talk about even whether all the miracles in the Bible happened.
All we have to do is understand that if Jesus is who he says he is –
if Jesus is the one for whom the darkness came down –
if Jesus is the one that was cutoff from the land of the living …
if Jesus is the one! Everything else falls into place.
You’re not going to get an anchor for your soul or improve your faith by studying archeology or by looking at the peripherals … getting all caught up in the minor things. We’ve got to remember what God did for Abraham … he showed him the gospel. We’ve got to get into God’s word and go to Jesus. We’ve got to read and study what he did. And finally, You have to realize Jesus Christ loves you so much that He became your Advocate to God. There’s our anchor … Jesus Christ. Because if our anchor was just hanging in the water that still wouldn’t dislodge Jesus Christ from us. Even hell … God poured hell itself down on him. He was ripped to pieces … and he stayed … he fulfilled the resurrection for us. There’s our anchor. Because if you go to Jesus Christ first everything else in the Christian life falls into place.
- How do you know there’s a God? Look at the evidence for Jesus.
- How do you believe in miracles? Well if Jesus is who he says he is then miracles are no sweat.
- Why do you believe this … why do you believe that.
- You know I don’t believe Christians are right about this or that …
- Everything falls into place intellectually but personally, what you need is Him. You need the sight of him … you need a vision of him to feel his presence.
- Have you gotten any today? Has this caused you to think?
- Have you had some cobwebs shaken in your mind?
- That’s the way the anchor goes all the way down and is firm.
- And eventually nothing will move you. Nothing will move you away from your anchor.
- And you will say, Lord God – YOU are my shield, my anchor … not circumstances … and you are my exceedingly great reward.
Don’t you see he doesn’t say, My Friends, I’ve come to bring you your reward. He says, “I’ve come to BE your reward. I’ve come to give you Jesus.