Post 23 "I am thy shield"

Genesis 15 verse 1 "After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward."

Let's remember for a moment. We have moved through 14 chapters. We have come from Adam in the Garden and the Lord walking in the cool of the day looking for Adam. Adam said "I was afraid." Now the Lord comes to Abram and starts with 'Fear not'. Sin has caused a seperation. It is no longer the walks in the garden together. Man knows he is sinful before an awesome and perfect God.

This chapter is about immediately after Lot left for the well watered plains of Jordan. Abram is wondering about his heir. Perhaps by tradition, Abram thinks his steward will be his heir. The Lord told Abram that he was mistaken and that his heir would be his own child. Then comes the instructions to take a heifer of three years old, a she goat of three and a ram of three plus a turtledove and a young pigeon with instructions on how to lay them out. Abram must have waited for a while because he had to keep the fowls (maybe buzzards) away until sunset. v12.

A deep sleep comes over Abram v12, then a "horror of great darkness fell upon him." Here is where the Lord tells Abram of the 400 years of slavery of his people in Egypt. The Lrod also tells of them coming out of Egypt with "great substance". v14. Then the people would return to Canaan.

Verse 17 gives a stark contrast to the Lord walking in the cool of the day with Adam before sin entered. Here it is "a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces."

The promise to Abram concerning the possessions of his descendants extended from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates and the lands of the people in the verses of the rest of the chapter.

There are a couple of things that point to why Abram was not allowed to take possession then. One was that the "iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full" perhaps referring to a judgment on them. Another was that Egypt would be judged. v14. It is also my belief that Abram's people were not yet great enough to possess the entire land. We will find that while under slavery they grew to great numbers with the Egyptians fearing they would outnumber even them. Then there is the great substance of verse 14. It would be tough to finance a nation without great substance. So, the nation had to grow and mature and gain some wealth before they became the actual possessors of Canaan.

The Lord has revealed more about himself. He is possessor of heaven and earth in verse 19 of the last chapter. In this chapter He is thy shield and thy exceeding great reward.
For additional reading concerning the Lord as our shield you may read: Psalm 3:3, Proverbs 30:5 and Deuteronomy 33:29. Just a little homework.

I was 'raised on' the New Testament in church although we studied the stories of the Old Testament. Actually, the Old Testament scared me some. I do not pretend to understand all the things there. After learning of the kindness that Jesus taught and the lessons on turning the other cheek, the happenings of the Old Testament seemed odd to me. I was trying to understand the ways of God and he quite frankly does not tell us everything. He moves in mysterious ways. We must remember that Satan is the enemy of God. While the saga is going on with Abram, Satan is corrupting nations which worship other gods and diggings have shown that they sacrificed children to idols. (It would make sense to me that Satan knew of the plan to make Israel a great nation and that the promise of redemption would come through that nation. I can almost picture him sitting out in the bushes somewhere listening to conversations about that promise. And so he sets out to build nations to come against Israel to stop the promise.) These nations were judged, for when they followed the leadership of Satan they also became the enemies of God. Sometimes we get to thinking that the whole thing is about us (or me) but it is not. There is a spiritual war going on around us. Satan cannot win, but he wants to inflict harm, then as now. It was about more than Abram's travels then and it is about more than our lives now. God knows the big picture while we see only a small portion. It would behoove us to accept God's wisdom and have faith that things will come out for the better because He is in control.