Genesis 15: The God Who Stakes His Own Life on His Promise

Introduction

"How would you say your relationship with God is going right now?" That is the question Joshua Gibbs, a guest preacher at Grove Hill Evangelical Church, uses to open his message on Genesis 15. Maybe things are going well, and that is a reason to thank God. But maybe you are painfully aware of your failures, struggling with sin, doubting, or simply feeling weary. You may tick every box on the outside and still find it hard to turn to God as your Father.

The preacher admits it: "There are times in our lives when the huge promises of God meet circumstances that can be very dark, and that produces doubt." That is exactly what Abram is going through. In chapter 12, God promised him the land of Canaan and a great many descendants. None of it has happened yet.

And yet, he adds, God has made us even greater promises: that we can come to him whatever we have done, that we are forgiven and accepted, that nothing can separate us from his love, and that a glorious and secure future awaits us. In Genesis 15, he sees two big reasons to keep trusting those promises: you can trust the God who can do the impossible (verses 1 to 6), and you can trust the God who stakes his own life (verses 7 to 21). Both sections follow the same pattern: God repeats his promise, Abram doubts, and then God confirms and strengthens his promise.

Outline of the message

1. God repeats his promise

God asked Abram to leave the comfort of his home and family. At 75, with a barren wife, Abram took a step of faith. But in chapter 15 he is no closer to seeing the promise fulfilled, and he seems afraid that God has forgotten it.
It is into this fear that the word of the LORD comes to him: "Don't be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, and your exceedingly great reward" (Genesis 15:1).
Despite the delay, God has not forgotten. The same goes for us: we may look at our lives and wonder whether God has forgotten his promises, but he has not, and he wants us to be sure of it.

2. Abram doubts, and he tells God

Abram's first words to God in Genesis are a question: "Lord Yahweh, what will you give me, seeing I go childless, and he who will inherit my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" (Genesis 15:2).
The promise seems so impossible to him that he has drawn up a backup plan: leave his inheritance to a servant. The preacher finds it reassuring that even Abram, whom the New Testament holds up as the model of faith, had questions and doubts: "Because I have them too."
Abram does not withdraw into himself or run away from God. He submits respectfully, calling him "Lord Yahweh," and honestly entrusts him with his fears. That is a model for us.
Joshua Gibbs quotes an author: "Even our doubting thoughts and guilty feelings are better laid out before the gracious gaze of the Lord than nursed in secret in our hearts." Doubts will come. What matters is what we do with them.

3. God confirms his promise: the God who made the stars

God does not back down. He does not say, "Sorry, I was distracted." He confirms: "This man will not be your heir; but he who will come out of your own body will be your heir" (Genesis 15:4). God does not over-promise and under-deliver, as we do.
He does not scold Abram or say, "How dare you question me?" He meets him in his doubts and gives him the assurance he needs. God is never shocked by what we think: he already knows our hearts.
We often believe the same lie as Eve in the Garden of Eden: "Did God really say?" (see Genesis 3:1). And God reassures us, just as he reassures Abram.
"Look now toward the sky, and count the stars, if you are able to count them. [...] So shall your seed be" (Genesis 15:5). It is estimated that there are somewhere between a thousand and two thousand billion billion stars. Four thousand years later, despite all our science, we have barely scratched the surface.
If the preacher took someone outside on a clear night and promised them a pound for every visible star, it would be wishful thinking. What changes everything is what Genesis has already said, almost in passing: God "also made the stars" (Genesis 1:16). A son for an old man and a barren woman seems impossible, but not for the one who made more stars than anyone can count.

4. Abram believes, and righteousness is credited to him

The next sentence may be even crazier: "He believed in Yahweh, who credited it to him as righteousness" (Genesis 15:6). A man unable to have children hears that he will have as many descendants as there are stars, and he believes it.
To explain this idea of crediting, Joshua Gibbs, who recently started working in a school and calls himself "terrible at maths," imagines taking a maths test alongside a student. She gets a perfect score, and he fails completely. Just before marking, she swaps the papers. He has done nothing to earn the grade, but the credit for her work becomes his.
Abram was not blameless: he lied, he put his own safety ahead of his wife's, he leaned on things other than God. Yet when he believes the promise, God credits righteousness to him.
Paul picks up these verses: "Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was credited to him, but for ours also, to whom it will be credited, who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead" (Romans 4:23-24). We keep sinning and wavering like Abram, but the perfect righteousness of Jesus is placed on our account.
To anyone who is not a Christian, the preacher says: all God asks of you is to put your trust in him, and perfect righteousness will be credited to you. We can be sure of this because Jesus really died and really rose again.

5. A covenant sealed between the divided animals

God repeats his promise of the land (verse 7), and Abram doubts again: "Lord Yahweh, how will I know that I will inherit it?" (verse 8). He has just believed the impossible and still needs reassurance. For the preacher, this is encouraging: God does not reject us when our faith rises and falls.
We do the same. God promises that our sufferings, however painful, are preparing for us an eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). But we cannot yet see that home, and carrying on as a Christian, serving others and fighting sin day after day can be exhausting.
Then comes the "strange" part: a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtledove and a young pigeon, cut in two and laid opposite each other (verses 9 and 10). "I like a barbecue as much as the next person, but that is not quite what I had in mind."
The preacher compares the scene to a wedding: a promise is made ("till death do us part"), then a visible symbol confirms it, the rings. Here, the promise is in verse 18, and the symbol is in verse 17: a smoking furnace and flames pass between the divided animals.
Jeremiah 34:18-20 explains the custom: those who do not keep the covenant will be treated like the calf cut in two, between whose pieces they passed, and their corpses will become food for the birds. Passing between the pieces means saying, "If I do not keep this promise, may I end up like these animals." It is the most serious promise there is.

6. A promise the Israelites could recognize

The first readers of Genesis are Abram's descendants, the Israelites in the wilderness. They are still waiting for the promised land, and they doubt that God will help them take it from the fearsome peoples who live there.
They hear God tell Abram that they will be slaves, then that the nation will be judged and they will come out with great wealth (verses 13 and 14). For a generation whose backs still bear the marks of Egypt's whip, the thick darkness of verse 12 recalls their slavery. The promise of the Exodus was fulfilled: when God promises, he keeps his word.
The smoking furnace and the flames remind them of the way God showed himself to them in the wilderness. "If this were a film, the Exodus theme music would start to play softly in the background."
The list of peoples and the precise borders in verses 18 to 21 give them confidence. It is a bit as if God were saying to us, "I am giving you all of London, everything inside the M25." The Israelites tremble before the giants of the land, even the Jebusites, and God names them one by one, saying he will give them this land. The preacher stresses how grave these words are: "God himself says: if I do not keep this promise, it will be the death of God." And he kept it: they settled in the land.

7. Abram was asleep: God does it all, even to the cross

In church we are often told that God loves us, but how can we know it when we are dealing with physical or mental health problems, difficult relationships or money worries? The preacher tells how a woman recently said to him: "Jesus hasn't helped me for years. Every time I call him, the line is busy." He admits he sometimes feels the same way, and he mentions the church that welcomes him and is praying for a new pastor: when God seems not to answer, even prayers that are obviously good, it is easy to doubt his love.
By passing between the animals, God could not have made his love clearer, short of becoming a man and really suffering for us. "But God commends his own love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). God does not just say he loves us, he proves it.
Before the Son of God on the cross, "it is as if God were crying out to us: I love you. You are my son, you are my daughter. I will never let you go. I will bring you all the way through."
And our sin? In a marriage, two people make vows. Here, what does Abram do in verse 17? Nothing at all, he is not even mentioned. Verse 12 explains why: he is in a deep sleep. God acts like a groom left standing alone at the altar who decides to say all the vows anyway: "I would rather be torn apart like an animal than give up my relationship with you."
For our salvation, we bring nothing. If you think God is lucky to have you on his team, this passage corrects you. If you feel useless, weighed down by trials and by sin, the good news is that you only have to line up right behind Abram. Jesus promises: "He who comes to me I will in no way throw out" (John 6:37).

Key takeaways

Doubt is not the end: like Abram, you can tell God about it honestly, and he meets you where you are.
God does not go back on his promises: he repeats them and confirms them, even when their fulfillment is slow in coming.
You can trust the God who can do the impossible: the one who made the stars credits the righteousness of Jesus to those who believe.
You can trust the God who stakes his own life: alone, he passed between the pieces, and on the cross he really died to keep his promise.
For your salvation, you bring nothing. God does it all, and he does not throw out anyone who comes to him.

Personal application

How would you honestly say your relationship with God is going right now?
What doubts are you nursing in secret instead of laying them out before the gracious gaze of the Lord?
Which of God's promises seems impossible to you today, and what changes for you in the fact that he made the stars?
When God seems not to answer your prayers, where do you look to be sure of his love?
Do you sometimes think you bring something to your salvation, or do you feel you have nothing to offer? How does the picture of Abram asleep speak to you?

Verses cited

Frequently asked questions

Was Abram wrong to doubt God's promises?

Joshua Gibbs finds it reassuring that even Abram, whom the New Testament presents as a model of faith, had questions. Abram does not run from God: he calls him "Lord Yahweh" and honestly entrusts him with his worry. God does not scold him, he meets him where he is and confirms his promise.

What does "he credited it to him as righteousness" mean in Genesis 15:6?

Abram was not blameless, but when he believes the promise, God puts righteousness on his account. The preacher compares this to a perfect exam paper swapped for his own. Paul takes up this verse in Romans 4: God also credits righteousness to those who believe in the one who raised Jesus from the dead.

Why does Abram cut animals in two in Genesis 15?

It is a covenant rite explained in Jeremiah 34: those who passed between the pieces were saying, "If I do not keep my promise, may I end up like these animals." Here, only God passes between the pieces, in the form of a smoking furnace and flames, while Abram sleeps. God stakes his life, and Abram brings nothing.