If there has been a time when you have taken a stand for God in the strength of his grace, supplied to you at that moment, and yet later, you wondered if you did the right thing, that is only what you might expect. If all this sounds familiar to you, take comfort from the fact that it is a very natural reaction and all the great saints of God suffer from it. Doubt begins to rise in his heart as to whether he did the right thing or not. The wind was howling around it, and the sand was sifting through its cracks.
After the wealth and luxury of Sodom that tent must have looked awfully shabby. I don't want you saying that you made Abram rich." So the king went back to Sodom with all his riches and now Abram is back in his tent, experiencing a very human reaction. With his heart aflame with the love and grace of God, Abram had said to this king, "I want nothing of all that you have. He did it, of course, in the strength of the fellowship he had enjoyed with Melchizedek. Perhaps also there was fear because he had turned down the king of Sodom's offer of a fortune.
No doubt he said to himself, "What have I gotten myself into now? I am almost sorry that I won this battle, for when he comes back what am I going to do? I won't be able to catch him off guard another time." So fear fills his heart. We can easily understand the justified fear that Abram felt as he faced the possibility of Chedorlaomer's return. Dictators do not take this kind of treatment lightly! Abram had publicly humiliated him by overthrowing his vast army with but a handful of men. He is afraid of this man, Chedorlaomer, the great king whom he had conquered. Coming, as this incident does, after Abram's return from his battle with the four eastern kings and his encounter with the king of Sodom, we can see why he is so fearful. He was having a sleepless night and the trouble was that he was afraid. God appears to Abram in a vision, but when he comes, his first words are, "Fear not!" This reveals what is going on in Abram's heart. The heart of this passage does not lie in its great phrases, however, but in its connection with the preceding events of Abram's life. And then there is that familiar word in the last verse, "And he believed the Lord and it was reckoned to him for righteousness." The fires of the Reformation were lit from that ringing phrase! This is the first intimation of this character of God in Scripture. The third phrase is, "I am your shield." In a thousand wonderful variations, we find this thought repeated frequently: God is our refuge and our strength God is a tower of refuge God is an overshadowing rock blessed is he that hides under the shadow of the Almighty. The second phrase is the word that came to Abram, "Fear not!" How often this is God's word to man, throughout this book.
The word of the Lord came to many men, just as it came to Abram, and they wrote as they were borne along by the Holy Spirit, and then actually sat down and studied their own writings to learn what God had said, (1 Peter 1:10-12 RSV).
(Genesis 15:1-6 RSV)ĭid you catch the first one, in the very first line, "the word of the Lord came"? The recurrence of this phrase many times afterward in Scripture emphasizes the God-breathed character of the Bible. See if you can recognize them:Īfter these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield your reward shall be very great." But Abram said, "O Lord God, what wilt thou give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus" And Abram said, "Behold, thou hast given me no offspring and a slave born in my house will be my heir." And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, "This man shall not be your heir your own son shall be your heir." And he brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." And he believed the Lord and he reckoned it to him as righteousness. Four such phrases appear in this paragraph for the first time in the Bible, though they are repeated many, many times afterward. By this is meant that the first time a word or phrase is used in the Bible, it is used in such a way or in such a context as to highlight the basic meaning of it throughout the rest of Scripture. The opening paragraph of Genesis 15 strikingly illustrates for us what is commonly called in Bible study, the law of first occurrence.
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