Then He said to Abram: “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years." (Gen 15,13)

How excited would we be if God told us that the fulfillment of the greatest promises He is currently making to us would only be experienced by our descendants sometime after the year 2400? Or if we saw only today on someone's great-great-grandchildren the fulfillment of what God promised him in the period of the Thirty Years' War? And what if those 400 years would be filled with humiliation for them? But after all, that's exactly how God communicated it to old Abram and confirmed it with the covenant (and Abram still had to drive away the darkness and the predators from it all)!

I doubt that this would arouse any enthusiasm in us, for it is very difficult for a modern man to look beyond the horizon of his own life. We take life as a kind of personal project that is supposed to be successful and fulfilled (already within this life) in whatever sphere. We regard the individual, not the whole, as the most important part of the world. We consider that we have the right to a good life, or at least the prerequisites for a good life, and to adequate care in the old age (which is to be provided by the state and its politicians).

God told Abram that He would make his descendants go through a long phase in which they would be slaves in a foreign land for several generations. It is hard for us to accept that God's way with a man may not always lead upward. After all, Abram was free, extremely wealthy - and God is going to put his descendants, his promised and loved descendants, through poverty and slavery? Yes, because from the perspective from above that we so often miss, these generations, by what they experience, will prepare the ground for those who come after them, and only they will experience the fullness of the promise. It had to happen: because of the transformation of the heart and for the sake of justice, as we shall later see.

Neither Abram's descendants nor we as individuals receive everything from God all at once. Yes, salvation is free because it does not depend on us, but is a gift of grace. But the precious and eternal things of God are only born with time in the life of a person who follows Christ, like precious stones, gold and silver from the transfiguration, transmuted by fire - that is the eternal riches of 1Co 3:12-13.

Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him. Then He said to Abram: “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years." (Gen 15,12-13)

Abram experienced "terrors and great darkness" right before God. No wonder he was momentarily overwhelmed by his encounter with God and his inner struggle of faith, for what accompanied his covenant with God was beyond all his previous experience.

And yet: was it really only human weakness, as I said last time? A manifestation of our humanity, to which heavenly things lie so far away that they are difficult to grasp?

Abram has just experienced darkness - and at that moment God begins to speak again, revealing to him the truth about the coming period of darkness in a foreign land. Abram's experience was thus prophetic, perhaps not the first, but certainly not the last in his life. God can speak to a person on the basis of what he or she is experiencing and then give a transcending interpretation to that experience. Abram's gloom, terror, and darkness symbolize the future Egyptian bondage of his descendants. In our lives, God may speak to us through dreams, life situations, with words we have heard, with those which were meant for us or even unintentionally caught. Sometimes we realize at that moment that we have heard them many times and yet were deaf to what they were meant to convey.

Some of our experiences thus take on a new dimension and interpretation and become a message for us. For the servants of God, the prophets - heralds of the word, they have, moreover, an overlap even to others. The prophets therefore experienced things that conveyed a message for those around them or for generations to come, as we now see with Abram.

Can anyone wonder that their lives used to be so dramatic?

 

Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. 11 And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him. (Gen 15,10-12)

During that long conversation with God (or maybe during a long time before Him, because it wasn't all talking), fear and darkness fell upon Abram. It was as if he had sunk to some depth in which he had lost sight of the light he had so clearly perceived from God. What had happened - what was this "fear and great darkness"?

It was not the power of darkness that gripped his heart in depression, for here was God so near. Nor was it Abram's consciousness of sin that drew him away from God. It was the depth of human weakness, the moment of exhaustion when, after the inner struggle and experience of an encounter with God that transcends all that is familiar, a man finds oneself at the edge of strength and his ability to absorb has been exhausted. It is no wonder that people in the Bible who have experienced a visitation from above have often fainted, lost their speech, trembled, and needed to hear: "Fear not..." This doesn't mean that the encounter with the heavenly always has to be so dramatic; it's a question of the degree of power of that visitation. In any case, this fact is not entirely easy to accept for those who believe that the experience of God's presence is entirely wonderful. One day it will be so without exception, but now we are still "in the flesh."

Abram has driven away the birds which here invade his covenant and represent the invisible enemy. He did not expect at all that in the very centre of God's activity and will there would be a struggle in which he must play his part. Nevertheless, when it came, he arose and immediately got down to work. Exhausting work, let us add...

This experience of Abram's also illustrates how close the heights of heaven are to the deep valleys in the life of pursuing God. And let us reiterate that beside the spiritual heights lie not the valleys of sin (as if the followers of the Lamb would have to fall into them), but the valleys of weakness, that "clay" of our bodies in which the heavenly treasure is stored (2 Co 4:7).

And he said, “Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it?” So He said to him, “Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” (Gen 15,8-9)

Abram demanded some evidence from God because, having believed the birth of a descendant shortly before, he had apparently exhausted his capacity and simply could not believe the next promise, the promise of the land. My God, how do I know? What's the right answer? "Nowise." Of course, there's no way to know, you just have to take hold of the invisible in faith. God has a different perspective as he sees from eternity. It is obvious to Him that what He promises He will fulfill, but a man doubts. Faith is also always a test of time for a man. Now I do not yet see, yet I believe.

Fortunately, however, God is also lenient to our weaknesses. To Abram, who first proved that he wants to believe but cannot, at least for now, He offers the assurance of a covenant.

At the time of Abram, there existed no states as we have today, the local governments consisted of the men of the tribe that controlled a certain territory. Back then, tribes made agreements - treaties, swore oaths by their gods, and invoked curses on each other if they were to break them. It was logical. There was no superior authority to which the aggrieved party could appeal, non-compliance would probably have resulted in war, and so the tribes bound themselves with promises whose fulfilment should be ensured, first and foremost, with their moral credibility (this was to be underpinned by reference to ancestral traditions: "we will respect each other's borders, as our fathers have done from all time ago..."). Very important factor was a respect before a higher power - the deity.

Sometimes we speak of God as the God of covenants, but as in many other things, it is because this is the way He comes to meet the understanding of a man, i.e. God appears to us in this way, He is hereby the God of covenants for us. It is well to bear in mind that, for instance, this first covenant with Abram would not have come into existence at all if it had not been for Abram's unbelief. God lends a hand to a man in his difficulty to grasp the invisible, and becomes one party of the covenant to confirm that what he promises is utterly valid.

He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.” But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” (Gen 15,7-8)

Abram ascended to his spiritual height - he believed God, and because of this He ascribed to him a positive quality of righteousness. He ascended to it by an inner struggle; it was no frivolous "bene, bene" nodding to whatever was presented to him. He had to beat his way through the bushes of incredulous thoughts that what God promises is not possible at all; but in the presence of God he finally overcome.

Once a man is on high, the ground is prepared for his spiritual victory to continue and extend towards next one. Therefore, God solemnly reminds Abram of His original promise that he would receive possession of the land in which he dwells in addition to his offspring.

But alas, faith is not an automatic thing... Abram, having just demonstrated it, is falling down again. He does dwell in the land and manages to keep his identity and religion, but still, this land is occupied by the Canaanites and receiving it seems like a fanciful idea from another world. He clearly does not want to contradict God, but neither can he agree - he demands proof. "And how shall I know that I shall receive it?"

Once we reach spiritual heights, there are others nearby ready for us, but the struggle it took to climb up is still too fresh, the victory not anchored in us enough to keep us from falling back a moment later. Peter, a moment after his best confession at Caesarea, utters the greatest folly and is rebuked; the disciples first experience the power of God as manifested through them, but soon want to call down the fire of vengeance on their adversaries. The heights and the depths are remarkably near on the spiritual path. To ascend upwards was to work against our old nature, and therefore the retrograde forces are still here for a time and by their inertia want to draw us back. Here it is necessary not to give up, to persevere, and thus to build a solid foundation for our edifice. This is where the "patience of the saints" is needed.

 

And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness. (Gen 15,6)

I wrote that faith is a struggle for the image of God in the heart of man.

Faith is a struggle because believing stands against what I don't believe in or do not want to believe. Just as Abram believed God against an obvious reality: he could no longer have a son. Unbelief is more natural to humans; we don't have to make great efforts to disbelieve. Skepticism and doubt are even commandments of modern science. Yes, at the level of scientific knowledge it must be so, as far as the material world we can touch and then analyze with reason is concerned. But in things unseen, about which our senses give us no information, we are dependent on internal constructions, (unscientific) intuition - and faith. We verify their correctness from our experience, i.e. indirectly or retrospectively, unless we experience Abrahamic-like encounters. Then we have something that can hardly be explained to those who doubt - but thank God that His Spirit is at work even in the 21st century...

Faith is a struggle for the image of God, because by the fall of man that image has been marred and corrupted, and therefore no man sees God rightly until the veil of deception is removed from his eyes.

Faith is a struggle for the image of God in the heart of man, not just in his head. Faith is not mere conviction. Biblical faith is not just believing something, but trusting someone; it is not just about ideas, but it establishes a new relationship with a person. It becomes a way of justification also because this relationship implies transformation. It is impossible to have trust in God embedded in the heart and go on living as without it.

 

And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness. (Gen 15,6)

Mostly, we take our understanding of the concept of faith from our current life or from those around us. Most of the time we understand it as a denial of some negative reality, an effort to see it differently (or not to see it at all, a kind of trying to live on a blue cloud). If we are to talk about trust in God, most of us will understand it as hoping that some bad situation will turn out well or at least not so bad.

However, this is to some extent confusing faith with hope. Hope has to do with future expectations, and we can fill in what we would like to happen and ask God for it. Nevertheless, faith, specifically the Abrahamic faith, is something else - it is tied to a specific promise of God. For Abram, the whole journey to the coveted offspring was a struggle to believe God's promise, even when everything looked exactly the opposite, and in fact, increasingly worse. Yes, he certainly wanted the good ending - he had hope - but there was even something more. For in the beginning he had received a clear promise, but then - for twenty five long years - he experienced an inner struggle to know if his God was trustworthy, if he could deliver what he had promised. In that struggle, Abram sometimes won, but often lost.

People who easily believe anything are considered fools by those around them, and rightly so. But Abrahamic faith is not naiveté or foolishness. During his conversation with God, Abram experienced a great struggle before he dared to believe, but at one point he finally did. God responded immediately. While we would all like to escape to that dreamy blue cloud of hope at times, Abram provides evidence to us that biblical faith is a rather unnatural thing for humans (and vice versa, unbelief is much natural for us (!)). Life experience teaches us something other than to believe, and as an old merchant, Abram knew this well. In life, after all, you get what you snatch, and no one gives you anything for free. Better not trust anyone too much, rely on yourself, it is just a naive notion that someone could mean it too well for you.

To trust God, therefore, we must lift ourselves up (and often rather "be lifted up" - how great is God's grace!) because, as Abram testifies, the faith to which God responds is in fact a struggle for the image of God in the heart of man.

 

And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness. (Gen 15,6)

In antiquity, the concept of "justice" was attributed to a person by the environment and it meant respect, respectability, esteem as a result of how that person acted among people. Abram understood this and lived in such a way that he could be considered righteous by those around him. But to be considered righteous by God - that was something else! When God Himself transferred this positive evaluation to him, Abram must have been surprised at what made it happen: the moment he believed God to fulfill His word, His impossible word... God declared him positively accepted on that basis. Abram did not have to tear himself apart in doing good deeds, but took on a special relationship to God that he had never taken on with any of his idols before. Indeed, he had not even heard of anyone who had done so towards his deity.

If we are weaned upon the New Testament theology of salvation, we know we are saved by the Christ´s sacrifice. We accept that by faith, and so we take faith quite naturally as a means to salvation, but perhaps we have never asked ourselves why is that so? Why should our faith be the bridge?

Man has fallen out of relationship with God because of his unbelief. When Adam ate of the tree of knowledge, he consciously expressed his disbelief that the way with God was the best possible way for him. He did not trust God as a being of supreme, absolute goodness. He questioned God's purpose, God's gift to man, and God's words about what was best for him. He accepted the idea, whispered to him by the serpent, that God didn't mean well with them, and might even be playing some kind of game with them. In doing so, he questioned the very character of God.

To question is nothing else than to disbelieve. Parents who have experienced their own children doubting their good intentions or character have tasted in part what must have been going on in the heart of God when Adam sinned.

Man fell out of relationship with God because of his unbelief, and that is why he gets back into it by faith.

 

Then Abram said, “Look, You have given me no offspring"... Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness. (Gen 15,3.5-6)

If we are trapped in our "ohs", God must bring us out! There, Abram was offered a view of the vast Middle Eastern night sky, in which the stars could be seen more clearly than in our countries and seemed closer. "So shall your descendants be." God did not change his mind during the conversation with Abram, it was Abram who finally changed his mind, and at least for the moment he believed God that what He said would happen.

It is a key sentence of Scripture on which Paul later built the New Testament justification by faith and proved that it was not new but very old theology. But how did Abram understand that then?

Abram had frankly no idea about theology. If you wanted to talk to him e.g. about the trinity of God, he wouldn't understand much about what you were talking about. (But the difference might be that the triune God did remain with him...) But during the conversation with God, Abram understood how much God longed him to believe that He would fulfill His word — and when it happened that God likes that. However, Abram could not understand the notion of justice theologically as we understand it today under the influence of the New Testament.

Not only did Abram have no idea about theology, but also about linguistics. The terms he used took their meanings from common language. "Righteous" in ancient times referred to one who is worthy of acknowledgement, respect, who acts honestly, is trustworthy, upright. Abram knew, like everyone else, about his past failures. However, the moment he believed God, God made it clear to him that it meant such a great thing that he attributed a new quality to Abram: he saw him as "righteous." Abram could have been surprised, wondering why God cared so much about it? Doesn't it mean more how Abram specifically behaves (and in the end, is it actually not more difficult)?