Yahweh Cuts A Covenant With Abram

Picture the scene. The sun is setting over the plains of Canaan. Five animals lie in pieces on the ground, the blood soaking into the dust. Abram has been driving vultures off the carcasses all afternoon. And now, just as the darkness falls, Abram himself falls into a deep sleep. A terror comes over him. A great darkness. And then, through the gathering night, something begins to move between the pieces. A smoking oven. A flaming torch. The Almighty God of heaven and earth, passing between the halves of a covenant sacrifice, alone. No man walks with Him. Abram is asleep.

And that, beloved, is the gospel in Genesis.

The Vision

Our text begins with the word of Yahweh coming to Abram. This sets man apart from the animals. God did not communicate to the fish or the cattle. He communicated to Abram in a vision. And now He has given us His Word, the Bible.

The occasion of this vision was just after all the great excitement of the battle and victory Abram had, and the experience with Melchizedek. After everyone had gone their separate ways, a heaviness began to set in on Abram. So Yahweh comes to Abram to encourage him. "Fear not!" says Yahweh. This is the same voice that caused Adam to fear. But now He appears to Abram and says "Fear not!"

Several thousand years later, Jesus said that Abraham rejoiced to see His day. The Jews recognized that claim as a claim to be God Himself and immediately tried to stone Him. But in truth Abram had seen Him. It was probably this very occasion to which Jesus referred, when He first identified Himself to Abram as the self-existing God, the One who was able and willing to supply every need in time and eternity.

Abram expresses his concern. He has no seed. If he and his wife were to die, all his house would go to his steward Eliezer and not even one of his own people. And once again, Yahweh renews His promise.

Here is the great principle of true salvation, set forth for the first time in the Bible. Not by works do men attain or manifest righteousness, but by faith. The Apostle Paul would later quote these words to the Romans and the Galatians as the Old Testament foundation of justification by faith alone.

The Ledger

Stop and think about what just happened in verse 6. Abram did not build a temple. Abram did not sacrifice an animal. He did not recite a prayer or make a pilgrimage or give a tithe. He did not perform a single act of religious obedience. He simply believed what God said. And God counted it to him as righteousness.

That word "counted" is an accounting word. It is the word a bookkeeper uses when he makes an entry in a ledger. Picture two columns on a page. One column is labeled "what I owe." The other is labeled "what I have." For every one of us by nature, the column of what we owe runs off the bottom of the page. A lifetime of sin against a holy God. Every idle word, every selfish thought, every broken commandment. And the column of what we have is empty. Nothing. Not one righteous deed that could begin to balance the debt.

Listen carefully, because the Bible teaches us something wonderful about that ledger. Before the foundation of the world, before Abram was born, before the stars he was told to number had been flung into the sky, the God who knows the end from the beginning had already chosen Abram in Himself.

So in the eternal counsel of God, the word "righteous" had already been written next to Abram's name before Abram ever drew his first breath. But there came a day. A day when Abram stood under the stars. A day when Yahweh said "So shall your seed be." A day when Abram believed God. And on that day, what had been true in eternity became true in time. What God had purposed before the world began was now counted to a living, breathing man standing in the land of Canaan.

That is how salvation works. God chose His people before the foundation of the world. But there comes a day, a specific day in each of our lives if we have been saved, when the Holy Spirit opens our eyes, and we believe, and what was settled in eternity is counted to us in time.

The Covenant Cut

So Abram believes Yahweh. And Yahweh counts it to him as righteousness. Right there, in verse 6, we have the gospel written in the clearest ink of the Old Testament. But Abram asks a question in verse 8 that every believer has asked at one point or another. How may I know that I will possess it? How can I be sure? And Yahweh’s answer is one of the most stunning moments in all of Scripture. He does not give Abram a document or a ceremony to perform. He gives him a covenant that only God Himself will walk through.

A young heifer is taken, and a female goat, and a ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon. Each was cut into two. If we are not careful we will miss this in our reading. It is significant. There is a reason God is having Abram do this.

How a Covenant Was Cut

In the ancient Near East, when two men made a covenant with each other, they did not sign papers. They did not shake hands. They took an animal, and they cut it in two, and they laid the halves opposite each other with a path running down the middle. And then the two parties to the covenant would walk together, side by side, between those bloody pieces.

And as they walked through that path, they were saying something to each other. They were saying, "If I break this covenant, may it be done to me as it has been done to these animals. May I be cut in two. May my blood soak into the ground the way theirs has. I am staking my life on my word."

That is what Abram has set up in the field. Five animals, cut in half, laid out opposite each other. A path down the middle. And everyone who knew how a covenant was made in that day would have been expecting the same thing to happen next. Abram would walk through. Yahweh would walk through. The two parties would pass between the pieces together, and the covenant would be sealed by the blood of the animals and the word of both men.

But that is not what happens. Watch what God does.

Abram Slept. Yahweh Walked Alone.

This shows how deep into sleep Abram was and how utterly helpless he was. It had to be this way because this covenant did not involve any promise on Abram's part. This was all Yahweh. Abram would not walk through the pieces as a pledge.

Only God passed through, not Abram, denoting an unconditional promise on God's part. I love the way the Legacy Standard Bible renders this phrase. "On that day Yahweh cut a covenant." Many translations soften the Hebrew and render it as "made a covenant." But the Hebrew literally says "cut." And that word carries the full weight of what was happening in that field.

William Varner, one of the LSB translators, put it this way. In the Ancient Near East, covenants were ratified by the two respective parties cutting animals in two and then together walking between the bloody, severed halves. Each party was essentially saying they may likewise be cut in two if they break their side of the covenant. The difference in Genesis 15 is that Yahweh, pictured in the oven and torch, passed between the animal pieces alone while Abram was in a deep sleep. This established a unilateral covenant which Yahweh alone was responsible to keep. By God's grace, there was nothing Abram needed to do to keep the covenant in effect, nor was there anything he could do to jeopardize it.

The Promise Secured

The covenant now expounds into specifics. The land which God will give Abram stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates, the land then occupied by the ten tribes Yahweh names. For a very brief time, under Solomon and possibly again under Jeroboam II, the children of Israel ruled all this territory, as a token of the final and permanent possession they will have in the future.

Specific boundaries are given. Some may say that because of disobedience Israel has lost any claim to that land. However, the Bible is clear. There are reaffirmations of this promise throughout Scripture, even during days of peril. Jeremiah 16 shows the perpetuity of the land promise and teaches that Israel's disobedience does not forever nullify it.

And this is exactly what the Apostle Paul is arguing in Romans chapters 9 through 11. He looks at the nation of Israel, he sees their unbelief, and he asks the question every one of us has asked at some point. Has the word of God failed?

The word of God has not failed. A thousand times no. It has not failed, because the God who made the promise is the God who keeps it. He keeps it to Israel. He will keep it to the Gentiles. He will keep it to every soul He has chosen in Christ.

If God can be trusted to keep His promise to a nation that rejected Him, He can be trusted to keep His promise to you. Paul's whole argument in Romans 9 through 11 is that the faithfulness of God to Israel is the guarantee of the faithfulness of God to every believer. If the covenant with Abram still stands after four thousand years, the covenant Christ cut in His own blood still stands for every sinner who will trust in Him.

For the One Who Has Never Trusted Christ

Listen carefully. If you have never been saved, you need to understand something about the God of Genesis 15. He is not meeting you halfway. He never has. He is not waiting for you to clean up your life, to get your act together, to bring something to the table, to sign on the bottom line of a covenant you cannot possibly keep.

He has already done it Himself.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, walked through the pieces for you. On a Roman cross, outside the gates of Jerusalem, He took the curse of a broken covenant into His own body. The blood that Abram saw soaking into the dust of Canaan was pointing forward to the blood that would soak into the wood of Calvary. And when Jesus cried out "It is finished," what He was saying was this: the covenant is kept. By Me. Alone.

If you will turn from your sin and trust in Him today, you will discover what Abram discovered. Salvation is not something you achieve. It is something God gives. It was counted to Abram as righteousness because he believed. It will be counted to you the same way.

For the Believer

And if you have already trusted in Christ, take this with you. Stop trying to keep a covenant God never asked you to keep.

You did not save yourself. You cannot save yourself. And you cannot keep yourself saved either. The God who walked between the pieces while Abram slept is the God who holds you in His hand right now. Your standing before Him does not rest on your performance this week, your faithfulness this month, or your obedience this year. It rests on the finished work of Jesus Christ, who walked through the pieces for you and said "It is finished."

So rest there. When the accuser whispers that you are not enough, remind him that you never were. But the One who cut the covenant is. When doubt creeps in, go back to Genesis 15 and watch Yahweh walk alone. When you fall, remember that Abram slept through the covenant and it held anyway.

Paul says it again to the Philippians:

And again in Romans:

That is the promise of Genesis 15. That is the promise of Romans 9. That is the promise of Philippians 1. And that is the promise you stand on this morning.

The God who made the promise is the God who keeps it. Alone. Without your help.