GOD\u2019S TIME SCALE is so different from ours. Abram wants a son, and feels his time is running out; God envisages a race with countless millions of descendants. Abram feels his life is approaching its termination with nothing very much settled as to God\u2019s purpose in calling him out of Ur of the Chaldeans; God sees the entire course of redemptive history.<\/p>\n
What God does in Genesis 15 is promise Abraham that his offspring will constitute a vast number. At one level, God\u2019s promise is enough: \u201cAbram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness\u201d (Gen 15:6<\/a>). Abram\u2019s faith is simple and profound: he believed God\u2019s promises, taking God at his word. And that faith, in God\u2019s eyes, was credited as righteousness. \u00a0This does not mean that Abram earned brownie points for deploying such a righteous faith. \u00a0Rather, the idea is that what God demands of his image-bearers, what he has always demanded, is righteousness \u2014 but in this sinful race what he accepts, crediting it as righteousness, is faith, faith that acknowledges our dependence upon God and takes God at his word. This faith of Abram is what makes him the \u201cfather\u201d of those who believe (Rom. 4; Gal.3).<\/p>\n Yet however genuine this faith, some of the details of God\u2019s promise Abram has trouble imagining. God tells him of a time when his descendants will possess all the land around him, and Abram wavers and asks for a sign (Gen. 15:8<\/a>). Graciously, God provides one: in a vision, Abram is enabled to see God entering into a covenant with him. Probably the pieces of the animals between which \u201ca smoking firepot with a blazing torch\u201d (Gen. 15:17<\/a>) passes represent a way of saying, \u201cMay those who enter into this covenant similarly be torn apart if they break the terms of this covenant.\u201d What a visionary act of kindness to anchor Abram\u2019s faith is also an instance of God\u2019s long-range plans, his vast frame of reference: he is establishing his covenant with Abram and his offspring, a covenant relation into which Christians enter today (Gal. 3:6-9<\/a>).<\/p>\n There is one more strand in this chapter that depicts God\u2019s long-term view of things. One reason why Abram cannot begin to take over the Promised Land immediately is that \u201cthe sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure\u201d (Gen 15:16<\/a>). God\u2019s sovereign timing so matches his moral sensibilities that by the time the children of Abraham are ready to take over the Promised Land, the inhabitants of that land will have so sunk in degradation that judgment must be meted out. That time, God says, is coming, but in this chapter it has not yet arrived.<\/p>\n –DA Carson, For the Love Of God<\/p>\n This academic year CCC is reading through a bible overview reading plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n