Genesis 15:1-6

We have a term, “Hedge your bets.”  This term means that we must have a contingency if our plans do not work out the way we would like.  God does not hedge his bets.  Instead of couching his promises in “if’s” and “probably’s,” God makes his promises in the most outlandish of promises.

This week we take up God’s outlandish promise to Abram in Genesis 15.  It was not a promise couched in my grandmother’s favorite, “If the creek don’t rise,” but it was the biggest comparison in the mind of Abraham, the same number as the stars in the sky.  And God made sure that Abram understood that God was the only one responsible in fulfilling the promise, “since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself.”

When we face the promises of God in the light of so many “realities” of our world, we are tempted to give up.  That’s why God tells Abram to “fear not.”  When we see that term in the Bible, we are about to be told good news.  Bad news comes after “woe unto you.” 

Don’t give up on the promises of God.  We have a God that delights in making outlandish promises to his people.  Abram, later renamed Abraham, confronted what he only saw as a hopeless situation, embraced God’s promise, and the Lord counted his faith in the promises as righteousness. 

Pastor Greg