Sunset is the beginning of the 14th, and time-wise we are moving into the daylight portion of the 14th - Passover day. As daylight hits, Abraham asks for evidence that God will follow through, and he receives the command to prepare a sacrifice, and this prophecy regarding his family is the reaction that he gets.
Verse 12 shows that this action of preparing a sacrifice is on the daylight part of the 14th, because when we get to verse 12, the sacrifice has been all prepared, and the sun was going down. That brings us up to the end of the 14th. Very interesting.
Many have wondered why Christ was sacrificed during the daylight portion of the 14th in the afternoon rather than at the beginning, and seemingly more in alignment with Passover. Was not the Passover lamb slain at the beginning of the 14th, after ben ha arbayim began? Yes, it was. So people think because He was sacrificed sometime during the afternoon of the 14th that there is something wrong there. No! We have the answer right here in Genesis 15 as to why He was sacrificed in the afternoon of the 14th rather than at the beginning of the 14th.
Now here is the answer: Even as the covenant of promise with Abraham (that we're reading of here in Genesis 14 and 15) was ratified by this sacrifice that we see Abraham making here, Christ's sacrifice provides the ratification of the New Covenant. Christ's sacrifice, by God's decree, had to align with the ratification of thecovenant ofpromisewithAbraham, not the Passover. It aligns time-wise exactly with Genesis 15.
Verse 12 specifically states "when the sun was going down." Therefore, this sacrifice in Genesis 15, like Christ's sacrifice, took place in the afternoon. In the very late afternoon, what happened at Christ's crucifixion? A great darkness occurred. Here in Genesis 15 a great darkness occurred to Abraham. In addition to that, a great horror fell upon him. Now what does that picture? There are two possibilities.
I prefer the first one though, that Abraham, as the father of the faithful and the number one antecedent ancestor of Jesus Christ, had to experience a bit of what God's Son in the flesh was going to have to go through a thousand, fifteen, seventeen hundred years later.
There is something else here that is not so readily apparent at Christ's crucifixion. Abraham had to beat off some vultures. It says that when the fowls came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. Vile birds are the Bible's symbol of demons. This gives the impression that there was a great spiritual battle going on during which the demons were taunting and persecuting Christ in order to induce Him to give up as He was hanging on the cross. You can see that in some of the psalms about everybody gawking at Him, and taunting Him.
It was not only human beings. We can understand it was demons as well, who were doing everything to break His courage and to break His spirit. That is why Abraham had to experience a little of that.
It says very clearly that God forsook Jesus. "Why have you forsaken me?" Christ asks, because now He was on His own completely and totally for the first time in His life, and Abraham had to go through a little bit of that - the great horror and darkness.
Now where does that bring us to time-wise? It brings us up to the end of the 14th. Maybe part of that horror that Abraham had to experience was the fear, let's say, of being buried alive, of being put in a grave. I don't know. There are things that we can speculate on, but that is put in there so that we will understand what Abraham was going through and how it parallels what Christ had to go through. It parallels even to the exact days and to the exact times of the days as the events were progressing.
Now it was dark. What time is it? The Firstborn, Christ, is in His grave. Therefore, time-wise we are now into the 15th of Abib. We have come all the way from ben ha arbayim, … . . .
This is the beginning of the covenant God made with Abraham and that Paul wrote of in Galatians 3. The entire chapter of Genesis 15 is of a special covenant containing promises that God made with Abraham to provide him with an heir and descendants from his own house, and inheritance of the land.
One of the interesting things, at least to me anyway, is to note God's foresight in all of this. Remember, this was before Abraham had any heir at all. We are talking about when he was somewhere shortly after the age of 75 and before Isaac was born. That is a long time before the children of Israel came out of Egypt. God's foresight included some form of discipline for Abraham's descendants that was going to last for 400 years—before the beginning of fulfillment of at least part of what God had in mind here.
You will notice a difference between the 430 years mentioned in Exodus 12 and the 430 years mentioned in Galatians 3, and the 400 years that is mentioned here. Now nobody—and I mean nobody—has been able to know exactly what event began the 400 years, because nobody has zeroed in on an event and it is not written in the Bible, as far as we know.
Researchers have come to the conclusion that the 400 years is simply intended to be an approximation of the 430 years. They back this up with the mention of the four generations in verse 16. Those generations appear to be Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Moses. Since those people lived a great deal longer than we do, the researchers say that God assigned roughly approximately 100 years to each generation. By this, Abraham, in faith, would understand that at some time in that fourth generation would come the beginning of the fulfillment of this prophecy that God made.
We need to understand so we get a bigger grasp on things here because this covenant is awesome. We need to understand that God is inaugurating a much, much larger plan, beginning with Abraham and then continuing through Isaac, who was a type of the Promised Seed, then Jacob and his twelve children (thirteen counting Dinah), Joseph and going down into Egypt, the famine that began while Joseph was there forcing Jacob to go down into Egypt where Israel grew into millions of people, and out of that millions of people God raised up Moses through whom would come the freeing of Israel from their captivity.
Brethren, that was just the first step of the fulfillment of the promises that are contained in this covenant God made with Abraham.
The events of Genesis 15 are a very significant starting point. The events of Exodus 12 and 13 carry those events to its first major, major fulfillment. I said "major, major," because when Isaac was born, that was the first step in the fulfillment of these promises.
The events of Genesis 12 and 13 are the next major step in the fulfillment of this covenant that God is making with Abraham in Genesis 15. What is happening here is that God is, with Abraham and this covenant, formally beginning His spiritual purpose. However, that will be preceded by forming Abraham's physical descendants into a physical nation which God will use for His purposes, and from whom God will draw the bulk of those who are going to be in the first resurrection. We can see it is beginning to step out and include us.
The real beginnings of the Old Testament Church were not at Sinai, but in the land of inheritance where Abraham pitched his tent. Eventually what Stephen gets around to is the New Testament Church, but on his way there he has to establish what he calls "the congregation in the wilderness." So where does the establishment of "the Church in the wilderness" begin? He goes back to Abraham, not to Mount Sinai. That is the foundation. The foundation of God's spiritual purpose is the covenant with Abraham, not what happened at Sinai or anytime after that. The real formal beginning (if we can put it that way) was that seemingly simple ceremony we see in Genesis 15.
You might recall that in Genesis 15:16, when God was making this prophecy regarding Abraham's children that they would go to a place where they would be foreigners and strangers and actually become enslaved by these people, He said that they would not come out until four generations. And then He said, "Because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." By the time we get to Deuteronomy 7:1-5, the iniquity of the Amorites is now full, and God expected Israel to carry out their extermination. That was part of the obligation that holiness imposed upon them.
We think it is pretty tough to overcome, do we not? They literally had to kill everybody—men, women, children. God said, "Do not spare. Kill them all." But God does not think in the same way that we do. These judgments that He wants Israel to carry out on them is because they are holy. They are holy judgments made on the basis of love. Everything that God does flows from a nature of love, and these judgments are made on the basis of the Canaanites' horrible conduct against their fellow man and against the God of heaven as well. In addition, we are going to begin to see that the judgment was made for God's purpose, because the Canaanites were going to be against God's purpose.
The Canaanite religion was not only false, it was downright immoral. The practice of cult prostitution was a major feature of it. They sacrificed children in the fire. Those were two major features of it. I am sure that these people were spiritually, morally, and ethically perverted to an extreme that we modern Israelitish countries are just now beginning to approach.
There is a second symbolic and spiritual reason that these commands are so stringently required. The people of the land can symbolically represent either two destructive-to-holiness factors. The people of the land can represent the demons whose territory is now being given over to us, or they can represent indwelling sin in each of us individually. In either case, we are to overcome and get rid of them. Sometimes doing this for ourselves can require significant sacrificial action on our part to overcome them—doing things that we do not want to do, that we may shrink from, and feel is abhorrent.
It is very possible that Jochebed heard the story directly from Jacob himself. Now undoubtedly part of what she heard was this that was prophesied of by God in Genesis 15.
The word "supposed" means "reckon," "add it up," "put the pieces together." He reasoned from the evidence he heard from God and he thought that they would reason too. It must have been general knowledge that Moses was the man. Moses was the deliverer. But they did not have faith in it. Moses knew that God had a people. He knew Israel, though in bondage, was that people. He had heard of the things to come—that Israel was to be delivered. He heard the things of Christ, according to Hebrews 11. I do not know all that God communicated to Moses, but I do know that God set before the eyes of his mind what His will and purpose was for him.
Moses, like Abraham, put credit in what God said and trusted Him. He believed God would keep His promises even when reason and senses that were fueled by the things that he could see, said it was an impossible condition. Faith told Moses that all the dignity and greatness of rank was sheer vanity. Faith told Moses that the pleasures of sin were ruinous and displeasing to God and short-lived. Faith told Moses that the rewards for obeying God were more durable and greater than that of Egypt. Faith told Moses that it was honorable to be mocked and despised for Christ and that suffering the afflictions in this regard were not evils, but the schools for helping produce the character and the mind of God.
Well neither is the iniquity of the Babylonish mystery religion yet complete. It is building toward completion though. We find ourselves living 1900 and some years after most of the new testament was written and that mystery of iniquity is building. That's what I'm showing you here.
We've jumped from Abraham to the time of the end, and the time of the end is going to feature a period of iniquity that is going to be similar to the times of Noah. Let's go back then to the book of Genesis just to get a brief description of what it was like in the days of Noah.
This is what the world is once again building toward. It reached it once before and in a small way it reached it in Sodom and Gomorrah. As we would say today, God blew them away. He did that in order to save their minds, so that they might be resurrected in the second resurrection and have an opportunity. So it was actually in one sense a mercy killing. He did it too, in the days of Noah as well. Intervening before those people's minds became so perverted and twisted that repentance would be impossible. We are building toward that kind of a circumstance once again.
I do not think we need to read any further. That is far enough there. So God made a covenant with Abram, and I want you to notice two things here. In verse 12, "And when the sun was going down. . ." And then verse 17, " And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp. . ."
Brethren, when did Israel leave Egypt? They went out of Egypt when the sun went down! Exactly 430 years to the day after the covenant was made! We were discussing this yesterday and Richard said that knowing God, they probably went out of Egypt right at the very second to 430 years. We will be conservative and say it was right to the minute. I do not know.
Nobody holds God back from what He wants to do. He says in Isaiah, "My counsel shall stand." This is why the prophecies ring with such a positive assurance. No puny man or angel, or mighty army of angels, or all the nations of men can stop Him from acting on what He purposes to do. Really brethren, under the best of circumstances, we are saved in spite of ourselves anyway.
Here is the promise that I am sure sustained the faithful during this period of time—especially during the period of time that we are talking about. That is, the time about when Moses was born. Those people were able to count. They were able to keep tally. They knew that it was getting awfully close to 400 years, and they knew that for four generations—from Levi, to Kohath, to Amram, and now to Moses (who represented the 4th generation)—they were getting close to the end of an age.
We can count too, can we not? And we know that we are getting very close to the end of 6,000 years. We are getting very close to when the odometer turns over to the Sabbath; and, from biblical reckoning, that ought to be the time that mankind and the earth are given its rest. God has already raised up the Deliverer who is going to do it, and that Deliverer is going to come back and deliver His people from that kind of a situation. But we too are living at the end of an age. Are we going to be faithful—like Amram, like Jochebed, like Moses? It remains to be seen.
Notice: "I will judge." The great supreme Judge promises Abram that He will judge the nation that holds Abram's descendants as slaves.
God waited four generations for the Amorites to get so bad He felt that as an act of mercy to them He had to execute them. He executed them using the instrument of the Israelites - the former slaves, the descendants of Abram - coming into the land to dispossess them out of the land the Amorites had inhabited. There is a teaching lesson there for you and me. We can learn from this that we just have to wait when something like this is going on. We just have to wait until the righteous Judge of all mankind says the time is right for Him to execute justice.
When God made his covenant promise to Abraham regarding Canaan, he forewarned Abraham that the land would not be given to his descendants for four hundred years. So Abraham was required to have patience. This is also an indication of God's patience. He plans way ahead, knowing what His plan is, and He patiently waits for the right time—as He patiently waits for each one of us to come to our time to be called and taken into His Kingdom. God stated a reason for this delay: Genesis 15:16 informs us that the reason is that "the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete." That was the reason given to Abraham at that time.
According to Genesis 15:16 one reason why Israel went into captivity in Egypt was because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet complete. There was a period of about 400 years where God knew that toward the end of it the people would get so bad that they would need to be vomited out of the land of Canaan, and that would coincide with the release of Israel from Egypt. But, Israel did not kick them out as required.
So, God not only goes to war to ensure that these people can repent, but also that the plague of evil would no longer spread out to others, or to another generation.
