God’s Covenant with Abram – Genesis 15:1-21

Bethel Baptist Church – David Rising

Genesis 15:1-21; May 31, 2026 Sunday PM

God’s Covenant with Abram

When we were first introduced to Abram and Sarai in Genesis 11, the first thing we were told about Sarai was that she was barren; she had no child (11:30). That comment was not just a factoid to make the story interesting, but it was a key point in the unfolding drama of God’s promise to Abram.

In Genesis 12 we hear God give Abram a tremendous promise. Part of that promise was the implied fact that Abram and Sarai would have children. God promised to make him a great nation, to bless him, and to make his name great.

This truth was put to the test when there was a famine in the land. Abram moved his family to Egypt to find food, but on the way he devises a plan to deceive Pharaoh so that he would not kill Abram and steal his wife.

If Sarai was hitched to Pharaoh and if Abram died, then God’s promise would not take place. Was this the internal thinking and discussion that caused them to make this scheme?

God was faithful and preserved Sarai and Abram and booted them back to the land where Abram sets about again to worship the Lord.

The promise of God was next put to the test somewhat by the free choice that Abram gave to Lot. Lot chose the land east of the Jordan, and thus Abram planted himself and his family where he was, on the west of the Jordan in the land precisely where God had promised to give to his descendants.

God promised a family, but they did not have one yet.

As we come into Genesis 15 tonight, we will see that issue come to the front. This is a very important chapter in scripture as it lays before us the promise of God once again, but this time it is solidified by a ritual that God performed. God would keep His promise, and He made that absolutely clear to Abram.

In this chapter we also have one of the key texts that undergirds our understanding and teaching about faith as the Apostle Paul presents it in the book of Romans. Pray.

1. God’s Promise: Descendants of Abram (15:1-6)

15:1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”

The LORD comes to Abram and speaks to him about this promise. Notice that the LORD does not begin with the details, but rather He first comforts Abram.

Remember the context as well. Abram had just confessed his dependence upon the LORD has he would not take any material benefits from the king of Sodom. Abram was looking to the LORD for His blessing.

And so the LORD comes to Abram in a vision and first tells him not to be afraid. Don’t fear.

Abram was a human like any of us, and so when the LORD appears to him in this vision He tells Abram not to fear.

The Lord then tells Abram He would be two things for him: (1) his shield, and (2) his exceedingly great reward.

God would be Abram’s shield. A shield is a form of protection from harm. God was signaling to Abram that He would take care of him, would protect him. Surrounded by strangers, even as many were allies with him, he would be able to rest assured that God would take care of him.

God also promised to be Abram’s ‘exceedingly great reward’ and this also ties in with his refusal to accept any reward from the king of Sodom for his successful rescue of Lot.

The reward would not be some payment for rescuing Lot, but would be the elements of the promise that the LORD would repeat again here.

It is important to see that the LORD is identifying Himself as the reward, the source of reward. God is putting Himself on the line, as it were, to bring about this promise.

Abram understands the promise, and he has seen God grant land and he has also seen Him bless him with many assets.

But what about the descendants, the great nation? Abram asks:

2 But Abram said, “Lord God, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 Then Abram said, “Look, You have given me no offspring; indeed one born in my house is my heir!”

Abram addresses God as ‘Lord GOD’ (אֲדֹנָ֤י יֱהוִה֙), Adonai Yahweh/Jehovah. This is a more rare designation for God, though more common in the prophets, especially Ezekiel & Isaiah (Matthews).

Abram’s concern is very practical. It is as if Abram has built the baby room already, has all the resources he needs for that child, but there is no child.

All of these blessings are null and void without a child, and so he raises the issue with God. Abram wonders and then seems to resolve in the idea that Eliezer of Damascus is that descendant.

Abram does not resort to some kind of pagan fertility ritual, as other nations would do. Instead, he puts the issue and resolution squarely on the shoulders of God.

This is the only time we hear of Eliezer by name, and some see this as a potential play on words.

“The word “children” (zrʿ) shares in the (inverted) consonants of “Eliezer” (ʿzr), implying that since God has yet to provide zeraʿ, then Abram must provide an “Eliezer” (i.e., heir) from his household.[1]”

Mathews, K. A. (2005). Genesis 11:27–50:26 (Vol. 1B, p. 164). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

It appears here that Abram is resolving to adopt his servant to be that designated heir to receive these promises.

The mention of Damascus again also reminds us of Abram’s recent victory in that area by returning Lot and His possessions – a victory which Melchizedek was careful to remind Abram that it was by the hand of the LORD.

Would not that also have been another reminder to Abram that God was able to do whatever He determined to do to bring about His purposes, His promise here?

We are watching Abram think out loud, or grow in the Lord out loud.

We need to be willing to humble ourselves also as we grow in the Lord and at times sound like we are not quite as strong spiritually as we might think we are. Abram is saying things here that he will eventually reverse, but it will take time for God to patiently teach him to trust.

Having declared that his servant would be his heir, eventually the Lord GOD corrects that thought:

4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.”

God says the answer is not Eliezer. Instead, God tells Abram that the heir would be from his body, his genetics, his seed. Abram would have to wait for the birth of his own son.

Abram and Sarai were not young, of course, but he hears that this process will eventually come with a little baby that at least he would have.

We know in the story how Abram seems to understand that as a promise it does not necessarily involve Sarai, but the LORD will speak to that later. (Of course it will involve Sarai.)

Notice now that the LORD gives a visual to Abram about this promise:

5 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.”

Illustrations are always helpful when you are teaching, and this is the master teacher, the LORD, giving to Abram a reminder to Abram of His amazing handiwork of stars in the heavens.

In a day when there were no big city lights lighting up the sky, you can imagine how dazzling the stars would have shown on that evening. We presume it was dark outside so Abram could see the stars.

Now we also presume that the LORD is using a manner of speaking when he compares Abram’s future descendants to the count of stars in the heavens. The LORD suggests that when he says ‘if you are able to count them’.

The observable night sky star count has been estimated to be about 4,500 since one can only see one angle of the sky at a time. Astronomers from the always reliably evolutionary magazine Sky & Telescope say this:

Astronomers had estimated that the observable universe has more than 100 billion galaxies. Our own Milky Way is home to around 300 billion stars, but it’s not representative of galaxies in general. The Milky Way is a titan compared to abundant but faint dwarf galaxies, and it in turn is dwarfed by rare giant elliptical galaxies, which can be 20 times more massive. By measuring the number and luminosity of observable galaxies, astronomers put current estimates of the total stellar population at roughly 70 billion trillion (7 x 1022).

(http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/how-many-stars-are-there/ accessed 5/26/26 2:31 PM)

The LORD’s point here was not to have Abram get out his calculator, but to make the point that his descendants would be very, very large.

You will recall that earlier the LORD compared the count of Abram’s descants to the number of the dust on the earth. That is the point for Abram. Yes you are childless at this point, but God would grant him a child which would spearhead an enormous progeny.

Abram may have had an idea how God would do that, but he really did not completely understand it. But how did Abram respond? Notice the oft-cited verse 6:

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

Abram believed in the LORD; he had faith in what God had just told him. Remember, this was not the first time Abram had heard, but it is the first time Moses adds this theological note about God accounting his faith for righteousness.

Abram put his trust in the LORD. He was confident that what God had said was true. It was faith in God now for what God would do now and in the future, particularly in the future. All Abram had was the promise of God and the illustrations of counting dust and stars.

In believing what God had said, Abram was saying that the future was in the hands of the LORD, not himself.

Again, note that Abram’s trust was in the LORD. The object of His faith was God. The LORD God, Abram’s God, was God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth.

He had just delivered Chedorlaomer and his army into his small army of 318 men. All praise to the LORD, and now after God’s promise was repeated we see Abram’s trust highlighted.

When Abram believed, did Abram do anything? No, he simply accepted what the LORD had said and rested in it.

We are familiar with what the Apostle Paul does with this passage in Romans 4. We will be covering that chapter soon in our AM series.

By the way, it is very likely that Abram was already a man of faith, and we do not necessarily have to look at this one particular instance to consider it Abram’s initiation or his conversion. He had already responded to God’s word in many situations, but it is fitting for Moses to mention God’s accounting to Abram because of his faith.

Abram did not just have faith once, but it continued.

“The force of the construction conveys an ongoing faith repeated from the past. The author is editorializing on the events reported, not including Abram’s faith in the chain of events as a consequence of the theophanic message. The point of the author is that Abram continued to believe in the Lord. In addition, reference to the Lord’s appearance to Abram at Ur (v. 7) implies an antecedent relationship (cp. Acts 7:2–4).[2]”

Mathews, K. A. (2005). Genesis 11:27–50:26 (Vol. 1B, pp. 166–167). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

As a result of Abram’s faith, God accounted or counted it toward Abram. Paul uses the term “imputed” in Romans 4:6. Often the term “righteousness” means right behavior, but it also means standing.

In the doctrine of salvation, we believe and teach that God grants to us the standing of righteous on the basis of faith alone. We do not make ourselves right before God because of our good behavior. God puts on our account what we lacked, righteousness, and considers us now in a right standing before him. Now, it is our privilege and duty to live as such, to walk in obedience and newness of life.

Paul argues strongly at the end of Romans 4 that Abram was a man of faith – faith in what God said, and then he was also a faithful man – who continued to believe, who did not waver at the promise of God.

The same promise of a right standing before God is true for us as well, as Paul states in Romans 4:23-25. That promise, for us, is based on the ultimate son of promise, the Lord Jesus Christ and His work of redemption for us.

There is much we could say more about this, but I want to keep the flow of thought going here as the conversation continues between the LORD and Abram. Notice verse 7:

7 Then He said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it.”

2. God’s Promise: The Land (15:7-21)

Now the shift returns back to the land. The LORD God states to Abram again what He said to him earlier. Now he connects Abram’s movement from Ur at a time when the focus in scripture was Abram’s father, Terah.

We did not have this commentary about Terah’s move from Ur, back in 11:31, but we were just told that Terah moved everyone from Ur to go to the land of Canaan. They of course did not arrive there, but ended up in Haran.

It was the LORD who appeared to Abram in Haran who made the promise about the land, which turned out to be Canaan. God reminds Abram now that He was leading all along. This particular land was always going to be the land of inheritance.

And so God has blessed Abram. He has made a promise about descendants, and now again He promises yet again the land. These things would take place.

Abram hears all of this, believe what God said, but he also asks for this:

8 And he said, “Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it?”

Now we could read this as Abram wavering a little in his faith as he now asks God for proof. How shall I know? What can you do for me, Lord, to convince me it is true?

I do not see this as Abram doubting, but simply asking God to do something to confirm what He had said. After all, the Lord was talking with him, appearing to him in a vision, so it would be very appropriate for the Lord to give some tangible evidence that these things would be so.

And so notice what the Lord does:

9 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.”

The Lord asks for these five animals. Three of them are three-years old, and the birds are not described. Why animals and why 3-year old? We are not told other than simply it was what God asked.

That should be all the reason we need. We already know that in Genesis Noah, Abram, and even Abel, sacrificed animals to the Lord. For that was the purpose of the altar.

But this was different. This was God who had made a promise and would now seal it by the death of these animals. The ritual we see here is unusual for much of the OT, but there is a parallel in Jeremiah 34. Notice what happens:

10 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.

And so we have five dead animals, three of which were split in two and placed next to each other. This created interest by vultures, but Abram kept them away. We might wonder if Abram knew what this was all about.

12 Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him.

This must have been a very tense time for Abram who was doing what God asked but now finds himself, in the dark, in a deep sleep. As he was fast asleep, he finds himself in a terrible nightmare – horror, great darkness. This contrasts the earlier encounter with God in Genesis 12:1 where the Lord tells him to fear not.

Abram had asked for confirmation, and now the Lord was delivering. And so the Lord speaks:

13 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. 14 And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. 16 But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

The LORD tells Abram very specific information that is prefaced with the words “know certainly” (יָדֹ֨עַ תֵּדַ֜ע). God is emphatic in these words.

God does not just say “yes” you will have descendants, but he tells them what his descendants will experience in a span of time more than 400 years. The text says 400 years, but commentators believe this is a round number since we know later it is 430 years.

It is interesting that the land in which his descendants will sojourn is not named, though we know from the texts that follow that this is Egypt. Perhaps Abram thought about this as well since he had already been there to get assistance during the famine.

The flow of the book of Genesis from this point forward shows how this took place as we find out how Abram’s family ends up in this foreign land.

The details of Israel’s growth, affliction, and exit with their pockets full is noted here. We who believe in the inspiration of the scripture do not think this is Moses putting words in God’s mouth after the fact, for it was Moses who would lead Israel out of Egypt.

God told Abram he would have a long life and will avoid all of the trouble. His retirement will be peaceful, not chaotic. Of all the things we might want to know about our future, perhaps the length of our life would be one of them. Or perhaps not, lest we dread the calendar and counting the days.

Verse 16 explains that in the fourth generation his descendants would return here. There is much discussion about the meaning of this, but it seems best to see it as another way of saying 400 years, with 100 years being a generation of a lifespan average.

What is intriguing is this reference to the iniquity of the Amorites. This is God’s explanation for why He was not giving the land to Abram’s offspring until this period of time passed.

“’Amorites’ fluctuates in meaning either designating the whole of Canaan’s populations (v. 16; Amos 2:10) or one of many diverse groups inhabiting the land (v. 21; see vol. 1a, pp. 446, 456). The prophecy implies that the returning Hebrews will be instrumental in God dealing with the sin of the Amorites.[3]”

Mathews, K. A. (2005). Genesis 11:27–50:26 (Vol. 1B, p. 175). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

The Amorites were very wicked people.

The extent of Amorite depravity is condemned in Mosaic legislation (Lev 18:24–25; 20:22–24; Deut 18:12; cf. 1 Kgs 14:24; 21:26; 2 Kgs 21:11) and illustrated by the violence and sensuality of their religious myths (e.g., Baal cycle from Ugarit). By delaying his judgment against the Amorites, the Lord expresses forbearance toward the nations. Retribution against their sins only at “its full measure” attests that judgment is neither capricious nor unwarranted (cf. 18:20–25). Nevertheless, divine temperance toward their iniquity reaches an appropriate point of intolerance.[4]

Mathews, K. A. (2005). Genesis 11:27–50:26 (Vol. 1B, p. 175). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Abram had asked to know for certain, and God told him very specific details about the future. Abram may have wondered if he really now wanted to know all of this, but it showed the kindness of the LORD in giving to him this preview of the future.

Now notice what the LORD does with these animals:

17 And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.

This smoking oven and burning torch symbolized the presence of the LORD. We see a similar picture of God’s presence at Mount Sinai in Exodus. God passed between those animal pieces, down the middle.

We hear sometimes of the language of scripture where someone cuts a covenant. Here is a visit illustration of that. Blood certainly was shed when the animals were cut, and now God passes through them.

This is God making a promise that He would bring to pass. It did not depend upon Abram. If so, we might expect God to have Abram also pass through the animals, like a bilateral agreement. This was God absolutely guaranteeing the outcome of His promise.

And thus, verse 18ff:

18 On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying:

“To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates—19 the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”

God has simply made it clear to Abram by this ritual that He would make and keep his covenant. The animals were cut, and now the covenant is cut. What obligation did God put upon Abram in this agreement? Nothing. It does not involve any actin of Abram, at least we have no word of this in this promise. God would be the guarantor that this would come to pass.

“God obliges himself to give to Abram’s descendants the land of ten nations, all of which fall within the land of Canaan proper. The river of Egypt (see Num. 34:5; Josh. 15:4, which use naḥal instead of nāhār) is not the Nile but the modern Wadi el-Arish, the dividing line between Palestine and Egypt. The geographical extremes of the promise obviously extend beyond Canaan, witnessed especially by the phrase to the great river, the river Euphrates. In fact, only during the apogee [highest point, climax] of David’s reign, many hundreds of years later, was this promise actualized. But even then the empire was maintained only for a generation. By Solomon’s time cracks appeared in the empire, and portions of the empire rebelled and reclaimed their own land for themselves.[5]”

Hamilton, V. P. (1990). The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17 (p. 438). Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

God said to Abram indeed he would give him the land. That has been the focus since verse 7. Prior to that, the focus was upon Abram’s descendants. God would keep that promise as well.

And so, in the life of Abram and within the context of God’s promise to him, this is an extremely important chapter to recall. God had made the promise earlier, but again and again He would repeat it. This repeat included these illustrations – stars of heaven, cutting of animals/cutting the covenant.

What do we see here?

1. Faith in God’s Word is foundational for our lives. When we read in verse 6 that Abram believed and God counted it to him for righteousness, we should keep in mind how the rest of the NT relies on this verse to emphasize faith in the gospel message. We read in Romans, Galatians 3, and James 2, this important matter of faith. Abram was given a promise by God, and Abram believed that promise. Abram did not do anything to gain a right standing before God. He simply believed what God said.

2. Assurance of God’s promises is also important. Abram wanted confirmation that God would indeed give him a son, and God graciously confirmed it to him through the cutting of the animals and God passing through them. God could have simply said that his verbal promise was enough, but he symbolized it through a tangible means. Should we expect the same confirmation of God’s word in our lives? The NT does not illustrate that our lives will have the same visuals by God, but we do have the confirmation of Scripture and all that is teaches by way of instruction and illustration (Israel’s history).

3. In the end, when we have done and said all that we can do, it is God alone who will bring about His purposes and it is to Him alone that the glory should go. God’s cutting ritual with Abram sent the message that He alone would keep the promise. We believe that God’s promise to Israel in the Abrahamic Covenant still is yet to be fulfilled in completion, and so let us believe that God will bring this to pass in His time. For us, the issue of land is the particularly relevant issue for our time, and so let us remember that God will bring this to pass for His people.