It must have been a clear night, and the desert air was likely rapidly cooling as darkness overtook the land. The dirt in the valley of the Dead Sea (as it was later called) was still stained with the blood of a massive regional battle between nine armies, and Abram the Hebrew had just successfully completed a subsequent smaller raid/rescue mission. Now, Abram, spoke in a vision with Yahweh – “God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth” (Gen 14:22). God told Abram, “Fear not … I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” This was indeed a great encouragement, and was certainly affirmed by the mighty victory God had just enabled and by the fact Abram trusted in God to protect and provide for him. However, Abram’s hope for greatness was not based in earthly riches or a military victory, but in the promise he had received years earlier from Yahweh himself that he, Abram the aged, would be the father of a great people through whom all of the earth would be blessed (Gen 12:3) and who would be as numerous and uncountable “as the dust of the earth” (Gen 13:16). However, his response to God reminding him that, “I am your shield; your reward shall be very great” on this particular night was more of a lament, or even a complaint.
Abram replied to God in Genesis 15:2, “O, Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless..?” and then he went on in verse three, “Behold, you have given me no offspring…” It’s quite a bold indictment. Abram is both spurning his material blessings and (rightly) attributing his lack of a child directly to God, and is basically saying, “Because you have not given me a child, you’ve given me nothing.” Rather than strike Abram down for what appears to be disrespectful ingratitude, God reaffirms His promise to give Abram offspring so numerous that they cannot be counted – in spite of the fact he remained childless and he and his wife were elderly. In this reaffirmation of the promise, God tells his doubtful accuser to “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them” (Gen 15:5). Of course we know from the next verse that Abram “…believed the Lord, and (the Lord) counted it to him as righteousness,” and that God kept His promise.
It’s this idea of counting the stars that struck me recently. The first analogy God used of dust was clearly intended to convey that it would be more than an overwhelming task to actually count the number of Abram’s offspring, it would be impossible. For, even if you could somehow count every piece of dust (or grain of sand, as in another analogy God used with Abram), constant geologic and aeolian processes would cause more dust and sand to be created before the existing granules could be counted. However, the second analogy of the stars might have seemed to Abram as remotely possible, even though the Lord implied it was not.
Think of Abram living in the middle east without a telescope or any other way of knowing that the number of stars just in our galaxy alone far surpasses what even the keenest-visioned person can count, or that some of what he could see shining on a clear night were actually planets and even another galaxy. What he didn’t know when God told him to “look toward heaven” was that the heavens expanded past the solar system and the Milky Way galaxy, and included millions of other galaxies containing billions upon billions of stars. Even if Abram was tempted for a moment to think he could meet God’s challenge of counting the stars, his lack of knowledge and ability would have led him to a calculation that was profoundly insufficient. What might for a moment have seemed like a possibility and answer what might have been a burning question for Abram – “Just how many offspring will I have?” – was in reality a more daunting task than counting every grain of sand and piece of dust on Earth.
I think that God’s challenge to Abram is meant to do more than just test his human ability to count the stars and be impressed and encouraged by what he sees. It seems that the most impressive and encouraging aspect of God’s challenge is actually what cannot be seen – the incomprehensible magnitude of the universe that Abram knew nothing about. In the same way, the promise God made to Abram was much, much more than just that he would have a whole lot of progeny. The magnitude of the promise – as we now know – is that Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, would come from Abram’s bloodline and that the children of Abram (later Abraham) would be more than just physical, but spiritual as all who believe in Jesus Christ and the Gospel are children of Abraham “by faith.”
I think God’s promises and providence are like that. It seems when God wills and acts the second, third and fourth-order effects (and so on) that ripple into eternity are good and awesome in ways we cannot fathom, and which we will get to spend eternity discovering, praising God more and more at each new bit of understanding and glimpse of God’s master plan.
There are three encouragements I want to highlight for us today: 1. We can trust God’s promises and providence because history – and hopefully our own experiences – prove God is faithful. 2. “Look toward heaven,” consider that God is working in and through the good and enjoyable as well as the hard and sad in ways you cannot even think or imagine and trust Him “…who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20) 3. Finally, consider Romans 11:33-36. “Oh, the depth and riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable are His ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid?’ For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.”
Pens and Picks 