Genesis 15:1

You know that sinking feeling after you've had a dinner party? You've used all the pans in the house, there is cake mix all over the walls from the mixer and the washing up is towered precariously by the sink! There was such momentum up to that point, you just had to get everything right before your guests arrived and once they did you you were too busy enjoying yourself. It is only in the silence that follows your final guest's departure that what you've just done actually sinks in. Now you are sat alone wondering if it was really worth it after all. Whats the point?

Well that is a rather dramatic account of a dinner party probably inspired by my wife's ambitious attempts to be a wonderful host (which she is). Imagine though what it must be like when its not a dinner you've been making but a war you have been fighting. Imagine that it wasn't a cheese soufflé that you were trying to nail but the leaders of evil and wicked nations that were exploiting the vulnerable. Imagine the sinking feeling after all that is finished. You've not been through the summit of the cheese and port but instead you have rescued the last captive and have shunned the offer of an evil ruler. Imagine then the nagging questions of "what was all this for?".

Looking at the plot line of lots of the epic films in our culture we might see Abram as achieving his destiny in Chapter 14's rescue account. Surely he has become the hero we all aspire to be? He is the rescuer. In light of this we may find his sudden emotional plummet a little surprising. Hasn't he just arrived? That would be the obvious conclusion looking through the lens of individualism that charicterises our world view. However we must understand that the culture we are reading about understood its worth not based upon its individual achievements and merit but upon the strength of its family and community. In Abram's society he had nothing. All Abram's had done was meaningless to him unless he could have a child to carry on his line.

This passage reminds us of something we keep on seeing in this God story - The creator's initiative. God intervenes time and time again. He isn't just a God who responds to our needs, he anticipates them. This scene doesn't begin with Abram's questions and disillusionment but instead God's words of empathy. He sees Abram's need even before it is expressed.

Abram's in a very different position to us. He doesn't have millenniums of history to look back on and to know what God is like. These are the early days of revelation. God is making himself known to a people who have long been exiled from the place where God and man lived in perfect relationship. The knowledge of God was distant and dim.

The first thing God says to Abram is a command, "Do not be afraid". If you had been rescued from the evil grasp of Pharaoh and had actually come out richer than when you went in because of a miraculous intervention by God, you would probably find those words extremely compelling. If this God says "Do not be afraid" then there is no need to be afraid.

Then God says something that Abram doesn't actually seem to get - "I am your shield, your very great reward". God is gently probing Abram's heart here. He knows that Abram has actually started to look for his reward elsewhere. Abram is afraid because his hope is not longer in God but in the child that God had promise. Abram was now making an idol of this child. He turns to God and says "what can you give me since I remain childless?". Just take a minute to absorb the audacity of this statement that Abram directs at God. Abram's idolatry has blinded him to incredible gift God was offering him. Not a child, although that was implicit, but the gift of himself - "I am your very great reward".


Here is God holding himself out for Abram, inviting him to lose himself in the sufficiency of his love and provision. Why do we, like Abram, so often hang our life on the hope of God fulfilling one of our idolatrous needs when he is offering us something infinitely greater - himself. If God is offering Abram God, what is a child in comparison? Have your hopes and dreams come to mean more to you than God himself? Do you elevate an unfilled prophecy above God himself? Is God or something else your "very great reward"? Idolatry is a subtle disease of the heart. In Abram's case the the object of his idolatry was the very thing the God had promised him.