People will often go to great lengths to get something they want. They will wait in line for hours for the newest iPhone. Instead of delaying gratification, people will max out credit cards to purchase that shiny little toy they cannot do without. They will line up a dawn for those black Friday savings at stores. Yet, it is uncanny how impatient people are waiting in the Wal-Mart checkout line or a restaurant. Did I fail to mention driving?
What about waiting on God? If you have been a follower of Jesus for any length of time, you have probably discovered it frequently involves waiting on God. Unfortunately, sometimes we are impatient with God just like we are with the cashier at Wal-Mart. There is no logical or biblical reason for our impatience because this passage of Scripture teaches us God may delay, but he always fulfills his promise.
Let me give you three reasons why we can believe God during the delay.
- God assures us of his promise through His Word (vv. 1-6).
Sometimes, we think God is not paying attention to what we are going through. I can assure you God is paying attention. God knew his servant Abram needed some encouragement, so he came to Abram in a vision. After God tells Abram not to be afraid and reassures him his reward will be great, Abram asks God a question in verse 2, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue (literally will I die) childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” This, of course, was the custom in their time. If the family did not have a son, the inheritance went to a trusted servant in the household.
We need to notice the tenderness of God here. God does not scold Abram for his question. Instead, God encourages and reassures Abram. He tells Abram to look up at the night sky and do something practically impossible: number the stars. This is how many descendants you are going to have, God says to Abram. God is not just talking about the Jewish people here. He gave such an infinite sign to point to all the children of faith who would come through the offspring of Abram, which has been fulfilled through Jesus Christ.
So, how did Abram respond to this reassurance of God? Verse 6 records his response, “And he believed the LORD, and he counted to him as righteousness. This shows us that:
Our faith/belief is the basis for our righteousness.
God gave Abram his word, and that is all Abram needed. The Apostle Paul comments on Abram’s faith in Romans 4:20-21, “No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” Paul goes on to conclude in verse 22, “That is why his faith was ‘counted to him as righteousness.’”
This is so crucial for us to understand. It is not our good behavior, our good works which give us a right standing before God. It is our faith, our belief in God’s promise to save us. This is what made Abram righteous before God, and it is what makes us righteous before God. The question is do you believe God’s promise to save you? Have you trusted in Christ to save you? Or are you still under the delusion you can do enough good to warrant a place in heaven?
When you are discouraged by delay and waiting for God to fulfill all his promises, you must always go to the same place for reassurance: God’s Word! Nothing else will encourage you like the Word of God! You must, like Abram, be fully convinced that God can do what he has promised.
You might be tempted to think that by delaying his promise, God is denying it. Let me encourage you with another reason you can believe God during the delay.
2. God’s delay is not a denial of the promise (vv. 13-16).
In verse 13, God reveals to Abram that the people of God will be enslaved in a land that is not theirs, which we know from the book of Exodus is Egypt, for four hundred years. God tells him that the people of God will come out of the land with great wealth later. He comforts Abram by telling him he will die in peace at a good old age. God also tells him that Abrams’s descendants, the Israelite people, will not get back to the Promised Land until the fourth generation. The reason for this delay, according to verse 16, is, “The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
God is not delaying his promise just to be cruel. God’s delays are not denials. God is in control of time. He often delays to teach us important things about the kingdom of God.
His delay is a display of great patience.
What is this somewhat cryptic statement about the Amorite’s iniquity? The Amorites were living in the Promised Land. They were an evil people. According to Leviticus 18:1-24, they engaged in 12 different variations of incest, adultery, child sacrifice, sexual perversion, and bestiality. They had flagrantly disobeyed God’s moral law for many, many years. One day, the cup would be full—one day God would say that is enough.
God does punish them for their sin eventually, but the focus here is not on the wrath of God. The emphasis here is on the patience of God. This is the way God operates in the world. He is tremendously and overwhelmingly patient. The Bible uses the word “longsuffering.” God suffers long with the world. He doesn’t just throw down his wrath willy-nilly. Why does God do this? Paul gives us a clue in Romans 2:4, “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.” This is why God delays judgment. He wants people to repent. Sadly, the Amorites did not. It is not too late, however, for you to repent. Praise God for his patience!
There is something else you can learn from this delay.
Suffering precedes glory (Acts 14:22).
God told Abram his people would be enslaved and “be afflicted for four hundred years” in verse 13. This Old Testament promise paints a picture of what is to come. At Iconium, Lystra and Antioch, Paul and Barnabus were “strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).
You have to make a choice. Are you going to envy the prosperity and ease of wicked people? Or are you going to be encouraged and strengthened by God’s Word? Are you going to be confident in suffering by knowing “that through many tribulations,” you must enter the kingdom of God? I can assure you of this. No suffering we go through here compares to the weight of glory to be revealed to us. God delays, but he never denies his promise to those who trust in him.
Not only does God reassure and instruct us during the delay, but he also gives us another reason to believe.
3. God confirms his promise through covenant (vv. 7-12; 17-21).
A little background information will be helpful. When people made a covenant with each other in Abram’s day, they would cut an animal in two and lay the halves apart from each other, and the two parties making the covenant would walk between the two halves of the animal. By doing this, the two parties are vowing that they may meet the same fate as this animal if they do not keep their part of the covenant.
This is a mysterious scene. This smoking fire pot and flaming torch passes between the halves of the animal. Then the LORD makes the covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land…” in verse 18. What can we learn from this mysterious scene about God’s covenant?
His covenant is unconditional and unilateral.
Nowhere in these passages of Scripture speaking of the covenant God makes with Abram do you see God saying, “Abram if you do this, I will do this.” What you see is God saying he will give or do something. This makes the covenant unconditional. It is not conditioned on Abram’s behavior.
Also, did you notice only God passes through the halves of the animals? God places the burden of keeping the covenant on himself. God was symbolizing that if he were to break his word, he would be cut in two like these butchered animals. He was invoking a curse upon himself if he broke the covenant. This was a guarantee to Abram that his descendants would get the land or God would die. And God, of course, cannot die.
What does this covenant mean to us as Christians? One commentator gives a great answer to this question:
By what figure could God have demonstrated his commitment more graphically to Abram? How could it have been displayed more vividly? The only way would have been for the figure to become a reality, for the ever-living God to take on human nature and taste death in the place of the covenant-breaking children of Abram. And that is precisely what God did in Jesus Christ. On the cross, the covenant curse fell entirely on Jesus so that the guilty ones who place their trust in him might experience the blessings of the covenant. Jesus bore the punishment for our sins so that God might be our God and we might be his people.[1]
God’s covenant with us in Christ is unconditional and unilateral. Christ and Christ alone has taken the curse upon himself. If we believe this promise, we, like Abram, can be counted as righteous before a holy God. Do you trust in what Christ did? The covenant curse need not fall on you. God has made a way for you to be one of his people.
I know waiting can be discouraging. So encourage yourself from God’s Word. Take him at His word and believe his promise. All of the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ. He will keep them all! As we wait for many of these promises to be fulfilled, we can rejoice in the patience of God. We can receive his comfort in our suffering. God is so serious about his commitment to us as his people that he has made a covenant with us. And God will never break this covenant.
[1] Iain M. Duguid, Living in the Gap Between Promise and Reality (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 1999), 59.
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