The Covenant of Conversion (Genesis 15:1-21)

August 2, 2009

Ifs

“History is full of ‘ifs.’”  That’s a great line from an article I read this week on the life of John Calvin in Christian History magazine.

The first half of the sixteenth century was a hinge of history unlike any other.  After a thousand years of monopoly on religion and every other facet of life, the Catholic church had rivals – Lutheran, Anabaptist, Reformed, and in England, Anglican.  You no longer had be Catholic to be Christian.  The pope, understandably, did not give up his control without a fight.  Entire cities and countries cut their ties.  Among those cities were Strasbourg in Germany, and Zurich, Basel, and Geneva in Switzerland.

One place where the Catholic church kept its hold on power was in France, the birthplace of John Calvin 500 years ago, July 10, 1509.  Raised in a strong Catholic family, Calvin was sent off to school at age 14 to study religion and law.  At about the age of 20, however, Calvin said, “God drew me from obscure and lowly beginnings…by an unexpected conversion he tamed to teachableness a mind too stubborn for its years – for I was strongly devoted to the superstitions of the Papacy.”

But it was not safe to be Reformed in France.  So Calvin fled to Basel to study further and to write.  Those of similar persuasion who remained in France were subject to false accusations – that they rejected Christ and the Trinity and the essentials of the faith, and that they advocated or at least were responsible for anarchy, disorder, and lawlessness in society.

To respond to these false charges, a 26-year-old Calvin wrote a small volume of six chapters summarizing Protestant teaching.  He dedicated his work to the king of France, who was cruelly persecuting Protestants.  He wrote it for French Christians whom he described as “multitudes hungering and thirsting after Christ” without “possessing any real knowledge of him.”  The work was titled The Institutes of the Christian Religion.  (A quarter century later, Calvin published the final edition as eighty chapters.  My English edition runs 1600 pages.)  It was instantly popular – except, of course, among the Catholics who compared it to the Koran or the Jewish Talmud and burned it.

Calvin left Basel, spent a few months in Italy, and returned home for a brief visit to France.  He left again, and planned to settle down in Basel or Strasbourg to study and write quietly, but a war caused him to detour through Geneva.  He was going to stay there only one night, but William Farel met him there.  Farel had helped Geneva reject Catholicism and embrace the Protestant faith.

When Farel heard the author of The Institutes was in Geneva, he came to Calvi’s room and urged him to stay in Geneva as pastor to the city.  Well, “urged him” is a little mild.  Farel told Calvin he should stay in Geneva or he would be like Jonah running from God, and would suffer God’s curse. And the rest, as they say, is history.

What if Calvin had not listened to Farel?  What if he hadn’t stopped in Geneva in the first place?  What if he hadn’t written the Institutes?  What if his impressionable young mind had been influenced in a different direction?  What if he hadn’t experienced conversion?  What if he had never been born?  History is full of ifs.

Calvin himself, with his strong faith in God’s providence, probably didn’t ask such questions.  But I do.  I ask them about him.  I ask them about me.  I ask them about you.

And I ask them about Abram.  What if he had not been born?

That counts

When we left Abram’s story last week, he had rescued his nephew, Lot, a prisoner of war.  We are a lot like Lot – a history of both woundedness and blessing, a strong desire for the pursuit of happiness that we continue to follow even when it doesn’t result in happiness, in need of rescue because we keep making choices that seem at the time to be good ones. 

Abram takes a small army and recaptures Lot from the most fearsome warlord of his day, Kedorlaomer, and establishes his own reputation for wealth, power, and integrity.

So it seems rather odd that chapter 15 opens with the Lord coming to Abram saying, “Do not be afraid.”  What is he afraid of?

He may be afraid of Kedolaomer’s revenge.  He may also be afraid of what might have been.  Have you ever had a brush with death – and in the immediate aftermath you were calm, but then you started thinking about how close you came to leaving this world?

But he may also be afraid of ending life without an heir.  God has promised Abram that he would become a great nation (12:2) and that his offspring will be as the dust of the earth (13:16).  It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to envision Abram and Sarai trying harder and more often than most couples of their age to make that first baby.  And perhaps only those who have struggled with infertility year after year can understand how hard it was to keep believing.

You have to wonder if Abram is also afraid that he’s not good enough.  He’s had some times when he felt close to God and God spoke to him, but it’s amazing how quickly those spiritual ecstasies wane.  Delay turns confidence into doubt.  “Maybe it’s me.”

And so God appears to Abram one night in a vision and says, “Do not be afraid, Abram.  I am your shield, your very great reward.”  In other words, “I will keep my promises.”

But Abram has been processing this, and he has a plan.  His nephew, Lot, Abram’s closest relative, has essentially divorced him not once but twice.  He’s back in Sodom and not in the family picture.  But all these romantic nights with Sarai are not producing any babies, so Abram voices to God what he’s been thinking.  “Thanks for the blessings and all, but it seems kind of hollow without an actual baby.  It’s looking a lot like he chief-of-staff Eliezer is going to get everything I’ve got.”

You have to hear in Abram’s words despondency, discouragement, even depression.  Maybe even disdain directed at the deity.  “You have given me no children.”  It’s not happening.

The reason we know this was a night-time vision is because of what happens next.  It’s been a long time since I was outside on a clear night without the distraction of city lights.  I can still visualize a childhood scene at Bexley Cottage in Murree, Pakistan.  There was a breathless awe as I gazed at the Milky Way, countless dots of light in a band directly overhead as if they were holes poked in a plastic dome. 

On a bright night just like that God spoke to Abram (again) and said, “Eliezer will not be your heir.  Your body will produce a son.  Look up at the sky and start counting stars.  If you can number all you see, you’ll be able to number your offspring.”

And the Bible says, “Abram believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). 

Pause there.  Abram believed God.  The Hebrew word aman means something solid, firm.  It’s a solid piece of wood you can drive a nail into.   It’s a rock that will support you.  It’s a secure place you can count on.  Abram believed God.

And God said, “That’s good enough.  You’re good enough.  I credit you as righteous.”

The word credit is interesting, and sparked an interesting discussion in one of my Bible study groups last week between the banker, for whom “credit” is a good word and the accountants, for whom the “credit” side of the ledger is a hazard.

“Credit” comes from an old Latin word related to “creed.”  It’s something you can trust, can believe in.  That’s how it came to be used as a loan – the bank is trusting you to pay it back.  The bank likes it when trustworthy people owe money to them.

This moment is pivotal for Abram.  God credits him with being worthy.  Why?  Because he believed.  Was this the first time he believed?  Probably not.  John Calvin mocked those who see justification by faith as a single moment of believing.  He called that idea “insane,” and said that saints are “justified by grace until they die.”

So it’s one thing to believe when the promise is made.  It’s another to believe when the promise is delayed.  When you’ve been trying awfully hard to make that baby without success and you still think God’s promise is solid, that’s faith.

The writer of Hebrews says that faith is the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).  Abraham is exhibit A for holding on to God when God didn’t make sense.

Paul insists based on Genesis 15:6 that Abraham is the prototype for those who trust that God sees them as good even though they are not (Romans 4) – faith apart from works.  James insists, though, quoting this same text, that Abraham’s faith had to follow through in works (James 2:20-24).

All that Genesis 15 says is that Abram believed, and God said, “That’s all I want.  That’s good enough.  You are good enough.  Credit granted.”

Cutting the covenant

But Abram’s not done with his questions.  “How can I know?” he asks God in verse 9.  Can we seal this deal in some way?  I want some tangible act – something I can see, hear, touch, smell, taste.  I want proof that this credit is good.

Then follows a story that is very odd to us, but would not have been odd at all in Abram’s culture.  When people made deals, they didn’t take out paper and write out the legalese in fine print with a notary public validating their signatures.  They “cut a covenant.”

They took animals and split them coronally – length-wise.  They then walked between the pieces, symbolizing two things.  First, that their bond was as close as the two halves of an animal.  And second, that they were calling on themselves a curse if they broke the deal – “may what happened to this animal happen to me if I fail you.”

God repeats his promise to Abram that the land will be his – but not yet because “the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure” (Genesis 15:16).  This is the Bible’s justification for the descendants of Abraham taking this land – that it wasn’t random genocide.  Possession of the land would have to wait until the current residents had become so evil that they no longer deserved to stay there.

As Abram’s vision continued, wow! (“behold,” v. 17, KJV) the invisible God became visible in smoke and fire that joined Abram in solemnly passing between the animal pieces.  He had his tangible moment to hold on to.

But what if Abram had not believed God?  What if Abram had held on the superstitions of his ancestors?  What if he had chosen to stop trying with Sarai?  What if he had given up?

History is full of ifs.

The doctrine of covenant

This series of sermons has several elements to it.  It’s about the story of Abram, the Bible’s first and perhaps best illustration of faith.  It’s about the legacy of John Calvin, who certainly deserves a lot of credit for shaping our world.  (He deserves some blame, too – but I’ll leave that for this week’s “Pastor’s Pen” in the newsletter.)

But this series of sermons is also about doctrine.  There’s a woeful lack of teaching in today’s church about what we believe as Christians and why it makes a difference.

Now some Christians get excited about doctrine and want to expound on irresistible grace vs. prevenient grace, or insist on dispensationalism over covenant theology, or debate the merits of Calvinism and Arminianism.  John Calvin certainly had very specific views on theology, but in my view those have to be measured against what he was battling – and his followers have continued to dissect all those doctrines with a great deal of overconfidence.  Those issues are and should be debated in seminaries, but that’s not what I mean when I say “doctrine.” 

I mean more what C. S. Lewis described as “Mere Christianity,” or, more recently, N. T. Wright as what it means to be “Simply Christian.”  What are the basics that we learn that tie Abraham to Calvin to you and me?

First, that God is God.  That means he’s in charge.  Calvin used the word predestination, though he didn’t coin it – it comes from the Bible.  I understand the starting point simply being God.  And if God is not in control, he’s not God.  If he is in charge, I understand that I could not have chosen him; he chose me.

But so much happens in the world we don’t understand.  If God is in control, why are there disasters?  Why is there evil?  I’m not supposed to understand it all.  I’m not God.  He is.

The second area of doctrine is depravity.  That the mess in this world and in us is of our own making.  We swing from one end to the other in so many areas – politics, theology, behavior – and no matter what we do, we make a mess.  We are powerless, individually or together, to find ultimate answers and meaning.  Calvin didn’t invent depravity – he just described it.

That led to last week’s sermon on humility.  We are in need of rescue, as Lot was.  And we need to admit our own finiteness.  I haven’t figured it all out.  Neither have you.  Maybe I’m closer than you to understanding God and maybe I’m not.  So along the way I need to treat you with humility as we both seek God with humility.

But faith doesn’t end there.  It doesn’t finish with (a) God is in charge, (b) I’m a mess, and (c) I have a lot to learn.  The faith on which we have leaned hard, into which we have driven our stakes, believes that God has made it possible for me in my depravity to be righteous – to be declared good.  God has included me in a covenant – a once-for-all group contract that makes me part of his family.

On this side of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we see that only by the cross of Jesus Christ is that possible.  My sinful nature deserved his wrath, but that wrath was poured out in full on Christ, and because of him I am “in.”

That is an amazing truth, but it’s also unbelievable, even illogical.  How could someone’s death two thousand years ago make me righteous now – or Abraham righteous two thousand years before Christ?  Some promises of God are, indeed, incredible?

But what defines faith, and what makes a believer, is the willingness to stake my life and eternity on just that truth.  The alternatives are superstition – that there’s nothing out there, or many gods, or that I have to work hard at it, or that God has left a confusing array of possible paths to him.

When I reject the superstition and believe God, it’s called conversion.  Calvin’s conversion happened when he was about 20, and he called it “unexpected” or “sudden.”  Abram’s happened into his eighties, when he believed the impossible and accepted the covenant.

What if Abram hadn’t?  What if Calvin hadn’t?  History is full of ifs.

More importantly, what if you had not?  What if you have not?  That if is up to you.  Calvin’s doctrine of predestination, even in Calvin’s own writing and thinking, never implies your being passive.  You don’t hear the gospel and say, “Well, if I’m predestined to believe, I will, and if I’m not, I won’t.”

No, you hear the good news and the response is in your court.  By Christ’s death God made full provision to bring you into the covenant.  If you believe, he will accept you as righteous.  He will promise to provide for your needs.  This “if” is up to you.  Amen.