Salvation, Substitution and a Steadfast Hope
Three Key Takeaways
God initiates covenant and keeps His promises. When Abraham asked how he could know God would keep His word, God didn't just reassure him—He made a covenant. In ancient culture, both parties walked between cut animals, saying "may this happen to me if I break the covenant." But only God walked through. He took the whole responsibility.
Christ became our substitute, taking the curse we deserved. The covenant promised blessing to Abraham's offspring, but also threatened a curse for disobedience. Paul explains that Christ became a curse for us on the cross, so the blessing could come to us. He took our place in the covenant.
We have an anchor for the soul in God's unchanging promise. Everything else we put our hope in can fail—money, popularity, achievements. But God's promise is completely unchanging. Through Christ, we have a steadfast hope, an anchor that goes right into the presence of God Himself.
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Salvation, Substitution and a Steadfast Hope
We're in the middle of a series about the life of faith, looking at Abraham. He's like the prototype of a life of faith in the Bible. He's the first person really held up as an example of faith for a whole life. You get to see how it works out in different areas.
Last week we looked at money and provision and what faith looks like in that. In future weeks we'll look at different aspects. Today we're reading one of those stories in the Bible that when you read it, you think, "What? What just happened?" It's not always easy to understand why it's significant. Hopefully we'll discover why it is.
In Genesis 15, we witness God speaking to Abraham, Abraham replying in prayer, and God carrying out extraordinary deeds.
The Story
After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision: "Fear not, Abraham, I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great."
But Abraham said, "O Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus." Abraham said, "Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir."
Behold, the word of the Lord came to him: "This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir."
(Abraham at this point is very old. This is why he's concerned when he says he hasn't had any kids yet. God promised him all these descendants, but at the moment there's this random guy from Damascus who's going to inherit everything he's got. God speaks to him again and says, "Don't worry, I'm on it. Your very own son shall be your heir.")
And He brought him outside and said, "Look towards heaven and number the stars, if you are able to number them."
God took him to see them and said, "Look, all these stars." Then He said to him, "So shall your offspring be."
And he believed the Lord, and He counted it to him as righteousness.
God said to him, "I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess."
But Abraham said, "O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?"
God said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon."
Abraham brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he didn't cut the birds in half.
When birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abraham drove them away.
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abraham. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.
The Lord said to Abraham, "Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years. But I will bring judgement on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age, and they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying, "To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates."
Two Segments of Prayer
Genesis 15 unfolds in two parallel conversations. In each one, God comes and declares something about Himself to Abraham.
First, God says, "I am your shield and your very great reward."
Abraham responds with a "yeah, but" kind of prayer. "Yeah, but Lord, I don't have any offspring. I don't have a child. You said I was going to have a child and you've not given me one."
God shows him by taking him outside the tent and showing him all the stars.
The second round, God comes to him again and says, "I am the Lord."
Abraham says, "Yeah, but," and prays back to him again. "How am I going to know that you're going to give me this land to possess?" Because God's promised him descendants and promised him a land, and he hasn't got either.
God, instead of getting him to look at the sky this time, gets him to look at the ground and they lay out these animals.
You get to see Abraham in prayer. You get to see God responding to him, making promises.
Understanding the Cultural Context
When we want to make a contract or covenant with someone, we don't tend to go and get a three-year-old heifer and a turtledove and a pigeon. But in the ancient Near East, this was how you made a covenant.
The idea was both parties would bring animals, cut them in half, lay them out, and then both parties would walk between the pieces. The symbolism was, "May what happened to these animals happen to me if I break this covenant." It was a way of saying, "I'm putting my life on the line. If I don't keep my word, may I be torn apart like these animals."
The Remarkable Thing
Here's what's remarkable about this story: Abraham cuts the animals in half and lays them out. Then a deep sleep falls on him—a dreadful and great darkness. He's completely out of it.
When the sun has gone down and it's dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch—representing the presence of God—passes between the pieces.
Only God walks through. Abraham doesn't walk through. God takes the whole responsibility for the covenant on Himself.
God is saying, "I'm making a promise to you, Abraham. And if this promise isn't kept, may what happened to these animals happen to me. I'm putting my life on the line to guarantee this covenant."
How the New Testament Understands This
The followers of Jesus who wrote the New Testament looked back on this moment and understood something profound about what God was doing.
In Galatians 3, Paul writes: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree'—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith."
Paul is saying that the covenant God made with Abraham promised blessing to his offspring. But it also implied a curse for disobedience. The problem is, Abraham's descendants—all of us—failed to keep the covenant. We deserved the curse.
But Christ became a curse for us. He took the curse on Himself. He was "hanged on a tree"—crucified on the cross. What happened to those animals in Genesis 15, what should have happened to us for breaking the covenant, happened to Jesus instead.
He became our substitute. He took our place. So that the blessing of Abraham—the promise of God's presence and favour—could come to us.
Three Things This Means for Us
1. Substitution (Galatians 3:13-14)
Christ came as our substitute. He took the curse that we deserved. When God made the covenant with Abraham, He walked through the pieces alone, taking all the responsibility. When we broke the covenant, Christ took the penalty.
He died in our place so we could receive the blessing.
2. Salvation (Romans 4:2-5, 23-25)
Because of what Christ did, we can be saved. Not by our own efforts, not by keeping the law, not by being good enough. But by faith—the same faith Abraham had when he believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.
We receive salvation the same way Abraham did—by believing God's promise.
3. Security (Hebrews 6:19-20)
Hebrews 6:19-20 says: "We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf."
Because God made this promise to Abraham and this covenant with him, we have a sure and certain and steadfast anchor. We've got security.
Christ comes in our place as our substitute. We've got security, steadfastness, certainty. Our hearts can be full of peace because we've got Christ who's gone ahead of us. He's gone through the curtain into the Holy of Holies in the temple. He's gone right into the presence of God.
The promise of God is secure and certain. It's like an anchor. If you're out in the sea, there's no way of being able to stop yourself from being shifted by the waves and currents and wind. You could get taken wherever. There's not only no way you can control it, there's no way you can even know what's happening. You can't tell because you're surrounded by water and sky and you're being swung along, swayed around, depending on the water and the wind.
Unless you drop an anchor. It goes down, and your boat stays still. It anchors itself into the steadfastness of the ground at the bottom of the ocean.
As believers, we've got this steadfast hope, an anchor for the soul. Your soul doesn't need to be thrown around depending on how today went or how tomorrow might go or what happened. Your soul doesn't need to get thrown around depending on whether that person likes you or that person unfriends you, or you get that job, or that person doesn't do that thing. All those things that can affect us.
There's an anchor that can go down and get anchored into the solidity of the ground. The thing that is most solid and most unchanging in the whole world, more unchanging than anything you can see around you, is God Himself. In fact, He is the only thing that is completely unchanging, and His promise is completely guaranteed.
Because we've got an anchor that can go down into the very promise of God, the one He made at the beginning of the Bible, story after story after story just shows how He's being faithful to it. Even though we fail, He's faithful again and again and again, even to the point where He Himself is willing to die in our place.
That is the unchanging nature of the promise of God. That is how secure you can be as a believer if you put your hope and your faith in Him.
Where We Put Our Hope
What we tend to do is put our hope and faith in all kinds of other things. But everything else we put our hope and faith in is changing.
You can see it all around you, all the time. If you put your hope and faith in riches and money, the riches and money might fade, might fail. There could be a run on the banks, a Wall Street crash. You could lose your job. You could lose your house. Insurance might not pay out. There are no guarantees.
SOME people put their hope in their popularity and social standing. That can get dismissed in one tweet from nine years ago. It can just fall down.
Other people put their hope in their achievements, but that just makes them more and more desperate and anxious about how well they do at work and how other people perceive them. It turns them into people that aren't actually very good at work because they just want to push others down to keep achieving more.
Whatever you put your hope in, it is changing and it is vulnerable—unless you put it down into the faithfulness of God, which is unchanging.
It means all those things can happen to you. You might lose all your money, all your good looks, all your friends, all your social standing. That would be a bad day. But you'd still have an anchor for the soul. You'd still have a righteousness that is yours freely from God. You'd still have all the curse of death and sin removed away from you because Christ came to take you in your place. You'd still have the promise of an eternity with Christ, so you could still be secure even if everything else fails.
At Redemption
This is the life of faith that Abraham models for us and we are invited into. We have an anchor for the soul that goes in behind the curtain, anchored right in the very presence of God, where Jesus has gone ahead of us. That's good news.
As we remember Jesus who died in our place so that the blessing of God could come to us, we can receive the Holy Spirit by faith. We can remember Jesus and His death and resurrection. We can, with confidence and with faith, pray for this blessing for ourselves. We can pray for God to fill us with the Holy Spirit, for God's presence with us today and this week. We can invite Him near, not because we've had a great week and earned it, but because He will freely give it to us because of His generosity.
