Day 16: Genesis 12-15

Welcome to 5 Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today is

January the 16th and we're now back in Genesis, chapters 12 through 15. Now before we step into today's passage, we need to reorient ourself in the story of Genesis.

You'll remember Genesis 1 through 11 has shown us the steady unraveling of a fallen world and God's relentless commitment to redeem it.

God began his rescue project through Adam, but humanity quickly collapsed into corruption and violence, ending in a cataclysmic judgment through a global flood.

God then preserved the world through Noah, only to see humanity rebel again, this time through pride and self -exaltation at the

Tower of Babel. Now in Genesis 12 through 15, God begins the rescue project again, but this time in a new way.

He does not address the whole world all at once. He calls one man out of the nations and his name is

Abram, later to be called Abraham. And through that man, God is going to rebuild the world and save it for his glory.

Now Genesis 12 opens with God's call to Abram to leave his land, his family, and all of his future behind and to go to the land that God has promised him.

And God promises to make Abraham, if he's obedient, into a great nation, to give him land and to bless all of the families of the earth through this single man.

And Abraham responds in faith, not perfectly, but genuinely, and he begins a life shaped by the promises of God instead of the uncertainty of man.

Now in Genesis 13, God reaffirms the promise of land after Abram separates from Lot, showing that the inheritance is going to come by faith and not by grasping.

Genesis 14 reveals Abram as a protector and a rescuer, defeating kings and even receiving a blessing from Melchizedek, a priest of God Most High and a picture of Jesus Christ.

Genesis 15 then slows the story down dramatically with God formalizing his radical promise in a overtly bloody covenantal ceremony, assuring

Abram that offspring is going to come even though Abram is still childless and growing older by the minute.

Now as you read today, I want you to ask the following question. How does God move his promise forward when the world and his people keep on failing?

And Genesis 12 through 15 shows us that God does not wait for ideal conditions.

He doesn't wait for moral improvement, political stability, or even human readiness.

He makes promises and then he commits himself to bringing those promises to pass.

And that leads to the central tension of this text. In Genesis 12 through 15, the tension is the gap between the promise and the fulfillment.

God promises this old man, Abram, land, descendants, and blessings, but Abraham owns no land, has no children, and lives as a wandering outsider who could feel like he's living a life bereft of any blessing.

The gap between these two realities is not accidental, it is covenantal. God deliberately places his people, like Abram, in situations where fulfillment is impossible without him.

And that way, faith in scripture is never described as optimism or certainty. It's always rooted in trusting

God, even when the evidence seems to point the other way. Abram's life teaches us that waiting is not a detour from God's plan.

It is the path God uses to shape his people. And the covenant grows, not through speed or strength, but through an old man and an old woman who are already barren and incapable, mortally speaking, of producing anything akin to the promise that God makes.

But through patience and trust, they will see his promises come true. And that leads to an important clarification.

Genesis 15 is one of the most important covenant scenes in the entire Bible. In the ancient world, when two men or a powerful king and a lesser vassal wanted to enter into a covenant together, they would enter into an agreement, a stipulation -based arrangement, by cutting animals in half laterally and then walking through their bloodied corpses.

And when they did this, the meaning was clear. They're saying to each other, may what happened to these animals happen to me or you if either one of us breaks the terms of the covenant.

Now what's shocking in Genesis 15 is that Abraham wakes up from a sleep and does not walk through the severed pieces with God.

God himself, through a smoking fire pot, walks through these severed animal parts alone.

And that is so important to the story of redemption because God is binding himself to the promise, placing the weight of fulfillment entirely on his own faithfulness.

God is saying to Abraham, if I fail to give you a son, if I fail to give you this land, if I fail to make your family blessed and for your family to bless all of the families on earth, then may

I be ripped apart just like these animals. Abraham is contributing nothing to the promises but belief because this is not a contract between equals.

It is a gracious covenant that is initiated by God, secured by God, and guaranteed by God entirely.

And this covenant radically points to Jesus. The promise that all the nations on earth are going to be blessed through the seed of Abraham is going to find its fulfillment in Christ, the true seed of Abraham, as Paul says in Galatians.

Where Abraham leaves his home in obedience, Christ leaves heaven itself in obedience to come to the world that the

Lord had promised him as his inheritance. Where Abraham trusts God's word about a future he cannot see,

Christ perfectly trusts the Father even unto death. And most importantly, in this covenant ceremony of Genesis 15, we're being prepared for the cross because just as God alone passed through the symbol of judgment in promise to Abraham, Christ alone is going to pass through the judgment and obtain for himself the curse of the covenant and be ripped apart on our behalf to give us the promises of God.

The blessing that's promised to Abraham flows to the nations because Jesus absorbed the judgment that you and I as covenant breakers deserve, which tells us that redemption does not rest on our human performance, but on the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.

For families, this matters deeply. Genesis 12 through 15 teaches us that God often works quietly, slowly, and invisibly.

Children, you should learn that waiting, like our father Abraham did, is not wasted time, but it's hope in the promises of God.

Parents, you learn that obedience doesn't always bring immediate results. And believers, we all learn here that God's promises are trustworthy even when life looks completely unpredictable and unstable because faith is not about seeing the whole picture.

It is about taking the next step, trusting that God is faithful to finish what he said he would finish.

So as you read Genesis 12 through 15 today, I want you to watch the small beginnings that God uses to begin his worldwide plan of redemption and how enormous his promise actually is.

There's no more flood, no more tower, just a man and the promise of God. And in the days ahead, we're going to see how

Abraham's story will teach us how God is going to build a redeemed world, one family and one act of faith at a time.

And with that, read your Bible carefully today, devotionally and joyfully, and may the

Lord use his word to sanctify you completely. And we will continue our journey tomorrow.