Whereby Shall I Know

"And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness." Paul builds a whole teaching on that single line. Yet read on two verses, and Abram says this: "LORD God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?"

The man who has just been counted righteous for believing now asks for proof, and God does not scold him for it. What God gives him is a shopping list: "Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon." Abram cuts the animals in half and lays the pieces facing each other, but he leaves the birds whole. Then he spends the rest of the day chasing birds of prey off the meat. It is the least ceremonial sentence in the chapter: "And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away."

Jeremiah shows what this arrangement was for. He speaks of "the men that have transgressed my covenant," the covenant they had made "when they cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof." The people making the promise walked between the halves, and that was how they signed it. So at sundown a deep sleep falls on Abram, and "an horror of great darkness" with it. While he lies there, "a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces." Only one party walked between them, and it was God. The chapter ends with a second list, the ten nations of the land, named one by one down to the Girgashites and the Jebusites. They are promised to a childless man by the God who signed alone.

So what did God do when a man He had already counted righteous asked for evidence? He acted it out in the dark, and He took the whole oath on Himself. Perhaps there is an assurance you have been ashamed to ask God for, because you feel a believer should not need it. You can ask Him plainly. Hebrews says God bound Himself by an oath to Abraham's heirs so "that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation." That comfort was meant for you too.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 329 is Poor in Spirit (Matthew 5:3).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two