After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a’ vision, saying, `Fear not, Abram; I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward,” (verse 1),—just the very words Abram needed, though perhaps, and very likely, no one knew it but God Himself.
You and I would feel a lot better if when we were afraid or sad and lonely, some person big and strong and rich and kind should say to us (and mean it too), “Don’t be afraid, I’ll do everything for you that you need”. But that is only a very poor likeness of what God has said, and will do, for those who love Him.
Open your Bible to John 16:3333These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33) and read, “These things I have spoken unto you that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” These inspiring words were among the last, the blessed Lord Jesus said to those He loved, on the night in which He was betrayed to the wicked men who had long planned to kill Him. “Fear not”, “Be of good cheer”—it is Jesus Who says the word, and that is why we believe it, isn’t it? But now let us look again at the first verse of our chapter in Genesis.
‘We all know what a reward is; it is something that someone gives you that isn’t wages or pay, when you’ve done something that other folks are very pleased with, isn’t it?
Now what is a shield? Some of you will say very quickly, “I know”, but as I can’t wait with this story until you tell me, I asked two boys that I know, and they told me that “I am thy shield” means, “I am your protector.” That is right, God was taking care of Abram, protecting him from wicked men and from Satan, but the verse says too, “and I have a reward for you in eternity,” because Abram had refused to take a gift from the world, when the king of Sodom met him.
But Abram had been thinking of the promise God had made to him in his old home, far away across the desert, and so he asked Him about a son, for he was past seventy-five years old, and his wife was only ten years younger than he, so they were not exactly young people, even in those days when people lived much longer than they do now. After the flood, lives grew quickly shorter, but they were not yet as short as now-a-days. God told Abram he should indeed have a son, and He even brought him outdoors at night, and told him to look up in the sky and count the stars if he could—so many would his children be for number. Before this, in the thirteenth chapter and sixteenth verse, God had spoken of Abram’s children as to be like the dust of the earth for multitude, and as we are sure there is a meaning in all the Bible tells us, we can think God, when speaking to Abram, had in mind, first, the saved ones of the people of Israel, and others who are going to be God’s earthly people; and then in the fifteenth chapter, verse five, God was thinking of those that are His heavenly people; but all of them, both earthly and heavenly people, saved through the precious blood of Jesus. Of course, not every one that has been saved since. Abram was an Israelite: no indeed, and God did not mean that, but as Romans 4:11What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? (Romans 4:1)1 Says, Abram was the father of all them that believe, the head of the great family of faith.
“And he believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness” (verse 6.). Have you believed in Him to the salvation of your soul? O, don’t throw this paper away, or pass this by to read something else. Have you believed, confessing your sins, your badness to God?
Abram was I think now quite as ready to wait for God to act for him as he had been before, or as he was later on, for he asked God, How shall I know that I shall inherit this land? Well, God graciously told him how it would be with himself, and with his children after his death, before they were given the land of Canaan for their own. Abram himself would die in a peaceful old age, a stranger in the country God had promised, but his descendants at the end of about four hundred years would be brought out of a strange land—Egypt, it was—in which they would be treated very cruelly, (but the Egyptians would be punished by God) and taken back to Canaan, the land of God’s promise.
The second half of verse 16 we must notice, too; it tells us that the wickedness of the nations which lived in Canaan when Abram did, was not yet “full”. Surely they were very wicked even then; let us turn back again to the thirteenth chapter and thirteenth verse which tells us about Sodom’’, that its people were “wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly”. God was going to wait four hundred years more, not on Sodom, which was soon to be destroyed, but on the rest of the people of the land, as He had waited many more years on the people who lived before the flood. Perhaps none of them would repent and turn to God, but, at least, they were given plenty of time to own their badness to Him, and they must have known they were wicked, but would not own it to God. Have you done that, dear young reader? I want to point you to two very solemn verses, Acts 16:30-3130And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? 31And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. (Acts 16:30‑31). There we are told that God now commands everyone to repent, because He has appointed a day of judgment, and ordained a Man, (it is the Lord Jesus) to be the judge.
God told Abram too of the boundaries —the Mediterranean sea and the river Euphrates—of the promised land, which was then the home of the ten nations named in the last verses of chapter 15.
Before we close let us notice that just as the precious blood of Jesus had to be shed before those who believe in Him could, beside knowing they are saved, be told of what God is going to do, and the course of things in the world, in the same way when Abram had offered as a sacrifice to God those animals and birds that verses 9-10 tell of, He told him of the future of his children. Of course we know that those Old Testament sacrifices could not take away sins, (Hebrews 10:44For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. (Hebrews 10:4) says that), but until the Lord Jesus came down into this world, and died on the cross, bearing the punishment instead of all those who believe in Him, God was pleased to receive those sacrifices which were offered in faith to Him in prospect of the cross.
Because Jesus has died, God can make us His children, His friends, and tell us about a glorious home in the sky, better than any country or home in this world. O children, but are you ready to go there? It is not enough to believe that Jesus has died; to be saved, you and I have to know that our badness is so real that God has had to punish Jesus on the cross for it. What would it have been for us if the Lord had not been willing to die for our sins, taking a far bigger punishment for them than any of us can ever know, and so satisfying God when He hung on the cross, that God can forgive us all the things He had against us?