Day 1 - Genesis 15:1

After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.

“Do not be afraid, Abram.

I am your shield, your very great reward” (NIV).

The first thing that caught my attention when I read this verse was the phrase “After this,” and I immediately asked the question, “After what?”

Well, you have to look back to Genesis 14 to get the attention to get this question, and there are a lot of things that happened in Genesis 14. I like to picture Abram in this chapter as the Mel Gibson version of William Wallace in Braveheart. He just seems that in command and powerful.

Here are the events of the chapter:

1)      The kings of Shinar, Elam, Ellasar, and Goiim went to war against the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Bela. They won.

2)      The men of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and when they did, many of them fell into the many tar pits that littered the Valley of Siddim. Those who didn’t fall into the pits ran into the hills.

3)      The victorious kings seized everything in Sodom and Gomorrah, including Abram’s nephew, Lot.

4)      Somebody came and told Abram all about this. He gathered an army, and they all went after Lot’s captors. Abram and his 318  men were victorious.

5)      After the defeat of his enemies and the return of Lot, the king of Sodom came out to meet Abram at the Valley of Shaveh. And so did Melchizedek, the king and high priest of Salem.

6)      Melchizedek blessed Abram, and Abram gave him a tenth of everything he had.

7)      The king of Sodom told Abram to take all the goods that he had recaptured from Sodom’s enemies, but Abram refused. He promised God that he would take nothing from the Sodomites, so that they couldn’t claim that they were the ones who made Abram rich. Abram acknowledged that everything he had came from God alone.

Do you see what happened there? Abram had maybe just had his most amazing day ever…conquering whole armies of people with the Lord’s help, and yet after this, the Lord has to tell him not to be afraid. Why? I think, just maybe, it had to do with the fact that Abram was human. And, as most of us know, humans are afraid of things we don’t understand.

This is just before God makes His official blood covenant with Abram, and Abram is still rather new in his faith. How often do we doubt God when we don’t know Him that well? How often do we doubt God when we think we do know Him?

God’s reassurance to Abram extends down through the centuries to us. We have nothing to be afraid of. God is our shield (our protector/ruler) and our very great reward, if we would only have faith enough to be able to see that.   

What does it mean to you that God is your protector and reward? How does it change the perception of your current circumstances? Praise God that He never changes and never fails!