After a two-month trip to International Space Station, the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour carrying NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley returned to Earth on Aug. 2 2020. The splashdown is set for 2:48 p.m. EDT (1948 GMT) off the coast of Pensacola, Florida in the Gulf of Mexico. It will mark the first water landing since 1975, when the NASA astronauts on the joint Apollo-Soyuz test mission returned home.
Man has always been curious about the sky and the stars. Richard Branson’s second spaceship Unity was unveiled on February 19, 2016 that can take 6 passengers and 2 pilots to the space and back. Famed cosmologist and physicist Stephen Hawking, said during its unveiling in a recorded voice, “Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up.” Mr Hawking, who has been suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, for more than 50 years and is bound to a wheelchair, and speaks with the aid of a computer, said he would like to go to space one day.
"Taking more and more passengers out into space will enable them and us to look both outwards and back, but with a fresh perspective in both directions," Hawking said unveiling Unity spaceship. "It will help bring new meaning to our place on Earth and to our responsibilities as its stewards, and it will help us to recognize our place and our future in the cosmos — which is where I believe our ultimate destiny lies."
Albert Einstein said, "imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand”.
God told Abram who was tired and weary, to go out of his tent, and look up at the sky and see the stars. To quote from Mr Hawking, “God told Abram to look both outwards and back, with a fresh perspective in both directions.”
In order to understand the gospels and the New Testament we need to have a good understanding the Old Testament. The new Testament is the fulfillment of God's promise to redeem the fallen world by God becoming human. Genesis 15 is one of the most important chapters in the entire Bible because God made a promise, a covenant with one man to become the source of blessing to the world. God's Covenant was with Abram and God's promise was to bless the world through him. In a world of bitterness, and evil seeming to grow daily, we need to hold on to God's promises more than ever. We hear about mass killing on a regular basis, with no particular reason. Even in the midst of terrible things like terrorisms and war, there is hope because God still works to turn them to blessings.
From Haran to Canaan, it was a long travel. Abram was an ordinary man, but a good man who owned many sheep and cattle. He lived with his wife Sarai in the land of Haran. But he had no children. One day, God came to Abram. Whether it was in a vision, or in a dream we don't know for sure. But God did come to Abram and He said to him, “Abram! I want you to pack up all your things and leave your home! “I want you to go to the land I will give you. I promise that I will bless you, and make your family great. I will be with you in all you do, and because of you all the families of the earth will be blessed." That was quite a promise! But a scary one too!! It meant that Abram would have to leave the place he knew and go to a place he didn't know. He would have to trust God that everything would be okay. But that's just what Abram did. Abram took his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot. They packed up everything they owned in the land of Haran and moved to the land of Canaan - that was the land that God was going to lead him to. It couldn't have been an easy move to make. Abram was 75 years old when God told him to pack up everything he owned and leave his home - and if you look at a map, Canaan is a long way away from Haran! The book of Hebrews sums up Abraham in this way, "It was faith that made Abraham obey when God called him to go out to a country which God had promised to give him. He left his own country without knowing where he was going. (Hebrews 11: 8,9)
Several years have passed, still no sign of the promise. Abram and Sarai had no children. Abram saw no signs of God’s promises to make him a great nations. And then…many years later, after about 25 years have passed, and Abraham is about 100 years old, on a warm starry night Abram was resting in his tent after a hard day’s work. People lived in tents back in those days because they had to move from place to place to find food for their many sheep and cattle. (Gen 13:8, Heb 11:9). It was a night like any other night... until God appeared. This must have been a bit of a surprise! And maybe more than a little bit scary. But God said to Abram, “Do not be afraid! I am your defender! I promise that I will give you a great reward.” But Abram said, “What kind of reward? I don't even have any children!” And then God took Abram out beneath the starry sky. “Look up at the stars in the sky,” God said. “You will have a son. He will have children, and his children will have children, and they will have more children, and one day they will be as many as the stars in the sky.” Gen 15:5 He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” 6 And he believed the Lord; and the Lord[b] reckoned it to him as righteousness. "Abram put his trust in the Lord, and because of this the Lord was pleased with him and accepted him" (Genesis 15:6). “It was faith that made Abraham able to become a father, even though he was too old and Sarah herself could not have children. He trusted God to keep his promise" (Hebrews 11:8, 9, 11)
The Lord made the lesson vivid by taking Abram outside, showing him the stars. I call it the 'The Star Promise". “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the Lord. This crucial verse shows us that even at this early time, justification (right standing with God) was by faith. The apostle Paul expounded on this verse twice (Romans 4, Galatians 3), to argue that we are saved by faith apart from any works. It shows us that trusting in the Lord is the means of obtaining His promised blessings.
In every promise there is a partnership, an obligation which obligates the recipient as much as the donor. Implicit in God’s promises, is a challenge for us to believe, to rise above human failings and pain; to trust in the promise that it will never fail.
God wanted Abram to get out of his tent. We need to get out of our tents - the tents make us trapped inside. Tents limit us from seeing the vision. “Our problems seem bigger, because we are narrow-minded and short-sighted. It is a question of perspective.” a writer wrote, “A mountain which appears menacing when we stand at its foot and it towers above us, shrinks into harmless insignificance when we view it from a distance or from the air. So the problem of God’s providence cannot be solved in the limited context of time and earth; its solution awaits the next world and eternity. We need to get out Our tents of doubts and fears. Tents can be anything that comes between you and God. Money, job, family and even church can become traps that can prevent you from experiencing the vision of heaven and to see God’s promises
When he was outside of the tent, God asked Abram to look up. He looked up into the sky, saw stars and constellations. Abram saw the star-spangled sky. He saw stars bright and stars dim, surrounded with hundreds of thousands of other stars. The longer Abram looked, the more stars he saw. There God made a promise and Abraham believed God’s promise. Abram looked, and (v-6) “And he believed in the Lord, and the Lord accounted it to him for righteousness.”
In an urban area like Atlanta, full of lampposts and headlights and so when I look up, we see only a few stars. But if we go to the countryside or the woods, we can see a lot more stars and constellations. We have too much artificial light that masks the stars to our naked eye. Too much gets in the way, obscures our vision and crowds out God's promises. We look into the sky to count the stars but we can’t see many of the stars because there’s so much stuff getting in the way and threatening to make a vision into something small and disappointing. Sometimes we call it 'noise, or stuff'. At the time of Abram, there were not much artificial lights that produced the 'noise' and he could see clearly thousands of stars.
Abram said, "How can this be? I am old! how may I know that I will possess the promise?” This is very similar to the Virgin Mary's question, whe she asked the angel, "how can this be? I am a virgin." Then God told him to do a strange thing. God said to him, “Bring me a heifer (young cow) three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. Abram was waiting for God to do something.
As the sun was going down, Abram was so tired, and sleepy. He fell into a deep sleep, like Adam when God gave a wife. God gave him the vision of what was to come. His descendants will be multiplied, taken to suffering for 400 hundred years in a foreign land. But God said, " I will deliver them and will take the wealth of the land with them when they leave".
And God always keeps his promises. He seals that with the blood. The blood of the covenant means “If I do not hold up my end of the covenant, may I be like these dead animals”. It is sealed at the cost of one’s life. (Jer 34:18,19).
Abram killed the animals and the birds as God told him to. He divided the beasts in the middle in two, according to the ceremony used in confirming covenants - a contract with the shedding of blood. Suddenly out of nowhere came flapping of wings of screeching vultures trying to steal the meat. Abram drove them away, and then he waited, and waited. When we make decisions to follow God, there will be oppositions, there will come screeching vultures and birds of prey to steal the promise.
In Mathew 13, Jesus taught the parable of the weeds: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away." Jesus says in John 10:10, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." You wait and wait, then you think, nothing happens. you get to doubt, and get frustrated. But God has a time for you. It is not your timing. The 'birds of prey' that steal your promises can come from inside in the form of doubts, fear, frustration and worry. They can also come from outside in the form of people,situations, our own family, friends, or even church. Job was rejected by family and friends. Yet he held out hope that someday there would be an answer from God. Even in the darkness Job could say, “[God] knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold” ( Job 23:10).
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; 14 but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. (a sign of Calvary where the Sun refused to shine) 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”
Suddenly fire and smoke flared against the darkness of the night, and Abram saw a smoldering smoking firepot, such as the ones they used to bake bread. Then a flaming torch seemed to walk up and down the butchered animals. It was a a cutting, flaming and moving covenant. Abram believed God's promise, and Abram's faith pleased God. It was Abram's faith in God’s promise that made things right between Abram and God. That is an important thing to remember!. To look up, is a constant reminder of the impossible dream that God had shared with our forefather, Abraham.
The creator of this Universe made a covenant with His creation. The fire was a symbol of God's promise to keep the word about His plan on the Cross, where Jesus was crucified, when the prince of Righteousness was burned in the fire of sin, and when the sun refused to shine and darkness pervaded the earth, Jesus became the sacrifice.
Look at the stars of the sky, and then look up to the mount of Calvary . The mountain where you see the cross. Look up and see the cross, the symbol that was given as shame and suffering has become victory and glory to those who believe. It is the greatest covenant in history, that God sealed with the blood of His own son by which you and I are given the promise of eternal life. The covenant that cleans up any stains of sin, blots out any bit of darkness of doubts and fear.
If you are going through a tough time at the moment and if you are wondering what God is up to, you can do something better than counting the stars as Abraham was asked to do. (Though that doesn’t do any harm). God is asking you to Look up to the cross. And see the great covenant He has made. See what God's love has done for you. See the power of his love that did the seemingly impossible – to suffer and die for you. “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Rom 8:32 32)
Before God even started to make the world, He had a plan for you and me. His plan is for us to know how good He is, and how much He loves us, and that one day we will come to live with him forever in heaven. When our hands droop, our knees are weak, and we are weighed down with worry and burdens, and we feel like giving up, remember we have a Saviour. We believe firmly that Jesus has not let go of his grip on us. Life may not be easy but Jesus’ love for us and his forgiveness are as strong as ever. In fact, faith looks forward to a time when we will be welcomed into the promised land of heaven. Trust him. He will not let you down, and you will see his goodness, over and over and over again.
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