Count the Stars

Night in the open country. A man steps out of his tent. Above him, the sky is thick with stars, more than anyone could ever count. And a voice says, “Count them, if you can.”

Abram has been following God for some time now. He has left his homeland. He has let his nephew choose the best land. He has turned down the riches of the king of Sodom. And still he and Sarai have no child. Then the word of the Lord comes to Abram in a vision. “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”

Abram answers honestly. “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me, since I remain childless? The one who will inherit everything I have is Eliezer of Damascus. You have given me no children, so a servant in my household will be my heir.” It is a raw, sad prayer. Abram isn’t pretending everything is fine. And God doesn’t scold him for saying it. Instead God answers, “This man will not be your heir. A son who is your very own will be your heir.”

Then God takes Abram outside. “Look up at the sky and count the stars, if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be.” Abram stands under that enormous sky, an old man with no children, looking at thousands upon thousands of lights. And then comes a sentence that the New Testament quotes again and again. Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness. Abram has nothing in his hands but a promise. And he trusts the one who made it.

God also promises Abram the land. And Abram asks, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will possess it?” God answers in a way Abram would understand. “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” Abram brings them, cuts the larger animals in two, and lays the halves opposite each other, with a path running between them. Birds of prey swoop down on the pieces, and Abram drives them away. Then he waits.

As the sun is setting, Abram falls into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness comes over him. God tells him what lies ahead. His descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. But God will judge that nation, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. Abram himself will go to his ancestors in peace, at a good old age. And in the fourth generation his descendants will come back to this land.

When the sun has gone down and it is dark, something appears: a smoking firepot and a blazing torch, passing between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram. “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.” And many readers have noticed who walks between the pieces. Not Abram. He is in a deep sleep. Only the fire, the sign of God’s presence, passes through. The promise rests on God.

Abram’s strange ceremony matches a custom from the ancient world. In Hebrew, you don’t just make a covenant, you cut one. Centuries later, the prophet Jeremiah describes the leaders of Judah making a covenant by cutting a calf in two and walking between its halves. The meaning seems to have been a solemn oath: may what happened to these animals happen to me if I break my word. In Genesis 15, it is God himself who passes through.

Count the stars. You’ll find this story in Genesis chapter 15. Abram had a promise and no proof, and he chose to trust God. So here’s a question for tonight. Next time you look up at the stars, which of God’s promises will you remember, and trust?