"Believing the Promise"

 "By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:" (Hebrews 11:9 KJV)

  "This was Stephen's reply: "Brothers and fathers, listen to me. Our glorious God appealed to our ancestor Abraham in Mesopotamia before he settled in Haran. God told him, 'Leave your native land and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you. So Abraham left the land of the Chaldeans and lived Haran until his father died. Then God brought him here to the land where you now live.

 "But God gave him no inheritance here, not even a square foot of land. God did promise, however, that eventually the whole land would belong to Abraham and his descendants - even though he had no children yet. God also told him that his descendants would live in a foreign land, where they would be oppressed as slaves for 400 years. 'But I will punish the nation that enslaves them,' God said, 'and in the end they will come out and worship me here in this place.'"" (Acts 7:2-7 NLT)

 If you have been following this blog for a while, (over a decade ago,) then you might have recalled this message, one which I shared at church, regarding the time God made a covenant with Abraham. As it was, God told Abraham to lay out a portion of dead animals, cut them in half, all except the birds, and they would sign a covenant together. 

 Basically, the way it was meant to work in those days, was the men who made a covenant to each other, would walk among the dead animals, promising to each other, saying, 'Let this, and more, be done to me, if I neglect to keep my part in this covenant.' However, God caused Abraham to go to sleep, while He performed the covenant on His own! If you really think about it, that might have been a covenant the Father made with the Son, who would be a descendant of Abraham many years later. 

 Anywho, the main point of this moment was when God gave Abraham a dream, the one that Stephen was sharing to those who were going to stone him. As I shared before the church, this was God's way to give Abraham more faith about the promise, as he became more positive of their existence, seeing how they would be slaves for 400 years, feeling sadness for them; and seeing them redeemed, and back in the land of promise. 

 As I was saying yesterday morning, God makes a way, one way or another...

"This is what the LORD says: "You will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again. For I know the plans I have for you," says the LORD. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope."" (Jeremiah 29:10-11 NLT)