Promise for Today - Cutting Covenant

Then the Lord told him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as your possession.”

But Abram replied, “O Sovereign Lord, how can I be sure that I will actually possess it?”

The Lord told him, “Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” So Abram presented all these to him and killed them. Then he cut each animal down the middle and laid the halves side by side; he did not, however, cut the birds in half. 

After the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. So the Lord made a covenant with Abram that day and said, “I have given this land to your descendants, all the way from the border of Egypt to the great Euphrates River..."
Genesis 15:7-10, 17-18 NLT

"So the Lord made a covenant with Abram..." The phrase "to cut a covenant" comes from this practice, where BOTH parties would walk between the divided parts, invoking a curse upon themselves if they failed. This was covenant sealed with the shedding of blood. 

The ritual of cutting an animal in two and walking between the severed pieces communicated that a person was pledging their very life to fulfill their promise. Astonishingly, none other than God, in the form of a burning torch, walked the path between the severed pieces. God had made a promise to Abram, and now, with this ritual, He was telling the terrified man, "I pledge My own life for the keeping of My promise. I am willing to suffer and die in order to follow through with My love for you and all the peoples of the earth. I am a God who keeps a covenant at any and all cost to Myself." (Excerpts from Strong's Concordance)

Throughout history, mankind has failed and continues to fail in the promises we make to God. This extraordinary act of inexpressible love and care - God's unique passage as a smoking oven and flaming torch in Genesis 15 - showed He took the curse upon Himself, guaranteeing His unbreakable promise. 

The ritual foreshadowed the Cross, where God's promise was sealed by Jesus, the ultimate sacrifice, who took the penalty for us because of our inability to keep our part of the covenant.  Mark 14:24 NKJV,  And He [Jesus] said to them, “This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many." He fulfilled it and sealed it for all eternity in the Crucifixion; Jesus' body broken and spilled out for us. 

Prayer:

Father,

          We pray as Paul prayed. For this reason we bow our knees to You, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that You would grant us, according to the riches of Your glory, to be strengthened with might through Your Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith; that we, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.
       Now to You who can do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to You be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.