Our Scripture Of The Week Is:

2 Peter 3:8 KJVS 
[8] But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

In verse 5, Peter indicated that these false teachers deliberately omit the truth about God in order to make their false case that Christ will not return, that there will be no judgment day. Now Peter urges his readers—his dear friends—not to forget something essential about the nature of their God. 
He is eternal. He is not limited as humans are by the perception of years passing. 

More specifically, Peter references Psalm 90:4: "For a thousand years in [God's] sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night." If we took Peter's statement absolutely literally, as modern people, then in God's eyes it's been a mere two days since Jesus promised to return! That, of course, is not the way Peter intends his statement. 

His point is that God is not bound by counting days from a human perspective. Time does not hold Him. He does not wait or rush in the same sense that mere humans do, locked as we are into minutes and hours and months. What seems like poor timing to us, as limited people, has a plan and purpose known only to God.

As Peter will reveal in the following verses, God will keep all of His promises in His perfect time and motivated by His perfect love.

Our topic today is:

GOD’S Covenant With Abraham – Prepare A Sacrifice part-2 Discussion

The Lord will soon complete a covenant ritual between Himself and Abram, a ritual that will specify, in part, the boundaries of future Israel to be occupied and possessed by Abram's descendants.

First, however, God will reveal to Abram a prophecy about the difficult future his descendants will face before they occupy the Promised Land. Abram's offspring, God says, will be strangers, sojourners, serving others in a land that is not their own. They will be afflicted or mistreated for 400 years. 

God is referring to Israel's slavery in Egypt, after the death of Joseph (Genesis 50:26) and before the story of Moses and the Exodus (Exodus 1:1–8). As is common in all forms of literature, the reference to time here is a generic, round number. It is perhaps meant to refer to four generations that will come and go during that time. 

Exodus 12:40 and Galatians 3:17 specify the length of that captivity as 430 years. God is making clear to Abram that, though the promise of the land will be kept, it will be kept in God's own time, centuries in the future. Here, God continues to deliver His prophecy about Abram's future family. Here, He continues by saying there will be an end to their captivity, and the nation that mistreated them will be judged. 

In fact, Abram's future family, then a nation, will leave that country with great possessions. Soon after this passage, Abram will be renamed Abraham, and his grandson Jacob will be renamed Israel: the father of the promised nation. God never mentions that the nation bound to enslave Abram's people is Egypt.

More than likely, though, Abram did not miss the similarities between these future events and what happened when he and his company left Egypt with great possessions of their own. In fact, Israel's captivity will begin in a very similar way to the start of Abram's adventure in Egypt (Genesis 12:10–20). They will come seeking survival during a time of famine (Genesis 46).

After revealing to Abram, perhaps in a dream, the affliction his future family will face in captivity, serving another nation, God informs Abram he will not live to see any of this. Instead, Abram will "go to his fathers"—a common reference to death—in a time of peace and at a good, old age. Of course, at this point in time, Abram is already somewhere between 75 and 85 years old (Genesis 12:4; Genesis 16:16). 

God's words about Abram's immediate future are a comfort, but they also let Abram know not to expect to possess the land of Canaan in his own lifetime. Instead, it will one day belong to him through his descendants. This promise comes along with God's prior reassurance that Abram will, in fact, see a natural-born son (Genesis 15:4). As it turns out, this promise itself will take some time for God to complete (Genesis 17:16–19). 

In the meantime, Abram will be renamed as Abraham (Genesis 17:5), and will attempt to "help" God fulfill His promises by having children with his servant, Hagar (Genesis 16:16). Finally, God concludes his prophecy about Abram's future family. In the previous verses, God revealed that they would be captives, serving another nation for around 400 years, before leaving that country with great possessions. 

Then, and not before, Abram's descendants would return to the land of Canaan "in the fourth generation." Later passages of Scripture will give a more specific number than this round figure: Israel will be in Egypt for 430 years, all told (Exodus 12:40). God's given reason for that delay is that the sin—the "iniquity"—of the Amorite people had not yet reached its full measure, or was not yet complete. 

In other words, one purpose of Abram's future family, the nation of Israel, is to serve as an instrument of judgment on the Amorite people for their sins against God. However, God would not preemptively judge the Amorites or any other people group of Canaan. In His justice, He would wait for them to earn the judgment He would pour out on them through His people Israel when they came to claim the land of Canaan as their own. 

This delay also serves as an expression of God's mercy, allowing that much more time for the wicked inhabitants of Canaan to see their sin and repent. After God completes His prophecy about Abram's descendants, He returns to the covenant ritual that began with Abram dividing and arranging the halves of the animals God had instructed him to bring (Genesis 15:9). 

Now the sun goes down, and God completes the ritual. Whether Abram is now awake and sees it with his own physical eyes, or sees this event in his vision or dream, we don't know for sure. Either way, what Abram sees is remarkable. In the dark, two items move between the halves of the animals. One is a smoking fire pot, something that served as an oven in Abram's day. 

The other is a flaming torch. In the narrative itself, we're not told what these two items represent. However, fire is often associated with both God's judgment and His holiness. In addition, these elements of smoke, fire, and the various kinds of animals later used for sacrifice under the Law point to God's future relationship with Israel.

Finally, in moving between the two halves of the animals, God is apparently finalizing the agreement between Himself and His people through Abram. This aspect, in particular, is important for its symbolism. Scholars suggest that this ritual—passing between the halves of sacrificed animals—was meant to imply a binding oath on those who participated. 

By walking between the animals, the person was accepting that same destruction if they broke their end of the bargain. Pointedly, note that Abram does not pass between the halves—only God does, via the symbolism of the pot and flame. The promise God has made here is entirely dependent on His will and His work.

Abram had begun this part of the conversation by asking the Lord how he would know if God would keep His promise to give Abram and his descendants the land of Canaan. Abram's dramatic experience of God's answer in performing this covenant ritual would surely have made a lifelong impression on him.

With the covenant ritual between the Lord and Abram completed, God gets very specific about the boundaries of the land He is promising to Abram and his descendants. Covenants between God and humans are significant, of course. Often they include conditions from God which, if met by the people involved, will result in God keeping His end of the agreement. 

This covenant is different. Sometimes referred to as the Abrahamic Covenant, this was an agreement in which all the conditions and promises were on God's side. For example, in the prior passage, God symbolically passes between the severed halves of the animals. 

This might have been a common ritual of that era, where both parties declared their obligations by walking through the middle of the carcasses. Notably, only God is shown to do this in the preceding verses-Abram's work is not part of this promise. God was binding Himself to do as He promised no matter what Abram or Abram's descendants did or did not do. 

Put another way, this promise from God to the people of Israel to give them this land, was a unilateral covenant. In defining this Promised Land, God begins at the southern border with the "river of Egypt," which many scholars identify as the Wadi el-Arish River, not the Nile. The northern border would be the great Euphrates River. 

The following verses will define the remaining areas of the land promised to Abram's offspring in terms of the people groups occupying those lands previously. In the previous verse, God established His unilateral covenant with Abram and his descendants. 

This is a promise which depends only on one side's agreement: in this case, God's vow, which He will fulfill no matter what Abram or his descendants do. That covenant includes possession of the land of Canaan as defined by God Himself. 

Verse 18 revealed the southern and northern borders to be the "river of Egypt," meaning the Wadi el-Arish River, and the Euphrates River, respectively. 

Now the Lord continues to define the areas of the nation His people will possess in terms of the people groups occupying those lands previously