Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1993
“And when the fowls came do wn upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away.” Genesis 15:11.
ABRAHAM, when he was childless, received the amazing promise that his seed should be as the stars of Heaven for number. This he believed and his faith in Jehovah “was counted unto him for righteousness.” Surely there is more righteousness in trusting the Lord than in all the works of the flesh! Those who speak lightly of faith are of a different mind from the Lord, whose judgment is according to truth.
For the confirmation of the Patriarch’s faith, the Lord resolved to give to His servant a gracious visitation which should be regarded as the solemn making of a covenant—and also as a prophecy of the future history of the promised seed. Abram was bid to bring victims—a heifer, a she-goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon. The language is peculiar— “The Lord said unto him, Take Me an heifer of three years old.” And then in the next verse we read, “And he took unto Him all these.” Thus God and His servant each took part in the sacrifice—and so they set forth in symbol the communion which the Lord God has with His people in the Covenant of Grace, as they meet together in that one great Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus, which is the soul and essence of all the outward offerings. It was an offering taken for God which the Lord accepted, but it was, also, an offering taken unto Himself by Abraham, who saw Christ’s day—saw it, and was glad.
The man of God obeyed the command of God with great exactness and deliberation, laying the pieces of the sacrifice in due order and then waiting upon God until He should be pleased to further reveal Himself. But what is this? The solemn service is disturbed by foul birds! The most intense devotion is liable to interruptions of the worst sort. In the East, if a camel falls dead in the desert, the air is almost immediately full of winged things. Vultures that had not been visible before, not so much as one of them, will suddenly appear, as if by magic, coming from every quarter and circling over the carcass. “Wherever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”
These and smaller carnivorous birds are the scavengers of warm countries and do not long allow any flesh to remain uneaten. So, doubtless, when the victims presented by the Patriarch Abram were laid upon the altar, they spied the bodies from afar and hastened to the prey. It was nothing to the vultures, whether they were victims slaughtered for God, or creatures that had fallen dead on the plain, for true to their instinct, they discovered the carcasses and flew to them, even as Job said of the eagle, “Where the slain are, there is she.” Flights of buzzards, kites and carrion crows began to make their appearance in the sky and they would have swooped down upon the sacrifices and defiled them, or borne them away piece-meal, if the Patriarch, who had presented the sacrifices, had not kept watch at the altar! This he did right earnestly and vigorously, so that we read in the text, “When the fowls came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away.” When we meet with God, we must be serious and resolute in His worship—and if difficulties arise, we must encounter them with all our might—resolving that we will offer to God a sacrifice which shall not be torn in pieces by distracting influences.
Observe that Abram, when he had done as God had told him, and had brought the victims and laid them in their places, did not go home in a hurry and say, “It is near sundown. Sarah will expect me in the tent.” No, he remained by the sacrifice! He did not grudge the time, nor feel a sense of weariness. He loved the worship of God and, therefore, lingered at the altar till the sun was going down. Nothing is to be hurried in devotion! Never is haste more out of place than in Divine worship! The habit of quiet waiting upon God, of never being in a hurry to be gone, the willingness to give time and thought to the service of God is not so common as one could wish. But when a man is thoroughly devout and
God’s Spirit has spoken with him, he is not satisfied to merely give the allotted time to Divine service or to private devotion, he loathes to be gone! He would be the first in the House of the Lord and the last out of it. He can wait the Lord’s leisure and not grow impatient, even if, hour after hour, the converse is not closed. The longer, the better, when God is near us. And if the blessing seems far away and it does not come all of a sudden, the gracious worshipper waits until it does come, for he would not go away without the benediction of the Lord!
When we are serving the Lord, our holy anxiety must not abate till we are fairly through with the service. Abram had laid the victims on the altar, but as yet no fire from Heaven had consumed them and so he remained on the spot to see that all was well to the end. The servant of the Lord does not quit his place till he has seen the matter through. For fear that all should yet be spoiled, he sets himself to watch. When, therefore, the kites and carrion crows come down, the waiting Patriarch is there to meet them. Had he gone away in haste to attend to his ordinary duties, the sacrifice had been stolen, or polluted. But he waits and does well in waiting. My Soul, wait only upon God, even as a maid waits on her mistress! Watch and pray and watch still. “Blessed are all they that wait for Him.”