Genuine: The Realities of Christianity (Genesis 15:5-7, 13-16)

 “What He has is something genuine… Who He is is Someone real.” – Stacie Orrico 💎

Dear truth tracker,

If you’re looking for something to hold on to, it’s Jesus Christ, the only One who’s true. He’s the Truth, so anything against Him won’t prevail. Anything not of Him will fail.

Previously, I talked about God’s promises to Abram. Now, we come to a chapter that tells of truths in God’s Word, both spoken and written. At that point in time, Jesus Christ wasn’t known, but we will look at the passage with Christianity as the focus.

Genesis 15:5-7, 13-16 (NKJV)

⁵ Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”

⁶ And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.

⁷ Then He said to him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it.”

¹³ Then He said to Abram: “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. ¹⁴ And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. ¹⁵ Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. ¹⁶ But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

We see a lot of realities here. First, we have the fact that Abraham did have many descendants, not only literal family members, but also spiritually adopted children. Galatians 3:7 says that “only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham (NKJV).” 

a photo of 200 billion stars from NASA (Hille, 2019)

God said his descendants would be as many as the stars. According to PhysicsOfTheUniverse.com, about 3,000 stars are visible to the unaided eye and about 100,000 stars can be seen using a small telescope. “There are an estimated one hundred billion (100,000,000,000) stars in our own Milky Way galaxy… (The Physics of the Universe)” That’s just one galaxy in the whole universe. The site goes on to say “there may be around ten billion trillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 10²²) stars in the observable universe.” That’s a lot, so I don’t think the passage meant literally the actual number of stars. In PRB.org, it tabulates the number of people born on Earth since 190,000 B.C.E when the first ever modern Homo sapiens couple existed. From this tabulation, it states that as of the year 2020, there lived 116,761,402,413 people on Earth (Kaneda & Haub, 2021). That’s almost 117 billion. 

What we’re counting is the number of Christians. I added the estimated populations listed in the article “Number of Christians Through History” and the Christian population as of 2020 from World Population Review and got a total of 3,861,500,000. It’s less than the stars in our galaxy, but it’s more than the stars Abraham saw.

The second reality is the truth that verse 6 tells plainly: Faith equals righteousness. This is what Christianity means. We become righteous in God’s eyes when we believe in Christ, when we believe that through Him alone, we are saved. In Luke 23, Jesus Himself told the criminal crucified next to Him that he’ll be in paradise because he believed Jesus was God.

The last truth in our text is life’s hardship. God said that Abram’s descendants will be afflicted foreigners for 400 years. Wright (2010) published a timeline that shows the events starting from God’s promise to Abram to the Israelites’ exit from Egypt. What God said really happened. Here we see that Christian life is not all milk and honey. Jesus said in John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world (NIV).”

All of these realities point to one awesome truth: God’s Word is genuine. He does what He says. He said He'll give Abraham's descendants the land of Canaan, and they got it as told in the Book of Joshua. We must then believe in Him, trust His Word, treasure it, and abide by it. “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever (Isaiah 40:8 BSB).”

Jesus will never fail us no matter how many times we fail Him. Jesus will forever shine His light even when our perspective is dim. Make Him your firm foundation, for He is the solid Rock. With anything that will be, He isn’t shocked. Only through Him, you get salvation. He’ll be your Righteousness, your sins’ Solution.

With love,

Celina <3

References

Hille, K. (2019, March 22). Hubble Captures the Brilliant Heart of a Massive Galaxy. Retrieved from NASA.gov: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/hubble-captures-the-brilliant-heart-of-a-massive-galaxy

Kaneda, T., & Haub, C. (2021, May 18). How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth? Retrieved from PRB.org: https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/

Number of Christians Through History. (2021, June 10). Retrieved from BELIEVE Religious Information Source web-site: http://mb-soft.com/believe/txx/numberch.htm

Religion By Country 2021. (2021). Retrieved from World Population Review: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/religion-by-country

The Physics of the Universe. (n.d.). How many stars are there? Retrieved from The Physics of the Universe: https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/how-many-stars-are-there.html

Wright, D. (2010, July 5). How Long Were the Israelites in Egypt? Retrieved from Answers in Genesis: https://answersingenesis.org/bible-questions/how-long-were-the-israelites-in-egypt/

Next: Jehovah-Jireh: The Lord Will Provide (Genesis 22:6-14)

Previous: My Best Friend: God the Promiser (Genesis 12:1-8)

Series 3: Genesis 12-50