The Covenant with Abraham - Part 1

In this passage that Wayne read for us, unlike what's been typical of our recent weeks of study in the book of Genesis, this is just three verses, and it's certainly by intent. These three verses are potent and they're also very pivotal, as we'll see.

You have on page one of your handout, that little number off to the corner, indicates the page number on your handout. And there are four covenants we've been highlighting, and we've been including this slide as we've come to each one. This particular one is the last of the three, and it's called the Abrahamic Covenant, or it's the covenant with Abraham. Abraham is actually not called Abraham until about the 17th chapter, because God actually changes his name by just a matter of a few letters in English, but difference in meaning, as we'll see when we get there.

So, the question, what's a covenant? Now, a covenant is a promise with a sacred character, either because God is making the promise, or because God is called as a witness in the covenant. So one of those two. And this particular passage, those three verses, are the beginnings of the covenant with Abraham. It is that kind of a covenant because it is God is the one making the promises to Abraham. There are two characteristics about this covenant that we want to take note of. One is the covenant is unilateral. Why do we say it that way? It is God making the promises to Abraham. It's all one way. It's all one way. God is making promises to Abraham. He is not asking for or expecting promises back from Abraham.

That's why we say it's unilateral. The other is it's unconditional. He doesn't say, Abraham, if you'll do this, then I'll do that. Or he doesn't say to Abraham, Abraham, I'll do this unless you do that. If you blow it this way, then all bets are off. He doesn't put it that way. So he makes a promise to Abraham, no expectation of promises back, and he doesn't put any conditions on it. There's no ifs in these verses. Now, there's also in here a time factor.

What do we mean by that? The three previous covenants, the ones we've spelled out before, the covenant in Eden, this is the very first one where Adam and Eve are in the garden and God tells Adam, here are the things that you need to know about what you do and don't do in the garden. Right after that, when Adam chose to sin, Adam and Eve were each told ways in which, now it's different, by God. The covenant with Noah was one that says as long as the earth remains, this is going to be the characteristic. So, they were all based on the earth, either Eden or the whole earth, and in time. Everything based upon on this present earth and in earth time. The covenant with Abraham is different in this regard.

It certainly has earthly fulfillment. As a matter of fact, its fulfillment is still continuing and God will continue to fulfill the promises in this covenant. But it also has heavenly fulfillment. And this is a wonderful thing, as we'll see in a little bit later. The covenant with Abraham has a fulfillment in time and in eternity. Not just for earth time, but on into eternity when this earth no longer exists. When there's a new heaven and earth. Abraham's covenant still has a place of fulfillment.

There's also a grace factor. Now, how much grace do we mean? Lots. Lots of grace. There is a grace factor that's really big. If you look at the earlier covenants, you could find mercy and grace in them. There was some element of mercy and grace in each of them. But in this particular one, it's kind of like some of the cable channels that are out there, all grace all the time. It is grace all the way. It is entirely by grace. That's the key thing. It is also overflowing with mercy. We will see that as we go through the rest of the book of Genesis, step by step.

That is why When Paul started to talk about salvation by grace through faith, and specifically not by the law, he went back to this covenant with Abraham. He started picking out passages about Abraham and pointing out things about Abraham. Why? Because the covenant that God made with Abraham was entirely gracious. And Abraham, every step of the way, walked by faith. Romans chapter 4 and Galatians chapter 3 are a couple of instances. And as we'll see as we proceed through here, Hebrews and James also have reference to this covenant by grace.

So, why do we keep bringing up grace? Is grace getting old to you? I hope not. Grace and law are each contrasting principles. Key point for believers to understand. Salvation is by the riches of God's grace. This is Ephesians chapter 2. The riches of God's grace and overflowing with mercy.

A lot of times when people hear those words, they have a hard time understanding, well, what's the difference between the two? It sounds pretty similar. But they're not exactly the same thing. We want to point out the difference here. Mercy is when God withholds punishments. that are deserved. I should have gotten this consequence, but God withholds the punishment. That's mercy. Guilty, but pardoned. Grace is different. How is grace different? Grace is when God blesses when we don't deserve it. One way to put this is mercy is when we don't get what we deserve. Grace is when we get what we don't deserve.

Is that clear? Okay. God graciously blessed Abraham. One of the reasons we know that is find this word blessing. The word blessing means it's pointing to grace. Because grace gives what we don't deserve. Mercy withholds what we do deserve. So when you see this blessing, blessing, blessing in here, and we see it in the rest of Scripture, look to grace. That's grace. God blessing us in ways that we don't deserve.

Now, one of the questions we could ask is God piling it on. Ever heard of piling on? It's a penalty in football. Years ago, I used to play high school football. That was a while ago. Don't touch me or I'll get hurt. But I used to play high school football, and we'd play against California School for the Deaf.

Well, guess what? The ref blows the whistle, who doesn't hear the whistle? So I learned pretty quickly that when the whistle blows, that's not time to relax. And what would happen is the piles would get really deep. and it didn't matter how many times the whistle was blown, the piles got deep. Well, it would be easy for us to accuse God of piling on. Grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon grace. Mounds and piles of grace.

God not only makes these momentous and great promises that we see the founding of in today's passage. As we proceed through Genesis, what we're going to find is this. God makes a promise to Abraham. Abraham goes and blows it. And what's God's response? God makes more promises. God makes more promises. And you would have thought, with Abraham having done what he's done, that there would be some horrific consequence. But there isn't. God withholds punishment deserved for the bad decisions that Abraham makes, and he continues to add promise on top of promise, on top of promise, all out of his grace. Blessing.

Grace and mercy are each part of God's character. As we go through here, we're going to see God repeating these promises, and we're going to see Him adding to them, both. What's amazing is God makes promises to Abraham that apply to his descendants, but God doesn't expect Abraham to pass on those promises. God directly makes the promises to his descendants as well. God is that gracious. He doesn't say, Abraham, if you'll tell your sons and your grandsons These promises then all follow through. He says, I'm going to follow through and I'm going to be faithful to the promises and I'll tell them, don't worry about it. I'll make sure they know. So we get back to this Abrahamic covenant and one of the things you notice on the chart, and this is on page one of your handout there, is there's a few passages that are listed there. Let me just tell you.

You ever heard of Cliff's Notes? Of course, these folks have just graduated. They've probably seen plenty of it. Cliff's Notes are kind of the abbreviated version of different things. You know, if you want to study biology and you've only got four hours and you've got to get ready for the final, that's what you do. You grab for the Cliff's Notes.

And they've got it on different things, English literature and different topics. Probably even this one. Yeah. Okay. And when you got a cram, you got a cram, right? Well, so maybe one on the Abrahamic covenant. That's what we've really got right here. This is the Cliff Notes version that we've listed there. The truth is there are a great many more passages that spell out and repeat and elaborate on what this covenant with Abraham means. Now, God promised, and three things, if you can just hold on to three things. He promised land, seed, and this isn't talking about planting wheat. Land, seed, and blessing. Those three things. LSB. Not LSD. LSB.

The land, or sometimes it's in the plural, land's promises were given by God in Genesis after this passage and all these passages you see listed there all the way to the last chapter of Genesis. The seed promise, that is, those who would come from Abraham be descendants of his, is given by God in all these other passages here, practically all the way to the end of Genesis. He continues on and on repeating that promise. The blessing promise is also given several times as well. Blessing in Genesis includes three primary things.

One, it includes prosperity, and that can be both physical prosperity and economic prosperity, but also spiritual prosperity. So there are several passages that allude to that. There's also fertility, that is the idea of having numerous offspring, which as we'll see going through these passages is exceedingly important for Abraham, especially in the culture that he is in. And especially knowing that he is on in years and has no offspring yet. So this promise of fertility.

And finally, victory. And a key point when we say victory, it includes protection and deliverance. So it's not just victory by itself, but also the protection and the deliverance from difficult circumstances that goes along with it. Okay? So all those things are included. Alright, now we're going to make a sweeping statement. Are you ready for the sweeping statements? Okay? You have them on page two of your handout here, these sweeping statements. It goes like this.

The rest of the book of Genesis will be carried along with the theme of this covenant with Abraham. The whole rest of the book is going to be carried along with the theme. We're going to, of course, encounter various things, but this one covenant that we've seen begun here is going to be carried through the entire rest of the book of Genesis. And the rest of the whole Bible will be carried along with the theme of this covenant with Abraham all the way into the final chapters of Revelation. So these three verses that Wayne read for us, pivotal verses, The whole book of Genesis, 50 chapters long from here on out, the whole Bible, 65 books after this one, carries on this theme of this covenant with Abraham and on into eternity.

Alright, is that sweeping enough for you? Not quite done. Even our gathering here this morning has meaning and significance on into forever, on into eternity. because of this covenant with Abraham. That's how important it is. It's exceedingly important and pivotal and momentous. Now, let's walk through the passage, but not like that. That's a little better. Okay. Now, we're going to go line by line through the passage here. Pretty much line by line.

First of all, the Lord said to Abraham, we've had an introduction to the Lord here now for eleven chapters. But now here we have this person Abraham and his name at this point is Abram. At chapter 17, his name will be changed to Abraham. So if I say Abraham, I mean the same fellow, just with the name change.

And just like you've seen in a lot of biblical passages, people have multiple names. God gives them a name different from the one they had. Here's Peter, who was called Simon, who was also called Cephas. Here's Paul, previously called Saul. And I've been called a lot of things too.

I won't repeat them. As we're going to see, God started off making a series of unilateral, unconditional promises. Remember, God making the promises, not expecting any promises the other way. Unconditional. No ifs. No, no, but Abrahams. None of those. Impacting the whole world, and the future, and all of eternity, and even impacting our military strategy right now.

How about that? We'll get into that some more later. Here are the next three lines. I put them together. Typically, I'm going line by line, but this one, I'm going to put them together. And the reason is there's a commonality, and you probably see it just looking at it.

You know, from, from, from. And it's from your, right? Okay. Do you notice all the froms? Not the froms. I think they're here in the, yeah, they're here. A couple of froms. No, this is three froms, okay? Alright, here's from. From his country, from his relatives, and from his father's house. Those three things. This going forth that he has for him is not to say, okay, now you've got a whole bunch of things you've got to do, and we've got a bunch of laws to lay on you, and a bunch of rules. It's not a way of, kind of a backdoor way of placing ifs.

But it's about God showing, because remember, as we'll see in the next line here, it's about God showing Abraham the land that He was going to promise him. The land that I will show you. You've got to leave here because then you can see the place that I'm talking about. You have this on the bottom of page 2 on your handout.

And I won't bother going through it all. What it basically is is a quote from a Bible backgrounds commentary. What I mean to point out, though, is a key cultural insight. And it's these two things that are bolded. And I'm going to bring these up in larger font so we can put some attention to them. Here are the two key points.

By leaving his father's household, Abram, or Abraham, was thus giving up his inheritance and his right to family property. Isn't that something? He wasn't just, you know, hey I'm going on a trip. But he was actually leaving the opportunity to get the inheritance to his family property. He was saying sayonara to that.

So this was a huge step for the Lord to ask Abram, later Abraham, to take. When Abram gave up his place in his father's household, he forfeited his security. He was putting his survival, his identity, his future, and his security in the hands of the Lord.

Isn't that amazing? I want you to leave your inheritance. I want you to leave everything that is secure. Everything that you're counting on as your years go by. in order to take you to a land that I have yet to show you. This is entirely by faith. The Lord says to Abram, trust me. Trust me. So this is not just Abraham coming to Sarah and says, Sarah, we're going on a vacation. This is Sarah. We're giving up everything we've got here. Our whole family inheritance, our stake. We're leaving it all and we're going to follow the Lord. And she's going to say, who's the Lord?

This was a huge step of faith for him to take. A huge step of faith. Abraham would indeed live by faith. No question about it here. To give you an idea, Abraham was not leaving some primitive backward culture. He was leaving the city that was the most advanced culture of the time. As a matter of fact, I'm going to show you some artifacts that are from a few centuries ahead, that is before Abraham's time, and you'll see them and say, wow, this is amazing. These are from 4,500 years ago. And it's to show you that the place where Abram lived was not some primitive, simple culture.

It was complex. It was highly developed. An amazing circumstance. Here, for example, is a helmet, a soldier's helmet. Here is a ram in a thicket is what it's called, made out of gold and other precious materials. Here is a sword. So this is not just some rough, crude sword.

We're talking about something, boy this is fancy. And this is so far ahead of Abram's time. In other words, This is several centuries ahead. If you were to think of it in our terms, it would be like us looking back on the years like around 1600 and 1700 and think of the advances since then.

So here's some further artifacts. Here is Queen Puabi's headdress. So this is some interesting metallurgy. This is some mosaic work that was done. And notice here, here is the harp with a bull's head. That's also in the mosaic. And here is a gold vase that was found and that's also in the mosaic. So everything that was in the mosaic, they also found in production. I could show you more, but the point is well taken. This was not some simplistic primitive stone culture.

Next week we're going to address Abraham's journey because the passage will step into it and see how Abraham stepped out, out of his father's household, out of the country, just as the Lord had called him to do. And this is the next line, ìTo the land which I will show you.î Isnít that something? The Lord didnít say, ìAbram, Iím going to take you over to this placeî and He could have given them the name. No. ìI will show you.î ìI will show you.î This is the Lord saying, ìTrust Me.î He was in this nice comfy place. What we have here, I show some of these artifacts.

The place where he lived has been excavated. It was once alongside the Euphrates River and much closer to the ocean. It's now 10 miles away from the Euphrates River because the river has migrated away and quite a distance away from the ocean. Nonetheless, it was an advanced coastal civilization at the time.

What God told Abram to do was extremely disruptive, not only to his own immediate family with himself and Sarah, but also all the other family members, figuring, okay, he's going to inherit family property and goods and things of that sort. And he said, no, I'm going somewhere else. And they're saying, where are you going? He says, I don't know. Whoa! God had not shown him this land yet, the land that I'll show you. He didn't even give a name for it.

He just said, trust me. Give up everything that you've ever known. Give up everything that you're ever going to own. And just trust me. Can you imagine trying to sell this to Sarah? Oh boy. Okay. Going there would be by faith in God's promise. Literally. Literally. He says, I'll make you a great nation.

We studied a couple weeks back the table of nations and we had this genealogical chart that we had handed out to you in the handout at the time. These are the roots of the great ethnic nations of the times. And I think there was a list of some 70 when you total it all up. And just by the way, we have a supplement, additional copies of last week's supplement showing evidence of Surug, Nahor, and Terah, historical and archaeological evidence. That's available on the cabinet to the right as you exit the room. And we also have a two-page supplement on the table of nations in Genesis 10, if you want to catch up with that. Again, that's on the cabinet to the right as you exit the room.

God promised that Abraham, who at this point was totally childless. Okay, you've got no kids at all. I'm going to make you a great nation. Good luck. Right? From a human standpoint, this would seem like a risky measure. Okay, I'm going to leave everything. I'm going to leave my family. I'm going to leave certain inheritance for a place that I've never seen and you're not even going to name.

And the Lord says, that's right. Trust me. Okay? But, and I know that you and Sarah have not had any children at all. Don't worry about it. I'm going to make a great nation of you. Now that's trusting the Lord. And I will bless you. When we think of bless you, we may think of gesundheit. But no, God isn't saying this because Abraham was about to sneeze. What is He saying?

The Lord is beginning here with five I will bless you's or blessings of some kind. In this passage here, in the first three verses of chapter 12, five times we have bless or blessing or blessed used in this passage. In the first eleven chapters of Genesis, the word bless or some form of it had occurred five times. Now we're seeing it in the first three verses of chapter 12.

The Lord is going to bless this guy Abraham. in great abundance. God said that he would bless Abraham, which meant, as we'll see, that he would be blessed by God with economic and spiritual prosperity, with fertility and victory. And we notice that's also protection and deliverance. God would bless him in all these ways. Remember what we said about blessing? It's by grace. Blessing is by grace. Grace is what we receive but don't deserve. It's above what we deserve.

And it will make your name great. We studied just last week about the Tower of Babel and how those people had tried to make a great name for themselves. And the Lord said, oh no, that's not what I have in mind. He turns around and promises to Abraham, I will make your name great. And by the way, here it is 4,000 years later, and what are we doing? Studying this guy Abraham. He says, I will make your name great. It's going to be not because Abraham tried to make his own name great, but because God did it. It's God's accomplishment.

It's not by human self-effort. But by giving this assurance, he says, don't worry. You won't become a nobody by leaving your family. I'll take care of you. You will be a person of consequence for generations and eons and into eternity to come. And so you shall be a blessing. Now, as we read the English here, there's a tendency to look at that and think of that as kind of a prophecy. You know, you're going to be a blessing.

But actually, in the Hebrew, it's an imperative. What does that mean? It's a you must. Abraham is told that he must be a blessing. How about that? He is told that he must be a blessing. So why would God do that? Why would God tell him, Abram, you need to be a blessing? God, by His grace, had already promised. Notice God already made the promises, didn't He? God already promised to bless Abraham. He didn't say, you'll be a blessing if. He says, you'll be a blessing because. You've already been promised blessing.

It is the same for us under grace. The Lord asks us to do things not in order that we receive a blessing, but because we've already been blessed. Here's an illustration. In Ephesians, see right here, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. What does he tell them in chapter 4? Forgive not in order to be forgiven, but because you have been forgiven. Because you've already been forgiven, not in order to be forgiven.

Big difference. I will bless those who bless you." Not only does God promise to bless Abraham, but He promises to bless any, so that's plural, any who bless Abraham. Wow! I'll bless you, and if somebody else blesses you, they'll get blessed too. Well, that's kind of amazing.

So this applies to Abraham's descendants, as we'll see in subsequent passages here. As we get into chapter 17, on into chapter 48, this repetition of these promises applicable to the descendants is carried out here. This principle even carries out today. One question is, how do you treat the nation of Israel? That's going to determine whether you're blessed or not. Or here's another one.

Our neighbor lady across the hall got out of Nazi Germany at the last boat that they let leave with Jews. And she said they came into New York and she said the Christians were wonderful. The Christians were wonderful. They were just tremendous to us. And there's blessing. There's blessing.

This even applies to the judgment of Gentile nations when the Lord comes again. This principle of, did you bless the Jews, will come into play. Matthew 25, verses 31 through 46. That passage spells out, how did you treat the Jews? That's how the Gentile nations will be judged.

Now, the next line is, and the one who curses you, I will curse. Here's the interesting surprise. Though the words curse there are significant, they're not the same word, aside from the curses and curse form. In the case of the one who curses you, the Hebrew word means to disdain or revile. The one who disdains or reviles you, But, and I will curse, the Hebrew word means to bring God's judgment upon the one. So different words for curse in each case. So what does it mean? God will bring his judgment upon the one who disdains or reviles Abraham and his descendants. Someone anti-Semitic, they've got problems coming. That's what the Lord is saying here.

How anyone treats Abraham and all of his descendants matters. And finally he says, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. Abraham would be the one who eventually would lead to Christ, even though he had not one descendant at the time the Lord made this promise. As we see in this kind of abbreviated family tree, here is Jesus Christ descended from Abraham. Christ would come and pay for the sins of the entire world. God would be satisfied with that payment. That's what he makes clear. From all the families in Genesis 18-18, as it is all the nations of the earth, those who believe would be spiritually blessed. Spiritually blessed.

So what is the gospel? As we're going to see here in a few chapters, Abraham was justified by faith. And we'll take a look at what did he believe that brought him justification, that brought him to a place of being declared righteous. So what's the gospel for us here today? What must be believed in order for a person to be saved? We have here kind of an extraction out of 1 Corinthians 15, 1-11.

Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, by which also you are saved. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised, and on the third day according to the Scriptures, and so you believed. That's the gospel. That's the gospel. It's that simple. It's that simple.

So and in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Most of the human authors, there's about 40 authors of scripture, were Jewish, descended from Abraham. Probably the exceptions to that are Luke and the author of the book of Job. Aside from that, the other authors appear to be all descended from Abraham directly.

If we look at this Ephesians 1.3 passage we looked at before, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us by His grace. This comes from the blessing that was given to Abraham. He has blessed us with a few spiritual blessings.

No. With every spiritual blessing, where? In the heavenly places in Christ. Untouchable. I'm not going to have a blessing in Christ that I'm going to have to have the insurance company come and cover because it got ruined in a fire or a theft or a tornado, right? There is no way those blessings can be touched. They're safe in the heavenlies. Every single one of them. We've been blessed.

As we go through these blessings that Abraham receives and the multiple demonstrations of God's mercy, we can take great peace in how the Lord has blessed us graciously. Mercy expressed because punishment that I deserve, I don't receive. Grace expressed as the Lord blesses me. How has he blessed me? With every spiritual blessing. That's grace. It's blessing we don't deserve. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you as we look at this passage here. What great peace we have. how much we have seen and will see that we can trust You in all these things. We can rest in You in all these things. And Lord, as we continue through the chapters and verses ahead of us, we just look to You to unfold the riches of Your mercy, the riches of Your grace, and see indeed that You are the promise keeper. for centuries, for eons, and for all eternity. Thank you, in Jesus' name, Amen.