Abraham's Covenant

Amen, well, good morning everyone. Good to be with you today. So my wife and I were setting plans for the week, in this past week arranging what we had to do. We try to talk about that, you know, different meetings and different appointments that we might have, who's picking up our kid, Penelope, all of that. We ended up having a gathering this past week though. My wife wasn't sure if she was going to be able to make it or not. And so I was like, "Hey, you know, Penelope and I, my, you know, our daughter, we can go, we can go to that event and we'll catch up with you a little bit later." And she said, "All right, great. Can you just make sure that, you know, you guys are home at a certain time? 'Cause I would love to see my," you know, she would love to see her daughter before bedtime and all of that stuff. So I said, "Yeah, you know, sure, no problem." And then she just stopped and looked at me and said, "Do you promise?" And I said, "Yeah, of course, right." No, it's not that she doesn't trust me, she does. She just may not trust my ability to leave places on time. Anybody else like that? You know, anybody? Yeah, a few, right? You know, that's, I'm Puerto Rican, so I operate on Puerto Rican time sometimes. My wife just calls it being late. Go figure, right? But she wanted to have my affirmation that I was gonna follow through on what I said. And by the way, mission accomplished, husband points for me, right? Yeah. Oh my goodness! You guys are too kind. Thank you. I love you all. I'll be signing autographs later. No, I'm kidding. But being true to your word is invaluable, isn't it? In marriage, in friendships, parenting, in any kind of relationship really, right? Being true to your word goes a long way. This is because I'm sure all of us have experience to some degree or another, maybe someone not being true to their word, which causes betrayal, mistrust, rejection, and those are things maybe some of us know far, far too well. But I bring this up because we're starting Acts 2 today in this series called, "The Drama of God." In Acts 2, what we're gonna find is that God is always true to His Word. You see, ladies and gentlemen, God is always true to His Word. We're gonna see that God will make promises in this Act, Acts 2, and that He faithfully keeps His promises. How amazing is that by the way, that God keeps His promises, church, every promise that God has said, God keeps it, God is faithful to it. Now, when we think of Act 1, we covered Creation and the Fall, through the early chapters of Genesis leading up to Genesis chapter 11. And perhaps the great temptation that we can face when we are talking about the Bible is we can make this immediate jump from creation, fall to then redemption and restoration. Now, it's not wrong to do that necessarily, as I get that we all have varying degrees of our understanding of the scripture. But when we go from the early chapters of Genesis to then the gospels, there's really an important theme that we are missing out on. And here is that theme, you ready for it? Covenant. Covenant. The idea of covenant not only helps us see God's revelation of Himself to humanity throughout the Old Testament, but it also further helps us understand how God continues the promise of Genesis 3:15, where the offspring of Eve will crush the enemy's head but he would only be able to strike his heel. And that idea is move forward. It's move forward throughout the different covenants and the promises that we will see throughout this month. This is because God wants to restore his image bearers who have been affected and marred by sin and the schemes of the enemy. And we'll see that continuing to take shape as we journey along here. Now, when I mention this idea of covenant, some of you might be thinking, "Yeah, I have no idea what that means." That's okay, no problem. In fact, there's a writer here, Thomas Schreiner, who wrote, "A covenant is a chosen relationship in which two parties make binding promises to each other." Author and scholar wrote that. You see, covenant relationships are found all throughout the Bible. Some were personal, political, others were legal. They were oftentimes accompanied by oaths and signs and ceremonies. And we see these kinds of relationships all throughout the scripture, which helps us understand that the covenant relationships were a major part of the ancient Near East culture. You see, our best example of this today is marriage, isn't it? The chosen relationship between two parties who make binding promises to one another. And with some of this as the backdrop, we learned that the Old Testament, what we learned throughout the Old Testament, is that God enters into covenant relationship with human beings and makes binding promises that forwards and weaves together our salvation story. God would call out a people, Israel for Himself and He would bind Himself to them, and they were called to bind themselves to Him. And how well Israel did that. Well, I guess that's a conversation for a different day. But with that said, let's dive into how this story unfolds with God's covenant to Abraham. And as we look at this, I wanna explore two high level truths that will guide our understanding. Here's the first. "God makes promises to Abraham." We'll be in Genesis chapter 12. So Genesis chapter 12 and 15, you can find your places there. Let's kick off in Genesis chapter 12. "The Lord had said to Abram," by the way, I'm, God had changed Abram's name to Abraham, so I'm gonna just call him Abraham, right? "The Lord had said to Abraham or to Abram here, 'But go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you, I'll make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I'll make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse and all peoples on the earth will be blessed through you.'" Now as we look at this passage of scripture, I wanna point out, three promises for us that are contained here. First is offspring. First is offspring. God makes promises to Abraham and part of that is offspring. When we look at Genesis 12:12, God says, "I will make you into a great nation. And then in verse seven of the same chapter, God said to Abraham, "To your offspring, Abraham, I will give you this land." By the way, do you know how old Abraham was when he received this promise? Anybody know?

- [Guest] 99.

- 75, 75 years old, and it would be another 25 more years before the child of promise would come. Could you imagine being 100 years old and having a baby? Can you imagine that, 100 years old and having a baby? That's why, Isaac, you know, he would be a child of laughter. You know, that's what his name would mean. But we see this nation that would spring forth from Abraham, which would imply having offspring. And that's what God promises to him. Offspring that would be a great nation. We also see this promise, land. God promises land to Abraham, right? The Lord had said to Abraham, "Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you, you know, it's quite amazing to me that when I read this story in Genesis chapter 12, it's quite amazing that Abraham leaves his own land, his people, his father's household. And he goes where the Lord tells him to, he would just follow the voice of God. You see, if you wanna talk about having your yes on the table, I do not think you can get a clearer example than that. Abraham gets called by God and Abraham just goes, and by the way, Abraham didn't come from a family of faith either. So it's not like he had that model for him or that kind of obedience demonstrated for him. He comes from an idol maker. That's what his father did, he was an idol maker. His father literally made idols for other people to worship. That's what was in his family line. And God called him and Abraham responds in obedience. We learned that this promised land would be the land of Canaan, but it wasn't yet to be inherited. So Abraham simply goes to the land, builds an altar, and worships the Lord there. We could also see this promise, blessing, and cursing. This is part of what God is promising to Abraham, blessing and cursing. Listen to Genesis chapter 12 verse three again, "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse; and all peoples on the earth will be blessed through you." You see, we find blessing and cursing that would be both for Abraham and by extension, Israel. God would bless those who bless Abraham and by extension, Israel, but He would curse those who would curse Abraham and Israel. We could then see this pattern play out in a number of different places in the scripture, right? Think about it for just a second, years and years later, on the cursing side here, the Pharaoh ordered for every human boy that is to be born to be thrown into the Nile. He brought on that kind of curse for the people of Israel. But when you think of the last plague that God had given for the people of Egypt was the death of the firstborn, curse for curse, right? Egypt had ordered for the Hebrew babies to be, Hebrew sons to be thrown into the Nile, but then God would bring on a plague for the firstborn son or for the firstborn rather. And that way we see this idea of curse for a curse. On the blessing side, we see this playing out for Joseph, descendant of Abraham and Potiphar, high ranking military official for the Pharaoh. And do you know that Potiphar's household was considered blessed because of Joseph and Joseph's presence and because of what Joseph meant to Potiphar, blessing for blessing. You see, what we see throughout the scripture is the enemy attempting to strike the heel of Eve, the offspring of Eve, time and time again, despite his fate being the crushing of his head. But the enemy would try to strike the heel and strike the heel time and time again. But God would call out Abraham because it's going to be through Abraham that God would establish his people in which the promised Messiah would come. And whoever blesses that line would be blessed. Whoever cursed that line would be cursed, blessing for blessing, curse for curse. These are the promises that God makes to Abraham. But then we could also see this second high level truth, that God formalizes a covenant with Abraham. You see, God formalizes a covenant with Abraham. As we move along in Genesis 15, we'll note that it is within this chapter, where God formally makes a covenant with Abraham based upon some of the promises that we just noted. Now after being childless for so long, so many years, Abraham tells the Lord, paraphrasing here, Abraham tells the Lord, you know, "Lord, at this rate, my servant, Eliezer of Damascus, that'll be my heir. That's going to be my heir because at this point, there's no child here." But the Lord tells Abraham, "Nope, your servant will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir." And then the Lord took him out to look up at the sky and counted the number of stars in the sky because that is what his offspring would be like because God is true to His promises and you know what Abraham's response is? Belief in the Lord. Listen to what verse six says. "Abraham believed the Lord and he credited to Him as righteousness." Abraham would believe what the Lord had told him. And notice that the text says, it is credited to him as righteousness. Notice, this righteousness that is credited to Abraham is not by human effort or works by faith or works, but it's by faith. And this would be a theme that the New Testament writers would later expand upon, but it would be Abraham's belief in what the Lord had said, that would set the premise for what would come next, a covenant that would be made and formalized. As you look at Genesis 15, and you start to unpack that, Abraham is to gather a heifer, a goat, and a ram along with a dove and a young pigeon and they're actually cut in half, these animals with the exception of the birds. And that would ratify the covenant. Now, as graphic as it is with maybe setting animals on two opposite sides of one another. 'Cause that's what would happen, you would set the animals on two different sides. You know, we have contracts now and you sign things and all that stuff, but PETA would be calling you, by the way, if you did that today. So just as an FYI, don't do that, this was in this context. And what we can know is, rituals like this surrounded covenant making. In fact, even when you look at Genesis 34, years later, you kinda saw this idea of covenant making with the animals. And the reason being is because it would demand faithfulness between two parties. In other words, whoever did not hold up their end of the bargain, so to speak, when a covenant was made in the ancient world, their fate would be like these slain animals, welcome to church. But that's what this gives us a picture of hey, I'm just here to preach you the word, right? I'm here to give you what the text is saying. It's a little bit graphic, I know, but hang on, hang in there with me because the Lord then causes a deep sleep to fall upon Abraham and there's a dreadful darkness that comes over him. But the Lord tells him what is gonna happen with the land, that his descendants, they would be in Egypt and eventually they would come out and take possession of it. And for 400 years, his descendants would be strangers in that country. But in the fourth generation, they would come back to take the land and take possession of that. And then listen to what Genesis 15 says. "When the Lord had set," or "when the Lord had set and dark," I'm sorry, "when the sun had set," there we go, "and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, 'to your descendants, I give this land from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.'" But we see that there is pictures of smoke and fire which would represent Yahweh Himself. And it's the Lord that walks through between the pieces. It's the Lord that walks through. Abraham does not, but the Lord walks through. And what we see is that this reveals to us that this covenant is based on God Himself. We see that there is an unconditional nature that is behind this covenant. As one scholar noted, God staked His own existence upon this promise, He staked His own existence. And theologically speaking, we know that God could never cease to exist and that's what makes this so powerful. This promise will take place because God has bound Himself to it. You see, that's what we see here. We see the Lord that walks through and we see ultimately that the sun had set, darkness had fallen, and the smoking fire pot with blazing torch appeared and what we see is the Lord walking through because He ultimately would bind Himself to this promise. Maybe I could say it this way as just kind of a big idea for us. The promises of God are just as sure as the presence of God. You see, the promises of God are just as sure as the presence of God. In other words, if God has said it, so shall it be. And here's what was required from Abraham, faith, faith. Abraham had a walk with the Lord and obey in faith. Even throughout Genesis 17, we see the Lord asks Abraham and his descendants to be circumcised as this would be a sign of the covenant, but faith and obedience were required for Abraham. And here's what happened as the story of God continues, the Lord did as He said He would do. Why? Because this covenant, even as I just showed you, right? It's the Lord who walked through. It's this covenant was based upon Him! It's based upon what He is going to do through Abraham, through his line, through ultimately crushing the head of the enemy. And God would choose Abraham, the son of a pagan idol maker to accomplish His good purposes. And this promise that He makes is unconditional in nature. But what's required of Abraham is faith and obedience. But God would do as He said, think about it, the promise of offspring. What happened? Sarah would give birth to Isaac. Isaac would be the father of Jacob. Jacob would be the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. Do you know what happens by the time we get to end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus? Abraham's descendants have multiplied and increased. And God would continue to make the nation of Israel great by revealing His glory in and through them, I mean, they eventually did fall in. At the end of the day, it was cause for the promised Messiah to come. But throughout the Old Testament, you see God doing incredible things through Israel. Why? Because the promises of God are just as sure as the presence of God. Think about the promise of land. The promise of land would happen, just as we read in Genesis 15, the prediction of Abraham's descendants being in captivity that would occur in Egypt. However, God would raise up Moses, who would lead the people of Israel out of Egyptian *******, up to the brink of the promised land. And it was under Joshua where the people of Israel would inhabit the Land of Promise. God did as He said He would do, because the presence, the promises of God are just as sure as the presence of God. Think about the promise of blessing and cursing, that would happen. I kinda walked through that a little bit. But there's plenty of examples that you can see. Blessing for blessing, curse for curse throughout the scripture. But for our purposes here, I wanna emphasize something from Genesis 12:3. that I didn't earlier, where God told Abraham that through you all the nations would be blessed. In other words, there's a universal blessing that's available through the line of Abraham that would come. Paul would actually write about that in the New Testament. Listen to Galatians chapter three. "Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham." Those who have faith. "Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham, 'All nations will be blessed through you.' So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith, the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say, 'and to his seeds,' meaning many people, but 'and to your seed,' meaning one person, who is Christ." This is remarkable to think about because the one who would ultimately come, the promised Messiah, Jesus is the true son of Abraham. He is the true offspring that would be able to fully bless all people. You see, Abraham thought it was just about having a son in Isaac that would come, but in the great plan of God, God would give His son, the Lord Jesus Christ to be the true heir, the true descendant of Abraham. But that blessing that we have received in Christ, it didn't happen without a curse. It didn't happen without a curse. Think about it in Galatians, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.' He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit." You see, Jesus was cursed for us so that we could be blessed. We are grafted into the promise of God and have received the Spirit of God. And because of that, there's blessing. And I just wanna walk through maybe a few promises that we should be reminded of as well. What are our few promises that we can grab hold of as we think about this story and this covenant, first is this, the promise of an eternal kingdom. The promise of an eternal kingdom. What we see in the Abrahamic covenant as a nation that would be established through the people of Israel. In other words, God would form a people through which His salvation purposes would be accomplished and Jesus would ultimately be the fulfillment of that. And He would establish His church, which would include not just Jews but Gentiles as well, forming a new people that are Abraham's children by faith. And the call that we have is to put our faith in the true King and live out what it means to be kingdom representatives. e are grafted into the promise of God and have received the Spirit of God. And because of that, there's blessing. And I just wanna walk through maybe a few promises that we should be reminded of as well. What are our few promises that we can grab hold of as we think about the story and this covenant, first is this, the promise of an eternal kingdom. The promise of an eternal kingdom. What we see in the Abrahamic covenant, as a nation that would be established through the people of Israel. In other words, God would form a people through which His salvation purposes would be accomplished and Jesus would ultimately be the fulfillment of that. And He would establish His church, which would include not just Jews but gentiles as well, forming a new people that are Abraham's children by faith. And the call that we have is to put our faith in the true king and live out what it means to be kingdom representatives. Israel was called to cooperate with God, to represent Him and to extend His glory on the earth. And the church is now called to cooperate with God, to represent Him, to extend His glory on the earth. You see, what we see in the beginning of scripture is that Adam and Eve were called to extend the garden. And the call that we have is to extend the kingdom because that is what God's people have always been called to do. But to do that we need to remember that we belong to a kingdom that is not of this world. We belong to a kingdom that is not of this world, that is not temporary, but that is eternal. We belong to an eternal kingdom and to an eternal king who rules and reigns over everything. We could also see this promise, the promise of salvation by faith, the promise of salvation by faith. Listen to how Paul referenced back to Abraham here. "The words 'it was credited to him' were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness, for us who believe in Him, who raised Jesus, our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification." You see, the salvation, ladies and gentlemen that we have received is by faith. Why? Because it's based on the finished work of Jesus. Abraham gave us a picture long ago of what it means to be declared righteous before the Lord. He put his faith in God and it was credited to him as righteousness. And Paul says those words weren't just for him, but they were also for us. This is because here's the reality. You and I have been declared righteous, not because of our own works, not because of anything that we have done, but because the one who knew no sin would become sin for us. He would become a curse for us, so that all who would put their faith and trust would become the righteousness of God and receive the blessing that we have right standing before God. You see, our salvation has never been based on what we can do, but it's always been based on what God has done. The salvation that we have received is by faith. Faith alone. We also received this promise, the promise of a glorious inheritance, the promise of a glorious inheritance. Take a listen to Romans chapter four, verse 13. "It was not through the law that Abraham in his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith." You see, Abraham would be heir of the world! And because we are, listen to this, because we are children of Abraham by faith in Jesus Christ, do you know what our inheritance is? The world! Abraham's great inheritance of the world is now our great inheritance in Christ because those who belong to Christ are Abraham's children by faith, not of natural descent, but by faith in Jesus Christ, where both Jew and Gentile forming one people in Jesus, where we are now children of Abraham, receiving the promise, receiving the blessing, and Abraham's great inheritance, heir of the world is now shared with you and me, who put their faith in Christ. That's our great inheritance, the glorious inheritance that we have received. And in fact, the apostle Paul, do you remember what, maybe he wrote in 1st Corinthians chapter three, verses 21 and 23 through 23, "So then no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours and you are of Christ and Christ is of God." See, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, God is not withheld from you. Maybe we think that, that God somehow withheld from you. All things are yours, in Christ Jesus. He has not withheld from you Christian because you are of Christ and Christ is of God, where we're joining God now in the restoration of people back to Him and we will rule and reign with Jesus in the life to come. You see, what a glorious and incredible and beautiful inheritance that we have. And by the way, let me remind you, that every promise of God is as sure as His presence. Every promise of God is as sure of His presence. God is true to His Word. God is true to His Word. We saw that throughout this story here in the Abrahamic covenant. So, I'm not sure what promise of God that you need today or what promise of God that you need to be reminded of today, but what I'm here to tell you is, there's a passage here in Romans chapter four that greatly encouraged me, that I hope it does for you as well. Listen to what Paul wrote regarding Abraham and his faith, "Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it has been said to him, 'so shall your offspring be.' But without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead, since he was about 100 years old and that Sarah's womb was also dead." Listen to this, "Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in His faith and gave glory to God being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what He had promised." Are you fully persuaded that God has the power to do what He has promised? Are you persuaded of that today? Maybe it's just being reminded the love of God, the care of God, the truth of God, that He's with you, He'll never forsake you, that He's walking with you. Maybe we just need to be reminded of those things because here's the problem, is that we can easily forget the promises of God, don't we? We can easily forget it or maybe we know them, but sometimes we forget them when we're faced with circumstances, when we're faced with trouble, when we're faced with hardship, when we're faced with challenges. And that's why I would say to all of us, that we need to regularly spend time with God, that we need to regularly dive into the Word to allow His presence to shape us, to allow His voice to speak to us. Because it's there where you can allow the surety of His presence and the truth of His promises to intersect in your life. That's why we need Him. It's because He'll remind us again of His promises, of what He has said to us. Maybe it's diving into gospel community. Maybe you haven't taken that step, but this is an important step because sometimes we, not sometimes, but we need all the time, brothers and sisters in Christ to remind us of the promises of God together, to encourage us, to strengthen us. You see, being involved in some kind of community to allow the promises of God to help shape us and steer us is incredibly important. Or what about us just having your yes on the table? Because what would it look like? Think about Abraham, right? He heard the voice of God, he left his homeland and he just journeyed with the Lord. And the Lord took him and the Lord showed him the land, but he wasn't even going to be the recipient of that land, that would come years and years and years later, even being really, really old and thinking to himself, "How in the world am I gonna have a baby at this point in time?" With his age and his wife. But yet God was faithful to His promises and Abraham believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. You see, what is God asking of you? You see, as we see sin running its course throughout the early chapters of Genesis, God called Abraham despite his background, despite where he came from, and God chose him and God used him to be able to fulfill his redemptive purposes. And God wants to use you wherever you are. But the question is, are you willing to follow? Are you willing to have your yes on the table to say, "God, whatever it is that you want, here I am, I give it to you. I wanna journey with you. I want you to lead me. I want you to guide me." Follow 'em. And what would that look like in your life? This is because the promises of God are just as sure as His presence and whatever it is that you're facing today or what you've walked in here with or your circumstances, just know that God is true to His Word and that God will fulfill His promises to His people. And we see that right at the outset here of this covenant. Even as we'll continue to journey along these covenants, we're gonna find that God has been so incredibly faithful and so will we just simply respond in faith and in obedience to however the Lord leads us. Let's pray together. I am not sure what you came in here with today, but I know that God sees it, that God knows you. It's not by accident that you're here and whatever it is, would you give that to the Lord? Would you allow Him to be the Lord of your life? This kind of faith that Abraham had of just walking with God, of being with Him, saying yes, despite leaving his own land, his own country, his father's household, but God had plans for him. What would it look like to respond with that kind of faith in your own life? That whatever God has asked of you, that you would just say yes to it. Maybe it's just being reminded again of the promises that God has said to us throughout His Word and just spending time and being reminded of Him. 'Cause oftentimes we can easily forget and we need to continually get in the habit of reminding ourselves of the truth and the beauty that's contained with what God has said to us, his people, his children, that we've been grafted into by faith. Or maybe you're here today and you need to give your life to Jesus. You need to turn from your sin and put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, Jesus, He came, He lived a sinless life. He taught about the kingdom of God. He came to His own, but His own didn't receive Him. And ultimately He paid the penalty for my sin and your sin, bearing the full weight of that, so that three days later He would rise from the dead conquering the grave, so that all who would put their trust and their faith in Christ would not perish but have everlasting life and would be children of Abraham, children according to the promise, children of God, or you are of Christ and you belong to Christ and you belong to God. That could be your story today. And in fact, well, prayer partners down front, come and see one of 'em, just stop by and say, "I need to give my life to Jesus. I don't wanna go my own way anymore, but I just wanna simply surrender my life to Christ." And our prayer partners, you can start making your way down now, if you need prayer of any kind, they're here. They're waiting on you to pray with you, to pray for you. If you need anything, they're here for you. Father, we love you, God, we thank you for what you have said to us by Your Word. God, I pray that as your people, that we would live into what you have said, oh God, how good that you are, how faithful that you are. And Father, I pray that we would boldly trust what you have revealed to us in your Word. God, that we would know that you are a God who is so faithful to your covenant promises, that you bind yourself to them. That's how faithful you are. So we can trust you. We can trust you in all things. Enlarge our trust, enlarge our faith, may we walk and obey what it is that you have put in front of us to do. We love you, God, we thank you for your love and your kindness and your compassion and your mercies, which are new every morning for us. We bless you and we give thanks to you, we praise you in Jesus' name. And all God's people said, "Amen and amen." Church, family know that you're loved, you're cared for, God bless you. Have a great day.