The Divine Covenants

The Abrahamic Covenant (Part 3)

The first thing we read of Abraham after he actually entered the land of Canaan is God appearing to him, and he built an altar to the Lord.

· Gen 12:6-7,  Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

Now notice that Abraham did not settle down in the land and possess it, but “he passed through it”.

· Acts 7:4-5, He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground.

Also there were the Canaanites to challenge Abraham’s presence there. So it is with the believer; the devil and the world unite to oppose his enjoyment of the inheritance that has been promised him. Again we see that “the Lord appeared to Abraham”. We earlier saw that God appeared to him as the “glory of God” back in Ur; but now that God’s instructions have been fully obeyed, He appears again and Abraham is rewarded by the promise that the land would belong to his offspring.

There are two important principles that we need to keep in mind as we look at God’s dealings with Abraham.

· First, God’s grace never ignores His righteousness. In other words, He never shows mercy at the expense of His holiness.

· Secondly, in exercising His sovereignty He never enforces the responsibility of the creature. In other words, though God is sovereign and can do anything He pleases, he never forces His will on an unwilling human, who is accountable for his own behavior.

These two principles are the key to understanding the Abrahamic covenant.

Some commentators like to speak of this as a “covenant of pure grace”, and surely it was that, because there was nothing in Abraham to cause God to so much as notice him. But it would be equally correct to call this a “covenant of righteousness”, for it demonstrated the divine character of God.

At this point we need to consider what God required of the person He was making covenant with. It was not until after Noah did all that God required of him by building the ark to save his family that God said that He would establish a covenant with Noah. Once Noah fulfilled the stipulations that God laid down, He was ready to fulfill His promises.

We see the same thing in the case of Abraham. There is no hint in Scripture that God entered into a covenant with Abraham while he was in Ur. Instead, there was a provisional statement made to Abraham.

· Gen 12:1, The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.

First, God acted in sovereign grace by singling out Abraham from his idolatrous neighbors. Second, the responsibility was on Abraham to do what God called him to do. Third, there would be a reward to follow his obedience. These three things are put together in Hebrews 11:8.

· Heb. 11:8, By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.

He was to receive an inheritance. In the Everlasting Covenant, God promised a certain reward to Jesus upon the completion of the conditions set forth by God. And while Jesus did perfectly fulfill all of the requirements placed on Him by that covenant, that does not mean that the law has been repealed and that the saints are free of the law.

Grace reigns, but it reigns through righteousness, and not at the expense of it. The obedience of Jesus does not mean that ours is unnecessary. Rather it means that our obedience, though imperfect, is acceptable. The obedience of Jesus does not provide license for us to be lawless and careless about the claims of God in the law. And this limited obedience is enabled by the empowering of the Holy Spirit. The same standard of obedience exists for the head of the church and for the members of the church. Jesus was our example and we are to follow in His footsteps.

We will be looking at how the various covenants gradually unfold the deeper meaning of the Everlasting Covenant. That covenant was, in its nature and contents, a mixed one, because the principles of both law and grace were operative in it. It was pure grace which ordained that any from Adam’s fallen race should ever be saved and it was grace that provided the Son of God to become incarnate and serve as our surety. But it was law pure and simple that Jesus obeyed that purchased our salvation, and therefore perfectly satisfied God’s requirements on our behalf.

The work of Jesus has released the sinner from the law as a means of procuring salvation, but it has in no wise removed the law as the rule for our lives. So divine grace does not set aside our responsibility to obey the law. Or to say this differently, we are not saved because of our obedience to the law, but it is equally true that we cannot be saved without it.

Unless Noah had obeyed God and built the ark, he and his family would have died in the flood along with everyone else. In our case, it is through Jesus and His obedience that our obedience is acceptable to God.

Some argue that this reduces the covenant of grace to the same level as the covenant of works. Not so. While there are some common parts to these covenants, there is a real and major difference. You see, the covenant of works that was made with Adam made no provision for a Mediator and there was no provision for those who failed under the covenant. The covenant of grace provides both.

In applying what we have just been discussing to Abraham it should be obvious that the law of his obedience involved both promises and threats, rewards and punishments. And at this point one may ask where are there any hints of such terms in the Abrahamic Covenant?  Well in the first place, unless there were such terms, there would have been no covenant. Secondly the very brief account of the story in Genesis needs to be kept in mind; and instead of a full categorical statement, we need to carefully piece together the details we find there. And thirdly, in Genesis 12:1 Canaan was provisionally set before Abraham.

We have not talked about the sign or seal of this covenant with Abraham. But we find in Genesis 17:9-14.

· Gen. 17:9-14, Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner--those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

Here it is clear that a condition was stipulated, and that failure to meet this condition would break the covenant.  

From the divine side, the covenant of grace is a certainty. There is no possibility of anything in it failing. However, this does not alter the fact that while the elect are left here in the world they are required, according to 2 Peter 1:10-11:

· 2 Peter 1:10-11, Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, [11] and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

You should notice the word “if” in verse 10. What do you make of that? I want you to consider several passages of Scripture.

· John 5:24, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.

· Rom. 6:23,  For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now contrast,

· Rom. 6:22,  But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.

· Rom. 8:13,  For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live,

· Gal. 6:8,  The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

· Jude 21, Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

The issue here is one of obedience. A “Christian” would not enter heaven if he entirely neglected the means of grace that is available for his spiritual preservation. The call of Abraham was a very important step in the out working of God’s purpose. It was one of those remarkable events in the history of the church which produced a new order of things. The line from which the Messiah, the promised Seed, was to come was now more definitely defined.

For two thousand years the believer’s faith was based on the words spoken in Eden when God promised that the Seed of woman would destroy the serpent. And until Abraham nothing more was revealed about the Seed. But in the covenant which God made with Abraham, the promise was renewed and the family from which He would come is revealed. John Kelly said that “We must bear in mind that everything that occurred to Abraham, from his call to the close of his life, was intended to explain and illustrate the nature of the covenant.”

When he was called only a bare hint was given of God’s purpose, yet it was enough to create faith in him. The actual covenant was not to come for some years.

· Gal 3:16-18,  The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say "and to seeds," meaning many people, but "and to your seed," meaning one person, who is Christ. What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise.

Four hundred and thirty years prior to the giving of the law at Sinai takes us back to the beginning of God’s dealings with Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, but we do not see the establishment of the covenant until Genesis 15:18-21.

· Gen 15:18-21, On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates--  the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites,  Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites,  Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites."

Just what did the Abrahamic covenant mean to the minds and hearts of God’s people of old? And how does this apply to us today?

· Gen 12:1-3, The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.  "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you;I will 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 earth will be blessed through you."

In this simple statement we have the original promise made to Abraham that the Messiah would come from his family. It was made at a point midway between the creation of the first Adam and the birth of the last Adam, Jesus.