Imagine your home
was hit by an earthquake! As you walk
around you see the cracks in the wall, the broken glass, and the tiles that
have been dislodged from the roof. You
face a choice—‘do we repair the damage or do we simply knock it down and start
again?’
Genesis started out well but then disaster
struck—humanity rebelled against their creator.
From that rebellion we see a cycle of sin and punishment. Indeed the rot runs so deep that even after
the flood people return to their rebellion.
What should God do?
Can the damage be repaired?
Should he give up on humanity?
Maybe he would be best to forget about this creation and start again
elsewhere.
What does God
do? Amazingly he does not give up on
humanity. Rather he sets about repairing
the damage. He does so by certain
promises that he makes to a man named Abram.
In this sermon we shall look at this promise or covenant, we shall also
look at the related themes of faith and grace.[1]
The Covenant
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.”
(Genesis 12:1-3).
God goes on to
promise Abram the land of Canaan (12:7).
We can note
three aspects of this promise: people—Abram’s descendants, place—Canaan, and
blessing. Sound familiar?
In chapter 2
we underlined the fact that before the Fall God’s people—Adam and Eve, were in
God’s place—Eden, and were enjoying God’s blessing. Now through his covenant with Abram God is
promising to make a new people, put them in a new place, and bless them (and
through them bless all peoples!). God is
promising to reverse the effects of the Fall!
This promise
is made on a number of occasions throughout these chapters against a background
of events that seem to make its fulfilment impossible. For example Abraham and Sarah are well beyond
child-bearing age, and the Promised Land is already occupied by the Canaanites. If these promises are to be fulfilled it will
only be by the supernatural work of God.
The promises confirmed to Abraham’s son Isaac, and Isaac’s son
Jacob. In chapter 17 God changes Abram’s
name (Abram—‘Exalted father’) to Abraham (‘Father of a multitude’) to signify a
prominent aspect of the covenant: Abraham will be the father of many nations.
David Jackman
points out that when God makes this covenant.
He is not striking a bargain, he is not saying, ‘you scratch my back and
I’ll scratch yours’. Rather in his grace he is promising to move
in a way, that he will always fulfil, to bless another. It is as if God is saying to Abraham, “out
of the heart of love which is my nature, I want to bless the whole world, and
therefore I choose you, Abraham, as my covenant man with whom I will begin”.[2]
This covenant
comes with a sign—circumcision.
Faith
What does
Abraham contribute to all this?
Nothing! All he does is receive
God’s word and believe God’s promise. In
so doing he becomes an example of someone who is justified by faith.
Genesis 15:6
is a key verse in the Bible for understanding the nature of faith: Abram
believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. [3]
Although
Abraham demonstrates the reality of his faith by his actions, it is not his
actions that made him right with God—Abraham is counted righteous before God by
simply believing. Our good works, our
church-going, our prayers can’t put us right with God—we are put right with God
by placing our belief, our trust, our faith in what he has done for us.
Abraham’s
faith is not always strong (e.g. Gen.15:2-3), however at critical times he
takes God at his word and believes his promises. ‘The key thing is not the strength or
perfection of Abraham’s faith, but the strength and perfection of the God he
trusts. Abraham learns that God is utterly reliable and faithful to his word.’[4]
In chapter 22 Abraham shows the reality of his faith by his actions. God calls him to go to Mount Moriah and sacrifice his son Isaac there. What does Abraham do? He believes God’s promises and obeys God’s command. He knows that it is through Isaac that all the blessings would come. He knows that God will fulfil his promise. He knows that God can do anything. He ‘knows that if God calls him to do this, and he is obedient to the command, God has a better plan than any plan than Abraham could see.’[5] Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham reasoned that God could raise Isaac from the dead if he was killed. In this chapter Abraham is an example of a person who believes God’s promises, and shows that he believes God’s promises by obeying God’s commands. This is the mark of being a justified sinner, that we believe God’s promise, and show the reality of our belief by obeying his commands.
Grace:
We don’t know anything of Abraham’s faith or knowledge of God before
chapter 12. We know that he lived among
a pagan people and his family worshipped other gods (see Joshua 24:2). There is no hint that God calls Abraham because
of any goodness that he sees in him.
Rather it seems God calls Abraham through unmerited, underserved,
unearned favour—i.e. his grace. Indeed
right throughout these chapters Abraham’s relationship with God is on the basis
of grace. Abraham is not portrayed as a
deserving man but rather we see him ‘warts and all’ (see Gen. 12:11-20;
20:1-18). It is clear that God’s
goodness to Abraham is something that Abraham does not deserve.
Another example of God’s grace at work is in his choosing of Jacob (see Rom. 9:10-13). Of Isaac’s twins God chooses Jacob to be the one whose descendants will be the line of promise and become the people of God. He is not an obvious choice. Not only is he the younger twin, but in the early part of the story he comes across as a rather unpleasant character. In chapter 27 he tricks his elderly and nearly blind father into giving him his blessing. ‘Once again we learn a principle that operates right throughout the Bible: God does not choose people on merit.’[6] If we are Christians today, it is not because we are better than anybody else; it is simply because of God’s sovereign grace.
Before we draw some conclusions we ought to note two people. Both are sons of Jacob.
The first is Joseph (see chapters 37-50).
Joseph’s words to his brothers, in Genesis 50:20 are key—‘You
intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now
being done, the saving of many lives’.
God has been in control of Joseph’s circumstances all along. He has seen to it that Joseph ends up in his
position of authority in Egypt. As a
result he is able to help his brothers when they coming looking for it during
time of famine. So the embryonic people
of God are preserved, and God’s promise to make a great nation from them is
protected.
Last week we
were on the search for the offspring of Eve (3:15) who would crush the
serpent’s head. We still haven’t found
the serpent-crusher. We followed a line
that led to Abraham and in these chapters we can see that line carry through to
Jacob (also called Israel). The
fulfilment of God’s promises appears to be connected with this line[7]
and we have good reason to see this line as anticipating royalty (Genesis
17:16)—thus we are anticipating a king through whom God’s blessing will be
mediated to the nations.[8]
Who does the line go through from Jacob? Judah! In chapter 49 Jacob gathers his twelve sons (who are the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel) and makes a prophetic blessing on each. Of Judah he says, The sceptre will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet’ (49:10) — one of Judah’s descendants will rule over all nations forever. Later in the story we will see that King David comes from Judah, and from King David there is a royal line that leads to the eternal king, the conqueror, the one who crushes the serpents head—Jesus![9]
Conclusion:
We covered a
lot of ground in this sermon and some of it has been fairly heavy. If you are like me you will need to read over
the key points a number of times before they are clear and they stick in your
head! But it is important to understand
God’s promises to Abraham for as John Stott writes, ‘It may truly be said
without exaggeration that not only the rest of the Old Testament but the whole
of the New Testament are an outworking of these promises of God.’[10] Everything that happens in the Old Testament
from this point onwards has God’s promise to Abraham in view, and the Old
Testament points forward to Jesus.
In 2 Corinthians 1:20 we are told that Jesus is the ultimate fulfilment of all God’s promises. God’s promises to Abraham are no exception. We see part fulfilment of these promises through Jesus now, and full fulfilment in heaven. Now through faith in Jesus we are God’s people, the true seed of Abraham (see Gal. 3:29), in heaven we will see a great multitude from every nation (Rev. 7:9 cf., Gen. 22:17). In the Old Testament Eden was a picture of God’s people enjoying God’s rest, and the promised land is thought of as the place of rest—confusing as this sounds now the place part of the promise is fulfilled in the rest we have in Jesus (Matthew 11:28-30) and will one day be ultimately fulfilled in heaven—where God’s people enjoy rest (Revelation 14:13). Now through Jesus we enjoy every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3) and in heaven we will experience, with all God’s people, the fullness of that blessing (e.g. Rev. 22:3).
[1] Idea for opening illustration taken from Phil Campbell and Bryson
Smith (2000) Full of Promise, The
Good Book Company.
[2] Jackman, Bible Overview Lectures, available from the Proclamation Trust.
[3] This verse that is quoted a number of times in the N.T.—Rom. 4:3;
Gal. 3:6; James 2:23.
[4] Goldsworthy, According to Plan, IVP, p.158.
[5] Jackman, Bible Overview Lectures.
[6] Roberts(2003), The Big Picture, IVP, p. 63.
[7] The promise to Abraham is closely linked with his ‘seed’ (22:18
26:4).
[8] Alexander (1998), The Servant King, IVP p. 33.
[9] This prophesy is initially fulfilled in David, and ultimately
fulfilled in Christ.
[10] Stott, Understanding the Bible, p. 45.
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