This week we progress in talking about what it means to be God’s covenant people. Last week we looked at God’s covenant with Noah, as God spared eight people, placing them in the ark as He flooded the world. I said that one aspect of being the covenant people of God is that we are spared from the wrath of God.
This week we are going to move from Genesis 6-9 to Genesis 15 as we look at God’s covenant with Abraham, as God informs Abraham that he will be the father of many nations though he is quite old and has no heir.
And what I want to point out about this covenant is a progression in our focus. I want to show that as God’s covenant people, not only do we need not fear the eternal wrath of God, but we also have assurance that we who have faith in Christ will dwell with God for an eternity. In other words, not only should we not fear eternal condemnation under the wrath of God (if we have faith in Christ), but we should look forward, with confidence, to dwelling in the very presence of God for an eternity.
What happens in this fifteenth chapter is that God comes to Abraham in a vision and tells him he will have great reward in life. And in the Old Testament period, if God were going to bless you, then it was through your family. That’s why the book of Job mentions that Job has seven sons and three daughters when it is recording how richly blessed he is at the beginning of the book. And, therefore, that is why Abraham’s response to God in verse 2 is, “O Lord God, what will you give me since I am childless?” He thinks there is no way God can bless him.
Therefore, God responds, telling him in verse 4 that he would have a son, and he would be his heir. God then tells him to go outside, and God says, “Count the stars if you are able to count them.” (God’s humor surfaces). And then He informs Abraham that his descendants will be as the stars.
What happens next is something that should take us back. The Scripture says that Abraham believed the promise of God. Isn’t that incredible? The man is probably just shy of ninety-nine years old, doesn’t have a son, God tells him his descendants will be as the stars in the sky, and He believes God. That’s faith.
And yet what is even more incredible is that God takes note of his faith and then credits him with righteousness. Now remember that Abraham falls into the same description of men we read last week from Genesis 6:5, namely, “that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
And God looks at his faith and declares him perfectly righteous. In fact, Paul is so blown away by this that he builds his entire argument in Romans 4 that salvation is by faith alone by appealing to this text.
Then God proceeds to tell Abraham that his descendants would possess the land from the river of Egypt (the Nile) to the Euphrates. And of course Abraham’s faith wants to be assured, so he asks God, “How shall I know that I shall possess it?” And here is where the story gets interesting.
God tells Abraham (paraphrased), “Go get four animals and bring them to me.” As Abraham does this, God proceeds to have him cut them in half. Now, this sounds weird to us, but to Abraham, this was a natural practice when it came to making a covenant.
In that day, the terminology was actually “cutting” a covenant, much like we might refer to “cutting a deal” with someone. And it was called this because two people making a covenant would cut the animal in half and walk through the pieces lying on the ground. By doing so, the individual was saying, “I covenant to what I am saying to such a degree that if I break the covenant, my fate should be as that of the animal through which I just passed.” Therefore, when God told Abraham, “Go get animals,” it would have been like God saying to you or me, “Go get me some paper and a pen.” We would think, “Great, He’s going to put it in writing.”
However, God then causes Abraham to fall asleep, declares the covenant, and verse 11 says that a smoking oven and a flaming torch passed in between the pieces. Finally, verse 18 says that “on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram.”
And before we move on, I also want to point out another aspect of the covenant, mentioned in chapter 17. Verses 6-8 read, “And I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you. And I will establish My covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your descendants after you. And I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land of your sojourning, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God”.
I point this out to you because you may be looking at the covenant God makes with Abraham here and thinking, “What does this have to do with me?” After all, we are not Jewish as Abraham was, so it doesn’t seem very applicable.
However, the promise that God will be God to a group of people, namely Abraham’s descendants, is a major biblical them that stretches over all of Scripture. And the reason it does is because Abraham’s physical descendants and the heirs of the promise are not necessarily the same thing.
Paul clears up much of our possible confusion in the third chapter of his letter to the Galatians. Verses 26-29 read, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ. [Now, we might stop here and think, “Now that’s what I am familiar with,” but if you are familiar with Genesis 15 and 17, then you are thinking, “God being God to a group of people is a promise made to the descendants of Abraham, so what does God do about that?” Paul answers in the following verses.] For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Jesus Christ. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” Abraham’s descendants are those who have believed on Jesus Christ. And being the descendants of Abraham, they are the ones to whom God declared in Genesis 17:8, “I will be their God.”
And on the other end of the Bible, they are the ones written of in Revelation 21:1-8 as John writes, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. 2And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, 4and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” 5And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” 6Then He said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. 7“He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son”.
And so we see that the covenant God makes with Abraham is one of the first stages of His revealing of His plan to save a people for Himself. And, therefore, this covenant with Abraham teaches us much about salvation. I want to point our four of them.
1) Salvation, as the covenant with Abraham, is utterly and totally the work of God.
As verses 12-18 describe Abraham falling asleep while God makes the covenant, it is obvious that Abraham is simply a beneficiary of the work of God. Abraham cannot even take credit for joining in the making of the covenant, because when you are asleep, you are incapable of such.
Well, in much the same way, look at our state when we were saved and how our salvation was accomplished, as described in Ephesians 2:1-5. “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. 4But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).”
We were dead in our sins. When a man is dead, he is incapable of anything. But God, in His great mercy, chose to make us alive in Christ. Therefore, our salvation is utterly and totally the work of God.
Now remember this, for it is crucial in understanding our assurance of the covenant promise.
Abraham said to God in verse 8, “O Lord God, how may I know that I shall possess it?” Abraham was saying, “What is going to be my confidence when everything looks terrible?” That question is given as the very reason God makes the covenant with Abraham. It was to give him assurance in the promised blessing. If Abraham were ever to doubt, he could say, “God made a covenant, so I simply have to trust that God will be faithful and true.” After all, remember that God even left Abraham out of the work of making the covenant and did it on His own—even as he does salvation with us.
Therefore, what is your confidence that you will endure and spend an eternity with God if you genuinely believed and repented? It is the fact that you are heirs of a covenant made by God to the descendants of Abraham (i.e. those who trust in Jesus Christ).
To believe on Christ is to trust His work completely for your salvation. Therefore, our assurance is in the faithfulness of God. To think we can do something to undo the covenant promises of God toward those who trust in His Son is actually to challenge the power and faithfulness of God, because you were dead in your sins so that your salvation is totally His work.
I say this in case you think that God may have good intentions, but the future is out of His control. Such is a wrong thought.
Where do I see this point in this passage, however? It is in verse 18. It says, “On that day the Lord made covenant with Abraham saying, ‘To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates.’” Do you hear that? God says, “I have given …”
When God plans to do something, you can count it accomplished, because there is no power greater in all the universe. Who or what will stop Him? He alone is God.
I say that to assure us that we might not be surprised that we face suffering despite being the spiritual descendants of Abraham.
Listen to God’s words describing the road to this blessing. “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years” (verse 13).
In the same way, because we live in this world, even though we read the beautiful ending in Revelation 21, we will suffer. Acts 14:22 tells us that the disciples encouraged one another to persevere in the faith by saying to one another, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” Romans 8:17 says, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (NIV).
How can Paul make suffering a condition to being heirs of God? I think it is because he knows that following Christ means suffering. Brothers and sisters, know for certain that the life will involve suffering. And we will groan with all of creation for our redemption, for the promises of God to be fulfilled. But you can have assurance that they will be. God has promised his people by making a covenant, and God’s plans will not be thwarted.
So we may wait with expectant confidence, knowing with Paul that “the sufferings of this world are not worthy to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed to us” as we will dwell for an eternity with our God (Romans 8:18).