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"The Covenant with
Abraham" Text Comment
This chapter is about the covenant God made with Abram, as we will read in the summation in v. 18. Or, better, it is about the renewal of a covenant God had already made with Abram. The promises he makes to Abram here are just those he has already made though now with further elaboration. He had implicitly promised children to Abraham in chapter 12 and again in 13:16, now he makes that promise more explicit and definite. There is another, a third repetition or renewal of this covenant God made with Abraham still to come, in Gen. 17. Now, this morning, I want you to see how important this history is for an understanding of the Bible and of the Christian Faith. There are certain moments in the Bible that are definitive, that are decisive or serve to define the nature and character of the Bible's message and the Bible's history. This is one of those moments and if you would be a master of Holy Scripture, you must come to understand how this particular covenant, this particular history is featured in, the role it plays in the rest of the Bible. Let me then try to demonstrate the definitive, the formative role that God's covenant with Abraham, especially as it is stated here in Gen. 15, plays in the entire account of our Christian faith as it is given in Holy Scripture.
The rest of biblical history will record the fortunes of God's covenant with his chosen people. That is, the history of salvation is the history of the covenant, this relationship that God established with his people. But this covenant with Abraham is the first and the primary instance of that covenant. All that follows is simply the unfolding, the working out, the elaborating, and the fulfilling of this covenant God made with Abraham. When we think of God's covenant with his people, we are more likely to think of Israel at Mt. Sinai, the giving of the law, the entrance into the promised land, and so on. But, all of that is nothing else but the working out of this original covenant with Abraham, as our text, especially vv. 7 and 13-16 make clear. In Exodus 2:24 we are told specifically that God was moved to deliver the people of Israel from Egypt when they were suffering oppression in that foreign country because "he remembered his covenant with Abraham." And later, in Exodus 6:3ff. the Lord told Moses that he would deliver Israel from Egypt because of the promise he had made to Abraham. Israel is simply Abram's progeny. The covenant God made with Israel at Sinai is never said to be a new or different covenant, it is simply a renewal and amplification of the covenant God had long before made with Abraham. The promises of that first covenant: relationship with God, a multitude of descendants, and the land of Canaan, are exactly the promises that are central to the covenant that is revealed by Moses. Israel at Sinai and in the wilderness and in the promised land stands in the covenant God made with Abraham. What is more, the covenant that God later made with the house of David, described in 2 Sam. 7, is made in service to the covenant first made with Abraham. It is a covenant that serves that first covenant, it supplies the means by which the promise God made to Abraham would be fulfilled. The covenant God made with David promised an eternal heir to David's throne, a great king who would reign over God's kingdom forever. In Psalm 72, a Psalm written by Solomon about this promised King, this anointed one, this Messiah, we learn that "all nations will be blessed through him, and they will call him blessed." In other words, the great promise God made to Abraham, that all nations of the earth would be blessed through him, is now to be fulfilled through the life and reign of this coming King, who is, of course, Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham. Which is why, when the birth of the Lord is announced, those to whom the announcement was made immediately saw in this coming birth the fulfillment of the covenant God made with Abraham. In Luke 1:72-73, part of Zechariah's song, the Benedictus, we read, He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David,...to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore toour father Abraham... That is the very oath we have read here in Gen. 15. And Mary concludes her Magnificat similarly, in Luke 1:54-55: He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers. Jesus Christ and his salvation is what God had in view in this covenant he made with Abraham, the winning of the nations of the world to Christ, and the gathering of all the saints eventually in the heavenly country. All of this is what God was promising Abraham and the rest of the Bible, following Genesis 15, is simply the outworking of those promises. And, the NT makes clear, the saints of the old epoch, Abraham and his descendants, fully understood that God's covenant with them was not ultimately about a piece of real estate at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea but was about salvation and eternal life in a better country of which Canaan was but a type or symbol. The covenant God made with Abraham is thus an organizing principle of biblical revelation and, thus, a unifying principle. The faith of the NT is the same faith Abraham had, as the NT writers will make clear. The promise made to us is the same promise made to them as is often emphasized. There is but one gospel, one salvation, one message, one covenant in the Bible, and its initial and definitive form is the covenant God made with Abraham. We Christians have a holy book in one volume only and its message is the same from start to finish.
This is the great significance of God's use of covenant as a way of disclosing the way of salvation. It makes salvation a matter of a personal relationship with God. This is not the way of the other religions of the world, that teach some form of service or obeisance offered to God as gaining some favor from him. It is not the way of the American civil religion which vast multitudes of our fellow citizens have embraced. They believe that God exists and that he will reward or punish -- and primarily reward -- those who do what he wants. But in this creed he is more of a Santa Claus, at most he comes but once a year. Of a personal knowledge of and relationship with this God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, they have no thought, no idea, no imagination. Of a life lived in communion, in covenant fellowship, in friendship with this God they know nothing. Salvation for them and for the adherents of other religions is a matter of a distant God making calculations about the behavior of lives lived in virtual isolation from him. But God made a covenant with Abraham, made promises to him about his life, not only his future life in heaven, but his life here in this world and the life of his children. Abraham was in this way brought into a life lived in the active personal knowledge of a present God, the High God, but now also Abraham's friend and father, his shield and his reward, as God puts it in v. 1. And what follows in the history of this covenant is a conversation between a mere man and the Great God, questions and answers, promises and vows, God speaking to Abraham and Abraham believing God's Word to him. All the way through the Bible this is to be the way of salvation. 'To know God' is just another way of saying 'to be saved.' Sinners come to be forgiven, come to obtain eternal life, by means of a personal relationship of trust and fidelity which God establishes with them and they in turn maintain with him. What condescension on the Most High God's part, to stoop down to know us and walk with us in this personal and intimate way, to give himself to us, sinful and small as we are. And how different this makes the Christian faith and life from all other religions and religious expressions in the world. Here lies the first and foundational uniqueness of our faith as Christians, we believe that God draws near to sinful men and women, makes himself known to them, and saves them only in personal fellowship with himself.
You are aware of the importance of v. 6 in the NT. Paul cites it as proof against the Pharisees that sinners are justified, made right with God, their sins forgiven and they accepted in the sight of a holy God, not through their works, that is their supposed obedience to God's law, but rather by faith, by trust in Christ who fulfilled the law perfectly for his people and in their place. In both of his great discussions of the justification of sinners Paul appeals to this text, Gen. 15:6 as proof that from the beginning this has been the Bible's teaching. We find it in Romans 4:2 and again in Galatians 3:6. In each case Paul contrasts this way of being right with God -- by trusting in his promise and in Christ the fulfillment of that promise -- with the way that men naturally think about salvation, the way the Pharisees of his day thought about it, namely, that we had to earn our way by piling up points, each good thing we did adding another point to our total. Balderdash, says Paul. First, we don't obey the law of God! We are sinners through and through and have never done a thoroughly good thing in all our lives. God judges our motives as well as the acts themselves! Our sin is a far more comprehensive, far graver problem than most men ever realize. As Alexander Whyte once remarked about Henry Drummond, one of the first of those sentimental Victorian preachers who would cut the heart out of gospel preaching in their generation:
And that is the problem with vast multitudes of people today. They imagine that they can please God with what they imagine to be their good works, and have no idea that what they think their good works would damn them a thousand times over. But, what is more, the Bible, Paul argued, always suspended the sinner's justification on his faith not on his works, his confidence in what God had said to him and done for him, not what he might do himself. And then he would quote Gen. 15:6. I wonder how many times Paul quoted that verse in the years of his preaching justification by faith alone? And a banquet never the end of Paul's life, just before they present him with his gold watch, "Dr. Paul, what is your favorite verse in the Bible?" "Genesis 15:6," he would say.... Abraham was righteous in God's sight because he believed in God, and that many years before the Savior came and died for Abraham's sins, the righteousness of Christ was imputed to him, as if he had never sinned or been a sinner, because sinner that he was, he accepted forgiveness as God's free gift. And no one is saved in any other way these four-thousand years later. Sure, the Christian too must strive to obey God's law and to live a pure and holy and obedient life. But he does so not in order to earn his way to heaven -- which he knows he could never do -- but in order to live faithfully in this fellowship he now has with God, in order to love the God who has loved him so, in order to demonstrate his gratitude for gifts God simply gave him. Abraham was an obedient man -- not perfectly by any means as we have already seen and will see again -- but his faith in God led him to work for God, to serve God, to love God with the life he led, and it will lead any Christian in any age to do the same.
Lest anyone think that God and Abraham decided together to make this covenant with one another, as if they were in some sense equal partners, the entire emphasis in Gen. 15 and everywhere else falls on the initiative of God. "The Word of the Lord came to Abram..." "I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land..." "I will do this for you and that; give you a child you could not have by yourself and give you a land to which you have no claim." It is always God speaking, God giving, God creating a relationship where none existed before. And so it remains always in the Bible. "My sheep hear my voice and they follow me," the Lord Jesus said. "No one can come to me unless the Father in heaven draws him." So it was with Abraham and so with you and with me. Our salvation is God's doing from first to last. Even Abraham's faith is a gift God gave him, something the Holy Spirit formed in him, as the rest of the Bible will teach. Later, some Jewish rabbis would teach that God chose Israel because they alone of all the nations would keep the law God gave them. Well, if that were so, God made a poor choice, as the rest of the Bible confirms, for they did not keep God's law. Yet he continued to be faithful to his covenant with Abraham and continued to raise up from that people, men and women who loved him and would believe his word and follow his commands. But this was God's doing, not man's. God made the covenant with Abraham, he created it, he preserved it, he enforced it in history as it unfolded. We are, accordingly, "monergists" when it comes to salvation, not "synergists." We believe that salvation is the work of "one" not "two" that it comes to pass because of a single worker and not as the result of a cooperation between two. The cooperation would never happen, the love would never be returned, the faith would never be placed in the word of God, had God not acted first and created that love and that faith in a sinful heart. That is not all said here in Gen. 15, but it is implied here and it is explicitly taught as the teaching of the Bible unfolds and these basic elements of the faith are expounded in greater and greater detail. In other words, the covenant with Abraham is the Bible's first substantial account of salvation, what it is, how it comes to a person, and what it does to him or her. And, because Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever, so is the covenant he made with his people, the first version of which was that he made with Abram. One of you gave me a book to read this past week, a new small biography of Christopher Love, a celebrated Puritan and Presbyterian preacher, who was executed, strange to say and horrible to have to admit, by the Puritans themselves, who admired his life and his preaching, but who considered him a traitor for his political views. Love was raised in an unbelieving home. He was fifteen years old before he heard his first sermon. And when we went to church that 1st Sunday, it was out of curiosity about the preacher not out of any spiritual interest! But when he heard that sermon, it changed his life. The Word of God had come to him. He returned home knowing himself for the first time to be a sinner in a world that belonged to a Holy God. The effect was so marked that his father refused to let him go to church again. In fact, he locked him in the attic of their house for fear that Christopher would go against his father's wishes. And he was right, because the young man tossed a rope out the window and slid down the side of the house and ran to church. There, this time, God met him, he was converted, his heart was changed, and he believed in Christ. After that he was a pilgrim, just like Abram. His father was exasperated with a son who would sneak out of the house late at night, after his parents were abed, to meet with his new Christian friends. Finally Christopher had to leave home and others supported him as he prepared for the ministry. How utterly typical. Not Ur, but Cardiff; not 2,000 B.C. but A.D. 1632, God did not come to him in a vision but in a sermon, but the substance is exactly the same. God made a new friend, brought another sinner into covenant with himself, which is how it always happens and must happen What is this in Christopher Love's case but the covenant God makes with his people: a personal relationship that God and God alone creates with sinful human beings to which they respond in faith. So it was in Abram's day and so it is in ours. Now, do you see yourselves in this covenant between God and Abraham? Can you see yourself in that man and his faith in God's Word and his personal friendship with God? That is salvation; the only salvation there is. Are you in covenant with God? Has he made himself your friend and your confidant? Settle for nothing less than this, for this alone is how men are put right with God! Lord, make me your friend! Take me into your covenant! Grant me a true faith in you and in Jesus Christ. I will not let you go until you bless me. Such is the prayer of the man or the woman who is near to salvation and eternal life and friendship with God. |
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