The Covenant

This morning, we're going to be talking a little bit about something that is very characteristic of reformed theology. So it's going to be theological, but hopefully it's going to be interesting at the same time. And I did just say that the men, you know, when things get a bit theoretical, it can go over the head, but I hope that this is going to be really helpful, really useful and practical to us this morning because it's so important. We're going to be particularly looking at a passage in scripture which is one of the turning points that really sets up the whole story of the bible. It's where God sets in place a series of events which would ultimately lead to the salvation of all of humanity.

It's where God sets up a plan. If you have your bibles with you, please turn to Genesis 15. Genesis 15. And we're going to be reading from verse one. So we're going to be doing some real bible study this morning.

We're also going to be flipping to Genesis 12. So first, we'll start with Genesis 15, and then we're going to go back to Genesis 12. From verse one: After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.

But Abram said, O sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus? And Abram said, You have given me no children, so a servant in my household will be my heir. Then the word of the Lord came to him, This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir. He took him outside and said, Look up at the heavens and count the stars, if you can indeed count them. Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be.

Abram believed the Lord and He credited it to him as righteousness. He also said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it. But Abram said, O sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it? So the Lord said to him, Bring me a heifer, a goat, and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon. Abram brought all these things to him, cut them in two, and arranged the halves opposite each other.

The birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the Lord said to him, Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.

You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation, your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot 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 you this land, from the River of Egypt to the Great River, the Euphrates: the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

Now, just flip back with me to Genesis 12. We're just going to read there the first three verses. The Lord said to Abram, Leave your country, leave your people and your father's household, and go to the land I will show you. For 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 the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. I'd like to start this morning by asking you this question, and I was so privileged to be talking with a young man this week about this very important question. How do you know you are saved? How do you know that you have peace with God? Real peace.

How do you know that your life is secure with Him? Some people have said to me, K.J., I don't know. I believe I'm a Christian, but I am not sure whether I have peace with God. I don't know how I can have that peace or that security. Others have said, Well, if I live the best life I can, if I treat my family really well, if I treat my friends really well, then I'm pretty sure that I have peace with God.

Do you know what the Bible says? Do you know what the Bible says about how we can have peace with God? It says you have to sign on a dotted line, to sign on a dotted line. It's a contract.

It's a contract. Have you ever heard that before? The Bible says that we are in a covenant with God, a covenant with God. The events that we read this morning took place between a man called Abraham and God.

It happened after a great military victory. In Genesis 14, we see that Abram had defeated the local inhabitants there that were threatening some of the city states that were allies with Abram. And Abram had moved. We see in Genesis 12 that God told him to move into this new area. He becomes very wealthy and powerful, and he, a simple farmer, rallies up these armed men and they push back and they fight against these invaders that are threatening his allies.

So he achieves this military victory. At the same time, he achieves a spiritual victory because the king of Sodom, who he was protecting, offers him all the plunder of this victory, offers him all the gold, all the weapons, everything that was left over by the invaders. But Abram says, I'm not going to take it because I don't want people to say that I've become rich by your hand. God will make me rich.

God will bless me. And so he's on a spiritual high for resisting this temptation to bless himself, to become wealthy. However, by the time we get to Genesis 15, he's a very disheartened man. It says in the first opening verses, the word of the Lord comes to Abram in a vision and says, Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid.

Abraham is down in the dumps, interestingly enough. And it's in this state that our passage begins. This passage is typically referred to as God's covenant with Abraham, but it's one of the most important Bible passages for understanding the theology of salvation. There are three things that I want us to understand here about this particular passage regarding this word, the covenant. And the covenant is a specific word that is used throughout the Bible, not only in the Old Testament but in the New Testament as well.

The first thing we see is what the purpose of this contract or this covenant is. When God comes to Abram, it's actually the second time He visits him. In Genesis 12, God comes to Abram out of the blue. We can assume that Abram really didn't know who this God was personally. Abram came from a place called Ur of the Chaldeans, which is modern day Iraq.

It's about 1,200 miles from this place that later became Judea or Israel. God says to this man, out of the blue, I want you to move everything you have, move 1,200 miles and come to this place that I will show you. God chooses Abram out of the blue. There's nothing that Abram had done.

He wasn't a better person. He wasn't better looking. He didn't have less or more teeth in his mouth. He was just an ordinary man, but God graciously comes to him. That's the first thing we notice about how God moves.

God is sovereign. God is sovereign. God can choose and move and call people out of His own good, free, and powerful will. God just comes to Abraham and it's an immense act of grace. He sovereignly, He graciously chooses Abraham out of the blue.

He tells him that he needs to go to this place. And so Abraham comes to know God through this miraculous event, this miraculous revelation of God. What does God promise him in Genesis 12? This is what becomes the essence, the essence of this contract, this essence of this covenant that God will make with Abraham.

Have a look at Genesis 12. He says, 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. Those who bless you, I will bless. Those who curse you, I will curse.

And through you, all the peoples on the earth will be blessed. That's the essence of this new relationship, this new covenant that is being made. In essence, God is saying, I want to be your God and I want you to be my people. I will bless those who bless you. Those who look after you, I will make great.

Those who invade you, who try to destroy you, I will fight for you. I will protect you against those. I want to be your God and I want you to be my people. That is the essence of what God promises here. So the purpose of God's covenant is that He is creating a special people for Himself.

People that are freely chosen by His grace to live under His protection as king. He is the king of these people. And through these people, they will be a blessing to the entire world. The second thing we see about this covenant contract, and maybe I'll just stop here to explain what this covenant is. A promise is a unilateral agreement.

A promise is, I promise Leon that I will buy him some chocolate if his team wins this week. He's passive. He doesn't have to do anything. He just has to hope that his team wins. If the team wins, I will buy him chocolate.

So it's unilateral. It's me going it's what I can do for Leon. A covenant is a bilateral agreement. It's like a marriage. A marriage is known as a covenant.

It's two people coming together promising that they will love one another, that they will stay with one another through thick and thin. That's a covenant. That is bilateral. So that is what a covenant is.

God is making this agreement, a two way agreement with Abram here. And we'll get to exactly what Abram's requirements are as well. The second thing we see, that God requires of people who participate in this bilateral agreement, what they have to have, what their role in this is, is to have faith. It's to have faith. In Genesis 15, Abraham is afraid.

He had ridden out this amazing victory. He had this humble farmer fights off these invaders. He resists temptation to take this plunder, but God comes to him and he's down in the dumps. He's afraid because, okay, he may have resisted these invaders, but they might be coming back.

He's a new guy in this new land. He's got no money because he didn't take the money that was on offer for him. So he's in this precarious situation. And so in the context of fear, of personal safety, and of being poor, God comes to him and God says to him this: I will be your shield. I will be your protector.

Against these invaders, I will be your shield. I will be your very great reward against you not taking that plunder, that money that you could have so easily. I will be your reward. That Hebrew word is actually the same as the word for compensation that people in the military would receive for their work, for their duty. It's the same word.

I will be that compensation for you. But Abraham is not immediately satisfied with this. He says, Well, that's all very well and good, but I don't have an heir. So whatever reward you'll give me, it's just going to go to my servants. Poor servants, they're like, Oh man.

They, he says, you know, it's pointless. I'm old. I'm not going to have a kid. Whatever you give me is just going to die with me pretty much. It's just going to be distributed amongst my servants.

And so Abraham says, You know, nothing's happened. Where is this promise that you made in Genesis 12 that I will become a great nation? That I will have descendants and descendants that will come after me? How will I be made into a great nation if I don't even have a biological heir? Abram's response here is so common to the life of a Christian.

Yes, he had just won a great battle, but now when he actually has his time to sit and consider what has happened, he's like, Man, I think I might be in a worse situation than I was when I started. I've got real enemies now. I've just fought this expensive battle, this expensive war, and man, I need to feed all my people now. He's just a simple farmer. He's not an army general.

So when he has time to think about it, he sees that he's not in a great position at all. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt that way? It's like a spiritual depression after a great spiritual victory, after a great spiritual high. You've just, you know, experienced God so powerfully in a situation. People often talk about that in, you know, victory over cancer or something like that.

They just go through a lull. Have you ever experienced that? Maybe a spiritual dryness of some sort. People in these situations stop seeking God. They can stop going to church over it.

Their lives get messy and it gets turbulent. What is the cure for this? What is the cure for this? Well, the text says that it's faith. Faith.

Which is not some weird spiritual thing. It's simply a dependence on God. It's simply a dependence on God. Faith is what brings Abram up out of this pit. God responds to these doubts of Abram.

Abram says, I don't have an heir. How can you give me these things? And God responds so beautifully. God says, You will have an heir. I promise you.

You will have an heir. And the text says that God leads Abram out. Have a look at verse five. It says, He, God, took him outside and showed him the stars. So God meets Abram in his tent.

Personal, comforting. And God takes him physically out and just shows him the immense universe that's out there. And He says, Look at these stars. As many as these stars are, that's how much, that's how many descendants you'll have.

That's an amazing, amazing thing to behold. It's a beautiful moment. And Abraham stands outside and he's led out by God like a dad leads his son out to the backyard and he shows him the stars. And in verse six then, after he sees this, it says, Abraham believed the Lord. Abraham believed the Lord.

The phrase about Abraham's faith described here in verse six is one of the most important verses in the Bible, because in the New Testament, it's mentioned at least twice by the writings of Paul when he talks about how as Christians we receive God's gift of eternal salvation. Abraham believed the Lord, it says, and God counted that faith as righteousness. God counted that faith as being good enough, as being right with God. This verse is referenced in the New Testament when it's talking about faith alone being the only means of salvation.

Faith was essential for Abram to receive what God wanted to freely offer him. And that's what faith is. It's not some spirituality, some level that you have to, if you get to fifty faith points, you get to receive an heir or something like that. It's just being dependent on God. It's just trusting Him at His word.

Faith is Abraham just saying, Lord, I pull up my hand because you said you will give me something. When you and I believed the gospel, when we came to that point, when we realised our utter helplessness in our brokenness and sin, faith is just saying, I hold out my hand, God, and I receive what you promised me. That is what faith is. And God counts that and looks at that and considers us to be completely righteous. Why?

Because through our faith, we stretch out those hands to receive God's promise that He has made everything right through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. It is by faith that we enter into this agreement, this covenant with God. The third thing that this passage teaches us about God's covenant is that God Himself would make sure that this covenant, this promise, this agreement would be upheld. This is really, really important and really, really amazing. God Himself is going to make sure that we maintain this relationship.

We maintain this agreement. And I'll show you how. You see, God tells Abraham that he has to pack up and he has to go to a land that is far away. He chooses him sovereignly and graciously because God wants to make a nation out of him, a nation that will be God's people.

A nation that would know God in a more personal way than any other people have known Him before. But up until this point, it's just been a promise. Up until this point, God has just spoken to Abraham and told him, If you go, I will bless you. It's not yet a covenant. A covenant is sure.

A covenant is stable. It is faithful. It's strong. So in verses nine to eighteen, God makes this promise a covenant. He makes it a covenant.

In verses nine to eighteen, God turns this promise into this covenant. In the middle ancient Middle East, a covenant was made in this way. People would say, Okay, say it was a military thing. Okay, we're going to make a treaty, a peace treaty.

So they would get an animal, they would slaughter the animal, they would split the animal in half, so they would cut it straight down the middle. Its guts and blood were everywhere, okay? And they would say, We will be in peace with one another.

And if one of us breaks this promise, breaks this agreement, may I become like this animal? And they would walk through the entrails and the blood and the guts of this animal as they said this. May I become like one of these animals? And they would walk through that. It is so serious.

It says, You know, may God curse me. May I turn out to be like this animal if I don't. And so we see God doing exactly the same. He says to Abraham in verse nine, Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a pigeon. And Abraham brought these to him, cut them in two, and arranged the halves opposite each other.

So he does this. And then Abram falls into this deep sleep or sees a vision and God says, You know, I promise you, and this is what's going to happen. He prophesies about the future of Israel. But then he comes to verse seventeen and I just want to show you this. It's amazing.

Verse 17: When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch appeared and it passed between the pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham. This was a customary ritual.

This term of making this oath, may I become like this animal if I do not uphold my bargain, is known as a self maledictory oath, a self maledictory oath. And in essence, it's saying, If I don't uphold it, I'll die. You can do this to me. But there's one huge difference here.

What's Abraham doing? He's asleep. There are two things, two symbols that are moving between these carcasses. There's a smoking fire pot and there's a torch. God is the one who passes through these pieces.

Abraham doesn't walk through them. By doing this, God takes full responsibility, and I'm getting goosebumps, God takes full responsibility for the agreement to happen. God says, If this agreement doesn't happen, if this plan should fail, may I become like this animal. Even if it means that you are the one that is disobedient and breaks it. The covenant agreement was, I will be your God and you will be my people.

And here's God saying that even if Abraham's descendants failed to uphold their end of the covenant, to keep God as their God, to worship Him as their creator and their king, then it would be God that would bear the curse that should fall upon them. In Galatians 3:13-14, Paul makes this astounding statement. We are the ones who broke that covenant. We are the ones who broke that covenant. He says in Galatians 3:13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law.

The curse of this covenant which became law. He redeemed us by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. 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, which is the promise to live and walk with God as His children.

So going back to the question I asked at the beginning, How can we be sure that we are saved? Not by trusting that we are good enough, strong enough, faithful enough to cling to God's promise, but by trusting that God is strong enough to uphold His promise. Friends, God made that promise to Abraham and to his descendants and we couldn't uphold it. We couldn't keep God as our God. We made idols in the image of God.

We put other things above God, in the place that God rightly owns in our hearts. And so Jesus was sent to die, to be that sacrifice, to turn into that animal that was slaughtered. But the amazing thing is that animal was raised to life again. Jesus had a restored life, a renewed life, a victorious, unconquerable life. And we have that now.

The oath that God made on our behalf points beyond that lifetime of Abraham and points to the day when God's oath was paid in His own blood, to finally and ultimately and completely create a people for God, a people that truly belong to Him, truly love Him, who are truly changed by His Holy Spirit to see Him, to worship Him as their king. God made His covenant contract so certain that nothing would be able to break it, not even our sin.

That's how we know we are saved. Not based upon our grip of God, but His grip on us.