Covenant God

Between Genesis 16 and Genesis 17, thirteen years have passed. Abram was 86 years old when last we read about him; today as we read about Abram, he’s 99 years old.

As we’ve seen already in this study through the life of Abram, God is in no hurry. I argue this is cause for assurance, though some would argue this is cause for annoyance.

If we’re honest, we want what God has promised right now. This whole waiting for 13 years thing is a little ridiculous. It’s actually been a much longer wait for Abram and Sarai than that, though.

Abram was 75 when the LORD called him to leave his home country and journey to the land God would show him. 75 years old when the LORD promised him offspring and land and blessing.

It’s been 24 years at this point, and the waiting is not over.

Have you ever had to wait 13 years, or 24 years for something? I know some of you have waited even longer.

Some of you have looked forward to retirement since your first day on the job; the thought of retirement is what gets you out of bed in the morning. You just keep waiting until you can retire.

You’ve prayed for your spouse or your child or friend to come to faith in Christ for years and years, decade after decade. And you’re still praying for that, still waiting.

If you’re a Royals fan, you waited 30 years for another World Series win. And you’ll probably wait another 30 years. 1985, 2015. 2045 could be their year. Just keep waiting.

I have a friend who has lived with an agonizing auto-immune disease for nearly 50 years, no doubt praying for relief and healing all the while waiting.

The Bible introduces us to a man who as born blind. Who knows how old he was when he met Jesus, but you know he had been waiting and waiting and waiting for God to act on his behalf.

But this is true: sovereignly (and possibly frustratingly) God is never in a hurry.

Understanding this will aid us in our walk as His people. A good chunk of the Christian life is very, very ordinary.

“Great swatches of covenant life consist of oil changes and grocery stores, doing business inventory, standing at copy machines, getting allergy shots, and pulling casseroles out of the oven.” - Dale Ralph Davis

If we can’t be content with routine days, we will run into problems; much of the Christian life is very, very ordinary.

That’s not really one of the points of this sermon or of Genesis 17; that is kind of the point of the time in between Genesis 16 and Genesis 17—it was apparently 13 years of ordinary life.

Not much divine “razzle-dazzle.” No big moments in Abram’s life. Nothing at all recorded for us about that time. It was just very, very ordinary.

And then, the un-ordinary or extraordinary happens. Again.

Genesis 17:1–2 NIV

1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. 2 Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”

At this point in Abram’s life, according to the book of Hebrews, Abram was as good as dead. And yet God had not written him off, nor had God forgotten Abram.

The long wait just serves to prove that the God of the covenant, the God of the promise, really was God Almighty—here, El Shaddai.

El Shaddai, God Almighty, was and is able to do what He has promised, even against all odds, even where good-as-dead-Abram is concerned.

J. Alec Motyer writes this about El Shaddai:

“It was the claim of El Shaddai to be powerful where man was weakest, and He exerts this claim supremely by promising to an obscure and numerically tiny family that they should one day possess and populate a land which, in their day, was inhabited and owned by people immeasurably their superiors in number and power.”

No way could Abram take the land for himself. But El Shaddai is more than capable.

God’s self-revelation is always significant.

The LORD God has revealed Himself to Abram before. The LORD has spoken to him, has made promises to him, has sworn to bless him. The LORD has kept Abram and protected Abram and delivered Abram’s enemies into his hand.

Here the LORD reveals Himself as God Almighty / El Shaddai, and shares His end of the covenant.

Genesis 17:3–8 NIV

3 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”

(As an aside: this is the chapter preachers long for, because we can finally call them “Abraham” and “Sarah”; God finally changes their names. We know them as “Abraham” and “Sarah” so it takes a lot of work to call them “Abram” and “Sarai.” It’s going to take me a few weeks to adjust; forgive me if I call them “Abram and Sarai” for a little bit).

Genesis 17:15–22 NIV

15 God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. 16 I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” 17 Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” 18 And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!” 19 Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. 20 And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. 21 But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.” 22 When he had finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him.

The major promise, it seems, at the heart of the covenant is that the land of Canaan will belong to them.

This promise is usually taken as merely the promise of some real estate for Abram and his descendants.

In Genesis 12:7, the promise of land was to Abram’s offspring.

Here in Genesis 17:8, it’s to Abraham and Abraham’s descendants after him.

Even still, Genesis 17:8 is usually taken to mean something like the land will be Abraham’s in the sense that it will eventually belong to his descendants.

However, the same phrasing in used in verse 7: to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

No one would say that the LORD will be Abraham’s God in the same sense that the LORD will simply be the God of Abraham’s descendants.

No! We understand the LORD as promising to be God to Abraham individually and to his offspring after him.

So, because we can’t just arbitrarily change the rules of what a phrase means, verse 8 means that the land is promised to Abraham personally.

But this gets a little sticky. Abraham had already been told that he would die without seeing his offspring inherit the land (Genesis 15:13-15).

So, how is Abraham going to enjoy the land if he’s…well…dead?

Pretty simple: he’ll enjoy it after his death (there is an implicit argument here for the resurrection of the dead).

If the land is promised, not just to Abraham’s offspring, but to Abraham personally, but he’s told he’s going to die before his descendants inherit the land, then wouldn’t Abraham have to assume that he would be brought back to life to enjoy the land?

Wouldn’t his faith lead him to assume a resurrection from the dead?

The focus of the promise is on the land of Canaan, just a small sliver of land in the Middle East—but this is a chunk of land that’s going to be part of a New Heavens and a New Earth.

THAT is when Abraham will enjoy his inheritance.

You see, for Abraham and for his children in the faith, not even death can ruin our inheritance.

That’s pretty good.

What really stands out, though, far more than anything about the land, is the incredible phrase found in verse 7 and verse 8.

Gen 17:7 “I will establish my covenant…to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.”

Gen 17:8 “and I will be their God.”

“What did God say to Abraham? I will be your God.

Donald Macleod writes:

What does that mean? It means that God is saying to Abraham, ‘I will be for you. I will exist for you. I will exercise my God-ness for you. I will be committed to you.’

There is no way that can be improved upon! There is no more glorious promise: not in Romans, not in Hebrews, not in Revelation, not in the gospel of John, not in the Upper Room. Nowhere! these words of the Abrahamic covenant have never been excelled and never will.”

This is what God says. This is His end of the covenant: “As for me…I will be your God.”

The LORD is Our God

There’s an analogy in the traditional wedding ceremony. When the man promises to be his wife’s loving and faithful husband, the rest of the vow explains what that phrase means: “for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, in sickness and health...”

The husband is promising “I will be with you and for you in all circumstances and be all that a husband ought to be.”

So, when the LORD Yahweh, God Almighty says, “I will be God to you,” He is pledging to be all that God should and could and would be to His people.

Once God says this to you, He establishes “a caring, protecting relationship which is as permanent as the living God who makes it.” (R.T. France).

This is a relationship that no time can exhaust, no circumstance can change, no disaster destroy, no catastrophe can crush, that no human abandonment can alter.

When the LORD Almighty says, “I will be God to you,” you have the world!

It’s not land or stuff or other material blessing that really matters here. It’s not even offspring. Neither is the essence of the covenant eternal life.

So many people boil it all down to heaven. “I get to go to heaven when I die!”

Don’t get me wrong; I long for heaven. I long for the LORD to come back and set the world at rights.

But the essence of the covenant is that the LORD is our God.

It’s not that we get ____________ ; it’s that we get God—and not just any god. We get the Creator God, the Maker God, the Almighty One, the All-knowing, All-powerful, ever-present LORD.

The LORD is our God and He is for us.

Romans 8:31–39 NIV

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The LORD is our GOD.

Imagine what this meant to Abraham, all the other promises aside. Imagine. After all this time, to hear those words from God Almighty / El Shaddai. “As for me, my covenant with you is to be your God.”

Ponder what that means for you, Christian.

>The LORD Yahweh expects a response to His promises. He says, “As for me” in verse 4. Now in verse 9, He beings by saying, “As for you…”

Genesis 17:9–14 NIV

9 Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. 10 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 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. 13 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. 14 Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

God had told then-Abram to be blameless, that is whole-hearted (Gen 17:1. Abraham shows that he is whole-hearted by his immediate obedience: On that very day…

Genesis 17:23–27 NIV

23 On that very day Abraham took his son Ishmael and all those born in his household or bought with his money, every male in his household, and circumcised them, as God told him. 24 Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised, 25 and his son Ishmael was thirteen; 26 Abraham and his son Ishmael were both circumcised on that very day. 27 And every male in Abraham’s household, including those born in his household or bought from a foreigner, was circumcised with him.

The LORD Deserves and Demands our Obedience

Back in Genesis 14, Abraham had 318 men who were able to fight. So by this point, there are probably more than that. And every male in Abraham’s household gets the summons for some minor, yet painful surgery.

We don’t need to get too detailed here regarding circumcision and the operation itself.

This operation would serve as the sign of the covenant between the LORD and His people.

It’s a sign of the promise, a reminder that God made these promises to Abraham.

Abraham and all who followed in this ritual would be forever reminded that they had been branded as belonging to God.

Abraham could say both statements:

“I am the man to whom promises have been made.”

“I am marked out as belonging to another.”

Abraham’s part in the covenant was to obey God and mark each male in his house with the sign of the covenant.

Circumcision was not a new rite; other nations practiced it in Abraham’s time. But God now gave it new importance and special meaning.

For the descendants of Abraham, circumcision was not an option; it was an obligation.

It is important to note that circumcision was not a “sacrament.” The performing of it did not convey any spiritual blessing to the recipient.

An eight-day-old baby boy wouldn’t understand what was going on and when he got older the ritual would have be explained to him.

Unfortunately, the Jewish people eventually made this ritual a means of salvation.

Circumcision was, for them, a guarantee that you were accepted by God (some people today place the same false confidence in baptism, communion, and other religious rites).

Romans 4:9-12 makes it clear that the physical operation had nothing to do with Abraham’s salvation.

Abraham had believed God and had righteous credited to his account years before he was circumcised.

Circumcision was not the means of his salvation, but the mark of his separation as a man in a covenant relationship with God.

The legalists in the early church wanted to make circumcision a requirement for the Gentiles. If the Gentiles were going to be saved, the Pharisees believed they had to be circumcised (oh, and keep the law of Moses).

This is heresy, and it was quickly shot-down.

Acts 15 records the conversation between the Pharisees and the leaders/elders of the early church.

Acts 15:5 NIV

5 Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.”

Peter got up and argued against such requirements:

Acts 15:11 NIV

11 No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”

Circumcision was covenant obedience demanded of Abraham, obedience the LORD deserved.

>What does all of this mean to Christian believers today?

The seal of our salvation is not some external rite, but the presence of an internal witness in the person of the Holy Spirit.

Those whose faith is in Jesus have experienced a spiritual circumcision. When we trusted Christ to save us, the Spirit of God "circumcised” our hearts

We will falter and fail and fumble in all of our effort to obey. We cannot, will not ever, on our own, obey Him fully. In fact, we cannot!

Enter Jesus, one of Abraham’s descendants, but not just another man. Jesus was 100% human and 100% God.

Jesus obeyed perfectly, every single one of the Law’s demands. The perfect Jesus then gave up His life, sacrificed Himself—perfect, spotless, sinless, holy—to hush the Law’s loud thunder.

We, then, aren’t saved by circumcision or adherence to the law or by an external or religious practice. No! It is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved.

Let us remember, Abraham was counted righteous because of his faith, counted righteous long before his circumcision, and LONG before the law came about. Abraham’s salvation didn’t depend upon the law or circumcision.

In the same way, Christians are reckoned righteous because they believe that God raised Jesus from the dead.

The ways of God do not change.

Is the LORD your God? Have you believed in Jesus and given your life to Him?

The LORD is the God of those who believe in Him. The LORD deserves the obedience of those who belong to Him. In Him, we have every good thing and everything we could never accomplish alone; why would we not do what He says?