"The Covenant of I Will" Genesis 17:6-8

Introduction:

The Abrahamic covenant is initiated by God and as such it is the covenant of the “I Will” as it denotes that God has promised that He is the one who will bring it to pass.

God’s covenant expression in His love language to His people. He speaks His redemption language contextualized and undergirded by His promises to bring His providential purposes to pass in the lives of His people.

A man may promise his fiancee many things with the best of intentions. She may in part be motivated to marry him based on these promises. But once they are married and time goes on many of those promises may never come to pass. And she may become disenchanted with him.

She may in the end live a life she never anticipated and her husband may hate his situation too even though he had the best of intentions, life being what it is threw way too curve ball that they never saw coming.

But with God as the absolute sovereign, He doesn’t make short sighted promises because He is not bound by time in regards to His infinite wisdom. He is incapable of failure when it comes to His promises being kept. His promises are absolute and unbreakable and incapable of failure.

So when God speaks His covenant love language to us He is not dreaming of what may come to pass, instead He is speaking in terms that emphasize His covenant fidelity as expressed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. So in Christ there is redemption, blessing and an inheritance to come for the people of God in Christ.

There were ethnic indicators in the Abrahamic covenant that actually had significant implications for the eternal fulfillment associated with the coming inheritance for the believer. We see three of them in our text this morning. The first is found in verse 6. Look back at your text at the Political implications:

I. The Political Implications (6).

When the Lord says He will make Abraham exceedingly fruitful He is not implying that Abraham is going to be a fruit grower and open his own produce company and make millions in the fruit industry. No, it is metaphorical of Abraham’s offspring. It is talking about his descendents where there would be many nations that will come through his ethnic line.

Now this is far more than just the Israelites and the Ishmaelites but it is also referring to the people groups that prang off from their two lines. We know that the line of the Jewish people goes from Abraham to Isaac and then to Jacob to the 10 tribes. But remember Esau is a descendent of Abraham and the Edomites came down from Esau. Herod the great was the famous Edomite King when Jesus was born.

And in the Jewish line there were many Kings who served over Israel and Judah in the line of Abraham.

So there are many political implications from the Abrahamic covenant. There are nations and Kings that are descendents of Abraham.

King David was a direct descendent of Abraham. The Davidic dynasty was the foreshadowing of the Messianic Kingdom to come.

And there was King Solomon who’s wisdom was legendary to the point that the Queen of Sheba declared that the half has only been told.

There was the boy King Josiah who instituted spiritual reforms and called the people back from their idols and there was reformation in his day.

There were many more of which were not as famous largely due to the negative aspects of their leadership. But they were still Kings who were from the line of Abraham.

But there are eternal implications that we can see in the political promises of the Abrahamic covenant as Christ the Messiah King of God has come into the world as a physical descendant of Abraham through Mary and He sits at the right hand of the Father above all authority in heaven and on earth.

All the nations and rulers of the earth are subject and accountable to King Jesus. God established the political monarchy in the line of Abraham because it would be the allegorical model for the eternal reign of His one and only Son as His Messiah King.

Christians have long known this to be true. This is why the statement declared by the Reverend Jonas Clarke in the face of British troops in 1775 became one of the battle cries of the American Revolution in which he said: “We recognize no Sovereign but God and no King but Jesus.”

But since the early days of our Nation much has changed. Os Guinness in his work, “Impossible People” points out that this rallying cry of the American Revolution that, “we have no King but Jesus” has in the modern time changed into “we have no King but the self.”

The Messianic rule of Christ in our transition from the temporal to the eternal reminds of the fallacy of humanism by reminding us that a theocracy is in our future. It is the only perfect form of government and the only one where true righteousness is the standard and God’s glory is permanently on display. If you don’t like the idea of a theocracy you probably won’t like heaven. Heaven is not under a republic nor a democracy.

It works so well in heaven because the sin nature is no more and the wicked are judged in absolute justice and moved to the place of their eternal punishment. The reason we cringe over a theocracy in this fallen world is that without the absolute sovereign reign of King Jesus in the physical sense fallen human beings could never enforce it perfectly.

Christian the political implications of God’s covenant promises should keep us in check in our allegiance to King Jesus above all else. Empires may rise and fall throughout history and that is why ultimate hope is not to be found in the institutions of men.

They merely remind us that in this temporal state where we see all the corruption and injustice of political systems that these are temporal and there is an absolute promise that justice and righteousness will flow like a river under the eternal reign of King Jesus.

And in that day all the injustices and corruptions of all the political systems of the world will be exposed and made right by Christ.

Christian In light of the covenant truth of the absolute authority of King Jesus we are challenged to examine our lives daily on how we live this out in the current Spiritual reign of the Kingdom of God as we live upon the physical earth until He comes again.

I find my own challenge is largely in how I contextualize my life on a day to day basis. I tend to drift into living out my Christianity in how I perceive its relevance to my everyday life. I realize that this comes from analyzing from the basis of human logic the relevance of God upon my life.

I measure all things spiritual and theological from that perspective. The problem however is that this worldview incorporates existential humanism into my Christianity. Human beings become the sovereign in such a context.

You see the context is not one of how we incorporate God into our existence and what we do in the world but really from the biblical perspective the context is regarding how God has incorporated us into what He is doing in the world.

This is an important hallmark of covenant theology. It is not the individual person who is sovereign, nor is it the majority of the people who are sovereign but it is God alone who is sovereign and in charge. The church is here on earth to carry out the mission in obedience to our sovereign King.

When society or the church capitulates to consumerism they are embracing a model where the consumer is King. Society does this largely due to money and at times so do churches. This is why society and churches drift because when there are absolute moral stands to be taken it affect the bottom line because it offends the consumer.

So adjustment have to be made over time to keep the perfect tension on the tightrope as to apply the moral truth in such a way as not to offend the consumer.

But if we have no sovereign but God and no King but Jesus we live for an audience of one. And we are liberated from the prison of compromise and are free to live in obedience to God alone.

If we apply this into our personal lives we are free to embrace our true identity as covenant people who live in the full and complete assurance of the promises of God in Christ. It has been said, that Christ didn’t come into the world to take sides, He came into the world to take over.

What matters Christian is not that Christ is on your side but that you are on His. If our perception is skewed on this we may find ourselves living lives that are lacking of spiritual vitality and we may begin to even ponder the relevance of God in our lives. Such a Christianity is heavy and burdensome and way too often vacant of the joy of the Lord.

Christian our joy is called the joy of the Lord because it comes from His hand and it is rooted in Him and in all He has done for us in fulfillment of His covenant to us through Christ.

Conclusion:

And His sovereign rule over us is not burdensome. As King Jesus has declared in Matthew 11:28-30 “28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Story about my uncle who put his boots on in the dark. He fell only to discover that when he could see that he had his boots on the wrong foot.

Christian when we live our Christianity like God revolves around us instead of us revolving around Him we got our spiritual boots on the wrong foot. We are contextualizing our Christianity out of a fallacy that is not based on the reality of the initiating covenant work of God. There is only one Rock of our salvation that we stand on with absolute assurance, Christ!

Confess your sin and rest in the rest that only Christ can give.

Unbeliever, the Universe is not primarily about you. It is all about God’s glory in Christ. And maybe today is the day that He will incorporate you into His plan and purpose in Christ through faith in Christ alone. Let’s Pray!