Genesis 17

The Covenant Affirmed and Sealed

Our faith in God’s ability to work in our behalf and carry out His promises always need strengthening.  We are no different than the disciples whom Jesus patiently trained, and to whom He said, ‘O ye of little faith.  How long have I been with you and you still struggle with completely trusting Me?’

How easily we grow impatient when God’s timetable does not correspond to our expectations.  How easily we doubt despite all of the times God has proved to us His power and His faithfulness.  How fragile is our faith when it should be robust and a shield against the darts of Satan. 

We are no different than Abraham who tries to play God and take matters into his own hands and makes a mess of things as we saw in chap. 16.  But Abram’s failures didn’t negate God’s covenant promises.  Against all odds, despite the impossibility of the situation, God is going to keep His promise and accomplish His plan His way.  Here in chap. 17 God will affirm His covenant and command an action that is the sign of the covenant.

I. God’s Covenant Promises Reaffirmed to Abram – Despite His Failures (vs. 1-8)

A. The chapter begins with divine revelation

1. Abram is 99 years old, which means he’s been in the land for 24 years, and Ishmael is 13 years old

a. 13 years have passed since Abram and Sarai tried to play God and come up with their own pathway to the promise through Hagar

b. For 13 years Abram hasn’t heard from God [I wonder if he was beginning to think that God had given up on him?  If his failure negated the promise?]

c. Now God breaks the silence and speaks to Abram once again

B. Following divine revelation there is divine identity (v. 1b) – God identifies Himself to Abram by saying, “I am God Almighty”

1. The Hebrew is El-Shaddai

a. This is the first of 6 times God will refer to Himself by this name in Genesis

b. “Shaddai” is always used in connection with promises of descendants

c. “Shaddai” evokes the idea that God is able to make the barren fertile and fulfill His promises

d. We might say that “El Shaddai” is the name of ‘the all-powerful and all-sufficient God who can do anything and meet any need’

2. Why would God identify Himself to Abram by this name at this time, after 13 years of silence?

a. Because God was going to tell Abram that he and Sarai would have a son

b. It’s as though God is reminding Abram that He is the God who is all-sufficient and all-powerful, and nothing is too hard for Him

c. He’s powerful enough to enable Abram’s wife Sarai to conceive even though she’s 89 years old at this point

d. God says, “I will” twelve times in this chapter; He is about to do the miraculous

3. How critical it is for us to believe in an Almighty God in the midst of whatever challenges we face

a. In the midst of financial challenges, workplace difficulties, marital conflict, struggles with addiction, parenting challenges, anxiety about the future, and any other sufferings or hardships we face

b. Will we believe that the God we serve is indeed God Almighty?  What you truly believe about God is the most important thing in your life.

c. Maybe God needs to correct your small view of Him just as He does with Abram in this passage.

d. Any thoughts of a God less potent than that He is “God Almighty” will shrink your soul and neutralize your faith

C. Following the divine identity, God gives a divine charge (v. 1c)

1. In other words, Abram’s faith needs to be an obedient faith – a genuine faith that is manifested in obedience

a. “Blameless” here means single-hearted, without blame, sincere, wholly devoted to the Lord

b. Wholly devoted to the Lord – that was God’s expectation of Abram and it is His expectation of you and me

c. The problem in the Laodicean church in (Rev. 3) is they were lukewarm – meaning they weren’t wholly devoted to the Lord

d. If you had to describe your walk with the Lord, would you be able to describe it as wholly devoted to the Lord?

D. The divine charge is followed by a divine promise (v. 2)

1. The phrase “My covenant” is used 9 times in this chapter and defines God’s relationship with Abram

a. The chief concern of this chapter is to confirm or ratify the covenant

b. Whereas inaugurating the covenant was entirely the result of divine initiative, confirming it involves a human response

c. That response is summed up in the divine charge [“walk before Me, and be blameless”] and spelled out the demand to circumcise every male

2. But even though Abram is now expected to respond actively to the covenant demands, he is the beneficiary – he will be multiplied exceedingly

a. Notice how often words like “multiplied,” “exceedingly,” or “multitude” appear in the chapter

b. The promise of a multitude of descendants is a key theme of this chapter

3. Hearing the divine promise prompts Abram to fall “on his face” – an act of reverence, of surrender, of saying to the Lord ‘I’m wholly devoted to You.’

E. Next, God Almighty proceeds to explain the covenant to Abram

1. There is an emphasis in this section (vs. 4-8) on divine sovereignty

a. (Verse 4) begins with God saying “As for Me”

b. God tells Abram all the things He is going to do for him

2. But before God goes into detail on what He will do, He changes Abram’s name to Abraham

a. You have to understand that in the ancient Near Eastern world, a person’s name was incredibly significant, and defined who that person was

b. So by changing Abram’s name to Abraham, God was communicating in a very powerful way what Abraham would become

c. His original name Abram means ‘exalted father’ and probably referred not to Abram himself but rather to Abram’s father, Terah

d. So Abram was understood to be not someone who was an exalted father, but someone who had an exalted father

e. God changes his name to Abraham, which means ‘father of a multitude.’

f. Abraham would become the father of a multitude of people, and even as God says in (v. 5), of a “multitude of nations.”

3. So how is that for a reminder of God’s promise?

a. Every time Abraham is called by his new name, he can be reminded all over again of what God’s promised him

b. His name Abram pointed back to his father, Terah; it pointed back to his past

c. The name Abraham looked forward to the promise God was going to accomplish through him

d. He went from a name that looked backward to a name that looked forward.

e. He went from a name that highlighted his earthly father to a name that highlighted his heavenly Father, and pointed forward to what God was going to do in his life

4. There are times in our lives where God wants us to look backwards; He points us to things that have come before and to where He has brought us from

a. But there is also time as Paul says in (Philippians 3:13) when God wants us to forget what came before and strain forward to what God has for us in the future

b. That was Abraham at this point.  God is saying to this man, ‘You have a future and a hope.  I no longer want you to look backward, but forward to the incredible things that I am going to do in you.’

5. Think about your life, about the ways God wants you to look forward in your life

a. Not for you to be stuck in regret as you look backward or in pride as you look backward, but to say no matter what has come before, whether it is failure or fruitfulness, I want to move forward in humble obedience to God

b. We can easily be paralyzed by our past

c. If there is failure in our past we can be paralyzed in the present believing that God has canceled us

d. If there is fruitfulness in our past we can be paralyzed into thinking we can coast in the present

e. We must look forward in faith; move forward in humble obedience to God

F. The covenant God reaffirms with Abraham possesses 4 featuresthat all begin by God saying, “I will”

1. God will make Abraham “exceedingly fruitful”

a. You will remember that God told Adam, as well as Noah and his sons to “be fruitful and multiply”

b. With Abraham, God says “I will make you exceedingly fruitful”

c. This change suggests that Abraham will be given divine power to achieve this fertility [God was going to enable Abraham to accomplish the purpose that God had for him.]

2. God will “make nations…and kings…come forth from” Abraham

a. It was beyond the tent-dwelling Abraham’s dreams that such a thing could be

b. But as you read 1st & 2ndSamuel, Kings, Chronicles, you discover various kings that came from Abraham’s ancestry

c. The founding of a line of kings in the Davidic dynasty began the fulfillment of this promise, which was ultimately fulfilled another thousand years later [2,000 years from Abraham] in the advent of Jesus Christ, king of the Jews

d. This is what Matthew [the Gospel written to a Jewish audience] celebrates in the opening verse of his Gospel: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”

3. The covenant is multigenerational, an “everlasting covenant” for descendants of Abraham still to come

a. (Verse 7) progresses from Abraham to his collective offspring [read verse]

b. This is the heart of the covenant.  God has chosen Abraham and his descendants, so that they are in a unique relationship – He is their God and they are His people (v. 7b)

4. The final feature of the covenant is a land (v. 8)

a. Though the promise of a land is not new, this is the first time its title “Canaan” has been used by God

b. This land of Canaan, God said, was “an everlasting possession” of Israel, Abraham’s descendants

c. This land is a battleground today and will be until the Lord returns to reign

d. But as far as God’s covenant is concerned, the land belongs to Israel. 

G. Now for us today, as followers of Jesus, we have no specific land that we occupy.  Instead, we have something more beautiful, more lasting

1. During Israel’s era they had the land with a holy temple in the midst of it where God dwelled symbolically

a. Under the New Covenant that God has made with all who give their lives to Jesus as Lord and Savior, we have the promise of an eternal land where God dwells literally

b. (Hebrews 11:16) says, “But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.  Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.”

c. Abraham had the promise from God that his descendants would possess a land. 

d. Every person who gives their life to Jesus has the promise from God that they will have a possession in heaven – God “has prepared a city for them.”

e. Have you given your life to Jesus?  Have you trusted in Him as your Savior?

2. God reaffirmed His covenant with Abraham, despite his failures

a. We all have failed God.  The Bible calls those failures sin and we are all guilty

b. But God invites you into His family despite your failures because Jesus has already suffered the penalty for those failures

c. All you have to do is place your faith in Jesus.  Then you receive the promise of a home in heaven.

3. God’s desire for Israel was for them to tell those around them about the God who created them, so they would join Israel in trusting God and worshiping Him

a. In so many ways Israel failed in their mission to communicate God to the nations

b. Today, God has called the church to tell those around them about Jesus

c. In so many ways, the church is failing in that mission; we are failing personally in that mission

d. Let’s repent and start telling others about the God who loves and accepts people in spite of their failures; the God who will forgive and save; the God who will covenant to give them an eternal home in heaven.