Genesis 15 The Gospel Covenant

The Text

Genesis 15 ¹ After these events, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield; your reward will be very great.

² But Abram said, “Lord GOD, what can you give me, since I am childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?”

³ Abram continued, “Look, you have given me no offspring, so a slave born in my house will be my heir.”

⁴ Now the word of the LORD came to him: “This one will not be your heir; instead, one who comes from your own body will be your heir.”

⁵ He took him outside and said, “Look at the sky and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “Your offspring will be that numerous.”

⁶ Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

⁷ He also said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”

⁸ But he said, “Lord GOD, how can I know that I will possess it?”

⁹ He said to him, “Bring me a three-year-old cow, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”

¹⁰ So he brought all these to him, cut them in half, and laid the pieces opposite each other, but he did not cut the birds in half.

¹¹ Birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

¹² As the sun was setting, a deep sleep came over Abram, and suddenly great terror and darkness descended on him.

¹³ Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know this for certain: Your offspring will be resident aliens for four hundred years in a land that does not belong to them and will be enslaved and oppressed.

¹⁴ However, I will judge the nation they serve, and afterward they will go out with many possessions.

¹⁵ But you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age.

¹⁶ In the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

¹⁷ When the sun had set and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch appeared and passed between the divided animals.

¹⁸ On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “I give this land to your offspring, from the Brook of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River:

¹⁹ the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites,

²⁰ Hethites, Perizzites, Rephaim,

²¹ Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”

My dad used to say some ridiculous, ignorant stuff about God before he got saved. "Me and God worked out a deal. If I do this for him, he will do this thing for me." First of all, God does not need anything. Second, created man is in no position to make deals with the Creator God. Thirdly, my dad catastrophically failed to uphold his end of the bargain.

(To be frank, I don't even remember what the "deal" was. It was so stupid, it doesn't even bear being remembered, let alone repeated.)

Adamic

Genesis 2:16-17 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”

Noahic

Genesis 9:8-17 Then God said to Noah and his sons with him, “Understand that I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you — birds, livestock, and all wildlife of the earth that are with you — all the animals of the earth that came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you that never again will every creature be wiped out by floodwaters; there will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.”

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all future generations: I have placed my bow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I form clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all the living creatures: water will never again become a flood to destroy every creature. The bow will be in the clouds, and I will look at it and remember the permanent covenant between God and all the living creatures on earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and every creature on earth.”

Davidic

2 Samuel 7:11-17 The LORD declares to you: The LORD himself will make a house for you. When your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up after you your descendant, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will discipline him with a rod of men and blows from mortals. But my faithful love will never leave him as it did when I removed it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and kingdom will endure before me forever, and your throne will be established forever.’ ”

Nathan reported all these words and this entire vision to David.

and now ABRAHAMIC

4 Now the word of the Lord came to him: “This one will not be your heir; instead, one who comes from your own body will be your heir.”

5 He took him outside and said, “Look at the sky and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “Your offspring will be that numerous.”

Man is never in a position as creature to make a covenant with God

We are born covenant breakers

Adam

Genesis 2 - do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and you will live. If you sin, you will die.

Genesis 3 - Adam ate the fruit and was instantly ashamed of his sin

Genesis 3:15 God preaches the gospel to Satan and Adam and Eve

Genesis 3:15** I will put hostility between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring.
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.

her offspring its "offspring" not offsprings

NOAH

Genesis 9 - I will never destroy the earth by water -- no matter how bad it gets. See, here is a rainbow to show you how serious I am.

Genesis 9:17 God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and every creature on earth.”

three (3) verses later

Genesis 9:20-25 Noah, as a man of the soil, began by planting a vineyard. He drank some of the wine, became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a cloak and placed it over both their shoulders, and walking backward, they covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father naked.

When Noah awoke from his drinking and learned what his youngest son had done to him, he said: Canaan is cursed.

He will be the lowest of slaves to his brothers.

Let me get this straight - Noah sinned in the eyes of God, and he blameshifts his son and grandson? The sons of Adam would NEVER act exactly their father, Adam? (see Genesis 3:12) (also sarcasm)

Fun fact: Noah's hangover-y curse did not affect the lineage of Ham. So, whatever racist, Mormon-ic false teaching you have heard on the lineage of Canaan, go ahead and unlearn that.

But what about Hezekiah in Isaiah 38, 2 Kings 20?

Isaiah 38:1-8 In those days Hezekiah became terminally ill. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came and said to him, “This is what the LORD says: ‘Set your house in order, for you are about to die; you will not recover.’ ” Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD. He said, “Please, LORD, remember how I have walked before you faithfully and wholeheartedly, and have done what pleases you.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah: “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the LORD God of your ancestor David says: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Look, I am going to add fifteen years to your life. And I will rescue you and this city from the grasp of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city. This is the sign to you from the LORD that he will do what he has promised: I am going to make the sun’s shadow that goes down on the stairway of Ahaz go back by ten steps.’ ” So the sun’s shadow went back the ten steps it had descended.

Hezekiah made no promise but only desperately pleaded for his life AND GOD GAVE HIM 15 EXTRA YEARS

*What would you do with extra 15 years add on to your life? Spend time with loved ones? Make the wrongs into rights? Not Hezekiah:

Isaiah 39:1-2 At that time Merodach-baladan son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah since he heard that he had been sick and had recovered. Hezekiah was pleased with the letters, and he showed the envoys his treasure house — the silver, the gold, the spices, and the precious oil — and all his armory, and everything that was found in his treasuries. There was nothing in his palace and in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them.

Isaiah 39:5-8 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the LORD of Armies: ‘Look, the days are coming when everything in your palace and all that your predecessors have stored up until today will be carried off to Babylon; nothing will be left,’ says the LORD. ‘Some of your descendants — who come from you, whom you father — will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.’ ”

Listen to this worthlessness of Hezekiah:

9 Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the LORD that you have spoken is good,” for he thought: There will be peace and security during my lifetime.

Utterly despicable. Yet, God saved him. God saves the worthless and the wicked. God saved me and God saved you.

His Gospel

This is the Gospel Covenant - God has made a promise with God to save his people throught the seed of Abraham

Galatians 3:10-18 For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, Everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed. Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith. But the law is not based on faith; instead, the one who does these things will live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus, so that we could receive the promised Spirit through faith.

Brothers and sisters, I’m using a human illustration. No one sets aside or makes additions to a validated human will. **Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say “and to seeds,” as though referring to many, but referring to one, and to your seed, who is Christ. My point is this: The law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously established by God and thus cancel the promise. For if the inheritance is based on the law, it is no longer based on the promise; but God has graciously given it to Abraham through the promise.

Our Response

God made a promise to God to go into the world as God and Man so that God could fulfill the promise God to God

In the eyes of the world and unbelievers, our faith is ridiculous. "God sets a bunch of rules that we cannot keep and punishes us for not keeping the rules that we cannot keep. How is God even good or loving or merciful?"

Because he does not rely on you to uphold your end of the bargain.

God saw you in your sin and wickedness

Romans 5:8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God saw you in your ungodliness and knew full well you couldn't keep up your end of the bargain

But God the Father, the only right, good, holy, and perfect, made an unbreakable promise to his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, who alone is the only right, good, holy, and perfect to save his people from their sins by the power of the Holy Spirit, who alone is right, good, holy, and perfect.

God sends his Son in the form of a baby boy, conceived by the Holy Spirit, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the direct seed of Abraham, to fulfill the promise that God made with God in front of a knocked-out, passed-out, completely dead, asleep Abraham and five slaughtered animals

Believe what the Lord says and you will be saved!

Abram heard God's promise. He had doubts. He had questions. But Abram believed that God would do what he had promised to do.

And Abraham didn't even get to see that promise fulfilled. He died before seeing that promise come to pass.

Abraham did not know the name Jesus Christ but he believed in him because he believed what God promised to do.

Abraham did not know Jesus yet but believed. Jesus knew Abraham from eternity past, always loved him and died for him.

Abraham did not know Jesus. Yet, Jesus said, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” (John 8:56)

Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Amen

Theologicus