So in this lesson we finally made it to Abraham, who is a familiar name to us all. It's a significant step as we march forward through the covenants. So as I mentioned at the end of the last lesson, we're moving from a wide and broad focus of all of creation, all of Noah's descendants, There's this general idea of a seed to come, and we're narrowing in with more details on who that seed will be, what can we expect for God to do to fulfill that promise to us. One thing that becomes increasingly clear, I was talking to a friend recently and he said, it's like you read the Bible and everybody's a failure until you get to Christ. And that's exactly true, that there are great moments where men do great things, where David or Samson or whoever has miraculous moments of faith. But I think because they're men like us, we know that even their best moments without God's grace are nothing, that it's God working in and through them. That God, like he made with Noah, has made an everlasting covenant, an everlasting determination, a promise within himself to redeem a people for himself. And it's in that gracious God that's given of himself to us that we can find hope and grace. So if we consider what's happened between the time of Noah, where we left off in Genesis 9, to now I'm in Genesis chapter 12, there's about 400 years time. So for us, you know, we could read these chapters in a handful of minutes, but four centuries have gone by between these two stories. Like I mentioned, there's a narrowing specificity that we see that Noah's line has increased, that the earth is being filled. We have recorded all the way until chapter 12 of this man named Abraham was born, or in chapter 12, Abram. we see that there's this promising a blessing for the earth, that it's not just his descendants through a narrow nation, but at some point, in some way, we'll find out in the future that all of the earth will be blessed through Abraham. One warning before we go forward is that it's so easy to read these stories independently. So if you imagine yourself kind of like I do, you read two or four or six chapters each day in your Bible, that it's easy to just read a few chapters and then to go on the next day to read a few. Maybe you miss a couple of days because you're busy or traveling and you pick back up that you've forgotten sort of the continuity of the book of Genesis. So let's always remember that this is one book written by one God who has one united plan. So all of this, it fits together. It's been divinely crafted to tell a single story about the supreme object of God's love. That's his son. That's the one who we will see revealed in the weeks to come. And so with that bright spot, that promise of God's son, we also see a long line of men. So if we were to go back and read the genealogies, we would see this person was born and they married and they had relations with their wife, they had sons and daughters, and then they died. And then this person was born, they were married, they had sons and daughters, and then they died. And it's over and over and over. It's like this cycle that God's trying to say, and then they died. To reinforce that point that we live in a fallen and corrupt world full of death, full of suffering, that He gives good gifts to us like family, like children, but without that promised seed that will come that there is no hope for any of us. So one word about the covenant with Abraham is that it's a sort of unique covenant in that it's in three different sections in the scriptures that we'll look at. So it's too much for one lesson because there's so much to it, it's so significant for the covenants to come, it's so significant even for the new covenant that we'll look at later on towards the end of this series. So today in this lesson we're going to be looking at Genesis 12 and Genesis 15. So we'll make it through the context of the covenant, We just talked about the expectation that there's this seed that Noah's descendants had children, they multiplied, they're filling the earth and that Abram has come. We'll also look now at the immediate context. So Genesis chapter 12, if you have your Bible, I'll just read a few verses from Genesis 12. Verse one starts out, now the Lord said to Abram, go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you and I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great and so you shall be a blessing. And verse three, I will bless those who bless you and the ones who curse you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. So basically what we see here is the promise revealed. It's the promise revealed to Abram that God speaks to him in some manner, in some way, and he says, first, go forth from your country. So Abram was, as far as we know, just a man. It's not clear if he knew of the sign of the bow in the clouds, if that had been passed down through generations. It's not clear that he had any interaction with God before this, that there was no divine meeting or setting apart, but this was God coming down to Abram and saying, OK, do this. So he says, go forth from your country. Leave your relatives. Leave your father's house. Go out on your own. Separate yourself from this people that you're in. Trust me and my promises, and I will make you a great nation. So when you leave your father's house, you're coming into, in one sense, me, your father, you're coming into my house, and I will give you many descendants. In that next, at the end of verse one, we see the first promise of a land. So if we read forward and think forward, we can guess what this land is, that it's the land of Canaan, most immediately promised to his descendants. But he says, go forward to a land that I will show you. And he says, I will make you a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great. So that we know if we read the Old Testament, people refer to themselves as Abraham's descendants. If we read the New Testament, we see even that the Jews in the book of Matthew call themselves sons of Abraham. He goes on, he says, you shall be a blessing that in some way that life with God and living closely with him and him choosing to bless you, it offers blessing to others. In verse three, I will bless those who bless you, and the ones who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. So there's this sense in which Abram, because he was chosen by God, he was set apart, he has a certain protection from God. That whatever this specific promise means that God has given to him, it's going to be fulfilled, that he's going to be guided through life with God's help. that those who seek to do harm, God will do harm to them. He will put a hedge around him and he will make him great. He will preserve Abram to fulfill his promise to him. And then going on in chapter 12, the promises that God has made Abram-Axon, he goes forward as he's told to. There's various details and stories and recorded history. Going on then into chapter 15, this is the initial promise that we just read made more fully confirmed. So in the opening of Genesis chapter 15, let me read verses one through seven. It says, after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, do not fear, Abram. I am a shield to you. Your reward should be very great. That sounds like a very summarized version of what we just read in chapter 12. Verse two, Abram said, oh Lord God, what will you give me since I am a childless and the heir of my house of Eliezer is Damascus? And Abram said, since you are given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir. So it's this sense in which God is talking to Abram, Abram's talking to God, and Abram says, okay, I mean, it was divine, it was miraculous in the way that you spoke to me in Genesis chapter 12, but I'm not really sure what to make of that. I mean, you've given me this promise. You told me you would bless me. All this time and trouble has gone on, and I've seen nothing of your promise. So it's almost like he says, where's the promise? What evidence do I have that you're going to fulfill this? So it says in verse four, then behold, the word of the Lord came to him saying, this man will not be your heir, but the one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir. We just read that. But then verse five, this is the sign that he shows him. And he took him outside and said, now look toward the heavens and count the stars. If you are able to count them, and he said to them, so shall your descendants be. So God doesn't just say you're going to have an heir and your line's going to continue, but your descendants are going to be as great as the stars. And then verse six, we'll cover in just a few minutes, but it says, and then he, Abram, believed in the Lord and he reckoned it to him as righteousness. And God said to him in verse seven, I am the Lord who brought you out of the Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land and to possess it. So we see the same type of promises that God gave to Abraham in chapter 12, now here listed out more explicitly. So he says, I'm going to give you an heir, one of your own direct descendant between you and your wife, that's going to carry on this line for you. And through him, through your descendant, through your line, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. That I'll give you this specific land that I called you out of the land where you were with your fathers, and I'm going to give you something much greater. That God has made this promise and he's promised he's going to fulfill it. That his descendants will be as many as the stars. So that was the promise to him. He will have descendants as numerous as the stars. That there will be this sense of blessing of God on God's people through the line of Abraham. Going back then to verse eight, he says, Oh Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it? So God, in some ways, increased his promise and said, I'm not just going to do these, you know, general things that could be a number of things. Here's my specific promise of increasing you as many as the stars. But verse eight, Abram asked, how do I know? What's the, what's the deal? What's the promise? What's the guarantee that I have? And this is where God makes a covenant with Abram starting in verse 13. God said to Abram, Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You will be buried at a good old age." Verse 16, Then in four generations they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete. In verse 17, here's the covenant being enacted. These pieces refer to some verses that we skipped in verses 9, 10, and 11 where Abram cut some animals in two as God had told him. verse 18 of chapter 15. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying, to your descendants, I have given this land from the river of Egypt, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. And then he goes on and explains more about the river and the land and the people. and what Abram can expect. So this is very significant. So in our second lesson, we mentioned about certain times and certain covenants, that animals were cut in half, that the parties of the covenants walked through, that in this case we see it was a flaming oven and torch, and what exactly those symbols represent or mean, we can't get into here. But the significance is that Abram, a deep sleep fell upon him, that he was put to sleep so that it was God who made the covenant with Abram, that he, walking through the pieces, signified that he would fulfill this promise to Abram, that he would fulfill every detail that he had just laid out for him. So there's a few significant things that he says. He says, going back, of what Abram can expect about his descendants. He said, know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in the land that is not theirs. They're going to be enslaved. So if we read on in the chapters to come, in the books to come, we can expect for Abram's line, Abram's descendants, to be in slavery. But God promises, I will judge this nation. I will bring the people out. And that's exactly what God does, as we'll see in the next few lessons. And then he says, verse 16, in the fourth generation, they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete. So God says, even though from a human perspective, you would say, Don't send my people into slavery. Don't send them into a foreign land. But God says, they're going to go there. I can already tell you what's going to happen. But I'm going to bring them out in a miraculous way. I'm going to return them to this very spot that you're at. And he gives the covenant, and then I'll repeat it again. He says, to your descendants I have given this land. from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. So God has given Abram a line, a promised line of people. And he says, you will have as many descendants as the stars in the sky. And in addition to that, he gives them a land, he gives them a place and says, this is going to be yours. I will make sure that it happens. I have made this covenant with you, swearing it almost as it were by myself, that I can guarantee that it's going to happen. And because this covenant is with Abram, and it's with his descendants, that at some point in time, Abram's going to die. Abraham is going to die. And that God has to continue on the covenant. He has to remember what he's promised to Abram in his line. He has to remind people of what he's promised. And he has to do it because God cannot make a promise and not fulfill it. So that's what we'll see. We'll go on to Genesis chapter 17 in the next lesson. We'll talk about God fulfilling the covenant of giving a specific sign, of giving a little bit more instruction or detail to the covenant. So Abram's been given a people, a purpose, and a plan just like with Adam, that there's this sense in which God has set himself to have this sitcom, that he follows these patterns of sharing his dominion, sharing his creation with the heads of his covenants. The significant verse that I want to talk about that we've read already but that I said we would come back to is chapter 15, verse 6. Then he believed in the Lord, and he reckoned it to him as righteousness. That Abram believed what God said, he took him at his word, and it was counted to him as righteousness." So that's significant because in some ways we can read these stories, these covenants, these people from so many thousands of years ago, and it'd be easy for us to look at them and say, They just happen to get lucky and get chosen by God, and they did their best, and they're going to go to heaven because of what they've done. But if we know anything of the life of Abram, we know that's not true, that he had many obvious sins. He had many ways in which he faltered and fell. He even had ways in which he didn't trust God. He didn't believe God and take Him at His word. But this verse indicates that Abram is saved, that he's preserved, that he will one day be in heaven, that we'll see him perhaps, not because of the work that he did, not because of his own faithfulness to God, but because of his faith that he had in God, that God said he would do these things, and that was counted to Abram as righteousness. And we see that fully confirmed in Romans chapter 4 when the Apostle Paul is writing to the church in Rome and he talks about Abraham's faith and the pattern and the example of it. And he says again, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. We also see in Hebrews chapter 9 that This is significant because it tells us, it confirms Abraham's saving faith. It confirms that in some manner that this promised seed was revealed more fully to Abram, that he knew something of what was going to come. So that when we talk about this old covenant, the first half of our Bible from to fall all the way until the end of it, that it's looking forward to this new covenant, this covenant of grace, that Abraham and anybody after him who is saved, who is preserved, who had a righteous life before God, whose faith was counted as righteousness, they looked forward to that promise of the seed. They looked forward to that promise of grace, of Christ coming, that Christ had not yet come. But Hebrews 9 talks about, at length, about Christ dying for those under the old covenant in the old administration, that He's death in God's providence, in God's outworking, in God working in many ways in a mystery that we can't fully explain, that those in the old covenant who He preserved, who were His, were saved by looking forward to the Christ figure. We also see in Galatians 3, who are the real children of Abraham? So previously, we've talked about the children of Abraham as the Jews in the book of Matthew, where Jesus said, you call yourselves sons of Abraham. So they would look back and say, our great forefather, the one who began it all, was Abraham, and we're in his line as his national people. But there's the reality in which because Abraham was united by God to faith, that if we have that same faith, then we are true children of Abraham. That in the sense of all the nations of the earth being blessed, that it wasn't just for his single line and then for it to end there with just one national tribal people. but that through his line came the person of Christ, and that person of Christ who died to include Jews and Gentiles, that if we have faith, if we're united to Christ by faith, if we believe that his work is sufficient to save, that we also are God's children and we're Abraham's children. We see finally in Galatians 3 that it's not just the direct, you know, descendants of Abraham who are his children, that because Abraham was united to God by faith, that he's saved by his faith of taking God at his word, that if we're here now and we have that same faith in Christ, that we can believe God when he says that Christ's work is sufficient for us, that that's what saves us, that we also are God's children and we're Abraham's children in a supernatural way. So in the next lesson, we'll cover the second part of the Abrahamic covenant. We'll get into the details, the specific promises of God saying, I will do this, and him saying, you will do this as my covenant people. We'll get into the sign, what's the mark of who's in the covenant and who's out. We'll even start to look a little bit about looking forward in the future, how the covenant with Abraham changes the covenants to come through his descendants, how those promises begin to be fulfilled, how that Messiah figure becomes specified. So if you've enjoyed this lesson, but you have a question maybe, please, if you're on a media platform, you can ask a question below in the comments. Or if you're on our website watching this, there's a contact submission page. And these lessons are recorded as a series, so we're filming them sort of successively. But we'll wait and do one final lesson where we'll answer any questions that you all may have to try to be as clear as possible. So thank you for watching. Continue reading. We'll go on in the book of Genesis. So continue reading about Abram and his line and his descendants and what's to come. And we'll see you in the next lesson. God bless.