The Abrahamic Covenant

2022-12-03

Abram, an idol worshipper from Ur in Mesopotamia, was called to leave his home and his family. These were God’s promises to Abraham:

Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. (Genesis 12:1-3)

What was Abram promised?

When Abram heard these promises, he left his residence in Haran for the land of Canaan. He eventually went to Egypt because of a famine. He deceived the king of Egypt because of his wife, and Pharaoh was plagued as a result, even though Abram was deceitful (consider the third promise above). He moved back into Canaan, and his nephew Lot left for the east.

Then the LORD spoke to Abram again in Genesis 13:14-17. We see a renewal of promises 1 and 2 here. After this, Abram won the war against Chedorlaomer and his fellow kings to deliver his nephew and met with Melchizedek. This is what the king of Salem did: “And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand” (Genesis 14:19-20).

This king blessed Abram, but you see that he blessed the LORD more than Abram. Abram was blessed because God is the source of all true blessing. We see a renewal of promise 3 here.

Again, the Lord spoke to Abram in Genesis 15:1-18. This is the first time the phrase “the word of the LORD” is used in the Bible. The LORD told Abram that “I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” Greater than the promises given to Abram, the superior blessing is the LORD Himself.

It has been years since God first made the promises to Abram. Abram felt it necessary to bring up the obvious problem concerning the second promise: Abram and his wife were old, and he still had no child. How could the second promise be true? God reaffirmed that Abram’s own descendant would be the heir, and the result would be a huge number of descendants.

What was Abram’s response? “And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). This is very significant; recall this was the first time the phrase “the word of the LORD” was used. There would be a seed that would come from his body that would result in a countless multitude. That seed, though prefigured in his upcoming son Isaac, was none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ” (Galatians 3:16). This is why Genesis 15:6 was quoted three times in the New Testament: Faith, or trust, in the Word of God, or in the promises of God, credits one with righteousness.

In Genesis 15:7, The LORD then moved on to the first promise, the promise of the land. He reaffirmed His promise for Abram to receive the land of Canaan. The patriarch, whom we know is asking in faith because of the previous verses, asked another good question: “Lord GOD, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” He has been wandering up and down the land of Canaan for a very long time.

God made a promise; now the LORD was going to swear an oath. Genesis 15:9 shows how the Lord was setting up to make a covenant: by dividing animals in half, setting the halves against each other. This covenant is also described in the book of Jeremiah: “And I will give the men that have transgressed my covenant, which have not performed the words of the covenant which they had made before me, when they cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof, The princes of Judah, and the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, and the priests, and all the people of the land, which passed between the parts of the calf; I will even give them into the hand of their enemies” (Jeremiah 34:18-20). The parties agreeing to the covenant would walk between the divided animals.

The Lord described what the future held. Abram would die, and his descendants would go to another country for 400 years, but then would return to Canaan. We know this country to be Egypt, and Moses led them out from there, and Joshua led them into the land.

After it was dark, “a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces” (Genesis 15:17). I am not sure of all the significance of the furnace and the burning lamp, but the Lord made this happen. Abram did not walk between the pieces; only the LORD did. By this ritual, we know this: “In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18).

After this, Abram thought that he could fulfill the promise of the seed by having a child with a younger woman, Hagar. She had a son, Ishmael. The angel of the LORD appeared to her and promised her son would be the father of a multitude. Abram was 86 years old when this happened.

Thirteen years later, the LORD appeared to Abram again (Genesis 17:1-27). The LORD said, “And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly” (Genesis 17:1-2). Abram fell down before Him; perhaps His reverence for the LORD increased the longer he walked with Him. The second promise is confirmed again; Ishmael would not be the son of promise. Here, the LORD changed his name to Abraham because He would be a father of many nations. Here, we see the third promise: a father of many nations with kings proceeding from his descendants. The everlasting covenant was made with Abraham and “his seed,” which we know is more than Isaac, but Christ. The first promise is remembered as well.

Here the sign of the Abrahamic covenant, circumcision, is given. Every male child would have his foreskin circumcised on the eighth day. Why the eighth day? Because the work was finished for God on the seventh day; the eighth day is the beginning of a new creation. It is a picture of something spiritual, as we see from these passages:

Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings. (Jeremiah 4:4)
And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also (Romans 4:11)
For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. (Philippians 3:3)
In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ (Colossians 2:11)

According to these verses, circumcision is a picture of the removal of the callousness of heart, a seal of righteousness by faith, worshipping in the Spirit, and a putting off of sin. These are all elements of the new creation in Jesus Christ.

After this announcement, Abraham was told that his son would be born from his 90-year-old wife the following year. He laughed. The LORD physically appeared to Abraham and Sarah in the next chapter, and she laughed also. Their son, named Isaac, which means “laughter,” was born as the LORD had said. The second promise was partially fulfilled at that time.

When the LORD told Abraham to sacrifice His son, Abraham did not hesitate to follow the command. When Abraham received a ram to sacrifice in place of Isaac, the LORD reiterated the second and third promises again to him. “By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22:16-18). The promise and the oath are reaffirmed.

All these promises took decades to fulfill in part. When God works in us, He takes decades, not a couple of minutes. We should not expect to be complete overnight. In fact, it will not be until the rapture when we will see it completely.

As for the promises to Abraham, when are they completely fulfilled? The land promise is fulfilled when God creates the new heavens and new earth with their new Jerusalem. This has not happened yet. The promise of the seed and the blessing is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, with the multitude of descendants fulfilled when the last person is born again. These things happened in stages with a prefiguring in earthly kingdoms and personages.