Introduction
What’s the deal … with God?
I mean, if you listen to the broadcast media you hear all SORTS of things, the wide and whacky, the weak and wish-washy …
But what does it say in the book?
I’m not shocked by the sort of stuff we hear on TV or radio anymore about what the deal is with God, but I do get a bit shocked when I hear people who seem to be good people who seem to be going to good churches answering the question ‘What’s the Deal with God’ with something like: ‘well, it depends whether we’re talking about the Old Testament or the New Testament’, as if God had changed His mind about how He prescribed what He was looking for from people.
Now of course it’s not until Jesus’s life, death and resurrection that the payment for sin and the defeat of our final enemy was accomplished.
Of COURSE!
But what God is looking for from us is basically at the heart of the matter what He was looking for from Adam and Eve onwards … to walk faithfully and trustingly with Him in the cool of the day … which as we know went very famously to pot when they first humans trusted a snake further than they trusted the Lord Who’d made them.
And the effects of that Fall into sin got compounded through the situation of Cain and Abel, wound on towards the Lord’s pronouncement that the inclinations of the thoughts of the whole of humanity had become only evil all the time resulting in the Flood … which didn’t achieve much more than restricting the scale of the offending because there were a lot less people left after that to offend … until we get introduced to Abram, an idolater living in Ur of the Chaldeans upon whom God set His redeeming covenant purpose.
His WHAT?
His covenant.
What’s a covenant?
Think of countries that have a written constitution, set up by a King (maybe a conquering King) … the document which sets out how the government will now work with the obligations and privileges of both parties (the people and the ruler) set out in black and white.
In the Ancient Near East there was much military to-ing and fro-ing and the establishment of Great Kings over little kings (travel. Communications etc requiring local sub-Kings under the suzerain, the Great King in order to get stuff done.)
THAT is the context of these covenants, which were ‘cut’ … carved into stone … and fixed to the wall in the temple of the subject people’s deity.
Three times in Abram’s life God came to him and developed his understanding of what the deal was, in Genesis 12, Genesis 15 and Genesis 17.
The Ancient Near Eastern suzerainty treaty covenants tended to be contractual, but with Jehovah’s covenants with HIS people … they were gracious not contractual.
That’s a MAJOR difference but now we’re jumping the gun.
1) God cuts a covenant for a great nation, Genesis 12
So the first big reveal for Abram on the situation with God arose in Genesis 12.
It would be hard to overestimate the significance of this call and this divine plan for the theology of the Bible.
Here begins God’s plan to bring redemption to the world.
The promises to Abram will be turned into a more fully formed covenant in Genesis 15 and 17 and will then lead through the Bible to the work of the Messiah.
The call of Abram begins with an imperative לֶךְ־לְךָ (lekh lkha, “go out”)
followed by three cohortatives (v. 2a) indicating purpose or consequence (“that I may” or “then I will”).
The second imperative (v. 2b, literally “and be a blessing”) indicates God’s ultimate purpose in calling and blessing Abram … it is not just a blessing OF Abram but that ultimately all people will will be blessed through God’s blessing of him.
a) Where was Abram when God found him?
From Joshua 24:2-4 we discover that Abraham was born and raised in Ur of the Chaldees, which is in modern Iraq, near Nasiriyah in the southeastern part of the country.
Joshua 24:2 says that Abraham and his father worshiped idols. We can make some educated guesses about their religion by looking at the history and religious artifacts from that period.
Ur of the Chaldees was an ancient city that flourished until about 300 BC.
The great ziggurat of Ur was built by Ur-Nammu around 2100 BC and was dedicated to Nanna, their moon god.
The moon was worshiped as the power that controlled the heavens and the life cycle on earth.
To the Chaldeans, the phases of the moon represented the natural cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death and also set the measurement of their yearly calendar.
Among the pantheon of Mesopotamian gods, Nanna was supreme, because he was the source of fertility for crops, herds, and families.
Prayers and offerings were offered to the moon to invoke its blessing.
THAT’s the kind of stuff Abram was into when God called him … way out on the idolatrous left wing.
b) What was God calling for?
So, the thing to notice is that when God called Abraham (then called Abram) in Genesis 12:1, He told Abraham to leave his country, his kindred, and his father’s house.
Everything familiar was to be left behind, and that included his religion.
We do not know what Abraham knew about the true God at that point, but it is likely that he had received some instruction from his father, as each generation passed down their history to the next.
But as a worshiper of other gods, Abraham must have been surprised to receive a direct revelation from Yahweh.
The moon god and other deities were distant objects of worship, and in that pattern of thinking they did not personally interact with men.
Well, in any case, when God spoke Abraham obeyed God’s call, and, when he arrived in the land of Canaan, he built an altar to Yahweh at Shechem (Genesis 12:7).
The text indicates that God’s appearance to Abraham was a deciding factor in his choosing to worship Him.
And (you know, all this history was foundational to New Testament theology so) Hebrews 11:8 says that Abraham’s departure from Ur was an example of faith in action.
Now, that’s important because as James 2:26 tells us having cited the account of God’s dealings with Abraham, “faith without works is dead”
FAITH justifies but where it is genuine it leads to faith-inspired action.
Hold onto that thought.
But the call to Abram to do these things ran alongside some pretty motivating promises.
c) What was God promising?
Genesis 12:2-3
““I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
- I) Become a great nation
- ii) Gain a great name
iii) Be blessing to ALL PEOPLES of the earth.
Well, Abram trusted what God had said, put his life and that of his family and flocks on the line and left Ur (where his country, kindred and family all were) and set out for the land he’d never seen but that God had now promised him:
Genesis 12:4-7:
“So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran.
He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.
Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.
The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”
So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.”
So far so good, but … let’s leave the 75 year-old Abram there and rock forward to Genesis 15, when Abram is now about eighty-six.
2) God ‘cuts’ a covenant for a personal biological heir, Genesis 15
The thing underlying what happens now in Genesis was … a decade later the very first promise in the Genesis 12 covenant didn’t look like being fulfilled any time soon.
They’d come through a few hard scrapes too, when:
(Genesis 15:1-3) “After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:
“Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield,[a]
your very great reward.”
2 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”
a) Where was Abraham when God caught up with him?
When God caught up with Abram in Genesis 15 he’d just rescued his nephew Lot from five allied kings (including the King of Sodom) and he was was in the Valley of Sheveh (the Kings’ Valley).
He’d just been meeting and eating with Melchizedek King of Salem (which means King of Peace) who was a priest of God Most High …
Now that name should ring bells. Hebrews 5-7 sets out the case for saying Jesus was a better high priest than the Levitical priesthood picking up on this passage in Genesis and on the passage in Psalm 110:4 where it says that the coming Messianic King (Who turned out to be Jesus) would be NOT a man from the priestly line of Levi but (Psalm 110:4) “a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.”
Abram then had a meeting in the same place with the King of Sodom who had come there to meet him and give Abram the spoils of the war Abram’d won … but which Abram refused.
That was the context, of having rescued his nephew Lot from some little local Kings in alliance, but there were bigger powers marauding around too and you can see it was a turbulent part of the Ancient Near East in that turbulent era.
So God comes along into that context to reassure Abram …
b) What was God promising?
And God says (Genesis 15:1) ““Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield,
your very great reward.”
Fundamentally God was promising Abram the security he would need if God’s promises of chapter 12 were to be fulfilled.
No WONDER then that Abram came back to the wider issue of God’s promise eleven years before that God would give Abram offspring … no wonder given what God had just said about protecting and providing and that both Abram and Sarah were still childless and a decade older.
They were both clued up enough about biological realities to know the previous promise of God now looked even more unlikely than in chapter 12.
c) What was God calling for?
So in this context of stretched faith what WAS it that God was now calling for from Abram?
i) Faith
Genesis 15:4-6 “Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.”
5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”
Your own flesh and blood will be your heir.
Your offspring will be too many to count … here’s a visual reminder with the number of stars in the sky.
Crucially, CRUCIALLY here’s the fundamental common basis of all of God’s covenants stated inv. 6 “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”
God promised righteousness to faith and God promised (again) Abram the land, vv. 7-9 : “He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”
8 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”
9 So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”
… and then the Lord gave Abram assurance of his faith with the sign that come out of that.
ii) Assurance
God is graciously looking for faith so that He can count that as righteousness against the record of His sinful people, who will turn back from the things they see and can grasp to trust Him for the unseen things that are eternal.
But He is also GRACIOUSLY giving assurance of faith to the people who are struggling with the time delay in seeing their faith justified!
Genesis 15:17 “When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces.”
And with the repeated promise of legitimate offspring, God added the promise of the land they’d need to live on.
But notice primarily here, God promised childless Abraham would be father of great nation in chapter 12, that (still) childless Abram would have a personal biological heir granting justification and assurance to Abram’s faith and now in the next covenant God cuts with Abram … we hear specifically of the racial universality of the coming Kingdom of God.
3) God cuts a covenant for many nations, Genesis 17
God made four major promises to Abraham through these covenants …
(1) land,
(2) numerous descendants,
(3) blessing for him and his descendants, and
(4) blessing through him for all nations.
The big new things in this covenant that is ‘cut’ in Genesis 17 are the worldwide scope of the covenant of faith and the covenant sign or symbol of circumcision.
a) Circumcision
This feature of the third major covenant event in the life of Abraham is possibly, to our modern minds, a bit gory!
What’s going on?
Let’s be clear at the outset there is no mention in connection with this of the motivation for this ritual being anything to do with either sensual preference or personal hygiene in an arid climate.
On the contrary, this is a very serious but ready reminder of consecration to God where it will be very obvious and apparent to remind His people in their own flesh that they have been set apart for Him.
After the Exodus and the banishment to the Wilderness for 40 years following their sin, the Israelites are called back to this feature of covenant faithfulness under Joshua’s reforms and in Joshua 5:8-9we read
“after the whole nation had been circumcised, they remained where they were in camp until they were healed.
9 Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” So the place has been called Gilgal to this day.”
The physical rolling away of the flesh was to be a lifelong reminder to the Israelite male that their sins are rolled away by the redemption of God’s people, and that rolled away these things are to remain in their daily conduct.
When that sign of circumcision has that same meaning, relating to that justification by faith alone that Abram had known, it is seen as a positive thing in the Bible.
But where circumcision has been made into a righteousness-EARNING act, the New Testament is universally critical of it.
So, famously, in Galatians Paul seeks to put a stop to people teaching that Gentiles who’d been justified by faith should also be circumcised as a meritorious act that would win favour with God.
The theme bubbles along beneath the surface in Galatians up until chapter 5 where Paul explicitly states the position …
Galatians 5:6 “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”
Or as Paul puts it in Romans 2:28-29 “A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. 29 No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.”
What came first for Abraham was justification by faith, and the covenant of circumcision was the outside sign of the effects of trusting in God from the heart as they flowed over into outward life … living set apart for God as one who had been redeemed from Egyptian slavery to sin, by God’s grace trough faith alone.
And it is precisely that faith-based justification FOR THE NATIONS which Paul wrote about which Abram is being promised here in Genesis 17.
b) Justification by faith
Genesis 17:3-7
“Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.”
In v. 24 we see the whole covenant God had planned come together:
“Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised, 25 and his son Ishmael was thirteen; 26 Abraham and his son Ishmael were both circumcised on that very day. 27 And every male in Abraham’s household, including those born in his household or bought from a foreigner, was circumcised with him.”
I reckon it’s about 24 or 25 years since God promised Abram a son that Abraham takes delivery of Isaac … and in HIM lies the hope of justification by faith and the life of Paradise restored for all of the peoples of the earth, which all starts to come to fruit several thousand years later on the Day of Pentecost.
But it is STILL a righteousness graciously reckoned to those who share in the same faith in God’s promises as Abraham had … and NOT by the works of the Old Covenant Law, which didn’t get given to Moses for a very long while yet.
Conclusion
So now I hope we’ve got a clearer idea what the deal is with God.
There are signs and there are symbols.
There are obligations and there are responsibilities.
But the BASIS of being right with the God of the Bible is and has been being put right with God (we say ‘justified’) by His grace through faith alone … and it always has been in the Bible from first to last.
‘But’, you say, ‘the Bible’s got all this stuff in it about behaving yourself’.
Yes it has!
And that’s because if your life has been transformed by receiving such overwhelming grace by the immense mercy of the Father, Son and Spirit …
And if you taken Him and trusted Him at His Word, both your view of what’s right and wrong has become His view and you are MOTIVATED by His mercy to walk His way.
