Covenants with the Fathers

The

Covenants

With The

Fathers

The Bible covers some seven thousand years of time and is divided into three parts: history, prophecy and doctrine. It reveals God’s great plan for the training of the Adamic people to rule, as His servants, with Him in the perfect eternity. After a short account of the creation of the earth, many millennia previously, it relates the creation of Adam and Eve and the law of good and evil in that good comes from the closest co-operation with God; and evil comes in opposing such co-operation.

When all creation was brought into being the natural laws of the universe began to operate and these laws which are called the laws of God, are perfect and unchanging. It would be absolutely impossible for the scientists to understand these laws and their implications if they were not constant throughout the ages. If man keeps these laws then he will enjoy the blessings of life, which is good: but if he breaks them either from ignorance or in knowledge, then he suffers the effects and this is evil. We have, in recent years suffered, for example, from bad husbandry with the outbreaks of BSE and such similar diseases due to trying to change the laws of nature in the feeding of our animals.

As the plan of God was made before the creation, its fulfilment depends upon God’s foreknowledge of what would happen in every stage of its development: therefore, this foreknowledge of God is vital to the success of the plan.

The first books of the Bible tell us of the preparation on which God would build. For twenty generations covering over two thousand years, God chose one person in each generation, preparing a basic character from father to son, uncontaminated by association with the rest of the world. So it is that we read of ten men only being chosen before the Flood and ten men after the Flood; father and son from Adam to Abraham.

The Making of the Covenants

Abraham was the product of this selection and the foundational character was developed sufficiently to carry on God’s plan. Thus we read that the Lord made Covenants with him and his seed for ever. This makes Abraham, as the foundation upon which the Nation of Israel was to be built, one of the most important characters in Scripture. Not only in the Old Testament, but also in the New. It is interesting to note that he is named seventy-four times in the New Testament.

The first promise made by God depended upon one single act of obedience, and was conditional upon Abraham leaving the home of his father and kindred. We read in Genesis chapter twelve of the one great promise which was the foundation of all the other promises and covenants that God made with him, based upon one simple statement:

"And I will make of thee a great nation" Genesis 12:2

And in Genesis 18:18 this promise is confirmed by God, when He says:

"Seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation."

The other promises are:

1 The Land promised to Abraham’s seed to be a place of separation and security.

2 To be blessed and be a blessing.

3 The curses that will fall on those who do not bless him.

4 To be a blessing to all the families of the earth.

5 His seed to be as the dust of the earth and the stars of heaven.

6 The father of nations.

7 The father of kings.

8 The seed to be called in his seed, Isaac.

9 His seed to possess the gate of his enemies.

The promises which were subsequently given to Isaac are much the same, some slightly differently expressed, and Isaac inherited them because of the obedience of his father Abraham to the laws of God. "Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my laws." Genesis 16:5 Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, inherited these same promises, his brother Esau being disinherited by God, with one addition:

"A nation and a company of nations shall be of thee."

Thus through three generations were the promises and covenants both made and confirmed. This was just one of the great covenants which God made. Others being the covenant of Sinai or the Mosaic covenant, the covenant with David and the New Covenant which is in Christ Jesus. All these were made with that one nation, and were so made that they could be extended to embrace the whole world. In the keeping of the Abrahamic Covenant, the holiness and righteousness of God are involved.

In Hebrews we read:

"For when God made promises to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by Himself." Hebrews 6:13

God made these promises with the fathers deliberately with all His foreknowledge of the future and knowing the terrible sinful state to which that one nation and company of nations, the Commonwealth of Israel (Ephesians 2:12), would fall. Therefore, no matter how wicked that nation became the promises were still binding upon God. We are told that Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. Therefore the faith of Abraham must reflect the righteousness of God in every promise being fulfilled or in the course of fulfilment.

Abraham had several sons, but they did not share in the covenants: these were destined to be fulfilled in Isaac; and so we read:

".... for in Isaac shall thy seed be called." Genesis 21:12

Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob, but Esau went out of the covenant and was disinherited, and we read in Genesis chapter twenty seven that the covenant blessings were given by God to Jacob.

The covenant with Abraham, like all the other covenants, had to be ratified with a sacrifice, and so the Lord told Abraham to take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah and there offer Isaac as a sacrifice to God. This was a test of faith for Abraham, as Isaac was the one son through whom the nation was to come, and he (Isaac) as yet had no children of his own.

We are told in the New Testament that Abraham’s faith was so great that he was prepared to slay Isaac believing that God would raise him from the dead. God did not want Isaac’s death, He wanted Abraham to give his son to God; and so when Isaac was laid upon the Altar, the surrender of Isaac was complete. God produced a substitute to die in Isaac’s stead, and so one could, perhaps, say figuratively that Isaac went through death into new life; and the new nation was born in him, through the obedience to God of his father Abraham.

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