Colleen and Nikki discuss the covenant that God made with Abraham while he was asleep. Podcast was published March 24, 2020. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: Today we’re going to be continuing our series on the covenants, and we started this two weeks ago. We did an overview of the covenants of the Bible, and last week we started with the first covenant, the Noahic covenant. This week we’re going to be looking closer at the Abrahamic covenant. But before we do, I just want to say, one of the first questions that so many formers have when they leave Adventism is: What about the Sabbath?
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And we’ve had so many people write in and ask us, “Will you please do a podcast on the Sabbath?”
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Now, in order to address that, really, step one is a study of the covenants. That’s the first place that we need to go to when we’re talking about the role of the Sabbath and the role of the Mosaic covenant.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: When I left Adventism, I wanted this to be very simple. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] I know. “Just give me a text.”
Nikki: Yeah! I thought, “Okay, if we don’t have to keep the Sabbath anymore, just show me the evidence in a succinct way.” What I want to say is, I’ve learned since then a proper hermeneutic is such an important part of arriving at the message of Scripture.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: We have to take the time to read the original message in its original context, we need to know the first application of Scripture in order to arrive at any kind of conclusion about how it applies to us today.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: So we can’t just hand you a bunch of proof texts that’s going to give you a quick answer. This is really the first step.
Colleen: That’s very true. This is the first step in coming to an understanding of what role Sabbath played and plays.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Or if it does. You’re absolutely right. The covenants are the key. It’s interesting that even Christians who’ve never been Adventist don’t always see the incredible importance of understanding the covenants, because they haven’t had to grapple with something like the Sabbath, which was the sign of a covenant.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: We have to understand if that covenant was for us, and if not, why not?
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: And you can’t really do that without looking more closely at each covenant, what it meant, who it was for, and what its terms were.
Nikki: So hang in there with us. Make sure you have your Bible. We’ll be reading out of the NASB. You know, I know sometimes when you listen to the podcast, we move quickly from the text that we’re going to be reading into reading it.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: So if you’re having a hard time keeping up, please just hit that pause button, because we want you following along in your Bible.
Colleen: And if you see the words, it somehow makes more sense, you remember it better, and you can find that text again.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: So, Nikki, what did you understand about Abraham, and did you understand that he had a covenant made with him or to him when you were an Adventist? What did you understand?
Nikki: Well, I knew that there was this really strange story about the animals that were cut up, but I had no idea what that meant or what that had to do with me. It was just kind of one of those strange stories I didn’t spend a lot of time with. I knew he had a promise from God that he was going to have a child with Sarah.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And that it would be through this son that Jesus would come.
Colleen: Um-hmm. Yes.
Nikki: So I had that understanding. I really didn’t know a lot about him. I mean, I knew about him offering Isaac up –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – but that’s kind of the extent of it.
Colleen: Yeah, me too. I didn’t understand how he fit into the entire scheme of Scripture. I just knew that he was going to have a son with Sarah. He blew it with Hagar and had Ishmael, and how could he? You know, I remember a few years ago hearing a Sabbath school lesson taught at the Loma Linda University Church by somebody on the faculty, a woman, who was making the case that when Abraham offered Isaac up on the altar, as God had commanded him, that that was an example of an extremely dysfunctional family. How could he have done that? There’s nothing indicating he had even talked to Sarah before taking them, and that this whole thing should be seen as a demonstration of the dysfunction of the family that Abraham and Isaac came out of.
Nikki: Wow.
Colleen: It was very upsetting to me to hear the lesson. I don’t even remember how she concluded it, but I do remember the blasphemy of trying to teach that story as an example of a dysfunctional family.
Nikki: Wow.
Colleen: So, missing completely what God was actually doing. So this is one of the reasons we have to go back to Scripture and see what actually happened. Because the way we’re taught in Adventism is proof-texting –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – pick and choose –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – little examples here and there, but without showing the big picture and without showing how God was at work. Now, we talked about this when we did our overview of the covenants, but let’s just remember, because to start talking about the Abrahamic covenant we have to look at where God called Abraham, which is found in Genesis 12. Everybody want to start there? And we’ll just look at a few places. But what was significant about who Abraham was? What did you understand as an Adventist about why God called Abraham?
Nikki: I thought he was a God-fearer.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: I thought he was like Job.
Colleen: Yes. I did too. In fact, I asked Richard while we were out on our walk this morning what he understood about Abraham as an Adventist, and he said, “Well, I believed” – because Ellen White said this, of course. He said, “I believed that he had actually not worshipped the pagan gods of his fathers, that he had been a righteous man, and because he was a righteous man God called him and gave him this promise and the seed.” That’s what I understood too.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Abraham was somehow special. Somehow Abraham had managed to avoid paganism. But that’s just not true. How do we know it’s not true? As we mentioned before, it’s found in Joshua 24. It’s Joshua 24:2 and 3. And we learn exactly who Abraham was. Why don’t you read it, Nikki?
Nikki: “Joshua said to all the people, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “From ancient times your fathers lived beyond the river, namely, Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the river, and led him through all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac.”‘”
Colleen: So right there it says –
Nikki: They served other gods.
Colleen: Exactly. And that includes Abraham.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It includes Terah, his dad, Abraham, and Nahor, his brother. That’s just where we have to start. God did not call Abraham because he was righteous. God calls all of us from spiritual darkness, and He chose Abraham. Heapproached Abraham. He called him. And Abraham believed and listened and went. So we first meet Abraham in Genesis, in Genesis 12. Interestingly, when we talked about the Noahic covenant last week, we mentioned a little bit about the tower of Babel and how God confounded the languages and kind of forced everybody to fill the earth, and the nations were formed around the different language groups. That was a judgment of God on the unbelief and the disobedience of the post-flood world, but it was also His provision to fill the earth, as He had commanded. The interesting thing about the writing of Genesis is that’s the last we hear from God in the book of Genesis until Genesis 12. We don’t know how many years passed between the dispersion of the nations out from the Tower of Bābel, Băbel – [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: – and the call of Abraham. We just don’t know. But the call of Abraham is where God reappeared. He started speaking again to man, and He started to reveal how He was going to save the world. So in Genesis 12, we need to read verses 1 to 3. Well, actually, verses 1 to 4, because this is where we first hear why God called Abraham and what He promised him. Now, this isn’t where He made the covenant, but this is where we hear the terms articulated first. So do you want to read that, Nikki?
Nikki: “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 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.’ So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.”
Colleen: We hear in those first three verses what it is that God had promised Abraham, or Abram at the time he was called. He called him out of his country, which was actually Ur, in the area of the world that is Iraq. He called him out of there. He led him ultimately into what became the nation of Israel, but that was much, much later, but into that part of the world. What’s the first thing that God promised Abraham? Verse 1: “The Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country, from your father’s house,” and where did He say He would take him?
Nikki: To the land which I will show you. He was going to show him where to go.
Colleen: Yes, and He was going to take him to the land which was going to be his new home.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: The second thing: I will what?
Nikki: Make you a great nation.
Colleen: Which meant he had to have –
Nikki: Seed.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: An offspring.
Colleen: Exactly. And he was already 75, we’ve learned, and had no children, so this is quite a promise.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And after making him a great nation –
Nikki: He will bless him and make his name great.
Colleen: And he would also be a blessing. And it’s interesting that at the very end of verse 3 He says, “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” I don’t think Abraham had any way to understand that when God promised it to him, but Abraham did listen to God, and he went. I’ve often thought, “What a shocking thing. How would he have even known he could trust God?” And ultimately, we all have to figure out how do we know we can trust God? And God gives us the faith to believe Him.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: God confirms His own Word, and God gives us the ability to trust His word, and that’s what Abraham did. He did for Abraham too.
Nikki: It makes me think of Kaspars talk at the conference this year. I love how he said, “God gives the demand andthe supply.”
Colleen: Isn’t that great?
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: That was a great line. Jumping ahead, years have passed. Abraham and Sarah and Lot and Terah and Nahor did leave Ur, but we come to chapter 15, which we’ve talked about already, but we’re just going to overview it. In chapter 15 God becomes more specific in His promises to Abraham, and then He confirms these words to him as a covenant. We find in chapter 15 that the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, Abram still, saying –
Nikki: “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 shall be very great.'”
Colleen: And I just want to stop and say, I have often thought of how amazing that promise was. “I am a shield to you.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: God is his shield. God is our shield. When we trust Him, He Himself is our shield. And He tells Abram, “Your reward will be very great,” and Abraham kind of argues with Him, “Oh, no, I’m childless. My heir will be Eliezer,” his servant. And God says to him, “No, no.” In verse 4, “The word of the Lord came to him, saying” –
Nikki: “This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.”
Colleen: And then He takes him outside, shows him the stars, and tells him what about his descendants?
Nikki: If you’re able to count them –
Colleen: – you’ll be able to count your descendants.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He promises him that many descendants. And then, the most amazing thing is overwhelming to me, verse 6. It says about Abraham, “He believed in the Lord, and He [God] reckoned it to him as righteousness.” This is the central passage in all of the Bible of how anyone is counted righteous. No matter when they lived, no matter what covenant we’re living under, this is how we are counted righteous. Abraham believed God, and God counted that belief as righteousness.
Nikki: And I can only imagine that God gave him that belief.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Because he was marveling, “How can this happen?” And God didn’t simplify it.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: He expanded it. He made it bigger. He said, “Look at the stars.” It would be even more overwhelming, you would think –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – even more impossible, but instead, in that moment, he believed Him.
Colleen: And you know, I do believe that God brings every person to a point of whether they’re going to believe the evidence from God or not.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: You know, Paul tells us in Romans 1:18-20 that everything that can be known of God, His divine nature, His eternal power, can be seen in what has been made.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But people suppress the knowledge in their wickedness. But people can look at that and believe because it is the message from God to us. It says, “So all men are without excuse.” So God gives people the ability to believe, but we have to also believe.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Did you have a moment where you knew you had to choose to believe, Nikki.
Nikki: Oh, yeah. Very clear. And it was kind of a scary moment because I knew there was a lot at stake. If I chose to walk with the Lord, it meant I had to walk away from a lot.
Colleen: Yes. I remember the moment, standing in our dining room looking out the window, feeling really depressed because I knew I was going to be leaving Adventism, and I felt overwhelmed at the loss, and I distinctly remember standing there and knowing that if I didn’t walk away, I would be betraying Jesus.
Nikki: Yeah. It was very clear.
Colleen: Very clear.
Nikki: I remember where I was standing and what I was looking at.
Colleen: Where were you?
Nikki: I was at the FAF conference, just outside of the room where most of the general sessions were held, and I was looking – I guess that was east toward the worship center, just looking up at the sky and praying and thinking, and I knew, I just knew –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – that what I had to do was going to be hard no matter no matter what I did.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: I was either going to turn my back on truth –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – or I was going to disappoint a lot of people.
Colleen: Yes. It was a moment where I felt like it really was a decision I had to make.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Will I follow Jesus or will I stay and preserve what I have?
Nikki: Um-hmm. And like we’ve talked about in past episodes, there’s a lot of bargaining. There are a lot of stages that go on, but –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: But yeah, there really was that moment where it was, “Okay. Enough.”
Colleen: Yes. You know, I think everybody has those moments, and I believe this was Abraham’s moment. God expanded the promise, expanded it, told him he would be – his descendants would be greater than he could even count, and Abraham believed.
Nikki: And it was in that moment that it was counted to him as righteousness.
Colleen: It’s amazing.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I love this verse. So then God confirms the covenant, as we talked about before. Abraham went and got the sacrificial animals, set them all out, and then God put Abraham into a deep sleep so he couldn’t participate. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: And what did God do then?
Nikki: Well, then He Himself walked through the cut-up animals.
Colleen: He did. He promised that what He had promised Abraham would come true. He also told Abraham what would happen to his promised seed before they came into the land. What did He foretell?
Nikki: They were going to go to Egypt.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: They were going to be slaves.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And then they’d come out –
Colleen: And they’d come out –
Nikki: – with riches!
Colleen: Exactly. And He even said for 400 years.
Nikki: Yep.
Colleen: And in the fourth generation they would return. God was very specific with him. While he was asleep.
Nikki: Isn’t that something?
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: He was able to reach him even in that dark sleep, where he was just completely immobilized –
Colleen: It’s true.
Nikki: – God could still speak to him then.
Colleen: Which is something I think all of us need to remember. Now that we understand that we actually have a spirit that’s not just our brains –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – the spirit that God gives us that makes us who we are that’s in His image, that part of us that can know God. God is not limited by our unconsciousness.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He is not limited when a person is in a coma.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He is not limited when a person develops Alzheimer’s. God can speak to the spirit of a man or a woman, and we have to know that while there is breath left in a person’s body, we can pray for them because God is not limited by our physical bodies.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Just worth remembering.
Nikki: It’s incredible.
Colleen: Yeah. So He makes this covenant. Is it conditional or unconditional?
Nikki: It is unconditional.
Colleen: Because?
Nikki: Because there was no condition. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: He didn’t require anything of Abraham.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: I mean, He made it very clear that He didn’t by putting him to sleep.
Colleen: Abraham couldn’t promise to participate, promise to serve, promise to worship, promise to raise his son in truth. He couldn’t do anything except receive God’s promise, and here’s the thing that we have to remember as we continue talking about not only this covenant but future ones: God’s promises cannot be broken, and because He is eternal and cannot lie, His promises are eternal. So if He’s making an unconditional promise, it never stops, and nothing we do can stop that from happening. And that’s what we have to remember as we move on through Abraham receiving the sign of the covenant years later, the sign which was –
Nikki: Circumcision.
Colleen: And there’s interesting stuff connected with circumcision.
Nikki: I was just going to say that I love that this starts in verse 13, that the first thing God says is, “Know for certain.”
Colleen: Oh, I love that.
Nikki: And I think that anytime God speaks we need to know for certain.
Colleen: That’s a really good point. Whatever He says —
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – even that people who never knew Him will go into eternal hell or whether He says, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”
Nikki: Or when He says, “It is finished.”
Colleen: Yes. When He speaks, we know for certain.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: No bargaining. Then, a few years after God made a covenant with Abraham, we come to the Hagar debacle. That’s in Genesis 16, and I want to say, “Sarah, what were you thinking?”
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: And even more, “Abraham, what on earth were you thinking?”
Nikki: Yeah. [Laughter.]
Colleen: But we all know that story, and the interesting thing is that even though Abraham acted outside of the covenant promises of God, he took matters into his own hands and tried to produce the heir he lacked, God still blessed Hagar and her son, Ishmael, even though they didn’t receive the covenant promises. He took care of them, and He reassured Hagar in Genesis 16 that He saw her, and He provided for her. Thirteen years after Ishmael was born, God visited Abraham again. The last verse of Genesis 16 tells us how old Abraham was when Ishmael was born. Do you have that, Nikki?
Nikki: Yeah, it says Abraham was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him.
Colleen: Oh, my goodness. Years after the covenant, here comes Ishmael, born by the flesh instead of by promise, and then we don’t hear anything for the next 13 years because that’s Genesis 16:16. The next verse is Genesis 17:1, and what do we read?
Nikki: “Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.’ Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, ‘As for me, behold my covenant is with you, and you will be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.'”
Colleen: Imagine that, 99 years old, no son by his natural wife, and God makes him the father of a multitude of nations and gives him the name that reflects that before there is a son in view, and He’s clearly said Ishmael is not the expected son, not the son of promise. So the rest of Genesis 17 reveals the next step God had for Abraham. He introduces to Abraham the sign of His covenant. Now, this is really interesting because it didn’t come at the same time God made the covenant in Genesis 15, it’s like, perhaps 20 years later. And I’ve heard people say, “I think the Abrahamic covenant might be conditional because circumcision came with conditions. There were things that God told Abraham would happen if he honored Him and kept the sign of the covenant by circumcising.” But I want to say, the sign of the covenant was not the covenant. And I was listening to a sermon by the late S. Lewis Johnson on this passage. Actually, I listened to a couple of sermons on Genesis 17, and he said something that was really interesting that I think has changed the way I understand – at least it’s changed the way I can explain sanctification compared to salvation or justification. He said, “God’s promises are the foundation upon which we are sanctified.” In other words, using Abraham as the example, God made an unconditional promise to him in Genesis 15. Abraham didn’t participate, the promises are eternal and cannot fail. And it’s on the basis of those unconditional, eternal, sure-to-come-true promises that God asks Abraham to be circumcised and to circumcise his offspring. It’s so interesting to me. You were talking to me a bit, Nikki, about what this made you think of regarding our own salvation and sanctification.
Nikki: We know that we’re saved by grace through faith, and that’s just – Jesus did it all.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: He was sufficient. But once we’re saved, once we’re born again, there are a whole bunch of commands for us that are not suggestions.
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: There are things that He calls us to do. It’s a part of bearing the name of Christ, being a child of God, and it just made me think of that, that Abraham was saved, or his faith was counted to him as righteousness –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – but that doesn’t mean that obedience isn’t required of him in other areas.
Colleen: That’s true. But the obedience is not the means to his salvation.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: And it’s not the means to maintaining salvation.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: It is what God asks of him because now Abraham can trust God and depend on God when he’s asked to do things that seem impossible. Just looking ahead briefly, think about when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I did not understand all the ramifications of that as an Adventist. You know, I knew it was a prefiguring of Jesus, whatever, but I couldn’t have explained that. And now I see Abraham had the covenant promises. He knew God was bringing seed, land, and blessing no matter what. And that’s why he could obey when God asked him to do the impossible. That’s why Hebrews says he knew that if necessary God would raise Isaac from the dead.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Because he knew God’s promises couldn’t fail.
Nikki: That’s incredible. I never knew that –
Colleen: I didn’t either.
Nikki: – until I became a believer, yeah. I didn’t know.
Colleen: Yeah. So we come to this point where God gives Abraham the command of circumcision, and He says in verse 10 of chapter 17, “This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your descendants after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. And every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations, a servant who is born in the house or who is bought with money from any foreigner, who is not of your descendants.” And He goes on to just elaborate on that point, that everybody in his household had to be circumcised and all of his offspring. Now, it is interesting – two things are interesting to me about this. The first is, God commanded Abraham to circumcise not only himself, to have himself circumcised, at the age of 99, but to circumcise everyone in his house, including Ishmael, who was 13. And yet, God made it clear that His covenant promises were not going to be given to Ishmael. They were going to come to the son of promise. He did bless Ishmael, He promised to make him the father of a great nation, but He did not give him the covenant blessings. And the point I think we need to understand here is that the blessings that came to Abraham for obeying and circumcising his household were not the covenant blessings, they were blessings associated with his obedience to the God he was already trusting. Abraham, Ishmael, his household, if they obeyed, they were blessed, but the covenant didn’t depend on circumcision.
Nikki: And we see that really clearly down in verse 18. It says, “And Abraham said to God, ‘Oh that Ishmael might live before you!'” But God said, “No, but Sarah your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.”
Colleen: It was very clear who the covenant promises were going to come through and to.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s also interesting that eventually, when the Mosaic covenant was given, the rite of circumcision on the eighth day was written into the law that was given to Israel. Circumcision was required for every male Israelite because it was Israel – the nation of Israel became the sons of the covenant, the promise that God gave to Abraham. It was the Jews, the Israelites who came through Isaac, that were the recipients of those covenant promises. So all the babies were circumcised as a sign of being part of the Abrahamic covenant. It’s also interesting that when we fast forward to the New Testament, it is that sign of circumcision which Acts 15 directly addresses and says, “No more. Gentiles are not to be circumcised.” They were never part of Israel, and they can be saved without becoming Israel, they can be saved without taking on the law of Israel, and we’ll talk more about that as we come to the new covenant. But circumcision actually stood for four different things. At least, this is according to the way S. Lewis Johnson explained it, and I thought it was very helpful. And I’m just going to share them here. First, he said, circumcision represented the removal of the body of the flesh, and in the New Testament we see that clearly because Colossians 2:16, well, actually beginning with 11 and on, it talks about receiving the circumcision of the heart, done without hands. Circumcision of the body foreshadowed Christ’s death and the removal of the body of flesh, which was the shadow of original sin, and so that’s the first thing he says that circumcision represented. The second was faith righteousness, and in Romans 4 Paul explains how circumcision for Abraham came after his faith, after his being counted righteous.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And it’s the faith and being counted righteous that is what we all have in common when we’re reconciled to God. Also, a third thing circumcision represented was commitment to the Lord because Jeremiah in chapter 4 verse 4 said to Israel: Circumcise yourselves to the Lord. Circumcise your hearts. This commitment to the Lord, represented by physical circumcision, stood for, represented, the commitment to the Lord of a person who trusted God. And finally, it represented commitment to the Lord’s people because circumcision set Israel apart from the surrounding pagan nations, and it also represented the fact that their seed was set apart and was not to be mingled with the pagan seed of the nations around them.
Nikki: Wow. I never noticed this until now, but in verse 15 we have God talking to Abraham about Sarah, and He changes her name, and He says in 16, “I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be the mother of many nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”
Colleen: That’s cool.
Nikki: I just guess I never really noticed the promise for Sarah and the blessings that would come out of her. It makes me think of 1 Peter 3. He’s talking about godly living, and he’s speaking about women here, and he’s saying that their adornment must not merely be external and that it should be the hidden person of the heart, and he talks about women in former times, and he says, beginning in 5, “For in this way in former times the holy women also, who hoped in God, used to adorn themselves, being submissive to their own husbands; just as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear.” So we often hear about being children of Abraham, but here we read for women that we are Sarah’s daughters if we do what is right without being frightened by anything that is fearful.
Colleen: And I think it’s very interesting, I’ve pondered this passage often, actually, because he’s commending Sarah for respecting Abraham’s authority –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – calling him lord, and without being frightened by any fear, and the lord here does not mean God. It means, like, boss –
Nikki: The authority.
Colleen: The authority, yeah.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: And it makes me think, Sarah had a lot of times when she could have been frightened, beginning with the call out of Ur to uproot and leave her family. But even going on from there, twice Abraham sent her off to a haram to avoid being killed. He misrepresented her as being his sister, which she was, a half-sister, but she was his wife, and he attempted to deny that fact to preserve his own life. God protected Sarah and returned her to Abraham, but I think of that sometimes. She had a lot of reason to not only fear but be pretty mad.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And yet she respected her husband, and here she shows up in the Bible as an example of godly living that God will reward in His time.
Nikki: The same woman who sent Hagar to Abraham.
Colleen: Yes. Isn’t that fascinating?
Nikki: Yeah. [Laughter.]
Colleen: I know, it’s amazing.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: Well, to summarize these three parts of the Abrahamic covenant and how they’re presented to us, the first time the covenant promises are presented is in Genesis 12 when God first called Abraham to leave Ur. We don’t find Him ratifying the covenant and being more particular in the details until Genesis 15, and we don’t know how much time elapsed, but we know it was some time. So in Genesis 15 we have the unilateral covenant, ratified by God Himself while Abraham slept. He can’t participate, he couldn’t participate, and he had no promises which could fail. God did that covenant Himself. And then in Genesis 17 we read of the covenant sign. This does not mean that the covenant promises are dependent upon circumcision. Rather it means the covenant promises are the foundation upon which Abraham could believe God and go into the rite of circumcision knowing he was secure in the promises of God.
Nikki: So I have a question.
Colleen: Um-hmm?
Nikki: There are people who say that the Abrahamic covenant is conditional because he was commanded to be circumcised.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: So what do they do with Galatians because it’s very clear in Galatians that we are grafted in to Abraham because of our faith –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and that we are absolutely not to be circumcised. So how do they get around that?
Colleen: I think it’s because they don’t really know what Galatians says. How can you possibly think the Abrahamic covenant is conditional upon circumcision if you really know Galatians? Or Acts 15?
Nikki: Yeah. It just doesn’t work.
Colleen: No, it doesn’t. And it’s very interesting that in Hebrews, in Acts 15, in Galatians, in Romans, it becomes more and more obvious that the Abrahamic covenant is used as the proof and the evidence that the Mosaic covenant is temporary.
Nikki: That’s really incredible. And it makes me think each of these signs of – we’re going to talk about all the other covenants still, but the signs of each of the covenants are not only a remembrance, but they’re a foreshadowing.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: For every single one of them.
Colleen: Just as Sabbath was a pointing backward and a foreshadowing and even the Lord’s Supper in the new covenant. That’s amazing.
Nikki: Yeah, well, we’ll share in that at the wedding supper of the Lamb.
Colleen: Yeah. That’s a wonderful insight. It’s interesting that this covenant sign that God gave Abraham was a sign that he was the one to whom God made the covenant. His descendants were supposed to receive it as well. There’s something really interesting here. Everybody in Abraham’s household had to be circumcised, including Ishmael, who was 13 years old at the time. Abraham had to be circumcised at the age of 99. Even the servants that came into his home had to be circumcised, and this was throughout the coming generations this had to be the case, that at the same time God commanded Abraham to circumcise his household, He made it very clear to him, in the same chapter, that Ishmael would not be the one who would receive the covenant blessings. In fact, Abraham said to Him, “Oh, I wish Ishmael could live before Thee,” and He says, “No, but a child out of your own body.” Well, Ishmael had been, but it was going to be out of Sarah, would be the one who would have the covenant blessing. So even though Ishmael was circumcised, he was not the recipient of the unconditional covenant. That’s another way we know that circumcision was not a condition for receiving the covenant blessings. The covenant was the covenant. Circumcision was a sign of belonging to God, of receiving those blessings, but the ones who received the covenant blessings were the ones that God said would come through the promised son. Not the natural son, the promised son, the son of promise. Even Ishmael did not receive the covenant blessings, but He did bless Ishmael and make him a great nation, but it wasn’t the covenant blessing.
Nikki: This is just such a picture of God’s sovereignty.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: As soon as Abraham believes God and it’s counted to him as righteousness, he immediately begins to thwart God’s plan –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – to do it his own way. He and Sarah come up with a plan, and they start trying to take the reins, and even in his disobedience, even in his unbelief in that way, look at what God’s done? He’s been faithful to keep His promise in spite of their faithlessness.
Colleen: So when we look back at the Abrahamic covenant, I think there are some take-home points that we can conclude. One is that God’s unconditional, unilateral promises will come true, even if people fail.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Another one is God asks those who believe Him to act in obedience to Him, not to make His promises come true, not to receive His promises, but because those promises are solid and because they cannot fail, He says, “Now do this.” It teaches us to trust Him when He asks us to obey when we have already believed. Another thing, God’s promises are fulfilled through those who believe because just as God led all of Israel out of Egypt, not all the people He led out of Egypt received His personal blessings. Remember how they got into the wilderness, they sent forth 12 spies to spy out the land and see what it would take. How many came back and said, “Yes, we can do this?”
Nikki: Two.
Colleen: Only two. And there were all those unfaithful people, and they also complained about the food. God made Israel wander in the wilderness for 40 years until the generation that left, who had been sovereignly rescued by God, as He promised Abraham, they got into the wilderness, but they had to wander there, and that first generation died and never saw the promised land because of their unbelief. And yet God’s overarching promise of releasing these people that were Abraham’s descendants did come to pass, and their children finally went into the land. God’s promises are fulfilled through those who believe. His promises can’t fail, but He does use those who believe to fulfill them, as a medium of fulfillment. Another thing we can know is that circumcision was not required for God to keep His promises, but what it was about was about learning to trust God and be faithful to what He asks. He doesn’t ask us to understand why circumcision was to be the response for being His person. He asked them to do it without understanding, on the basis that His promises cannot fail. So sometimes when God is directing us and His Word says we have to act in a certain way, we have to do it even without understanding. So what can we say, looking back at the Abrahamic covenant? Well, first of all, those promises God made to Abraham thousands of years ago are still coming true. Many of them have already been realized in the person of Jesus, and there are still promises that He is fulfilling. They are eternal, because God is eternal. We can also know that because of the Abrahamic covenant, the new covenant, which we will learn about in more detail as we go along, also cannot fail and is a further fulfillment of the promises to Abraham. And we can know that if we trust God’s Word and act on it, we can know we are His. When He says to believe Him, like Abraham did, we will be counted righteous. But for us on this side of the cross, believing God involves believing what He has shown us about His son, believing what His Son has already done. He came, fully God in a human body; He lived a sinless life because He was sinless; He died according to Scripture; He was buried, and He was raised on the third day according to Scripture; and when we believe that and put our full weight of trust on that fact, we are born again, and we receive the sign of the new covenant, the new birth. And if you haven’t trusted Jesus, we urge you to do that. Read Galatians every day for a month and ask God to teach you what He already knows He wants you to learn, and place your faith in Him.
Nikki: So if you have any questions or comments for us about what you’ve heard today or any previous episodes, please email us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can also sign up for our weekly emails, view back issues of the Proclamation! print magazine, or you can donate at proclamationmagazine.com. And I just want to say, when you review the podcast for us on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts, you actually help us expand our reach. We have had missionaries from overseas, and we’ve had Adventists finding this podcast in their search engine because we’re climbing as you leave your reviews, so thank you to those of you who’ve done that, and we would love for you, if you haven’t already, to follow us on Instagram or like us on Facebook. And we’ll see you guys next time.
Colleen: Bye.
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