As for me, this is My
covenant with you: You will be the father of a multitude of nations. – Genesis
17:4 (NET)
The person speaking
is the Creator God (of Israel), and the person to which that God speaks is the
man whose name was here, in the verses surrounding our text, is being changed
from “Abram” to “Abraham.” It is quite useful to look at Abraham, and to
look at these times in which God speaks to Abraham, in the context of His
covenant with Abraham. This is especially
helpful for those that understand themselves, as Christians, to be the sons and
daughters of Abraham by faith in the universal Lordship of Jesus of Nazareth.
It is made clear, in
both the Hebrew Scriptures as well as the New Testament, that the basis for
Abraham being brought into covenant with God was faith. This was the requirement of that covenant,
and that which brought him into covenant with the Creator God. This was the way that Israel, through its
history, understood the relationship between God and Abraham, and this went a very
long way towards the way that they defined and understood themselves and their
relationship to that same God. It is possible to see that this was the
understanding also held by the Apostle Paul who writes, in quoting from Genesis
15:6, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness”
(Romans 4:3b). The idea of that being credited to him as righteousness is
probably best understood by saying that the belief in the word and command of
God was what brought Abraham to an understanding and experience of God’s
covenant faithfulness.
Christians are to experience
God’s covenant faithfulness in the same way, that being the faith that shows
itself forth through the belief that the crucified and resurrected Jesus is the
Messiah and King of all, and that He is presently reigning in the inaugurated
but not yet consummated kingdom of heaven (constantly breaking in whenever the
Gospel is preached in word and deed) that God has established, and is establishing
and extending, right here on this earth. When an individual agrees with
and makes that proclamation (again, in both word and deed---speaking and acting
as if Jesus is truly King), that individual is also credited with
righteousness, enjoying and expressing that which represents the ultimate
fruition of God’s covenant faithfulness to Abraham.
God informed Abraham
that His covenant faithfulness would be expressed in him becoming the “father
of a multitude of nations” (17:4b & 17:5b), in being made “extremely
fruitful” (17:6b), in “making nations” (17:6c) of him, and making it so that
“kings will descend from” (17:6d) him. As he continues to listen, Abraham
goes on to hear God say, “I will confirm My covenant as a perpetual covenant
between Me and you” (17:7a). Because the providential Creator God is the
maker and the confirmer and the perpetuator of the covenant, Abraham is assured
that the covenant “will extend to your descendants after you throughout their
generations” (17:7b).
In that extension,
which those of the household of faith find extended to all that respond to the
gracious acts of God in the same manner as Abraham , which is of trusting in
that same God and in the message of the Gospel, God tells Abraham, “I will be
your God and the God of your descendants after you” (17:7c). In all of
this, we clearly find that God is the Actor and the Mover in this area of
covenant. According to the record of Scripture, which reveals the way
that Israel understood its God and is therefore quite important for those that
lay claim to being the renewed Israel, that God took steps to reveal Himself to
Abraham and to position Himself as Abraham’s God (becoming Abraham’s patron?),
and seemingly continues to operate in the same mode with the same types of
expectations.
The Creator God put a
requirement upon Abraham as a symbol of the covenant---a symbol that He would expect
His people (His clients?) to bear as a response of gratitude to His grace and
as a reminder of His covenant faithfulness and their subsequent obligations to
Him. God said, “As for you, you must keep the covenantal requirement I am
imposing on you and your descendants after you throughout your
generations. This is My requirement that you and your descendants after
you must keep: Every male among you must be circumcised” (17:9-10).
Abraham quickly acceded to this requirement, and it would be faithfully carried
out through successive generations. That is, until we meet up with the
descendants of Abraham, that being the nation of Israel, after their
deliverance from the exilic bondage of their sojourn in Egypt.
No comments:
Post a Comment