2024-10-23_Abrahamic Covenant

Overview

God’s covenant with Abraham consists of three parts: The promised land, the promise of blood descendants, and the promise of blessing and redemption. With each part of the covenant, God is restoring what is critical to loving and supportive familial relationships. Sin tears apart family life, first and foremost, by eliminating the trust among intimates (Adam and Eve betraying each other’s commitment to being obedient to God, when they share in the indulgence of forbidden fruit), the solidarity among brothers (Cain rising up against Abel), and the continued integrity of a bloodline set up by God for soteriological ends (the Sons of God, very likely male descendants of Seth, having conjugal relations with the Daughters of Men, very likely female descendants of Cain). God is focused on combating the negative impact of sin on family life, because He intends for mankind to live as a family with God and with one another inside of Him (John 17:23). God’s creation is an expression of His love, which means that creation is “good,” before it is defiled by Adam’s sin, because it reflects His divine goodness as best as any created universe can. Also, on the Seventh Day, God rests because He intends for creation to find its rest inside of Him. What is good and what is at rest, which is to say, completed and fulfilled, are that which reflect God’s goodness and that which find their home inside of God. Therefore, what has been defiled by sin falls away from God’s order, is increasingly less reflective of Him, and is increasingly lost and far from His tabernacle home. Thus, as God is ordered, so the sinner is disordered, as God is life, so the sinner is barren, as God is clear, so the sinner is opaque, and as God is at home and at peace in Himself, so the sinner is lost and anxious. God makes a covenant with Abraham to set aside a portion of mankind that, in remaining faithful to the covenant, will learn to be ordered, to trust in God as the source of life, to be as open as God is open, and to be at home nowhere else but where God has so ordained. In identifying land, descendants, and blessing and redemption with this covenant, God is creating a familial home life where the faithful will learn to be like Him.

Man is disordered by pride and inhospitality

Genesis 19:1-13: And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night. And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat. But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter: And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came into thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door. But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door. And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place: For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the Lord; and the Lord hath sent us to destroy it.

Ezekiel 16:49: Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

Josephus in The Antiquities of the Jews (dated 93 A.D.): About this time the Sodomites grew proud, on account of their riches and great wealth: they became unjust toward other men, and impious toward God, insomuch that they did not call to mind the advantages they received from him: they hated any strangers and abused themselves with hedonistic abandon. Now, when the Sodomites saw the angels masked as young men to be of beautiful countenances, and this to an extraordinary degree, and that they took up their lodgings with Lot, they resolved then to enjoy these beautiful boys by force and violence. 

Traditionally, the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is identified with homosexual practice. No doubt, that is part of the story recounted in Genesis 19:1-13. All the men of the city, the young and the old alike, surrounded Lot’s house and demanded that he release unto them the beautiful young men that had taken up residence with him for the night, “so that [they] may know them.” Same sex attraction is ancillary, though. The mob outside is taken with the beauty and the newness of the two guests. If the angels had been masked as women, and had been just as beautiful and as new, the context suggests that the mob here would have wanted “to know” them just as much. They reject Lot’s daughters not because they are female but because Lot had offered them as a way of maintaining hospitality to the two guests. Therefore, what is the mob is really indulging, more so than same sex attraction, is their shared loathing of hospitality. For hospitality has the primary purpose of reaffirming family life by treating guests as if beloved familial relations, and familial life is ordered by God for His purposes. Thus, the Sodomites exalt their pride by tearing down the familial life ordained by God and substituting in its place hedonistic abandoning not in sync with God’s will. They have rooted their pride in the extent to which they rebel against God, and the result is a loss of humanity. The men are prone to mob behavior against any beauty not controlled by them. They are similarly prone to mob violence against outsiders, such as Lot, his family, and his two guests, because the very existence of outsiders works against the insularity of their inward focused pride. God sends His angels to destroy Sodom not primarily because of homosexual behavior, but because the Sodomites are consumed with their pride, inhospitality, and insularity to the point of becoming monsters prone to mob violence. In a sense, already the Sodomites are consumed by the flame of their unrestrained self-indulgence. The fire that God is going to unleash on them later will be an outward expression of how the Sodomites already are burning away their own humanity.

Man is made barren by seeking immortality on his own terms

Genesis 11:1-9 and 30-31: And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So, the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore, is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth…. But Sarai was barren; she had no child. And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran and dwelt there.

In constructing the Tower of Babel, man attempts to claim heaven by his own efforts apart from divine grace. No doubt, he sees himself as merited in planting his flag upon heaven’s shoreline like the Spanish Conquistadores who will lay claim to the New World many centuries later. The merit of the cause is secondary, though. Even if he did not see himself as having the merit to lay claim to heaven, he would do so anyway to make himself “a name.” As bad as man’s hubris, it is the smallness of his vision that condemns man here. For acquiring heaven is less important than acquiring “a name” that will stand out among others. Heaven is just a prize to be taken and put at the top of the totem, until something even more sparkly comes along, grabs their attention, and replaces Heaven at the top. Man has accomplished much, notwithstanding how far he is at this time from Eden and, for that reason, how hard it is in comparison to Eden to harvest what is good out from the land. The fact that the whole earth is of “one language” and that men are able to organize to the degree necessary to build a tower to heaven tells us that mankind now has developed well beyond the age of basic subsistence farming. There is technology and, even more so, there is sophisticated political leadership. And yet, for all that, man wants heaven as simply a totem to his own pride. He seeks immortality by his own merits, but he gets nothing in the effort but disunity and barrenness. Sara’s barrenness is emblematic of mankind’s condition. Abram and his family have moved into a new land, but with Sara unable to conceive, Abram is unable to build a family that will survive this generation. Like with the Tower of Babel, his work will be stillborn. God will need to intervene positively for Abram and Sara, as He had intervened negatively in breaking apart the building of the Tower of Babel, for a multi-generational to be at all possible.

Man is not transparent because he lacks faith in God

Genesis 18:12-15: Therefore, Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also? And the Lord said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh.

Much like Adam and his wife believing that they can hide from God behind trees and manage not to be observed, Sara believes that God can be deceived about her faithless laughter at the prospect of conceiving a child. God calls her on her lie, just as He had confronted Adam about his attempt at hiding, for the same reason as before: God gives Sara a chance at redemption by making the sin transparent and unavoidable. Hiding the sin, even when there is no chance that that can be done successfully, is really an attempt at avoiding redemption. Why would the sick try to avoid the hospital? Because they do not have faith that they can be cured there. Thus, in this lack of transparency, we see a kind of spiritual barrenness. Man has lost faith that his plight can be turned around even by God, so he tries to avoid any confrontation that might drive him to seek redemption.

Man is lost when fixated on what is ungodly

Genesis 19:26-29:  But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace. So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.

Lot’s wife looks back at Sodom in violation of a command not to do so. Though Lot and his wife are fleeing from God’s destruction of the city, Lot’s wife presumably looks back because she has not lost her attachment to the riches and the pleasures she had known there. In looking back at that moment, she is consumed by the fiery and sulphureous air. She dies and is later encrusted with salt much like many objects and corpses that ingest saline from the Dead Sea. In becoming salt, Lot’s wife becomes a permanent fixture of a dead land. That is where her soul is. For all the turmoil, though, God remembers Abraham and, for that reason, saves him from the destruction that is everywhere. Where man loses himself, God gives him the chance to be found and saved.

Abrahamic Covenant

Genesis 12:1-3: 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.

The promised land: The first part of the covenant is known as the promised land and can be found in Genesis 12:1, where Abraham is called by God to leave Ur and go to a place known as Canaan. The land of Canaan later became known as Israel. Israel was named after Abraham's grandson and is often referred to as the promised land because God promised to give the land to the descendants of Abraham.

The promise of blood descendants: The second part of the covenant is known as the promise of the descendants and can be found in Genesis 12:2. This is where God promised Abraham that he would make a great nation out of him – “I will increase your numbers very, very much, and I will make you into nations....” This is when God changed Abram’s name to Abraham meaning ‘father of many nations.’

The promise of blessing and redemption: The third and last part of the Abrahamic covenant is known as the promise of blessing and redemption. It can be found in Genesis 12:1-3, where God promises to bless Abraham and all his descendants. As part of this last covenant, God asked Abraham to remove his foreskin and the foreskin of all Jewish boys after him. This process is known as circumcision and is a sign of the Abrahamic covenant.

God makes His covenant with Abraham because Abraham has faith in God.

Hebrews 11:8-10: By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

In promising land, descendants, and blessings, God is promising what is necessary for a revival of family life. This is God’s intent behind the Abrahamic Covenant. For if family life is restored, then the family can cultivate an ordered life characterized by self-restraint, a life conducive to abundance instead of barrenness, a life steered toward honesty and transparency, and, finally, a life that is found in God rather than lost in the wilderness of sin.