God Chooses a Family to Continue His Redemptive Plan

Hello Steemians! I'm finally getting around to the fourth part in my series about the covenants in the Bible. Sorry it took so long, but life happened, and I've been a little busy.

You can see the other posts in the series by clicking the links below.

Part one, an introduction
https://steemit.com/jesus/@garthfreeman/christianity-the-law-and-the-ten-commandments

Part two, an overview of the Old Testament Covenants
https://steemit.com/bible/@garthfreeman/the-covenants-of-the-old-testament

Part three, from creation to the Flood: the Noahic covenant
https://steemit.com/christianity/@garthfreeman/the-noahic-covenant

This is one of the points in the Bible where lots of theological splits happen and I got a little lost in the sauce reading up on the topic. Because it's so contentious I'm going to try to keep this basic and on neutral ground. We'll see how I do...

First, for a brief recap: God creates the world for man, man rebels. God eventually gets fed up with man's tomfoolery, decides the flood the place. God starts over with Noah and his family, establishing a new covenant with them, and promises to never flood the world again. God gives man his marching orders: go out, reproduce, and subdue the earth.

The Babel incident

So, Noah and his family get busy repopulating the Earth, but they fail to follow the other command, to fill the Earth. Instead they decided to gather together in one place and build a city. In addition, they decided to build a tower, or temple, to reach the heavens with the intent of making a name for themselves.

Well, this isn't what God had in mind at all, and He decided to do something about it. If the people weren't going to obey Him and spread out like He commanded, He would force them to! This is where God confused their languages so they couldn't understand each other. Since the people couldn't all communicate, they ended up spreading out after all, and from there they began to form into The Nations.

You can read about all of this in Genesis chapter 11.

Enter Abram

After this, you might think God would give up on His rebellious creation, but He doesn't. Once again, God finds a guy He thinks would be a good candidate to start His new family with. The guy's name is Abram, and for all the world could tell there was nothing special about him.

Nevertheless, God chose him. God tells Abram:

Genesis 12:1-3 (NET Bible)

“Go out from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household
to the land that I will show you.
Then I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you,
and I will make your name great,
so that you will exemplify divine blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
but the one who treats you lightly I must curse,
and all the families of the earth will bless one another by your name.”

Now, this Abram was an old man, 75 at this time. However, he believed God's promised and took his family and headed out. He had several adventures along the way, and he didn't always handle himself very well, but God was intent on using him anyway.

A little later, God tells Abram there's more to His plan than He previously disclosed. God takes Abram to a mountain overlooking Canaan and tells Abram that his descendants would possess the land, ans far as he could see. Remember, now, Abram was an old man, and his wife was past child bearing years. Nevertheless, Abram once again chose to believe God.

The covenant established

A little later, Abram becomes impatient with God and asks Him what the deal is. He complains that he doesn't have a son to inhiret and his heir is this dude named Eliezer that works for him. Here's God's answer, from Genesis 15: 4-6 NIV:

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.” 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[d] be.”
Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Here's where the covenant happens. God tells Abram to gather up some animals to cut a covenant. You see, in the ancient world when two men would covenant, or make an agreement, they would have a ceremony called cutting the covenant. They would gather up animals and cut them in pieces, then place the pieces in two rows. The two men would then walk through the center, signifying that they would keep the terms of the covenant, and if they didn't they would suffer the same fate as the animals. Basically, if they break the terms they forfeit their life.

Abram goes to work and prepares the ceremony. Then, a strange thing happens: God makes Abram wait, and eventually Abram falls asleep. God tells Abram his family would end up in a foreign land as slaves, but God would get them out. Then, God goes through the animals BY HIMSELF!!!

Gen 15: 17-21

When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi[e] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”

The significance of God passing through the animals by Himself can't be overlooked. Here, God is basically saying He takes on the full responsibility of the covenant, and if it's broken, He will pay the penalty!

The Sign of the Covenant

Now that the covenant is cut, Abram is feeling pretty good about things. He doesn't have any children yet, though, so he and his wife decide to "help God out" a little. They decide Abram should have sex with Sarah's younger servant, Hagar. He does, and she has a child named Ishmael. this ends up causing all kinds of problems for Abram and his descendants, but I won't go into them here.

God is patient with Abram, though. He waits until Abram is almost a hundred years old and tells him again that his descendants would be numerous and inherit Canaan. Then, God changes Abram's name to Abraham, and lays out some terms.

First, He tells Abraham that he and his descendants need to be circumcised:

Gen 17:9-14 NET

Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep the covenantal requirement I am imposing on you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. This is my requirement that you and your descendants after you must keep: Every male among you must be circumcised. You must circumcise the flesh of your foreskins. This will be a reminder of the covenant between me and you. Throughout your generations every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, whether born in your house or bought with money from any foreigner who is not one of your descendants. They must indeed be circumcised, whether born in your house or bought with money. The sign of my covenant will be visible in your flesh as a permanent reminder. Any uncircumcised male who has not been circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin will be cut off from his people—he has failed to carry out my requirement.”

Then God tells Abraham that Sarah, his elderly wife, would give birth to a son, which Abraham should name Isaac, the following year. It would be through Isaac that the promises God gave Abraham would be fulfilled through Isaac's line.

There's a lot more to the story, but since the focus of these articles is Covenants, I'm ending this one here. For now, here's what we learned:

Terms	Sign	Blessings/Curses
This is a hotly debated area, so keep in mind you're getting my opinion, but as I see it this covenant is unconditional.	The sign of the covenant is circumcision	The blessings are that Abraham's descendants would be numerous, and they would inherit the promised land. Also, God promises that through Abraham's "seed" all the world would be blessed.

Thanks for reading, and tune in next time to learn about the Mosaic Covenant, the covenant God establishes with Abraham's descendants with Moses acting as a go-between.