Chapter 4: The Covenant

God's promise to make Abram into a great nation, give him a land of his own, and make him a blessing to all the nations.

In the previous chapter, we looked at the Flood, and we saw how the flood story taught us that the issue with sin is not the sin out there, but the sin inside us. We saw how Noah fell into sin, just like Adam did, within moments of stepping off the ark. You can read more about that here:

Chapter 3: The Flood

This week we are going to zoom in. Over the last chapters, we have been focusing on global issues. We have seen why the world is broken (because of sin), we saw what God was going to do about it (launch his rescue plan), and we also saw how the world got more and more evil, leading to the story of the Flood. These have all been global issues. However, the grand narrative of scripture shifts in Genesis 12 from focusing on the world as a whole to one family in particular. Previous chapters have left us with a question: How exactly is God going to enact his rescue plan? Sure, it will be through a righteous family; we learned that in the story of Noah. But what makes a person righteous? Would this happen in multiple cultures, or with multiple different people? Genesis 12 gives us the answer. It is the pivot point in scripture where the focus of the story moves from the world at large to focus on the life of one man and the promise God makes to that man: Abram (later renamed Abraham). Let’s have a look at what the Bible says about this:

Genesis 12:1–9 (CSB)

1 The Lord said to Abram: Go from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. 4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. 5 He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the site of Shechem, at the oak of Moreh. (At that time the Canaanites were in the land.) 7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring, I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. He built an altar to the Lord there, and he called on the name of the Lord. 9 Then Abram journeyed by stages to the Negev.

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Why Abram?

We do have to wonder whether there was something special about Abram that set him apart from the rest of the world. Did he come from a powerful family? Did he have great wealth or influence? Was he important in some way? The picture that the Bible paints is that just wasn't the case. Abram is simply described as the son of Terah and married to Sarai, a wife who was barren. When you think about it, Abram is introduced and defined primarily by who he wasn't - Terah - and by his lack of offspring. He really was a nobody.

Not only was he a nobody, but he also came from a family who worshipped other gods. For example, in Joshua 24:2-3, we read that Terah, the father of Abraham, lived beyond the river and worshipped other gods. Yet, it was to this man, who came from pagan origins, whose family worshipped other gods, who didn't have any children, and who had no features that set him apart from those around him - it is to this man that God calls and says, "Go from your land."

This is a theme that permeates the Garden to Garden city story. God chooses to use the weak, the lowly, the downtrodden, and the nobodies of this world to accomplish his rescue plan. Remember how we said that God created the universe for his own glory? I believe that this is partly why God chooses the unremarkable and lowly things of this world to accomplish his purposes. So that we can see his hand in it and give him the glory for it. You can even see this in the promise God makes to Abram:

Genesis 12:2–3 (CSB)

2 I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

God is the main actor in this story - he is the one who will make things happen, and he will do so through someone who has no chance of making it happen on their own. Even though Abram was not special, God gave him a difficult task. He had to abandon his family and leave his land in faith, trusting that God would lead him to the right place. To become a worshipper of the one true God, Abram had to make a decisive decision to separate himself from his past and his family. Abram's faithfulness came at a cost. He left behind safety and security to step out in faith. The same is true for Christians today. Following Jesus and trusting God comes with a cost. Abram had to leave the city of Ur, a place where the land was lush and the soil produced crops in abundance, to follow God. But he went anyway because he believed in God. Abram had faith.

Faith is a vital part of God's rescue plan. The value of faith will be explored further as the story unfolds, but it is worth noting here that God's rescue plan is worked out through faith.

Abram’s blessing

We also have to consider the blessing God promises Abram. Let’s read what it says:

Genesis 12:1–7 (CSB)

1 The Lord said to Abram: Go from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. 4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. 5 He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the site of Shechem, at the oak of Moreh. (At that time the Canaanites were in the land.) 7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring, I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.

This blessing forms the plot line of most of the first 5 books of the Bible (the Pentateuch). This promised blessing comes in three parts: God would make Abram into a great nation, give this nation a land to call their own, and they would be a blessing to all the nations around them. The issue is immediately obvious: Abram is not great; he has no name, and he certainly can’t be considered a nation. At this stage, he was 75 years old, had a barren wife, and was living in a land of plenty. However, he was told to go across the desert to a place where he had no family, no security, and no provisions. Yet, it is here that God says, “I will make your name great and make you into a great nation.

For this to happen, God would have to miraculously work in the lives of Abram and his wife Sarai. Abram would, in some ways, be justified in doubting God. So, a few chapters later, in Genesis 15, we read a discussion between God and Abram where he expresses this doubt to God.

Genesis 15:1–21 (CSB)

1 After these events, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield; your reward will be very great. 2 But Abram said, “Lord God, what can you give me, since I am childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 Abram continued, “Look, you have given me no offspring, so a slave born in my house will be my heir.” 4 Now the word of the Lord came to him: “This one will not be your heir; instead, one who comes from your own body will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look at the sky and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “Your offspring will be that numerous.” 6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. 7 He also said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” 8 But he said, “Lord God, how can I know that I will possess it?” 9 He said to him, “Bring me a three-year-old cow, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 So he brought all these to him, cut them in half, and laid the pieces opposite each other, but he did not cut the birds in half. 11 Birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. 12 As the sun was setting, a deep sleep came over Abram, and suddenly great terror and darkness descended on him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain: Your offspring will be resident aliens for four hundred years in a land that does not belong to them and will be enslaved and oppressed. 14 However, I will judge the nation they serve, and afterward they will go out with many possessions. 15 But you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” 17 When the sun had set and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch appeared and passed between the divided animals. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “I give this land to your offspring, from the Brook of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River: 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hethites, Perizzites, Rephaim, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”

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Abram says to God, “How can I know that you will fulfill your promise to me?” What follows is a very strange episode where all these animals are cut up and smoking fire pots move between the animal carcasses. This is strange to us because we don’t live in the Ancient Near East. In the days Abram lived, this is how you made a covenant, how you signed a contract. The idea is that the two parties who wanted to make a covenant agreement would effectively say, “Let me be like these animals if I don’t uphold my side of the bargain”. Instead of signing the document, they would walk through the cut-open animals as a way of signaling that they accepted the terms and conditions of the covenant.

Notice what happens in this interaction, though: God lays out the terms of the covenant – He will make Abram into a nation, He will give him land, and He will make him a blessing to the nations. But then, instead of both parties signing the covenant deal, God causes Abram to fall asleep. God, through the burning fire pot, passes through the animals to sign His side of the deal. In doing so, God declares, “I will bring about this blessing, even if Abram or his offspring fail”. In fact, it can be argued that God declares that He will bring about these three blessings despite Abram (or his offspring’s unfaithfulness), even if it killed Him.

That turns out to be exactly what happens. Abram’s offspring, the people of Israel, end up being constantly rebellious. They constantly turn from God and fail to be a blessing to the nations around them. Yet God was committed to His promise, even if it killed Him, and one day it did. But we are getting ahead of ourselves again.