the seed of the serpent in time and looking forward to that day. Genesis 9 and we get to move on to the Noahic covenant. So a bit of a read here, 17 verses beginning in verse 1. We read here, And God blessed Noah and his sons and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every fowl of the air and upon all that moveth upon the earth and upon all the fishes of the sea. Into your hand they are or are they delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you, even as the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your blood of your lives will I require. At the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of men. At the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of men. Whoso sheddeth men's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. where in the image of God made he man. And you, be you fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply therein. And God spake unto Noah and to his sons with him saying, and I behold, I establish my covenant with you and with your seed after you. And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, of every beast of the earth with you, from all that go out of the ark to every beast of the earth. And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off anymore by the waters of a flood, neither shall there anymore be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, this is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations. I do set my bow in the cloud and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass when I bring a cloud over the earth that the bow shall be seen in the cloud and I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, this is the token of the covenant which I have established between me and all the flesh that is upon the earth. So you can see right away it sort of is all laid out in one neat little passage of scripture as opposed to Genesis being spread out a little bit. Now you have hope with that and we'll get into the Abrahamic covenant and you'll find that it's spread out again, all right? So this one's a nice one between the two. Now one of the major factors that many Christians often overlook when reading their Bibles are the large time gaps especially in the book of Genesis that are there but they're elsewhere in the Bible as well. Most Christians are aware that there's that 400 year gap between Malachi and the visit of the angel to Zacharias in the temple there and advising of the birth of John the Baptist. What most people probably know, but it just doesn't sort of filter through when you read through the Bible, is there are some other large time gaps in the Bible. Some of the even much bigger times than that 400 years. The life story of Adam and Eve basically ends, the information we're given on Adam and Eve, basically ends with the whole Cain and Abel affair, okay, in Genesis chapter 4. when Adam's age and death are listed, they're listed in Genesis chapter 5 and he's 900 and some years of age. So immediately, you know, from chapter 4 to chapter 5, several hundred years have transpired and God tells us nothing. about that time? Nothing. Genesis 6 opens and we're introduced straight away to Noah and his family with chapters 7 and 8 recording the events of the great flood. Now what might take around about 20 minutes to read is actually a record that covers around 930 years. That's almost a thousand years. Okay? And so just, you need to sort of keep some of these sort of things in mind when you do read through the Bible, especially these opening books of the Bible. And just so that you understand that length of time, that 930 years, you need to understand that is longer than from Moses to the Babylonian captivity. Okay? And yet how much information do we have in the Bible from Moses to the Babylonian captivity? A ton. So there are periods of time where God ordered that a lot of information be recorded and there are huge periods of time where God ordered no information to be recorded. A time period recorded from Exodus through to the book of Daniel is the same time period that we're skipping over here. The book of Genesis alone covers around two and a half thousand years of history. One book. Okay, so you've got to be very careful going through. Noah is born around that thousand years after Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Eden. And though the record of humanity is for this period of time exceedingly sparse, there is enough for us to learn some lessons and understand why the great flood was sent. The descendants of Adam and Eve did indeed go forth, they did indeed multiply. Reading of people like Seth, we learn that some of the descendants went on to be followers of the Lord. Reading of people like Cain, others did not. The world population grew and grew and grew, but as we have learned from our own recorded history post the flood, those who followed the Lord were outnumbered by those who lived for themselves, all right? The same thing happened before the flood, right? Until in the end, There was one man and one family that followed the Lord and all of humanity did not. Now we bemoan Western society going more and more secular and how few there are of us. That's nothing compared to Noah. One guy, three sons, three daughters-in-law, a wife, and that was it. Eight people on the entire planet and they were all related. You talk about Amish. Okay? Probably came from some backwoods place called Tannum Sands or something like that, right? Sorry, take that back. I mean, Gladstone. Anyway. Which is a totally different place, right, Brother Luke? That's what he's told me. Totally different place. Listen, we want to appreciate the fact that we've come up to Bible block training on a central Queensland tropical island. That's what we're going back and telling everybody, all right? We appreciate that. Trade us right up here. Anyway. But let's go back to eight people versus the world. Too often we feel that we are too few in number, that we're the only ones left, we're the only ones teaching the truth. There's very few out there. And listen, though our numbers may be small, nothing compared to what people in the Bible experienced. Again, something we tend to just read over without realizing what we're reading. Hence Pastor Graham saying, sometimes the Lord comes on and goes, did you notice that gap there? that verse again and listen, what a testimony, and I realize this is New Testament talk applying it to an Old Testament person, but what a testimony for Christ Noah and his family were, okay? They really were. The devil's standing back laughing, I've got the whole planet on my side and God talks around and says, you haven't got him, you haven't got his boys, there's three daughters-in-law you haven't got, There's always a remnant, remember that. The Lord had left the world at large with a simple covenant to follow, the Adamic covenant. All they had to do was follow the example of the Lord in the garden, follow the example of Abel, and just pray to God. Bring a sacrifice, pray to God. They didn't have to worry about the tree of knowledge, good and evil, because God had sent some angels there so nobody could get there anymore. That's a pretty simple lifestyle. Okay, be fruitful, multiply. I know there's thorns and weeds and all that coming up, but you dress the ground and I know you're going to give birth inside, but there's the terms, just follow them. Right? But all of the world at large, by the time you get to Noah's time, had decided to follow the way of the serpent, shall we call it, and sin had grown to such an extent, corrupting every human being on the planet so badly, except this one family, that it's recorded of the Lord that it repented the Lord that he had made man. it grieved him at his heart. You know there's a verse in the New Testament written to the church that, well now as soon as I say that it's gone out of my head. Grieving the Holy Spirit, what's that verse? There we go. There you go, write that down, Ephesians 4.30, just as a warning, all right? Because humanity had so grieved God that, these are my words, not Bible, the Bible has repented. Tim Bunch is saying, if he was God, he wished he'd never done it, all right? Imagine grieving God that bad, that he wished he had never let you be born. That's saying something, right? Okay? Imagine what it must have felt like to the Lord to see his entire creation, minus this one family, his entire creation so corrupted by sin that his only recourse was to wipe them all out. That's a big deal. Now in contrast, remember Adam and Eve hiding in the garden and I said to you, still God turned up? In contrast, when the Lord looked at Noah and his family, read this, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. I love the hymn, grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that'll pardon, grace that'll cleanse within, grace that is greater than all our sin. And you know what? Praise the Lord for his bountiful grace. Praise the Lord for his bountiful grace. You actually see this grace extended in leading up to the great flood where after ordering Noah to build the ark in order to preserve human and animal life, it was 55 to 75 years before that ark was finished being built. And all the while, 2 Peter 2, verse 5 tells us that Noah was out preaching. 55 to 75 years Noah's out there preaching and preaching and preaching and even if you take the lower estimate there, 55 years is still a long time to preach. Now some of these younger ones keep telling me how old I am. I am not 55 yet. I'm not even 50 yet. He preached for 55 to 75 years, warning people of the coming flood, calling on them to repent. Another sad truth revealed here is that no one heeded the preaching of Noah. Now we've got pastors around this room and I'm not going to ask them, I'll just speak from my perspective. It It is actually a big hit when you invest into someone's life and you put prayer into them, you put personal time into them, you preach sermons and listen to me carefully, we don't preach sermons at people. If you do that, you're not preaching, that's the flesh coming through. But oftentimes the Lord will have you craft a sermon and put it together and you'll preach it and maybe one or two of the points you know in your head, they needed to hear that. And then to see them go out into the world and just give up on God and go back into sin, That's a hard hit for a preacher, right? He is the only listener, the only preacher on planet earth. And outside of his own family, no one listens. Man, no one. Now, this passage preaches, all right, and the lesson here is quite simple. We're to preach the gospel regardless of whether or not anyone comes to Christ. Okay? Great commission is to go, to sow. But if I sow and Apollos waters, who gives the increase? God does. Okay? God's truth must be preached, even if it is preached only so God can show fallen man later on at the judgment that they were given the chance. The result of the failure of mankind in keeping the Adamic covenant was all human life outside the ark was killed in the great flood. That was the result of not keeping the Adamic covenant. And we will never know until we're in glory how many that numbered, millions, billions. You need to understand 2,500 years, both numbers are possible. The population could have been as big as ours today. Now our text for this next covenant is given immediately after the floodwaters have receded. Noah and his family are landed on the mountains of Ararat there and they've just come out the door, right? The end of chapter five records Noah and his family exiting the ark, building an altar, worshiping the Lord in the manner of the Adamic covenant. That's what they're doing. They're following the covenant that's been established. And it's following this moment that God sets up a new covenant, the Noahic covenant, okay? And it supersedes the previous Adamic covenant. I taught this in the last lesson and I mentioned it again when I was introducing this one, or maybe I didn't, I definitely missed it last time. There are three components. There are the parties, there are the terms and there is the sign. And looking at our text that we've read here, you can see all three of them. Chapter 9 here opens up with God responding to Noah and his family's act of worshipping in the terms of the Adamic covenant and that's always a good thing, by the way, because he turns around and he blesses them, okay? And he then sets up terms for a new covenant. If you look at verse 1, some of you want to tell me what the first term is in verse 1? Be fruitful and multiply, all right? Now that's the exact same term that was given the Adamic covenant, wasn't it? All right, and considering the circumstances are pretty much the same as Adam and Eve, it makes sense that that term is still in the covenant, yes? Looking at verses two and three, who can tell me what is the next term in this covenant? Fauna and flora, so flora was, but now fauna is added to acceptable food. And this is something that's often not thought about among believers, but it remains true all the same, that previous to this, humanity was vegetarian full stop. Okay, so a long, long time we were vegetarian, all right. What's more, it appears, do you hear that word? It allows for a little bit of uncertainty because I can't be 100% sure. But it appears as though for the same period of time that animal life were not scared of humans. The animals being scared of humans begins at this point in time. Doesn't surprise me, we start eating them and they start being scared of us. I think if people started eating me, I might be scared of them, all right. Of course, if you all start eating me, you're crazies and I want out of here anyway. All right, verse four, what is the third term? Okay, eating meat with the blood is still wrong. All right, this actually hasn't even changed for us today. You can find the same thing be exhorted by the apostles themselves in Acts 15. Okay, verses five and six, fourth term, anybody want to stab in the dark? Murder is punishable by death. First time capital punishment is taught by the Lord in the Bible and it's introduced as a result of the planet-wide devastation brought about by sin. And the Lord warned Adam and Eve from the very beginning that sin brings death. Now further again, this is also the first time that we see God authorizing one man to have authority over another man. Now, we would call that set up of authority government. Now, it could be local, it could be national, it could, you know, the government's taken various forms over the years. If you want to go into the family sphere, then we understand that the authority is set up with the parents there being over children, and that was actually set up back in the Garden of Eden. The second authority established by God in the Bible is this area of government here. Now the third, by the way, is religious but that's a little bit later on when we get towards the Aaronic priesthood and then on into the church. But staying with these four areas of the terms here, we need to ask and answer the question of whether or not this is going to be a conditional or an unconditional covenant. And if we look down at verse 8, Alright. And I want you to cast your eyes on down through there. Let me check my pasta looks gone. I started at half past, didn't I? So I'm assuming I'm finishing just before then? Yeah. Okay. Coming on down through there, verse eight, I establish my covenant with you, verse nine, ever living creatures is with you. And I want you to keep on coming on down here and you can see God is setting the token up, the sign that's gonna be there. I'll remember this, I'll remember that, the bow will be there. Coming on down there, somebody wanna tell me, does any of that phraseology, any of those verses or comments tie God's fulfilling of his promise to not flood the world again to any sort of human behavior? got an O at the front here. Anybody else want to add to an O? We can do an option. No. No, no, no. Correct. All right. Even when you look over the first seven verses here of the terms to this, all right, no obedience to these terms is required in the terms. So with this in mind, is this a conditional or an unconditional covenant? is unconditional is the correct answer. God gives instructions, I need you to follow these, but then he just flat-out promises to never flood the earth again. The terms are given and they are just instructions. They're not a, well, if you follow these I will. They are, here's the terms and I promise I'll never flood the world ever again. with this in mind, do not imagine that God is not promising to never punish sin. A lot of negatives in one sentence, that's bad English but I don't know how else to say it. Do not imagine that God is promising to never punish sin nor that he will never again destroy sin-corrupted humanity or again that he's not promising to not destroy, two negatives again, a sin-corrupted planet. He's not saying any of that, he's just saying won't flood, won't destroy all life again by a flood. That's all he's saying, okay? I would like you to come forward if you would please, now don't lose Genesis 9 because we're coming back, come all the way forward to 2 Peter chapter 3. I think we've been there about three times today, maybe more, 2 Peter chapter 3. 2nd Peter chapter 3, when you get there find out verse 9 please. 2nd Peter 3 verse 9 reads, the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to us, not willing that any should perish, praise the Lord, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come. So we understand despite his promises, sin is still going to be judged. The Lord will come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. The earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." Now that's an astounding passage of scripture, astounding verse of scripture. Just as in Noah's day, years are given to humanity to hear the gospel and repent. Yet just again, as in Noah's day, there is an expiry date put in place to the offer of God's grace. By the way, we went to Revelation 20 earlier, verse 10, but verse 9 and then chapter 21, verse 1, testify further that God does destroy all sinful humanity and this planet by fire. The simple lesson here is you need to accept God's grace while you can, because unlike Noah's day, we actually don't know when this one will end up. There's no Methuselah living today to let us know when the Lord's coming again. In fact, the exact opposite is promised. We don't know the day or the hour. Back to Genesis 9. So the promise is not that God won't destroy the planet or destroy sin. The promise is he would not do it via a great flood. And so we're given terms, we're given instructions, they're unconditional. Let's consider the promises that are given with this one. Without reading the passage but looking at the verses again, what promises does the Lord make? Verse 11, obvious, no great flood repeats. And this promise of God is based upon his own faithfulness and that's it. Again, it's unconditional. It is because of God's faithfulness to always do what he says he will do, that we can know with certainty that there will never again be a worldwide flood like the great flood. And up to this point, over 4,000 years later, history's shown God to be true. He's kept his word. I don't know about you, but 4,000 years, you could probably start believing the Lord by now, yes? bonus is here, this magnificent promise will be maintained, listen carefully, the magnificence of this promise is that it will be maintained regardless of how wicked humanity becomes, regardless of how corrupted by sin this planet becomes. That's a pretty big statement right there and as we've already seen it's not as though God has promised to not punish sin but rather not punish sin in that manner. Moving on, we'll consider the parties involved, which are pretty obvious. Noah and his family are involved, but it's not just Noah and his family. If you look at verse 9, the Lord says, and I, behold, I establish my covenant with you and with your seed after you. Do you see that? Verse 17, God said unto Noah, this is the token of the covenant which I've established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth. Now these verses clearly reveal that this covenant did not apply to just Noah and his family, but to Noah, his family, and any descendants. In short, all of humanity. This would include you and I here today, by the way. This is a very interesting point of study because though we read how God works down through history, first with Israel and then with the church, it turns out that all humanity received these commands and thus all humanity, even today, are still bound by this covenant. Ready for this? Making all humanity accountable to God. Now here's some New Testament verses that you can think of where it says we're all going to stand before God. We all got to give an account. Well what about that tribe I know on that island that's never even had a white person go there and tell them about the gospel? They're still accountable to God because of this covenant that was made thousands of years ago with all of humanity. They're still accountable. Okay? Now some of you have got your eyes sort of going like this and you're thinking is it still applicable today? Don't overthink this. was just made with all humanity, is what I'm saying. And that's what makes all people guilty before the Lord, right there. Okay, so going on from that, the sign, I'm sure you could all work out the sign pretty quickly. What's the sign? Rainbow. Verses 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 talk about the rainbow. It's a sign, it's the token of the covenant. I can remember being told by my parents as a very little boy that rainbows are a reminder of this promise of God. I didn't hear about the pot of gold until years later and somebody already beat me to the end and it wasn't there when I got there. But from my earliest years, I can remember being told that a rainbow represented God's promise to not flood the world again. And I thought that was cool as a kid and I still like looking at rainbows today. Noah's family is important to the scripture's greater storyline because this covenant reinforces everyone's accountability to God, which is what I was trying to make the point there before. Our God is holy. Our God is righteous. He will not allow sin to abide. He will not allow it to continue unpunished forever. However, and praise the Lord for this, this is, I don't want to say balanced because it's not. When God dispenses a goodness, it overbalances. this judgment on sin is overbalanced by his great grace that he extends for years and generations in an effort to ensure that everybody gets saved, everybody has the opportunity to get saved because as we read in Peter before, he's not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance, okay? So as a result of God's great grace, God always provides a way for all of humanity to be saved. And just as Noah and his family were saved from God's wrath on sin, we too can be saved from the same. So there's the Noahic covenant. It's in a nice, simple 17 verses, just packaged there for us to see and to understand. Let's turn up a page, it is for me anyway, to Genesis chapter 11. And we move on to the Abrahamic covenant. The Abrahamic covenant. Now, we're gonna read nine verses here and it doesn't actually contain a specific connection to our covenant, but it needs to be read and kept in mind as we open this covenant up, all right? So, it's one of those passages you just gotta have as a bit of a foundation before we can unpackage the Abrahamic covenant. Chapter 11, Genesis chapter 11, picking it up in verse one, we read here, and the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. You all know how this one turned out, right? 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 under heaven and let us make us a name lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. The Lord came down to see the city in the town which the children of men built. The Lord said, behold, the people is one. They have all one language and this they will begin to do. And now nothing will be restrained for them, which they have imagined to go to. Let us go down and 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, the name of it is Babel. I know in Australia, we tend to call it Babel, but I think Babel is the right pronunciation. Why? That's where they all babbled on, alright? Because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon all the face of the earth. Alright! Like I said, it doesn't specifically speak to the Abrahamic covenant but it needs to be understood as we go into the Abrahamic covenant. Noah and his family, they've left the ark, they worship the Lord, that new covenant is set up and without looking back over the page, you can look at your notes but don't look back over your page, who can remember what the first term of the Noahic covenant was again? fruitful and multiply, okay? Genesis 9-1, all right? And this is the reason why I took you to Genesis 11, because with just around about a hundred years of being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth, whilst they might be fruitful and whilst they might be multiplying, you know what they're refusing to do? Fill the earth. God had said, scatter. They had said, let's build a town, let's pull God off his throne because we're not going anywhere. God came down and said, is that right? Try this on for size. And he changed all their languages. Now that would have been, I think, I think as God, that would have been one of the funniest days in the entire Bible. I'm learning Greek and Hebrew with Brother Kevin Currell, and we get given lists, vocabulary lists that we just have to know, right? So the Greek word and then the translation, all right? And there's one in my Hebrew list, there's a word called hayah, right? And for the life of me, I cannot remember what it is, because in my head, I get down my list, I go ding, ding, ding. And that's what my head does. and I got this little black and white cartoon Japanese ninja jumping out, and I cannot learn the word, because I'm going, and they're translating Hebrew. This would have been the funniest day, I reckon. Just, what did you say? Anyway, heck. Man alive. Anyway, let me just try and get back here for a second. My head is on fire at the moment. All these ideas that I want to share with you, which are hilarious, and I need to stay on topic. You've got lines there on your page, because I'm going to make a comment about a particular word that is found with the Adamic covenant and right here with the Noahic covenant that you can write down notes or just listen, all right? And that's, I want to pick out the word replenish. You see it right here in the Noahic one, and you find it in the Adamic one, all right? The word replenish here means, listen carefully, to fill. It does not mean restock or refill. And there is an abundance of both biblical evidence and etymological, that's history of your word, evidence to show that that word means nothing more than fill. And I'm walking down this road for real good reasons. I am not suggesting that the use of the word replenishment is a mistranslation by the King James translators. I'll tell you what it is. It's an adjective. Anybody remember what an adjective is? All kids go, what's that word again? What's an adjective? All right, describes a noun, all right? Look, English is called one of the most expansive languages in the world. And the reason for it is we almost have a word for everything. And if we don't, we'll pinch a word from another language to ensure that we have a word to describe what we're doing, all right? You need to understand, this part because the Hebrew word translated as replenish is found 240 times in the Bible with the vast majority of that being translated as fill, filling, filled, fulfilled. Only five times do they translate it as replenish. Only five times. By the way, it's also translated, consecrated, satisfied, set within a space. And so, though someone will make the argument that replenish means to restock. And I can remember listening and being taught that the fact that it was used in Genesis 1 was proof that there was a pre-Adamic society that was on planet earth. that Lucifer was the leader of that pre-Adamic society. They were rock based and you know that because when you go to Isaiah 14, it says that Lucifer was covered with all these gemstones and so he was a rock person. How many of you saw that dumb Noah movie a bunch of years ago? Come on, be honest. And you're sitting there like, where did those rock monsters come from? That idea. Okay? There is a whole line of teaching even amongst King James Bible-believing independent Baptists that there was a pre-Adamic society. Lucifer was the head and all the damage you can see on things like the moon and all that, that's when God and Satan had it out and God won. I've heard of reading between the lines but someone really double-spaced or something because as good a movie as that would be to watch, They don't end in the Bible. Okay? Replenish means fill. End of story. Caleb will take it from here. Thumbs up, he goes. Look, this is the era of Genesis 11, alright? Though Noah, Ham, Shem, Japheth are still well and truly, listen to me, alive. Instead of multiplying and filling the earth, they relocate from the mountains of Ararat, Turkey, down to the plains of Shinar, Iraq, and begin to build the Tower of Babel. They are united in a God-defying effort to live life the way they want to live it, regardless of what old man Noah said God said. And we're only 100 years from the great flood. The story of humanity doesn't actually improve, by the way. As we continue to read the Genesis account of humanity, we watch Noah's family grow, we see different siblings and cousins and different clans, and those clans grow into tribes, those tribes grow into nations. And with the interference of God Almighty at Babel, those different nations speak different languages, which of course fracture again into various dialects and then whole new languages yet again. And does humanity turn wholesale to the Lord at all? just keep walking further and further, not literally away from Babel, but literally away from God. Where's the worship of God in all this? Though it's not really our focus for this covenant, I want to assure you it was still there. You do find the odd person in these times who worshipped the Lord and led others in the same. I would point you to two pre-law Noahic covenant prophets of the Lord, one fantastic and one corrupt, to show that it did occur. You ever heard of a guy called Melchizedek? He was a prophet of the Lord. Let me give you a corrupted prophet of the Lord. You ever heard of this guy, Balaam? Okay, they existed before the law under the Noahic covenant system. Now we are about to enter with this covenant a great diverging in how God has dealt with humanity up to this point. A point that is nearly 2,000 years old of history. for the first time in almost 2,000 years of human history where God has dealt with all men everywhere, like he does today in the age of grace even, the Lord focuses in on one person. and one family and that sets this covenant up different than the two that came before it. Now we don't know a whole lot about these other pre-law prophets. I mean even today the story of Melchizedek, Christians go, is he about to tell us something new out of that? There isn't a whole lot to tell you about Melchizedek. I think it's about 17 verses. You can read them as well as I can. Who was he? Prophet of the Lord, a type of Christ. What else? That's about it. Okay? That they existed is still a fact. Balaam confuses a lot of Christians but if you think about it, you've all met Christians that were ready to follow the money than the Lord. Yeah? Genesis 11 reveals that humanity were once again headed down the path of turning away from the Lord and despite living eyewitnesses, people that were literally on the ark, Despite men of God living for God and preaching for God and worshiping God, mankind walked away from God and out into sin. And it's at this point in time, remember I said foundation, we get into chapter 12. Chapter 12. We read here, did replenish, didn't I? Verse 1, the Lord said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country, from thy kindred, from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee, and I'll 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, curse him that curses thee, and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. A great divergence, a massive paradigm shift, a huge departure in how God has up to this point in time dealt with mankind. For the first time ever, 2,000 years into human history, God calls a single person, a man, and establishes a covenant with him. So from a broad approach, we are now into the most narrow approach you can look at, and we're introduced to this Abrahamic covenant. Now what's interesting with this covenant is, rather than superseding the Noahic covenant, It parallels the Noahic covenant because this covenant is one family. The Noahic covenant is all of humanity. You see the Abrahamic covenant focuses the narrative of scripture firmly and primarily to Abraham and his descendants. Now God was still concerned with all the humanity but the view of scripture narrows to these specific instructions with a specific group of people. Now thankfully we've got a whole lot more history to help us understand why God would do that and the reason for this is the overlying story of the Bible and where is the Bible leading to wherever you start? Christ. It's always leading to Christ. What begins as a broad promise to Adam and Eve that a seed will destroy the other seed, it points to Christ. It ends up with Christ. And so we find God's revelation of himself to humanity likewise narrowing because, like I said with Genesis, it's step by step, day one, day two, day three, so that we can keep up with what God is doing. So let's pick this covenant out more particularly. The Abrahamic covenant can be found in a total of five passages of scripture being revealed to Abraham over a period of 50 or around about 50 years. All right, now again, big time gaps when you're reading the life of Abraham. It might only take you 13 to 14 chapters, but you go through quite a number of years as you read the lifetime of Abraham. Now we don't have time to go through them all, which is why I've given you, have I already written them in your notes for you? Yep, so that's why I've given them to you, right? So starting easy, could someone look in at the opening verses of chapter 12 here where we all are together, please tell me who are the parties involved in this covenant? God and Abraham, all right, but also Abraham's descendants, yes? All right, verse two makes mention of the fact that he would make out of Abraham a great nation, yes? So we understand it's not just Abraham, it's going to be a bunch of his descendants. And as an added bonus, in verse three we read the phrase, in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed, and in thee references a particular descendant that will be the blessing of all nations and that is obviously Christ. So up to this point in time what scripture has revealed of this is the coming Messiah. Let's just call Christ that for the moment. The coming Messiah would number one be a descendant of Adam and Eve. Number two he would crush Satan after experiencing his own pain. Now he's a descendant of Abraham's and at the same time he will bless all nations. That's the messianic prophecies up to this point in your Bible. Now again, we know who this because we got the benefit of thousands more years of history and a complete Bible. But back here in this time, that's all they knew. That's all they knew. And so, the parties involved are Abraham and his descendants and God. Moving along, let's consider the terms. Staying in verses 1, 2 and 3 here, here's what we can see. Number 1, verse 1 rather, there is a promise of a land. Verse two, there is a promise of a nation. Abraham's descendants would become a great nation. This is actually expanded on in Genesis 17. I've got that reference on there where we read God saying to Abraham that thou shalt be a father of many nations, not just one, many nations. And again, I will make nations of thee and kings shall come out of thee. This is again connected with a multitude of descendants in Genesis 13 and in Genesis 22, where their numbers are described as being as the dust of the earth. And again, I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, as the sand which is upon the seashore. That's a lot of people. Keep in mind, these promises were given to Abraham, whose wife was barren and couldn't have kids. It was Abraham's faith in God that saw these promises begin to come to pass when Isaac was finally born years later again. Verse 2, there is the promise of blessing. God would specifically bless Abraham. and make his name great personally. Again in that verse there is the promise of Abraham's name being made great and we would say today legacy. That's what he's talking about there. His name would be, he's got a legacy and using worldly terminology here the three great world religions are all part of the Abrahamic faith is what they call that. Okay so Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Verse 3 talks about others would be blessed or cursed depending on how they treated the descendants of Abraham. should keep reading this is broad and you can just go away and think about that a little bit bit more later on when I the word broad there but then we're also told in verse 3 that a specific descendant of Abraham would be the cause of blessing for all people and nations which is repeated again in Genesis 22 verse 18 now considering all these promises are what make up this covenant would someone look at those promises and venture a guess is this covenant conditional or unconditional It's unconditional and circumcision is in there but we'll get to that in a second, that's not part of the promises, right? None of these are, I will do this if you, they are just promises, yes? So that's what makes this then unconditional. unconditional. At no point are there any requirements put on Abraham or his descendants to fulfill certain things in order for God to keep his promises. Does that make sense? Now I've already stated and demonstrated the terms of the Abrahamic covenant are repeated five times throughout the book of Genesis and in each case repetition, though you may find expanded details, you will never find conditions placed on Abraham or his descendants for God to fulfill these promises. I want to make a quick comment on what is essentially just a comment by God to Abraham that makes up a part of this covenant, but which, it'll have to be next time, ends up being a separate covenant on its own. If you look at verse one here in Genesis chapter 12, we read God calling Abraham out of his home country to a land, and then if you look down here in verse seven, it adds, the Lord appeared to Abraham and said, under thy seed will I give this land, and he built there an altar under the Lord who appeared unto him. It's just a comment. Abraham comes and he says, I'm going to give you this land. And then nothing more is said for a while. And it turns out when God speaks about that again, he actually sets up a separate covenant again. Okay. So it's there. I'm just pointing it out, but we'll look into that better next time. All right. God makes a promise to Abraham to give him the land to which he is called. And Genesis 15, Let's not go there. Genesis 15 verse 7. Write this down. Genesis 15 verse 7. Genesis 15 verses 18 to 21. I'll say it again. I'll say it slower. Genesis 15 verse 7. Genesis 15 verses 18 through 21. Everybody get it? Genesis 15 verse 7. Genesis 15 verses 18 to 21. God makes the promise again, he repeats it in Genesis 15, to give him the land and when you look at a map, you can all picture that part of the world, yes? This is the area we're talking about. Okay? That's the area he promises. Basically from the Nile to the Euphrates. Okay? and all the land in between. Now this particular promise, like I said, is slightly refocused later on, and you actually find different land parameters given later on, which is why I said this turns out to be a second covenant, okay, within this one. But just sticking with this broad one, it does not escape my attention that whether it be Jewish, Arab, or someone else, all the descendants of Abraham basically live within those parameters right now, 4,000 years later. That's no coincidence. coincidence at all, okay? Because not only did Abraham, Father Ishmael and Isaac, after Sarah passed away, he remarried and he had more sons and daughters that you don't read a whole lot about in Genesis 25 and God sees here all his descendants, all his descendants and they all live within those regions. So let's conclude. Five minutes, look at me go. Let's conclude this covenants by seeking its sign, all right? Now we have to go up to chapter 17 for this one. 17. Genesis chapter 17 and find out verse 9. God said unto Abraham, thou shalt keep my covenant therefore thou and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and thy seed after thee. Every male child among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin. It shall be a token of the covenant betwixt you and me. He that's eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man, child, and his generation. He that is born in the house and bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. He that is born in thy house, he that is born and bought with thy money must needs be circumcised. My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. The uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people. He hath broken my covenant. I tell you that the Jews are not the only people that do that? A lot of these people here still do that. Okay? We, in the church, we just start thinking about the Jews. A lot, if not all of them, still do that. All right? And the reason why is it's come from here. Here's my covenant between Abraham and all his descendants and the sign of the covenant is, I want you to be circumcised. If you won't get circumcised, you're not in this covenant. But that's the token, that's the sign of this particular covenant. So circumcision is that sign. So when a Seventh-day Adventist comes along and says, you know, you're supposed to be keeping the Sabbath because here it is, ask him whether they've been circumcised. That should end the conversation. It really should. All right, because you can't If you're going to have one, you've got to have the other. It sort of works with that. The same passage of Scripture that they'll pull out to show you should keep the Sabbath, it's the same passage of Scripture that says you should also be circumcised. They only ever read half verses. But it helps to explain again why. Here's a passage of Scripture that you might have read and then you've gone, what was up with that? This should help you understand why God got angry with Moses when he sent him back to Egypt. He hadn't circumcised his son. You remember that one verse? his missus got in there and did it for him she wasn't a happy lady by the time of that conversation was done that's why God calls one of Abraham's descendants who is circumcised to go and save all these other part of his descendants who is circumcised but he hasn't circumcised his own son okay It's there, you just gotta hunt around to find the answers. Look, there are multiple applications that you could preach on when it comes to this covenant. You could speak about God's faithfulness despite humanity's unfaithfulness. You could speak about Abraham's faith and failings. You could teach on how that God took a man and his wife and created multiple nations, showing that he is indeed a keeper of his promises. But it's on the basis of these promises and the fulfillment of many of these promises that you and I can look forward to that one descendant blessing the entire planet. he's already blessed us with salvation amen but i tell you what the day he sits on that mercy seat in the temple in jerusalem that'll be a day that'll be a day and i'm looking forward to that brother luke where are you You're working a lot.