Father, we thank you that you have given us the desire to be here as your people gather together to study the scriptures, and we thank you so much for the living and abiding Word. We pray that you would send the Holy Spirit to us, that we might see and know the things of Christ freely given to us. Lord Jesus, we ask that our knowledge of you would increase experientially and not just intellectually, that you would open our hearts, that you would illuminate our minds and hearts, that you would enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may see the wonderful things that you have done for us and have in store for us. Father, we pray that you would give us a deep understanding of the Scriptures and that you would make us faithful to your mission. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. We are in Genesis chapter 12. Genesis 12. And let's just read tonight a few verses out of Genesis 12 and then some of Genesis 15. Let me back up. Let's start in Genesis 11 31. and read to 12 verse 5. Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son, Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." So Abram went as the Lord had told him. A lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. Now, skip over to chapter 15. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward. Some of your translations may say your reward shall be very great, but God says, I am your shield. I am your exceedingly great reward. But Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring and a member of my household will be my heir. Behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, Look toward the heaven and number the stars if you're able to number them. Then he said to them, So shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord or believes in the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. The second most important figure in the Bible other than Jesus is Abraham. Now, I didn't say he was the greatest born among women because Jesus says John the Baptist, besides himself, is the greatest born among women in the Old Testament. The greatest figure in the Bible, if you want to understand your Bible, you have to understand Abraham. If you miss Abraham, you're not going to get the majority of the New Testament because Abraham is everywhere. Romans 4, Galatians 3 and 4, all through the Gospels, the language of every tongue, tribe, nation, and language in the book of Revelation, all the references to Abraham everywhere in the New Testament showing that God's covenant promise to Abraham is foundational to understanding your Bible. Foundational to understanding Abraham is Genesis 3.15. Because remember, God is carrying that seed promise. If I could take a red thread through your Bible and sew it through your Bible, and it could just sew all the way through the Bible, and that be the seed promise from Genesis 3.15, and that thread go through every page, and every story, and every account, and every teaching, you would get better the unity of the scripture. That's what unifies the Bible. At least the Old Testament is the promise of the seed redeemer that God promised to Adam and Eve in that curse that he placed on the serpent. That seed promise surfaces in almost every covenantal promise. That seed was with Noah on the ark. That seed will be promised to Abraham in the Abrahamic Covenant. That seed will be promised to David in the Davidic Covenant. And that seed will come being born of Mary, the Virgin Mary, in the Gospels, in Jesus Christ. Paul will tell us in Galatians, to Abraham and to his seed were the promises made, not to as many, but as to one who is Christ. Galatians 3. To Abraham and to his seed were the promises made. not to many, but as to one who is Christ. So Paul will definitively tell us the seed of Abraham is Jesus. Matthew will say as much in Matthew 1. He'll open that genealogy about Jesus and he'll say, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham. And what the whole Bible narrative is telling you is that the promises God makes to Abraham are fulfilled in Jesus. And so whatever else we might see in the Abrahamic administration, all the little subsequent land and people and all those blessing statements, we can't understand any of that apart from the seed. Now, how do I know that from the Old Testament? Because Abraham got that in Genesis 15. Look at Genesis 15 and what we just read. God is coming in chapter 12 and he's told Abraham, I'm going to give you a land. I'm going to make you a great nation. I'm going to make your name great. I'm going to bless you in every way. And all the families of the earth are going to be blessed in your seed. And then in Genesis 15, God comes and he says to Abram, fear not. I am your shield. I am your exceeding great reward. Now, you might think Abraham would be like, great, that's awesome. God's for me. God says I'm with you. I'm your shield. I'm your reward. Abraham, you might think most American Christians, if God came to them today and just said that out of the blue, they'd be like, that's awesome. Abraham doesn't say that. He says, Lord, what will you give me seeing I go childless? Abraham understands that all the promises of God are bound up in the seed that God promised him. And if Abraham doesn't have an offspring, a seed, in Hebrew it's zerah, offspring. If he doesn't have an offspring, he doesn't have any fulfillment of any promise. When we come to Abraham offering up Isaac, Abraham's willing to offer up that typical fulfillment of the seed promise in Isaac. And the writer of Hebrews will tell us, in Hebrews 11, that Abraham concluded that God was able to raise Isaac from the dead. So what he did was he said, OK, God's given me all these promises. He's promised me land, really the world, which we'll see in a moment. But he's promised me land. He's promised me a great name. And he's promised me that all the nations are going to be blessed in me. And then Abraham understands in 15 that that's dependent on him having a child, a seed. And then God fulfills that in part, in Isaac, as a type of Christ. He's not the seed. He's the typical first fulfillment of that seed promise. And then God says, now kill Isaac. And so what the writer of Hebrews says is that Abraham does some theological reasoning. God has said this, now God has commanded this. If I go through with this, the only thing I can conclude is if I kill Isaac, God's going to raise him from the dead. Now that too is a picture of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The writer of Hebrews will tell us that. But Abraham is understanding that all those promises are utterly dependent on an heir, a seed, an offspring. That's important because if you miss that and you jump into the Genesis account and you jump into the Old Testament, you might think it's about the land and the nation. You might make the mistake of thinking it's all about the land of Israel and the nation of Israel. When from the beginning it was all about the seed of Abraham. Now, the land plays a crucial role. The seed plays a crucial role. There's no doubt in that. But all of those things in the Old Testament, the land and the physical seed offspring that becomes the nation, they are all typical. They're all preparatory. That's the best way to think about all that. As I said over the weeks past, all of that is preparation for the coming Redeemer. O Palmer Robertson has a Little book called understanding the land of the Bible And in it when he comes he goes through all the land in the Old Testament all the different places in Israel And when he comes to the page land in the New Covenant, he says the land was made for Jesus Christ The land was made for Jesus Christ Now notice what God has done with Abram at the beginning here. Where was Abram heading? Where was Abram going at the end of chapter 11? Most people miss this, by the way. It's very, very helpful to tie it all together. Genesis 11, where was he going? Where? He was going to Canaan with his dad. His dad's idols, we're told in Joshua 24, he was heading to Canaan. He was going to take possession of land with his family in his own strength. And God stops him and he says, get out of your family, leave your father's house, leave your possessions. I'm going to give you the land of Canaan. That's important. Abraham's going there to inherit the land in his own strength. God says, I'm going to give you the land. But you're not going to get it from your fleshly descent. You're not going to get it with your father's house. You're going to get it by way of promise. You're going to get it by way of my covenant dealing with you. This is all covenant. Abraham is covenant. God's dealings with Abraham is God's covenant, overarching covenant of promise. Paul is going to tie all of this together and say what God is doing with Abraham is giving him the gospel. Turn to Galatians 3. If you have not underlined this in your Bible, do so, unless you have a really nice Bible that you don't like underlining in, and then write it down somewhere. Galatians 3.8. Now, you've got to pay very close attention to this, because you could miss this. Like I said, you could get bogged down on all the earthly stuff going on in the Old Testament with Abraham. But remember, Paul and the apostles interpret for us the Old Testament, they teach us how to read it. And notice what Paul says in Galatians 3.8, the scripture for seeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham. Do you see that? There, Paul is saying, the gospel, there's only one gospel. The gospel was preached to Abraham. Abraham had the gospel like you have the gospel. The gospel message came in this particular form to Abraham. In you or in your seed shall all the nations be blessed. The blessing of the nations in Jesus Christ Justification and sanctification in Jesus Christ, the reception of the Spirit in Jesus Christ to Jew and Gentile alike was the gospel being proclaimed to Abraham. God was saying, this is what I'm going to do. Everything else is bound up in that. Everything else serves that. Best way I can put that. Everything else that God says to Abram serves the gospel that God preaches to Abram. It's all there serving that gospel, serving what we read in the New Testament. Now, the land of Israel is a debated subject, obviously. There's probably differences in this room, I'm sure about it. You know, it's not an easy subject. I would say a few things and then keep your questions, please, because we will take them after this lesson. If you could envision in your mind the globe, the world, if you could just envision that, and you could envision that tiny little piece of land called Israel today, And it is a land bridge to three continents. Don't know if you knew that. The land bridge to three continents. This preparatory for the gospel going out to the nations. That's the point. And it was this little plot of land. It really isn't that substantive, a piece of land. But God promises Abraham, Abram at this time, that's going to be your inheritance. But then, now come to Romans I'll come back to your visual imagery in a second. But Romans 4, verse 13, Paul says, the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world. Notice it doesn't say land. What does it say? World. The promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. Now, Paul is defending justification by faith alone. And he's saying that all goes back to Abraham. And what Abraham got promised was not the land of Israel. Ultimately, it was the world. Remember, Jesus says the meek shall inherit the land of Israel. The meek shall inherit the earth. The meek shall inherit the earth. Abraham was promised the world. Let me put it this way. If your ultimate hope is the land of Israel, it is too small. The land of Israel was a down payment in the Old Testament for the world. It was a down payment for Redeemer to come to Israel and to bless the nations to his atoning death and resurrection. And so what Abraham gets is the whole thing. It would be like your dad giving you a bond, a savings bond that says, when you're 21, you're going to get all this and you're trying to cash it in for what it is now. It'd be settling for less than what it's going to be. That was the whole point of the land. The land was a microcosm. So now imagine the globe again. And imagine the land of Israel as one little tiny part of the whole. That's the point. God was not just going to give Abraham Canaan. He was going to give him everything. How do we know that? Hebrews 11. tells us that Abraham didn't receive the land. Now check this out. It is true that physical Israel did inherit the land. In the days of Joshua, they got all the land. Very clear in scripture. What's not so clear to people is that Abraham got one little tiny microcosm plot of land in the land. What did he get? He got a place to bury his wife, his son, his son's wife, and his grandson. Abraham got a little tiny piece of land so he could rise again from the dead on the last day and inherit everything. Abraham got a little tiny piece of land to put his bones that are going to one day be raised up when Jesus comes again. He didn't inherit the land. He inherited everything. Remember the writer of Hebrews says, here we have no continuing city, but we look for the one to come and that God has made us heir of all things and that Abraham and his offspring are heirs of the world in Christ because of the seed. Remember the parable of the vineyard. The Pharisees hate Jesus. They're hating him more and more as Jesus teaches more and more. They hate him more and more for uncovering their sin of hypocrisy. And he tells them the story about them getting this vineyard leased to them and the master going away and then sending servants and then sending more servants. Those are the prophets in the Old Testament. They beat him and they kill him. And then the owner says, I'm going to send him my son. Maybe they'll listen to him. And he sends the son and the son comes and they say, this is the heir. This is the heir. Come, let us kill him. So even the Jews of Jesus' day knew that the Redeemer would be the heir of all things. The son of Abraham would inherit everything. He would be the true heir. Now notice back in Genesis 12 that God promises Abraham the land He promises that he's going to make him into a great nation, that he's going to make his name great, that he's going to be a blessing, that he will bless all who bless him, and he will curse all who curses him. And in Abram, all the families of the earth would be blessed. What's important to see here is that if we limited Abraham to being the father of the Jews, we would be making a big mistake. We would make a big mistake if we saw Abraham as just the father of physical Israel. From the beginning, the first word that God ever speaks to Abraham is about you, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ. The first word, not the second word. not a secondary, not a rewriting of what Abraham said, not a replacement of anything. The very first word that God says to Abraham is about you and me, if you're a believer, that all the families of the earth, that's us. This is not Israel. This is not Jerusalem. We are the coastlands of the sea. If you read Isaiah, Isaiah says the coastlands are going to hear the gospel, the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. We are realizing that on the coast of North America, far from Israel, God promised that Abraham would be the father of many nations, not just one nation. Now, at this point, we'll talk about circumcision in the weeks ahead, because it's very important. At this point, what is Abraham? Is he a Jew or a Gentile? He's a Gentile. In Genesis 15, I'll turn over there. Genesis 15, remember, God says, I'm going to be your shield. I'm going to be your great reward. Abraham's like, I don't have an heir. All I got is this guy, Eleazar of Damascus. Is he going to be my heir? God's like, no, one's going to be born in your own house. And then God takes him out and shows him all the stars and says, your descendants are going to be as many, even though you don't even have one out of a hundred. Your descendants are going to be as many as the stars in the sky a multitude. Two greats in number. And what does Abram do? What does he do in response to God's promise of descendants? A descendant, a seed, and descendants. What does he do? He what? He believes. He believes. Look at verse 6. Second most important verse in the Bible, possibly. Genesis 15, 6. Quoted by Paul constantly. If you don't have that underlined and you don't have a fancy Bible, underline it. Genesis 15, 6. Abraham believed. the Lord, he believed the word of the Lord, he believed into union with Christ, and it was counted to him for righteousness. He was justified, it was credited, it was put in his bank. The righteousness that Jesus would get by his perfect life and attaining death was imputed to Abraham because he believed. He believed, right? Now, was Abraham a Jew or a Gentile at this point? Still a Gentile. He doesn't become a Jew until 17, when God gives him the sign of circumcision, which is what makes a Jew a Jew. It's nothing physical, because Abraham came from his dad, who God told him to separate. And the point is, here's the point, the father of the true Israel, of all who believe in Jesus, the father of the true Jews, Jew and Gentile alike, together in Christ, was a Gentile when he was justified. That's the point. He was a Gentile when he got the promises. There was no Jew Gentile at this point, but the point is, there was no Jew. He was a Gentile. We're Gentiles. Last time I checked, we're all Gentiles in here. And that means, what God does with Abraham spiritually, preceding any of the physical preparatory stuff, That has to happen in that order. Does that make sense? God couldn't have and wouldn't have made him an Israelite and made a nation out of him and then done all this stuff. He first did it. so that you know that you will be justified by faith in the coming seed of Abraham, so that the same thing is to you as to the Jews, that they have no privilege you have now. It's all the same. All the same promises, all the same salvation, all the same justification, all the same Redeemer. And it had to happen. This is Paul's argument in Romans 4. He was justified, not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised. He was a Gentile. That's good news for us. That means we don't have to become Jews to get something. That means that God has the same plan for Jew and Gentile in the new covenant. Same blessings, same privileges, same justification. Turn back quickly to Galatians chapter 3 and 4. We're going to look at two more things tonight, then I'm going to stop because this is probably enough for an introduction. I know it's a lot. There's a lot about Abraham, but. In Galatians four. Notice this, notice verse 12, Galatians 3, I'm sorry, 3, 12. The law is not a faith. That means if you're trying to be justified by your goodness, your good works, your law keeping, then that's human merit, that's works of the flesh, that's works. If you're trying to be justified by faith, there's no place for human effort in that level. And so, Paul says, the law is not a faith, but the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles. Notice that? Not a blessing of Abraham, the blessing of Abraham. Not one of the blessings of Abraham. The blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles that we might receive the promise spirit through faith. Now, what Paul is saying is that just like Abraham was justified by faith and received the spirit. So you get the blessing of Abraham in Christ because of what Christ has done. He was cursed. He hung on the tree. He died the cursed death so that we get the blessing of Abraham. We are under a curse by nature. Jesus was born under the law, became a curse. Son of Abraham said yes to the covenant curses, said yes, Father, I will take the covenant curses so that then he gives us by faith the covenant blessings in him. Jesus became a curse. Remember what God said to Abraham at the beginning. I will bless you. Everyone who blesses you, I will bless. Everyone who curses you, I will curse. And it's interesting that that blessing curse motif is even there in Genesis 12. So that when we come to the New Testament, we see how the blessing curse motif works out. We deserve curses. He gets the curses. We get the blessings in him. One place I want to take us as we close, what would Abraham have known? Stephen, I were talking about this a little bit earlier. And it's hard. I mean, it's hard for a lot of people to understand how much the Old Testament saints knew because we have limited data. But I think we have more in the New Testament than sometimes we we acknowledge. Turn to John 8, 58, as we close 56 through 58. One of the great problems with physical Israel was that ethnic Israel claimed physical descent from Abraham as the grounds of their blessing. That's what we call covenant perversion. If you make the covenant blessing dependent on physical descent or anything human, any human effort or human attempts at gaining it, then that's human effort. That's not promise. And the Jews were preeminently self-righteous, preeminently legalistic, and they were masters of covenant perversion. And so Jesus is arguing with them, they're arguing with Jesus about Abraham because... Jesus says to them that he comes from his father and they're of their father, the devil. Well, for you, that's a big slap in the face to say, you know, your mom fornicated with the devil is a big deal to say that to somebody. And Jesus, the Savior, says that that's that's not Mark Driscoll. It's Jesus saying that that's intense. It's intense. And they they were so nationalistically proud. Abraham is the guy. Abraham's the guy. We have one father, Abraham. And so notice what they say in 53. Are you greater than our father, Abraham, Jesus? Are you greater than Abraham? Nobody's greater than Abraham. Who died? The prophets died. Who do you make yourself to be? 54. Jesus answered, If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It's my father who glorifies me. Of whom you say he is our God, but you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Now listen, your father Abraham... Rejoice to see my day. And he saw it and was glad. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, Jesus says. That means Abraham was looking forward to the day of the Messiah, the Christ. The seed, the promised seed. Your father Abraham saw my day and he rejoiced to see it. He had joy over it, and he was glad that I was coming. He was glad that a Redeemer was coming. He was glad that a seed would come. He was glad that God would fulfill his promises. He was glad that it wasn't up to human effort and merit. And then notice what they say. You're not even 50. Have you seen Abraham? Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. Now, what Jesus is saying is that he is both Abraham's Lord, Yahweh, who made those promises, and he is Abraham's seed. He is both Abraham's Lord and Abraham's son. And how could Abraham look forward to see Jesus's day? Because he's Abraham's Lord. He's I am. He is I am that I am. who met Moses at the bush, who revealed himself to Israel. He is the great I Am. He is the ever-existing One, ever-living One. I was who I was. I am who I am. I will be who I will be. That's what the word means in the Hebrew. All those tenses, all in one. No beginning, no end. Jesus is God. He is Yahweh. And He is Abraham's son. Now, that's important. Because what God wants from us when we read portions in the Old Testament about Abraham is to see those things, those fulfillments in Jesus. Anything less than seeing his day and rejoicing in it and being glad is to miss the point of the Abrahamic Covenant. Anything less than seeing Christ and rejoicing and being glad is to miss the intent of everything God said to Abraham. I know there's a lot of Baptists here. This is not to be provocative. The Abrahamic Covenant and the New Covenant are one and the same in substance. The Abrahamic Covenant and the New Covenant are one and the same in substance. That substance is Christ. They are one and the same. The new is the ultimate fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. So much so, that Paul can say, if you are Christ's, you are Abraham's. If you are Christ's, you are Abraham's. Otherwise, if they weren't one and the same in substance, Paul never could have said that. He never could have said, if you are Christ, if you belong to Jesus, you are Abraham's descendants. Travis always jokes. And he's right. You can't sing, Father Abraham had many sons, and I am one of them, unless you get that and believe that. Only people that get that the Abrahamic Covenant and the New Covenant are one and the same in substance, obviously there's historical differences, but they're one and the same in the substance that runs through it. The marrow of it is the same. It's the acorn in the tree. Genesis 3.15 is the acorn in the tiniest form. The Abrahamic covenant is sort of the sprouting out. The new covenant is the ultimate fulfillment. The tree has blossomed. It's worldwide. Every tongue, tribe, nation, language, blessed in Jesus, the seed of Abraham. Now, this is so easy. As I say this stuff, I think, wow, it's easy. And yet so many people miss this. It's so simple. I mean, it's so simple when you think about it. If you keep your eyes fixed on the son of Abraham, you understand Abraham. You understand everything about the Abrahamic covenant. I'm going to recommend a book to you. I don't push books on people. I recommend them. I'm pushing a book on you. You will thank me and you will be tempted to name your second child after me. If you have a second child. Oh yes, we can. Your sixth child. There you go. Do you have six or seven? You have five. Yeah, your sixth child. OK, this book is kind of hard to find. You can order it online. It's $22. It's a hardback. You can get it from the Reformed Episcopal Recorder, I think is what it's called. The book is called The Abrahamic Covenant and the Gospels. The Abrahamic Covenant and the Gospels. It is all the biblical theology about Abraham that you could ever want to know. The best chapter in here, if you don't want to buy this, and you're compelled to name a kid after me, which I know you won't, I will photocopy for you pages 102 to 108, Christ as shield, Christ as reward. Now remember, what did God say to Abram? I will be your shield, your exceeding great reward. His name's Theophilus, the only guy ever in history to get named by his parents, Theophilus, besides the guy Luke wrote to. But Theophilus Herder, the Abrahamic Covenant in the Gospels, it is worth every penny.