“1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. 2 I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”
3 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.””
Years ago I went to a funeral in a very ceremonial church. As we were all waiting for the family to enter the sanctuary, the pastor entered holding the Bible, or, rather, he was patting the Bible. He held a gigantic Bible high in the air and walked down the middle aisle, patting it with his palm with each step. The goal of all of this seemed to be a show of respect for the Scriptures. It struck me as merely ceremonial when we failed to open the Bible at any point in the service.
Years and years before that, when I was still living in my parent’s home, I needed to throw out a Bible. It had a softcover and was falling apart. I took it out to the trash bin, which looked much like the Herm’s Sanitation trash bin that many of us have, and I simply stood there. I couldn’t throw it away. It just felt wrong. I took the Bible inside and gave it to my dad so that he could throw it away. If there was something evil about throwing away a Bible, I didn’t want to suffer the consequences. I apparently saw nothing wrong with my dad suffering the consequences. Now that’s just superstitious.
It’s right to respect the Scriptures, but respecting the Scriptures isn’t a matter of ceremony or superstition. Within these pages, God tells you about Himself. He tells you about yourself. He describes what a relationship between Him and humanity looks like.
Scripture describes both sides of this relationship. Today’s Scripture speaks of God’s side of this relationship and your side of the relationship. You respect God’s word not by patting your Bible ceremonially or by treating it with superstition. You respect God’s word by trusting what God says within it and by doing what God says within it. You respect God’s word by taking both sides of this divine-human relationship seriously. A relationship with God has two sides. That’s what we see in this morning’s Scripture and that’s the claim of this sermon: a relationship with God has two sides.
We will think of these two sides in two points. First: the obligations of the covenant. Second: the promises of the covenant. First, in verses 1-3, we see our side of the relationship with the obligations of the covenant. Second, in verses 4-8, we see God’s side of the relationship with the promises of the covenant.
First: the obligations of the covenant. We’ve been studying this relationship between God and Abram for some time now, and we’ve seen that it is unequal. They are covenant partners, but God is God and Abram is a mere mortal. You can see that in verse 1, ‘When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.”’
There has been a thirteen-year gap since chapter 16. God was completely free to remain silent for thirteen years. He was and is free to act when He sees best and free to remain silent when He sees best. He and Abram have a relationship, but it is a relationship that exists on God’s terms, and that is always the case with divine-human relationships. It couldn’t be otherwise. The fact that you can speak to God whenever you want in prayer is only due to the fact that God’s terms are very generous. The fact that you can open God’s word and hear from Him whenever you have the good sense to do so is only due to the fact that God’s terms are very generous.
You, like Abram, have no choice but to meet God on His terms. You can’t hear from Him in any way other than on His terms. You can’t come to Him in any other way than on His terms. He is what theologians call transcendent. He is beyond us. We can only be in relationship with Him because He makes it possible.
This relationship obviously has a particular gravity to it because of who God is. You see this in verse 1, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.”
God thinks that the sheer fact that He is God puts obligations on Abram. “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.” The fact that God is God is reason enough to revere Him.
The same is true today. Why gather to worship God? Because God is God. He is always worthy of worship. That really is reason enough. Why avoid sin? Because God is God and you are not. “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.”
That is the primary reason for obedience. We tend to focus on secondary reasons. A man gathers for worship in hopes of hearing something that might benefit him or avoiding a consequence he doesn’t want when in reality the fact that God is God is reason enough for him to come to worship. A teenage girl obeys dad and mom because she doesn’t want to get in trouble when in reality she would be wise to honor her father and mother because God said to do so, and she is living every moment before God whether she recognizes it or not. I tend to focus on secondary reasons for obedience—how will obedience benefit me, what will disobedience cost me—when I would be wise to focus on the primary reason, which God told Abram, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.”
If you are a parent, you have experienced a glimpse of God’s position. You have, at some point along the lines of an argument with your child thought or said these words, “because I’m your father. That is reason enough” or “because I’m your mother.” Now if you have that sense within you about your role in your relationship with your child and what you deserve, have the good sense to recognize in your walk before God.
If any of us saw God as He truly is, reverence and obedience would follow naturally. Abram recognized this as we see in verse 3; “Abram fell facedown.”
I do hope that is the posture of your heart when God speaks. We stand as a congregation in reverence for God when we hear His word read. Perhaps we would do well to fall facedown. Now, of course, it isn’t ultimately about the posture of your body; it is about the posture of your heart, but the body does matter. Abram fell facedown for a reason.
Could you bring yourself to fall facedown before God when He speaks? “This is the one I esteem,” says God, “he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.” That certainly describes Abram when he fell face down; the question for you is, ‘does describe that you in this morning’s encounter with God in His word?’ God is watching you just as He was watching Abram. Is this all ceremony and superstition for you, or are you mindful that you are a mortal and that God is God?
Abram’s part of the relationship with God was to walk before Him and be blameless; that’s verse 1, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.” First, let’s think about this obligation of walking before God. This language of walking before God, or walking with God, or walking in God’s ways runs throughout the entirety of Scripture, but what does it mean? I think that Claus Westermann’s description is helpful; it is, “a life in which every step is taken looking to God.”
God was calling Abram to be mindful of Him in everything. He was calling Abram to live before His face continually. That is always the call for God’s people. That is what is the reality behind the call to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That is the call upon you. You are to look to God in every step you take.
Now I want you to consider the frame of your heart this morning in regard to that expectation. Do you think God is expecting too much or too little when He calls you, like Abram, to walk before Him all the days of your life? Do you think God is asking too much or too little when He asks you to love Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Do you wish that God required less or do you wish that you could give God more?
I know that something has gone awry in me when I wish that God required less. I know that something is going right inside me when I wish I could give God more. I know that something is wrong inside me when I see His commands and expectations as burdensome. I know that’s wrong because the apostle John is clear that God’s commands are not burdensome. I know that something is right inside of me when I say with Isaac Watts, “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.”
God called Abram to devote every portion of his life to Him. He was and is worthy of that. He also called Abram to be blameless. That’s our second focus in Abram’s obligation; “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.”
We tend to trip up over this word “blameless” because we think that God is calling for moral perfection in this life. We imagine that God was expecting the impossible from Abram and, therefore, from us. Now God knows far better than you or I that none of us will achieve moral perfection in this life. By calling Abram to be blameless, God wasn’t demanding perfection. He was calling Abram to keep the covenant. You see this is all couched in the covenant in verses 1-2, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. I will confirm my covenant between me and you.”
God didn’t expect moral perfection out of Abram. He expected Abram to keep the covenant. Abram could keep the covenant. There are covenant keepers in Scripture. They are righteous. They are blameless. Think about Luke’s description of Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist; “Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly.” Luke wasn’t saying they were morally perfect. He wasn’t saying they weren’t sinners. He was saying that they were covenant keepers. They had, in the words of the Old Testament, circumcised hearts. They were alive to God. They were dead to sin and alive to God. That is what God expected of Abram.
That is what God expects of you if you are in covenant with Him. If you are a Christian, you are part of what is called the new covenant. This new covenant is described in what is called the New Testament. “New Testament” is another way of saying “New Covenant.”
In the New Covenant, you have promises from God like Abram did. You also have obligations toward God like Abram did. There was no way for Abram to have the promises without the obligations, and the same is true for us. This is why Jesus said, ‘not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father.’ Only the covenant keepers will enjoy the promises of the covenant.
This is simply another way of saying that you need to be born again to enter the kingdom of the heaven. That’s what Jesus said; “truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
Now if you are not born again or if you are falling back into sin, the covenant will seem burdensome, impossible, and pointless. If you are born again and walking in the truth, the covenant will seem liberating because its obligations are freedom from the bondage of sin. It will seem “easy and light” as Jesus describes it because you have the Holy Spirit. It will seem fitting because you love God and obedience is His love language. Burdensome, impossible, pointless, or liberating, fitting, easy and light—which describes your view of Christianity?
Covenants consist in obligations, which we have studied to this point, and covenants consist in promises to which we now turn our attention in our second point: the promises of the covenant. These promises of verses 4-8 might sound familiar by now. These promises of verses 4-8 hopefully sound familiar to you by now if you have been with us for this entire series. These promises break down into three categories: land, identification, and descendants.
Throughout these nine sermons, we’ve seen these three categories time and time again: God promised land, God promised to identify Himself with Abram, God promised Abram descendants.
What’s interesting is that here in chapter 17, we see that these promises have expanded in scope and depth over time. What was simply, “this land,” in chapter 12 became, “all the land which you can see,” in chapter 13, and the land “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,” in chapter 15, and now finally, “the whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you” in chapter 17.
What was a simple promise of identification in chapter 12, “I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse” was applied to Abram’s offspring in trouble in chapter 15, “I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions,” and now to generations to come in general in chapter 15, “to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.”
What was a rather vague promise of descendants in chapter 12 was refined to descendants as numerous as the dust of the earth in chapter 13, descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky in chapter 15, and now in chapter 17 Abram is promised that he will become the father of many nations, that he will be very fruitful, that God will increase his numbers, and that kings will come from him.
The promises continued grow in scope and depth. This had to be somewhat bewildering to Abram. Put yourself in his position. He’d been waiting for the promises and what he often got from God was more promises. Now if I were Abram and I saw these increasing promises, I’d be thinking one of two things: either God can and will keep His word beyond my expectations or He keeps upping the promises without delivering because He is a con artist. This is, after all, what con artists do. They promise and when their promises are delayed, they give greater promises, and when those promises are delayed, they give still greater promises to keep you on the hook.
Now you face that same question. You have promises that, like these promises to Abram, have grown beyond what you could ask or imagine. Think about this promise from Revelation, “God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Either God is able to do even that and will do that or this is all a big con that has simply grown and grown.
The rest of Scripture was written, in part, to demonstrate that this is no con. God was faithful to His promises to Abram. He was faithful to His promises of land, identification, and descendants. The book of Joshua spells out the fulfillment of this promise of land. The book of Exodus, and all of Scripture, spell out the fulfillment of His identification with His people. The rest of the book of Genesis, and the rest of Scripture, spell out His fulfillment of descendants. We read about Isaac, and Jacob, and Jacob’s twelve sons. The genealogy of Jesus in the book of Matthew tells us about the king of kings who came from Abram. Scripture is written, in large part, to tell you that God is a promise keeper and can be trusted. That’s why you can trust Him.
These promises to Abram are ultimately about the new creation which has everything to do with you. God has promised to make all things new. He has promised to put right what went wrong in Eden. You see a bit of that in verse 6, in which God says, “I will make you very fruitful.” This is connected with what He said in verse 2, “I will greatly increase your numbers.” In other words, “I will make you fruitful and I will multiply you.” That is Eden language.
God’s command and blessing to Adam and Eve was, “be fruitful and multiply.” The author used that same language here to show that God’s promises to Abram were a way back to Eden. “The author’s purpose,” as John Sailhamer put it, “is to show that God’s covenant with Abraham is the chosen means through which His original blessing will again be channeled to all humankind.”
It should be obvious to everyone that life is messed up. Just turn on the news. Log on to Facebook. Life has always been messed up. Today is just a different flavor of the same mess. We have always been messed up because we fell into sin. Genesis 3 truly happened, and you have lived every day of your life in the aftermath. Your behavior is part of the aftermath, and you cannot put yourself or the world right.
God can. Scripture describes how God can put you right. Scripture describes how God will set the world right. This is why, in chapter 11, the book of Genesis suddenly narrows in on this one man, Abram. It goes from the Tower of Babel which was man’s attempt to reach heaven and transitions into this story of Abram which is God’s means to reach humanity. God chose Abram. He chose him to bless all humanity, which is why He renamed Abram “Abraham”, as you see in verse 4; “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.”
The name “Abraham” is a promise that God is reconciling the nations to Himself; the name “Abraham” means, “father of many.” The blessings are for the many. The blessings are for the children of Abraham. This is the new humanity. This is the new creation.
We tend to think of names as mere labels. We tend to think our name is merely what we are called, but in the Old Testament a name expressed a person’s essence; it expressed the truth of who that person was or who their parents hoped they would become. “Adam” means “man” because he was the first man. Abigail’s first husband’s name was “Nabal” which means “fool” and he certainly was a fool. “Samuel” means “asked of God” because his mother asked God for a child. God renamed Abram “Abraham” because he would be the father of many; he would be, in the words of Sailhamer, God’s, “chosen means through which His original blessing will again be channeled to all humankind.”
You can only enjoy grace because God renamed Abram “Abraham.” You can only enjoy grace because the blessing was expanded to many. You can only enjoy grace because blessing came to the whole world through Abraham’s promised descendant Jesus of Nazareth.
He is means by which humanity returns to God. He is the means by which humanity enters the new creation. It is by faith in this promised one of God that you enjoy the blessings of Abraham, the man of faith. That is available in no other way. You must be a child of Abraham. You must be among the many for whom Abraham was named, “father of many.”
That’s the children’s song—“Father Abraham had many sons and many sons had father Abraham. I am one of them.” Are you? Do you have faith like Abraham? Are you in relationship with God?
If not, you can be. You can know God as a friend. The Bible will become a description of your relationship with Him. It will be as real to you as it was to Abraham because he was living it just as you will be living it. You come by way of Jesus. He is your way into the covenant as we will see in the sacrament in the words, “this is the new covenant in my blood.”
That is the fullest expression of the extent God’s faithfulness. That is the guarantee of His promises. He has given Himself. He calls you to give yourself. He calls you to walk before Him. He calls you to be blameless. It’s up to Him to keep all His promises. He will. Will you? That’s what a relationship with God looks like. Amen.