The Abrahamic Covenant

All right.

Let's let's go ahead and pray.

Father in heaven, uh, thank you for your blessings.

As we study this, Father, we just we pray for guidance and um also Father again just pray for um a heart that that each of us can have.

Father realizes there are different views on this sort of stuff, and ultimately we want to look to you and we want to understand as best we can, but we do appreciate that others come to different conclusions on things.

And so we just ask as we study together, though, that we could learn more of your word and that we could come to appreciate it better.

And we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right.

We began a study last week regarding the Old Testament prophecies about the nation of Israel.

I don't know why.

I don't know if that's why there's nobody here today or not.

Um could be it.

Um I didn't get into a lot of details for our scriptures.

We did look at some.

Primarily what I wanted to do then was to give you an overview of the two main theologies concerning Israel and prophecy.

They differ quite a bit.

Uh I'm not going to revisit much of last week unless it pertains to this week.

Uh so if you do find some of the terminology confusing, you know, I would just urge you to listen again to last week's message.

I do want to reiterate, as I did then, as I alluded to in the prayer, this is not a salvation issue.

We we are studying it more than anything else because it just kind of raises its head in the geopolitical sphere we're in with Israel.

And uh the other reason is I just never addressed it.

So I never really tried to put all this together in all my time here.

So I just decided I should spend some time studying.

After studying it, I see why I've never done it before.

Before retirement, I would never have had enough time.

There's no shortage of material on this stuff.

Goodness gracious.

It's not for the faint of heart.

Uh and today's sermon won't be either.

So if you um I I can't break it up.

I thought about, I have broke it up some, but not as far as the Abrahamic covenant.

Well, I'm gonna go through it pretty detailed.

So it may be a little bit longer than usual.

If you get tired, don't don't I won't be upset at all, even if you need to walk out.

If I'm the last one here standing and everybody's gone, that's fine.

We'll put it on tape and you can go back and listen to it later.

Um so just just that disclaimer there.

Okay, so there are these two primary approaches to how the Old Testament prophecies concerning Israel will ultimately be fulfilled.

There are more than these two approaches, but these are the two primary views.

And frankly, the other systems it seems to me filter into these primary understandings with some nuanced differences.

So I'm not going to concern myself with the minority views.

I did mention one of them last week if you're interested in that kind of stuff.

Um I had stated last week that I would that I wanted to limit this to two messages.

I there there's too much material for me to just stop at two and give it any justice.

In effect, there's too many promises to Israel to just cut it that short.

With that in mind, I'm actually extending this series.

I'm gonna cut it off at four with next week's message, which means I am gonna preach about it on Wednesday night.

And I realize a lot of you, or not necessarily a lot of you, but not all of you come on Wednesdays.

But we usually have a good turnout, so I'll record the message for any of you can't be here.

And I I hope the message on Wednesday, the fact that we're doing that, won't dissuade you from coming.

Um, but I just decided I need the time.

It's if I if I cut it off, I couldn't have cut it off today.

It would have been so clunky and there would have been too much to think about.

So I didn't want to skip over all that.

Um I will try to provide some practical application as we go.

I did a little bit of that last week.

But all in all, I would just say this: take last week, this week, Wednesday, and next week as an opportunity to learn your Bible.

Okay, particularly the Old Testament and what the New Testament says about the Old Testament.

So next week we'll we'll be at the end of this for this year.

So hang in there.

Hang with me.

Um, to revisit, I will mention this again.

One approach to the promises uh to Israel is what we call dispensationalism.

This theology says that Christ will return and set up a millennial kingdom, and the nation of Israel will be exalted during this time.

This will be the reign of the Messiah Jesus, as and all believers who were raised or raptured into immortality will also reign with him.

There will also be a human kingdom, and by human I mean mortals.

Well, we're still human, but I mean mortal and mortal bodies, that will consist of Jew and Gentile, believers who have come through the great tribulation.

And then upon the establishment of the Messianic, the Davidic kingdom in the millennium, the Old Testament prophecies would be fulfilled really in a very literal sense.

I mean, so as you if you read the Old Testament prophecies, and uh you the idea is in dispensationalism is that they'll be pretty much fulfilled as described there.

Um so that's that's the one.

The other approach is called remnant or replacement theology.

And this is the idea that prophecies concerning the Old Testament Israel, current concerning Old Testament Israel, has already been fulfilled in one of three ways.

First, the prophecies were actually fulfilled in the Old Testament.

Second, the prophecies or promises were conditional, and if Israel failed to meet the conditions, they would not receive them.

And then, third, the promises were fulfilled through Christ.

And it is the latter where the theology gets its name of replacement or remnant theology, and that while the promises or prophecies were fulfilled in Christ, those benefits extend to, and there's a little bit of back and forth about who it extends to, but it definitely extends to the remnant of believing Jews, and then I think most think more fully then to the church at large.

And in saying that it would not be to the ethnic Jews, not to the Jewish race per se.

Okay, so now I've I've stated my views of prophecy have changed somewhat over the years.

As you may have detected last week, I do lean toward remnant theology, and I I can tell you why, because of my beliefs as far as the covenants.

It was funny.

I to me, I I read one of the guys from Dispensational View that quoted, you know, that he thought the problem was as far as people not believing in that view, is that they didn't understand the covenants.

And I was thinking, well, I don't think you understand the covenants, not to be bombastic, but you know, we we came through that.

I was under the old covenant, so in a sense, and so that was that's why we ended up with the name New Covenant Church in Christ.

There was a big study about the covenants, and what does that mean, and how did we get here, and that sort of thing.

So I think God's covenantal agreements are what drive our theology.

Um that said, I am less inclined to sign off on millennialism, which I said is linked to remnant theology, and that's the idea, again, that we're in the millennium right now and there won't be a future millennium.

I think there's a good possibility of a millennium in the future.

I, you know, I'm open, I'm I'm looking at both of those views, but I do have trouble ascribing that if there is a millennial, its primary purpose is to go back to the old covenant existence.

And that's basically what dispensationalism is teaching.

But that is my biases on this, and I wanted y'all to know, because I know some of you uh believe in at least some tenets of dispensationalism, if not fully.

I do want to present both views fairly.

And if you don't think I'm doing that, you can call me out on it, or you couldn't even speak on it.

You know, it's again, it's not a salvation issue, and I don't have any problem with anybody uh espousing that view.

Um so just so y'all so know, I haven't forgot about Ezekiel 40 that we looked at last week.

I indicated I would come back today, and I wrote it out and I had it in the sermon.

I thought, uh no, I can't do that to these poor people because they'll be here all day if I add that to it.

So I read I I I'm not gonna go over that today.

We're we just don't have time for it.

I'll address it in full on Wednesday.

An issue there, you may recall, is whether the temple described there is a millennial temple.

I don't think so.

But neither do I think it was fulfilled in the New Testament as some remnant people think.

I think it was a temple that was going to be that never was, but I'll explain why on Wednesday.

Now, what I want to do today is to consider the Abrahamic covenant.

There are really three Old Testament covenants that we are going to need to look at to grasp all that may apply to the nation of Israel or ethnic Israel.

Now, let me define those terms really quickly.

The nation of Israel is just as it sounds.

There's a nation called Israel.

It was reformed again in 1948, right?

It's over there now, it's in the middle of all kinds of things going on in the Middle East, right?

Many think of 1948.

That 1948 event is Israel coming into a nation as a fulfillment of prophecies.

Prophecy.

I'm not going to get in that today.

I'll touch on it next week.

So that's national Israel.

If I do say ethnic Israel, and in thinking about it, I don't think I made a lot of distinctions about this, but it's possible it might come up in my mind.

So ethnic Israel, when I say that, I'm referring to the Jews racially.

Okay?

So there is a nation of Israel now.

Not all ethnic Jews are there, right?

Jews are still scattered everywhere, but most of the nation of Israel is made up of ethnic Jews now, though not all, but but most of most of it is.

So in thinking about Israel, Israel, again, is of course a significant player in today's world.

There's no doubt about that.

The question we are trying to figure it out is whether Israel is biblically significant or not.

And to do that, I think we need to understand the covenants that God made with Abraham, and then with the nation of Israel itself, which is the Mosaic or Sinatic covenant given on Mount Sinai right, or what we often refer to as the old covenant.

And then finally, the covenant God made with David, the Davidic covenant.

Of course, the other covenants that's going to come into consideration is the new covenant, the covenant that we read of in the New Testament that Jesus instituted in the upper room with his disciples, and that we are all privileged to be a part of.

Okay.

But we begin with Abraham.

Abraham is, of course, where the nation of Israel came from.

So I want to give you a very brief history of Israel.

I think this will be helpful.

And this is pretty much in agreement.

There's not dispute about this, okay?

This is just history.

From Abraham came Isaac and Jacob.

Jacob's name was changed to Israel.

Okay, he had 12 sons.

His 12 sons formed the 12 tribes of Israel.

So initially, Israel was just a family.

And a family went to Egypt to get food, you may recall.

And Joseph, of course, provided for the family there.

Eventually, Joseph died, and Moses was sent to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt where they were in slavery.

They left, they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

And during that time, they were under the Mosaic covenant, again, what we call the old covenant.

That's uh the law, of course, with its heart as the Ten Commandments.

We all understand that.

We'll consider a bit of that today.

As God prescribed, the Jews were to use a tabernacle during this time for their worship.

It's probably the first portable building in history.

It wasn't just a tent, it had a tent covering over it, but they built it with wood.

It's described in Exodus.

And this is where they offered sacrifices.

And so this was, you know, it was portable and it could be moved while they were wandering in the wilderness.

But eventually, of course, a temper, a temple, which took the place, the tabernacle was for moving, the temple was stationary and there was built, and it was built elaborately for worship in Solomon's time.

Okay, so the Jews, however, we know continually rebelled against God.

And God sent prophets, including Isaiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, a lot of the prophets we read in the Old Testament, to try to get Israel to repent.

The people did not repent as a whole.

Now, a remnant did, and God mentions that from time to time, but the nation did not.

Eventually, the Israelites were forced into Babylonian exile.

The first temple was destroyed.

Solomon's temple was destroyed.

After that, there was a restoration of the Jews.

You can read about some of that in Haggai and Zechariah.

He's speaking about that time.

Those prophets are speaking about that time, and I think to some extent, Daniel.

A second temple was then built in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.

And you can read in those books about the second temple being built.

That is the temple that was standing when Jesus was born and roamed the earth.

And that is the temple that was ultimately destroyed in A.D.

70.

Okay, so it's good for you to realize there have already been two temples built and destroyed in Israel.

That's, I think, helpful in coming to terms with different ideas about Israel or different beliefs about a temple.

Because a big belief in dispensationalism is that there's going to be a third temple in the end times, and most believe there's going to be a fourth temple during the millennium that is described in that Ezekiel passage I mentioned last week, and that again we'll discuss again on Wednesday.

But first, the Abrahamic covenant.

All of you understand, I think, that a covenant in Scripture is kind of like a contract, right?

A covenant is considered more serious, though, than a contract because there's no way to properly break a covenant.

Okay, contracts or legal agreements, they will often have escape clauses.

You know, there's a way to get out of it.

Covenant relationships can only be broken through heinous sin.

Okay, we normally think of marriage.

That's the one that comes to mind.

The only way a marriage can break up is if somebody is cheating on the covenant.

Okay, so a covenant can be broken but not legitimately.

It can only be broken illegitimately.

Okay.

Now, the the reason that folks think Israel is special as a nation is because of the covenants or promises that God made to them in the Old Testament.

So we're going to look at the covenants today and Wednesday, and then we're going to look at the extended promises and the current state of Israel next Sunday.

The first covenant that we're going to look at today, and this is probably the most important one with how people view Israel, honestly, for the modern day view of Israel, is the covenant God made with Abraham.

And so again, I'm warning a lot of scriptures today.

So I'm going to try to go fairly quickly because I don't want to keep you here all day.

So, you know, again, hopefully you can go back and listen later if you miss something.

So please turn me.

We're going to start in Genesis.

Genesis 12, and Genesis 12, verses 1 through 3.

Genesis 12:1–3

The Lord said to Abram, Go from your land, your relatives, and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation.

I will bless you.

I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you.

I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt.

And all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

This is the initial covenant.

God's promises to Abram's, promises to make Abram's house great.

And we'll see where God changes Abram's name to Abraham later.

I just mentioned that because I sometimes I get them mixed up about where we're at at that point.

If I call him Abram or Abraham, the same thing.

It doesn't make any difference as far as what we're doing.

So a point to note here and forward is this, though.

Are there any conditions on this covenant in question?

So whatever covenant we're looking at, we do need to understand is God saying this is conditional or not?

Now, is there anything here that Abraham has to do?

Well, yes, there is.

He has to leave his land and his relatives.

That's verse one.

The Lord said to Abram, Go from your land, your relatives, and your father's house.

Presumably, if Abraham said, nah, I'm not doing that, he would not have got the blessing.

And in fact, uh, we read later on how it took him a little longer to get where he was actually supposed to get to, but we don't need to worry about that today.

But in effect, he has to relocate, he has to trust God, go to a land he's never seen.

At the time he was called, and given this covenant, he's in Babylon, which is modern-day Iraq.

He has to make this long journey to Israel, what we now call Israel.

In Abraham's day, Israel was called the land of Canaan.

But the only condition we see here is that God says, Go from your land and I will make you into a great nation.

And he also says, just note here, all peoples on the earth will be blessed through you.

Okay.

I'll resist the urge to expound on that.

There's some more about this covenant then in just a few verses down.

So, verse 7.

The Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring, I will give this land.

Alright?

So the land will be given to Abraham's offspring.

The term is literally seed, and I want you to remember that for later reference.

But here's a promise that God will give the land of Canaan to Abraham.

What we and it's the land what we now call Israel, and really a little more, to Abraham's offspring.

No conditions are noted here, right?

Abraham has journeyed, and God just says, I'm going to give the land to your seed.

Okay.

Abraham has been promised a lot of offspring and a land for that offspring.

Pretty clear so far, I think.

Okay, so let's move over to chapter 13, Genesis 13, beginning in verse 14.

After Lot had separated from him, the Lord said to Abram, look from the place where you are, look north and south, east and west, for I will give you and your offspring forever all the land that you see.

I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can count the dust of the earth, then your offspring could be counted.

Get up and not walk around the land through its length and its width, for I will give it to you.

Now note here, dispensationalists certainly believe this is indicating that the Jews shall have a claim to the land, because God says he is giving the land forever to Abraham's offspring.

And again we see here God says he will give Abraham many, many descendants, and those descendants are to receive a land.

So we've clearly got here a promise of seed, offspring, and a promise of land.

Okay?

No doubt there.

Chapter 15.

Chapter 15.

Verse 5.

I'm gonna read through this.

I think it's important.

It's a little dry, but I'm gonna read through it all the way.

Starting verse 5, all the way through the end of the chapter.

He took him outside.

Um, look at the sky and count the stars if you are able to count them.

Then he said to them, Your offspring will be that numerous.

Abram believed the Lord, and then he credited to him as righteousness.

He also said to him, I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.

But he said, Lord God, how can I know I will possess it?

He said to him, Bring me a three-year-old cow, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.

So he brought all these to him, cut them in half, and laid the pieces opposite each other, but he did not cut the birds in half.

Now what's going to happen here is a covenantal, it's like God is ratifying the covenant.

I'm not going to get into details about how we know all that and stuff, but you can trust me on there.

You can read about it and look it up.

There's not a lot of debate about this part either.

Birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

As the sun was setting, a deep sleep came over Abram, and suddenly great terror and darkness descended on him.

Then the Lord said to him, Know this for certain, your offspring will be resident aliens for 400 years in a land that does not belong to them, and will be enslaved and oppressed.

However, I will judge the nation they serve, and afterward they will go out with many possessions.

And of course, there what he's talking about is them being in Egypt, being in slavery, and they eventually do go out, they do go out with many possessions.

But you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried in good old age.

And the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites have not yet reached its full measure.

When the sun had set and it was dark, a smoking firepart and flaming porch appeared and passed between the divided animals.

On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, I give this land to your offspring from the brook of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River, the land of the Kenites, the Kenesites, the Catamites, the Hephaitites, the Perizzites, Rephiam, Amorites, Canaanites, Gergesites, and Jebusites.

I want to say parasites, just seeing with sites in it, right?

But anyway, you get the point there.

So it's confirmation again of the promise of the offspring and the land, although there are some more certainly specific points about the details of the land boundaries here.

So from this language, in the previous language, I think we can understand why dispensationalists believe this is an open and shut case.

They say Abraham's offspring gave Abraham's, God gave Abraham's offspring the land where Israel is now, and God set up the covenant himself, and earlier he said, it's forever, it's a done deal.

Quoting from the Jesus plus nothing site, which is a dispensational site, it says, quote, it is important to note that this was an unconditional covenant.

God put Abraham in a deep sleep while making this covenant, showing that God alone was responsible to keep it.

Abraham's descendants would become a great nation.

They would come under God's protection by extension of the comment that I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.

And you've probably heard some pastors make that kind of reference, that we should bless Israel because of this promise, lest we be cursed.

Okay.

So there is one uh more passage we need to read in Genesis.

And it's here we come to another condition.

Okay, so Genesis 17, Genesis 17, beginning in verse 1 and 2.

When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him, saying, I am God Almighty, live in my presence and be blameless.

I will set up my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you greater.

So again, he refers to the covenant.

Then notice verse 7.

I will confirm my covenant that is between me and you and your future offspring throughout their generations.

It is a permanent covenant to be your God and the God of your offspring after you, and to you and your future offspring, I will give the land where you are residing, all the land of Canaan as a permanent possession, I will be their God.

Okay, so he talks clearly about the permanency there.

Uh now, verse nine, God also said to Abraham, As for you and your offspring, after you uh throughout their generations, as for you, sorry, as for you and your offspring, after you throughout their generations, they are to keep my covenant.

This is my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you, which you are to keep.

Every one of your males must be circumcised.

You must be circumcised in the the flesh of your foreskin to serve as a sign of the covenant.

Throughout your generations, every male among you is to be circumcised at eight days old.

Every male born in your household or purchased from any foreigner and not your offspring.

Whether born in your household or purchased, he must be circumcised.

My covenant will be marked in your flesh as a permanent covenant.

If any male is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that man will be cut off from his people.

He has broken my covenant.

Okay?

Now, I want to make sure that you catch this.

To be part of this Abrahamic covenant here did not require you to be in Abraham's bloodline.

This means that even if Abraham, and this is what it says here, has a direct child who was not circumcised, he would not be regarded as keeping the covenant, and he would be cut off from his people.

However, a purchased servant who was not part of his bloodline, who was a foreigner, and was circumcised, was part of the covenant.

And so I stress that just so that you understand, from the beginning, the covenant was not strictly a matter of biology or ethnicity.

It was not racial.

It was about them being chosen, and we won't get into that today, but they were chosen for a special purpose.

Now, of course, being in Abraham's direct line had its advantages because you had to leg up in ancestral access to the covenant.

But it's also clear it wasn't just about ancestry.

After all, they were chosen.

Why?

So that all the nations would be blessed through them, through the offspring of Abraham.

And of course, all the way through Christ, we know.

So and I'll look again at verse 27.

And all the men of his household household, whether born in his household or purchased from a foreigner, were circumcised with it.

And so they're making the point there that circumcision is what's um showing fulfillment of the covenant on Abraham's side.

Now, now we know this clearly from the New Testament.

Circumcision was not a permanent sign, that was a type of what was to come with the spiritual fulfillment of a circumcised heart.

And this is going to be a theme of sorts as we continue.

So I want us to consider this.

The Bible is loaded with what we call types and antitypes between the Old Testament and New Testament, and most agree with that, no matter what side they're on.

Anti in this case does not mean opposite.

You know, that's what we typically have Christ, antichrist.

No.

Anti in this case means anticipated.

So what it's saying is there is an event or situation in the Old Testament that's a type, and then in the New Testament, there is an anticipated fulfillment.

And they just refer to it as an anti-type.

I don't know why it seems to make it confusing to me, but that's how it's referred to.

Type and anti-type.

So there is, it means again, anticipated.

That's how I remember.

Remember, anti in that case means anticipated.

So circumcision is like that.

We read of the type.

The antitype is mentioned in Romans 2 and verse, starting in verse 25.

Paul writes, Circumcision benefits you if you observe the law, but if you're a lawbreaker, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.

So he basically says, Well, that's great if you're keeping the law, but you can be circumcised if you don't keep the law, it don't really matter.

So if you're an uncircumcised, but if you're uncircumcised and you keep the law's requirements, will not un his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision?

So he's like, you know, you might be uncircumcised, but if you're doing what the law requires, then that counts as circumcision.

And here he explains why.

A man who is physically uncircumcised, but who keeps the law will judge you who are a lawbreaker in spite of having the letter of the law in circumcision.

For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, and true circumcision is not something visible in the flesh.

On the contrary, a person who is a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart by the spirit, not the letter.

That person's praise is not from people, but from God.

Okay?

So what Paul makes clear there is that a true Jew in New Testament thought is determined by inward circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.

And there are other of these clear types, anti-types in Scripture.

The most obvious perhaps is the sacrifices that were done in the Old Testament.

They were a type, but Jesus is the anticipated fulfillment of that.

I won't turn there for the sake of time.

I'll reference 1 Corinthians 5, verse 6-8.

1 Corinthians 5:6–8

Paul says, Let us keep the feast, not with the leaven of malice, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

You know, the old covenant prescribed the feast of unleavened bread.

Any of you that were in the worldwide church of God, we kept that.

We could not only not eat leavened bread, and you had to eat unleavened bread, but you couldn't have any any leaven in the house.

It was the one time of year that both my car and my house were clean.

And boy did I dread.

I had to get in there and clean that stuff up.

So when the Worldwide Church of God said, Well, that's the old covenant, not the new covenant, I was on board for that reason alone.

I kid, but uh I was happy about it.

So, anyway, leaven was a type of sin in the Old Testament.

The idea of eating unleavened bread then represented a spiritual antity in the New Testament, not a food, but that we live a holy life.

Free from leaven, which is a type of sin, free from sin ultimately.

So Paul never prescribed that we keep the Old Testament holy days.

Rather, we were to fulfill the spiritual intent of them.

Okay, and then quickly over in 1 Corinthians 10, 6, I'm going to turn there because it mentions the word type.

1 Corinthians 10.

I should have marked these, but then 1 Corinthians 10, verse 6.

1 Corinthians 10:6

There are a few of them.

Now these things took place as examples for us so that we will not desire evil things as they did.

Now it says examples in the CSB.

I think most of your translations probably says type, because that's really what it means.

Paul is using the word type there.

The word um he's saying these things were a type to us.

In other words, the Israel coming out of Egypt was a type of us coming out of a lost condition into salvation.

And we understood that in World Why Church God.

I think they taught that to an extent.

So, in short, in comparison to the Jews of the old covenant, the Jews live physically often what Christians are to live spiritually.

In any case, we and it is true in many cases, we end up living holy lives out physically, but the main thrust of it is the main idea is we do it inwardly.

Because Jesus, of course, had a problem with the Pharisees.

He said, We're here doing some of it, but it's just an outward appearance, it's just for show.

It's not a change in your heart.

And so that's the idea in the New Testament.

Um, so what does this mean for the Abrahamic covenant?

Well, this is the part where some of the debate gets started.

So let's look at what it says in the New Testament.

Galatians 3.

Galatians 3.

I'm going to start in verse 10 for context.

Now, of course, and you'll remember, we'll even see a little bit of it here, but Paul has stressed in Galatians that we are justified by faith, not by the works of the law.

But now he does come to a section where he's going to talk about the promises to Abraham.

Galatians 3, verse 10.

Galatians 3:10

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it's written, everyone who does not do everything written in the book of laws is cursed.

Now it's clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith.

But the law is not based on faith.

Instead, the one who does these things will live by them.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, becoming a curse for us because it is written, curses everyone who hung on a tree.

The purpose was that this was that the blessing of Abraham will come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus, so that we could receive the promised spirit through faith.

Brothers and sisters, I'm using a human illustration.

No one sets aside or makes addition to a validated human will.

So like a probated will, nobody makes a change to that.

Now the promises, so he's saying, they weren't changed, he's explaining them.

Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.

He does not say and to seeds as though referring to many, but referring to one and to your seed, who is Christ.

My point is this the law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously established by God and thus cancel the promise.

For if the inheritance is based on the law, it is no longer based on the promise.

But God has graciously given it to Abraham through the promise.

Now, it's easy enough to see here that the Mosaic covenant, the old covenant, does not invalidate the promises made to Abraham.

That's clear.

We're all agreed on that.

But what else is being said?

Well, notice verse 16 again.

He does not say the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.

He does not say and to seeds, as though referring to many, but referring to one, to your seed, who is Christ.

The promises he said spoken to Abraham.

Which promises?

Well, he doesn't distinguish.

I mean, he appears to be talking about all of them, but he is talking in the context of seed to your offspring.

So some take it that he's only talking about the offspring here, not the land.

We'll come back to that.

But it's certainly the promises we read in Genesis, some of them.

Notices he says the promises were made to a seed, not seeds of that seed is Christ.

And then the commentary, Paul says, He, God, did not say two seeds plural, but to seed.

Now, we know that the physical offspring of Abraham, all the Israelites, were the seed of Abraham or the seeds of Abraham.

The word seed can be singular or plural, just like offspring can, which is curious within itself, right?

It's curious that that's the word that was used.

But he um said, Paul says, it's to your seed who is Christ.

I mean, he says that's who it is.

He's saying the promise was ultimately to Abraham and Christ, and then notice the end of the chapter, Galatians 3, beginning in verse 27.

For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.

There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or free male, female, since you are all one in Christ Jesus, and if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise.

Now, that almost sounds like Paul is contradicting himself because he's talking what we might think of about multiple people again.

He's talking about people in the church.

But I would say it's not contradictory because it focuses on what he stresses in the New Testament.

In Christ, we are one.

We are Christ's body.

We are not many, we are one.

However, the Israelites, the Jews who do not believe, are not in Christ.

They are not one, they are many.

The Israelites are seeds of Abraham, but they are not the seed to whom the promises are made.

Christ is the seed to whom the promises are made.

Let's look at John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

John chapter 8 and verse 31.

John 8 · chapter mention

Begin reading here.

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, If you continue in my word, you really are my disciples.

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Now this seems to offend them.

They say, We are descendants of Abraham, they answered him, and we have never been enslaved to anyone.

How can you say you will become free?

Jesus responded, Truly I tell you, everyone who commits a sin is a slave of sin.

A slave does not remain in the household forever, but a son does remain forever.

So if the son sets you free, you will really be free.

I speak what I have seen in the presence of the Father, so then you do what you have heard from your father.

Our father is Abraham, they replied.

If you were Abraham's children, he's already called them their descendants, but he said, if you were his children, Jesus told them, you would do what Abraham did.

But now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.

Abraham did not do this.

You're doing what your father does.

We weren't born of sexual immorality, they said.

We have one father, God.

Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me.

Because I came from God and I am here.

For I didn't come on my own, but he sent me.

Why don't you understand what I say?

Because you cannot listen to my word.

You are of your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth.

Now Jesus is speaking here with a group of Jews, and he says, Yeah, you're Abraham's descendants physically, but you're not his children, not spiritually.

Not, and the reason is why?

Because you reject me.

You're rejecting the Messiah.

Remember, John the Baptist told them God can raise children from Abraham from these stones.

Physical ancestry does not guarantee a place in God's family.

It's those who are in Christ who are also the seed of Abraham.

Now, a dispensationalist might agree with this, but they would say that it stops at the end of the age and that God is going to bring them all in.

Okay, well, that's an interpretation of scripture.

I get that about the end times.

And they would also turn to Romans 11 to counteract a bit of this, where I read last time that all Israel will be saved.

And I should say that practically everyone who believes that Romans 11, 26 refers to ethnic Israel or the nation of Israel believes it only refers to the end time generation.

Okay.

I was trying to get them resurrected from the beginning of time, but uh, you know, practically everyone believes it just refers to the end time generation, and that not every Jew will be saved.

And Paul does write in Romans 11, 29 that God's gracious gifts and calling are irrevocable.

So in context, they believe that is referring uh to ethnic Israel or national Israel.

And I said we'll try to study more of that whole passage next year.

That's my whole board willing.

But um, to me, Galatians 3 here seems clear on how the New Testament tells us to think about the seed.

Okay?

Well, how about the land?

Dispensationalists say the promises apply to the land, even if they grant somewhat the seed argument.

In fact, they believe, as stated earlier, the Jews reclaiming Israel in 1948 is the beginning of fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

David Jeremiah, and I mentioned him because he's well respected.

I like to listen to him myself, but he's he's a strong dispensationalist, and many of you have heard him.

He has an article called The One Promise God Made to Israel that hasn't been fulfilled.

And I think in saying it that way, he's granting that the seed promise has been fulfilled in Christ.

But as far as The land, he writes as follows quote, the land promised to Abraham and his descendants were described with clear geographical boundaries.

And he goes on to describe that.

And I've mentioned some of that.

We won't go into that now.

But he says, this if Israelis were currently occupying all the land that God gave to them, they would control all the holdings of present-day Israel, Lebanon, the West Bank of Jordan, plus substantial portions of Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

The strange thing is, he says, Israel has never in its long history occupied anywhere near this much land, not even at the height of the glory days under David and Solomon.

This fact has caused many biblical scholars to spiritualize the meaning of the term land and equate it with heaven.

Others claim that the promises were conditional and were forfeited by Israel's disobedience.

And then in refutation of that, Jeremiah quotes uh Dr.

John F.

Uh Wilford.

I don't know if you've heard of him, but he's he's a well-known scholar.

And this is what Walford says.

The term land used in the Bible means exactly what it says.

It's not talking about heaven, it's talking about a piece of real estate in the Middle East.

After all, if God was promising to Abraham only heaven, he could have stayed in Ur.

Why go on the long journey?

No, God meant land.

And then from that, Jeremiah continues, David Jeremiah continues, and he says, quote, the fact that Israel has been dispossessed of the land in three periods of history is not an argument against its ultimate position.

After each dispossession, God brought Israel back to its originally promised land.

God has consistently kept his promise to Abraham, and that gives us absolute assurance that he will keep it in the future.

But then he writes this ignoring God's care and protection of Israel is extremely dangerous.

The land of Israel is so important to God, and then he quotes Deuteronomy 11 and verse 12.

It is a land the Lord your God cares for.

He is always watching over it from the beginning to the very end of the year.

And I would say that sums up the dispensational view pretty good on as far as the land.

Some of them would not go as some of them want to bring the seed part into it too, but as far as the land, that sums it up, I think.

So do we have any New Testament teaching on this?

I think we do, but the fact is we have teaching in the Old Testament on.

Joshua 21, Joshua 21, and this of course is after Moses, and after they went in the promised land.

Joshua 21, beginning in verse 43.

So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their ancestors, and they took possession of it and settled there.

The Lord gave them rest on every side, according to all that he had sworn to their ancestors.

None of their enemies were able to stand against them, for the Lord handed over all their enemies to them.

None of the good promises the Lord had made to the house of Israel failed.

Everything was fulfilled.

And it says here, God fulfilled everything.

We see a similar comment in Nehemiah chapter 9.

Nehemiah 9 · chapter mention

And again, this is the time when the second temple was being built.

Nehemiah, and that is just after, or just before the book of Psalm.

So I guess it's after 2 Chronicles and then Ezra and then Nehemiah.

Yeah.

Okay, Nehemiah chapter 9, verse 7.

Nehemiah 9:7

You, the Lord Nehemiah, here is praying, speaking.

The Lord are the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur and the Chaldeans and changed his name to Abraham.

You found his heart faithful in your sight and made a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanites, the Heathites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and the Geresites, sorry, to give it to his descendants.

You have fulfilled your promise because you are righteous.

Okay.

Dispensationalists are inclined to say here that Israel, well, they never really took possession of the land.

And I will say we do know from the book of Judges that portions of the land were not what we think of as conquered in one sense.

So how do we put that together?

Well, I would put it together just like the United States of America, frankly.

Would anybody say that the European settlers who came here did not conquer the land because there are still Indian reservations?

No.

I think this is telling us God considered his promise for the land to be fulfilled as it extended to Israel.

And we'll talk more about what I mean by that as far as extending to Israel and then the part that's just to Abraham.

It did not mean that there would not be any no non-Israelites in the land anywhere.

And there's a similar debate about 1 Kings 4.

I'm not going to turn there, I'll give it to you so you can read it later.

Beginning in verse 24 of 1 Kings 4, you'll read of the dominion that Solomon had in the area and the area it covered.

And scholars indicate that those boundaries there are what God promised to Abraham.

But again, dispensationalists will say Solomon never possessed the entire land, even though all the people in the land paid tribute to Solomon and he ruled over it.

They'll just say, well, they never fully possessed it.

Well, it's true.

They didn't live in every square acre of it, but they did possess it.

It says that here.

More importantly to me, it says in Scripture, God did fulfill his promises to Israel.

It doesn't sound to me as if God thinks he has anything left to fulfill to.

Okay, so what about the permanency clause, okay, given to Abraham, that we read about in Genesis?

That's really the big issue, I think.

And it's clear from Deuteronomy, now we understand what he said to Abraham, but it's clear from Deuteronomy there was a condition placed on the nation of Israel as far as the land.

Let's look there.

Deuteronomy 28, chapter 28, and beginning in verse 1.

Now, if you faithfully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all his commands, I am giving you today, the Mosaic covenant, the Lord your God will put you far and above all the nations of the earth.

All these blessings will come and overtake you because you obey the Lord your God.

But notice then verse 58 of Deuteronomy 28.

If you are not careful to obey all the words of this law, which are written in the scroll, by fearing this glorious and awe-inspiring name, the Lord your God, he will bring wondrous plagues on you and your descendants, severe and lasting plagues, and terrible and chronic sickness.

He will afflict you again with all the diseases of Egypt which you dreaded, and they will cling to you.

The Lord will also afflict you with every sickness and plague not recorded in the book of the law until you are destroyed.

Though you were as numerous as the stars of the sky, you will be left with only a few people, because you did not obey the Lord your God.

Just as the Lord was glad to cause you to prosper and to multiply you, so he will also be glad to cause you to perish and to destroy you.

You will be ripped out of the land you are entering to possess.

Then the Lord will scatter you among all the peoples from one end of the earth to the other, and there you worship gods of wood and stone.

God says something similar, very similar back in verse 21.

So I'm gonna go back there.

The Lord will make pestilence cling to you until he has exterminated you from the land you are entering.

Okay.

Now it's been mentioned that yeah, they left, they they were took out, driven out of the land at different times.

Uh but I just want you to understand where it says that.

But then notice verses 45 and 46.

All these curses will come, pursue and overtake you until you are destroyed.

Since you did not obey the Lord your God and keep the commands and statutes he gave you, these curses will be a sign and a wonder against you and your descendants forever.

Okay.

Now, I understand the promises to Abraham were to be permanent, but you can't have it both ways.

Are the curses forever?

What this seems to be saying to me is the land promises, as far as the nation of Israel, were conditional.

The nation didn't obey as a whole, and they were scattered.

Now, individual Israelites or converts who followed God are still under Abraham's promises.

They're part of what is referred to time and again in the Old Testament and uh in the New Testament as the remnant.

There is a New Testament application, I believe, to this too, that clearly speaks to the permanency aspect.

So Romans 4, Romans 4 and verse 13.

For the promise to Abraham and to his descendants that he would inherit the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.

This says that the promises meant Abraham would inherit the world.

And it was not through the law, it was not coming through the old covenant, but through the righteousness of faith.

The Greek word for world there is uh cosmos.

That's a little different from land.

What it means is everything that God made.

That's what Abraham and his seed were going to inherit.

The whole of the created order, everything.

Jesus is going to inherit everything.

You may recall as we studied Romans 8:17, that if we are God's children, we are of we are heirs of God, we are co-heirs with Christ, it tells us.

Romans 8:17

So we're joint heirs.

And of course, any Jew can be part of that too.

But they have to be a believer in Christ.

So back then to the type antitype expression, dispensationalists say, you know, really, this one little piece of real estate was given to Israel in the Old Testament, that's really just a type of what Christ is going to inherit.

He's going to inherit the whole world, really, the whole universe.

So, and and those who would try to say, well, God will be breaking his promise if he doesn't give them that land in the millennium like that.

Well, that's like promising the difference between a between a pintoe and a Porsche.

Um, He's actually given them much more than that.

Again, the issue is they have to be in Christ.

Now, dispensationalists say that God has made promises to national Israel.

God will not revoke those promises.

God will not change those promises.

I just think they're failing to consider the conditions that were on the nation.

They fail to see that the fulfillment was not revoked in Christ.

And the New Testament fully explains what the Old Testament is saying.

That promises were made ultimately to Christ, not to the nation of Israel as a whole, respective of whether or not they believe in Christ.

Now, again, I get there's this issue with what's going to happen at the end time.

Um, and that is a bit of a different situation.

So we'll we'll move into considering that more, and that's really dealing with the passages or prophecies uh concerning Israel at the end time.

But again, Wednesday, I'm going to look more at the old covenant, the Davidic covenant, and talk about again the situation with it with uh Ezekiel 40 and the temple there.

Um but uh we do want to look at modern day Israel next week, what we might expect for a future fulfillment of prophecies, and then um what it meant we could say with Israel becoming a nation again in 1948.

So great job, you survived.

You're still here.

That's great.

All right, let's pray.