This year during the season of Advent through to New Year’s Eve our theme is “The Means of God’s Giving.” Today we rejoice in God’s gift of His Written Word, Covenants and promises and how through the power of God’s Written Word, Covenants, and promises God does such great things, giving us faith, forgiveness and eternal life.
In the Garden of Eden, immediately after Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit, God cursed the world, as He promised. But, He also then promised to send a Savior, One who would take care of the sin of Adam and Eve and all people. In the Garden of Eden there were no Jews or Gentiles, only Adam and Eve and from their seed the nations of the world would be born. Later on in Genesis God chose Abram and narrowed the line of promise of the Savior, that is that through the blood line of Abram, whose name He changed to Abraham, the Savior would be born. God made a covenant with Abraham. The covenant God made with Abraham was an unconditional covenant, one that God would not break. God promised Abraham that He would make him a great nation. Now, just so we understand, the nation God promised to make of Abraham’s descendants was not necessarily an earthly nation, in other words, the nation of Abraham would ultimately be an eternal life in heaven nation for all those who believe in the Savior.
God promised Abraham that He would bless Him and God most certainly did. During Abraham’s life he became a very blessed man, not only because of the promise of the Savior, but also in his amassing flocks, herds, and many earthly blessings. God was with Abraham and protected him.
And because of God’s promise, “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed,” God granted he and his wife Sarah a son. Of course, all of this was done according God’s good and gracious will and His perfect timing, which is not always according to our imperfect will and our timing. As we know the history of Abraham and Sarah, they were old and beyond child bearing years when their son Isaac was born, but God did keep His promise and the line of Abraham continued through Isaac as well as through his son Jacob and the twelve tribes of Israel through the line of Judah.
As time went on, God remembered His promise to Adam and Eve and to Abraham. When the twelve sons of Jacob, Israel, were enslaved in Egypt, God called Moses to lead His people out of slavery and into what is called the promised land. So, God made a covenant with Moses. But, God’s covenant with Moses, while being similar to His covenant with Abraham, the covenant with Moses was a conditional covenant, at least the promised land, earthly part of the covenant was a conditional covenant. God’s covenant with Moses was that, “if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant” I will bless you and these people.
So, if and as long as the Children of Israel would obey God’s voice and keep His covenant He would make them His people, that is they would live under His divine care and protection. And very often we seek God’s care and protection for His people, pillaging the Egyptian people, bringing them out of slavery in Egypt, routing the Egyptians army, guiding them through the wilderness, defeating those destined for destruction in the land they were to possess.
God’s promise to the Children of Israel is that if they would obey God’s voice and keep His covenant He would make them into an earthy kingdom. And God did make them into an earthly kingdom beginning with King Saul, King David and King Solomon. And yet as we review their sordid history we can see that because of their sinful nature, that they were a stiff-necked people, that they continually were disobedient and did not keep God’s covenant so that the kingdom was divided and eventually the people were carried off to other nations.
God’s promise to the Children of Israel is that if they would obey God’s voice and keep His covenant He would bless them. And indeed, they were blessed, at least for a while. God continually disciplined His people because of His love and promises to them. Ultimately, however, although they lost the conditional Mosaic covenant, the land and the kingdom, they never lost the unconditional covenant, that is the Abrahamic covenant. Indeed, through the line of Judah and King David, the Savior of the world was born.
So, how do these two covenants compare? The Abrahamic Covenant was an unconditional, eternal covenant. The first promise of a Savior given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was reiterated to Abraham who was chosen by God’s grace to be the family through which the promise would be fulfilled. It was not until later that the people of Abraham became know as the Jews or Jewish nation, and after God changed Jacob’s name to Israel that they became known as Israelites. Yet, the promise made to Abraham, that is the promise of a Messiah was not a promise of salvation because of one’s DNA, their being born from the line of Abraham. As Jesus said, speaking to the Pharasees, “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Matthew 3:9). And, “Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Luke 3:8). Indeed, all who have faith in Jesus are children of Abraham. We are children of Abraham.
As for the Mosaic Covenant, that was a conditional, earthly covenant with its main objective ultimately pointing to the heavenly covenant. In other words, the Mosaic covenant with all the ceremonial, sacrificial laws was given to continually remind the people that the price for sin was death, the shedding of blood. Even more, the price for human sin, the sin of Adam and Eve in Eden was set at death, human death for human sin. Thus, none of the animal sacrifices were counted for forgiveness, but pointed to the One Human, the One Promised, the Messiah, the Savior, whose birth we are preparing to celebrate.
Fortunately, Israel’s breaking of the Mosaic covenant did not negate God’s unconditional Abrahamic covenant. So, although Israel lost the promised land and God’s hand of blessing, the world never lost God’s promise of a Savior.
What does this mean? During this Advent season we are preparing our hearts and minds to celebrate once again the birth of the One promised in Eden. Indeed, God never forgot the promise He made to Adam and Eve and to all people, the promise He reiterated and narrowed through Abraham and the promise reiterated to Moses. Jesus was born to fulfill that promise in Eden, to Abraham, and to Moses.
In simple terms, in the beginning God gave Adam and Eve one command, which they could not keep so God promised to send a Savior to take care of what they could not do. God made a covenant with Israel, which they could not keep. God calls us to live lives of faith and obedience, which we cannot do. So, what Adam and Eve could not do, what the whole nation of Israel could not do, what we cannot do, Jesus did. Jesus was born, true God in human flesh for the purpose of doing for us what we cannot do, live a perfectly obedient life and He did. Jesus obeyed all of God’s laws and promises perfectly, never sinning even once. Then, of His own free will, not by coercion, but because of His great love for us, He took our sins, all our sins, our sins of thought, word and deed, our sins of commission and omission and the sins of all people of all times on Himself and suffered and paid the price of eternal death and hell for us and all people, just as He promised.
As we continue through this Advent season we see clearly that Jesus is the fulfillment of the spoken Word in Eden, the Written Word of Moses, the Word in flesh for us and our salvation. We rejoice in the fact that every Sunday we are able to hear the Word God, be reminded of our Baptism, be given the forgiveness He earned for us, and partake of His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins and strengthening of our faith.
What a great God we have, what a loving God we have, what a gift giving God we have, One who created us to love us, One who has taken care of all our needs, reconciling us with Himself and One who rejoice in our coming to be given the gifts He has to give. To Him be the glory for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
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