March GNP Article

God made a covenant – a binding promise – with Noah. Next, He makes a covenant with Abram. What is so important about these promises between God and men?

The rainbow that God showed Noah after the flood was the sign of His covenant promise with him. Every rainbow since then is a reminder of that covenant. 

Abram was called by God, and given a covenant too. God promised to bless him and increase his descendants upon the earth, to be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

There was one problem with this: Abram had no children and his wife Sarai was barren. Sarai gave her handmaid Hagar to Abram, and Hagar became pregnant. She gave birth to Ishmael, Abram’s son. Then God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, and Sarai’s name to Sarah. Their new names meant ‘father of many nations’ and ‘mother of many nations’. God made it clear that Sarah would also have a son, and that Abraham’s increase would be counted through Isaac, Sarah’s son, not through Ishmael, Hagar’s son. Why was this important? It goes back to the issue of covenant, of promises made between God and men. God honours His Word and He cannot break His Word. If you remember, when we looked at creation, God created everything by His Word. He spoke everything into being. It’s the same with His covenants. If He promises something, He will ensure it happens. The problem Abraham had was that he had two sons, but only one of them was the son of the promise. Isaac was counted before Ishmael, even though he was younger than him, because he was the son of Abraham’s wife Sarah, with whom Abraham had a marriage covenant. Ishmael was also Abraham’s son, but from Sarah’s handmaid Hagar, with whom Abraham did not have a covenant. However,because God keeps His promises, He spoke a great blessing over Ishmael and his descendants, because Ishmael was the seed of Abraham, and God had promised to bless his seed. You remember how all living things have their seed within them, so that they can reproduce? It was the same with Abraham and his sons. 

Today, we can enter into a covenant relationship with God. We don’t have to keep the laws and rituals of the Old Testament, as those were all fulfilled in Jesus. We get to walk in the new covenant that Jesus made in His blood on the cross. He has taken the death penalty for our sin, so that we can walk in the blessing of His sinless life and relationship with God and the Holy Spirit.

 We can walk in the blessing of Abraham, and in the covenant relationship Jesus has with God!