ICS Daily Devotions
The Abrahamic Covenant

Christmas is a time when we remember that God pursued us with His covenant kind of love. We need to remember the faithfulness of God and how He has honored the word of His covenant when we celebrate Christmas!

We need to know that we were helpless and spiritually bankrupt after Adam and Eve sinned against God. There was absolutely no other way for us to make ourselves stand right before a holy, righteous and just God based on self-righteousness. God had to righteously and justly find a way to restore mankind to Himself since man had chosen to willfully rebel against God. God chose to establish a covenant with a man so that the problem of spiritual lostness of man would become His problem through the covenant relationship.

Genesis 12:3 I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

God had a plan to send Jesus as part of Abraham’s lineage when God told Abram that through him all the families of the earth will be blessed. Genesis 12:3 is a PROMISE, a PLAN and a DESIRE of God to have all the families of the earth to be blessed. Of course, the blessing that God was referring to was not just money but a restoration of the relationship with God. God wanted to be with His creation again. God desires to walk and fellowship with man daily.

Abraham was concerned regarding how the promise of being a father of many nations was going to come to past. Although Abraham was obedient to the call, it was very obvious that both of them had passed the age of child bearing therefore he asked God for an assurance.

Genesis 15:17-18 And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates—

Do you know that it is alright to ask God for an assurance through His word? God responded to Abraham’s concern by giving him the highest form of commitment during those days and that was through the covenant ritual. The ritual involved the splitting of animals into half, to have bloodshed, promises and curses were pronounced to ensure that the covenant partner would honor their word of the covenant. If someone were to dishonor the covenant then he would be hunted down, killed and cursed. It was the highest form of commitment that would help Abraham to understand the kind of commitment he had from God in human language or practice. God would never dishonor the commitment of the covenant. God was pursuing to restore mankind to Himself and He bound Himself to make it happen by establishing the covenant relationship. The wonderful news about the Abrahamic covenant is it is an unconditional covenant. It means God will bring the promise to pass without any prerequisite on us or the Israelites.

Sermon Series: Christmas -2019