Turn
with me please to Genesis, chapter 17. Four thousand years ago God
appeared to a man named Abram and made a covenant with him. God changed
his name from Abram to Abraham and He told Abraham that He would establish His
covenant between Himself and Abraham and his descendants. He told Abraham
that it was an everlasting covenant and He said, “I will give to you and
to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the
Much of the Christian world has misunderstood what God is saying in His
covenant promise to Abraham. They keep asking the question, “When is God
going to fulfill His promise to Abraham and give back to the Jews all of their
If God meant what He said, then there is a problem. This earth is not everlasting and there are no everlasting Canaans on this earth. Not only that, God promised to give that land to both Abraham and to his descendants and Abraham never received that land. Not only did God not give it to Abraham, his descendants will not enter that land and take possession of it for more than six hundred years after the promise was made.
By the time that Joshua will lead God’s people in to take
possession of that land, tens of thousands of Abraham’s descendants will have
lived and died having never seen that land. What about God’s promise to
them, as well as to Abraham?
The reason why God never gave Abraham that
If scripture says that Abraham was living as an alien in that land but he was
looking for a heavenly city, then Abraham knew that the true promise was never
for the earthly
When we read about that covenant promise in
Genesis, chapter 17, most modern translations say that God’s promise was to
Abraham and to His descendants after him but the Hebrew wording actually means
seed, referring to the Christ to come.
God’s true covenant promise to Abraham was the promise of giving that
everlasting
The promise was only to Christ but we can also
obtain that promise by having become one with Him. We do that when we
become clothed with Him (Galatians
In fact, God gave Abraham both the old covenant and the new covenant promises at the same time. God was promising the earthly land to Abraham’s earthly descendants and He was promising the spiritual land to his spiritual descendants. That old covenant, however, was a faulty covenant.
The Hebrew writer tells us that
old covenant was faulty when he wrote, “For if that first covenant had been
faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second” (Hebrews 8:7).
He tells us why in the next few words, saying, “For finding fault with
them”.
It was a faulty covenant because man is
faulty. Man must be made perfect to have an everlasting home with God (An
everlasting
That being true, why did God ever bring into
being that old covenant? Was it done to help Abraham’s spiritual
descendants (Descendants by faith) to obtain their everlasting spiritual
In that old story, God’s people were in
bondage in the
Moses led God’s people out of Egyptian bondage
and he led them through the sea, on dry ground. When the Egyptian army
pursued after them, Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and the waters
returned to their place. The entire Egyptian army was drowned in the
sea.
After the Israelites saw what God had done,
scripture records, “When
Notice, they were a nation of saved believers
that had been saved from slavery. They have the promise of a land of milk
and honey but they have not yet received that land. They have been saved
out of slavery but they must travel through the wilderness to that land and be
willing to fight for it. They will be required to faithfully follow the
LORD and His servant, Moses, all the way there in order to receive the
promise. It will not happen for most of them. Most of them will be
disobedient and rebellious and God will strike them down in that
wilderness.
Remember when they sent the twelve spies in to
spy out the land? Ten of them came back and gave a bad report. They
told how it was truly a land of milk and honey but they also said it was
inhabited by strong nations and giants. Only Joshua and Caleb gave a good
report and encouraged the people to enter and take possession of that
land. That nation had been saved from slavery and the land of promise was
before them but they wanted to return to slavery, instead.
What happened that day was the last
straw. God told them that their corpses would fall in that wilderness
(Numbers
In Deuteronomy, chapter 1, Moses recounts to the next generation what had happened. Forty years had passed and the rebels had all died in the wilderness. Moses repeated God’s promise of how none would enter except Joshua and Caleb and adds, “Moreover, your little ones who you said would become a prey, and your sons, who this day have no knowledge of good or evil, shall enter there, and I will give it to them and they shall possess it”.
Their little ones would enter that land because they had no
knowledge of good or evil. They were under the age of
accountability. Everyone else in God’s army, except for Joshua and Caleb,
died in the wilderness.
That was their story. Now we will look
at our story. Just as Moses brought God’s earthly chosen people out of
bondage, Jesus has been sent to bring God’s spiritual chosen people out of
spiritual bondage.
In John, chapter 8, Jesus spoke to the Jews,
saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave
of sin” (John
Just as they were led through the sea to that
wilderness, we have been brought through the waters into our spiritual
wilderness. We have not yet, however, received our land. We must
follow Jesus through our wilderness to receive our land. Unlike that old
army, God’s spiritual army includes both men and women, everyone who has been
baptized into Christ (And made one with Him). Just as with that old
story, only those who follow the Lord fully will receive that land. They
will receive it, along with the little ones who do not know good from
evil.
It sounds like God created that earthly story
as a copy of our spiritual story. We need to look at how God does His
creation work. In the first verses of his gospel John writes, “In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the
beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart
from Him nothing came into being that has come into being”.
A few verses later he tells us how the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus is the Word of God from the
beginning and He is the creator of all things. When we read scriptures
that tell us how God spoke the creation into existance we can now see how it
happened through Christ, before He became flesh.
Paul spoke of the creation works of Christ in
his Colossian letter. After writing that, “He is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn of all creation”, he says, “For by Him all things
were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether
thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things have been created through
Him and for Him” (Colossians 1:16). If He has created all things, then
nothing is excluded that has been created.
If Christ’s creation works include rulers and
thrones and authorities, then His creation work is still under way and it
includes who is in power and over what. It includes every ruler and
Pharaoh and it includes the Pharaoh that led his army into the sea in pursuit
of God’s people.
When the scriptures speak of the creation works of Christ, we are seeing both the old creation and God’s new creation. His first creation was completed in the garden when He created man in the image of God. Scripture tells us that work was very good.
It was very good until man sinned and messed it all up. From
that time on, Jesus has been working on God’s new creation, a creation that
will create man in the image of God by creating him in the image of God’s
Son. We have just seen where Jesus “is the image of the invisible God”, so if we are created
in His image we will have been created in the image of God.
If Jesus is placing all rulers and authorities
into their positions of power does He direct the decisions they make?
Remember how that old salvation story began? When Moses was sent to bring
God’s people out of slavery God told him before-hand that He would harden
Pharaoh’s heart so that he would not let His people go. God caused that
story to begin the way it did when He caused Pharaoh to do what he did.
Paul spoke of that Pharaoh, saying, “the Scripture says to
Pharaoh, "FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER
IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH” (Romans
9:17).
Jesus is the creator and He put Pharaoh into
his position and then He directed his actions to make that old story begin to
happen as it did. Paul said that He did it to demonstrate His power and
that His name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.
Was
the Creator causing an earthly copy to
come about to show what was to come in the new covenant gospel message?
Is that old covenant story telling us something of the power of
the
gospel to save? If the LORD raised Pharaoh up to demonstrate His
power and that His name might be proclaimed throughout the earth, was
it to foretell of the new covenant message of the power of the gospel
for salvation that would be preached in the name of
Jesus to all nations?
It sounds like the creation works of Christ
include his causing things to happen in this life. Is He really creating
true life stories? Did He create that old Hebrew story for
our instruction?
Paul seems to be telling us that very thing in
his letter of 1 Corinthians, when he speaks of that old salvation story and says
that what happened to them happened as examples for us. He tells us, “For I do not want you
to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all
passed through the sea; and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud
and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same
spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed
them; and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not
well-pleased; for they were laid low in the wilderness” (1 Corinthians 10:1-5).
After reminding them of that old covenant
story and how those people had been brought through the sea and into the
wilderness to be led to their land and how God struck them down because He was
not pleased with them, he tells us, “Now these things happened as examples for us”.
Remember, after they had come through the sea
and seen what God had done to the Egyptians that Hebrew nation believed in the
Lord and in His servant, Moses. They all
has some faith in the LORD but not the kind of faith that would faithfully
follow Him all the way home.
Did Christ, the Creator not cause it all to happen for our instruction? That is what Paul said in 1 Corinthians, chapter 10. Is he not saying the same thing in Romans, chapter 9, when he tells us how the scripture says to Pharaoh, "FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH”?
The next verse tells us, “So then He has mercy
on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires”. This is the
same chapter that speaks of the potter and the clay and of the potter making
some vessels for honorable use and others of common use.
Jesus is the creator so He is the potter and
we are the clay. Paul asks the question, "Or does not the
potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for
honorable use, and another for common use?" God decides what
kind of vessel we will become and He creates our life according to His will.
He has mercy on some and He hardens others, as He desires. It
sounds as if His new creation work includes having mercy on those who are to be
created in the image of Christ Jesus and hardening the hearts of others.
If the Potter makes vessels of the clay before
Him as He chooses, then it sounds like we have no choice regarding the kind of
vessel that we will become. With that possibility in mind, Paul asks the
question, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” He also asks
how we can answer back to God because the thing molded can not say to the
molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it?”
Does that mean we don’t have a choice in what
we will become? No, it does not mean that. We do have a choice.
We can see that if we back up just a few verses. Paul began to
speak of how Christ does His creation work in our lives in the previous chapter
(Chapter 8, of Romans). He will speak of how God causes things to
happen in our lives but, remember, Christ actually does God's creation work.
God causes good things to happen if we
love Him:
Romans 8
28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good
to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the
image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;
30 and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He
also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.
As Jesus is doing His new creation work He is
causing all things to work together in our lives to bring about the new
creation that will conform man to the image of Himself. He is the potter
working with the clay to make vessels of honor of those who make the choice to
love Him.
That is how we have input into the kind of
vessel that we will become. We must make the choice to love Him.
For those who make the choice to love Him, He has called them according to His
purpose. His purpose is to create them in the image of God.
Paul says that God foreknew and predestined
those who would love Him to be conformed to the image of Christ. That
means He foresaw whether or not we would make the choice to love Him and for
those whom He foresaw making that choice, they will become sons of God.
The Potter will create them as vessels meant for glory.
Remember, God is not limited in time. He
is in all time now and He was in all time in the beginning. The Psalmist
(David) said, "Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in
Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet
there was not one of them." (Psalms 139:16)
Every day of his life had been determined
and recorded in God’s book before he was born. God knew him and recorded
his life beforehand because God had foreseen him.
Just as God foresaw every day of David’s life
before he was born, He also foresaw every day of our life in the beginning and
based on what He foreknew about us, He predestined our future. The Potter
knew what kind of vessel that He would create from the clay before He started
His work.
When Paul said that God causes all things to
work together for good to those who love Him, he is speaking of a good spiritual
story, not a good earthly story. Paul wrote this scripture and he did not
have a good earthly story. He had a very bad earthly story but he had a
good spiritual story. That is what God is promising to us.
We are involved in the creation of our life
story when we pray for God to make things happen for us. When we pray and
God answers our prayers, we have input in the creation of our life story. Paul says it will happen for those that God
foreknew (As loving Him) and that have been predestined to become sons of God
(The brethren of Jesus).
Regarding God's promise of our being created
in the image of His Son if we love Him, Jesus tells us who it is that loves
God in John 14:15. He says, “If you love Me, you
will keep My commandments”. He makes sure we get the message when
says it two more times in that chapter. He tells us, “He who has My
commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will
be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him”.
Previously He said that if we love Him we will
keep His commandments. Now, He says that if we keep His commandments, we
love Him. The Father will love those who choose to love His Son with
obedience and the Son will love those that the Father loves.
Two verses later He tells us, “If anyone loves Me, he
will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and
make Our abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words;
and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me” (verses 23-24).
Having an abode with God is the covenant
promise. Only those who choose to love the Lord with obedience to His word will
have that heavenly home with Him. Only those who follow Him fully, like
Joshua and Caleb will receive that land.
We heard Paul tell us how God will cause all
things to work together for good in our lives if we love Him and then he later
speaks of how the Potter is working with the clay to create vessels of His
choosing. We said that shows how we have a choice of what we become by
our making the choice to love God.
We can hear Paul confirm that to be true when
he writes to Timothy and speaks of those who name the name of the Lord and how
they are to abstain from wickedness. He then speaks of how there are
vessels to honor and some vessels to dishonor in any large house. He
says, “Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be
a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good
work.” (2 Timothy 2:21).
We are seeing the Potter's work and the
vessels of honor and vessels for common use that Paul spoke of in Romans,
chapter 9. Notice, “if anyone cleanses himself” he will become a
vessel of honor. We must make that choice. Remember, the promise
has been made to those who love God and only those who obey Him really love
Him. They are the ones who make the choice to obey Him and abstain from
wickedness.
Just as Jesus is creating our life story
today, He created the events that brought into being the old covenant story.
We saw how Jesus caused that story to begin to come about like it did
when He hardened Pharaoh's
heart. When He hardened his heart that last time, God brought about the
event that washed away that army in the sea.
Again, are not the scriptures telling us how God
caused that old covenant earthly story to happen as a copy of our new covenant spiritual
story? Did He not make it happen for our
instruction? Can we not see it in what happened to them in the
wilderness?
They had believed in the LORD when they saw what happened
to the Egyptians but their belief will become unbelief in the wilderness. The Hebrew writer compares the old
story with our story. He tells us (Chapter 3) how that nation could not
enter their land of rest because of their hard hearts. He tells us, “Therefore, just as the
Holy Spirit says, "TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS
AS WHEN THEY PROVOKED ME, AS IN THE DAY OF TRIAL IN THE WILDERNESS”.
He tells us to, “Take care, brethren,
that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away
from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is
still called "Today," so that none of you will be hardened by the
deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold
fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end”.
The Holy Spirit is telling us to look at that old story and get the message. He is telling us to look at their story and be careful not to let happen to us what happened to them. They had an evil unbelieving heart and they fell away.
Remember, they believed in the
Lord when they came through the sea. They believed when they were just
standing by and watching the Lord do His awesome work but when their journey
became difficult, they fell away. We will have become partakers of Christ
if we hold fast in our faith (“the beginning of our assurance”) firm until the
end.
The Spirit is speaking and, in chapter 4 He
tells us, “Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one
will fall, through following the same example of disobedience”. He is giving
us their example of disobedience and He says that we can fall if we follow
their example.
That is the same thing that Paul said in 1
Corinthians, chapter 10. He said that
what happened to them happened as our example.
Paul is telling us what the Hebrew writer tells us. We must look
carefully at their example of disobedience and not be like them or we will
fall like they fell.
Did not God cause that old earthly story
to come about to parallel our story for our instruction? Remember, God
hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he would not let God’s people go until after
those signs and wonders had taken place. He finally let them go free but
later changed his mind.
Think about what God caused to happen in that
old story. After the death of the firstborn, the Egyptians let
God destroyed Pharaoh and his army in the sea
to create a parallel story of our spiritual journey. Jesus created that
story for our benefit so that we can see what God is causing to happen in our
story. When the Israelite nation went through the sea, their Egyptian
slave-masters tried to overtake them to bring them back into slavery but they
were washed away in the sea, Scripture says that "not
even one of them remained" (Exodus 14:28).
Was that not a copy of how we are brought out
of slavery to sin? Were not our slave-masters (Our sins?) all washed away
in the sea of baptism? When Paul was told to, "Get
up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name" (Acts
Just as they were a nation of saved believers (After their slave masters were washed away), we are also a nation of saved believers after we have been brought through the waters of baptism and our slave masters have been washed away. We must, however, be like Joshua and Caleb and be faithful until the end.
We must faithfully follow our LORD
through our spiritual wilderness to receive our spiritual land. The
others who will receive that land are the little ones who do not know good from
evil.
We need to take heed lest we fall. We,
who have passed through the waters and have had our slave masters washed away,
are on our way to
If you have come through those
waters but have been rebellious toward God, you need to repent or else your
body will fall in this wilderness and you will not reach that land. If
you have never left the land of slavery and your slave masters have not been
washed away, you will die in that land of slavery.
Either way, if you are not
following in our spiritual wilderness like Joshua and Caleb followed in that
earthly wilderness, you need to look at that old story because the example
tells us, “Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one
will fall, through following the same example of disobedience”. The promise is only to those
who choose to love God and that only includes those who choose to keep His
commandments.
Johnny Rogers
Revised
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