The Seven Covenants:

The Dispensation of Promise

I. Introduction
A. The Importance of the Covenant with Abraham

1. Abraham as our example

- Obeyed by faith God’s call to Canaan

- Believed God unto righteousness

- Received a new name/nature

- Was confirmed in faith.

2. Abraham as the ground of blessing.

- We have to step back to see the forest rather than the trees in order to fully
appreciate all that God has done in Abraham.

B. The Preconditions of the Covenant

1. The Promise of a Redeemer

- The Seed of the Woman (Gen. 3:15) who would undo what had been done
in the Fall.

- While God made man responsible for the moral law written on the heart,
the promise of the Seed pointed to a better way. In the light of this
promise “men began to call upon the Lord” for deliverance. (Gen. 4:26)

2. The Establishment of Human Government.

- Under the previous dispensation lawlessness prevailed. So God made a

covenant with Noah to establish human self-government. We are our
brother’s keeper. (Gen. 9).
 - This is the beginning of God restoring His authority among the nations in
the earth.

- It is a necessary precondition for the establishment of the Kingdom of God

on the earth.

- Just as the moral law failed to curb the sin of man, so did the establishment
of human government. In fact, it led to united rebellion against God.

3. The Two Lines

- Through the course of these two dispensations we have seen the contrast
between the godly line of Seth and the ungodly line of Cain. This
distinction was threatened by the incident with the Nephilim just prior to
the flood and so God solidified the line of the Seed of the Woman by
Noah’s blessing of Shem.

- However, even this is not sufficient because, Abram, his descendant was
born in a land of idolatry. Thus God needed to establish not only the line
of descent, but the guardians of the promise, as it were.

Gen. 12:1-3
II. The Dispensation of Promise
A. The Aspects of the Covenant Promises to Abraham

1. The Blessing

- I will bless you And make your name great;

- And you shall be a blessing.

- 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

2. The Nation/Seed

- I will make you a great nation

 Also

- Genesis 15:4–5. “And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying,
“This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own
body shall be your heir.” Then He brought him outside and said, “Look
now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.”
And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.””

3. The Land

- To a land that I will show you

Also

- Genesis 12:6–7. “Abram passed through the land to the place of

Shechem, as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh. And the Canaanites were
then in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your
descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the Lord,
who had appeared to him.”

B. Three Recipients of the Blessing

- Genesis 22:15–18. “Then the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second
time out of heaven, and said: “By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord,
because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only
son— blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your
descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the
seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In
your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have
obeyed My voice.””

- Abraham

- The Seed/nation

- The families of the earth

C. The Conditions of the Covenant

1. To establish the covenant

- Obedient faith on the part of Abram

 - By leaving Ur and traveling to Canaan Abram has met the condition to
covenant with God.

2. To maintain the covenant.

- Once the covenant is made it becomes unconditional on the part of Abram.

- This is evidenced by the fact that God alone passes through the parts in the
cutting of the covenant in Genesis 15.

- Thus, fulfillment of the covenant depends completely on God.

3. To enjoy the blessings of the covenant

- However, there are conditions for enjoying the blessings of the covenant in
a temporal sense.

- This is made clear in two ways.

- First, Abram was to receive the blessing when he was in the land.

- This is also indicated in passages concerning Isaac and Jacob.

- Genesis 26:1–6. “There was a famine in the land, besides the first famine
that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the
Philistines, in Gerar. Then the Lord appeared to him and said: “Do not go
down to Egypt; live in the land of which I shall tell you. Dwell in this land,
and I will be with you and bless you; for to you and your descendants I
give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham
your father. And I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of
heaven; I will give to your descendants all these lands; and in your seed
all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; because Abraham obeyed My
voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My
laws.” So Isaac dwelt in Gerar.”

- Genesis 28:12–15. “Then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up

on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God
were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it
and said: “I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of
Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants.
Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread
abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you
and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Behold, I
am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back
 to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken
to you.”

- Thus for Abraham and his descendants, receiving the blessings of the
covenant are dependent on being in the Land.

- Second, there are two aspects of Gentile blessing, one of which is

conditioned and one of which is not.

- The conditional blessing for Gentiles is that they bless Abraham and his
descendants. For the nations, this becomes the principle of responsibility
for this dispensation, as evidence by the curses that come upon Egypt
precisely because they did not bless Israel but instead brought them
under bondage.

- The unconditional blessing is that God will bless all the families of the earth
through Abraham.

D. The duration of the Covenant

1. Everlasting

- Genesis 13:14–15. “And the Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated
from him: “Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are—
northward, southward, eastward, and westward; for all the land which
you see I give to you and your descendants forever.” ”

2. Temporal

- While the covenant is an everlasting covenant, all of the blessings are not
fulfilled immediately.

- Genesis 28:1–4. “Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged
him, and said to him: “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of
Canaan. Arise, go to Padan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother’s
father; and take yourself a wife from there of the daughters of Laban your
mother’s brother. “May God Almighty bless you, And make you fruitful and
multiply you, That you may be an assembly of peoples; And give you the
blessing of Abraham, To you and your descendants with you, That you
may inherit the land In which you are a stranger, Which God gave to
Abraham.””
 - Hebrews 11:13. “These all died in faith, not having received the
promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced
them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”

- Hebrews 11:39–40. “And all these, having obtained a good testimony

through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided
something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from
us.”

- Leviticus 14:14–17. “The priest shall take some of the blood of the
trespass offering, and the priest shall put it on the tip of the right ear of
him who is to be cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big
toe of his right foot. And the priest shall take some of the log of oil, and
pour it into the palm of his own left hand. Then the priest shall dip his
right finger in the oil that is in his left hand, and shall sprinkle some of the
oil with his finger seven times before the Lord. And of the rest of the oil in
his hand, the priest shall put some on the tip of the right ear of him who
is to be cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of
his right foot, on the blood of the trespass offering.”

- Hebrews 9:22. “And according to the law almost all things are purified
with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission.”

- Hebrews 10:3–4. “But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every

year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take
away sins.”

III. Application
A. Guarding the Gospel

1. Errors come from de-emphasizing aspects of the covenant.

- For instance, the land promise is completely lost in theologies that hold that
the church has replaced Israel in God’s covenant program.

- This robs the covenant of one of its central components and renders the
promises of God to Abraham and His descendants as completely
meaningless. In essence, God was not telling the truth.

2. Errors come from invalid principles of interpretation.

 - How do theologians justify ignoring important aspects of the covenant such
as the Land Promise? By an invalid method of interpretation.

- “The Old Testament records two kinds of promises which God made to
national Israel: national promises and spiritual promises. The spiritual
promises encompassed every spiritual descendant of Abraham, and were
not restricted to national Israel . . . . The spiritual promises still are being
fulfilled through the church today. Israel’s national promises all have been
either fulfilled or invalidated because of unbelief.” (Cox, Amillenialism
Today, 34)

- So the promises that God made to Isaac and Jacob regarding their physical
descendants were false. They did not, as Hebrews indicates, receive those
promises and they will not. Who is fulfilling those promises? Gentiles in
the church. This kind of spiritualizing of the promises leads to the idea
that God has permanently cast off Israel because of their unbelief.

- This completely undermines the security we have in Christ.

A. Understanding the Covenant

1. Helps us Understand the Course of History

- This is God’s plan for the redemption of man and his cosmos.

2. Helps us Understand the Mosaic Covenant

- As we will see, the Law was given as the first answer as to how to inherit
the promises on a permanent basis.

3. Helps us understand the Gospel.

- The Condition of Faith

- The distinction between temporal and eternal blessings

- The assurance of fulfillment