Abrahamic Covenant (Part One)

Genesis 12:2 “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shall be a blessing.”

Blessing here simply means “Increase,” we can as well say God made a covenant of increase with Abraham.

What is a covenant? A covenant is an agreement between two parties. God enter into an agreement with Abraham, it was an agreement of increase in every area of Abraham’s life. God made a covenant with Abraham that required nothing of Abraham. God determined to call out special people for himself through whom He would bring blessing to all nations.

Seven steps of Faith that Abraham took in surrendering his will to God

·         He surrender his native land

·         He surrender his family

·         He surrender the plain of Jordan

·         He surrender the riches of Sodom

·         He surrender self “Circumcision”

·         He surrender Ishmael

·         He surrender Isaac

Each painful surrendering was followed by divine revelation of God’s blessings. The more we lay aside self, in the process of our work with God the more of God we see.  God relationship with Abraham came to full manifestation as result of Abraham faith in God. He never stagger at the promise of God, instead he was strong in faith. The life Abraham lived was a product of what He believed.

However what we call the Jewish religion and tradition today was the life Abraham lived by faith. Simply because his descendant could not enter this life (covenant) by faith they ended up carving out religion out of it, which ended up in works instead of faith (Hebrews 3:15-19; Galatians 3). Just as the Church has replaced the gospel of grace that Christ preaches with the message of works (Galatians 3:1).  Scriptures further reveals to us the Jews style of worship in Matthew 15:6-9:

“And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. Ye hyprocrites. Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying. This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but their hearth is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines with the commandment of men.”