The Abrahamic Covenant: Why God Chose Israel & What It Means For Us

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has taught home-style Bible classes for twenty years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting, people say, the time seems to fly by. And now, here's Les Feldick. Well, once again, it's good to have everybody together, and we trust that we'll revel as we continue to study the Word. We're going to pick up more or less where we left off last week, but before we start on a real in-depth study of the Abrahamic covenant, which I have mentioned in previous lessons, is so basic to understanding all the rest of God's program for the ages, and the change of God's dealing with the human race as we come into Genesis chapter 12. But before we start that, I would like to address a few remarks to our television audience that it's going to be so hard to cover as much as I would like to cover in just one thirty minutes, and I'm always afraid that if I'm not rightly understood, and if these things don't really come by us in an understandable way, that you'd be prone to just turn me off. And so I would beg with those of you watching us on television to not give up on us, even though we may not get as far as we'd like to get in this first thirty minutes. But bear with us, and over time, I think as most of my class people have over the years, you'll begin to see how beautifully all of this comes together. Christendom is a mass of confusion tonight. We've got so many different ideas, and we've got so many different groups, and the problem is they just don't take the time to see what does the Word really say, or as I've stressed so many times, we also have to realize what it does not say. And this is what we'll try to point out, that a lot of people think these things are in here, and they're not. And that's just as dangerous as to try to twist it or to say, well, this is what the Bible says and it doesn't. So this is all on our minds as we begin now this study of the Abrahamic covenant. Now I'm one of those creatures, and I was just telling my wife as we were driving up, even the national magazines are beginning to realize that there are legions of people like me, and that is whenever I pick up a book or a magazine, I immediately go to the back page. You know people like that? I just can't help it, and you know what they're doing now? They're putting their editorials on the last page. Well, now I'm going to do that same approach before we go back to Genesis 12 and start our study on the Abrahamic covenant. I'm going to start at the tail end of it, in Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2, now this of course is one of the letters of Paul written to the predominantly Gentile churches there, and the Ephesian letter was more or less encyclical. In other words, it was written to the church at Ephesus with the idea that it would be passed around to all the other churches in the area. But it was predominantly to the Gentiles that he writes, beginning in verse 11, for sake of time, in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 11, and again those of you watching on television, if possible, find a Bible and take down these verses, take down some notes, and if it should leave you with your head swimming, you can go back and see what the Word says. All right, in verse 11, Paul writes, "...wherefore remember that you," now that's a personal directive, "...remember that you, being in times past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision, by those who are called the circumcision," in other words, that's the way the Jew referred to the Gentile, the uncircumcised ones, that verse 12, "...that at that time," while Israel was almost in a snide way referring to Gentiles as the uncircumcised dogs was their favorite phrase, "...that at that time," Paul says, "...you," Gentiles, "...were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise," now underline that word, covenants, because this is going right back to the Old Testament, but Gentiles were strangers from the covenants of promise, and now the last is almost unbelievable to a lot of people if they don't understand why Paul is inspired by the Holy Spirit to write it, and that is that our Gentile forefathers were in a situation of no hope without God in the world. Now, that seems shocking, doesn't it? And people are prone to say, well, that wasn't fair, how could God do that? Well, we're going to cover all that, if not in this half hour, well, certainly in the next one. But this was the state, you want to remember, of our forefathers back in the pre -Christian era. Now, after all, we've all got forefathers that go all the way back, you know, to Adam. And so our forefathers back there before these revelations that were especially given to the apostle Paul, our forefathers were in this set of circumstances. They were not part of the nation of Israel, they were Gentiles, they were in no way associated with the covenants that God made with Israel, and consequently then they were without Christ, they were without God in this world. That was their lot. But don't stop there. The next verse, a three-lettered word that I always say is so crucial if you're going to be a Bible student, but, but, now, now, now is a time word. Even though this was the lot of our forefathers for hundreds, yes, thousands of years, two thousand years and then some, now it's different. We are no longer under those circumstances of being outside the covenant and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, without hope and without God. Now, Paul says, in Christ Jesus you who were, now the word sometimes I better use as at one time, but you who were at one time far off. What do you mean by far off? Well, what he just said in the previous verse, see, without hope, without God in this world. But now, we who were at one time far off are made nigh, that is, made nigh to God by what? The blood of Christ. So you see, the death, burial, and resurrection is what makes all the difference in the world. Now, while we're mentioning death, burial, and resurrection, it's been quite a while since I've referred to it, and like I've always stressed, I don't claim to be an evangelist. I'll leave the evangelizing up to them. I'm not a preacher, and so I don't constantly preach at people. But nevertheless, even though I'm basically trying to teach, we do want to bring, periodically, the gospel as plainly as we know how to bring it, so that there will be, as I told one of my classes the other night, I guess my most fervent prayer day in and day out is that no one will ever come to my classes over a period of time and slip out into eternity lost, because that to me is just horrifying, to have someone sit under what I think is good, solid teaching and yet miss God's salvation. I think that would be awful, and so that's my fervent prayer. So, periodically I will. I'll just make a point to come in and make as clear as I know how to make it the gospel or the plan of salvation, or as Paul just said in Ephesians, that we've been made nigh by the blood of Christ. All right, now turn, if you will, then, to 1 Corinthians 15, the first four verses. I use them often enough in my nightly classes that I trust people can almost just see these words in their sleep. Moreover, he writes, and again he's writing to the Corinthian church, which was Gentile predominantly, he says, Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel, the gospel, not a gospel, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you and which also you have received and wherein you stand, that is positionally, by which also you are saved. Now, there's only one plan of salvation in our Bible for us today, and that is by believing the gospel, and so Paul has to clarify it. So, he says it's by this gospel that we're saved if we keep in memory. In other words, you've got to know what you believe. If you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain, in other words, a lot of people believe. There's no doubt about it, but they're not believing the right thing. They're just believing something and anything, and they think they're going to get by. But the Scripture is so adamant that we have to know what we believe, and that's why Paul uses the word know, K-N -O-W, from the Greek word epinosis, full knowledge. We have to know what we believe. Now, I always stress, and you who have been in my classes for years now, that you certainly don't have to know the whole Bible from Genesis through Revelation to experience salvation. But we better know the plan of salvation. We better know why God is able to save a sinner. All right, here we go now. Verse 3, for he says, I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received. Now, Paul is always making reference to the fact that it was the ascended, glorified Lord that revealed these truths to him, and he, in turn, passes it on to us Gentiles in particular, although we certainly don't leave the Jew out. So he says, I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that, and here it comes, Christ died for our sins. What's the next few words? According to the Scriptures. See? Now, that means it wasn't just all of a sudden an afterthought. God didn't all of a sudden find Himself in a jam and He had to do something. No, it was all preplanned from eternity past. It was all considered before man even came on the scene. So he says, He died for our sins according to the prophetic Scriptures, the Old Testament. Verse 4, and that He was buried. He was really dead. He just didn't go into a coma, or as they say, a swoon, but He was buried and He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. Now, that's the gospel. When Paul says in Romans 116, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it, the gospel, is the, what's the next word, power of God unto salvation to everyone that, what's the next word, believeth, right, to everyone that believeth. It doesn't say to everyone that repents and is baptized. It doesn't say to everyone that does such and such and such and such, but it says very plainly that if we believe this gospel that Christ died, was buried, and rose from the dead, when we believe that with all our heart, that gospel becomes the very power of God Himself. The very power that created the universe is released on us, to us, in us, and we, by that power of God, then become a child of God. I mean, it's beyond human understanding, so what do we do? We take it by faith. We take it by faith. We can't comprehend it, but the Bible says that's what it is, and when we believe it, God, as Paul says over and over, accounts it as righteousness by believing, but we've got to be careful what we believe. Now, all of this coming back, then, to what we just saw in Ephesians 2, that we have been made nigh by the blood of Christ. Now, you can't separate the blood of Christ from His death. They're just tied together, and I can't imagine, I usually don't fault the men behind the sacred deaths. That's not my job, but one of the couples in one of my classes were rather upset the last time we met, and their pastor had made the statement that there is nothing in Scripture that indicates that Christ died a sacrificial death. How in the world can anyone say that, when the Bible is full of the fact that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission? And then Paul comes along and is constantly referring to Christ as our Passover. He is the one who died for us, who shed His blood for us. He is the sacrifice and the only sacrifice that God was satisfied with. Paul also, as he wrote the Hebrews, and I'm sure he did, he said that the blood of bulls and goats couldn't take away sin, but what could? The blood of Christ, because He was the supreme, the perfect sacrifice. So, that's all wrapped up together. The fact that His blood was shed, He died, He was buried, and He rose again from the dead, and now then we have been made nigh by virtue of that tremendous act of God, and when we believe it, the very power of God moves in on a life, and we become, as again Paul says in 2 Corinthians and other places, we become then a new creation. But, like I said, now that's starting more or less on the back page. Now let's come back to Genesis chapter 12. We touched on it just a little bit last week, but now in chapter 12 of Genesis, we come to a place where, once again, God has seen the human race, time after time, utterly rebel and reject Him. Now, just for a moment of review, Adam wasn't in the garden very long until he did what? Well, he rebelled, he sinned, he was disobedient. Now, when Adam moved from that garden experience to living out of the garden, in our present-day vernacular, couldn't we very easily call that a whole new ballgame? It was a whole new ballgame. It was a whole new set of circumstances. It was a new set of regulations that God had now given—instructions, or whatever you want to call it. It was just totally different from life in the garden. All right, under that set of circumstances, then, we found the human race just utterly rebel until it got so bad God had to bring in the flood. Now, again, watch what happens. When the flood is finished, as we've been seeing the last several weeks, and Noah and his families come out of the ark, what have you got again? Another new ballgame, a whole new set of circumstances. And again, God gives even more or different rules and regulations to live by. Remember, we pointed out how that he now gave instruction that they could kill animals and eat the flesh thereof? They couldn't do that before. And so there was all these things that just made life after the flood totally different than life before the flood. But God hasn't changed. Human nature hasn't changed. But yet the circumstances have changed. Oh, they hadn't come very long after the flood, and we saw here a few weeks ago, where were they? The Tower of Babel. Oh, at the Tower of Babel. And now Satan influence comes in, and they end up going after other gods. The introduction of idolatry. Remember? Paganism. And from the Tower of Babel, paganism just permeated the whole human race. Everyone. We have no indication that, well, we know Noah lived through a lot of that period of time. We don't know what happened to him. But Noah aside, we have nothing to indicate that anyone had any knowledge of the one true God. They had all flocked after idolatry and paganism. Now, what does God have to do? For almost 2,000 years, and I want to bring this out, from Genesis 1-1 until chapter 11, the last verse, covers 2 ,000 years of human history. Just in those 11 chapters. 2,000 years. But beginning with chapter 12, verse 1, we're going to cover the next 2,000 years, and it takes up the biggest part of our Bible. All the Old Testament and well into the New are now going to be in those next 2,000 years. But here God is, with a human race that again has totally rejected His offer of salvation. They have totally rejected His authority, and they have followed other gods. They're steeped in idolatry. And remember, idolatry's God is Satan himself. And it just seems as though there's no hope for that human race. And then we can use that three-lettered word again, but God. God says, I'm going to do something different. I'm going to take a new approach. Now, it wasn't again that He got caught by surprise. This was all preordained, and as we were discussing the other evening with just a small group, you know, there's a fine line between the sovereignty of God and the free will of man. And it's so hard to define those two and not get them crossed over, because God is absolutely sovereign. We know that. He has laid the whole line of human history out ahead of time, and yet He has never taken the free will away from man to accomplish it. And so you come on to this whole business of foreknowledge and all that, but whatever. We don't want to get confused on these things, that God is never caught by surprise. And so now with the human race totally saturated in idolatry, He says, I'm going to take a new approach. I'm going to take one little group of people. I'm going to take one man, and out of that one man I'm going to bring about a nation of people, a small nation. And with that nation, I'm going to work, I'm going to teach them, I'm going to reveal myself to them in a way that the human race has never had revelation before, and I'm going to take that little nation of people, and sometime down the road I'm going to funnel them back into the other nations of the world in order to bring them to myself. Now, the best way I can picture it on the board, and we're not going to have time this half hour to bring it to fruition, but if I can help you to mentally see, let's take a wide line, that's the mainstream of humanity, the human race, humanity. Now, they have come all the way from Adam, 2,000 years, and it's been one catastrophe after another, hasn't it? Now at the end of that first 2 ,000 years, like I said a moment ago, God is going to do something different. He's going to call out one man. His name to start with is Abram, and we get to know him better as Abraham. Now, out of that mainstream of humanity, He's going to pull, beginning with this one man, Abram, the nation of Israel, the Jew. And here is what Paul was referring to in Ephesians. While God is going to be dealing with this nation of people coming out of this one man, Abram, He's going to let the rest of humanity just sort of drift along in their godless state to their eternal doom. And I've seen it in my classes over and over where they're almost aghast, and they say, well, they didn't have a chance. God wasn't fair. You know what I always have to remind you? What had God been doing for 2,000 years? He'd been dealing with the whole human race, with no one segmented, with no one left off. They all had knowledge of what He expected of them. What did they do with it? They stepped it underfoot. They ignored it. They rebelled. And so now God, in His foreknowledge, can see that this wouldn't have changed one bit. Humanity would have continued to do as they did the first 2,000 years. They would just constantly live in rebellion, and it would go gradually from bad to worse. So He is perfectly just, as Paul said in Ephesians, to leave these people now, take their course of human history without God, without anything to do with this little nation of people that God is going to be working with, particularly now, until some future time. And He was going to send that prepared people back into the mainstream of humanity to bring them the knowledge of Abraham's God, as God will reveal Himself to Abram. Now, am I making myself clear? So He's going to take this little nation, and He's going to make covenants with them. And if you remember a few weeks ago, I explained that a covenant is always one way—from God to man. So even though these covenants are seemingly broken and forgotten, since they came from God, they'll never be broken. They'll never be forgotten. Sooner or later, these covenants are always going to come to fruition. Never lose sight of that. And so as God makes these covenants now with the nation of Israel, always keep uppermost in your thinking. It's because of this mass of humanity that God is doing what He's doing, because He's going to prepare these people, hopefully, for the time when they can come back in and reveal a knowledge of their God—the Scripture calls it the God of Abraham—so that He can give a revelation of the God of Abraham to these pagan, godless, Gentile nations. Has God forgotten them? Not at all. He's doing everything for their benefit, albeit there will be generations in here who passed in the scene and out of the scene, and they're lost. I mean, that's just something that we can't reconcile in human thinking, but God knows what He's doing. So the first thing I want folk to get in their mind is the reason the little nation of Israel has survived the millennia against all odds, in spite of all the times that people of this world have tried to obliterate them, is because they're God's covenant people. Now granted, as we can already see, they didn't succeed in doing what God really wanted them to do, because before they got to the place where God could now take them into the Gentile nations and use them as His missionaries or His evangelists, what did they do? They crucified the Lord of glory. But again, Satan may have thought that he was the victor by seeing the very Son of God dying on that Roman cross, but what Satan and the rest of the world never comprehended, God wasn't defeated at the cross, who was? Satan was. So even though the favored covenant people blew it, that's the best expression I can use, they just totally blew it. They didn't recognize the One who had come to fulfill these covenants. They rejected Him, they crucified Him, but God went ahead and brought the gospel to the Gentiles without Israel by bringing on the scene one little Jew, Saul of Tarsus. And what's the first thing that God revealed to Ananias concerning Saul of Tarsus? He's a chosen vessel unto me, and he's going to take the word to the Gentile. And if you're careful as you read Paul, you'll notice that he's always saying to you Gentiles. Watch for it as you read his letters. Well, we'll see you next week. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Ralph 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Ralph 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time.