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Pete Allinson: Abraham, the law, and grace. Let's talk about it on Key Life.

Steve Brown: This is Key Life. We're here to communicate the freeing truth that God's not mad at his children. Steve invited our friend Pete Allinson to teach us all this week. Pete is a former pastor, founder of forgedtruth.com and the author of Like Father, Like Son.

Pete Allinson: Hey Pete.

Steve Brown: And thank you Matthew. Pete,

Pete Allinson: Hey.

Steve Brown: we're we're talking this week. This stuff is so good I can hardly stand it. It really is. You know, you need to sometimes sit down and and set aside other things and look at the bigness, the plan, the covenant, the magnificence, the sovereignty of a God who created us.

Pete Allinson: Yes.

Steve Brown: And covenant theology allows us to see that. And we said Pete taught us at the beginning

Pete Allinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: that there are other ways of looking at scripture and to help understand as a kind of hermeneutic over scripture, but but we're we're reformed and we're Presbyterian and so we're kind of into covenant theology. And so we've been looking at the covenants and it's been amazing.

Pete Allinson: Mhm.

Steve Brown: All right, we saw it with Adam and he messed it up. We went to the tower of Babel then they messed it up. Noah didn't do that good after he had been redeemed and it's falling apart. Did God just say I had such high hopes for you and look at what you've done? Or did he was he over this too?

Pete Allinson: He knows before the foundation of the world. He knows the end from the beginning, right? So yeah. Uh it's it's just a it's it's important for us to have that higher view of God. Thank you for bringing that up.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Allinson: And so and so Adam and Eve broke the covenant of works, but immediately in Genesis 3 we see that the the serpent's head is going to get crushed.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Allinson: And then we saw uh how God gives the common grace to everybody through the Noaic covenant. But then it gets worse again. God's not surprised, right? There you go. So then we come to Abraham and so we find this in Genesis 12. Now the Lord God said to Abraham, go forth from your country and from your relatives or from your father's house

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Allinson: to the land I will show you and I will make you a great nation. I'll bless you and make your name great and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you and I and the ones who curse you I will curse and all uh uh and uh all of the families of the world through you will be blessed. Now what we find here

Steve Brown: That's big.

Pete Allinson: It's it's it's humongous, isn't it? And it's it's the it's it's really what we see is that connection to the Genesis 3 where God promises graciously that he is going to do something to redeem mankind. Now he told Adam and Eve in the garden, the day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall surely die. It's over.

Steve Brown: Yeah. Yeah.

Pete Allinson: So God doesn't have to do anything, but then that hint of grace in Genesis 3 and now we see Abraham who is this Semitic man out of Ur of the Chaldees and and he's an old guy, but he but he says through your family and I'm going to build you. I'm going to build a nation through you. Notice that we don't see him saying, hey you're a pretty good guy. Um you're you're not a sinner. He doesn't even call him righteous.

Steve Brown: No.

Pete Allinson: He he just he calls him. And so here again we see the covenantal elements, the relationship building elements that God does from the from the greater to the lesser, from God to man. He says, Abraham, I'm calling you into a relationship. And I'm going to build you. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to promise you these things. And I'm going to I'm I'm going to fulfill it. And and so we see here that in this covenant, in this bond um we see that God is is doing something unconditional. God is saying, this is on me.

Steve Brown: Oh really?

Pete Allinson: I'm going to make this happen.

Steve Brown: What about all the stuff he wanted to add um Abraham to do?

Pete Allinson: I know, right? Well, Abraham has got a lot of things to do. You got to you got to go because in the covenant, in every relationship even if it's from the greater to the lesser, from God to man, there's stipulations, right? And uh and so Adam uh Abraham has to go in in obedience

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Allinson: to Canaan where he's never gone before. And he's got he's got to move there and he's got to follow God. Now the interesting thing is is that as Abraham goes, this takes time which raises the question, why in the world didn't God just use one of the sons of Adam to restore the covenant?

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Allinson: Why didn't he take why wasn't Seth the one? Why we don't know.

Steve Brown: But a lot of people say why God why didn't God fix this?

Pete Allinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: We don't know ultimately, but we do know that for his glory uh he has this broader historic plan that he is unfolding.

Pete Allinson: Yeah. And so with Abraham he says, I'm going to I going to build a mighty nation to you, but Abraham goes on and on and on and he still doesn't have any kids. So by the time you you come to Genesis 15 he looks up and he says, uh well I mean look at

Steve Brown: Do you know how old I am? I can't do this.

Pete Allinson: God, if you're going to you're going to pull off this nation building, get going. And he goes, I'm going to build you into a mighty nation uh and and and then interestingly, and there's so much teaching that could go into this practically, you know uh Sarah uh and Hagar, he he tried to take it into their own hands to give him children. Comes up with Ishmael.

Steve Brown: Yeah, it really is. Yeah. Uh uh and we're still suffering from that.

Pete Allinson: That's exactly right.

Steve Brown: That was a bad move.

Pete Allinson: It was a bad bad deal. But then what we do see is that God coming to the idea of the covenant actually cuts the relationship uh with with with Abraham.

Steve Brown: What do you mean cuts?

Pete Allinson: You see the word covenant really comes from the Hebrew word berit which means to cut.

Steve Brown: Uh

Pete Allinson: Uh to cut uh and and scholars struggle a little bit over the etymology of it and exactly its meaning. But what we see in in in Genesis is that uh is that Adam, excuse me, Abraham um is put into a stupor and he lays out the animals in a row and cuts some in half.

Steve Brown: Now that was a a practice that the animals cut and then the people that were in the covenant walked between the cut animals with the implication if you don't do your part of the covenant you going to be like them.

Pete Allinson: Exactly. Exactly.

Steve Brown: That's that was the purpose of the cutting.

Pete Allinson: That that that's why that so they cut the animals. And so that's why O. Palmer Robertson translates this idea that a covenant is a bond in blood

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Allinson: sovereignly administered. So Abraham is thrust to the side. He's put into a stupor and God in the form of the firepot and the smoking torch goes through those animals himself cutting the covenant with Abraham. He said, I made the promise. Now let me ratify it. Let me prove to you that I am going to fulfill my promises. Notice though Abraham's on the side.

Steve Brown: He didn't even walk through the animals.

Pete Allinson: What does that teach us?

Steve Brown: Oh. It teaches us that this covenant of grace

Pete Allinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: is the big deal and it is it is it is supported and ratified by God himself. Therefore it's unconditional. In other words, this is going to happen. Even though there's stipulations in the covenant, Abraham still had to go. He had his part to play. But ultimately this larger covenant of grace which then in in encompasses the whole Old Testament now looking ahead to the coming of Messiah. This covenant of grace we see is something that God promises to do. And so Israel as a nation um is is integral in this, the nation that comes from Abraham.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

Pete Allinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: is going to be that that family line. You you don't notice before Genesis 12 and and Abraham God is dealing with the whole world as a whole.

Pete Allinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: Through all the way up through no through Noah, all the way up to Abraham. Now he is he's saying, I'm going to focus my efforts of redemption and grace through one people, the Israelites in the Old Testament time. And it's going to be through Abraham through whom I will bring this unique redemption that will bless the rest of the world. Uh and and of course when we think of the rest of the world we think of the the John 3:16.

Pete Allinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: For God so loved the

Pete Allinson: world.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Allinson: And and that's actually and we Christians living in America right now struggle to understand what that means. You cannot understand for God so loved the world until you understand Genesis 12 1 through 3. Through you, the nations of of the world, all the nations will be blessed through you. And so uh it really deals with this in a in a powerful way. The covenant of grace is seen and ratified uh with Abraham. And then in Genesis 17 the sign of that covenant, circumcision, is given. And then God promises uh to work through Israel to bring that covenant of grace to the nations.

That leads us then next to David or to Moses and then to David.

Steve Brown: All right. Tomorrow. Good night.

Pete Allinson: That is so that's so huge and so magnificent and so unbelievable. And the gospel is right there. When God makes a covenant with Abraham he didn't know the name of Jesus, but God did. You think about that. Amen.

Guest (Male): And that was Steve Brown and Pete Allinson continuing our look at the Old Testament covenants. Tomorrow we'll wrap up this week's study of the covenants by looking at the connection between Moses, David, and Jesus. Interesting stuff there. You don't want to miss it. Hey by the way, have you stopped by keylife.org lately? Let me point out a few areas of interest. First, the vault. It's an online collection of classic sermons from Steve dating back to the early '70s. We are currently digitizing these messages from old tapes and reel-to-reels plus plus we have just added the entire TV series that Steve did with the late Tony Campolo back in the '90s.

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