Genesis

After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying,

“Do not fear, Abram,

 I am a shield to you;

 Your reward shall be very great.”

2 Abram said, “O Lord God, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.” 4 Then behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.” 5 And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them “ And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” 6 Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness. 7 And He said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.” 8 He said, “O Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it?” 9 So He said to him, “Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds. 11 The birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away.
   12 Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. 13 God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. 14 But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. 15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. 16 Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.”
   17 It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying,

“To your descendants I have given this land,

 From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates:

19 the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite 20 and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim 21 and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite.”

—Genesis 15

In this chapter, God once again demonstrates the absolutely unilateral nature of salvation. Iain Duguid explains:

   At the conclusion of a covenant agreement, it was sometimes the custom for the parties to walk between the pieces of a torn up animal. This served as a kind of acted out curse. What they were saying was, “If I break the covenant, may I be torn in pieces like this animal.” But in God’s covenant with Abram, only one of the parties passed between the pieces: God himself in the form of a blazing, smoking torch (v. 17). That foreshadowed the pillars of cloud and fire on Mount Sinai. The one who would give the law was here showing that grace comes first, for this was a totally one-sided covenant.

—Iain Duguid, Living in the Gap Between Promise and Reality: The Gospel According to Abraham (P&R, 1999), 39.

Originally posted at The Calvinist Gadfly.

Q. 17: How did God create man?

A. After God had made all other creatures, he created man male and female; formed the body of the man of the dust of the ground, and the woman of the rib of the man, endued them with living, reasonable, and immortal souls; made them after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness,and holiness; having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfil it, and dominion over the creatures; yet subject to fall.

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

—Genesis 2:7

All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.

—John 1:3–4

It was a simple recipe: a little dirt, the breath of life, and just like that, Yahweh created man. So simple, it was, that one might wonder why we can’t do it. After all, we have dirt, and we have life and breath, so why not? The answer is in the phrase “breath of life.” The truth is that God could have used anything to make man. It didn’t have to be dirt. It could have been water, grass clippings, or tree bark. The thing that did the trick was the “breath of life.”

This is not breath as we know it. It is an anthropomorphic expression, a figure of speech that projects human character onto non-human beings or things — in this case, God. The Lord uses them frequently in Scripture help us gain some small measure of understanding of ideas and events that are humanly incomprehensible. God doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t have a body, cardiovascular system, lungs. He doesn’t inhale oxygen-rich air and exhale carbon dioxide. The breath of life is not to be found in our atmosphere, or any other, because it doesn’t exist as a thing to be measured and analyzed. The breath of life is life itself, and it proceeds from God alone.

“In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.” This life is more than just the mechanical workings of organic beings — God is not an organic being — it is “light,” however we may define that. It is what separates us from the animals; it is understanding, spiritual existence, the image of God in us. It is the necessary essence that fits us “to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”

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By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; it was he to whom it was said, “In Isaac your descendants shall be called.” He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type.

—Hebrews 11:17–19

Just a few quick observations from this text:

• By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac . . . Genuine obedience is by faith (Romans 14:23).
• By faith Abraham . . . was offering up his only begotten son; it was he to whom it was said, “In Isaac your descendants shall be called.” . . . Abraham trusted God to keep his promise, in spite of incomprehensible evidence to the contrary.
• By faith Abraham . . . was offering up his only begotten son; . . . He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead . . . Abraham believed that God was able to do the impossible to keep his promise.
• By faith Abraham . . . offered up Isaac [and] also received him back as a type. This passage is thick with typology. First, Abraham typifies the Father, offering his only son. Isaac typifies Christ, willingly and knowingly laying down his life in obedience to his father. Abraham’s faith is an example of saving faith in Christ: Abraham surely believed that Isaac would die, yet believed that God would keep his promise and raise him from the dead. Finally, the ram is a type of Christ, and an illustration of substitutionary atonement. Abraham owed God a supreme sacrifice. That sacrifice was his only son, who was more than just precious as a beloved son, but also the fulfillment of God’s promise of Abraham’s future legacy. Isaac was Abraham’s everything, his very life. And that is our debt to God, for our sin. We owe him a death, and he will be paid. But he has provided a substitute. Abraham called the place Jehovah-jireh (the Lord will provide, Genesis 22:14). Jesus is our “ram caught in the thicket.” Calvary is our Jehovah-jireh. Most immediately important to us is that, in Isaac, we see ourselves, desperately in need of a substitute that only God can provide.

Iain Duguid on election:

The doctrine of election is a difficult one for many people. They struggle with the justice of the idea that God chooses some for salvation and passes over others. Some people, therefore, have argued that it is a matter of God’s foreknowledge. God knows in advance which people are going to choose him, and therefore he responds by choosing them. The Bible, however, is clear. God’s love for his chosen people existed long before their birth, all the way back to the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4-5). God does not love us because he foresaw we would love him. Rather, we love God because he loved us from the first (Rom. 9:16).

Yet, as we pointed out earlier, even though God’s election is sovereign, it is not arbitrary or unjust. It is not as if Esau desperately wanted to be a chosen son and God harshly turned him away, not allowing him a place among his chosen people. No, Esau has twice turned his back on his spiritual birthright. First, he sold his birthright to his brother for a bowl of lentil soup (Gen. 25:31–34). Now he compromised the fundamental goal of God’s election: the creation of a separate, holy people for God. Under the circumstances, Esau could have no complaints about being passed over.

We should also notice, however, that Jacob is not chosen because, in contrast to Esau, he is such a wonderful person. Jacob shows himself to be a scheming, conniving, calculating little rat, especially during the first part of his life. Nonetheless, because God’s choice rests upon him out of his sovereign mercy, God is going to work on Jacob, reshaping him, purifying him into a person he can use. Neither Jacob nor Esau deserves God’s grace in his life, but God’s sovereign mercy rests upon Jacob for his blessing, and so his grace begins the transforming work in his heart.

So it is also for us. Our election and our salvation are entirely of grace. God did not choose you because you were better or smarter or more beautiful or holier than everyone else. God did not choose you because he foresaw that you would exercise faith while others wouldn’t. God chose us while we were still filthy sinners, because of his electing grace. Even with his transforming power at work in our hearts, thou, the best of saints make only small beginnings on the path of holy living. We never outgrow our need for grace while we live on earth.

But God’s sovereign choice on salvation is not arbitrary. Those passed over by God have no cause for complaint. Their condemnation is thoroughly deserved. Even though we plead with them with tears to abandon their self-destructive course and find salvation in Jesus Christ, they will have none of it. The whole idea is foolishness to them. Those whom God chooses, he then begins to reshape into a people for his pleasure. As Ephesians 1:4 puts it, “He chose us . . . to be holy and blameless in his sight.” The result is that those chosen have no cause of arrogance. Their justification is undeserved by them. It is merited only by the righteousness of Christ that is credited to their account, and it is worked on them by the indwelling power o the Holy Spirit. All is of God, so that God may receive all the glory.

That truth should give us boldness in our sharing of the gospel. We may freely call all who will come to Jesus and be saved. The invitation to the party is open to all. Whoever you are, whatever you have done, your sins too can be paid for by the death of Jesus on the cross. No one is too guilty or too defiled to come. You too can receive Christ’s righteousness credited to your account. You too can participate in the feast that God has prepared for all who are his people on the final day. It’s a genuine offer, and we pray fervently and intently that many people will respond to it in faith. But we trust the outcome of our evangelism to the care of a good god, who chose a people who would be his before the foundation of the world.

That too is a comforting thought, given the imperfection of so much of our gospel witness. It is God who determines the outcome of our speaking for him, not the quality of our speech. It is God’s choice whither our words fall on the ears of an Esau, to whom they are all nonsense, or on the ears of a Jacob, for whom the road to faith may be long and hard but will eventually bring him to glory. It is God’s choice whether our words fall on the ears of an Abraham who is ready now to hear and trust and believe. We therefore invite all to come to Christ of receive the living water from him, confident that all those whom the Lord our God is calling to himself will hear his voice and will come. To him indeed be all the glory.

This truth should also give us great joy on the midst of our manifold sins and failures. Do you know yourself to be a sinner in God’s sight? Are there areas of your life where you continue to fail God over and over again? If so, the bad news is that you are normal. But the good news is that if God has laid hold of you by his electing grace, he will sustain you by that grace through every step of your earthly journey. He will use even that son which you find so difficult to combat as a means of driving you back to the cross. And one day, at the end of all things, you too will be purified completely by his grace and will stand before him without fault or blemish. What a wonderful, heartwarming, comforting, doctrine the doctrine of God’s election is!

—Iain Duguid, Living in the Grip of Relentless Grace: The Gospel in the Lives of Isaac and Jacob (P&R, 2002), 27–29.

Originally posted at The Calvinist Gadfly.

Q. 31. With whom was the covenant of grace made?

A. The covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed.

Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as referring to many, but rather to one, “And to your seed,” that is, Christ.

—Galatians 3:16

Nineteen centuries (according to Ussher) before Christ, a covenant was made with Christ, and through Christ, with all who were chosen in him. There are two (that I see) directions we could go with this discussion. One is union with Christ, or what it means to be in Christ. The other is the unusual unilateral nature of the covenant. The latter will be the focus of this post. Look with me to Genesis 15:

9 [God] said to[Abram], “Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds. . . . 17 It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram . . .

Did you see what happened there? Under normal circumstances, both parties to a covenant would have bound themselves in the covenant by passing between the bifurcated beasts. In this case, however, only one party made a promise and made the symbolic gesture binding himself to his oath. God, in the form of a smoking oven and a flaming torch, passed between the pieces. Abram stood by and watched.

This was a unilateral covenant, a promise made by God alone. God was not working together with Abram. And this is the pattern for all of redemptive history. God makes the promises, and he keeps them, and we are the undeserving recipients of his grace. So it has always been, and so it will always be. Like Abram, we hear God’s promises, and we stand and watch him work. From the beginning, monergism has been at the core of God’s redemptive plan.

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I just picked up Cruciform Press’s October publication, Awaiting a Savior: The Gospel, the New Creation, and the End of Poverty, today. It’s a title that makes me nervous. It could be excellent, applying the gospel and gospel priorities to Christian life, or it could go very badly, falling into popular philosophies of so-called “social justice.” The introduction and table of contents suggests the former, so I am optimistic.

In the few pages I read this morning, the author, Aaron Armstrong, describing the state of creation and life in Eden, wrote, “It was a world in which poverty could not exist” [p. 15]. Poverty could not exist because poverty, like all miseries now in this fallen world, is a result of sin. In a sinless world, there is no poverty.

Reading that, I was struck with an idea not (yet, anyway) stated explicitly: It is perhaps the first irony of all time that poverty began when the richest people who would ever live wanted more. Adam and Eve had everything they could ever need. They were given dominion over all of creation, and free use of all of it, save one thing: they could not eat the fruit of one tree. Of the abundance of the garden, only one tree was off-limits. And it took only a few words from the serpent to make them think “It’s not enough; I want more.” Because Adam and Eve wanted more than God had given, we all have less.

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”

—Genesis 2:18

It was this lack of a “soul-mate” that God had in mind in saying the first “not good.” Adam needed a helper, and particularly a helper corresponding to him, for assistance and companionship. Adam would be in charge, as Scripture makes clear. But that would not mean that Adam’s wife was of inferior worth, since she would be “corresponding to him.” She alone, of all creation, would share humanity with Adam, would bear the image of God with him.

The stubborn refusal to recognize the possibility of an equality of worth coexisting with inequality of function is simply a perversion of our culture.

Never forget, then, God’s design: God created Adam—as He created all things—for His service. As such, God’s design would never have been to create someone to make it harder or more miserable for Adam to serve Him. Rather, God would create someone to better facilitate Adam’s service to Him.

Since this was the specific reason for which God created the first wife—to be a helper corresponding to him—this means that the woman would really find her greatest happiness in embracing what God created her to be. Unwise women might not think so (Prov. 14:1), but it remains true, nonetheless.

—Dan Phillips, God’s Wisdom in Proverbs (Kress Biblical Resources, 2011), 191.

Genesis 28 tells the story of Jacob's encounter with God at the place he would call Bethel. This is where we read of Jacob's ladder, and from whence comes that theologically stupid song you learned in Sunday school. At Bethel, Jacob had a dream in which he saw a ladder upon which angels ascended and descended.

Whatever happened to Jacob’s ladder? The image virtually disappears in Old Testament history. Centuries pass with no mention of it. Then suddenly, it appears again in the New Testament:

Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote-Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. “Come and see,” said Philip. When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false.” “How do you know me?” Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.” Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that.” He then added, “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” John 1:45–51 NIV

Jesus’ words to Nathanael were radical. In this conversation He declared that He is the ladder of Jacob; He is the bridge between heaven and earth; He is the one who spans the chasm between the Transcendent One and mere humans. The angels of God ascend and descend on Him. He makes the absent God present among us.

—R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Tyndale, 1985), 173–174.