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DWDP - Abrahamic Covenant..God's Unconditional Promises to Abraham · More Than Medicine

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  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills that plague our culture and our country.
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  SPEAKER_01: Hosted by author and physician, Dr.
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  SPEAKER_01: Robert Jackson.
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  SPEAKER_02: Papa, can you tell me a story?
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  SPEAKER_02: Do you really want me to tell you a story?
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  SPEAKER_02: Well, you go get your brother and your sisters, and I will tell you a story.
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  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Devotions with Dr.
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  SPEAKER_02: Papa.
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  SPEAKER_02: Gather round, grab your Bibles, and let us look into the written word which reveals to us the living word, who is our Lord Jesus Christ.
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  SPEAKER_02: Well, today we're going to look at Genesis twelve verses two and three.
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  SPEAKER_02: God speaking to Abraham, and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, and so you shall be a blessing.
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  SPEAKER_02: And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.
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  SPEAKER_02: And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.
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  SPEAKER_02: In verse two is recorded God's covenant with Abraham, outlining four divine commitments, four divine promises that follow after Abram obeys the command to leave his home and his family and relocate to Canaan.
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  SPEAKER_02: The first commitment, the first divine promise is nationhood.
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  SPEAKER_02: God promises to transform this old man.
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  SPEAKER_02: He's seventy five years old, and his wife Sarah is barren.
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  SPEAKER_02: And God promises to transform him into a great nation.
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  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure that made Abram's heart leap.
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  SPEAKER_02: The second thing is God promises divine favor.
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  SPEAKER_02: God pledges to bless him with both spiritual and material blessings.
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  SPEAKER_02: And as we go forward in our Bible study we will see the outworking of that pledge in Abram's life.
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  SPEAKER_02: The third promise is renown.
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  SPEAKER_02: God promises that he would make Abram, Abram's name great, ensuring his legacy is exalted.
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  SPEAKER_02: And that is true.
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  SPEAKER_02: Both Jews and Christians and even Muslims revere Abraham.
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  SPEAKER_02: And listen, that is no accident.
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  SPEAKER_02: That is the fulfillment of a divine promise.
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  SPEAKER_02: And then fourth is universal impact.
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  SPEAKER_02: Abram is positioned as a conduit of blessing, a promise ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ and extended to all nations.
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  SPEAKER_02: Even you and I are beneficiaries of that promise and that blessing.
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  SPEAKER_02: Listen to me, God is faithful.
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  SPEAKER_02: He made that promise to Abram centuries ago, and the promise was that the impact through his life would be a universal impact.
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  SPEAKER_02: And there are Christian people in almost every people group around the world, and God is faithful to that promise that He made to Abraham.
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  SPEAKER_02: Now here is the beginning of God's redemptive strategy, where grace received by Abram is intended to be shared.
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  SPEAKER_02: Abram was chosen by God by sovereign grace, not for any particular merit of his own.
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  SPEAKER_02: As we will see, Abram had plenty of moral failings of his own, just like you and me, and yet God chose him and bestowed grace on him, blessed him with the intention that he would bless others.
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  SPEAKER_02: Well, kind of like you and me, right?
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  SPEAKER_02: God chose you and me for no particular merit of our own, entirely by his sovereign grace.
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  SPEAKER_02: We had plenty of moral failings of our own, yet God chose us, washed us, filled us with Holy Spirit, and called us his children, and now expects us to extend His grace and glory to others.
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  SPEAKER_02: It's not all about me.
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  SPEAKER_02: It's not all about you.
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  SPEAKER_02: It's all about Him, and sharing His goodness and greatness with others.
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  SPEAKER_02: Now I want us to compare this verse with Genesis eleven chapter four, where the rebel crowd at Babel said Let us make a name for ourselves.
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  SPEAKER_02: You remember that?
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  SPEAKER_02: They gathered at Babel and they said Let us make a name for ourselves.
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  SPEAKER_02: And here God said that He was going to make Abram's name great.
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  SPEAKER_02: That crowd at Babel said, Let's make a name for ourselves rather than making God's name great.
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  SPEAKER_02: The rebels preferred self exaltation rather than God exaltation, rather than God worship, and they ended up scattered, speaking strange languages.
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  SPEAKER_02: In Genesis twelve and verse two, God chooses to make Abram's name great, and through his obedience he becomes a universal blessing.
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  SPEAKER_02: All of this occurs at God's initiative.
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  SPEAKER_02: How do we know that?
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  SPEAKER_02: Well, four times in verse two God says I will, I will make you, telling us the covenant is God's idea formed by His divine grace and not upon Abraham's merit.
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  SPEAKER_02: Furthermore, this is an unconditional commitment by God to Abraham.
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  SPEAKER_02: All Abraham had to do was move to Canaan.
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  SPEAKER_02: The rest was up to God.
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  SPEAKER_02: Now look at verse three.
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  SPEAKER_02: Let me read verse three to you one more time.
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  SPEAKER_02: And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and the and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.
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  SPEAKER_02: God's promise to keep Abraham and his descendants as the apple of his eye, which we will see will unfold in the life of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the life of the entire nation of Israel over many centuries, because they became his chosen people.
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  SPEAKER_02: At this point Abram has to realize that it is through him that the promise of Genesis three verse fifteen that a savior for mankind, the promised seed of the woman would come through him, through his progeny.
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  SPEAKER_02: How awe inspiring had that had that to be?
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  SPEAKER_02: Basically God is promising protection for him and his family, once again an unconditional promise.
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  SPEAKER_02: This blessing and the protection extended and and continues to apply to Abram's progeny even today.
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  SPEAKER_02: I realize that that raises a question often asked.
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  SPEAKER_02: Does this covenant with Abraham apply to ethnic Jews even today?
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  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's talk about that a minute.
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  SPEAKER_02: In answer to that, to that question, we have to distinguish the covenant with Abraham from the covenant with Moses.
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  SPEAKER_02: The covenant with Moses came much later at Mount Sinai.
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  SPEAKER_02: The Mosaic covenant was a conditional covenant compared to the covenant with Abraham, which was an unconditional covenant.
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  SPEAKER_02: The Mosaic covenant, God promised to bless the nation of Israel, to protect them and to prosper them if they obeyed, and if they walked in righteousness, if they had no other gods before him.
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  SPEAKER_02: In other words, all the Ten Commandments, plus about six hundred other commandments.
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  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, they did not keep the commandments, despite the fact that God sent prophets to them repeatedly over many centuries of time to remind them of the covenant and to warn them of the consequences of disobeying the covenant.
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  SPEAKER_02: And then eventually, because of their disobedience, the northern ten tribes, the nation of Israel, went into captivity in Assyria in 722 BC.
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  SPEAKER_02: And then a hundred and some years later, the southern two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, went into captivity to Babylon, as God had predicted through his prophets.
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  SPEAKER_02: Then seventy years later, as he also had prophesied through his prophets, the southern two tribes, Judah returned under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah.
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  SPEAKER_02: So that was the Mosaic covenant, different from the Abrahamic covenant, which was an unconditional covenant.
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  SPEAKER_02: Many allege today that God's promises to Abraham are now since Jesus Christ conferred on the spiritual descendants of Abraham, who are Christians, basing their belief on verses like Galatians three nine, Galatians three fourteen to sixteen.
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  SPEAKER_02: Let me read those verses to you so you'll understand what I'm trying to say here.
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  SPEAKER_02: Galatians three nine says, So then those who are are of faith are blessed with Abraham the believer.
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  SPEAKER_02: Then verse 14 and 16 in Galatians 3.
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  SPEAKER_02: In order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
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  SPEAKER_02: Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations, even though it is only a man's covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it.
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  SPEAKER_02: Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.
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  SPEAKER_02: He does not say and to seeds plural, as referred to many, but rather to one, and to your seed that is Christ.
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  SPEAKER_02: So based on verses like that, people are saying that the promise that God made to Abra Abraham is now conferred to Christian folks.
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  SPEAKER_02: And then go on to Romans chapter nine and verse sixteen.
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  SPEAKER_02: Let me see show you what it says.
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  SPEAKER_02: Romans nine and verse sixteen.
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  SPEAKER_02: So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.
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  SPEAKER_02: And then Romans nine, seventeen through twenty four.
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  SPEAKER_02: For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I raised you up to demonstrate my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.
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  SPEAKER_02: So then he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires.
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  SPEAKER_02: So you will say to me then, why does he still find fault?
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  SPEAKER_02: For who resists his will?
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  SPEAKER_02: On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?
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  SPEAKER_02: The thing moulded will not say to the moulder, Why did you make me like this, will it?
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  SPEAKER_02: Or does not the potter have a right over the clay to make from the same lump one verse, one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?
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  SPEAKER_02: So under you understand that God chooses whom he makes.
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  SPEAKER_02: And so it is that Christians are now the ones that are blessed through their faith in Jesus as spiritual spiritual descendants of Abraham, but not so fast.
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  SPEAKER_02: Paul also says in Romans eleven twenty eight through twenty nine that ethnic Jews are not forgotten by God, nor are the promises made to them for God's gifts and his callings are irrevocable.
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  SPEAKER_02: So if you go to the theological chat rooms, this debate rages incessantly, but mostly politely, for after all, these are Christian theologians.
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  SPEAKER_02: And I guess you and I would just have to wait till Jesus comes back to find out for certain.
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  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's the end of our lesson for today.
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  SPEAKER_02: I'll be back again next week and we'll pick up where we left off.
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  SPEAKER_02: Until then, I pray that the Lord will bless you real good.
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  SPEAKER_02: Remember, Jesus loves you, and your doctor loves you.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to this edition of Mortan Medicine.