How will we designate the succeeding period which dates from the Call of Abram, and on to the promulgation of the law I Will we style it the age of promise to man (Gal. 3:16), and of public testimony for God? (Rom. 11.)
Previous to the deluge, the unity of the race had not to be proved; it was a palpable fact; there were neither tongues nor nations. Satan kept in the background, but filled the earth with corruption, and led on the ruined world to assert a proud, independent will of its own. God, as the moral governor, and in righteousness, wrapped up the whole scene in one huge winding sheet—a remnant alone preserved. Then on the ground of Noah's sacrifice, which surely pointed to Calvary's victim, founding in death a new and righteous ground of relationship with God, the blessings of the new world were secured, while man's sin was as fully recognized (Gen. 8:21). This was followed by the institution of civil government for the repression of evil, and God establishing a covenant with the earth—which was to be a perpetual one; then He spans the heavens with the rainbow—the sign that the earth will continue under blessing till destroyed by fire. Then in the providence of God the world is parceled out into nations, and the whole world system of today established. What next follows? Satan having reduced man to the lowest of all misery and wretchedness, now comes boldly before the world and sets himself up as its God.
O what a picture of hopeless ruin! Man has drifted away from God to the public acknowledgment of Satan and demons-the prince and leaders of the opposition to divine authority, and who, while on their way to their appointed doom (Matt. 25:41), ceaselessly labor to thwart the counsels of love, and to drag the race clown to their eternal ruin. Alas! these hearts of ours are capable of any piece of folly or wickedness. Satan, the liar and murderer, has been deliberately chosen by the world instead of the God of truth and life. Barabbas, the murderer, was the accepted man of the people, while the Lord of glory was the nation's rejected.
Now we are brought to a standstill. Idolatry is universal; the world has sold itself to Satan, Certainly if the world-system which God had in providence established will not have Him, He cannot have it. On the other hand, to go on with evil would be to deny Himself as light (1 John 1:5). Will He therefore execute summary judgment and so vindicate the majesty of His name and character? Triumphantly we reply, that He will not, so long as the heavens are arched by the rainbow. Could the Israelite confiding in the Word of Jehovah, be stricken on the terrible night of Egypt's doom with such a Word searching the depths of his soul: "When I (Jehovah) see the blood I will pass over you" (Exod. 12:13)? No more can the fallen and degraded creation be buried in one common destruction, while God looks upon the "bow" and remembers "the everlasting covenant" with all flesh (Gen. 8:16). But God did judge the idolatrous world. Ah! what a God is ours! How rich are His resources I How endlessly diversified are His ways of grace! He morally judged the whole scene of iniquity by the introduction of a new and hitherto unknown principle in His dealings with men. By glory and the authority of His Word He called one of the demon worshippers out to Himself, out from the entire system which He had just set up in His providence. God did not destroy the ordered system, nor break it up, but called Abram to leave it altogether; not to improve it, but to disown it. How peremptory How precise in terms was the call! "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee" (Gen. 12:1).
Abram then, was called out from the surrounding darkness, and constituted the depository of promise. The thoughts of God are communicated to the man of faith. Heaven displaces Canaan; and grace is announced rich, full, free, sovereign in character, and eternal in results, instead of governmental goodness to man. Both grace and government, however, are running on, but in their application, the world enjoys the governmental blessing of God under the Noachic covenant, which is for time only; while the unconditional blessing under Abraham is enjoyed by the household of faith—a blessing eternal. The principles of grace and of civil government do not unite and center in the Christian or in the Church. Government was committed to the Gentiles, while grace is as truly characteristic of the Church.
But Abram was not only called to blessing, but to be a blessing (Gen. 12:2), and for this end he was constituted the head or stock of a new race, and the root of the olive tree of testimony on the earth (Rom. 11). Thus we have three headships revealed: Adam, of the race fallen; Abram, the father of all who believe; Christ as risen, of the new creation race. We have also a double headship in Christ; namely, creation and the body (Col. 1:15, 18); as also a double aspect of the fatherhood of Abram—the Jewish nation; hence he is the fret in Scripture termed a Hebrew (Gen. 14:13), and also head of the family of faith; thus he is the first one of whom faith is spoken of (Genesis 15:6).
It is affirmed that promises were made to Adam when fallen; the women's seed, the bruiser and conqueror of the serpent, being alleged as the first of all the promises. But is this theology or Scripture? Let us see. The Lord God set up the bema or judgment seat in the scene of ruin, the garden, and after tracing the evil to its source-the serpent, gave judgment accordingly (Gen. 3:14-19). The serpent was cursed and doomed to perpetual degradation (verse 14); millennial glory will bring it no relief (Isa. 65:25); and then comes a promise to the Second Man, or woman's seed of final triumph over the enemy and his power (verse 15). But to whom were the words addressed, to the man or to the serpent? To the latter, undoubtedly. That the listening Adam had faith in the glorious revelations thus given, however dimly announced, is evident from the fact that while death had now enveloped the creation in its folds, Adam gazed beyond, even into that deathless region where God and the Lamb are the light thereof; he named his wife "Eve"—mother of all living. Then the woman comes up for judgment (verse 16), and the governmental consequences to her as witnessed in daily life are too apparent to require comment; under Christianity the sorrows of childbirth are conditionally ("if they continue") alleviated (1 Tim. 2:14, 15); the place of subjection is also assigned to the woman; this under grace is firmly maintained (1 Cor. 11: 3-10). Lastly, the ground is cursed for man's sake, and he sent to labor in it by the sweat of his brow, and thus procure a subsistence (verses 17-19); under Noah the ground was made more productive, and could be wrought with less toil, while under grace the resources of creation are unrestrictedly placed at man's disposal (1 Tim. 4:4, 5). There is nothing in all this of eternal consequences in weal or woe to the human race. Governmental judgment and for time, is the point of chapter 3 of Genesis. The eternal issues of good and evil were afterward unfolded in the Scriptures.
The first person to whom promises were made, and in whom they were deposited, was Abram (Gal. 3:16). “There is no promise to Abram and his seed as to our blessing, but there was to be a seed like the stars for multitude, but that is not ' one.' What you get in Genesis chapter 22. is, Because thou hast done this thing,' when Isaac was offered up, and has not withheld thy son, thine only son, in blessing, I will bless thee, and in multiplying, I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in thy seed (this now is the one seed-Christ) shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice.' The promise was given to Abram and confirmed to Christ, the seed: it was never given to Abram and the seed, but confirmed to the seed. The offering up of Isaac was the occasion, for then the promise was given in resurrection, and it is confirmed to the seed when we come to the Lord. In Galatians 3. Change the order of the words, ' Now to Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed,' which is Christ."—Bible Treasury, vol. 9, page 259.
One other point. The promises become more full and rich until they culminate in chapter 22. figuratively Christ in resurrection—the source of all blessing, and heir of all things—this as typified in Isaac; made to Abram (chapter 12.), confirmed to Christ (chapter 22.) And what yields such sustainment to the heart, and lifts one far above the evil around, is the fact that the blessing is absolutely unconditional. God is the promiser; Christ the seal and confirmation of all, and we believers the subjects of blessing.
About 430 years after the promises were given, and long before their accomplishment, the law came in by the bye—a provisional covenant entirely. The blessings under the Abrahamic covenant depend upon the faithfulness of God; those of the Mosaic covenant rest upon the fidelity of the people. The former will be made good, because God is the promiser; the latter never were, because man's obedience was in question. The former was the fruit of sovereign and Divine goodness; the latter, for the moral testing and trial of the people.
Now, in Abram the Lord sets the tree of life before the faithful, and that publicly before all. God's grace is displayed. Previously, the tree of life had been hidden away in the paradise of God, and the Abels, and Enochs, and Noahs had been secretly called to eat of its life-giving and life-sustaining fruit. The one family of mankind gathered around the tree of responsibility, ate of corruption and violence, and perished in the flood; then afterward the nations flocked around the same tree, and idolatry of the most degrading kind, accompanied with civilization of the highest character, was the result. The world sold itself to Satan; that was their responsibility,. But now having demonstrated to mankind, that life could not be gained as a human result—that death and misery were the fruit of all man's labor; God publicly calls believers-whether Jews or Gentiles—to repose under the ample shade of life's tree, and eat of its living fruit. We have had earth's nations dying around the tree of responsibility; but, O what a prospect I there through the vista of ages, I see the living gathered around the tree of life (Gen. 12:3). Wait yet a little moment, dear child of God and heir of eternal glory, and thou wilt personally enjoy a scene where all is life and there is no responsibility-tree (Rev. 21.)