“Divine Grace And Human Responsibility” Genesis 17:1-14 May 31, 2009

SI: This chapter is the most important in the story of Abraham.

The Lord speaks to Abraham and in a detailed and precise way he spells out

his covenant relationship with Abraham. .

Within this chapter, are a number matters of tremendous importance for our

understanding of the Bible and our faith.

There is no way we can cover them all in one sermon, so we’re going to spend

a few Sundays covering this chapter.

Start with verses 1-14.

INTRO: Does the Bible contradict itself?

The Bible says in some places that a woman should focus on her inner beauty,

that her dress should be modest and simple,

and that she should not wear gold, pearls, expensive clothes, or fancy hairdos.

And in other places it celebrates the physical beauty of women, and makes

positive comments about the attractiveness of certain women, and the

adornment of the female body with jewelry, perfume, and fine clothes.

The Bible teaches the complete equality of men and women, especially in Christ.

In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.

And the Bible also emphasizes the distinction of genders, limitation of church

office to men, and the submission of women to men in the church and home.

The Bible tells us to pray for our enemies, to bless and not to curse.

And the Bible gives us inspired prayers and songs that curse God’s enemies.

The Bible teaches the absolute eternal security of the elect

in the unchanging love of God.

And the Bible also repeatedly warns believers not to fall away

and forfeit their salvation.

The Bible says we are justified by the righteousness of Christ received faith alone.

And the Bible says that our lives will be judged in the last day by our works.

The Bible says that God is One and it also stresses the triple personality of God.

There are many places where the Bible presents

what appear to be contradictory teachings.

The question is: Are these real contradictions?

Are any teachings of the Bible really in conflict with each other?

No, they aren’t. The Bible is completely unified.

But even though we know the Bible is unified and know it doesn’t contradict itself,

it does present teachings that are in tension with each other,

and it is oftentimes very hard to harmonize these teachings.

And the temptation is to pick one teaching and throw out the other.

Jehovah’s Witnesses and Unitarians say you can’t really believe in the Oneness

of God and be true to Scripture if you also believe in the Trinity.

So they’ve picked one teaching and tossed the other.

Roman Catholic Church says that if you believe that you are justified

by the righteousness of Christ, then that undermines the Bible’s teaching

that you will be judged according to your works. Either one or the other.

So the Catholic Church has rejected justification by faith in order

to affirm judgment according to works.

In more and more evangelical churches, the Bible’s teaching on the equality of men

and women is used to set aside the Bible’s teachings on distinctive gender roles.

Those are just a few examples.

So what is the right way to approach Bible when teachings appear to contradict?

You have to believe both. You have to embrace both at the same time.

Even if you can’t see clearly how they can be harmonized with each other.

This is the way Scripture often reveals to us truth about God, salvation, and the

Christian life. It puts teachings side by side, in tension, and then challenges

us to believe them both, ponder them, and work them out in our lives by faith.

Now, what does that have to do with our passage?

Genesis 17 presents two profound biblical teachings in tension—

Divine grace and human responsibility.

First, this passage emphasizes in the strongest possible way

the sovereign grace of God. Who takes the initiative and brings Abraham

into the covenant? God does. He gives Abraham unconditional promises

of salvation and blessing to him and his descendants.

And then, in this very same passage, God places the strongest possible emphasis

on the responsibility of Abraham and his descendants

to meet the conditions of the covenant and prove faithful from their side.

God promises to bless them no matter what,

and then he demands that his people obey or else.

How do you deal with this tension?

The answer is not to downplay or throw out either—but to believe both.

Doing so will give you incredible strength and maturity in Christian life.

Let’s look at this passage and subject under three points.

1. What this passage teaches us about divine grace

2. What it teaches us about human responsibility

3. The strength that comes to the Christian life by believing both

Credit: Sermon by Dr. Robert Rayburn on this passage

MP#1 What this passage teaches us about divine grace.

A person who doesn’t know much about the rest of the Bible might say:

I don’t see any tension in this passage.

It’s just saying: God will be faithful to us if we are faithful to him.

God will do his part if we do our part.

But that does not begin to do justice to what God says to Abraham,

or to what the rest of the Bible says about God’s covenant with Abraham.

The point driven home over and over is that God’s promises are unconditional.

He will keep his promises to Abraham and his descendants no matter what.

Look again at the emphasis in verses 2-8.

I am God almighty.

I will confirm my covenant between me and you.

I will greatly increase your numbers.

I have made you the father of many nations.

I will make you very fruitful.

I will make nations of you.

I will establish my covenant as everlasting covenant between me and descendants.

I will give you the land as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants.

I will be their God.

Is there any doubt what the Lord was communicating to Abraham?

There is absolutely no way that you can read this and think that God was

saying: Abraham, I’ll do my part if you do your part.

Think of how this played out in biblical history.

Abraham did not walk blamelessly before God—but God kept his promise.

He brought Israel into the Promised Land even though as a people

they had failed him in every way.

And for centuries, even when Israel continued to rebel, and even when God

had to send them off into captivity to break them of their idolatry,

he did not cast them off.

This is pressed home in the New Testament.

Paul in Romans: God never once failed to be true to his promise to Abraham.

Many individual Jews did not believe, and they rejected and crucified the

Messiah and were cast off from the people of God.

But even so, as Paul pointed out, the covenant with Abraham concerned

not all his physical descendants but his spiritual descendants.

And God by his grace has always seen to it that there are spiritual

descendants of Abraham. Here we are, 4,000 years later, walking by faith.

And furthermore, there is not a single spiritual descendant of Abraham,

not a single one of us who would say we have walked before God blamelessly.

Every single man or woman who has come to faith in Christ and believed and lived

and died in covenant with God has done so because God called us,

and kept us, even when we failed—just like Abraham.

There is no way you can say that Genesis 17 is simply a bargain between ,

God and man—I’ll do my part, I’ll save you and bless you, if you do your part.

It’s a magnificent proclamation of God’s sovereign, unconditional grace.

He chooses us, he calls us, he saves us, he keeps us because he has promised.

Listen to these great verses that drive this home.

Ephesians 1

“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.”

John 10

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand.”

Philippians 1

“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Revelation 5

“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.”

Matthew 18

“I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

The Bible never hesitates to remind you, that you would never have believed apart

from the grace of God and his work in you. It was not by your own effort,

or your own decision, or the exercise of your will.

It was and continues to be all of God.

And that brings us to . . .

MP#2 What this passage teaches us about human responsibility

God says to Abraham: “Walk before me and be blameless.”

“As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you

for the generations to come.”

Just across the page, in chapter 18, God puts Abraham and his descendants

under a lasting obligation to instruct and direct their children in the way

of the Lord and to do what is right and just.

Then he gives Abraham circumcision as the sign of the covenant.

Circumcision signifies obedience to all of God’s laws.

And then the Lord says that if anyone is uncircumcised,

then he has broken the covenant and will be cut off from God’s people.

These are real responsibilities, real demands of God.

If a child is born into a Christian family, if he is a covenant child,

born into the covenant community, God requires two things.

He requires his parents to instruct him and direct him in the way of the Lord.

And God requires that covenant child to live up to the demands of the covenant.

If a person makes a profession of faith, as a young person or adult,

and enters the covenant community, is baptized and joins the church,

God expects him to live up to the demands of the covenant.

There are obligations that God lays down for men and women

who would be in his covenant and stay in his covenant—

faith, repentance, and obedience.

Just as God’s grace is elaborated throughout Scripture, in the same way

this theme of real human responsibility to keep the covenant is as well.

The Bible addresses people as responsible and free

and under obligation to respond to God’s call.

Listen to these verses, let them hit you.

Joshua 24

“Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve . . . If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”

1Corinthians 15:2

By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

Hebrews 3:12

See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.

Luke 9:23

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.

Rev 2:7

To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”

Mark 13:13

He who stands firm to the end will be saved.

These are real conditions.

The lack of these things has caused many people to be cast out of the covenant. There are many people who started out in the covenant but did not hold firmly

to the Word that was preached to them and so they believed in vain.

There are many who allowed themselves to be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness,

and who refused to deny themselves and take up their cross

and who failed to stand firm to the end, and what happened to them?

They were cut off.

The Bible never hesitates to remind you, that God holds you responsible

for faithfulness to his covenant. You must walk before God and be blameless.

That means a life of faith, repentance, and obedience.

Does this sound like a contradiction? On the one hand Genesis 17 says God’s

covenant with you is unconditional. It’s all his grace.

He brings you in. He keeps you in. Nothing you do can mess that up.

On the other hand, Genesis 17 says that the covenant is conditional.

You are held responsible by God for keeping the covenant.

If you do not live a life of faith and obedience, you will be cut off.

That brings us to our third point:

MP#3 The strength that comes to the Christian life by believing both

You must believe both in divine grace and human responsibility.

You must hold to both and embrace both as true.

And you must live your life according to both.

Because the Bible teaches both.

The Bible teaches that people everywhere are responsible, free persons

who have an obligation to respond to God’s call and believe.

And once they have believed, must continue in a life of faith and obedience.

And the Bible also teaches that those who do believe would never have believed

were it not for the grace of God—choosing them, working in them,

calling them to faith, and keeping them safe to the end.

This is not a contradiction, it’s a mystery.

And no matter how you try to explain these teachings and harmonize them,

there will always be a tension between them.

You must never let the tension between God’s sovereign grace

and your absolute responsibility to be relaxed in your heart and mind.

Believing both gives you particular strength for living the Christian life.

Let me show you how this works in one area of life and from that,

how it applies to the whole Christian life.

Parenting. Christian parenting. You want your children to walk with

the Lord and to be with you in heaven, don’t you? Of course you do.

That’s huge, isn’t it? The eternal destiny of your child—heaven or hell.

The strength to parent as a Christian comes from believing in God’s grace

and human responsibility at the same time, and never letting to of either one.

First, you have to absolutely and completely trust God’s sovereign grace.

You have to believe God when he says:

“I will be your God and the God of your children.”

You have to say to yourself: My child in not a pagan. He’s a covenant child.

He’s a little lamb of God. God has chosen him for salvation.

And God has already shown his sovereign grace

to my child by having him born in a believing family.

You have to entrust your child’s salvation to Jesus.

Just like the parents who brought their children to Jesus and put them in his arms. And Jesus took those children, not because they had chosen him or made a decision

to believe, he took them in fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham.

And he blessed them and said the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

Believing in God’s grace delivers you from worry and from pride—

because it means your child’s salvation doesn’t depend on what you do or what

your child does but on what God does.

And then, at the same time, you have to believe with equal conviction

that your child’s eternal destiny depends on your faithfulness to the covenant,

and your child’s response to God.

It is your responsibility to raise your children in the faith.

You are the channel God has prepared for their spiritual blessing.

So you can’t take this lightly, you are responsible for your child’s soul.

Believing this delivers you from complacency.

Dutch theologian named Wilhelmus a Brakel. His parents strong Calvinists.

Believed absolutely in the sovereign grace of God.

Totally trusted God for the salvation of their children.

But they also believed in the responsibility they had before God.

And the responsibility their son had to believe and live and obedient life.

Brakel remembers that his mother prayed incessantly that he would walk with God,

and he remembers her frequently saying to him:

“O, what you will have to answer for, if you do not fear God!”

So when you worry about your children, or when you get proud of where

they seem to be spiritually, grab on to the sovereign grace of God.

My child’s salvation is in the hands of the God. He alone will save them.

And anything good I see in them is evidence of his grace alone.

And when you get lazy and complacent about your children,

and think they are going to be fine if you don’t pray with them and for them, and

read the Bible to them, and take them to church, and talk to them about Christ—

Then you need to grab on to the Bible’s teaching about human responsibility,

and how the covenant can be broken, and people cut off.

You might go back and forth between these poles a dozen times during one

heart-to-heart talk with your teenager.

But that’s what it means to live by faith.

To take the grand mysteries of the Christian faith, teachings in tension,

and believe both and apply to your heart as you need them.

Know and believe with all your heart that you are in covenant with God because

he has chosen you and called you and brought you into a saving relationship

with him, and that he keeps you safe and close to him.

And desire with all your heart to keep the obligations of that covenant,

and never break that covenant so that you will never be cast off because of

faithlessness and disobedience.

Spare no effort to live in faithfulness to God’s covenant.

And depend entirely on God’s grace for that faithfulness you strive for.

All day, every day work, obey, and strive to be faithful to God,

and at the same time pray that he will make you faithful.