Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #26 of Genesis, chapter 22, and we are continuing to read Genesis 22:15-19:

And the angel of JEHOVAH called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, And said, By myself have I sworn, saith JEHOVAH, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son:  That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice. So Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba.

I think it was worthwhile that we spent some time looking at a principal that is not something that has been declared as regularly as some doctrines have been declared, like the principal that God’s methodology is to compare “spiritual with spiritual,” and that all conclusions must harmonize.  Those principals are true, but there is also the principal that the deeper spiritual meaning has the greater meaning or worth – it is more important and more significant.  So if anyone searches the Bible and learns some history and learns the historical and literal meaning, that is fine.  But if they do not go further to find the deeper spiritual meaning, then they have really done a superficial job, and they have not uncovered the reason why God wrote that verse in the Bible.

I think we have made that point well enough, but before we discuss that God will bless him and multiply his seed, let us think about the statement that God made in Genesis 22:16:

And said, By myself have I sworn, saith JEHOVAH…

It has to do with the blessing and the multiplying, and that is an interesting way to put it: “By myself have I sworn.”  We find similar language in other places in the Bible.  For example, it says in Isaiah 45:20-23:

Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations: they have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save. Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? have not I JEHOVAH? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.

God has sworn these things and He says, “The word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness.”  Here, in particular, He is swearing to the fact that every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear, or as it says in the New Testament, “…every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”  So we see that this is more information concerning what God swears to.  He is swearing in Genesis 22 concerning Abraham having acted obediently in offering his son Isaac, and we know that this has to do with God the Father offering God the Son.  Therefore, the blessing to Abraham is not an earthly blessing of Abraham’s physical seed, but it has to do on a spiritual level with the seed of elect that are counted in Christ and the multiplication of that seed.  There are, perhaps, as many as 200 million that are counted for the seed out of totality of mankind.  It is an incredibly great number of people that God has sworn to, as He swears that because the father Abraham has offered up his son Isaac (pointing to God the Father having offered up His Son the Lord Jesus Christ), He says, “…in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven.”   God’s salvation program is in view, and God has sworn to it – He has sworn by Himself.

He also uses similar language in Jeremiah 11:1-5:

The word that came to Jeremiah from JEHOVAH, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and speak unto the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem; And say thou unto them, Thus saith JEHOVAH God of Israel; Cursed be the man that obeyeth not the words of this covenant, Which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, Obey my voice, and do them, according to all which I command you: so shall ye be my people, and I will be your God: That I may perform the oath which I have sworn unto your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as it is this day. Then answered I, and said, So be it, O JEHOVAH

And, again, God is indicating that He has sworn an oath concerning the Promised Land, the land promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and their seed.  The Bible is more focused on the spiritual meaning of what these things pointed to.  As a matter of fact, the literal meaning of the Promised Land can go nowhere.  How can you give the (physical) land of Canaan as an everlasting possession?  You know, that would be like someone selling you the Brooklyn Bridge, as the old saying goes.  How can you give what you do not possess?  If God’s plan is to destroy the world, then nothing that is part of this world can be held as an everlasting possession.  The very fact that the world will be destroyed means that you would lose that possession at the point of its destruction.

So God is speaking on a spiritual level throughout the Bible regarding the Promised Land,  the blessings to Abraham, the multiplication of the seed and who the seed really are – the elect of Jews and Gentiles alike.  And it was all according to an oath that God had sworn, as He said, “I have sworn unto your fathers,” and  we know He swore by Himself, according to His own Word. 

We also read of God swearing in Jeremiah, but first let us go to Micah and then we will go back to Jeremiah.  There are some beautiful verses in Micah 7:18-20:

Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.

This is God’s salvation program – to forgive sin, to subdue iniquity and to cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.  By the way, can that be taken literally?  How can He cast sins into the depth of the sea?  Was Jesus cast into the depths of the sea?  Yes – but only in a figure of the prophet Jonah.  And the man Jonah was not himself bearing any sin.  He was only a type and figure of it. 

Again, the plain statement makes no sense and is not true of its own.  Actually, since God said He would give Abraham the Promised Land of Canaan, saying, “That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed” because of an act by Abraham, these things cannot be true on a literal level.  They are not true.  You see, if you do not understand the deeper spiritual meaning, you could charge God with falsehood: “It is not true that you can give the earthly land of Canaan as an everlasting possession.  It is not true that the seed is blessed because of Abraham’s action, because you tell us that no man is justified by works.  A man is not even blessed himself by his own action, so how can he cause a multitude of other individuals to be blessed because of his action?  That is impossible.  And it is not true that sins have been cast into the depths of the sea on a physical, literal level.”  Those statement are simply not true, but on the spiritual level, they are very true, once we understand that the sea represents the wrath of God, and Christ died under the wrath of God and He went down into “hell” or the grave.  Spiritually, He was bearing our sins and He went down into the depths under the wrath of God, and this verse is fulfilled regarding all our sins having been cast into the depths of the sea.

So we see that everything the Bible has to say about God’s salvation program (and it has a lot to say) is connected to the fact that God has sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.  The “days of old” would mean from ancient times which predate this world and go all the way back to the foundation of the world in eternity past.  It was in the counsels of eternity that God developed His grand plan of salvation, His magnificent salvation program.

Let us go back to Jeremiah 51.  We have seen that God’s salvation program has to do with His swearing an oath, and Jeremiah 51:12 has to do with the “fall of Babylon.”  And, again, this is the failure of the churches and the natural-minded theologians, so it is no wonder they have been so far from truth, with much of the Bible being unchartered territory to them for centuries because theologians have put up “walls” around it with their methodology of Biblical hermeneutics regarding how to study the Bible.  Basically, they have attempted to keep the Bible student under their hearing from investigating and digging further in the Bible.  If an elect child of God in times past would see a spiritual meaning, he would come to his pastor or an elder and say, “Do you think this could represent this?”  The response was, “Oh, watch out!  We do not want to get into spiritualizing things – just stick to the plain, literal meaning.”  They would add, “You can go out on a limb as long as the New Testament has interpreted something.”  This would serve as a hinderance to proper Bible study.  At the time of the end, with the hermeneutic of those in the churches, we can see a big reason why God ended the church age simultaneously with the opening of the Scriptures.  He had allowed their method of teaching as one way of “holding back” and “sealing up” the Word.  It was certain that one could not come to the right conclusions using their methodology.

But, you see, God freed His people at the time of the end from this (wrong methodology of Bible study), and He has shown us the proper way.  Of course, the people of God have always understood the proper way, at least to some degree.  But now the evil and negative influence of the tares and the natural-minded theologians in the churches and congregations is gone.  We do not even listen to them (or we should not be listening to them).  We do not ask for their input.  We do not seek their permission.  We know we have this great freedom to search the Bible, and we have that wonderful blessing as we live in this time.  You know, there are many difficulties and we all recognize that, but there is a great blessing that is a true comfort in our affliction as we go through these days “after that tribulation” and in the days of this tribulation, the recompence of tribulation or Judgment Day.  The Word of God is our great comfort in our affliction, as God is revealing so many truths, and we are seeing the Bible in a purer form than we have ever seen it before.  And we are free to roam God’s Word.  We can search out mystery, after mystery, after mystery, in a right and proper manner, as God has seen fit to open up truths here and truths there for His people.

So, here, we know that God was not all that concerned about the physical nations of “Babylon” and “Judah.”  They were two nations that existed at a time of limited population, but He was concerned with the end of the world when He would open up His Word to reveal to His people that “Judah” or “Israel” are figures of the churches and “Babylon” was a figure of Satan’s kingdom that first came against the churches and overcame them.  It demonstrated, thereby, the character of the Great Tribulation with the judgment that began at the house of God and would carry on for 23 years.  At the end of Babylon’s seventy-year period of dominating and afflicting Judah, the Jews were set free by the king of the Medes and Persians (Cyrus aka Darius) and Babylon fell.  Satan’s kingdom of this world fell.  It says in Jeremiah 51:11-14:

Make bright the arrows; gather the shields: JEHOVAH hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes: for his device is against Babylon, to destroy it; because it is the vengeance of JEHOVAH, the vengeance of his temple. Set up the standard upon the walls of Babylon, make the watch strong, set up the watchmen, prepare the ambushes: for JEHOVAH hath both devised and done that which he spake against the inhabitants of Babylon. O thou that dwellest upon many waters, abundant in treasures, thine end is come, and the measure of thy covetousness. JEHOVAH of hosts hath sworn by himself, saying, Surely I will fill thee with men, as with caterpillers; and they shall lift up a shout against thee.

And the discourse continues; it is a condemnation of Babylon, signifying the wrath of God coming down upon Satan and the nations of this world in the Day of Judgment which began on May 21, 2011.  It is the “recompense of tribulation” for the sake of His temple; that is, Babylon was used to judge the churches, but they ought not to have stretched forth their hand against  God’s anointed.  (Of course, it was all according to the will of God that it be done that way.)  So God came in recompense.  It was a spiritual judgment upon the inhabitants of the world, and it was according to the fact that JEHOVAH God had sworn by Himself, just as He had sworn according to His salvation program.  And, likewise, He has sworn according to his judgment program.  He will carry out the judgment.  He will execute the judgment written, and so will His saints, because He will move in them to will and to do of His good pleasure. 

So we are seeing in Micah and Jeremiah and in Genesis 22 and Isaiah 45 (as well as other verses) that it is the Word of God or all Scripture that is in view when God says, “I have sworn,” because it takes all Scripture to accomplish the will of God regarding His salvation and judgment programs.  It requires the whole of the Bible, and God has sworn that it will be done.  It will be accomplished.

In Hebrews, chapter 6 we see a passage that is connected to Genesis 22, and this comes up in Hebrews 6:13:

For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself,

And that answers the questions, because there are natural-minded people, like atheists, that will read the Bible just to find material to be critical about, as they search the Bible to find fault.  They see God swearing by Himself and they even dare to say, “Oh, God is an ego-maniac.  He is so self-involved that He must swear by Himself.”

But there is a reason that God swears by Himself.  What else is He going to swear by – man?  Is He going to swear by sinful, weak little man, His fallen creature?  Is He going to swear by the creation that He created by speaking His Word and bringing it instantly into existence?  Well, these are lesser things.  The whole universe, with the sun, moon and stars, is altogether as nothing in His sight.  The Bible even tells us that the heavens are not “clean” in comparison to Holy God.  What could be summoned, beckoned or called upon that would be better than God Himself?  And, of course, the answer is, “Nothing at all!”  Therefore, the answer is, “For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself,” or the fulness of the Godhead – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.  It is the Almighty everlasting God that inhabits eternity, the all-knowing omnipresent God who is the great Supreme Being.  There can be nothing greater.

Then it says in Hebrews 6:14-18:

Saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:

There are two immutable things.  I used to read that and wonder: “The first thing is that it is impossible for God to lie, but what is the second?”  The second is that God swore by Himself, because He is immutable, including his characteristics, attributes, essence and His very Being.  The God that He is cannot be changed.  There is the fact that He is absolute Truth, and He cannot lie and the fact that He is Faithful and True.  That is the second immutable or unchangeable characteristic of Himself, and that is why He swore by Himself.

So the whole Bible has been delivered to mankind with an oath made by God Himself to Himself – there is none greater.  And that oath is that He will carry it out.  He would save all those He had obligated Himself to save from the point of the foundation of the world when He selected them.  He will carry out the salvation of His people all the way through the resurrection and the receiving of the new heaven and new earth He has promised.  And He will carry out the judgment against all the rest by destroying them with an eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord.  And He will fulfill all.  He has sworn to it.