Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #3 of Genesis, chapter 26, and we are going to read Genesis 26:3-5:

Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father; And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.

I will stop reading there.  In our last study, we saw that God was reiterating the promise given to Abraham, Isaac’s father, and He was confirming the promise with his son Isaac, in an interesting way, because Isaac was used as a type of the “seed” when God gave the promise to Abraham and Sarah of a seed.  It was built around the drama of Sarah having a son in her old age.  We know that Isaac himself was a figure.  God used him as a parable pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ, as Christ would come.  And God declared that He was the “seed” (singular) that was spoken of in the book of Genesis.

I mentioned this last time, but God said, “Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of,” and then we read a little later that Isaac dwelt in the land of Gerar, so it was the land of the Philistines, and that was the place where God came to Isaac and He said, in Genesis 26:4:

And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;

“All these countries,” would be all the various nations of the land of Canaan, as the land of Canaan was a picture…and I am aware that someone may be listening to EBible Fellowship for the first time, and they are probably hearing all these references to “types and figures” or “pictures.”  I try to think of as many synonyms as I can, because it comes in handy, considering that this is the way God wrote the Bible – in parables. The Bible says that Christ “spoke in parables… and without a parable spake he not unto them.”  The Bible has various levels of meaning.  There is the historical level of meaning – it is true history; the events we read about actually happened.  But if we stop there and just look at a moral teaching or instruction in living…and we can find that in the Bible, and it helps man to live in a way that is more pleasing to God.  That is another level, but it is still on the surface, which is the historical, grammatical, plain meaning of the Scripture, like the keeping of the Law or the blessings that come from doing it God’s way.  But these are just the very basic things of the Bible.  They are only the “milk of the Word,” but the strong meaning lies on another level.  It lies in the spiritual realm, and that is not easy to find. 

That is where study comes in.  I have mentioned this before, but we need the Holy Spirit to help us.  As we go about (Bible) study, we need to be saved and we need to have been given a new heart that makes us “alive” to the things of the Spirit.  God gives us of His Spirit, and once we have that qualification, then we need to follow the Bible’s instruction for studying the Bible.  God has presented us with His Word, the holy Bible, and within it are instructions, just like when you bring home a new tool or something you have to put together.  You open it up, and there is an instruction manual.  There are “instructions” built into the Bible, and 1Corinthians 2 is a good place to go to learn about that instruction, comparing spiritual with spiritual or Scripture with Scripture, and then we are told that the Holy Ghost teacheth.  And the Holy Ghost is Spirit.   We compare spiritual with spiritual, and the Law is spiritual.  We compare this verse with that verse – here a little, there a little – and that allows the Holy Ghost to teach.  We “turn over the reins,” or we turn over our thinking to Him.  The Bible says, “Trust in JHEOVAH with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”  We do not follow other men, like theologians and their writings.  We do not lean on man’s understanding, but we want to lean on God and allow His Spirit to direct us.  And He will, and He will guide us into all truth.  Then there are other principles, like we cannot take three or four verses that apparently say one thing, but they contradict something we read elsewhere.  There needs to be harmonization, and everything must fit like pieces of a puzzle.  After following the steps of comparing Scripture with Scripture and harmonizing conclusions, then we can have good confidence that the thing we found is truth.  It is a nugget of truth, and that which was hidden, and by God’s grace, we now have learned something.  That is why I consistently refer to “types and figures” and things like that, because we are operating on that deeper level, trying to see what God has hidden in the Bible.

And at this time we are studying Genesis 26:4 where the Lord speaks of making Isaac’s seed to multiply as the stars of heaven.  I went to this verse last time, but it says in Genesis 26:7-8:

And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

The promise is to the “seed” of Abraham, and we gone to this passage many times before, but we will go there again, in Galatians 3:6:

Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

This is one of those verses where the Lord writes in such a way that it would be very easy for the reader to get the wrong idea.  And that wrong idea would be that what was accounted to him for righteousness was Abraham’s belief, but that understanding does not harmonize (with the rest of the Bible).  That is why the principle of harmonizing all Scripture is a necessary part of Bible study.  We could even go back to the previous chapter, where it says in Galatians 2:16:

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

When we search further, we find that God calls faith a “work” in Thessalonians.  He calls it “the work of faith” two times, but one time would be sufficient as He has placed it within His Law.  And that means that faith is a “work” and no man is justified by works in the sight of God.  “Oh, yes, but the Bible also says that you can become justified by the works of the Law, if you keep the whole Law.”  But no man is able to keep the whole Law.  We do not come anywhere close to keeping the whole Law.  Therefore, the conclusion of God is that no man is justified by the works of the Law.  However, there is a “man,” the Lord Jesus Christ, who can perform the “work of faith” in a right way, and He did at the foundation of the world when He was laden with the sins of God’s chosen people, all the elect.  And He suffered and died, and that was the “work of faith.”  His work showed forth His faith and because He was faithful in all the Law, there is no condemnation or error that would prevent Him (Jesus) from doing that work to justify all those that intended to justify. 

This is a point that some who carelessly read the Bible do not understand because they will see some verses that are saying we are not justified by the Law (and they understand that part right), but they think that faith is something that God has given that is not part of the Law.  And that is why the professed Christians that populate the churches think, “If I believe, that is not keeping the Law because belief or faith is not part of the Law.”  They see the Law as over here to the side, and faith is over there in the other direction.  “So if I believe and I have faith, I am not coming under the Law.”  But they are wrong, and they have not correctly harmonized all the verses in the Bible, such as those statements in Thessalonians.  Let us turn to one of those verses, since I referred to them.  It says in 1Thessalonians 1:3:

Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love…

Your “work of faith” is spoken of here, and God does not make statements like this accidently or incidentally, as if it has no meaning.  He very purposefully called faith a “work,” or “your work of faith,” as He was speaking to the believers in Thessalonica.  That means that they were performing a “work of faith.”  Of course they were, because it says in 1John 3:23:

And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.

Did you see that?  This is His commandment – that we should believe.  Now here in Galatians 3, Abraham believed God.  That is what it said in Galatians 3:6: “Even as Abraham believed God…”   That, in itself, is nothing special, as God commands all men to believe.  He commanded Abraham to believe.  He commanded every human being made in His image to believe, and when man responds (whether in obedience or attempted obedience) and believes, it is a work of the Law, because the Bible defines “work” as obedience to the commandments of God: “Thou shalt not kill,” and if you obey, you have done that good work; “Thou shalt not steal,” and if you do not steal, you have done that good work.  And this applies to whatever the Bible commands.  There are positive commands like, “Husbands, love your wives,” and “children, honor your parents,” and so forth.  If we do not “bow down to other gods,” it is a work of the Law.  And God also commands that we believe, and when we respond, it is a work.  And this is the main focus of the churches: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.  Accept Him.  Come down the aisle.”  And once that work is performed, they say that you have kept the commandment and you have, supposedly, believed on Jesus and done the work of faith.  However, no man is justified by works – not the work of keeping the Ten Commandments, and not the work of keeping God’s commandment to believe.  If you start down that road, then you have to keep the whole Law of God, the whole Bible, perfectly, and it is not possible for a sinner.  You cannot even get started in a right way because the sinner has a desperately wicked and deceitful heart that is dead in trespasses, so how are you going to keep God’s Law?  So this is the error.

Now the Bible does have language that says that faith is that which saves and is somehow distinct and apart from the Law.  Yes – and that is because it is referring to the “faith of Christ.”  When the Bible is speaking to the sinner and commanding belief, if we respond in any way, it is a work.  But Galatians 2:16 says that we are justified by the faith of Christ, the faith belonging to Him – not ours.  If that faith of the Lord Jesus saved us, that is outside the boundary of our relationship to the Law.  And that is why the Bible occasionally gives the idea that faith is “off to the side” in relationship to the Law of God, because it is in the Person of Christ, and Christ has that relationship to the Father.  And He can perfectly maintain that work, and He did when He suffered and died in the atonement. 

And, again, when we read in Galatians 3:6, “Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness,” it would be referring to the faith of Christ.  I do not want to get any further into trying to prove that right now, but we can prove it, if necessary.  Then it goes on to say in Galatians 3:7-9:

Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.

It is no wonder when we read this kind of language why so many theologians are enamored with Abraham.  “Oh, his work of faith!”  To them, it almost rises up to the level of the Lord Jesus going to the cross, if you read some of their commentaries and the way they “wax eloquent” about Abraham and his offering up of Isaac, his only son, and how tremendous it was.  And they have fallen into the trap.  There are numerous Scriptures, like what we are reading in Galatians 3, that appear supportive of this snare that God has laid.  It is camouflaged, covering over the snare and trap of thinking that a man can be justified with God through his own faith and belief – his own faithful act.  But it is not so, even when we go back to Genesis 26. We read in Genesis 26:4:

And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;

And then we read in Genesis 26:5:

Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.

Wow!  God is saying  that in Abraham’s seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because (this is the reason) Abraham obeyed my voice.  Earlier I mentioned the definition of a “work.”  When God commands, our response of obedience or attempted obedience is a “work.”  And this is saying that because Abraham did good works…and it is really repeated by saying that he “obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”  It is just like what God does in Psalm 119 where every verse speaks of the Word of God, using terms like statutes, laws and commandments.  They are all synonymous. 

And Abraham did a good work, and this is why all the nations of the earth shall be blessed – because of this.  It is amazing, and it stands out incredibly as an enormous contradiction to Galatians 2:16 and other statements in the Bible that declare, flatly, that we are not justified by our works, and that we will die in our sins if we do not keep all the Law perfectly, once we start to try to keep any part of the Law.  Then we have to keep the whole Law, and the Bible indicates that no man can do that.  No man is justified by the works of the Law, except (it seems) Abraham.  But, no, Abraham was a man just like you and me and all of us, which means he was a sinner, and which means that he was not justified by the works of the Law.

What God is doing here is that He is declaring spiritual truth.  And keep in mind because we have notice this before, but it needs to be said often: the most important meaning of a Bible verse is its deeper spiritual meaning.  The spiritual meaning supersedes the surface meaning, the plain, literal meaning of the verse.  And, again, there is the example where God commands, “Circumcise your hearts.”  It cannot be done in the physical, literal life of a person living on the earth.  (And, please, no one try this, because you will die.)  No one can circumcise his heart, but then God says, “I will circumcise your heart.”  And we know, for example, that when it says, “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed,” we can read God’s spiritual clarification on this in Galatians 3:16, although God held back on revealing this fact for a couple thousand years.  And, yet it was always true, but He just did not reveal it clearly until it came to Galatians 3:16:

Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

That is, it is singular, and it is singular because it is pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ.  He is the promised seed.  We do not have time, but let us just turn there quickly to Genesis 22 where Abraham offered up Isaac, and then we read in Genesis 22:17-18:

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.

You see, it helps us to understand when God makes the statement “because thou hast obeyed my voice,” it is pointing to Abraham as a picture of the Father who offered up His only Begotten Son.