Genesis 17:4-8
“This is my covenant with you: I will make you the father of a multitude of nations! What’s more, I am changing your name. It will no longer be Abram. Instead, you will be called Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations. I will make you extremely fruitful. Your descendants will become many nations, and kings will be among them! I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation. This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8And I will give the entire land of Canaan, where you now live as a foreigner, to you and your descendants. It will be their possession forever, and I will be their God.”
The book of Genesis feels a bit like trial-and-error as humanity wrestles with the devastation of sin in the world. God has a “Let’s wipe the slate clean” moment with Noah (Genesis 6), but it is literally moments after the flood waters recede that Noah degrades himself. Again, God is not about to walk away from humanity. As we see here in today’s passage, he’s taking a new step and making a covenant (or supernatural promise) with Abraham. He’s locking himself in to humanity for the long-haul, a truth that we can cling to if we ever wonder whether God will simply abandon us to the darkness.
Here’s your freedom for today: God is committed to us for eternity.
Even marriage, one of the most sacred types of human vows, isn’t eternal. We only promise “until death parts us.” When God makes a promise, he uses the word “forever.” He’s outside of time and not limited by it. When he says he’s promising a land to his people forever, he means that it has eternal value. God is inherently faithful — when he gives his word there is no going back. Why would he bother to make such a promise? Because his very nature is love in ways we can’t even comprehend. God finds us worth his time. God finds you worth his time. He’s made a promise to bring us into a land far greater than what we have seen, and we can follow him straight into that Promised Land.