Lesson 8 THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT

 Lesson 8

THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT

    IN OUR STUDY of the preceding lessons, we saw that after man died spiritually, his need of a Mediator, Righteousness and Eternal Life, could be met only by the Incarnation of God's Son.

    In our last lesson, we traced the working of the Grace of God from the time He gave to man the promise of the Incarnation, to the time of the flood, in His preserving a righteous line through which the Redeemer could come.

    We saw that Satan, in his effort to make the Incarnation an impossibility, corrupted humanity to the extent that the flood became imperative.

    Noah, who knew God, was spared with his family. He preserved the true faith in Jehovah, and handed it to his sons.

    We remember that there were two means Satan used to thwart the purpose of God in the Incarnation. They were: (1) his seeking to destroy the knowledge of God upon the earth, and (2) his seeking to destroy the righteous line.

The Tower of Babel

    From the time of the flood until the building of the tower of Babel, there was worship of God. Not that all men accepted it, for many wickedly rebelled against it; but the knowledge and revelation of the true God was too fresh in their minds for them to set up other gods.

We notice that in the ninth chapter of Genesis a command had been given to

replenish the earth. In the eleventh chapter of Genesis, we see that the whole earth was

of one language and one speech. The unity of the race was untouched. The ark in

which Noah and his family were preserved, had rested in Armenia. As men began to

multiply, this barren tableland no longer sufficed. Men must either separate and fill the

earth as God had told them to do, or a more fertile territory must be found if they are to

keep together. The latter course was resolved upon, so they passed down into the rich,

fertile lowlands in the plain of Shinar (Genesis 11:2).

 They resolved upon a permanent settlement there in order to build a city and tower,

that they might not be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth (Genesis 11:4).

    Jehovah came down and confounded their language, which caused their being scattered over the earth (Genesis 11:7-9). From there the streams of population poured forth to all parts of the world: northwest to Europe, west to Asia Minor, southwest to Egypt and Africa, south to Arabia, southeast to Persia and India, and east to China. Of course, this was not the work of a day. It took ages and ages for the more distant lands to be settled.

After men had been scattered, the worship and knowledge of Jehovah passed into the

worship of the powers of nature and then into idols. Sense knowledge took the place of

God's Revelation which had been given to spiritually dead man.