God’s Faithfulness: The Promise-Keeping God

August 26, 2018May 6, 2021Kirk E. Miller

God’s Faithfulness: The Promise-Keeping God
CrossWay Community Church
August 26th, 2018

Redemptive-Historical Survey: 4 | Abrahamic Covenant & the Patriarchs (LDBC Recap 3/6/16 Pt. 1)

March 7, 2016November 26, 2017Kirk E. Miller

Explanation

On Sunday, January 24th, 2016, I began a Core Seminar on Redemptive History & Biblical Theology at my church, Lake Drive Baptist Church. During the course of this series I’ll be sending out emails recapping lessons and directing recipients to resources for further study.

Rather than just share these recaps with my church family, I’ve decided to share them here on the blog for anyone else who might be interested. I will be posting them occasionally over the next couple of months on a weekly basis or so.

See previous posts:

Recap/review

This week we finished up our discussion on the Abrahamic Covenant and moved through the role of the Exodus in redemptive history. Since we completed coverage of two stages in redemptive history this week, we’ll have two parts to our recap. In this post (part one) we’ll review the Abrahamic Covenant.

Overview of Biblical material

Genesis 11:27-50:26

God calls out a man named Abram (eventually renamed Abraham) and makes a covenant[1] with him and his descendants.[2] God is with Abraham and blesses him throughout his life.
Abraham and his wife Sarah miraculous have a child, Isaac, according to God’s specific covenant promise of numerous descendants.
As promised (Gen 17:7, 19, 21), God’s promise to Abraham is passed to his son Isaac (Gen 17:21; 26:1-6, 19-26) and then Isaac’s son Jacob (eventually renamed “Israel”—father of the nation of Israel [Gen 27:18-29; 28:10-16; 35:6-15]). God is with Isaac and Jacob and blesses them throughout their lives.
Through a great series of events, involving the selling of Jacob’s son, Joseph, into slavery and a great famine, Jacob (Israel) finds himself and his family in the land of Egypt. Again, God is with them and blesses them.

Role within redemptive history

We summarized the role of the Abrahamic Covenant (and, by extension, God’s dealing with select descendants of Abraham–the patriarchs–on account of this covenant being passed down to them) the following way: God initiates his new-creational kingdom plan in the form of covenant-bound promises to Abraham.

Continue reading →

7 Principles Concerning Israel and the Land (John Piper)

July 26, 2014Kirk E. Miller

Yesterday Matt Smethurst published a blog post on Israel, Gaza, and the idea of Israel’s ‘divine right’ to the land (originally posted Nov 22, 2012). In it Matt linked to and shared thoughts from one of John Piper’s sermons on that same topic. I was familiar with this sermon; I have listened to it once or twice previously. But I was reminded of it yesterday; and, like Matt, I thought it would be good to share his principles as well as some commentary.

In the sermon, John Piper provides 7 principles concerning Israel, Palestine, the land, ‘divine right,’ etc. I want to share these because 1) this is incredibly relevant right now and 2) I think Piper is spot on here.

1. God chose Israel from all the peoples of the world to be his own possession.

Deuteronomy 7:6 – The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

2. The Land was part of the inheritance he promised to Abraham and his descendants forever.

Genesis 15:18 – On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.”

Genesis 17:7-8 – “I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”