No conditions

We were talking about the provisions of the covenant God made with Abraham. God said that to the nation that came from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob He would give the land of Canaan forever – for “an everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:8). Israel were later scattered from the land because of their disobedience, but the land remained theirs. God always promised they would return.

According to the covenant, all the families of the earth would be blessed through this nation. Consider the number of medical and scientific discoveries, the number of Nobel prizewinners, the humanitarian efforts at national disasters. The Bible – both Old and New Testaments – was written by Jews. (The Old Testament was written by Jews. Of the writers of the 27 books of the New Testament, only Luke may have been a Gentile – and that’s not certain.) Above all, consider the blessing to the world brought by the Jewish Messiah. “Salvation,” He said, “is of the Jews” (John 4:22).

The covenant contains a wonderful promise, which apparently applies to all of the Jews: “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you” (Genesis 12:3). The blessing appears to be a blessing in kind, and the curse a curse in kind.

Because Rahab saved the lives of the Jewish spies, God saved Rahab and her family. In Egypt, after Pharaoh ordered all the male Hebrew babies to be drowned in the Nile, the entire Egyptian army was drowned in the Red Sea. In the time of Esther, when the antisemite Haman built a gallows to hang Mordecai the Jew, he wound up being hanged on it himself. In more recent times, Hitler’s henchmen  formed ghettos in the major cities and built high walls around them so the Jews could not escape. After the war, the Berlin Wall divided the city which Hitler had chosen to be his pride and joy. And before the Nazis made Zyklon B gas readily available and built the gas chambers, they shot countless thousands of Jews and burned their bodies. How did Hitler die? He was shot and his body burned.

Abraham was promised that he would father a multitude of other nations, apart from Israel. He was also father of the Arab nations.

Finally, circumcision of male children on the eighth day was to be the sign of the covenant.

When you read how the covenant was ratified in Genesis chapter 15, you will notice something unusual. Abraham sacrificed a number of animals and placed them in two rows. When it was time for the parties to pass between the rows, only God passed between them. God had placed Abraham in a deep sleep. This was an unconditional covenant. God was unilaterally covenanting to do these things for the Jewish nation without corresponding obligations on Israel's part. 

The things particularly to remember about God’s covenant with Abraham are first, that it is unconditional, and second, that it is eternal and unchanging.