That Land Promise Has Expired: Jesus, Abraham, and What God Requires Now

Texts:  Genesis 17.3-9 and John 8.51-end

We’ve got some hefty texts to consider, today.   Genesis 17 and John 8. Texts about promises, identity, and how we live, echoing right into the troubles of our own time.

In Genesis, Abram hits the deck before God, who makes a stunning promise: nations, kings, and land. Yes, that land in Canaan, promised as an "everlasting possession." Everlasting.  That’s a heck of a long time.  We've all heard these verses used, haven't we? We’ve heard them pulled out to justify claims on that specific patch of earth, right up to the tragic conflicts we see today between the patches of the land called Israel and Pallestine. "God gave it to us, forever!" the argument goes.  

But hold your horses. Verse 9 adds a crucial condition: "As for you, you shall keep my covenant..." This wasn't a no-strings-attached giveaway. It was conditional. Keep the covenant – love God, love neighbour, live justly – then the land promise holds. Think of it like getting the keys to a company car – abuse the rules, you lose the privilege.

So, how did Abraham’s descendants do? Let's be brief: the rest of the Hebrew Bible shows a rather patchy record. Bless their hearts, it wasn't exactly a stellar record, was it? Golden calves, dodgy kings ignoring prophets, worshipping other gods, injustice... the covenant was broken, repeatedly. If the promise depended on faithfulness (and faithfulness was frequently absent) what happens to the "everlasting" part? It suggests the promise, at least concerning that specific land, might be forfeit. Waving Genesis 17 today as an unbreakable divine deed ignores the crucial small print about obedience. It certainly challenges using it to justify violence or dispossession now.

Now, fast forward many centuries to John 8. Jesus is sparring with the religious leaders again. Honestly, sometimes reading John’s gospel is like watching a boxing match!  He declares, "Very truly, I tell you, whoever keeps my word will never see death." The leaders are outraged. “Woah!  Back up the donkey there. Abraham died! The prophets died! Who do you think you are?" They accuse him of having a demon – their usual response to baffling claims.

Jesus doesn't back down. In fact, he doubles down.  He says Abraham saw his day and rejoiced, and then delivers the knockout punch: "Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I AM."  Boom!

I AM. Not just 'I existed before'. He uses God's own name from the burning bush, YHWH. He's claiming equality with God.  John's Gospel is making one of his more startling assertions: Jesus (according to John) is the God who made that covenant with Abraham. No wonder they reached for stones – it was ultimate blasphemy to them!  It would be like me walking into Canterbury and claiming to be Jesus.

Do you see the connection? The Genesis promise was conditional on keeping God's covenant – the Old Testament as we call it.  But humanity struggled. Then Jesus, the great "I AM," arrives and offers a new promise, a New Testament - not of land, but of eternal life itself. And the condition? "Whoever keeps my word."

This new way, centred on keeping his word, echoes the conditionality of the old covenant.  But focuses it now onto Jesus’ word. But what is his word?   We can boil it down to the The Great Commandment:  essentially love God, love neighbour – which means love enemy, welcome the stranger, seek justice, forgive endlessly, live humbly. 

This brings us to a crucial point, one that often gets lost in some corners of Christianity. We sometimes get terribly tangled up in doctrines about Jesus, particularly intricate theories about how his death saves us – the substitutionary atonement idea, that God needed a blood sacrifice and Jesus was it. Now, the cross is central, undeniably powerful, mysterious. But listen to Jesus himself in John's Gospel! He doesn't say, "Whoever believes the correct theory about my death will never see death." He says, "Whoever keeps my word."

This should give us pause about focusing only on belief in Jesus's death as the ticket to heaven. Keeping Jesus’ word – is about discipleship. It’s about action. It’s about letting his teachings permeate our lives and change how we behave.   As the troublesome but ever-practical letter of Jesus’ earthly brother James reminds us, "Faith without works is dead." Lifeless. A car without an engine. 

You see, Jesus seems far more concerned with whether we live his teachings than merely signing off on a doctrinal statement. Keeping his word isn't about perfection; it's about the direction of our lives, the active striving to embody his love, forgiveness, and justice. You can say you believe Jesus is Lord until you’re blue in the face, but if you’re not actually doing the stuff he said – loving, forgiving, seeking justice, caring for the poor, welcoming the stranger – then according to Jesus himself, and his brother James, your faith isn't firing on all cylinders. To continue the car metaphor, it’s like owning a Ferrari but never taking it out of the garage. It looks nice, but what’s the point?

So, the journey is from a conditional land promise, arguably broken, to the arrival of the Promiser Himself, the great I AM. He offers not territory, but life eternal. The condition remains faithfulness, but now defined as actively keeping his word – living out his commands of love and justice.

So, my friends, the challenge for us today is to embrace the radical, life-altering promise offered by the one who is before all things. It’s about getting our hands dirty with the messy, demanding, beautiful work of keeping his word – loving God, loving our neighbours (all of them, no exceptions!), and finding in that active, living faith, the promise of life that truly never ends. Amen.