4 I will take you to me for a people, and

5 I will be to you a God... and

6 I will bring you in unto the land ... and

7 I will give it for an heritage."

And this it is solemnly signed, "I, Jehovah!"

But now let us look at the significant scene, when this wondrous covenant was first made. It is most

important and full of the deepest instruction.

We all know that a Covenant is usually made between two parties, with certain conditions to be observed

on each side. When both parties are human these conditions may or may not be kept, and when they are

broken by either side the Covenant is null and void.

Now, all such conditional Covenants which man has ever made with God, have been shamefully broken.

Whenever he who is "conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity" has entered into covenant with the Eternal

and Holy God, he has "turned aside like a broken bow," and the Covenant has failed.

But there is such a thing as an Unconditional Covenant, which is really a free-grace promise, but formally

made by the one contracting party. And when this one is Jehovah Himself, then it cannot fail, and it must

stand for ever-- "ordered in all things and sure."

There are three such unconditional Covenants in the Bible. One with NOAH concerning the earth, in virtue

of which we to-day enjoy "seed-time and harvest and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and

night" and immunity from a flood of waters. This Covenant is seven times mentioned in Gen. ix. 8-17. The

second, with ABRAHAM concerning the Land (Gen. xv. 8-21). And the third, with DAVID concerning the

Throne. (2 Sam. vii. 4-29. xxiii. 5; Ps. lxxxix.)

The Covenant that was made with Israel at Sinai was a conditional Covenant. God covenanted to give them

life and blessing, and peace and prosperity in the Land, and Israel covenanted to obey the Law. "All the

people answered and said, All the words which the Lord hath said will we do.... And Moses took the book

of the Covenant, and read in the audience of all the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we

do and be obedient. And Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood

of the Covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words." (Exod. xxiv. 3, 7, 8. Heb. ix.

18-20). In contrast with all this, it is expressly recorded that when God re -instates Israel in the blessing it will

be on the ground of grace and not of Law; on the ground of a "new" and unconditional Covenant and not

on the conditional Covenant of Sinai. Jer. xxxi. 31, "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a

new Covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the Covenant that I

made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; whic h

my Covenant they brake"!

Now let us turn to Genesis xv. and see how this original, unconditional, covenant was made by Jehovah

with Abraham. Abraham was fully instructed how he was to proceed, and what preparations he was to make

(verses 9, 10): and he divided the heifer, the goat, and the ram, and "laid each piece one against the other,"

that when the time came he might pass between the pieces. For this was, or became, the manner of making a

Covenant, as we learn from Jer. xxxiv. 18, 19, where Jehovah s ays, "I will give the men that have transgressed

my covenant, which have not performed the words of the covenant which they had made before me, when

they cut the calf in twain and passed between the parts thereof. The princes of Judah, and the princes of

Jerusalem, the Eunuchs and the priests, and all the people of the land which passed between the parts of the

But here, in this case, just at the critical moment, when Abram was ready to pass between the parts of the

victims, and be a party to the Co venant, God put him to sleep! for "when the sun was going down, a deep