Genesis 12: God's Eternal Covenant with Israel

Introduction

On October 4, 2026, the Evangelische Gemeente Hoogvliet in the Netherlands celebrated, apparently for the first time, Israel Sunday. The preacher of the day, Kees Smits, is introduced by the church as someone who knows Israel well. He points out that on that same day, in the synagogues, Jews were celebrating Simchat Torah, "the joy of the Law": the Torah scrolls are taken out of the ark and people dance in a circle seven times, so great is their delight in the Law.

The subject is vast. Kees Smits warns that he cannot say everything and will stick to a few important points. His thread starts from Genesis 12: the mission and promise given to Abraham, the eternal covenant God makes with him, the love that chooses Israel, and then the place of the Church, which is joined to this covenant. His message ends with one sentence: all of this is "the continuous line of God's faithfulness."

Outline of the Message

1. Abraham Receives a Mission and a Promise

Genesis 12:1-3: "Get out of your country, and from your relatives, and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you." God promises a great nation, a blessing and a great name, and adds: "All the families of the earth will be blessed through you." In Genesis 15:18, he gives the land to Abraham's descendants.
Leaving your family was dreadful in those days. Family was your whole security: it protected you in danger, cared for you in sickness and looked after you when you were too old to work. Leaving your country also meant abandoning the national gods.
"When God gives us a mission, he always gives a promise too." To this old, childless man, God promises descendants, a land, a name, his protection and his blessing.
Abraham is also given the mission of being a blessing himself. He sets out in the obedience of faith, "just like us." Kees Smits insists: "God did not want a will-less instrument. God wanted a partner."

2. The Berith, a Covenant Nothing Can Break

In Genesis 17:7, God speaks of an "everlasting covenant" with Abraham and his offspring, from generation to generation. For Kees Smits, this covenant between God and the Jewish people is still in force today.
The Hebrew word is berith. It is an agreement between two parties who were at first strangers to each other: you did not make a covenant with your own family, since you already had obligations toward them.
He compares the berith to marriage: two people who did not know each other meet, fall in love and promise each other faithfulness for life. The berith raises love or friendship to the level of a commitment you cannot undo.
The most astonishing thing: covenants were made between equals. Here, the eternal, almighty God binds himself to a mortal man. "Abraham can no longer get out of it, but neither can God."
Elsewhere in Scripture, God speaks of Israel as his bride. Allies owe each other faithfulness and loyalty. In the East they used to say that a covenant "is stronger than death."
Israel is not without fault. They are ordinary people, "with their faults, their failings and their wanderings," just like us. What makes them unique is this covenant with God. Being chosen is a privilege, but also a burden. When someone told a Jew, "You are the chosen people," he answered: "Do you want it?"

3. Chosen by Love, Not by Merit

God did not choose Israel because they were more devout or more obedient. At Sinai, while Moses receives the Law, the people make the golden calf. Someone once said: "The marriage certificate was not yet dry when the bride had already given herself to another."
When two young people start courting, there is always someone who asks: "But what does she see in him?" Love cannot be explained. Kees Smits tells of a conversation with a woman who had had a hard life with her husband. She was asked whether he had been a good husband. She answered: "Maybe not, but I loved him."
Deuteronomy 7:6-8: Yahweh chose Israel, not because they outnumbered the other peoples, for they were "the fewest of all peoples," but "because Yahweh loves you." Holy does not mean faultless, but set apart for God's service.
It is God's choosing love. There was nothing in Abraham or in Israel that moved God to choose them: he draws his reasons from himself. "We did not either," we did not earn it.
People break their agreements every day, in politics as between individuals. God never goes back on his covenant, and that is not thanks to Israel: he had plenty of reasons to draw a line. He cannot give up his choosing love. There lies Israel's hope.
That Israel still exists, while other peoples vanished long ago, is a sign of God's faithfulness. So is the fact that there is still a Church despite our unfaithfulness and our mistakes. "Israel's preservation is not found in politics or in military strength, but in God's faithfulness."

4. Chosen to Be a Blessing

Election is not an end in itself. It carries a great responsibility: faithfulness and loyalty to the covenant.
In Abraham, God had the whole world in view: "All the families of the earth will be blessed through you." He does not give up on this world, despite all we have done.
Israel was called to make the true God known to a world fallen into the darkness of paganism, to be a light to the nations, "a great priesthood." For that, it needed a land, a city and a temple.
Israel was also called to give birth to the Messiah. The Redeemer was to be born from Israel.

5. The Struggle Between the Serpent's Offspring and the Woman's

"Where God has such a great plan, the evil one is there too." In Genesis 3:15, after the fall, God says to the serpent: "I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel." For the preacher, this victory was accomplished at Golgotha.
Adam was the head of creation and did not hold back his wife. Through that line, God could no longer save the world. But God already had a plan: a Redeemer would come from the woman's offspring, Jesus Christ, born of the virgin Mary. He had to come from above, because man had failed.
This hostility will last as long as this creation exists. That is why, according to Kees Smits, Israel is constantly attacked, Jews have known hostility through the centuries and the Church is persecuted around the world: in Nigeria, several people are killed every day because they confess the name of Jesus, and in India, some states are passing anti-conversion laws.
Christian Europe carries a long history of antisemitism. In the name of Christianity, Jews were burned alive, locked in burning synagogues, deported, driven out, persecuted, robbed and discriminated against, with the Shoah as the lowest point. Even great names like Augustine, Erasmus or Luther made statements hostile to the Jews: "That was the spirit of the time."
"There is a lot of talk about slavery right now, and rightly so." But toward the Jews too, there is much to repair. Behind politics, he says, there is a power of darkness that does not want this people to exist. And yet God pursues his plan.

6. The Church Is Grafted Into Abraham's Covenant

John 1:11: "He came to his own, and those who were his own didn't receive him." But because Israel rejected the Messiah, salvation reached the Gentiles, "us." We were outside the covenant, among the goyim, the nations.
This mystery was hidden in God's heart, and Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, made it known: the Gentiles are also partakers of the promise (Ephesians 3:6). When God made his covenant with Abraham, he already knew there would be a Church.
At a Bible school, students welcomed a new student, a Messianic Jew: "Oh, what joy that you have come to us!" She answered: "Wait. We Jews did not come to you. You came to us."
"Israel is our elder brother." And if Israel does things you do not agree with? "Millions of people do things I do not agree with." They remain dear.
Kees Smits rejects replacement theology, which makes the Church the spiritual Israel and holds that Israel no longer counts. "You find that nowhere in the Bible." Romans 11:1-2: "I ask then, did God reject his people? May it never be! [...] God didn't reject his people, whom he foreknew."
A blindness still largely rests on Israel: you can talk about the Old Testament with Jews for hours, but the conversation stops when you bring up the Messiah. God will one day remove this blindness. Already, hundreds, perhaps thousands of Jews have recognized Jesus as the promised Messiah. Their number is slowly growing, and their communities live under heavy pressure.

7. Making Israel Jealous, Praying for Jerusalem

Romans 11:11: through their fall, salvation has come to the Gentiles, "to make them jealous." The Church's mission is not to drive out or despise the Jews, but to make them jealous: "Look at what we have. It is for you too." Redemption and forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.
On some trips to Israel, the preacher was ashamed of the behavior of Christians. "We have a lot to make right with the Jews." And he adds: "This is not the hobby of a few Israel fanatics. It is a mission that comes from the Word."
Psalm 122:6: "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem." We know how to pray for an exam or an operation, and that is good. But do we pray every day for Israel and for the Messianic Jews, who give Bibles to young soldiers, share the gospel and start projects for those going through great hardship?
Romans 1:16: the gospel is "the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes; for the Jew first, and also for the Greek." It was promised beforehand by the prophets (Romans 1:2) and it came into the world through Israel.
"The content of the gospel is not a doctrine, but a person": Jesus Christ, born of the offspring of David according to the flesh, declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection (Romans 1:3-4). Truly man, truly in history, truly from Israel.
Romans 1:17: God's righteousness is revealed "from faith to faith." God keeps his promises. "The faith that began in Israel is not replaced, it is widened," passed on to all nations. "That is the continuous line of God's faithfulness."

Key Takeaways

When God gives a mission, he also gives a promise. Abraham was called to leave, and to be a blessing.
God's covenant with Abraham and his descendants is everlasting: God bound himself to it and does not give it up.
Israel was not chosen for its merits, but out of love. We did not earn anything either.
The Church does not replace Israel: it is joined to Abraham's covenant. Israel is our elder brother.
Our mission toward Israel: to make them jealous through what we have received in Christ, and to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Personal Application

What mission has God entrusted to you, and what promise comes with it?
How does the fact that God never gives up his covenant with Israel change the way you see his faithfulness toward you, despite your own unfaithfulness?
Have you, knowingly or not, adopted the idea that the Church has replaced Israel? What does Romans 11 say about it?
Does your life make others want to know what you have received in Jesus Christ?
Can you include in your daily prayer the peace of Jerusalem and the Jewish believers who confess Jesus as Messiah?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the berith, the covenant God made with Abraham?

Berith is the Hebrew word for covenant. Kees Smits explains that it is an agreement between two parties who were at first strangers to each other, comparable to a marriage: it raises love to the level of a lasting commitment, with obligations on both sides. In Genesis 17:7, God calls it an everlasting covenant. It also applies to the descendants and cannot be broken.

Why did God choose Israel?

According to Deuteronomy 7:6-8, it was not because Israel was greater or better than other peoples, but because Yahweh loves them. Kees Smits speaks of the love that chooses: God finds his reasons not in Abraham or in Israel, but in himself. This choice has a purpose: to make the true God known to the world and to give birth to the Messiah.

Has God rejected his people Israel?

No. Kees Smits quotes Romans 11:1-2: "Did God reject his people? May it never be!" He rejects replacement theology, according to which the Church has become the spiritual Israel. Believers from the nations are joined to Abraham's covenant, and the Church has received the mission of making Israel jealous and praying for the peace of Jerusalem.