“This is my covenant with you: I will make you the father of not just one nation, but a multitude of nations! What’s more, I am changing your name. It will no longer be Abram; now you will be known as Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations. I will give you millions of descendants who will represent many nations. Kings will be among them!”
- Genesis 17:4-6
A brief recap of the covenants to this point before touching on Abraham! First, in the creation narrative, God reveals to us His intentions of creating humanity. That we might live in communion and fellowship with Him in His direct presence and be given authority and responsibility for creation. In one sense, Heaven will be just like that. However, because God is a good and loving God who wants to be genuinely loved, He created the angels and humanity with free will. Of which we see Lucifer fall to his pride, and bringing many angels and all of humanity with him. We slip into our pride and choose rebellion. God’s plan changes to now try to bring us back, restoring and redeeming us. Second, sadly humanity just gets worse, and becomes nearly entirely wicked, until Noah and his family are all that remains. God wipes out the wickedness ensuring it does not defeat righteousness, thus showing mercy on His creation and that He will never give up.
Multiple generations pass, sin, and righteousness continue to be displayed, population increases, people try to build the tower of Babel to reach Heaven, God stops their pride again and creates every language we know of, thus producing the many nations that now exist. More time passes and we have Abram, just a guy living in the fertile plan now called by God to move only to where God knows and start a nation with his infertile wife.
Covenant of Faith:
If we ever needed a case study of what faith looks like through the thick and thin points of life, I would just direct anyone to read about Abram/Abraham. At numerous points in his life, he is the epitome of faith, and at numerous other points, he is the epitome of faithlessness. I don’t blame him either, too often when we see his faithlessness some preachers play the blame game as if we are not prone to have the same lack of faith.
Another reason I don’t blame him, beyond my inability to have faith at some points, is that God makes some nearly impossible promises to him. Of course, nothing is impossible to God, but the amount of faith needed by Abram and Sarai is incredibly high. They left their nice potentially settled farmer life to become nomadic hunter-gatherers in a land they did not know because some God asked them to. On top of that, they are old, older than most people today even live to be, we’re talking about being in their nineties! It’s a miracle if a woman can have a child in their 50’s, rare to happen in their 40’s, now double that age and try promising a ninety-year-old that not only will they have a child, but they will be the chief ancestor of not just one nation, but many nations.
I don’t know about you, but that’s a hefty promise that requires so much faith.
Covenant for Redemption:
This covenant though was for much more than the temporary desiring for a son, God saw an opportunity to begin ushering in His plan for redemption for a son.
So, if God wants to restore the whole world back to Him, His offer of grace needs to have the capacity to be for all people in all places for all times. Thus, God promises to not only provide Abram with a son but that he will be the father of nations! God is revealing further His grand scheme of redemption! Abraham will have millions of descendent, if not billions by this point, and even Kings will be among them. This grand scheme almost sounds too good to be true for Abraham and even for us, indeed some of us can’t even begin to fathom how all this will work out and happen. Though this may be the general outlook of His redemption, let's get more specific about how it will happen.
Aside from the nation, aside from the nations, and even aside from the Kings, the most beautiful word in the entire promise is one specific word. Can you guess what it is?
It’s this… God promises to send Abram a son. A son, that is the most beautiful thing, about this entire covenant is how the sending of the son establishes God’s plan for redemption.
I don’t know if you are catching the gravity of this yet. God has promised, in a covenant that will not end, that the nations will be His once again by the sending of a son, excuse me, the Son. The promised son, Isaac, goes well beyond Isaac, and points to the other promised Son, Jesus. Isaac himself brought no redemption, though he did help further the plan and we can read about his life in the next many chapters of Genesis. But what this covenant highlights are how God promised to send His own Son, Jesus, to redeem not just a nation but many nations, thus making Abraham the father of many nations.
Final Blessing:
Abraham’s covenant goes well beyond his day and desire for a son and heir to his estate. But now all of us who have come to faith in the Son, the one who has redeemed man from their rebellion are counted in those nations that are descendent of Abraham. Truly, Isaac brought through the bloodline one nation that Abraham is a father of, but Jesus brought not just a few more, but literally every nation to be under Abraham.
This covenant means that we then point others to have faith in the somewhat crazy promises of God. We may doubt how heaven could even exist when only 10 minutes in the newsfeed we can see so much evil. We might seem so far away from it all, but God is faithful, God sent His Son to restore His intentions, and that day will come. And for Abraham, he is the father of it all.
So may we walk about the nations of the world with a different sense of hope and what is to come because of what the Son of God has done.
Now may the Lord of Life and Redemption be with you in every step, every breathe, and every heartbeat of your journey.
תגובות