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Have you ever been told by someone that God has a wonderful plan for your life? I have, by several people. The first few times I heard it, I thought it was a good thing. Wonderful means good, right? Well, as we will see, Abraham was told by God himself that he has a wonderful plan for his life.
Genesis 12:1-3 says this: The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
This sounds like a pretty good life: greatness, blessings, protection, and an outstanding legacy. Little did Abraham know that this wonderful life would include family conflict, wandering, famine, barrenness, warfare, and loss. What’s more, he never saw what was promised to him. How many of you can relate to Abraham’s experience in some way? You expect good things but get difficult things instead.
When we read the stories of the Old Testament, we find connections to our own lives. This is a natural response, especially when the characters in the story experience challenges similar to our own. We are told that the Bible has an answer for all of life’s problems, so we scour the pages to look for something relevant to our situation. Abraham and the call of God, Joseph and sibling rivalry, Moses and the leadership challenges, Joshua facing an impossible conquest, David caught in sin, Isaiah and Jeremiah in the lonely experience of being God’s messengers. What did they do when they faced challenges in life? Because these individuals are considered righteous or admirable, we assume their lives are models to follow.
I want us to look at Abraham’s life not as a model to follow but as a testament to God’s goodness and faithfulness. Yes, Abraham did respond in faith to God’s instruction to leave his homeland and go to Canaan. Yes, he obeyed God’s command to sacrifice his own son. And yes, because of Abraham’s faith, as we read in Genesis 15:6, he was considered righteous. However, he had many moments of failure. He selfishly offered up his wife to other men out of fear for his own life. He attempted to manipulate God’s plan by offering his inheritance to his servant, and by having a child with a woman who was not his wife.
Abraham’s life was not wonderful, but it was full of God’s favour. Today, I want to show, through examining Abraham’s life, how the favour that God extended to Abraham is also extended to us through Jesus. We will do this by focusing on three themes in Abraham’s life: promise, blessing, and faith.
Promise. What does it mean for God to make a promise? In the passage I read earlier from Genesis 12, we read about a promise that God made to Abraham. This promise is repeated multiple times. We read it also in 15:18-19 and in 22:15-18. Chapter 15 contains a fascinating story of how God confirmed his promise to Abraham after Abraham wanted to make one of his servants the heir to God’s blessing. Let’s read, starting at verse 4.
Then the word of the LORD came to [Abraham]: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. He also said to him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.” But Abram said, “Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” So the LORD said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him… [verse 17] When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land…”
This is strange, isn’t it? What is going on here? One commentator identifies this as a ritual of reassurance. In the Ancient Near East, this ritual was performed as part of establishing a treaty or covenant. What’s odd is that these covenants were only ever between humans, not between humans and their gods.
The way the practice worked was that representatives from both sides of the covenant would pass through the animals, which were split into two, as a way of saying, “Let me die in the same way as these animals if I take back that which I have given you.” A keen observer will notice that it was only God who passed through the animals, represented by the smoking firepot and blazing torch. Abraham did not pass through.
Thus, God undertakes a ritual that, in essence, says to Abram, “If I do not keep my promise, may I become like these animals.” Of course, God cannot die, but that is precisely the point, he cannot lie either. He will undoubtedly keep his promise of providing for descendants and land so that Abram’s descendants might become a “great nation” (12:2) and thus be blessed and become a blessing for the nations (12:3).1
Let’s look at Genesis 22, which contains another restatement of God’s promise to Abraham. You may be familiar with this story. Abraham is summoned by God, who tells him to take Isaac and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. Abraham obeys, but just as he is about to kill his son, God intervenes and provides a ram for a sacrifice in Isaac’s place. Another strange story. What sort of God asks someone to sacrifice his child? This, again, goes back to Ancient Near East practices. Human sacrifice was used as a way for people to get what they wanted from their god. Likely, Abraham didn’t know at this time whether or not Yahweh required this sort of sacrifice as a way of getting what God was offering. If Yahweh was anything like the other gods, human sacrifice was perhaps unsurprising.
This was a test of Abraham’s faith, which we will look at more in a bit, but it also demonstrates God’s character. By providing Abraham with a ram to sacrifice, God was showing that he is not like the other gods. He will be the one to provide the sacrifice to guarantee his promise. This is a theme throughout the Bible. I am eager to show you examples of this because it’s an incredible theme to look at. But I will have to save that for later in this series.
From Abraham’s story, we can see that God is a God of promises. He does not make promises he can’t keep. Even though he knew Abraham and his descendants would fail, he promised to bless them, to make them great, and to bring blessings to the world through them. What are these blessings?
Blessing. A blessing is more than a response to someone sneezing or a prayer before a meal. It means to receive something good. I like to phrase it this way. Blessing means to receive the benefits of God’s favour. Here are some examples of how the word bless is used in the Bible. If you want to review this list with all the references, you can access my sermon notes on our website later today.
God blesses the first humans, telling them to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:22). Throughout the Bible God continues to bless individuals (Gen. 24:1; Job 42:12; Judg. 13:24), groups (Exod. 32:29; Josh. 17:14), descendants (Isa. 44:3); and nations (Ps. 115:12; Jer. 4:2). God also blesses animals (Gen. 1:22; Deut. 28:4), land (Deut. 26:15), crops (7:13), houses (Prov. 3:33), and special days or times (Gen. 2:3; Exod. 20:11). People also pronounce blessings on others (Gen. 24:60; 47:7; Exod. 39:43; Lev. 9:22–23; 1 Sam. 2:20; Neh. 11:2): deathbed blessings are particularly noteworthy (Gen. 27–28; 48–49). Consecration ceremonies also provide for the blessing of various objects or of animals for a sacrifice (1 Sam. 9:13). Throughout the Bible people pray for God to bless them and those they love (1 Chron. 4:10; cf. Ps. 67:7).
In the NT, Jesus offers a series of blessings called the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3–11). Mary (Luke 1:42, 45, 48) and Peter (Matt. 16:17) receive special blessings, and Jesus blesses his disciples when he ascends into heaven (Luke 24:50–51). Jesus also blesses the bread before he feeds the multitude (Mark 6:41; 8:7) and likewise blesses the bread and wine at the Last Supper (Mark 14:22). Jesus taught his disciples, “Bless those who curse you” (Luke 6:28), and these words are echoed in Paul’s admonition to the Roman Christians: “Bless those who persecute you” (Rom. 12:14; cf. 1 Cor. 4:12). Paul speaks often of God’s blessings (2 Cor. 9:8; Eph. 1:3), referring also to “spiritual blessings” (Rom. 15:27), “the blessing of Christ” (Rom. 15:29), and the blessings of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:23).2
Blessing is an important part of life with God. He wants to bless us and wants us to be vessels for his blessing to others. Right from the beginning, he blessed the first humans. And, as we read in Revelation 19, when Christ has returned to restore all things to their intended glory, we will hear him proclaim, “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!”
For Abraham, the promised blessing was in contrast to the curses in chapters 1-11. Interestingly, we read the word curse five times in those chapters, and we read the word bless five times in Genesis 12:1-3. And, where we see the word curse in this passage, it is against anyone who would oppose God’s blessing on Abraham and his descendants.
As I already demonstrated, blessing comes up throughout the Bible in many ways. I want to highlight one instance of blessing that I mentioned last week. It is found in Numbers chapter 6, which I hope we will all have memorized by the end of this series. Numbers 6:22-27.
The LORD said to Moses, “Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them: “ ‘ “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.” ’ “So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”
Faith. This is a slippery word. It requires clarification before we continue because I want to be sure we are all thinking about the same thing when I use the word faith. In our world today, we use it lightly as a way to comfort or encourage someone. We talk about having faith in others, our leaders, or our things. We talk about having faith that this is the year a Canadian team will win the Stanley Cup. We talk about having faith that everything will work out. There are Christians who believe that the strength of our faith determines our health and prosperity. As I said, faith is a slippery word.
We will gain clarity when we read it in the context of Abraham’s relationship with God. The famous passage about Abraham’s faith is Genesis 15:6. “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” The word here is belief, but I chose this verse to demonstrate that faith and belief are the same. Another word we could use is trust. After Abraham tried to take God’s plan in a different direction, God corrected him, and Abraham responded by trusting God’s promise. Instead of going his own way, he turned to God’s way.
When we think about faith in God, we might reduce this idea to simply agreeing that he exists. Or, we think that any doubt or uncertainty about God means we do not have enough faith. But this is not the right way to think about faith. Taking Abraham as an example, which is appropriate because this is what the New Testament writers did, we will see that faith should be understood as trusting that God’s way is better than my way, even and especially in the midst of uncertainty and doubt. After all, if we are certain about something, we do not need faith. On the other hand, doubt or uncertainty that leads to rejection of God and his ways is unhealthy.
This is where it gets slippery again. There is a delicate relationship between faith and works. It is so delicate that it is what essentially caused the world-altering division between Catholic and Protestant Christians. We Protestants like this verse in Genesis 15, which states that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. It means that we are saved because of our faith, not our actions.
Abraham is declared righteous because of what he believes rather than what he does. Although many of his actions may have qualified him as righteous, his faith in God’s promise is seen as more significant. Since Abraham’s actions are the outcome of his faith, it is faith that is of primary importance. There is a clear distinction between those who take what God says seriously and those who disobey him. Eve and Adam believed the serpent rather than God. Now, Abraham shows that he will trust God, even under challenging circumstances. Let’s not lose the importance that God does the work of saving. Our actions are a response to this salvation, not the cause of it.3
New Testament Connections. As will be the case throughout this series, I want to close with connections to the New Testament. Remember, the early church did not have the New Testament as part of its Scriptures. They saw Jesus and the establishment of the church through the lens of the Old Testament. This is why it is so important to know the Old Testament.
Abraham is prominent in the New Testament. Members of the early church identified themselves as heirs of the promises to Abraham. Acts 3:25 says, “You are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.’”
Paul believed that the promise of blessing through Abraham’s family to the nations was an early statement of the gospel message and he claimed the promises to Abraham for all who had faith in God through Jesus Christ.4
He wrote in Galatians 3:7-9: “Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’ So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”
The promise of blessing is the promise that the God-human relationship which existed in the Garden before the fall will be restored. The blessing that God gave to Adam and Eve will return. Starting with Abraham and passing down through Jesus to anyone who wants it, we are promised a harmonious relationship with God. Our experience of this blessing is but a shadow in this life.
Hebrews 6:13-15 and 17-19 says, “When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.’ And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised… Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”
This is the gospel beforehand that we read in the life of Abraham. It is the gospel, or good news, that God has made a way for us to receive his blessing because he has kept his promise.
1 Longman III, Tremper. Genesis: 1 The Story of God Bible Commentary. (Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition), 204
2 John S. Kselman and Mark Allan Powell, “Bless, Blessing,” ed. Mark Allan Powell, The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary (Revised and Updated) (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 98–99.
3 James McKeown, Genesis, The Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 91.
4 James McKeown, Genesis, The Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 76.
Pentateuch Series Bibliography
Alexander, T. Desmond. From Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch. Fourth Edition. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022.
Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.
Averbeck, Richard E. The Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church: Reading the Torah in the Light of Christ. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2022.
Brueggemann, Walter. Preaching from the Old Testament. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019.
Glanville, Mark. Freed to Be God’s Family: The Book of Exodus. Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2021.
Longman III, Tremper. Genesis. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016.
Lynch, Matthew J. Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.
Provan, Iain, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III. A Biblical History of Israel. Second Edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015.
Smith, James E. The Torah. 2nd ed. Old Testament Survey Series. Joplin, MO: College Press Pub. Co., 1993.
Walton, John H and J. Harvey Walton. The Lost World of the Torah: Law as Covenant and Wisdom in Ancient Context. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019.