Abraham's Offspring
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
We began our Hope of the Ages Advent series last week and we continue with it today.
We are looking at Old Testament passages and seeing how the birth of Christ has fulfilled them.
Last week, we saw how Jesus is Isaiah’s Great Light prophesied about 700 years before Jesus was even born.
This morning we go back even further and look at how Jesus is Abraham’s Offspring in Genesis 12.
And in that passage, we will learn some important lessons about faith for this season of Advent.
CONTEXT
CONTEXT
Before I read it, let me give us a little background on the first book of the Bible.
The book begins with Moses’ record of creation—God creating all things out of nothing through the power of His Son.
Everything He made is good
Then we get to the creation of man and woman and God says it is very good
He creates Adam and Eve in His image and designs them to worship Him and glorify Him and receive joy from that
But in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve sin against God.
He gave them every tree in the Garden to eat from, but told them they would die if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
When they eat of this tree, they are separated from God and their relationship with Him is broken
He lets them live for many years so that His grace would abound, but their lives will now end in death because of sin
And the next seven chapters of Genesis are really the outworking of sin entering the world. You see depravity on full display.
Adam’s son, Cain, murders his brother Abel out of jealousy in Genesis 4...
We are reminded of the death that is in the world because of sin in Genesis 5 because as we read through the list of Adam’s descendants, they all died, with the exception of Enoch.
Sin has brought death and death is rampant
Of course, we see it in chapters 6-9 in God’s global judgment of the flood because of the depravity in the earth
We see in the generations of Noah in chapter 10, where we are once again reminded that death is taking the life of every person who walks on the earth
And we see it in chapter 11, when the whole earth has one language and people migrate and attempt to build a tower for themselves to make their own name great
They attempt to steal God’s glory
And God scatters the nations in judgment
So after seeing how sin has wreaked havoc throughout God’s glorious creation, the reader is left longing for a way to fix it.
How will God reverse the curse of sin and death? How will God recover His worship from the mouths of humanity, who are deeply entangled in horrible sin?
This is where Terah’s family enters the picture and his son Abram is called by God to a life of faith that would change the eternal story line of existence.
READ Genesis 12:1-3
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
FAITH IS A RESPONSE TO GOD’S CALL (v. 1)
FAITH IS A RESPONSE TO GOD’S CALL (v. 1)
As we trek through this text today, I want to give us three teaching points. We will be seeing how Christ is the fulfillment of Genesis 12:1-3, but as we go along, there is great application to be made about faith.
So we begin with Teaching Point #1: Faith is a Response to God’s Call (v. 1).
In verse 1, we see that the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country, and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”
Where exactly is Abram’s country? Who are his people? Where does he come from?
Well here is what we get at the end of chapter 11:
Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.
Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there.
Abram’s family came from Ur, which is an ancient city 186 miles southeast of modern-day Baghdad.
It was a peaceful and prosperous city located on the Euphrates River.
At the center of the city, there was a ziggurat built for the worship of the moon god Nanna
What this tells us is that Abram came from idolaters. He came from a people who bowed down to a false god.
In fact, Nanna is one of the oldest false gods of Mesopotamia.
He was seen as the creator of the moon and time and as wise and kind.
And Abram worshipped him.
It is weird to think about it.
When we think of Abraham, we think of the father of the faith. The patriarch of patriarchs. God’s man of belief who becomes this prototype for faith throughout the Scriptures.
We don’t think of him bowing down to anyone or anything but Yahweh, but that is what is happening here.
Abram is an idolater from Ur.
So when 12:1 says, “Now the Lord said to Abram…,” what we have is God speaking in His sovereign grace.
The One who governs all things chose that at this moment in time, He would speak to Abram.
Abram as done nothing to deserve hearing God’s voice.
He has no merit to offer God.
We just established that he is an idolater
But God sovereignly and lovingly chose to call Abram out of his idolatry. Out of his Nanna-worshipping world. He plucked him.
And He is calling Him to something.
To leave his country. To leave his kindred. To leave his father’s house.
In this gracious and sovereign call, God is calling Abraham to three things:
Leave his land
Leave his family
Leave his inheritance—that is likely what is meant by “Father’s house.”
That is a lot to leave. It is a lot to give up.
ILLUSTRATION: Imagine right now that God called you out of nowhere and said, “I want you to leave Yorktown, VA. Outside of your immediate family, I want you to leave everyone behind. And I want you to give up your 401k.”
Might you have some questions?
See—it is really easy to read this and say, “Yeah, yeah—Abram got called and he went,” but if you think about your own life, this was more than difficult for Abram.
It was one of the harder things God calls anyone to in the Scriptures.
If Abram was going to listen, he would not just be giving up those physical things, he would also be giving up his faith that he had practiced his whole life.
The worship of gods was attached to households.
The worship of Nanna was all that Abram knew.
The expectation would be that any future generations of Terah’s house would worship Nanna as well.
For Abram to leave his father’s household was to leave his father’s god. He would be leaving Nanna behind.
But notice that everything God is calling Abram to, He will give back to him.
Go from your country (v. 1)…to the land that I will show you (v. 1)
Leave your family (v. 1)…I will make of you a great nation (v. 2)
Leave your inheritance (Father’s house)…But receive the role of being a blessing to all of the families of the earth
And implied in all of that is, “Leave Nanna…worship Yahweh!”
The rest of Genesis moves from being about the history of the created world to being about the history of Abraham’s family.
If that is the case, then we know Abram answered this call. He believed God. He followed God. And He trust in God to come through on His promises.
APPLICATION OF TEACHING POINT #1
APPLICATION OF TEACHING POINT #1
I think that every Christian experiences something of what Abram is experiencing here on a couple of levels.
First of all, we experience it in our initial calling to salvation. The Gospel call to believe.
We see ourselves in Abram because like him, we were born bowing down to false gods.
Maybe not Nanna, but the gods of entertainment, money, comfort, distraction and legalism are all around us.
It is not hard to find an idol ready to absorb your worship.
And God stepped into our ignorant idolatrous existence and opened up our ears to His voice.
God’s Word never would have seemed true to me unless God opened my ears.
God’s Son never would have sounded glorious to me, unless God had intervened and quickened by spiritual ability to listen.
God Almighty would still be my enemy if God Almighty had not cleared the way for my ears to hear the Gospel of the Kingdom that has made me His friend.
So yes—we would say that we can identify with Abram because as much as he could do nothing but believe God and obey God and praise God, we can only do the same.
Why did God choose Abram and not someone else?
Because it was God’s free choice to do so.
And Abram’s response should be to fall on his face in worship
And so it is with us—why did God choose us to believe in Christ? Why did He have you born to Christian parents? Why did He have you walk in that church when you were 14? Why did He allow you to be born in a country where religious freedom gives more opportunity for the Gospel light to spread?
Because it was His free choice to do so.
You should praise Him for it.
But secondly, we don’t just identify with Abram in salvation.
We identify with him in our daily discipleship.
Each day God calls us to give up the desires of our flesh for the sake of honoring Christ.
For Abram it meant land, family, inheritance and false idols.
Who knows what it means for you today?
I just hope you are reading your Bible.
I hope you are praying.
I hope you are worshipping daily.
In the sanctuary of your worship with God, He speaks and tells you of new Canaan’s to go to. New levels of obedience to pursue. New planes of holiness of rise to by His grace.
Christians who never give anything up are likely Christians who are not growing.
And they are not growing because they are not daily tuning their heart to the voice of Christ.
And if only they would, they would find God wants to sanctify them and lift them out of their immaturity and complacency and backsliding.
That He wants to use the sound of His daily call to holiness to draw us away from the world and into deeper intimacy with Him.
FAITH IS A TRUST IN GOD’S PLAN (v. 1-3)
FAITH IS A TRUST IN GOD’S PLAN (v. 1-3)
So that is our first teaching point for this morning—Faith is a response to God’s call.
Now, let’s keep going and look to our second teaching point:
2. Faith is a Trust in God’s Plan (v. 1-3).
To understand God’s plan for Abram, we have to examine His promises to Abram. What exactly is God promising Abram in this call in Genesis 12?
Well I think we have four promises:
Land: Implied with “…the land that I will show you.”
Great nation (v. 2)
Great name (v. 2)
This contrasts with what is happening in chapter 11. Why was Babel built?
Genesis 11:4 “Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.””
In humanity’s plan, they would make their own name great by rebelling against God
But here, Abram’s name will be great if he believes God
This idea of him getting a great name also might indicate that kings would be born from his line
We know they were
Global blessing through Abram
If you bless Abram, God will bless you
But if you dishonor Abram, God will curse you
These are the details of what we call the Abrahamic Covenant
And this covenant is crucial—it has bearing for the entirety of the Bible
When you get to Revelation 22 and you are reading the end of the book, there are Genesis 12 implications all over it
And because of that, we see the Abrahamic Covenant reiterated throughout Genesis
First, we see it in chapter 13 after Abram separates from his nephew, Lot.
The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.”
Then, we see it again in chapter 15 in a covenant-making ceremony between Abram and God.
Abram is lamenting the fact that he has no son and his wife is barren.
How will he have this great name and offspring like the dust of the earth if he doesn’t even have an heir in his house that is his own son?
So God ratifies His covenant with Abram in this ceremony where a heifer, a female goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon are all cut in two
And then Abram is put to sleep during the ceremony to show that this is all really not his work, but God’s work
And then God reiterates the covenant:
Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.
In Genesis 17, many years have passed since the promise and Abram still has no son. And yet, there is God assuring Him again that His plan will come to pass. This is also where Abram gets a name change:
When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”
And then, finally, in Genesis 22, after Isaac has been born, and Abraham has shown his willingness to lay his only son, the child of the promise on the Lord’s altar, God tells him one more time:
and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”
The task laid before Abram in all of this was truly to believe.
He would need to act. For example, there is a transaction that must take place between he and Sarah in order for the heir to be born.
But God is the one in control. God is the One fulfilling His promises in His time.
He is the Covenant-Maker and Covenant-Fulfiller.
The question is—how would God actually fulfill the Abrahamic Covenant?
This is where Jesus and Advent enter into the equation.
What was Abraham promised?
Land, a name, a nation and he will be a blessing.
How will the promises be kept? Well—they will be kept the same way all of God’s promises are kept—in His Son, Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 1:20 “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.”
So how does Jesus fulfill the promises made to Abraham?
Well, let’s talk about what Jesus has accomplished in terms of the big picture.
Big picture-wise, Jesus’ words at the institution of the Lord’s Supper are helpful:
Mark 14:23-24 “And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”
What Jesus meant when He said that is that the New Covenant would be established in His death.
God required blood when covenants were established—just as we saw in Genesis 15 when all those animals were cut in two as God ratified His covenant with Abraham
Jesus’ blood is poured out as the establishment of God’s New Covenant where He would forgive His people’s sins and write His laws on their hearts and He would be their God and they would be His people.
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
So with His blood being poured out and our sin being removed, all of God’s promises, including the ones made to Abram, belong to God’s people through Christ.
So what does this look like?
How has Christ secured the Abrahamic promise of land for His people?
Well, in Christ, we will be given an eternal place to dwell as the worshippers of God with the new heavens and the new earth. And at the heart of the new earth, there will be New Jerusalem.
Revelation 21:1-2 “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”
How does the promise to make Abraham’s name great find fulfillment in Christ?
It is the fact that God Incarnate is born from his line.
Matthew 1:1 “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”
What about the promise of a great nation? How is that fulfilled in Christ?
Well, we would start by saying a physical nation came from Abram—the Jewish people.
But what the Bible shows us repeatedly is that not all of Israel is Israel.
Some that are Jewish by blood are not Jewish by faith.
And as many in Israel rejected God, they failed to be a light to the nations. They failed to bless the people around them. They were disciplined by God in their failing.
And then, as we read the New Testament, we find out that along with the New Covenant, God is forming a new people that will be a nation of Jewish people and non-Jewish people, all brought together under one spiritual roof by the blood of Christ.
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility
So then, God has made a true Israel for Himself through His Son filled with forgiven people who have faith in Him and love Him demonstrate that through obedience to the laws He has written on their hearts.
Of course, we are talking about the church. And Peter writes about the church this way:
1 Peter 2:9 “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
The church is truly the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abram about a great nation.
And lastly, the promise that Abram would be a blessing to all the families of the earth is fulfilled in Christ coming through Abram’s line and saving people from Himself from every tribe and every people group and every nation on the earth.
And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Now, did Abram know all of this when he followed God into the land that was shown to him? Of course not.
He didn’t have his Nancy Guthrie books on Old Testament themes and biblical theology and Christ’s fulfillment
He didn’t have his ESV Study Bible
He didn’t have Google to “search it up” as the kids say
He simply believed God. He trusted in the plan of God.
But we stand on the other side of the Cross with our New Testaments in hand and we understand that the plan Abram trusted in had Jesus at the center of it.
God’s Son would come from Abram’s line
God’s Son would come and die for the people of God and open the way for them to live in the glory of heaven forever
God’s Son would make a new nation for Himself, called the church, with Jew and Gentile dwelling together under the peace won for us at Calvary
And God’s Son is The Blessed One from Abram’s line who makes the way for His people to be blessed for all of eternity
And since God elected, in His infinitely wise plan, to accomplish all of that through the power of His Son, we must conclude that when Abram put his faith in God’s plan, he put his faith in God’s Son.
He may have not understood it. He may have not known His name.
But he heard the call and the promises and he trusted God’s plan—which of course, is Christ securing the Kingdom through His life, death and resurrection.
This is why Paul was able to write:
What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
APPLICATION OF TEACHING POINT #2
APPLICATION OF TEACHING POINT #2
If we are to experience the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant and receive its blessings in our own lives, we must have the same faith as Abraham.
What Abraham demonstrated was saving faith. Faith that results in being made right with God.
What makes up that sort of saving faith?
The Reformers had a three-fold answer to that question.
They said Saving faith has knowledge, assent and trust.
Knowledge = You understand facts about God
This alone is not enough for salvation.
Be aware of that. You can know a lot about God but not be saved.
Assent = Agreeing with the facts about God
This is also not enough for salvation.
You can know things about God and even agree with those things and still be opposed to Him if you love your sin too much.
Trust = Reliance on God
Trust ties the knot of justifying faith.
Trust is the touchdown pass.
Trust is the key.
Whatever metaphor gets it done for you
Trust is crucial.
When we know facts about God, agree with those facts and place our trust in them—now we are getting somewhere.
It is not enough for me to simply know Jesus is Savior. It is not enough for me to agree with it.
I have to trust in it. I have to rely on it and nothing else for my salvation daily.
When Abram left all he had ever known, he trusted God. He trusted His plan.
And in doing so, He trusted in Christ.
We must do the same.
FAITH IS A CONDUIT FOR GOD’S BLESSINGS (v. 1-3)
FAITH IS A CONDUIT FOR GOD’S BLESSINGS (v. 1-3)
Let’s wrap things up with our final point for the morning:
We have seen that:
1. Faith is a response to God’s call.
2. Faith is trust in God’s plan.
Teaching Point #3: Faith is a Conduit for God’s Blessings (v. 1-3)
Now, first of all, I want to say that I am aware my third teaching point this morning sounds like it is straight out of a sermon from a certain smiling, grinning prosperity teacher down in Texas.
But—we are not talking about “believing more to receive more,” here. We are talking about how God glorifies Himself by blessing His children when they trust Him.
To understand this, we can think about Genesis 3-11 as a whole, compared with the first few verses of chapter 12.
In Genesis 3, we have Adam’s fall.
Then, we see a curse.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
After Cain murders his brother in chapter 4, God says, “And now you are cursed from the ground,” which had received his brother’s blood.
In chapter 5, Lamech gives Noah his name, which means, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and the painful toil of our hands.”
And then in chapter 8, we are reminded of the curse of Genesis 3 again, when God promises not to curse the ground again because of man
Meanwhile, between chapter 3 and 11, there are just two mentions of blessing from God.
There are two curses pronounced in Genesis 3 alone.
But then, in the midst of all these curses, we have God’s covenant with Abraham with blessings attached.
There are five mentions of blessings in these three verses alone—more than double all of the nine previous chapters combined.
These blessings really come down to three points:
God will bless Abraham—meaning He will give Abraham favor that will result in safety and prosperity
God will make Abraham a blessing—meaning that He will use Abraham to bring safety and prosperity to others
And Abraham will be a channel of blessing to the entire world—there will be favor for the nations through his family
If you read through the reiterations of the blessing in chapters 13, 15, 17 and 22, you will see that two of these three promised blessings were conditional.
If Abraham’s family are faithful to God—He will bless Abraham and his family.
Abraham and his family will be a blessing to others—if their position with God is not jeopardized by disobedience
And we know those two blessings were conditional because we see God taking His blessings away when Israel were disobedient through its history.
They grumble against God and complain and doubt Him—He doesn’t let Moses’ generation enter the Promised Land and has them wander in the wilderness for four decades
They reject His leadership through the Judges—He gives them a king in Saul, who so perfectly captures why you shouldn’t trust men over God.
A king whose brashness and jealousy brought Israel’s kingdom and welfare under threat
They commit spiritual adultery by worshipping false idols—They lose land and position and are carried off into Babylonian Captivity
Do you see how these promises were conditional, at least in the immediate sense, for Israel?
And this really shows us how faith is the conduit to God’s blessings.
When we believe God—We understand what He is saying, we agree with it, we trust it and that trust is demonstrated in obedience—God blesses us.
Those blessings may not always look the way we think blessings should look. It might not always be health and wealth. Often it is not.
But His blessings will not just be enough to sustain you in doing whatever He has called you to do—His blessings will lift you to the heights of spiritual joy so that no matter what you have going on—You are a worshipper.
The third blessing is unconditional. No matter how badly Abraham and his family messed up, God’s plan would not be deterred.
He was going to bless the world through Abram’s family.
And that blessing would come in the Messiah born from His line. The One who would come and die for us.
The One who would lay down His life to buy an eternal land for His tribe.
The One who would be crucified to purchase a people for Himself who would be so numerous that they were like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore.
The One who would bless the nations by gathering His people from the four winds and into His Kingdom.
From Genesis 12 on, you see Abraham and his kids fail often.
I mean—right after this covenant is made, Abraham goes down to Egypt and out of fear for his life, pimps out his wife to the Egyptian king.
It isn’t great.
He is supposed to bring about an great heir with Sarah and instead, he is pawning her off to a foreign throne.
It is unclear if the king actually slept with Sarah. Painfully unclear.
And then, in Genesis 16, Abraham tries to short-circuit God’s plan again by agreeing to this scheme where he sleeps with Hagar, his wife’s Egyptian servant.
That is not the plan. But Abraham and Sarah are trying to be practical. Their practicality leads to all sort of complicated stuff—as tends to happen when a third person is introduced to a the marriage bed.
And then in Genesis 20, just before Isaac’s conception, Abraham once again is handing off his wife to save his own hide!
Again—unclear if the king sleeps with Sarah, but the text seems to insinuate the unthinkable.
It just gets worse with his kids and grandkids.
Playing favorites. Stealing inheritances. Rape. Murder. Selling siblings into slavery.
Game of Thrones has nothing on Genesis.
And yet—God’s plan to bring about the Messiah from this line is not deterred.
Jesus would be born the Son of Abraham.
APPLICATION FOR TEACHING POINT #3
APPLICATION FOR TEACHING POINT #3
When it comes to Abraham, he ultimately believed God and obeyed. He was a mess, like the rest of us. But we know he came good and was a faithful man on the whole. We see it in how his servant talks about him when he goes to get a wife for Isaac:
So he said, “I am Abraham’s servant. The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become great. He has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male servants and female servants, camels and donkeys.
God blessed Abraham.
Because Abraham believed God.
We know Abraham was faithful because of how the New Testament speaks of him:
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
Abraham is included in the list of faithful, believing saints in Hebrews 11...
Abraham was not a perfect man. But God’s grace brought Abraham to faith.
And it was credited to Him as righteousness.
His sin was forgiven.
His life was sustained.
He lived in God’s favor.
And ultimately, everything God promised Him, he will receive.
And he will receive it the same way you will—by trusting God.
A heavenly home. Citizenship in a heavenly nation. The blessing of eternal salvation.
Christ secures all of this for His people, but they are divine gifts to be received by faith.
In the same way that Abraham trusted in God’s plan, you must trust in His plan in order to be saved and receive these gifts from God.
Understand that God says you are a sinner and His Son is the only cure the judgment you should receive.
Show you agree with Him by admitting you are a sinner and turning away from that sin
Place the full dependence of your soul on Christ who suffered in your place and rose again to defeat sin and death
In Him, by faith, the blessings of Abraham will be yours
Because by faith, you will be a child of Abraham—a son or a daughter of God