The Promise
Missions Series 2026 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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INTRO
INTRO
Were missions always part of God’s plan?
or did God began with Israel in the Old Testament then only later decided to include all the other nations?
Many non-Christians and even some Christian tend to have this skewed understanding of the Bible
That in the Old Testament we are given one God who is only about
Israel
Land
Law
and Judgment
Then in the New Testament we are given a different God who is only about
all people or nations
kindness
grace
and forgiveness
TESNION
TESNION
With that in mind…
which is it?
Did God change His heart?
Did His mission evolve?
or was the global plan of salvation always there?
Because if missions is a New Testament invention
then Genesis is just ancient history to us
But if missions is rooted in Genesis
then the cross was not Plan B
and the nations were not an afterthought to God
And that’s exactly what I want to show you this morning
We are going to spend our time in three passages
Genesis 12
Genesis 15
and end in Galatians 3
And my prayer for you today is that you will see that
the promise was always global
the fulfillment was always God’s doing
and the center was always Christ
TRUTH
TRUTH
Let’s begin in Genesis 12 which opens up with a call from heaven
God calls a man named Abram
Abram at this time is no spiritual hero by any means
in fact, he’s just a pagan from the country of Ur
But look at what God says to him:
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.
This is no small asked from God
He is calling Abram to uproot his whole life to move to a place that God will show him
He doesn’t even know where
but is asked to uproot from the country he was born and raised in
his community
and his family
But this big ask comes with some big promises
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.”
God promises Abram three things:
Land
A people or nation
and a great name
But then the promise widens
“in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”
That promise is the promise I want us to fix our eyes on this morning
because that promise is profound
It means
before Israel exist
before Sinai
before the law
God’s stated intention is global blessing
not assimilation
not conquest
but blessing
God has chosen one man, Abram, through which He is going to bring blessing to all the people of the world
But there’s a problem…
Abram is 75 years old and his wife Sarai is barren
This means they have no son
and no son means
no heir
and no heir means
no nation
And how can there be global blessing if there is no child?
Genesis 15 answers that question for us
Some time has passed since God called Abram
Abram has been been through a lot with family and other struggles
yet their seems to be one thing on his mind
But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.”
Abram is not doubting God’s promise
He’s just wanting to know how it’s going to work out
“God if you don’t give me a child of my one then the promise is going to be passed down through an heir from a slave, I assume?”
And God proceeds to do what He often does
He doesn’t respond with an explanation but with assurance
And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
The Lord takes him outside and says, “look up”
“try and count the stars real quick”
“can number them can you?”
“the same will be true of your offspring”
What a moment that must have been for Abram
and if I was Abram I think my reaction would have been
“wow, that’s incredible… but how are you going to do that? Like do you know when I’m going to have my first child tho?”
But that is not Abram’s response…
And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
That word “counted” matters
It matters because it tells us that God did not look at Abram’s faith as a moral achievement and reward him
Faith is not a meritorious work
Faith is empty-handed reliance
In this moment Abram contributes nothing but trust
And because of that God credits righteousness to him
That is justification, this being in right standing with God before Sinai takes place
Before circumcision is put into practice
Before the law is enforced
Abram believes God
And God counts it to him as righteousness
But Abram still asks the honest question:
But he said, “Lord God, how can I know that I will possess it?”
Not “Do I believe?”
But “How can I be certain?”
So God tells him to bring animals
Abram cuts them in half and lays the pieces opposite each other
To us, that sounds strange
To Abram, it was unmistakable
This was covenant language
In the ancient world, when two parties made a binding covenant, they would sometimes cut animals and walk between the pieces
And by walking that blood path, they were saying:
“If I break this covenant, may what happened to these animals happen to me.”
It was a life-and-death oath
So Abram prepares the animals
And what would he expect?
He would expect both of them to walk through
Two parties
Two commitments
But then something unexpected happens
A deep sleep falls on Abram
He does not walk the path
He does not swear an oath
He does not bind himself
Instead, he watches
And he sees a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch: a visible sign of God’s presence
And God alone passes between the pieces
Abram does not
This is a huge deal…
God walks the blood path by Himself
What is God saying?
He is saying:
“Abram, this covenant will not ultimately rest on your faithfulness. It will rest on Mine.”
“If this promise fails… the curse falls on Me.”
God binds Himself to fulfill the promise.
Abram asked, “How can I know?”
And God didn’t give him an argument
He gave him a covenant.
And when you read that scene, you should feel the weight of it
Because Genesis 15 is not just ancient ritual
It is God foreshadowing the cross
That night in Genesis 15,
God walked between the pieces alone.
But Centuries later,
God would walk another path alone
up a hill outside Jerusalem
And Paul, in Galatians 3, connects those two moments
He tells us that the promise to Abraham,
the covenant sealed in blood,
was always pointing to Christ.
Let’s look at what he says
Paul quotes Genesis 15:6
Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?
The way Abraham was declared righteous
is the way anyone is declared righteous
By faith
Not by works of the law
Then Paul says something crazy:
Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
That means covenant membership is not defined by ethnicity
It is defined by faith.
That’s how Genesis 12 becomes a blessing to all peoples
because now all people through faith can be heirs of Abram
Now the Scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and proclaimed the gospel ahead of time to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed through you. Consequently, those who have faith are blessed with Abraham, who had faith.
Paul says,
“guys, don’t you see it?”
Scripture is clear…
it’s always been God’s plan to bring salvation to all the nations
that’s what God meant when He made that promise to Abram in Gen 15
Paul tells us that the gospel was announced in seed form in Genesis
But what about the law?
That’s what the galatians are struggling with
do we still follow it?
do gentile converts need to follow it?
For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, Everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed.
Paul is clear
The law cannot justify
It demands perfection
But here is the good news:
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
Notice the logic carefully
The law does not bless sinners
It curses lawbreakers
And Paul has already said in Galatians 3:10 that anyone who relies on the law must keep all of it
And no one does
So everyone stands under the curse
But then Paul says something staggering:
“Christ redeemed us.”
That word redeemed means to buy out of slavery
to pay the price that sets someone free
From what?
“From the curse of the law.”
How?
“By becoming a curse for us.”
Not by canceling the law
Not by ignoring sin
Not by pretending judgment doesn’t matter
But by stepping into the place of the condemned
Paul even quotes Deuteronomy 21:23
“Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”
In the Old Testament, being hung on a tree was a public sign of divine judgment
And Paul says: That’s exactly what happened at the cross
Jesus did not just die
He bore the covenant curse
This is Genesis 15 in fulfillment…
That night, God walked between the pieces and said,
“If this covenant fails, the curse falls on Me.”
At the cross, the curse falls on Him
The covenant keeper becomes the curse bearer
And why?
“So that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles.”
Don’t miss that
The cross is not only about individual forgiveness
It is about fulfilling the Abrahamic promise
The blessing promised in Genesis 12:3
all the families of the earth would be blessed flows through the cross
And then Paul narrows it further…
Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ.
The word “offspring”
“seed”
is singular
Paul is not saying Abraham didn’t have many descendants
He’s saying the promise ultimately converges on one person
The promise was not vague
It was not scattered
It was focused
Christ is the true Seed
The true heir
The true Israel
The one through whom blessing comes to the nations
And then Paul lands the argument
For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
If inheritance comes by law
it is a wage; a payment
If it comes by promise
it is a gift
Those are mutually exclusive categories
the Law says:
Earn it
the Promise says:
Receive it
And Paul says:
God gave it by promise
Which means it rests on God’s faithfulness
not yours
If you didn’t earn it, you cannot lose it
Because the covenant was never finally about your grip on God
It was about His commitment to you
Genesis 15 shows us the covenant sealed in blood
Galatians 3 shows us the blood that sealed it
And that means the promise to bless the nations rests on a finished cross, not human effort
APPLICAITON
So what does this mean for us?
Salvation has always been for all peoples
The church did not invent missions
When we pray for the nations,
when we send missionaries,
when we translate Scripture,
we are not starting something new
We are stepping into Genesis 12.
God’s heart has always been set on blessing all the families of the earth
2. Jesus has always been the center
Old Testament believers were not saved by sacrifices or moral achievement
They were saved by trusting in the promised Redeemer to come
We are saved by trusting in the Redeemer who has come
Some looked forward
We look back
But everyone who has ever been counted righteous
has been counted righteous the same way:
By faith
Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith.
3. Faith has always been the response
Not heritage
Not church attendance
Not moral improvement
Not law-keeping
Faith
Empty-handed reliance on the promised Seed
Jesus Christ
And that changes how you live
Because if your inheritance rests on promise, not law, then your obedience is no longer an attempt to earn
It becomes gratitude for what is already secured
You obey not to keep the covenant alive
but because Christ already kept it and bore its curse
CLOSE
CLOSE
So here’s the bottom line
The promise was always global
The covenant was always secured by God
The fulfillment was always Christ
And the response has always been faith
From Genesis 12…
to Genesis 15…
to Galatians 3…
We have seen that missions was never an afterthought
It was never added later
It was always on God’s mind
Our God does not change
The God who called Abram is the same God who sent His Son
The God who walked between the pieces is the same God who bore the curse on the cross
And because He was faithful to His promise to Abram,
you and I from completely different families, nations, and backgrounds are now part of that covenant blessing
We are living proof that Genesis 12 is true
And next week, we’re going to ask:
If this has always been God’s mission…what is our part in it?
And then we’re going to end this series in Revelation 7, where we will see the promise completed
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,
The promise that began with one man ends with a multitude
When Rev 7 takes place Abraham will see the stars that he couldn’t count that night in the dessert
Because our God keeps His covenant
