Son of Blessing
Notes
Transcript
The
Father of Many
Father of Many
Up until the calling of Abram and the covenant God makes with him.. there was no “people of God” as a separate, marked, body of believers. Certainly there were people, families, houses of believers before Abraham - Job would be an example - there were “sons of God” and sons of men” but there was no organized or official group of God’s people...
And yet even with this first foundational covenant, there were elements of earlier covenants… the adamic, or creational purpose of God seen in his blessing of Adam and Even and his commission to fill the earth...
Listen to the words of the first expression of this covenant in Genesis 12...
English Standard Version Chapter 12
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. 3 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.”
The Lord again states His intention in the covenant in chapter 15 and then again finally in chapter 17..
English Standard Version Chapter 17
I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. 7 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. 8 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.”
There are a few basic promises included here… we usually summarize the 3 promises seeing the Lord promise to give Abraham many descendants; He promised to give him land; and finally He promised to bless Abraham and through Him he was going to bless the nations.
This is a foundational covenant for the Jewish people. This was their beginning, and like many of the covenants it was grounded in God’s grace - He initiated the covenant - in Genesis 15 it was God who promised that He would fulfill this covenant… It was filled with GRACE..
AND this covenant of grace with Abraham is basic for us as it highlights the unconditional nature of God’s work, of redemption, in Abrahams faith-filled response to the promise of God while the Mosaic covenant thrusts the obedience to the law to the forefront...
But lets first take this first promise within this covenant… a promise of descendants… of many offspring. Where Adam had failed to be fruitful, to fill the earth - with Godly people… the Lord was now instigating a plan that would again fill the earth with His people - those who worship Yahweh… This promise reflects the intention of the Lord from the garden of eden that His people would reflect His glory as they fill the earth!
And remember, in Genesis 11 the people had refused to scatter and fill the earth with the fame and glory of God, they gathered together to build a temple marking the fame and glory of themselves… So the Lord had judged them… But in Gen 12 He calls one man - ABRAM - to be the father of many and to begin his plan of redemption that would gradually unfold until its climax in Jesus Christ! AND a creational element to multiply the community is seen here and was partially fulfilled as seen in the Exodus…
Exodus 12 tells us there were about 600k men - that would have been the military aged men, so some put the total including women and children at over 2 million… When you read the book of Numbers you get bogged down in all the numbers - but it is showing God’s faithfulness to HIs promise...
And even though “descendants” have been multiplied - the trouble remained that they were not all God’s people, Jews yes, but not faithful followers of the Lord. The prophets and the Israelites own experience consistently highlighted their failures and shortcomings… but there was a promise still...
Father of Dwelling
Father of Dwelling
The Lord had also promised Abram land… yep, a place to live, a holy place for a holy people. They were to have all of the territory where Abram had sojourned and even beyond.
Now you may get excited thinking about property and what it is worth - seeing it as an investment. But for ABRAHAM and the Israelites, it was more than that. It was a place of security, a place of stability and provision. Having land provided opportunities for them to prosper as they built homes and developed crops and grew families.
This too rings familiar with the creation account. The Lord made man and put Him in a place, in a special place that provided for security, stability and opportunity… The Garden was a place where Adam and Eve could live out their design and calling and also dwell with God. It was a place for their dwelling but more importantly it was a place for them to dwell with God - or for God to dwell with them. Adam and Eve were evicted - exiled from this place and people have been homeless - feeling displaced ever since…
I’ve never been homeless… it is something we rarely think about however it is something that most Americans are really only about 3 steps away from… Every night over half a million people go homeless here in the states - listen to the words of this case-worker, describing conversations with homeless women she worked with...
The women told me about being evicted, about how humiliating and emotionally shattering it is to watch all your belongings — family heirlooms, important papers and identification — thrown out into the street, scattered in the wind.
“You begin to feel rootless,” they said.
Exposed, naked, alienated. It seems like the whole neighborhood knows all your business, but doesn’t care. Soon afterward, human vultures pick over your possessions and steal what’s not guarded.
Now homeless, you spend all day looking for hot meals, a place to sit without being told to “move on,” somewhere to take care of bathroom needs and a dry quiet warm space to sleep. There are no safe places to store belongings. Opportunities become elusive.
BEING ROOTLESS… OPPORTUNITIES being ELUSIVE… That is what it is to be displaced.. and for the Israelites the land in Palestine that land where Abraham walked, that land they took possession of after the Exodus was an initial fulfillment of this but even in the book of Joshua as the people were taking the land there was already trouble brewing in paradise as the people did not take the land in faithfulness and obedience as directed… Centuries later after repeated warnings from the Lord and continued violence from neighbors, the people were conquered and removed from the land and taken into exile - homeless again. The prophets would warn and rebuke the people for their unfaithfulness but there was always a message of promise and hope…
In Jesus day, the Jews had returned to their land yes, but it was far from the glory it once had and the ark of the covenant - mediating the presence of the Lord in the temple had been long lost and mostly forgotten… While the people were ‘home’ in a sense, their land was occupied by the Romans as it had been for hundreds of years by other countries - the Jews were more like tenets renting space from a land-lord… still displaced - ALIENS… still in exile. They were uneasy and and longing for real belonging…
Father of Blessing
Father of Blessing
Abraham was the father of the Israelites, the Father of promise… the father of blessing… NOT that he brought the blessing, but rather it is through Him that the blessing would come...
In Genesis 12:1-3 the Lord speaks of blessing 5 times!
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.”
So what does that mean? Is it simply all the positive elements we think of, they would have thought of in Abraham’s day: having a long, prosperous, healthy life - a big family, a big house, or land, victory over and peace with “enemies...” — things we still think of today: great job, income, lots of friends, overall success…
From the context we can see such local and terrestrial elements as part of the blessing - certainly fitting with the creation model as well - where we dwell in paradise experiencing these elements of prosperity as we live in a righteous relationship with GOD and with others...
But those elements are peripheral… they are blessings definitely enjoyed — albeit partially and flimsily by Israel in the promised land — but they are the fruit of a restored and right relationship with the Lord.
As described by one scholar this way:
Blessings are the manifestation of a faithfulness, fidelity, and solidarity in relationships whereby one’s natural and personal capacity to fulfill God’s intention and purpose is advanced and furthered. God’s word to Abram is powerful, enabling the calling to be fulfilled.
Our being blessed is fundamentally grounded in relationships, hear another NT scholar:
To be part of God’s covenant people, to belong to God in this way, is to be blessed. In a similar way, to be out of relationship with God is to be cursed.
So our being blessed is found primarily in our having a right relationship with God… to find again that place where we BELONG. BLESSING is found in a right relationship with GOD.
Our main, identifying characteristic is alienation… isolation from God because of our sin. That rebellion brought consequences that resonate within every relationship we have and echo within our souls as our displacement, our feeling of rootlessness, isolation, abandonment and the very struggle we have to connect with others comes from this initial alienation from GOD...
The Israelites knew it, they had half a home, a hollowed temple, and a fruitless religion… still, the curse remained… and so they longed for the fulfillment of the great promise to Abraham. And you know it too… You feel it… when you are reeling from disappointments and hurting from betrayal… when you yearn for significance, stability, purpose… Do you know what it means to feel displaced - without a home, uncared for and misunderstood? To feel cursed?
AND Matthew wants his readers to know that Jesus Christ is the son of Abraham, the son of promise, the son of BLESSING! He is the annointed one - that comes as the climax to the Lord’s plan of redemption begun with Abraham!
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
The phrasing here is intentional - pointing back to Genesis… “book of the genealogy” is a phrase in the Greek NT used in Gen 2 and Gen 5… both times it is highighting the beginning of an era or age…
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.
And the generations of Adam are the story of the spread and flourishing of the curse; a dark cloud of suffering into which the light of the promise to Abraham shines… and generation after generation has awaited its fulfillment… waiting for the blessing - the restoration of our relationship with God and all the blessings that follow...
AND NOW with the coming of Jesus, we stand in the wake of the fulfillment.. as Jesus brings redemption, a restoration of a righteous relationship and proves the faithfulness of God. THIS IS HOW WE PREPARE OUR HEARTS FOR A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS.
WE RECOGNIZE OUR STRUGGLES ABOUND...
WE REMEMBER THE PROMISES HE MADE...
WE REALIZE OUR SAVIOR HAS COME...
WE ANTICIPATE HIS RETURN.