Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you;
And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing;
And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.
Abraham lived in Ur of the Chaldeans at this time but God wants him to go to an unknown land. We later find out this is modern day Palestine or, as the Bible calls it, “The Promised Land”. If the Lord is going to form a nation so the Messiah can come through He also wants the rest of the world to know this Messiah is coming. Therefore, God, in his wisdom, planned to plant this nation in the intersection of the ancient world. That is, the Promised Land was the junction for all major trade routes of the ancient world. Therefore, even though only one nation would have God’s Law, all nations would have the opportunity to hear about the true God and come worship Him. If they chose to seek out the truth they could also become aware of the coming Messiah.
If Abraham is going to become a great nation he will need descendants but at this time he is old and childless. In Genesis 15:1-6 the Lord appears to Abraham in order to encourage him that He has not forgotten His promise. Abraham wonders if God would fulfill His promise through Abraham’s servant Eliezer. God said “no” because Abraham was going to have a son. In fact this son, as Abraham would find out the hard way, would come through Sarah not any other wife. In an attempt to help God, Sarah gave her handmaid to Abraham in order to raise up this promised seed. That son is known as Ishmael from whom come the Arabs. But God does not need our help so He informs Abraham of this mistake and reminds him that the promised son would come through Sarah (Genesis 15:16-21).
We have another piece coming onto the stage God is setting in history; Covenant. A covenant is different than a contract.
- Contract--if one part does something in violation of the contract then it is considered broken. Basically both parties agree to uphold their end of the bargain or the contract is void.
- Covenant--both parties agree to uphold their end regardless of whether the other party does or not. The violation of one part of a covenant does not nullify the covenant for the other party. This is why God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16) for people are breaking their covenant oath. The Lord made this covenant with Abraham, later He will make one with Israel, and finally He makes with through Jesus Christ for all Christians. We are only obligated to keep the covenant we are under, not all of them.
The Lord had already promised to Abraham that He would turn him into a great nation. Now He says this will happen through the birth of Abraham’s son whose descendants God will give the Promised Land to. To establish this promise God puts Abraham to sleep (Genesis 15:12) to show Abraham has no part in this. That is, God is making this promise not because Abraham deserves it or worked for it but because God has a plan, a story to unfold. He then makes the covenant with Abraham and promises to give to his descendants the Promised Land (Genesis 15:18-21).
At the original call of Abraham he was 75 years old. In Genesis 17 Abraham is 99 years old and God has still not given him a son. But the Lord does appear to him in order to let him know that within a year the promised son will be born through Sarah (Genesis 17:15-22; 18:1, 9-10). God commissions Abraham to keep the covenant they have made. As a sign that they are in a covenantal agreement God tells Abraham to circumcise his household. This sign will be for all his descendants in this particular covenant (Genesis 17:6-14).
Finally Isaac, the promised son, is born in Genesis 21 when Abraham is 100 years old. Abraham had been told multiple times that neither his servant nor his other son Ishmael would continue the covenant. It was going to be Isaac, the promised son from Sarah. But then God seems to ask something unthinkable from Abraham. He asked him to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22:1-2). In his mind Abraham had a dilemma. How could God keep His promise to make Abraham a great nation if Isaac were dead? This is where Abraham's apologetics comes in.
- He trusted that God always kept His word. He was promised to become a great nation through the promised son Isaac.
- God is now asking Abraham to kill this son. If he were to kill Isaac then seemingly God’s plan would fail.
- Therefore, Abraham concludes, God must be able to bring Isaac back from the dead
When the Lord saw that Abraham had this type of faith he was able to keep him from actually going through with killing Isaac (Genesis 15:15-19). In order for Abraham to become the example of faith God had to put Abraham in a situation to show his faith. This is an instruction for us today. This is the type of faith we are to have in Jesus Christ. We believe with reasonable evidence that God raised Jesus from the dead based on the testimony of God’s Word, the Bible. Our reasonable evidence is that since God can speak the living world into existence from non-life surely He can bring the dead man Jesus back to life. Believing in Jesus’ resurrection compels us to act in such a way that seems counter-intuitive to the world.