Series: God and the Nations

Israel: God’s Special Nation

Exodus 19.1-6; Romans 9.1-5

God promised to bless all the nations through Abram’s posterity (Gen. 12.3). This is one of the key statements in the Bible that reveals the Divine purpose. The rest of the Bible is about how God fulfilled that promise. A nation would be used by God to bless all the other nations of the world. This special nation was the nation of Israel. From Abraham God created His very own nation. The fact that God created a nation from an old man with a barren wife underscores the fact that Israel was God’s. God created the world and He created Israel ex nihilo (out of nothing). There is simply no way to account for the existence of the Jewish people apart from the living God.

Through Israel we are meeting the one, true God. He would reveal Himself to the world by revealing Himself to them. Why did God do it this way? Why not just reveal Himself to each nation individually? Some religious pluralists think that is what God did. Every religion, they say, is a revelation of God to a particular people. And when you strip religion of its particular, historical, and cultural baggage, all religions are basically the same. But Israel’s God is different from all the other gods.

If God is the God of Israel, then we must come to God through what He revealed to Israel. That assertion will meet with a chorus of objections from our pluralistic culture that has rejected the very idea of an absolute truth. Postmodern man believes that truth is relative to culture and subjective experience. This means that one person’s view of the truth cannot be applied to another person in a different culture with a different experience. We must realize that this thinking is nothing new. That is just the same old paganism of the ancient world. Every nation had its own private religion and pantheon of deities to worship. So we are still very pagan today.

To be sure, the truth-claims of the Hebrew Bible are absolute and this creates some tension with other truth-claims. This is why the people of Israel have always been strange and have scandalized the world. But this is how God chose to reveal Himself to the world. Those who reject and hate the Jews are not only racists, they are hostile toward the living God. The world hates Israel because the world hates Israel’s God. The world has made several attempts to get rid of Israel, and they are still trying.

In spite of it all, this special nation endured and has been a conduit for God’s revelation and blessing to the rest of the nations of the world. What would the world be like without the Jews? They are truly a special and a holy people, chosen by God Himself. This is something no other nation can claim. You can’t read the Bible, Old or New Testament, without noticing how special the Jews are to God and to His plan of salvation. Salvation is of the Jews (John 4.22).

Christians should make it known to the world that we too worship and serve the God of Israel. We too can claim to be Abraham’s children because we share his faith in God. Gentile Christians owe the Jews a huge debt of gratitude. They deserve our love and respect and we should pray for their salvation through faith in Jesus, who is their Messiah. There is no place for even a hint of antisemitism in the Church. The Gospel is truly for the Jew first and then for the rest of the world (Rom. 1.16).

Israel’s Special Creation

The creation of Israel shows how God will relate to the rest of humanity. Israel did not create itself or choose to serve God on their own. Abraham himself was not seeking the one, true God. And this was the situation will all mankind. There was no one seeking God, but God was seeking us. God could have ignored us or wiped us from the earth. We deserve nothing and God does not need us. But God chose to work with humanity through the nation of Israel. Israel was not called by God because they were better than other nations. In fact, God called them a rebellious and stiff-necked people! God elected Israel according to His own gracious will and for no other reason.

Israel could never boast in her relationship with God if she remembered that God had created and called her according to the election of grace. God was setting a precedent for how He would also relate to the rest of humankind. It would be by grace that God would call and save people. We have nothing in us that might obligate God to work with us. Pride is built on the illusion that God owes us His attention.

The fact that God created Israel makes them absolutely unique in the history of the human race. The Jews are a strange people. They don’t seem to belong anywhere and have always been separate and unassimilated, like a lump of lead in the stomach that cannot be digested! God commanded them to maintain this uniqueness and not to compromise it and become like the other nations.

This uniqueness is also called holiness, and it is an aspect of God’s nature. If Israel was going to be God’s way of revealing Himself to the world, it was essential that Israel accurately represent the nature of God. It must never appear that the God of Israel is anything like the gods of the nations. Israel had to think about God’s reputation in the world. If they became like the other nations, this brought God down to the level of the gods of the nations. And that would defeat the whole purpose of Israel’s creation.

Israel was not allowed to form their own identity. Their identity was formed by their calling and relationship to God. God defined Israel. Israel did not define God and they did not define their own national identity or determine their own destiny. The rest of the nations ignored the living God and sought to establish themselves in the world according to their own desires and plans. The world is still operating like that today. But Israel belonged to God and were not to be like everyone else. “You shall be holy to me, for I the LORD am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine” (Leviticus 20:26). Israel became God’s wife when He made a covenant with them at Sinai. God promised to love and care for them and they promised to be faithful to God.

When God met Israel at Sinai He wanted to get something into their heads: belonging to a holy God is serious business! To belong to God means that God’s will is preeminent. The life of the people of Israel had to revolve around God. Many of the commands given in the Law reflect this agenda. The people had to be cultured and made to think about God as the center of their lives. Even mundane things were given a Divine meaning so the people would think about God all the time.

God did not save Israel from Egypt just to let them go their own way. Salvation is for a relationship with God. God could have rescued them from slavery from in Egypt and then just let them go to find their own way in the world, like He did with the nations at Babel. But Israel’s destiny was to belong to God.

Israel’s Special History

Exodus

The defining event of Israel’s life was their great exodus from slavery in Egypt. God Himself had caused them to come to Egypt during the days of Joseph. Egypt was the nursery of Israel. It was there that they grew from a large family into a nation. But something changed and they were oppressed by the Egyptians. They cried out under the whips of their taskmasters and God heard them and remembered His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He had promised to give them their own land. But first God had to deliver them from Egypt.

This deliverance would be one of the greatest displays of God’s power and glory. Egypt was one of the great civilizations of the ancient world. And the finger of God would bring Egypt to its knees as God sent His plagues, mostly against aspects of nature that they worshiped as gods. Then came the final plague of death and the Passover when the Israelites were saved by the blood of the lamb that marked their dwellings.

The whole thing was done so that it was obvious that God had delivered His people. And this event was something that God would continually refer to and bring the people back to in their memory. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:1-2).

Israel was redeemed by God. The people already belonged to God because they were His creation in the first place and because they were Abraham’s seed. But now God had bought them, purchasing them for Himself from their bondage in Egypt and bringing them to Himself.

Sinai

The next great event in Israel’s history was Sinai. At Sinai God would reveal His glory to them. They would also hear His word and receive His Law. God entered into a covenant with the people of Israel at Sinai. Men have entered into covenants with each other from the beginning of human history. It usually involves two parties binding themselves to each other and making certain commitments. It makes a lot of sense for men to make formal agreements with each other because we can mutually benefit each other and there is always the need to hold people to their commitments.

God doesn’t need anything from men. And does anyone doubt that God would fulfill His own promises? But it was God Himself who initiated covenants. This was a remarkable condescension on God’s part since we are clearly not His equals. But God seems almost enthusiastic about binding Himself to Abraham and his descendants. God had already made a covenant with Abraham before making another agreement with Israel at Sinai.

These two covenants, the Abrahamic and the Mosaic, would be the two most important revelations of God in the Old Testament and are the very pillars of the Scriptural record.  After being redeemed from Egypt, Israel was in a covenant with God.

Exodus and Sinai really happened. God revealed Himself in actual, concrete, historical events. Other nations had written myths about the gods. Israel’s God had actually done something for them and said something to them. They did not come to know God through abstract, philosophical ideas. Israel’s God was not an idea but a living Presence. Israel’s God even did miracles for them, turning the natural laws of the universe upside-down. The pagans worshiped nature. Israel’s God ruled nature. Israel’s God was intimately involved with them and cared about their welfare, even feeding them in the wilderness every day with bread from heaven.

And Israel would always be reminded of these concrete, historical facts. As Moses said to the next generation of Israelites:         

“And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom. Then the LORD spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice. And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone” (Deuteronomy 4:11-13).

The historical nature of God’s revelation has an absolute tone that has always scandalized the world. The historical context of the Divine revelation in the Bible is what some have called “the scandal of particularity.” We cannot easily dismiss Israel’s history as just a national myth or a philosophy. This is not somebody’s ideas about the Divine, this is the real God speaking and acting within human history and being seen and heard by real people.

In Israel that comfortable distance that the world likes to keep between itself and the Divine had been breached by God Himself. The world had been invaded. And that was just the beginning.

Israel’s Special Gifts

Revelation

Israel was the recipient of the revelation of God. What we call the Old Testament is the beginning of God’s program of self-revelation to the entire world. But the Jews were the people who got to experience God’s glory, holiness, wrath, compassion, mercy, grace, and love. The main point of the Old Testament is not just morality but the revelation of God Himself.

The true God cannot be known through human wisdom. Even though creation speaks about the glory of God, it is a muted and incomplete revelation. The only way God can be known is through special revelation. And God gave this special revelation to Israel. “He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and rules to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any other nation; they do not know his rules” (Psalm 147:19-20).  

There were two crucial revelations of God that we get through the Jews. First, there is only one, true God. This is called Monotheism. The pagans believed in many gods, which is Polytheism. Secondly, the God of Israel created everything from nothing. The ancient pagans were either materialists, believing that matter is the ultimate substance of the universe, or pantheists, believing that all things contain the Divine nature. The Jews were so strange when compared to the ancient pagans it makes their beliefs very difficult to explain as a naturally occurring development. No one else reached these conclusions. Where did the Jews get their strange beliefs? The Bible claims that it was through revelation.

Law

When Israel was at Sinai God gave them His Law, originally written by God Himself on two stone tablets. There were many other commandments, but the whole Law is summarized by the Ten Commandments. The tablets of stone were also called the words of the Covenant (Deut. 29.9). By agreeing to obey the Law, Israel had entered into a covenant with God.

The Law can be summarized as commands about our relationship to God and commands about our relationship with each other. Jesus summarized the whole Law by saying we must love God and love each other (Matt. 22.35-40).

Everything in the Law hangs together. We cannot love God while mistreating our neighbor. Everyone recognizes that human society begins to fragment if we do not obey the Law. Even the ancient pagans knew this and we have laws from nearly every civilization that mirror the Law of God. God wrote the Law on their hearts, which is also called conscience (Rom. 2.14-15).

The Law is an expression of perfection. It is everything that must be done for a good and a complete life. Just think of what the world would be like if everyone kept the Law of God!

There is just one problem. We don’t keep it! The Israelites did not keep it. In fact, they had broken it and made a golden calf before the Covenant was even ratified! The Law was given to teach us about sin (Rom. 7.7; Gal. 3.19). Something is wrong with human nature that the Law could define but could not remedy. The failure of the Jews to keep the Law was simply a demonstration of the human condition. Everyone has fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3.23).

Promises

God was merciful to Israel and He forgave their sin. Anyone who thinks the God of the Old Testament is just an angry and vengeful deity needs to read the Scriptures more carefully! God gave them a way to atone for their sin, at least temporarily, through a system of priests and sacrifices (Heb. 9.1-7).

But the problem of sin remained with Israel throughout her history. The people repeatedly sinned against God and broke the Covenant made at Sinai. And God often punished them for their sin, even sending them into captivity, though He never completely destroyed the people. In spite of their unbelief and disobedience, God would remain faithful to the promises He had made to Israel (Jer. 31.35-37). Much of the Old Testament is about God keeping His promises in spite of human failure. The promise and the purpose of God depended on God, not on man. God promised Israel that He would deal with the problem of sin and human failure.

As their history unfolds, God sent prophets to Israel to tell them about the future and the purpose of God. The prophet Jeremiah told the people that God would eventually make a New Covenant, but not like the one made at Sinai, in which He would take away all their sins and give them a new heart that would incline them to Him (Jer. 31.31-34).

And Isaiah prophesied about a suffering servant who would take on himself the penalty for the sins of the entire nation (Isa. 53.4-6). The prophets also promised that an anointed ruler, born from the line of King David, would come to establish the Kingdom of God (Isa. 9.7; Jer. 23.5; Ezek. 34.24; Hos. 3.5; Zech. 12.10).

All of these promises were given to the people of Israel. As time went by, especially after God brought them home from captivity, they began to look expectantly for God to fulfill these promises, though even the Jews did not fully understand what this would mean for them and the rest of the world. God’s promises are always bigger and better than we anticipate.

Israel’s Special Fulfillment

There had always been a sense of incompleteness and imperfection in the Old Testament. The problem of sin was never fully addressed under the Law of Moses. In fact, the whole system of Tabernacle, Priest, and Sacrifice were constant reminders of sin and of the people’s alienation from God. The whole Law seemed to tell the people to stay back, lest God consume them (Heb. 12.18-21). But the Prophets had preached about a time when God would bring the fullness of His salvation (Isa. 46.13).

When the fullness of time had come (Gal. 4.4), the birth of the Messiah was announced in Israel. All of the announcements about Jesus’ birth included the language of fulfillment (Matt. 1.21-23; 2.1-6; Luke 1.31-33; 54-55; 68-75). The Scriptures, which had been preserved by the Jews, were being fulfilled.

Fulfillment means reaching a goal or achieving an objective. When the New Testament authors wrote about Jesus and the Gospel fulfilling the Scriptures, they were saying that the true purpose of God in the Old Testament, everything He had revealed to Israel, was going to finally be realized. If you want to summarize the message of the New Testament, it could be “that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.”

The language of the Gospels is fulfillment, not replacement. God never altered His purpose, which was first announced to Abraham. The Gospel of Christ is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham (Gal. 3.8). The Law of Moses had only been added to this original promise to Abraham, because of sin, until the Seed of Abraham could come into the world (Gal. 3.16).

 A New Age has come in which all of the promises that God made to Israel are being fulfilled. In the name of Jesus there is now salvation, forgiveness, and justification (Acts 3.18-26; 13.23-39). God did not send Christ to change the Law, or to erase it, but to fulfill it and complete it. The Law was the shadow. Christ is the substance, the reality, the fullness (Heb. 10.1). The promises to the Patriarchs and the Law of Moses had been the starlight and the moonlight. Now the Day has dawned.

But the thing that surprised even the first Christians, who were Jews, was that all of the promises of God that He had given to Israel and then fulfilled in Jesus were also for Gentiles who would believe. God had said that Abraham’s Seed would bless the whole world. What Jesus had brought was big enough to include the other nations. It was now possible for Gentiles to become children of Abraham, not by keeping the Law, but through faith in Jesus, just as Abraham had been justified through his faith in God’s promise (Rom. 4.16-17).

Think of the people of Israel like a family tree. Abraham, and all of the promises God made to him, are the root of that tree. And all the descendants of Abraham are the branches. It was now possible that Gentiles could be grafted into that family tree and receive all of the blessings of God! God did not chop down the family tree and plant another. The Church did not replace Israel. The Gentiles were grafted into Israel’s family tree. There is only one People of God, one holy nation, made up of both Jews and Gentiles who believe (Eph. 2.11-22; 1 Pet. 2.4-10).

The sad thing was that many of the natural branches of the tree have been broken off because of their unbelief. In fact, only a remnant of the Jews received Jesus as Messiah. Most of them rejected Him. Is there hope for the people of Israel to turn to their own Messiah? Of course there is hope! If there is no hope for the Jews, then there is certainly no hope for the rest of us. But if God can graft the Gentiles in, we who had not been cultivated for this at all, then He is also able to put the Jews back into their own family tree (Rom. 11.16-32). This is exactly what have we learned from Israel’s history: The Promise has never depended on man’s effort or will but has always been moved forward by the grace and mercy of God.

Series: God and the Nations

The Promised Blessing for the Nations

Genesis 12.3

 

From Babel to Abram: The Judgement and Mercy of God

The first section of Genesis, chapters 1-11, chronicle the effects of the fall and culminates in the account of the Tower of Babel. Babel was the beginning of the various nations of the world, whom God scattered because of their proud rebellion. So the nations of the world began as the result of God’s judgment. God was not going to allow the pride and rebellion of men in alienation from Him to set the agenda and determine the climate of the world. God had another purpose for the world and this necessitated that Babel should fail.

But God’s purpose would not fail, and this purpose begins immediately after the account of Babel with the call of Abram. The call of Abram is really the beginning of God’s purpose, which includes a promise of blessing for all the nations, even those very nations God had judged at Babel. So we also begin to see the mercy of God against the backdrop of human failure. God’s dealings with the nations of the world will include both judgment and mercy. “Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off” (Romans 11:22). Aspects of God’s nature are being revealed. We learn that there are some things that God will not tolerate. And it is never wise for men to oppose the will of God and test the Divine patience. Eventually God’s patience runs out. But God mixes wrath with mercy. The men at Babel were not destroyed, though their plans were frustrated. God has continued to strive with the nations, not because the nations deserve anything from God, but because it is God’s nature to be benevolent toward men and because God has a greater purpose that He is working out in the midst of the nations.

The nations exist because of God’s will, not because of their own power or ingenuity. Most of the nations of the world fail to acknowledge this fact and in their pride think that their own efforts have made their existence possible. God may allow the nations to grow and prosper for a time, as it pleases Him, but He also judges and removes nations from the face of the earth, as illustrated by what happened at Babel. But ultimately, God has goodwill towards the nations and has a plan for blessing them.

The Life of Faith: Living in Opposition to the World

It is important to see the call of Abram and all of the events of his life against the dark backdrop of world history up to that point in time. Babel is intentionally contrasted with Abram in the Genesis narrative. It is as if the Scripture is asking “is there another way to live other than the way of the men at Babel?” And then Abram comes as the answer to that question. Abram represents the life of faith. He is the archetypal faithful man just as the men at Babel were the archetypal men of the world. Babel represents worldliness that is lived in alienation from God and in opposition to the will of God. This is something that God curses and judges. Abram represents a life lived in faith and in submission and obedience to the will of God. Abram even becomes the conduit through which God’s plan of blessing will be accomplished on the earth.

Abram will become the Father of the Faithful. Those who please God and who have a relationship with God must become like Abram and must share Abram’s faith. “That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:16-17).

Faith is not merely intellectual but represents an entire lifestyle and an orientation toward God. Faith is a life that is turned toward God and reconciled to His will. As Abram’s life unfolds we see that God is the driving force and the main factor for everything in Abram’s life. Abram’s move out of his own father’s household and away from the city of Ur is mandated by the call of God. Abram’s life in the land of Canaan is guided by God and His promise.

There is nothing normal or natural about Abram’s life. Abram is different from everyone else around him at that time and he stands out in the history of the world. There is no way to explain Abram’s life apart from the call of God. Secular historians have studied the ancient civilizations of the world in what we now call the Ancient Near East, which is where Abram lived. Abram’s life, especially his relationship with God, differs drastically from the way the ancient people viewed life and the Divine. The ancient people of the world were worshippers of nature: the sun, moon, stars, and the earth itself. The idea of a God who was personal, who would speak to man, care for man, and actually bind Himself to a man in a covenant, was something completely new and different. While all the other nations had turned away from the Creator and worshiped the creation, Abram began a life in the presence of the one, true, living God.

The Call of Abram

 

The Necessity of Separation

Sumer was one of the great civilizations of the ancient world. In fact, it was one of the first great civilizations of recorded history. Ancient Sumer was located in what is called the Fertile Crescent, or Mesopotamia, also known as the Cradle of Civilization. Sumer is famous today for being the earliest civilization to have a written alphabet. Ur was one of the cities created by the rise of this civilization. The city of Ur was famous for its Ziggurat, which was a tall tower built for pagan worship and may have been a copy of the tower of Babel itself. This city was one of the great urban centers of the ancient world and this is where Abram was living. Abram was called to leave Ur and go to Canaan. This would mean that Abram was leaving civilization to go out into what was mostly a wilderness by comparison.

Why would God have Abram leave Ur? Was God not interested in Abram having an influence on such a great civilization? Understanding God’s call for Abram to leave Ur is to understand one of the great principles of Scripture: holiness. Holiness means separation. Abram was to be separate from all the other nations because of his association with the living God. God is holy and so Abraham was to be holy. Abram’s life would be different from every other life because Abram’s God was different from all the false gods worshiped by the nations. This same principle is applied to the people of God today. “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. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:9-11).

Rather than having Abram live in an existing nation, God was going to give Abram his own land and then build a nation from Abram. If Abram had stayed in Ur it would have been easier for him to be influenced by the culture of that nation rather than taking all of his directions from God. God was going to be the shaping influence of Abram’s life rather than the surrounding culture or civilization which did not know the living God.

 

The God of Abraham

God was going to reveal Himself to the world through His covenant with Abram. The true, living God would be forever known as the God of Abraham. God was going to bind Himself to a single man and his descendants.Everything that God was going to do in the world would be done through Abram and Abram’s family. Abram was a kind of conduit for God to reveal Himself to the rest of the nations of the world. The revelation of God would happen within human history. Abraham was a real person. The true God would not be revealed through mythology but through history. This is the real God we are coming to know through Abraham, not some projection of human thought and desire or the pagan deification of some aspect of nature.

We would expect the true God to reveal Himself in real and concrete ways. Furthermore, we would expect the revelation of the one, true God to be something unique. If God had not revealed Himself in a unique way, then there would be no way to distinguish the true God from all of the false gods of the nations. God will not allow Himself to be confused with the idols of the nations or with some aspect of the natural world. “For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens” (Psalm 96:5).

One of the great and unique revelations in the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians call the Old Testament, is the fact that there is one, true God. Monotheism was something unique to Abraham and his descendants. All of the other nations worshiped many different deities, one of which they would often adopt as their patron deity. But Abram did not decide to adopt God. God decided to adopt Abram. Everything about the calling of Abram is unique in world history. No other God revealed Himself in this way and no other nation even claimed to worship the one, true God.

We begin to understand that the religious pluralism of our time is nothing new to the world. They world has always believed in a multiplicity of gods and a multiplicity of religious faiths and ways to worship. The idea that there is only one, true God that all people must worship and obey is a unique revelation of the Hebrew Scriptures. We can expect this to always be a controversial idea that makes the world nervous.

 

The Nature of a Divine Promise

 

Divine Initiative

There is no indication that Abram knew the true God or that he was even seeking to know the true God. Abram probably worshiped the gods of Ur, which were the sun, moon, and stars. God Himself sought Abram and initiated this relationship. In this way God was setting a precedence and teaching us something about His Kingdom. The initiative is with God. God is the great seeker of man. Man does not seek after God. We are quite satisfied with our idols. It was God who made the promise to Abram. In other words, we do not see Abram asking for anything or trying to make a deal with God. Instead of Abram doing something for God, God wants to do something for Abram.

God does not need our service or favors, like the idols of the nations. God is always giving to us, not because we deserve it, but because of who God is. We cannot obligate God. But God gives to humanity and it is only because God wants to do so. If God did not want to reveal Himself or do anything for us, then there is nothing that could be done to find God or move Him to act against His will.

No nation or individual can claim to have ownership of God as if God answers to us. God cannot be manipulated like a genie in a lamp. “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:24-25).

 

Divine Grace

Abram is called by grace. This is God’s free and unmerited favor at work in Abram’s life. Abram was not some kind of special man who deserved to be called by God. In fact, we know nothing at all about Abram and his life and character before God called him, and that is intentional. The point here is God’s gracious call of Abram, not Abram’s character. The call of Abram was based entirely on God’s grace. The rest of Abram’s life was his response to the grace of God. God’s grace shaped Abram’s life. Abram’s life did not influence God’s choice of him. When we see the obedience of Abram to God’s calling we see how the grace of God changed Abram and made him into the faithful man that he was to become. Abram’s life was lived in conformity to God’s gracious calling. When God gave Abram a commandment, Abram immediately obeyed. But this obedience must be seen in the context of God’s gracious calling of Abram and not just as Abram’s moral superiority.

God was showing how He was going to interact with humanity. God’s relationship with the nations was going to be based on His grace, not on the moral development of the nations. The fact that the nations had already rebelled against God and had chosen to worship other gods underscores the grace of God. Man’s universal sinfulness and alienation from God meant that the only hope for the human race was the grace of God. Man could not work his way back to God and had no interest in doing so anyway. God had to freely choose to reach down to us and bring us up to Himself. He began to do that in His gracious call of Abram. Abram is a picture of God’s grace to the rest of humanity. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

 

Divine Power

The promise that God gave Abram depended completely on God for the fulfillment. Only God’s power could bring about what God promised. This fact will be made clear as Abram’s life unfolds. Abram and his wife Sarai would be the parents of many nations. Yet, they were childless. And they continue to age without having children. But the promise of God stands. They decide to take matters into their own hands, and Ishmael is born. But Ishmael was not the child of promise. Only God could bring about the birth of the child through whom the promise would be fulfilled. Everything rested on God. There was nothing for Abram to do except believe the promise and wait for God to fulfill it in His time and in His way. This is the nature of faith. Instead of grasping and struggling to make its own way in the world, faith waits patiently on the power of God. “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:31-33).

The nations at Babel were the antithesis of faith. Abram illustrates another way to live. Rather than grasping and struggling and taking matters into his own hands, Abram was to wait on the Lord and rest in the promise and the power of God. The nations of the world do not live by faith in God. The world grasps and struggles and works to get what it wants. But Abram and his children live by trusting God for everything and being willing to receive from His hands rather than striving to grasp everything for themselves. So we see there is a radical difference between the children of Abraham and the children of this world. And living by faith is not just intellectual, but is a whole new way of life in the world that is oriented toward God and dependent on His promises and His power to keep His promises.

 

The Nature of a Divine Blessing

 

Being in Agreement with God

Most of us probably have a rather shallow understanding of what it means to be blessed by God. Blessing is a religious word that we use in many ways. We pray for our Church services to be “blessed” perhaps without really knowing what we mean by that request. We also ask God to bless our food before we eat. What are we really asking for when we ask God to bless us? Perhaps it is just a general request for well-being or for whatever we are doing to be good and profitable. There is nothing wrong with asking for blessings. But God’s promise of blessing for the world through Abraham is something much deeper and much better than what we typically pray for.

For Abram, the blessing of God included God’s protection and presence. God was with Abram when he became a stranger in the land of Canaan. God guided Abram, leading him in the way that was most beneficial for him. And Abram became rich because God blessed Him. God’s favor was upon Abram.

And we must see this favor in contrast with God’s judgment on Babel. Babel was cursed, not blessed. God opposed Babel, but He blessed Abram. And God promised to bless the rest of the nations, the very ones He cursed at Babel, with the same kind of blessing that He gave to Abram. Instead of being God’s enemies, which would bring the opposition and curse of God, God would reconcile the world to Himself and bring us into agreement with Him. The Apostles connected the blessing promised to Abraham with the Gospel. As Peter preached to the Jews: “You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness” (Acts 3:25-26 ESV).

That is the blessing of Abraham that would come through him to the nations. God would bless the world by putting away the enmity between Himself and sinful, alienated men. God would bless the world with salvation, reconciliation, and the forgiveness of sins. There would be harmony with God, for all those who would accept this offer of peace and blessing. Others could enjoy the same blessed relationship with God that Abram had.

 

Being a Part of God’s Purpose

Rather than doing his own thing and having his own agenda, like those at Babel, Abram was called to be a part of what God was doing in the world. Abram, though once an Outsider himself, became an Insider with God. Abram was right in the middle of God’s will instead of working against the will of God like the rest of the world. Abram would become an instrument in the hands of God to accomplish God’s purpose on earth. Abram would be more than a spectator. He would participate in what God is doing in the world.

God had His own purpose for the world and He was calling men into it, starting with Abram, rather than endorsing what men wanted to do. God could have deserted the human race completely and excluded all of us, rejecting and ignoring us forever. But that would not be God’s will. God did not desert the world of men. But neither did God endorse what sinful, alienated men wanted to do on their own. God judged Babel and then called Abram.

The primary revelation in Scripture is the will and purpose of God and the fact that God is calling us to be a part of what He is doing. God never promised to bless what men want to do. In fact, what sinful men want must be cursed by God. But there is the promise of blessing for those who will submit to the will of God and be a part of what He is doing. To be blessed is to be in the stream of God’s will, flowing with the current of His eternal purpose. In the letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul connected Divine blessing with the Divine purpose and its fulfillment in Christ:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:3-10 ESV).

God had already designed a plan for the world before the foundation of the earth. In the call of Abram, we are simply seeing the beginning of this purpose on the earth and within human history. The Scriptures will then show the unfolding of God’s plan. This purpose is the theme of the Bible. It all started with Abram and continues to this day. No one has to be excluded from this purpose because the blessing of God was promised to the whole world. The only ones who are excluded are those who exclude themselves by rejecting the knowledge of God.

 

Being a Blessing to the World

Abram would be used by God to bring this blessing to the world. So in a sense Abram himself would be a blessing as well as the conduit for the blessing. Abram was a willing participant in God’s purpose of blessing the world. Becoming involved in God’s purpose is what gave significance to Abram’s life and turned it into a blessing. We should all be thankful for Abram’s willingness to be used by God. God always uses people to accomplish His purpose in the world. Consider how impoverished the world would be without an Abraham. There would be other personalities through whom God would work to advance His purpose on earth. But Abram was the beginning of it all.

The mega-narrative of the Bible is God’s purpose of redemption. Within that over-arching story are many smaller stories, or episodes, that advance the plot of God’s purpose. In other words, every person who has a part in God’s purpose contributes a little piece to the grand scheme. At the end of all things there will be a grand, beautiful mosaic or tapestry of various strands and colors that combine to form the purpose of God’s blessing for the world.

All believers in Christ today are part of that purpose that began with Abram! We are all conduits for God to continue to bless the world today, just as Abram was God’s conduit at the beginning of this purpose. The very presence of God’s people is a blessing to a world that would be quite dark and corrupt otherwise. This is why Jesus told His disciples:

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:13-16 ESV).

 

The Seed of Abraham

One Seed, not Many Seeds

The most critical aspect of this promise to Abram was that the blessing for the world would come through his “seed” or offspring. Remember that this was promised to an old man who had a barren wife! Abraham and Sarah would decide to use Hagar to produce an heir for Abraham and Ishmael was born as the result. But God said he was not the child who would fulfill the promise. Ishmael was the seed of Abraham. But he did not fulfill the promise of God. Ishmael was born according to the flesh. There was nothing unusual or supernatural about Ishmael’s conception and birth. God was going to fulfill this promise in His time and in His way.

Later God visited Abraham and Sarah and promised that in their old age they would have a child. Then Isaac was conceived and God identified Isaac as the child of the promise. Officially, it was Isaac who was the Seed of Abraham. But the promise was not fulfilled even in Isaac. The promise was that Abraham would have many descendants, as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore. From Abraham came the people of Israel. Was that the fulfillment of the promise? It was certainly part of the promise that Abraham would give birth to a nation of people. But even the existence of the Jewish people did not fulfill the promise God gave to Abram.

The Apostle Paul explains the promise of God to Abram and its ultimate fulfillment in Christ: “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” (Galatians 3:16 ESV). In other words, the word “seed” is singular, not in the plural. The promise would be fulfilled by a single descendant, not by many descendants. This might seem like a minor detail. But Paul says it Jesus who is the fulfillment of the promise to Abram. Jesus is the seed of Abraham. The blessing God promised to the nations was the coming of the Christ.

 

The Promise is the Gospel

The promise God made to Abram was a piece of good news for the world, especially in light of what had happened previously at Babel. That God would even want to bless the world that had rebelled against Him is itself a revelation of God’s goodness. The good news God gave to Abram is that God would not desert the world but would bless it. This promise to Abram was the first instance of the preaching of the Gospel, and God Himself was the preacher. “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed’” (Galatians 3:8 ESV). The Gospel is the Promise and the Promise is the Gospel. This good news was something that God had committed Himself to do and to accomplish. The Gospel is the good news about a Divine action and accomplishment. It started with Abram and was completed in Christ. This is the message that will justify us if we believe it, just as Abraham was justified by his faith in the promise of God. Abram was not justified by works, but through faith in the Gospel God had preached to him.

At a later time, God would give the Law to the people of Israel. But the giving of that Law in no way obviated the original promise. It only added to the Promise until the time came for it to be fulfilled. This is a significant part of Paul’s exposition of the Gospel.

“This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made” (Gal. 3.17-19).

The Covenant of Law was added to the Covenant of the Promise. But the Promise was the original covenant and was fulfilled in the New Covenant God established in Christ. God never changed the purpose that He revealed to Abram.

 

Gentile Inclusion and a Worldwide Mission

The scope of the promise God gave to Abram is staggering: it is for the whole world. While the promise would be fulfilled through Abram and his family, it was not just for Abram’s family to enjoy the blessing. The Promise was not that God would only bless the Jewish nation but that God would bless all the nations through the Jewish nation through whom the Christ would come into the world. During the time of preparation for the coming of Christ, it did seem like God let the nations go their own way. He worked almost exclusively with the Jews. No one can deny the special place the people of Israel have in God’s purpose. But it would have been too small for God to only bless the Jews. God is the God of the whole earth and all the peoples of the world belong to Him and have always been in His mind.

The Gospel is first for the Jew and then for the Gentile. This was the intention of the promise to Abram. The early Church learned, after some Divine guidance, that the Gospel was to be preached to the Gentiles. Jesus commanded the Apostles to go to the whole world with the message because that was the original design. Before he was called, Abram himself had been a Gentile – an Outsider who was alienated from the Covenant of God. But God made Abram an Insider so that all the Outsiders in the world might have hope.

“Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called ‘the uncircumcision’ by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:11-13 ESV).