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:
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).
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