God continued to repeat his plan, his mission, his intention over and over throughout his word. As God called Abraham, which would become the founding of the nation of Israel, he repeated his plan once again.
The story begins with Terah
Abraham’s father, Terah, had lived in the land of Ur, which today would be found in Iraq, just to the southeast of present-day Baghdad. At a certain point, and possibly because he was aware of God’s call to Abraham, Terah decided to leave Ur and head out toward Canaan. Along the way, though, he stopped in Harran, a city in northern Mesopotamia, and eventually died there.
Harran, though, was not the location to which God had called Abraham to go. The final destination was to be Canaan, so following Terah’s death, Abraham continued on his journey toward Canaan because God had spoken to him directly:
The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
“I will make you into a great nation,
Genesis 12:1-3
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you. ”
God had already spoken to Abraham (Abram) back in Mesopotamia. Stephen actually told us this more explicitly as he spoke at the Sanhedrin as noted in Acts 7. So, as Terah died in Harran, Abraham continued the journey, following God’s plan that he would go to the land that God would show him, and as we learned from the story of Terah, that land would be the land of Canaan.
God soon after promised to Abraham to give this land of Canaan to his descendants, but in this initial calling, we can see the restatement of God’s mission. He tells Abraham that he will make him into a great nation and that he will bless him. What does that mean?
The blessing of the covenant
Is God saying that he will make Abraham rich? This could possibly be part of God’s plan, yes, although Abraham and his family already had many possessions, so this is not likely what God meant when he said that he would bless Abraham.
Is God saying that he is going to have a lot of children and in this way he would become a great nation? As we will find out, yes, this is also part of God’s plan and a central theme of Abraham’s story. After having Ishmael through a significant deviation from God’s plan for Abraham, after taking the fulfillment of God’s promises into their own hands by having a child through Hagar, Sarah’s servant, Abraham and Sarah would eventually have a child of their own. After waiting 25 years following God’s promise that Abraham would have descendants like the stars in the sky, Isaac was born to Sarah and their own child would represent the continuation of the covenant that God would make with Abraham.
While each of these physical components, these benefits of Abraham’s relationship with God, the covenant, the agreement that God would make with Abraham, would be the heart of the blessing that God would give to Abraham. The primary blessing that God would give to Abraham would be his covenant, that God would be Abraham’s God and those that would inherit the covenant, through his son Isaac and his son Jacob and onward, would be God’s people.
This blessing, at its heart a covenant relationship with God, is a direct extension and continuation of God’s mission. God’s mission has been, from the beginning, that his image would be spread all over the earth. In the beginning, that mission carried with it a physical sense because Adam and Eve were made in God’s image and had not sinned. In that time, their physical beings were uncorrupted and the spiritual nature of Adam and Eve was pure, aligned with God, and able to continually be in his presence, living with him forever.
However, at Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God through their desire to be like God, a corruption of their nature had taken place. They were no longer perfect. They were no longer aligned with God in their physical and their spiritual natures.
Yet God’s mission still hadn’t changed. God remained steadfast in his plan that his image would fill the earth and so he made a plan that through Abraham would come the blessing, that God’s people could know him through the covenant that he would make with them. At first, this blessing and covenant with God would come through Moses – a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – and as the law was given and the nation of Israel was established. In the future, though, the blessing would come through Christ – also a physical descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – but who would establish a new covenant through his blood and offer a relationship with God to all people. Through Christ, the true image of God, a relationship with God was established with everyone who would believe and place their faith in him. Through Christ, God would establish a relationship with people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.
Fulfillment of the promise
This would eventually be the fulfillment of the promise that God made to Abraham. God promised Abraham that his descendants would be like the stars in the sky. He wouldn’t even be able to count all of his descendants.
How was that possible? That was the question that Abraham was asking himself. He didn’t even have any children. At the pace that he was going, his heir would have been one of his servants, not a son. God was promising him that he would be a great nation. God was promising him that his descendants like the stars in the sky, but he didn’t have any descendants at all.
It wasn’t just through physical descendants that God was making his promise to Abraham. Because the heart of God’s blessing to Abraham would be the covenant that he would make with Abraham, Abraham’s descendants would be, through the nation of Israel to Christ, and through Christ to the rest of the world, like the stars of the sky. They would be so numerous that Abraham wouldn’t be able to count them.
Even today, God’s promise is Abraham is still being fulfilled. God’s mission is still being carried out as his image is being spread throughout all nations, to the ends of the earth. This mission, even today, gives us identity and purpose. Each of us who have been given a new birth, who have been made new in Christ…each of us carries the image of God within us. He is the true image of God, Christ himself, and we seek to make his disciples amongst all of those nations such that more and more true descendants of Abraham, descendants by the new covenant offered in Christ’s blood. We will continue to add stars to the sky such that there will be one day it will be impossible to count the number of people who are included amongst those who are descendants of Abraham through Jesus Christ.
