Today we come to three verses that hold the key to understanding the whole message of the bible! The promise to Abraham is not just a story about God’s dealings with one ancient individual. Nor is it just a story for the physical descendants of Abraham under the Old Covenant. It is just as vital for the spiritual descendants of Abraham under the New Covenant in Jesus Christ. And the question to ask yourself as you come to this passage today, is this. Am I a true son or daughter of Abraham? Am I sharing in these promises by faith?

I want to begin today by reminding you of where this chapter fits in the story so far. The Bible makes sense of the world we live in. It sees History as the unfolding of God’s plan to bring everything to perfection in Jesus Christ. Genesis answers the fundamental questions we ask about our world - who we are, how we got here, why the world is like it is. As we saw last year, Genesis 3 explains how sin, evil and destruction entered the world. Genesis 4 to 11 shows the inevitable spread and dreadful consequences of sin. But along with the bleak picture of the gradual degradation of mankind, Genesis 1-11 also shows God's reaction to human sinfulness, with both judgement and mercy. As time passes, people get further away from the Garden situation. Adam's punishment was to till the ground in painful toil. He was driven from Eden to the ground outside. Later, Cain is driven from the ground itself, to become a nomadic wanderer, far from the LORD's presence. In the Flood, the habitable land itself is ruined and overturned, and then after the re-establishment of humankind, we have the judgement of Babel, where people are scattered and their tongues confused.

In these early chapters of Genesis, we see God dividing humanity into two types – the righteous line, who seek God and worship him, and the unrighteous, who invent other gods and many forms of worship. But it wasn’t as though the righteous line saved themselves by their own works. One of the most prominent themes of Genesis is that of God’s grace, His undeserved favour. Noah enjoyed God’s favour, and God chose to save him and his family. That favour continues down the chosen line of Noah’s son Shem, to Abraham. Now though we often call this the “godly” line, many of them were anything but godly. There is no indication that they maintained the faith and worship of the Creator God in unbroken succession. In fact Abraham’s family took on the idolatrous religious habits of the Sumerians, Akkadians and Amorites they mixed with in Ur and Haran.  That is why God had to call Abraham back out of the ungodly world and set him apart.

We read at the end of Genesis chapter 11: “Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran.” And then chapter 12 follows on here: “The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” “I will make you into a great nation 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 promises three main things to Abram. A great people with a great name; a land of their own for that people; and a great blessing, that will flow out from them to all the world. I want to look more closely at each of those promises. First… 

1. The Promise of a People and a Name

Now what God freely gives Abraham here is exactly what the people of Babel tried to get for themselves back in chapter 11. God had said to Noah after the Flood, “be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.” But his descendants say, in chapter eleven verse four, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves, and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” They wanted to make a name for themselves by disobeying God’s command to spread out over the earth. They would make their name great through their own efforts and concentrated human might. And of course nothing has changed. That is still how proud humanity works even today. Let us make a name for ourselves by our own glory and might, without reference to God and his promises. But God says to Abram, I will make you into a great nation, and I will make your name great. Now to Abram personally of course, this honour comes in the form of a literal name that God gives him. The name Abram meant “exalted Father.” But later in chapter 17, God calls him Abraham, which means “Father of many peoples.” And today many nations and three world religions – literally billions of people, look back and call Abraham their father.

However, this is not just a private promise to Abram. There is a wider, spiritual application for us as Christians. This is an eternal truth. God will always bless and honour those who trust His covenant promises, but he will shame those who try to bring honour on themselves. Especially those who think they are good enough to merit salvation by their own works. Jesus said, “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself, will be exalted.” And the promise has its ultimate fulfilment in the person of Jesus himself, who lives the perfect life we could not and dies the perfect death for our sins. He is the one with the name above all names, that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. What is the great name that God promises Abraham and that we inherit? It is God’s divine Name, The Lord, and through Jesus God gives us this Name.

God promises Abraham that a great nation will come from him. This was pretty amazing, since we are told at the end of chapter 11 that Sarai his wife was barren. So we know right up that God is going to do something special. And it will require faith from Abram. But God does it. And the whole of the rest of the bible is about God’s gradually unfolding plan to create a special people for Himself and give them a great name.

2. The Promise of a Land

Another thing God promises to Abraham here is a special Place for His special people to live. He says, “go to the Land I will show you.” And in verse seven, after he has made the journey to Canaan, we see how “The LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.””

Israel’s ancestors were not from Israel. Abram came from Mesopotamia – the area inhabited today by Iraqis, Persians, Kurds and Turks. His people were descended from the righteous line of Shem, in contrast to the original inhabitants of the Land, the Canaanites, who were descendants of Noah’s disobedient and scandalous son Ham. So, about 4000 years ago, Abram responded to the call of God to go to this godless place, the land of Canaan, which would one day become his place.

Later God reveals more about this promise of the Land to Abraham and his descendants, as we’ll see in Genesis chapters 13, 14 and 15. Not much is said here, but it is the first step in the hope of a future return to Eden – that special place where God’s people originally lived in perfection under God’s care and blessing and in perfect harmony with each other and with Him. This promise of salvation, of a return to Eden, of a reversal of the curse of the Fall, starts in Genesis and goes through the Old Testament until it finds fulfilment in Jesus. The Old Testament fulfillments in what was to become the Land of Israel are just shadows, illustrations that point forward to the real Land that will one day appear, the Land where God rules over his holy people forever. The New Testament shows us that Abraham was looking beyond the physical land of Canaan to something far more radical and universal – the restoration of the whole universe. A heavenly Land, the writer to the Hebrews calls it. As we go through Genesis in coming weeks, we’ll see how the New Testament interprets this promise of the Land for us as Christians today.

3. The Promise of a Blessing

So the Abrahamic Covenant promises a great People living in a great Land. But there is more. God promises Abraham a Great 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.”

A blessing is the opposite of a curse. We don't normally use the words bless and curse in the way the Old Testament does. By a curse we usually mean either swearing, or some sort of magic spell, like the gypsy evil eye. But in the Old Testament, a curse is something very serious, especially when it comes from God. 

God is the God who speaks, and every word that God utters in the bible is either a blessing or a curse. With God, there is no middle ground. You are either for him or against him. And if against him, make no mistake, you are under God's curse. That’s the bad news. The good news is, you can change sides.

A blessing is a word of approval from God. But a curse is a word of disapproval and judgement. Human curses and blessings are usually not much more than wishful thinking. But with God, a word of blessing or curse is powerful, because whatever God speaks, happens. It amounts to a sure prophecy of what will take place. Think of how God has spoken up to this point in Genesis.

When He first spoke the universe was created, and he pronounced it good. He blessed it and everything in it. He blessed the animals. Genesis 1 verse 22; "God blessed them and said, "be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." " 

He blessed the first humans. Genesis 1:28: "God blessed them and said, "be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth...". Genesis 5 verse 2 also says, "He created them male and female, and he blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created."

But then sin entered in. Adam and Eve rebelled, and for the first time, God pronounced not a blessing, but a curse. In Genesis three, he places under a curse, the Serpent, the woman, the man, and the very earth. That is, he speaks his disapproval, his judgement, his condemnation, on the evil that has marred his good world. And the curse for humanity is death.

In Genesis 4, God blesses Abel for his acceptable offering, but curses Cain for the murder of his brother. In Genesis 6, God curses the whole world in the flood, but blesses Noah and his family with the creation blessing he gave to Adam. Genesis 9 verse 1: "then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth."

In the Creation covenant that God made with Adam and renewed with Noah, God covenants with the whole of humanity in a general sense. He promises to sustain and bless the created world. But He did not remove the covenant curses. We live in a world with death and sickness and disaster and broken relationships. Both Covenant Blessings and Covenant curses of the Creation Covenant are general in nature. They apply to the whole of humanity. As the bible says “God makes his sun to shine on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.” But in Abraham we see God doing something new. He chooses one man out of all men, and puts his blessing upon him in a special way, and makes him the father of all the faithful to come, the patriarch and pattern of faith itself. God gives Abraham His Promise, the promise that from his Seed, salvation will come to humanity. From here on, anyone who has true faith in God, whether Jew in the Old Testament or Christian in the New, looks back to Abraham for their spiritual roots. So Abraham provides the example of faith to follow. But he also provides the physical means by which the One in whom we put our faith will come, namely Jesus. Abraham is the spiritual pattern of our faith, and the physical progenitor of our Saviour. Through faith in Abraham’s offspring, Jesus, those who are not physical descendants of Abraham may now inherit the blessing and promise, and become his spiritual children. 

Look at our reading from Galatians 3: “Consider Abraham: “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”

Here we have the reason that Genesis 12 is so significant, and why the whole of the rest of the bible rests on these promises. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ announced 2000 years before he even appears on earth. How? Because in the gospel we have the fulfilment of God’s promise to bless the whole world through one man. At the heart of the gospel is this fundamental truth – that in Abraham’s Seed, all nations will be blessed through faith. And our response to the gospel should be that of Abraham, the man of faith. Abraham believed God, and it was credited to his account as righteousness. How did Abraham respond? With faith that led to action. If Abraham had just sat back and lived comfortably in Haran, he would not have inherited the promises. He needed to take up the inheritance that God had given him. And so we read in Genesis twelve four:
So Abram left, as the LORD had told him. And then in verse 8: There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.” Abram’s faith response was obedience and worship. He called upon God in faith at the place God told him to go. In coming weeks we’ll see how this worked out in his life, and how God did indeed bless those who blessed him and curse those who cursed him.

There is only one way for us to share in the blessings promised to Abraham. And that is to place our trust in the One who brings these blessings to fulfilment. We live, quite literally, at the ends of the earth from Abraham, and four thousand years after he set out in faith. And yet our faith journey and his are inextricably linked to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is called the Seed, the Offspring, of Abraham. Because of these promises, made so long ago, today we send out missionaries to cultures that have not heard the gospel, and we continue to preach that gospel to our own countrymen. There is only one way for the nations to be blessed, and that is through Abraham’s Seed, Jesus Christ. They are not alright by themselves, and that is why we support world mission and evangelism. The gospel is for all people. 

As Christians, we want others also to have this wonderful promise in Galatians 3:29: “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” God wants to bless us in Christ with the blessings he promised Abraham. Will you step out in faith together as his church, accepting those blessings by faith, and making the spiritual journey that God calls us to? Will you be obedient to his call, and worship him in your lives, and call upon his name? Do you want others to honour that great Name he has given, the name of Jesus our Lord? If that is what you earnestly desire, then sing with me the words of our next hymn, and mean it when you ask in the second verse, “My Gracious Master and My God, assist me to proclaim, to spread through the earth abroad, the honours of your name.”
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