The
Living God is a Missionary God (Part
3)
The
Promise
John R.W.
Stott
What then was the promise which God made
to Abraham? It was a composite promise consisting of several parts.
First, it was the promise of
a posterity. He was to go from his kindred and his father’s house, and in
exchange for the loss of his family God would make of him “a great nation.”
Later in order to indicate this, God changed his name from “Abram” (“exalted
father”) to “Abraham” (“father of a multitude”) because, he said to him, “I have
made you the father of a multitude of nations” (17:5)
Second, it was the promise of
a land. God’s call seems to have come to him in two stages, first in Ur of the
Chaldees while his father was still alive (11:31; 15:7) and then in Haran after
his father had died (11:32; 12:1). At all events he was to leave his own land
and, in return, God would show him another country.
Third, it was the promise of
a blessing. Five times the words bless and blessing occur in 12:2-3. The
blessing God promised Abraham would spill over upon all mankind.
A posterity, a land and a
blessing. Each of these promises is elaborated in the chapters that follow
Abraham’s call.
First, the land. After
Abraham had generously allowed his nephew Lot to choose where he wanted to
settle (he selected the fertile Jordan valley), God said to Abraham: “Lift
up your eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and
eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I will give to you and to
your descendants forever” (13:14-15).
Second, the posterity.
Sometime later God gave Abraham another visual aid, telling him to look now not
to the earth but to the sky. On a clear, dark night he took him outside his tent
and said to him, “Look toward heaven and number the stars.” What a ludicrous
command! Perhaps Abraham started, “1,2,3,5,10,20,30…,” but he must soon have
given up. It was an impossible task. Then God said to him: “So shall your
descendants be. “And we read: “He believed the Lord.” Although he was probably
by now in his eighties, and although he and Sarah were still childless, he yet
believed God’s promise and God “reckoned it to him as righteousness.” That is,
because he trusted God, God accepted him as righteousness in his sight
(15:5-6).
Third, the blessing. “I will
bless you.” Already God has accepted Abraham as righteous or (to borrow the New
Testament expression) has “justified him by faith.” No greater blessing is
conceivable. It is the foundation blessing of the covenant of grace, which a few
years later God went on to elaborate to Abraham: “I will establish my covenant
between me and you and your descendants after you…for an everlasting covenant,
to be God to you and to your descendants after you and I will be their God”
(17:7-8). And he gave them circumcision as the outward and visible sign of his
gracious covenant or pledge to be their God. It is the first time in Scripture
that we hear the covenant formula which is repeated many times later: “I will be
their God and they shall be my
people.”