The Promise of Abraham

The last three weeks what did we see? God created a kingdom, and is the King. He created mankind to uniquely represent him in that kingdom however Adam and Eve rejected that call. As a result of Adam and Eve’s rejection of God’s perfect plan sin and death entered the picture. However God did not leave them without hope as we saw last week, God provided a plan for a redeemer.

This week we are going to see how that plan continues to unfold in scriptures specifically in the life of Abraham.

Genesis 11 we have the story of the Tower of Babel – up to this chapter in Genesis we have been focused the human race as a whole – setting the table for the understanding of a universal history. It is here in chapter 11 that history is contracted and becomes national. It isn’t the design of Scripture to record the famous deeds of all men everywhere, to trace the rise and fall of the kingdoms of the world, rather to unfold the spiritual dealings of God with man. The author of Genesis therefore, after marking the downward tendency of mankind, now calls attention to a man on who, God’s light had shined, who was to be the only hope of a world which had nearly perished in the ruins of its corruption.

God chose Abraham that He might make him a worthy ancestor of the children of faith, and the founder of a nation by means of which he was to illustrate the ways of His providence and grace.

The knowledge of God had nearly disappeared from the world it had been over 400 years since the last recorded communication from heaven… The call of Abraham was a spiritual revival – a fresh starting place in the religious history of mankind. 

Genesis 12:1-4

1 The Lord said to Abram: Go out from your land, your relatives,
and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
2 I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you,
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who treat you with contempt,
and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.
Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran.