03 | The Christ: Blessing Extended
We highlighted in our first study that the biblical story begins with God creating human beings in his own image to rule his world on his behalf. However, the story takes a turn for the worst when human beings rebel and decide that it is better to define what is good and not good for themselves.
This act of self-promotion and defiance sets off a downward spiral of chaos and corruption that ensues over the next several pages, and by the time we get to Genesis 11, we are left wondering what God is going to do to regain control over a world that’s gone wild. However, when we turn the page to Genesis 12, and we see God’s answer.
Many of us fail to realize that if we are going to truly understand the story of the Christ then we need to make sure we have a clear understanding concerning the story of a covenant promise that God made with humanity. If we are going to gain a better understanding of the man named Jesus then we need a better understanding of the man named Abraham. These two men are intimately connected.
Genesis 1-11 closes with the scattering of humanity from the infamous city of Babylon. Abraham is the first human figure that we are introduced to after this scattering. Abraham’s story begins with God selecting him and his family out of all the families on earth and giving him a promise. God initiates a special relationship with Abraham that is meant to have significant implications for the rest of the world. This special relationship and its implications are revealed in Genesis 12:
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you (or through you) all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3).
The key emphasis here is that God promises to bless Abraham so that he will end up being a blessing to others. God is going to bless the family of Abraham so that through his family all the families of the earth will be blessed. That’s the promise.
In this initial promise to Abraham, God speaks of blessing five times in just three short sentences. This promise is clearly intended to echo the words on page one of the Bible where God blessed humanity and gave them dominion (Genesis 1:28).
In our previous study, we explored what it meant for God to give human beings dominion over his creation, but we didn’t talk about what it meant for human beings to have been blessed by God.
What does it mean to be blessed?
The phrases, “God has blessed me” or “I am so blessed” are so frequently used today that it lead to misconceptions about what the Bible actually means when it talks about being blessed by God. Most of the time when people say, “God has blessed me,” they are referring to the fact that God has given them something for which they are happy and thankful. And to be fair, some Bible translations do interpret the word blessed to mean happy.
However, even though we will definitely experience profound happiness when we are blessed by God, we must not reduce this word blessed down to the idea of receiving gifts from God or internal feelings of happiness about life. To be blessed is not merely a condition describing what we may feel like, but rather a word declaring how God feels about us. In the Bible, to be blessed by God means to have the right relationship with him that we were intended to experience.
The word blessing as used on page one of the Bible and here with Abraham and throughout the rest of the story means to experience and enjoy fellowship with God.
The benefits of God’s blessing can range anywhere from simple material gifts that we might receive from God all the way to salvation from sin and the gift of eternal life. But at its core, to be blessed means to experience and enjoy fellowship with him.
And so, in this ancient promise given to Abraham, God is announcing that he is going to restore creation back into a right relationship with him, and he is going to somehow pull that off through this man Abraham. To put it plainly:
God’s plan is to rescue and restore his blessing to his creation through the family of Abraham.
And so to explain what we mean by this and why it’s important for us today, we’re going to look at the story of Abraham and how that story helps us understand the story of Jesus and how all of this ought to shape our story as Christians.
The Story of Abraham
It’s important to realize that the story of Abraham begins with God as the one who takes the initiative. There is no indication that Abraham already knows or worships Yahweh — the God of the Bible. God selects Abraham as he is, and he offers him a unique promise that Abraham can receive if he is willing to trust God and leave his home and his family and go to a foreign land west of where he’s been living. He was living in the ancient city of Ur which was a highly sophisticated city and the height of civilization during this time period so it would not have been an easy place to leave.
God promises to bless Abraham, and that he would make Abraham’s family the vehicle through which God’s blessing would once again be experienced by “all the families of the earth.” A key aspect to that promise is God’s pledge to make Abraham into a great nation. God was setting Abraham apart from the rest of humanity in order to make a new nation out of him that would bring God’s blessing to all the other nations on earth.
And so, Abraham left the city of Ur and his extended family just as Yahweh had told him to do, but this journey of faith was quite the struggle. He traveled to a foreign land that experienced a severe famine shortly after he arrived. This led Abraham to make the decision to flee to Egypt where he still feared for his life. God had promised to make a new nation out of Abraham in this new land, but so far the promised land and his aging wife, Sarah, remained barren.
We should put ourselves in Abraham’s sandals for a minute and see all this from his perspective. He has left everything based on this promise from a God that he barely knows, and nothing seems to be going like it should.
Have you ever felt like God isn’t delivering what you thought he would deliver?
Have you ever had trouble trusting God because of where he has taken you?
It is at this point in the story that Abraham needs some reassurance that God is still going to do what he has promised to do. And it is in the midst of Abraham’s insecurity that we once again see God graciously taking the initiative in this relationship.
In Genesis 15, we read:
After these things the word of Yahweh came to Abraham in a vision: “Fear not, Abraham, I am your shield and your reward shall be very great.” But Abraham said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless”… And Yahweh brought Abraham outside and said to him, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars. So shall your offspring be.” And Abraham believed Yahweh, and he counted it to him as righteousness…
But Abraham also said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” And Yahweh said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” And Abraham brought him all these, cut them in half, and made two rows of animal carcasses with a pathway in between them.. And as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. And on that day Yahweh made a covenant with Abram.
This is a monumental moment in the biblical story. Unfortunately, many of us are likely to miss its significance if we do not do a little extra homework to understand this ancient custom and this very important word called a covenant. In the Bible, a covenant is a sacred and binding agreement that initiates a brand new partnership. And it’s a partnership that is based on specific promises that are made and certain commitments that are to be fulfilled.
In ancient times, before we had pen and paper and written agreements, people would make covenant agreements by sacrificing some animals and cutting them in half to make two rows of sacrificed animals with a pathway in between them. The symbolism of this ritual was easy to understand. The parties involved in this covenant agreement would walk the aisle between the two rows of animals as a declaration that stated, “If I do not uphold my end of this covenant then may the same thing be done to me that has been done to these animals.”
And so in Genesis 15, Abraham was doing what was customary for a covenant agreement in his day. He assumed that he would walk the path in order to be guaranteed the promise that God had made. But as Abraham prepares to walk between the two rows of sacrificed animals to enter into this new partnership with God, something incredible happens.
We read that as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abraham, and it was only Yahweh himself — represented by the smoke and fire — who walked the path between the sacrificed animals.
Why is that so significant?
In this passage, God is confirming his promise to rescue and restore his blessing to his creation through the family of Abraham, and he is doing so by entering into a covenant partnership with Abraham. But remarkably, God does not make Abraham walk the path in order to gain what God was promising to do. God walked the path alone. That was his guarantee that the promise he had made to Abraham would be fulfilled!
Essentially God was saying, “I will take the ultimate consequence and the curse of this covenant upon myself if either one of us does not uphold our commitment to this partnership.” God was declaring to Abraham that he can rest assured in the fulfillment of what he has promised to do because God’s promise will rest in his own faithfulness to Abraham and not be dependent upon Abraham’s families’ faithfulness to God.”
God was declaring that, “I will do for you and through you what I have promised to do even if it ends up costing me everything.”
In his covenant with Abraham, Yahweh confirmed that he was willing to suffer death himself in order to fulfill his promise to rescue and restore his blessing to his creation. That’s amazing grace!
So in Genesis 15, Abraham was given the reassurance that he had asked for, but then over the next few pages his real-life situation would continue to be a struggle. It had been over two decades since God promised to bless them with a child. Sarah was only getting older, and their hope in having this child had to be dying. Abraham’s faith was being tested, but then we finally get to Genesis 21:
And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age. And Abraham called the name of his son, Isaac. (Genesis 21:1)
Twenty-five years after God promised to make Abraham into a great nation, God finally delivered the birth of his one and only son. The birth of Isaac initiated the birth of that new nation that was going to extend God’s blessing to the ends of the earth.
We should again take a minute to place ourselves in Abraham’s sandals and imagine how difficult it must have been during those twenty-five years to keep believing that God would do what he said he would do.
Isaac is finally born, and so it appears that we can all take a deep breath and relax as God’s rescue plan seems to be on track and advancing forward. However, on the very next page, God asks Abraham to do something that is completely unexpected and that seems completely irrational.
In Genesis 22, God commands Abraham to take Isaac, his one and only son and the living hope of that new nation that’s going to restore God’s blessing to the rest of creation, and to sacrifice him on an altar.
Can you even imagine what Abraham must have thought in that moment?
This is without a doubt a very unexpected sacrifice. Abraham had to be wondering what is going on here. Isaac is the promised child and the living hope of that new nation through whom God would restore his blessing to all of creation. If Isaac is to be killed as a sacrifice then it seems like God’s rescue plan and promise would die with him.
So how could this possibly be the way that God is going to restore his blessing to the rest of the world?
Out of everything that Abraham had experienced thus far in his faith journey, this was finally the ultimate test. This unexpected sacrifice demanded a response of complete and total trust. And what happens next becomes one of the most important lessons that God has taught his people throughout human history.
As Abraham obediently lays his only son on the altar and willingly raises the knife to sacrifice him, God stops him. Abraham has just passed the test. He has proven that he totally trusts God and that he has faith in God’s power. The author of Hebrews would later put it this way:
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. Abraham, who had received God’s promises, was in the act of offering up his only son, [the son] of whom it was promised, “Through Isaac you shall become a great nation.” Abraham considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back (Hebrews 11:17-20).
Abraham trusted God enough that he was willing to sacrifice his one and only son, but God graciously stopped him and provided a substitute instead. In Genesis 22, we read:
And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a bush by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide” (Genesis 22:13-14).
The story of Abraham ends with God commending Abraham for his faith and confirming his promise one more time to bless all the nations of the earth through the new nation that would be birthed from Abraham’s family (Genesis 22:15-18). The story began with God announcing this promise to Abraham and inviting him into a relationship of trusting obedience towards him. After a long period of delay, God takes the initiative and takes it upon himself to confirm his promise by entering into a covenant with Abraham. Everything seems to be on track and going according to plan until an unexpected sacrifice is required that demanded a response of total trust from Abraham. And it’s through this unexpected sacrifice and the response of total trust that we learn a key lesson as to how the world is going to once again experience and enjoy fellowship with God.
God will restore his blessing to all of those who believe his promises and who trust that he will provide what we need and who have faith in his power over death.
The rest of the Old Testament tells the story of Israel which is the promised nation birthed from Abraham’s family. However, that story ends with Israel in exile and experiencing some of the consequences for disobeying God and breaking their covenant with him. The Old Testament ends and Abraham’s family no longer seems to be experiencing or enjoying fellowship with God.
They don’t seem to be experiencing God’s blessing themselves, and so they aren’t really extending his blessing to the rest of the world either. By the end of the Old Testament, God’s rescue plan to restore his blessing through the family of Abraham seems to have stalled out with no one in Israel being able to set it back on track.
And so how does all this help us understand the story of Jesus?
The Story of Jesus
In the midst of Israel’s exile, some of their prophets talked about a time when God would one day create a new covenant with his people that would completely restore and fulfill all his promises that he had made previously. When we get to the New Testament, we are told that the time had come and this new covenant between God and his people is actually being fulfilled through a particular descendent of Abraham named Jesus.
The New Testament introduces Jesus as the son of Abraham who has come to restore and extend God’s blessing to all the nations on earth. This is why we have said previously that if we are going to truly understand the story of who Jesus is and what it means for him to be the Christ then we need a better understanding of Abraham and God’s ancient covenant with him.
God’s promise to extend his blessing through Abraham’s family to all the families of the earth had been announced in the Old Testament but left unfulfilled. But after a long period of delay, God once again took the initiative and took it upon himself to confirm his promise by entering into a new covenant with his people.
God entered into this new covenant, not by walking a path between sacrificed animals but by walking this earth as a man and becoming the sacrifice himself.
Like the story of Isaac, this was a sacrifice that was completely unexpected. God’s people and Jesus’ followers did not see this coming. They knew that it was God’s plan to rescue and restore his blessing to his creation through the family of Abraham. And some believed that Jesus was the promised son of Abraham — the living hope of Israel through whom God would restore that blessing. However, when Jesus was crucified by the Romans, it seemed as if God’s plan had died with him or maybe that this Jesus was not who they thought he was in the first place.
We need to put ourselves in the sandals of the first followers of Jesus and realize that this was something that didn’t make sense to them. How could this possibly be the way that God was going to restore his blessing to the rest of the world?
This is where the great lesson that was taught by God in the story of Abraham prepares us for the life of Jesus: God will restore his blessing to all those who believe his promises and who trust that he will provide what we need and who have faith in his power over death. In leading his one and only son up the mountain and to the wooden cross, God was doing what he had asked Abraham to do many years before. However, this time there would be no substitute for the beloved son. This time the beloved son was the substitute.
As Jesus obediently lays down his life and willingly gives himself over to the Roman authorities, God does not stop them!
The New Testament tells us that God loved his world so much and was so committed to his promises that he gave his one and only son as the necessary sacrifice for our sin so that we could once again experience and enjoy fellowship with him.
In the words of the American theologian and professor, Edmund Clowney:
“God did what Abraham did not have to do: He made His Son an offering for sin. We must reverently confess that for our salvation the cost to God was everything.”
Out of everything that the disciples had experienced with Jesus, the cross was almost too much. But the good news and the guarantee of God’s promise was that Jesus didn’t stay dead. Just as Isaac had returned with his father from the top of the mountain, Jesus, the promised son of Abraham, was resurrected by his Father from the grave. And now he has invited all people from all nations to once again experience God’s blessing through him.
Fellowship with God can once again be experienced by all those who believe his promises and who trust his provision and who have faith in his power over death.
This is what Paul implies in his letter to the Galatians where he writes:
And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith (Galatians 3:8-9).
God initiated a rescue plan to restore his blessing to his creation through the family of Abraham. Jesus came to fulfill that plan, and now all the families of the earth can be blessed through the descendent of Abraham who we know as the Christ. The Old Testament Abraham had only foreshadowed what the New Testament Jesus actually fulfilled.
Jesus has initiated the new covenant that the prophets looked forward to and now invites all people from all nations to follow him in faith and to join him in extending God’s blessing to the rest of creation through this renewed partnership with God.
This is what Jesus alluded to when he said that many will come from the east and the west and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 8:11). This is what Paul was getting at when he declared that all those who follow Jesus in faith are now members of Abraham’s family (Galatians 3:7). Christians are now those who experience God’s blessing and are now those who are meant to extend God’s blessing to all the families of the earth.
So if this is a significant aspect of what it means to be a Christian, then let’s look at what this means for Christians to belong to the family of Abraham and to join Jesus in extending God’s blessing to all the families of the earth?
Our Story as Christians
The implications of Jesus fulfilling the covenant with Abraham and inviting Christians to join him in extending God’s blessing to the rest of creation are way more than we could possibly cover here in this study, but we can hit some highlights of what this means for us today.
It first means that for many of us, we need to realize that unless you have a Jewish lineage then you are living proof that God’s promise to Abraham is actually being fulfilled in Christ. If you are not a biological descendent of Abraham then you are a descendent of a different family from a different nation who is now getting to experience God’s favor and fellowship because of what he has done through Abraham’s family — namely through Jesus.
It should humble us and help us to realize that we have been included into something and get to experience the benefits of a promise that God had made to the ancient ancestors of a particular people group from the other side of the world. We ought to be extremely thankful that we even know the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. If you belong to him then you are evidence that God is restoring his blessing to his creation through the Christ.
It also means that we need to remember the lesson that God’s blessing is given; it is not gained. We as Christians today are experiencing God’s blessing because he took the initiative and invited us into a new partnership and relationship with him. Fellowship with God is not something that we can earn but rather something that we can experience by believing his promises in Scripture and trusting his provision and by having faith in his power. We ought to be extremely thankful that we belong to a God who has taken the initiative and even sacrificed himself in order to bless us and to be with us once again.
And lastly, it means that we need to recognize that we are now part of the vehicle through which God’s blessing is being extended to all nations and all the families of the earth. God set Abraham apart and blessed him so that he would be a blessing to others.
We need to see that God’s blessing is about so much more than just personal salvation. It is a call to be a part of something much bigger that God is doing in human history. We as Christians are called to participate in the plan to rescue and restore God’s blessing to the rest of creation.
What do we mean by that?
You are surrounded by people in your city, in your neighborhood and even in your own family who unfortunately are not experiencing or enjoying fellowship with God. But part of the way that God continues to fulfill his plan is the fact that he has placed you in the midst of those people.
You and me are called to play a part and participate in God’s plan by being an obedient Jesus-follower and a real-life example of his service, humility and self-giving love. We are called to share the good news about how God has taken the initiative and made an incredible sacrifice because he loves his world and wants to bless all of humanity.
The first page of the Bible begins with human beings enjoying fellowship with God and experiencing his blessing. Then the last page of the Bible looks forward to the new creation and informs us, “The dwelling place of God is now with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3). The Bible is bookended with this vision of God’s people experiencing and enjoying fellowship with him.
The restoration of this blessing was initiated by a promise from God to Abraham, and is now being fulfilled through the person of Jesus the Christ. Jesus is the descendent of Abraham who has initiated a renewed partnership with God, and who is extending God’s blessing to the ends of the earth. We as Christians are now included into the family of God. We are now responsible to help bring God’s blessing to all the families of the earth. And we are to share the good news that fellowship with God can once again be experienced by all those who believe his promises and trust his provision and who have faith in his resurrection power.
