The Blessed Descendant of Abraham

This morning, we are continuing our series on the portraits of the Messiah, the Old Testament expectations of the king at Christmas. Today, we'll be looking at the portrait of the Messiah seen in the life of Abraham. But in order for us to understand that there is a portrait in Abraham, I want us to look at the explanation of that portrait in the New Testament as expressed by the apostle Paul. And so this morning, go to Galatians chapter three, where we hear Paul explain how Jesus, the Messiah, is connected to Abraham. Galatians chapter three, verse 15.

Paul writes, "To give a human example, brothers, even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say 'and to offsprings,' referring to many, but referring to one: 'and to your offspring,' who is Christ." This is what I mean. Paul says, "The law, which came four hundred and thirty years afterward, after Abraham, that law does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void."

"For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by a promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now, an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God?"

"Certainly not. For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith."

"But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptised into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise."

So far, our reading. There was nothing special about the man named Abram from Ur of Chaldea. There was nothing significant about this man until God burst into his life. There was little to make him stand out from his brothers, Nahor and Haran. He was just a bloke living in the ancient capital of Qaldiyah, modern-day Iraq, and in his day, it would later become Babylon.

Abram wasn't necessarily nicer than other people, nor is he described as being more spiritual than them. It seems God just comes to Abram at the start of Genesis chapter 12. And what becomes clearer as the story unfolds is that God's choosing of Abraham, well, that choosing is an immense act of grace. God freely and graciously chooses Abraham out of the blue. Let's have a look at Genesis chapter 12, where the story begins.

Read the first three verses. Genesis 12, verse 1. "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 dishonours you, I will curse.'"

"And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Abram, or as I'll probably interchangeably say throughout the sermon, Abraham, Abram comes to know God through a miraculous revelation. What does God promise to Abram in Genesis chapter 12? God promises three things: a people, a place, and a presence.

Specifically, the presence of God. Have a look at those three verses again. Abraham is promised descendants, a people. These descendants will have a place, a home, a country to live in, their own country. And then thirdly, God promises him presence, that God will watch over Abraham and his descendants.

God will watch over them in such a way that those allies, those who bless Abraham and his descendants, will in turn be blessed by God. And the enemies of Abraham, those who curse him and his descendants, will be cursed by God. God will be their protector. What we find in Genesis chapter 12, in these three verses, is the essence of what theologians call the covenant of grace. I will be your God, Abraham, and you will be my people.

That is the covenant agreement. I will be your God, and you will be my people. Specifically, God also says that through this relationship, God will bless the world. Through the descendants of Abraham, through this relationship, God will bless the world.

So in the first instance, we see the gracious plan of God. That is our first point. The gracious plan of God is revealed here in Genesis 12. But then we go to the second point, and that is the receiving of a promise in faith. Genesis 12 tells us that Abraham obeys God's word, and he moves out of this place, Ur of the Chaldeans, and he moves his way down to a place called Canaan.

And we skip over a few adventures in chapters thirteen and fourteen, and we land in chapter 15. We find Abraham entering and living in the promised land. In other words, he is living in the place that one of the blessings of this agreement: he is living in the place that God said He will bless him in. But we find that there is a problem. We find Abram looking far from blessed in chapter 15.

In fact, Abraham looks cursed. Earlier, if you want to skim chapter 14, Abraham had recently fought off a couple of pretty nasty enemies. Abram had done that. Now in chapter 15, he starts sensing the risk that these enemies might come back and fight against him again. And we also see in chapter 14 that even when he was successful in fighting on behalf of an oppressed people and people that needed Abram's help rather, Abraham doesn't take the plunder that is offered to him by the king of Sodom, the king that Abraham rescued.

Abram rejects the offer and says instead, "I will wait for the Lord to bless me." We see that there is this faith, this hope that the blessing of Genesis 12 will come by no other means than by God Himself. So Abram rejects the plunder of the king of Sodom. But it's been years since that promise. And God has seemingly not given much of that blessing to Abram yet.

Abram really, even as he lives in the land of Canaan, this is not his land. He still feels like a foreigner. And at the start of chapter 15, we find that he's afraid. He's afraid because he's just upset a whole bunch of powerful neighbours. He's afraid that the promise of God of a descendant is quickly running out.

He's becoming old. And into this context of fear, God comes to Abraham for the second time after years of silence. And to him, in verse one, He says, "I am your shield. I am your very great reward." In other words, Abram, you are right.

You don't need the king's treasure. I am your greatest reward. Abram, you are right. You don't need to worry about your enemies. I am your shield, and I will protect you from them.

But Abraham is not immediately satisfied with this promise. It has been years since God made His initial promise, and it seemed now like a lifetime ago. In the meantime, he's immigrated countries. He's set up a business. He started building his networks.

And up until recently, he has taken part in military action. Abram is busy doing a very human thing at the start of chapter 15. He is beginning to doubt. Where are the results of God's promise? Where is this trial that would cause Abram to be a blessing to the nations?

Abram's response to God is something that is so common in our life, isn't it? He had just won a great battle. And now, as he sits down to consider his situation, his spirit begins to wane. In chapter 14, he had announced to the powerful men around him that he would be a thorn in their side. Now Abram's starting to get wealthy and he has acquired enough might to fund his own little army. But really, Abram is still just a simple farmer.

He herds goats and sheep. When he sits down to think about it, he realises he's not in a great position to be in. And it can be the same for us. After a great victory, after a spiritual high that Abraham had just experienced, there comes a spiritual dryness. Perhaps some of us have experienced that, that you've enjoyed and you've ticked all the boxes of church life.

You've invested, you've been a part of, you've served, you were active, you were dynamic, you felt like you were aligned with God every step of the way, and it felt good. And now, all of a sudden, that feeling, that emotion, that drive is gone. Perhaps you've experienced it when you've been to a great Christian conference, and for a whole week, you've worshipped and you've fellowshipped and you've been a part of something that just made you sense like you were in heaven on earth. Or perhaps you were baptised and you made a public profession of your faith and you just knew that this is the right thing. This is what I commit my life to.

And then, after all of this, you go home and you are met with just more of life. Just the ordinary mundaneness. You still wrestle with your sin. You still have your doubts. When your emotions wane, everything wanes with it.

And so you fall back into the drudgery and the mundaneness of life, and spiritual depression sets in. I know, and perhaps you do as well, of people who have had their whole faith shaken by that experience. People that have walked away from church because of that experience. In a way that they can't explain, they spiral into a spiritual depression. And that is, I think, where we find Abram today.

But what is helpful for us to see as well is that there is a cure given to us, or explained to us at least. Our text seems to indicate what that might be, and it simply comes down to this: to conquer spiritual dryness is to simply have a hard-nosed, stubborn faith in God. There's no conference that's going to fix a spiritual depression. There's no church ministry you can get involved with that's going to rescue it.

What conquers that spiritual dryness is having solid commitment in who God is. And that's what we see. What we find happening is that God doesn't immediately click His fingers and instantly there's a baby born. He doesn't change Abram's heart from the inside out overnight. God simply reminds Abram of the promise.

But this time, He makes the promise more explicit. He reminds him and He just brings one more or a couple of more details into it. He tells Abram that he would indeed have a son, and that from this son, God will produce millions of descendants. And perhaps the most beautiful detail of this whole story, verse five says that God takes Abram, I don't know how, outside of his tent and shows him the night sky. Now, I love imagining that moment.

God taking Abram outside like a dad leading his son by the hand to the backyard to show him the night sky. Abram is like a moody teenager in his room. God hasn't done what I've asked of him or what I hoped he would do. God takes him to the backyard. Now, to imagine the heavens that Abram saw that day, away from all the light pollution that we have in our big cities.

Imagine the night sky without the carbon dioxide in the air. Four thousand years ago, they are bursting with millions of diamonds in the sky. Abram, God says, "As many stars as are out there, so great will your descendants be." We're told that at this, Abram's only response, verse six, is he believes the Lord. He believes the Lord.

I guess if you think about it, what else can you do? In this instance, you are being reminded of the splendour and the glory of God's handiwork. You see it again displayed in its full glory. This all-powerful creator of the universe, as you are looking into the clear night sky, in that moment, you are like looking through a window into the majesty of God. And this all-powerful God says to you, "As powerful as I was to create that, that's how powerful I am to give you this promise."

The phrase about Abram's faith described here in verse six is actually regarded as the most important verse in the Bible. If you can believe that. Genesis 15, verse 6. Highlight that in your Bible. Because it goes on to say, verse six, that God counted Abram's faith as righteousness.

It's this verse that forms the cornerstone of the apostle Paul's explanation of the gospel in Galatians 3. Paul says there that faith was essential for Abraham to receive what God wanted to freely offer him. In other words, this is what faith is. Faith is not a certain level of spirituality, something that says, "If you attain 50 or a 100 faith points, then you receive what I want to give you."

Faith according to Scripture is simply you holding out your hand when God says He wants to give you something. That is what Abraham does. The reality is when you and I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, we acknowledge our utter helplessness because of sin. We realise and we acknowledge that we needed to look to Christ alone to save us. And in that moment, God sees us as completely righteous.

Why? Because through that little bit of faith, where we've stretched out an empty hand to receive the promise that God has made in Jesus Christ, we receive the forgiveness that Jesus has won for us. And that leads us to our third and our final point: the covenant commitment or the covenant ceremony. There is one reason and one reason alone why the promise of God to Abraham in Genesis 12, verses 1 to 3, is called the covenant of grace.

There is one reason, and it's because this covenant, this promise, depends not on us at all, but completely on God. God tells Abram that he has to pack up and move to a land far away. Why? Because God wants to make a mighty nation out of him. A nation that God would call His own people.

But up until Genesis 15, this has only been a promise. It's actually not yet a covenant. Even though theologians call Genesis 12, verses 1 to 3, "the covenant of grace" being expressed for the first time, it's only in Genesis 15 that we see it actually being a covenant. Let me explain.

When making a covenant, a solemn promise in the ancient Near East where Abram was, there was a ritual involved. There were many rituals involved, in fact. But in making a solid contract, a binding agreement, two parties entering into this binding commitment, they would mark their agreement by sharing in some dinner together. That dinner, however, was usually some sort of animal that had been sacrificed as part of the ritual of making this agreement. This dinner was a big old feast because two animals were usually sacrificed.

One from each of the parties to the contract. These animals would be cut in half. They would be laid on the ground with their blood and their entrails lying there with it. And as they made this promise to one another, as they said, "I will do so and so. I promise on oath that I will do whatever."

"I will give you ten thousand dollars for this car. Man, that's not a very expensive car, but ten thousand." They would walk through these split-up, gooey, bloody entrails to say, "May I become like this dead animal if I don't go through with this agreement." It is what is called a self-maledictory oath. You are actually calling God on to curse you if you don't go through with this deal.

We find that happening in Genesis 15. As the initiator of this contract, God has offered many terms to the deal that He will uphold. He says to Abraham that He will give him a land, right, the land of the Canaanites, and that He will bless him and his descendants, and that He will make them as numerous as the stars in the sky. He will bless all the nations through these descendants. But for Abraham, there is only one term, one clause in the contract that he must uphold, and what is that?

Be my people. I will be your God. I will give you all these things. You be mine. The amazing thing is, for Abraham and his descendants, they only need to enter into that by being faithful.

They only need to receive those blessings by making God their God. Genesis 17, we find a restatement of this covenant, which is now marked with circumcision, which is a sign in the flesh, which says, "Yes, God, I will be your people." This physical sign that all men in the family must have is a sign that I am choosing for you to be my God. I'm aligning myself to be your people. But we see already in chapter 15 that it is faith and faithfulness to God that is the requirement.

Regardless, we see a contract that is being signed in blood. We see that in verses 9 through to 21. A covenant is being made. A self-maledictory oath is being made in that moment. But there is one significant difference.

We are told that as God commands Abram to go and split these animals in half, and we see that he has a number of animals that he does this to, Abram then falls into a deep sleep, the Bible tells us. And what Abram experiences in that moment is he sees a torch and a fire pot swirling through the carcasses. In other words, Abram does nothing. He witnesses as two parties participate in the agreement. Who is that?

It's God. And God is acting on His behalf, and He's acting on the behalf of Abraham for this one covenant between them. Verse 18 concludes for us in chapter 15 that on that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham. So God doesn't make a covenant with Himself. Even though Abraham is not involved, God has made a covenant with Abraham.

There are no two parties making an oath here, just one. What it means is that God takes sole responsibility for the promise of the covenant to be kept. If Abraham or his descendants fail to uphold the terms of the covenant, the punishment of that covenant breaking doesn't fall on them. It falls on God. In that moment, God is saying, "May I become like these dead animals if I do not fulfil what I've promised to you, even if the reason why I cannot fulfil it is due to your inability, is due to your disobedience."

This is why it's called the covenant of grace. This covenant wasn't about establishing one family as some sort of monarchy in the Middle East. Even as God promised a family to Abram, God's vision was on the world. It is through your descendants that the nations will be blessed. Two weeks ago, we saw the promise to Eve that a descendant, an offspring, would come from Eve that would conquer Satan, that would crush His head.

Now, we find another promise of a descendant offering blessing to the world. And like with Eve, we find a double meaning. The blessing of the nations relates to the fact that non-descendants of Abraham, non-Jews, would receive God's blessing. In other words, a time would come where non-Jews will receive the favour of God. And so by the time we get to the New Testament, Paul reveals to all of us that Christians, whether they are Jewish or not, have received God's blessing.

In fact, the blessing is so abundant that Paul considers it identical to the blessing of Abram's descendants. Paul says in verse seven of Galatians 3 that all Christians can therefore call themselves sons of Abraham. Whatever our nationality, if we have faith in the promise that was made by God in that moment, we receive the blessings of the covenant. In fact, we are so similar to Abraham because of this thing called faith. We are so similar to him that Paul concludes that even Gentiles like us can consider ourselves spiritual descendants of Abraham.

Where Paul states in Galatians 3, verse 9, "So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith." What an amazing place to be put. We are on par with Abraham in the reception of the blessing. What are those blessings again? A people, a place, and a presence.

Paul will go on to say that as Christians standing in the line of Abraham, we enter into the covenant through the same means, which was faith. Abram believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. And what do we receive? We receive a people, the church. We receive a place, the kingdom of God, and we receive a presence.

For now, the Holy Spirit. One day, the triune God Himself in eternity. We receive the blessing. But there is a second meaning to Abram's blessed descendant, and it's similar to the promise of Eve. And that is that through Abraham would come a person, a person from his descendants. That is the case that Paul made in our passage.

He says there is only one offspring talked about, not offsprings, the offspring. And this man would come from Abraham. He would come from the Jews. And from this people group would come a man that we know as Jesus. And it is through Him that all the nations are going to be blessed.

Jesus would be more than a Jewish man. He is a perfect God who has made a promise. And that is why Paul makes the final and astounding claim of Galatians 3. God's people have failed to uphold the covenant. They have failed to uphold their end of the bargain to simply be God's people.

That's all they had to do. And God doesn't fail, however. Galatians 3, verses 13 to 14, Paul says, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, the curse of the contract, that animal thing that happened there. Christ redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.'"

Next week, we look at Moses, and we will see the covenant of grace being further stipulated about what the binding elements, the terms are of this contract, the laws that prove our faithfulness to God. In these stipulations, we understand all the blessings and all the curses that are associated with God's covenant with Abraham. But in the New Testament, Paul is saying that the oath God made points beyond Abraham and points to the day when God's oath was paid in His own blood. That's why Paul finishes with verse 16. "Now, the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say 'and to offsprings' referring to many, but referring to one: 'to your offspring,' who is Christ."

It means that God made His covenant so certain that nothing and no one could break it. Not even our sinful unwillingness to simply be God's people. And you see, friends, this is the power of the central message of the Bible, the central thread of the Bible.

Not that we have offered anything to God. Whether we are Jew or Gentile, whether we are rich or not, whether we consider ourselves educated or uneducated, we have not offered anything to God that He would find useful. God simply promised us salvation graciously. And then He paid for our unfaithfulness by His own blood. Abram receives this gracious promise, the promise of a people, a place, and a presence, and he receives it simply by believing the Lord who said it.

It was this simple faith that would be credited to him as righteousness. And so, dear friends, at the end of the sermon, the one application, the only application point I can give you is to simply believe it. To hold out that hand, to say to Him, "Okay, I'll take it. I believe what you've said about it. If you want to give it to me, okay?"

There's nothing else we can do. Because at the end of the day, it has been done by God on our behalf. And so even if you find yourself in the storms of life, even if you find yourself in the spiritual dryness, my advice to you can never be, you know, I don't know, "Go and read a good book. Go and try another conference." The only thing I can do to help you is to say, "Just believe the promise."

"It is yours. Receive it. Be blown away by the grace of it. Know today that your survival is not dependent on yourself, but on the Lord, the God of Abraham. And if you find yourself sinking beneath the waves, know that it is not your grip on the hand of Jesus Christ that saves you, it is His grip on you."

What a comfort it is to know that as we march towards Christmas, that at Christmas time, a God is coming to us who would relentlessly pursue us at the cost of Himself to make sure that His promise wouldn't be broken. "I will be your God and you will be my people." Let's pray. Father, we can only say thank you for this. Thank you that you have so wonderfully and clearly expressed both the power of a promise and of the unrelenting purpose of Your love to fulfil it.

Help us, Lord, to stand in that promise. Help us to remember that promise in whatever situation we find ourselves in. Help us, Lord, when emotions will try to rob us, will try to make us doubt the veracity of that promise. Help us, God, to not trust our logic, our minds to comprehend and to reason our way into that promise. Help us in all respects to have the humbleness, to have the sensitivity, to have the openness of simply holding out a hand.

We thank you for the example of Abraham. We thank you that he is in so many ways like us. Nothing special. We thank you, Lord, that because of him, by Your grace, we have Jesus. And we thank you that through Jesus, we have You.

Keep us, Lord, in that knowledge, and we pray, Lord, that You will protect and guard our hearts to believe it always. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.