ABRAHAM; THE FATHER OF MANY NATIONS

Covenant language is a version of promise language.  Each time a covenant is established there is a promise made.  In the story of Abraham this happens multiple times.  God makes a promise to Abraham that he will be the “father of many nations” and that his descendants will receive the “promised land”.  

When he received these promises I wonder if he thought about how they would be fulfilled.  We know from different parts of his story that he tried to take the fulfillment of these promises into his own hands (Check out Genesis 16 for more information about that), but that didn’t stop God from using Abraham to fulfill this promise. However, we know from the New Testament that while the promise was eventually fulfilled for Abraham it was not ultimately fulfilled until Jesus.  

For Abraham this meant his descendants would be the Nation of Israel. But that wasn’t the end of God’s plan of fulfillment. In Jesus we are all descendants of Abraham and the promise is extended, now literally including all people, all tongues, all nations.  Jesus isn’t confined to the borders of the Nation of Israel, but we still have a promised land.  We are promised a New Jerusalem, a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth.  Sometimes our assumptions about how God will fulfill his promises are too limited. C.S. Lewis in his sermon Weight of Glory says this, ““It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”