Three Promises

TRANSCRIPT

Laced throughout the entire Bible, is God's plan to reclaim and restore this world from its fallen state. Journey through a dozen chapters of the story and we arrive at specific promises God gave to Abraham that affect every person on earth. From tensions in the middle east, to ideologies in the West, the reach and implications of these unbreakable promises are profound and alive today. Here’s at the heart of what God says:

“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 all the families of the earth shall be blessed”” (Gen 12:1-3).

Here we see three promises God gives to Abram, who he later gave the name Abraham:

Firstly: Promise of a land.

Secondly: Promise of a great nation.

Thirdly: Promise that all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

God is outlining his plan of a new nation that has its own land, which will in turn be blessing to all other nations. When God uses the word great, it’s not simply a case of stressing multitude and gifting, but rather in terms of being righteous and holy. He is promising that one day the nation that descends from Abraham will be a great Holy nation in a Holy land. These three promises speak of the gospel of the Kingdom that will restore this world that man is destroying, back to its original beauty and order that God created. From the beginning of history – from the moment Adam, the first man sinned – God promised a saviour that would one day come to crush the fallen angel called Satan who tempted them. And later we learn his evil kingdoms will be crushed along with him, and this saviour would then establish His own Kingdom. This saving Messiah, meaning the anointed one, or in Greek the Christ, would become the King of the promised Kingdom.

Israel is that nation who will one day receive the divine restoration by Messiah, or Christ if you prefer. Those that respond well to this people and its promises will be blessed by Christ the King, and those that respond badly will be cursed. A strong warning that still stands for us today.

The mystery within the Jewish scriptures was that God’s Christ would come first in the person of His Son, being born to a virgin, to become fully God and Fully man, and having lived a perfectly righteous life, he chose to lay it down of His own accord. “He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities” (Isa 53:5), nailed to a cross, “gave Himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:6), paying the penalty we deserve, yet defeating death by rising on the third day, and inviting all, even non-Jewish people like me “will be grafted in” (Rom 11:23) to Israel’s salvation. If you choose to repent and have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, to “die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed” (1 Pet 2:24), you will one day be resurrected as Christ rose, to eternal immortality and become “heirs according to [the] promise” (Gal 3:29) of this future Kingdom.

The Apostle Peter explained:

“brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago” (Acts 3:17-21).

It was this mystery of suffering before glory that paved the way for the second coming of Jesus who will soon return in great power and majesty as King to establish his “everlasting Kingdom” (Dan 7:27), through which the restoration of all things and the fulfilment of his promises will be seen by all.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34).