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From the earliest days in Israel’s history, there was a promise of a coming king who would rule over the people of Israel. When God spoke to Abraham in Genesis 17:6, He promised that “kings will come forth from you.” Later in Genesis 49, when Jacob prophesied concerning his sons, he said, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” (v. 10). Long before the days of King Saul, long before the time of the judges, and even before Moses was born, God not only promised a future king for Israel, but even specified the tribe out of whom the king would come!

It’s a historical event like no other. When mankind fell into sin through the disobedience of Adam, humanity was cut off from being in a right relationship with God. Sin separated us from our Maker, and we became rebels at enmity with Him. We were lost and without hope in both our unwillingness and inability to be restored in the fellowship that humanity experienced before the Fall.

As we have discussed previously, the Mosaic Covenant was a covenant that God made with His people Israel. It is evident from the moment of its establishment that this covenant is bilateral in nature, for it was an agreement between God and the Israelites, who pledged that they would do all that is required of them in their keeping of the covenant (Exodus 19:8, 24:4, 24:7). As we will discuss in today’s blog, it didn’t take long for the Israelites to fall into sin, and by so doing, break the covenant.

When you hear the term “Mosaic Covenant”, what comes to mind? Perhaps you think of the Levitical priesthood, or the Law…and you would be right. Those are most certainly major themes of the Mosaic Covenant. But what if I told you that another theme of this covenant is the relationship between God and His people? In fact, the Bible makes a very clear connection between this covenant and the Abrahamic Covenant, where God chose Abraham to be the one through whom the whole world would be blessed.

When we read the Bible, one theme that stands out is the holiness of God. To be holy is to be set apart. God, the creator of all things, is indeed set apart from His creation. Creation had a beginning, but God is eternal. God has no beginning or end; He simply is. Also known as the Tetragrammaton, His very name is I AM WHO I AM (Exodus 3:14). God’s holiness is thus linked to His aseity -- but there’s more to it. The holiness of God also encompasses His moral perfection. “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

Ask anyone who is outside of Christ what they need to do in order to be saved, and the response is, more often than not, pretty uniform across the board: do good works, and if you do enough of them, maybe the good works will outweigh the bad deeds on Judgment Day and voila…you would be allowed to enter into paradise. In essence, all religions outside of biblical Christianity share one thing in common: a form of works-based salvation.

When God first appeared to Abraham in Genesis 12, He gave him three distinct promises: a land, a seed, and a blessing of all the nations. We spent the past few weeks exploring all that was entailed in these three promises, and we ended last time with a reminder from Hebrews 11:13, that Abraham never saw the promises truly fulfilled in his lifetime, but rather saw them only in bits and pieces. He lived in the promised land, yet as a foreigner. He had several offspring throughout his life, yet only his son Isaac received the covenantal blessing. Yet even this did not happen immediately after receiving the promise, as it took 25 years for Sarah to finally conceive and give birth to Isaac. It would be during this time of waiting that God would once again appear to Abraham in Genesis 15 to make a covenant with him, but before we dive into the covenant-cutting ceremony itself, we need to take a step back and consider the overall context.

As we continue our study of the Abrahamic Covenant, one thing becomes readily apparent: history is moving in a certain direction. God’s plan continues to unfold in the great drama of saving sinners from His wrath that they justly deserve. The promises God made to Abraham in Genesis 12, which would later become formally established in a covenant-cutting ceremony, all point us to the one descendant of Abraham through whom all the promises would be completely fulfilled: Jesus Christ. So far, we have talked about two of those promises: a land and a seed. Today, we will be discussing the third and final promise laid out in our text in Genesis 12; namely, the universal blessing, paying particular attention to the text in bold.

When God appeared to Abraham in Genesis 12, He made three distinct promises that would serve as the backbone of the Abrahamic Covenant: a land, a seed, and a blessing. Last time, we talked about the promise of the land that God would give to Abraham’s seed, and we ended our discussion with the singular and plural natures of the seed to whom the Promised Land belongs. Now, we turn our attention to the promise of the seed that would come from the loins of Abraham: who this seed would be, and how the identity of this seed fits in the redemption arc. To begin, we will once again be looking at Genesis 12, focusing particularly on the text shown in bold.

When it comes to events that change the course of human history, we often think of various wars, natural disasters, famines, and plagues. Certainly, these are major events in and of themselves, but what if I told you that there was a single event experienced by one ancient Mesopotamian man that overshadowed all of these? In the next few blogs, we will be talking about that very event: the day when God appeared to a man named Abraham and promised him a land, a seed, and a blessing for all the nations.