Now that you have the context, overarching context of how primeval history moves into the patriarchal history, how the problems of the Tower of Babel with the scattering of the human family is now going to be reversed little by little starting with the call of Abram. Let's now go to chapter 12 verses 1 through 3 and see the call of Abram because it's super important. Really, these three verses form the entire rest of the plot of all of scripture. And too many people read the Bible kind of plotting along reading these verses or those books and they don't really have the overarching theme of salvation history and how salvation history is really beginning and being laid out so beautifully here in these first few verses.
So I can't overemphasize enough how important these three verses are for the rest of the vitals plot here. Okay, so let's open up to chapter 12 verse 1. This is for the first three verses here and we're going to unpack them following the notes on page 2. So verse 1, now the Lord is 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 1, a great nation, and I will bless you and make your 2, name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and those who curse you, I will curse, and 3, by you, all the families of the earth shall bless themselves. Alright, so then Abraham verse 4 did as the Lord said and so forth, we'll talk about that in a second. But let's spend some time unpacking these three verses and I, my friends, you should definitely underline this, block it off, circle it, whatever you do to personalize your Bible because it is that important here.
So this promise that God makes to Abram, we call Abram to leave his father's house, is really a threefold promise. Okay, so threefold promise, which later I'm going to show with you, are going to be elevated to the level of a covenant oath. Alright, and the difference between a promise and an oath is significant. One author I like, I'll give the example of the difference between an engagement ring and a wedding ring.
The engagement ring, you're promising to marry somebody. But with a wedding ring, you're marrying them, you swear an oath, I'm yours, you're mine. Is it a kinship by covenant, if you remember all the stuff we talked about before. So you can think of it that way, right now it's a threefold promise and each of these promises will be raised level of covenant oath.
Think of that as the wedding ring, okay? So let's unpack this looking here at your notes. Let's look at number one, I will make of you a great nation. Now two things are required to be a great nation.
Number one, you need descendants. You need to have a lot of people that descend from you and two, you need land. If you just have land and you don't have descendants, you're not a great nation. If you have a lot of descendants, but not the land, you're not a great nation.
Like even the Israelites down in Egypt, their slaves in a foreign land, a land that's not their own. So you need both descendants and you need land in order to be considered a great nation. Now, this is really important because there's a lot of people out there who will say that God is being very unfair right now. And of course later on in the story of salvation because there's the Canaanites dwelling peaceably in the land, mining their business, farming and shepherding and doing their thing.
Even God brings the Israelites into usurp the land and take the land which didn't belong to the Israelites all along. And that's a false narrative, it's a false understanding of salvation history. Because the land originally was meant for Shem, the firstborn son of Noah. The land is a blessing and the birthright was going to Shem, and then the descendants of Ham which are the Canaanites, you served that land and took it for themselves.
So one thing, we'll talk a lot more about this when we go through the book of Deuteronomy and Joshua. You can go to Salvation History Course and get some of the details right now. But suffice it to say, when God says to Abraham, I'm going to give this land to your descendants. I will make you a great nation.
He's not going to be taking something from the Canaanites and give it to the Israelites. And the Israelites never had it all along. That's false. The Israelites possessed the land as descendants of Shem, but it was the descendants of Ham that you served it.
So God's not being unfair. It's giving to the Israelites what's theirs by right. All right, that's what I wanted to clarify here. Now this promise of a great nation, which obviously presupposes the descendants of land, this is going to be upgraded to the level of a covenant oath in chapter 15.
We're going to talk about that at the end of this particular lesson. The last 15, 20 minutes we'll talk about chapter 15, where this promise is upgraded to the level of a covenant oath with a sacrifice of a bunch of animals. So stay tuned. We're going to talk about that very, very soon.
Now, as said earlier, this is the plot for the rest of scripture. All these three promises are, well, this first promise that is upgraded to the level of a covenant oath in chapter 15 is fulfilled because God is faithful to his promises. It is fulfilled with the stories of Moses and Joshua, right? Moses delivers the people from slavery, brings them to the border of the promise land, but then Joshua brings them in and they conquer the promise land under his leadership.
So the next major phase of salvation history is going to fulfill this first promise slash oath to make him a great nation. Okay. All right. And then so let's look at the second one.
I will make your name great. Now already you should be ringing your head. Ding, ding, ding, ding. We've already spent so much time looking at the word name.
The word name is very, very important to repeat it here once again. Remember that those folks at Babel, the Babylonians, we call them easily for now. The folks at Babel, they tried to make a name or a shem. Shem is the word for name, a dynasty for themselves.
So if you remember, they were opposing God. They were opposing the God's people, which really is are the descendants of Shem, making the dynasty an empire for themselves. They're trying to grasp at something that is not theirs. But in contrast to that, interestingly enough, God then says to Abraham, I'm going to make of you a great name.
I will make of you Abraham a great dynasty later on. Say Kings will come forth from you. And I love that because this gift of this blessing of a dynasty and kingship is given to Abraham. He doesn't need to take it grasp grasp at it by force like those at Babel did.
It is a great contrast in grasping at what is not yours or waiting patiently for God to be a queen of the blessing to you. I love that contrast there. So because Abraham calls upon the name of the Lord, God will make of Abraham a great name. There's also a really great parallel.
We're not going to study this, but it just comes to mind right now before I forget. It's a really great parallel with David. When David wants to build a house for the Lord of Temple, God says, no, I will make of you a great house. And that's actually, well, we'll talk about it in a second because I'm a little bit of myself, but the making of a great name or a great dynasty is going to be fulfilled with David and his own.
That's the next stage of salvation history. Now, so this promise, when will it be raised to the level of a covenant? So, in the name of the Lord, it's in Abraham's story. It's chapter 17 with the sacrifice of his own flesh with the institution of circumcision.
We'll talk all about that in the next lesson, lesson number nine. Okay, so I will make you a great name. He promises here it will be raised to a covenant of chapter 17, but it will be fulfilled by God in the story of David and Solomon. Okay.
All right, excellent. So then that brings us here to point C the third promise in you all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves or passively it's nice and it works. All the families of the earth or all nations shall be blessed. Okay.
So this is important because we just saw chapter 10 and chapter 11, you have the table of nations, those seven nations that are being described that were described and listed as descendants of Shandam and Japith. These are the nations in question and all the nations that develop from them. All nations will be blessed in Abraham. Okay.
That's what's going on here. All the nations that have been torn apart by sin, especially the Tower of Babel, now they're scattered because of the rebellion. Now through Abram is going to be reversed. This is when Babel and the sin of Babel and the scattering of all peoples will be reversed because God wants to bless them.
He wants to regather them again in his family and that's some more continuation from what we've been talking about in the previous chapters. Again, I always say this all the time. Don't read each chapter separate from the overarching context. It is one story.
It's the biblical story, the story of salvation. Don't read one chapter and be like, okay, I'm done with the Tower of Babel and now it's going to Abram. No, Abram is responsible to Tower of Babel. Anyway, I repeated that, I repeated myself earlier.
But note this. This is also important because people out there will say, oh, it's just so unfair of God. God is calling Abram. He's blessing the Israelites and what about everybody else?
This is so unjust of God just to, in fact, all of the Old Testament is focused on the family of Abraham, Abraham, and Jacob, Israel and all the Israel, the 12 tribes of Israel. What about everyone else? You read the Old Testament as if God is being so unfair to everyone. Again, that's false because God calls Abram, Abraham later changes his name and he blesses the Israelites and the whole story of blessing is much more poignantly comes off the page and exit the story.
But he does that for the sake of all the nations. He does it to bless everyone, to bless the descendants of Shem Ham and Japheth and everyone that comes from them. That's what he's doing. So it's not, he's calling Israel as we're going to see in the Exodus story to be the firstborn son for all the other nations.
So it is false when someone says God is being unfair. And I say this now and you're like, I've never heard it. Well, maybe you have, but it is out there. God is not being unfair.
So when he calls just Abram, he's calling Abram to be a blessing to others, which incidentally I find really, really powerful. If you reflect for a moment, God calls each of us in our own individual ways to be a blessing to other people. However that might be through time, talent, treasure, you're a good listener or you're a good servant, you're a good carpenter, you can help people, build houses or repair stuff. Or I don't know, you can fill in the plank, there's all kinds of stories.
But God blesses us in order that we might bless others. This is clearly seen with Abram in the most important way of salvation. But in your own individual ways, God wants to bless us too. And I think that's a really, really powerful part here.
So God is not being unfaithful to everyone else. He hasn't forgotten about everyone else. He's going to bless them and protect them and call them into his one reunified family in Jesus through the calling of Abram. So I want to clarify that.
Now this promise is raised to the level of covenant oath in chapter 22 with the mere sacrifice or at least a willingness to sacrifice Isaac. And we'll talk about that whole story in lesson 10. So when is this fulfilled? It's fulfilled obviously with Jesus.
When will all nations be blessed? Jesus Christ, the ascending of the apostles, the establishment of the church, beginning at Pentecost. And we saw how Pentecost is a reversal of the Tower of Babel before. At Pentecost now all nations are coming in.
Now everyone is going to be regath and into God's family. All nations will be blessed. Okay? All right.
So these are the three promises. They're raised to the level of covenant oath in chapter 15, 17, 22. We'll look at 15 right now. Next lesson, we'll look at the second promise raised to an oath.
And then the next lesson after that lesson 10, we'll look at the third promise raised to a covenant oath as well. So with that he responds, let's continue on to see that Abram does respond with great faith. But yet there are trials to his faith. He's not perfect.
We tend to look at biblical figures as well as saints for that matter as these incredible moral authorities. And they are that. But they have their journey of faith as well. And as we're going to see here, Abram has a lot of challenges from the get-go, but yet he's obedient.
He's faithful. And yet that obedience and faithfulness will be purified gradually and slowly and to ultimately chapter 22. So look at that here Roman numeral two in your notes. I'm Dr.
Nick. Thank you so much for watching this clip. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did and you want to access the entire lesson and the entire course, come visit us over at ScriptYourIntradition.com and join our community of students.
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