February 21st, 2005

The Promise and the Fulfillment

About four thousand years ago on a beautiful, starry evening. God called Abram (later called Abraham) out into the desert night:

 “Abram, do you see how many stars are in the night…so shall your descendants be numbered.”

“But God, I’m an old man, well stricken in years. I can’t have children, and my wife Sarai is barren. She cannot conceive.”

“Abram, do you know how many grains of sand are at the shoreline? So shall your descendants be numbered”.

And Abram believed…and God credited him to righteousness.

And so begins the story of the salvation of the entire human race, God will tell Abram to change his name to Abraham. He tells him that through him and Sarai (now called Sarah) “all of the nations of the world will be blessed. Those that bless you I will also bless and those that curse you I will also curse.

At this point we pause for a moment to insure we do not overlook the method of salvation. Abraham simply believed. He had not performed the rites of circumcision. He had not followed God’s instruction to sacrifice his only son Isaac on the alter. Abraham had not done anything…he simply believed. And so two thousand years later, in the book of Romans, Paul would explain the doctrine of salvation, not by works but through faith. We are saved the same way the first man was saved, by our faith.

How strong was the faith of Abraham? Years later, after God had indeed blessed Abraham with a son, (the son in whom all the nations of the world would be blessed, remember?), God tested Abraham’s faith by telling him to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering. Wait a second, how could the descendants of Abraham and Isaac bless the entire world if Abraham killed Isaac?

The only answer is that Abraham’s faith was so strong that he believed God would raise Isaac back to life after death! Conjecture? Interpretation? No, read Hebrews 11:19;

By faith, Abraham offered up his only son accounting that God could raise him up even from the dead! (paraphrased)

And two thousand years later, Matthew the tax collector, known for keeping meticulous records, begins his amazing Gospel with these words:

(This is) The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Matthew then goes on to list the lineage, the descendants of Abraham from Abraham(to two thousand years later) to Jesus Christ. In whom all the world would be blessed…just as God had promised.

Mike Schacter

© 2005 TeamRFC