Great and Precious (4)

“I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great…” Genesis 12.2

The beginning of God’s promises
The God of heaven and earth, Who made the vast cosmos and upholds it by His power, invited Abraham to become His friend and companion, to dwell in His presence, and to know the fullness of joy and pleasure that only God can give. God promised to bless Abraham, to make friends and enter a bond of peace with the patriarch, and then to use him as a way of extending that bond of peace to others as well.

This is the promise God held out to His people in Babylon, only with the prospect of greater blessedness than they’d ever known.

This blessing of God – blessed to be a blessing – is the beginning of God’s promises. All those who share the faith of Abraham begin their quest for God’s promises just here: reaching out to receive God’s blessing with a view to offering that blessing to others.

We cannot enter the worldview of the promises of God unless we come through this door of blessing. In being blessed our sins are forgiven through Jesus Christ and the scales are removed from our eyes, spiritual scales that keep us from seeing the beauty, goodness, and truth of God. Being blessed leads to blessing others.

Greatness times two
In the second set of promises God graciously offers to make of Abraham a great people and to give him a great name. If we have entered the blessing of God we can claim this second set of promises for ourselves as well.

Two senses of greatness are in view here.

The first sense of greatness God promised to Abraham has to do with the people who through him will be blessed of God. They will be a “great nation” – very numerous. As we read elsewhere in Scripture, God says those who follow in the blessing of Abraham will be as many as the sand of the sea, the dust of the air, the stars of the sky.

It was this blessing of increase that God recalled to His people in captivity, and commanded them to pursue diligently.

Abraham was not to be blessed of God in isolation; rather, he would become the father of countless millions down through the ages who would receive the grace of God and, in faith and obedience, become blessed to be a blessing as well.

We do not claim or enjoy the promises of God alone. They to whom the promises come through Jesus Christ are a great nation, transcending every culture, age, language, and political boundary. In the better promises of our Lord, we are never alone; we are citizens of a royal priesthood and a holy nation – a people of God’s own possession (1 Pet. 2.9, 10). We are a great people, citizens and ambassadors of an eternal Kingdom, and we share together in the great blessings of God which are ours through Jesus Christ our Lord.

God promised Abraham that this great nation would also have a great name. That is, they would be influential, persuasive, the kind of people who determine the way of things and who make lasting contributions of blessing to culture and society. Abraham was promised a kind of greatness he would never have been able to know back on the ranch in Ur of the Chaldees. God promised to make him more numerous and influential than anyone who had ever lived.

Because Abraham would be the friend of God. Abraham would share in God’s bond of peace. God’s name would be his, and God’s blessings would flow through him to all the nations of the earth.

Yeah, promises like that get my attention, too.

Fulfilled in Jesus!
God has fulfilled this promise today among the followers of Jesus Christ. For two millennia the Good News about Jesus has swept across the face of the earth and the pages of history, creating a family of multiplied billions who know the blessing of God and are reaching out to extend that blessing to others. The Christian faith has been the single largest religion in the world since the days of the early Church, and it continues to grow and multiply year by year.

Make no mistake: Present challenges and conditions notwithstanding, the community of those who share in the blessings of God through Jesus Christ is a great nation, a people of enormous and growing influence, a people who fear no one and nothing, and who are determined in their course of life to know all the exceedingly great and precious promises of God.

Those who know these promises, moreover, trusting in Jesus and bearing witness to Him, demonstrate in a multiplicity of ways the reality of the persuasive and transforming power of His Name.

Promises of blessing and greatness: These are precious and very great covenant promises, indeed.

For reflection
1.  How does your church indicate that it holds these promises of greatness to be very precious?

2.  What are some ways believers can influence their Personal Mission Fields for blessing?

3.  Can you think of at least two ways believers can become more numerically great in the world? In what ways does your church equip you for this kind of greatness?

Next steps – Preparation: Does your church equip its members for greatness, according to the promises of God? In what ways? Talk with a church leader about these questions.

T. M. Moore

This is part 2 of a 5-part series, Living toward the Promises. You can download this week’s study as a free PDF, suitable for personal or group use, by clicking here. You can learn more about living toward the promises of God by ordering a copy of the book, I Will Be Your God, from our online store (click here).

We invite you to register for the free online course, One in Twelve: Introduction to Christian Worldview. In this course T. M. Moore provides a sweeping panorama of how life in the Kingdom of God unfolds in an age in flight from God such as ours. Set your own schedule and study at your own pace. Learn more, and register for One in Twelve, by clicking here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.