As we finish chapter 11, it is immediately followed by the calling and separation of Abram in Genesis 12.
I want you to see verse 3 in relation to chapter 11, verses 1-9. All the nations are put under a curse because of what they did at Babel and so they are away from the blessings of God. But God has not forgotten His purpose, and now we see in chapter 12 that He is going to separate one man away from the families and nations of earth, and through him all of the nations of earth will be blessed.
You can see a pattern developing that helps the church to understand its unique position in relation to God and the world. The pattern here is going to be repeated in the church. So we look at the Old Testament and what do we see? One family being separated out from the nations of the world; being a blessing to all the families of the world that are now being cursed.
Now, you might not be aware of it, but that blessing is so important, that it is repeated five times within the book of Genesis alone. If something is repeated that often, God wants us to get something—there is something important here. We will only look at two of them. Turn to Genesis 22, and see why there needs to be this blessing. This is being repeated to Abraham:
That is in the past tense. It is directly tied to Abraham’s obedience. Then in chapter 26, we find that it is spoken to Isaac,
The nations of Genesis 10 and 11 are going to be blessed because of Abraham’s obedience. This includes every nation on the earth.
That puts a bit of a responsibility on the world—on the Gentiles. This was repeated in Genesis 27, only this time it was spoken to Jacob.
What that original promise to Abraham contained, then, were two conditions: (1) Israel had to be faithful, and (2) the nations had to respond by blessing God's covenant people.
This is the beginning of the promise we just read of there in Deuteronomy 1:8, but that promise is gradually expanded to include more.
Instead of just being a vague promise of land, now we have some dimensions that are set, and those dimensions go all the way from the River Nile to the River Euphrates. I am not going to go through the whole promise as it has expanded from time to time, but we are going to jump all the way to Romans 4 and update this into New Testament, New Covenant times.
The promises expanded out of the land of Palestine from between the two great rivers, the River Nile and the River Euphrates, and now we find Abraham is going to inherit the entire world. It gets even greater than that because we find in the book of Hebrews:
Well, that includes, if we can believe what the Bible says, everything that God has created, that has been inherited by Jesus Christ, and we are coheirs with Him. Think of that in terms of what is said all the way back there in Deuteronomy. The land is before you. And brethren, the land is before you, but now it is exceedingly greater than it ever was all the way back in that time. God is not offering us some puny and unusable knickknack, but we are to be coheirs with Christ of God's awesome creation, and eternal life in addition so that we might enjoy it forever! That is something that is almost too big. It is impossible for my mind to encompass that. But in Hebrews 11:
The story of Abraham begins rather abruptly. Just a few verses before this in chapter 11 it begins with his genealogy, and then it quickly moves on to show some of the significant spiritual events in his life. But now let us go back to very familiar verses in I Corinthians 1, beginning in verse 26, where it says:
And that includes Abraham. Abraham was no more righteous than Noah, or you and me. Nobody can say, "God, I am not all your workmanship. I had all these good works before You ever called me." Abraham was elected because of what God chose to execute, not because or on the basis of anything Abraham had done. And so we find in verse 30, "But. . ." Here comes the contrast:
