This promise is a bit more specific: First, God promises that He will multiply Abraham, that He will give him a lot of descendants. Secondly, God explicitly connects His promise with land.
Both the promise of land and what I call fecundity—that is, population—are natural outgrowths of the Genesis 12 promise that we looked at just a moment ago. In that promise, you will recall, God assures Abraham he will become "a great nation."
Now, we all know that great nations have lots of land, and that great nations have lots of people. So, in fact, this second promise is really just an embellishment, a restatement of the first one that we saw in Genesis 12. But, there is something much more beyond this, a point that we need to make, a dimension I need to mention in the Genesis 13 promise that we dare not miss. God says He will give this land to Abraham and to his descendants forever. We will come back to that idea in just a minute..
Let us see what we can do with all of these promises. I suggest to you that if we put all these promises together (the ones in Genesis 12, 13, 15, 17 and 22), we come up with a composite promise that has some common threads. Let us identify some of those common threads that appear in this promise. First, there is the eternal possession of land. That is obvious.
Secondly, a thread which to me is even more important is fecundity, or population. God promises Abraham, who had no son at all through Sarah during the time of the earlier promises, that he will be the ancestor of many peoples. No wonder Paul encapsulated it by stating that it was "the word of promise" as we saw in Romans 9:9: The "word of promise" was Isaac's birth to Sarah: "At this time I will come and Sarah will have a son."
Massive population appears to be (to me) the most conspicuous and the most ubiquitous thread of the promises. People! Lots and lots of people! They will need land, so God is going to give them land. He gives them land in perpetuity. But, land without people has about the same potential as the lunar landscape if you think about it. It does not do much good. People are what is going to be needed.
Let us take a look to see if I can back that statement up with a few specifics. We will look at five points. First, the promise of the eternal possession of land is really a promise of God's Kingdom. That promise is, as we saw in Genesis 13, to include all compass points—northward, southward, eastward, and westward. Further, the land is given over in perpetuity. It is given over forever. It will be secure, never to be snatched away by an enemy in, for instance, an act of war.
The four-compass-points promise is in fact a promise of the universe. That is how big the chunk of land that Abraham is going to receive.
We will not turn to Romans 4:13, but Paul speaks there of "the promise that He [Christ] would be heir of the world." In Revelation 21:7, Christ Himself states that "[H]e who overcomes shall inherit all things." I think the Greek means "the all, the everything."It is the universe.
Let us not forget, as well, in other scriptures (although we will focus mostly here on Genesis 13:15), that the promises involved land that will fall to Abraham as well as to his descendants. Not just to his descendants, but to Abraham himself. So this cannot just mean that Abraham's descendants, throughout their various generations over time, are going to receive the land and keep it. It does mean that. But God says that Abraham himself will inherit the land.
And yet in Acts 7:5, Stephen makes it clear that Abraham did not ever receive the land in his lifetime. No, not even enough to set his foot on. But even when Abraham had no child, God promised to give it to him for a possession and to his descendants afterward.
Abraham died without inheriting the land. To inherit it—to fulfill God's promise to him—Abraham is going to have to be resurrected. And, if he is going to receive it … . . .
This is what Abraham believed, and this is what God is being faithful to in regard to us, in regard to salvation. It is His promise to Abraham. What we have here is the original promise.
That is the same promise, a little bit added to it, and God kept adding to it. Each time that He said it, He added a little bit more detail. He repeated it to Isaac, then to Jacob, adding more detail each time. Our calling to make us a part of Abraham's seed has already been fulfilled, and thus He has been faithful to the fathers—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—in that part of it. But now He must continue that faithfulness to them and add faithfulness to us by saving us; that is, by completing our salvation in order that the promise be completely fulfilled. This has to be done, because the promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob involves everlasting life.
The everlasting covenant part cannot be the Old Covenant, because it was never intended to be everlasting, and at this moment it is fading away, according to Hebrews 8:13. So there must be everlasting life to accommodate everlasting possession of the land. In Romans 11:26-29 He showed that the promise will be kept, and the salvation being spoken of there is the same salvation that we are involved in, except that it comes in the Millennium and the Great White Throne Judgment period. God is faithful, and He is thinking way ahead of time.
I am giving you these verses because I want you to see how confident God is that He can bring what He is saying to pass. In His mind's eye, in His mind, your salvation is already assured. It is His confidence in Himself to bring you into the land, and is a major cause for these things being written in the past tense, and in the perfect tense, because He is so confident that He can do it. He wants you to believe that, to carry with you that same kind of confidence in Him, in His faithfulness, so that you can live a life that is free from the kind of worries that we would normally have in leadership, because our leaders on earth normally do not fulfill their promises; but God does.
He adds to the dust—we have sand, stars which are considered to be countless. We see here strength, power, greatness in number. And not only that, those who come from Abraham are going to sit in strategic locations like doors and gates, letting people in and out.
That promise indicates that the nations that come from Abraham are going to spread over the whole earth. These promises either imply, or they clearly state large populations, large land surfaces, good geographical locations, good weather patterns, rich soil, mineral wealth, and enormous numbers of people. Do not these promises indicate that Israel is to become a major force in the world?
In the prophecies of the Old Testament pertaining to the end-time and beyond, Israel is almost always the subject of those prophecies, and other nations, regardless of how populous and powerful they are, are mentioned only as they come in contact with Israel. Here's Revelation, a book devoted almost exclusively to the end, yet evidence of Israel's existence is very sparse and vague. But at the time of the end, as it has approached, what has God done? He has revealed to His church where Israel is. The rest of the world doesn't give a hoot, but to the church it means something. It has been revealed so that we can make a proper use of this truth.
Indeed brethren, Israel is large, and it is important. Its combined population is somewhere around 500 million people. I should interject something here. The promises made to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob are given in the sense of the entire completion of God's purpose, when all of mankind will be included within the sons of Abraham—all converted, all part of the family of God as well. We are in an important juncture of that, but in this time period—from the time Genesis 12 took place up until now, and in all of that history—God has been following through on all of His prophecies and promises regarding this.
Now the promise not only includes Abraham, but also his seed as well. Let us cut this short by leaping all the way to the New Testament to Galatians 3:16.
Brethren, the inheritor of the promise was Jesus Christ. He is the seed of Abraham. He is not the seed of Canaanites. The inheritor of the seed had to be a descendant that came from Abraham or God's promise is yet unfilled. Well, the Bible says it is filled, and the single legal inheritor is Jesus Christ; but He in turn is going to share His inheritance with all of the children of Abraham.
Now recall that the Wavesheaf offering had to come from seed which the Israelites had planted. Are you beginning to see where I am headed? Are you beginning to see why it had to be planted by an Israelite? It is because the Israelites were the descendants of Abraham. They only, and the seed which they planted, were qualified. If you see the parallel, the seed was passed through sperm to a woman's egg all the way down through history till we get to Jesus Christ. That seed that was in Mary and was impregnated by God then became the Inheritor of the promise. Did He do that with any Canaanites? NEVER! A descendant of Abraham was involved all the way down the line.
Jesus Christ was the first of the firstfruits of God's spiritual harvest. He was the first of the firstfruits of God's purpose, and according to that promise the seed had to be a direct descendant of Abraham. So if the grain the Canaanites planted was acceptable as a Wavesheaf offering, then it symbolically portrayed Jesus Christ as coming from the seed of Canaanites. IMPOSSIBLE! according to God's Word. But it even gets worse than that.
Right there, it is pretty limited—"all the land that you can see." Even if he got up on the highest hill, all you are going to see might be 50 or 60 miles in any direction, and then it will be lost in the haze. But, if we take those words literally, and I want to do that at this time, his inheritance does not seem all that great; not really befitting someone who is going to become the father of the faithful.
That is greatly expanded now, is it not? And that is what we are going to see, here. The promise to Abraham and to his seed is gradually expanded from what Abraham could see. We see it expanded from the River of Egypt (the Nile river), to the River Euphrates. Now we are talking about something that is several hundred miles square; a considerably larger piece of land.
By the time we get to the New Testament in the writings of Paul, Abraham is going to inherit the whole earth! And it is not just Abraham, but his descendants as well—the family of Abraham.
The promise has now gone from everything that Abraham could see with his naked eyes to where Abraham is going to inherit the entire universe—not just the land of Canaan, not just the lands, not just the earth—he is going to inherit the entire universe. In fact, the Weymouth translation says, “For in this subjecting of the universe to man.”
Think of this please in relation to Genesis 1:26 where mankind was given dominion. In the Old Testament it kind of describes that dominion as being nothing more than over animals—sheep and so forth as we saw in Psalm 8. Now we find that his dominion has been extended to over the entire universe.
It is interesting to note, as we look at this in passing (we will get to it a little bit later here), but it was not until after Abraham was separated from Lot, that God told Abram to “lift up your eyes and see the land which I am going to give you.” It is entirely possible, since the promised seed had not been given yet, that Abraham might have had Lot in the back of his mind as a possible heir. God is going to show Abraham that Lot is not the heir and they are going to separate.
Then Lot leaves, and then the Lord appears and He commands Abram to do the same things that Lot did in verse 10. He said, “Lift up your eyes.”
Now I think that Abram sees clearly that Lot is not intended to be an heir, it is very clear in his mind, God reinforces it by appearing, and Lot has separated from him.
It is not just given to the descendants; it is given forever. And now the promise involves eternal life. So, then He turns and says,
Ten years before the events of Genesis 15, Abram at 76 submitted himself to God’s judgment for the sake of peace, and let Lot choose what physically looked to be the best territory. On Lot’s part, here is another decision driven by the mind of men based on what is seen that did not work out very well either.
Now with this let us get back to Abraham. In chapter 13 we saw Abram taking a step in faith of self-sacrifice for the sake of peace, while literally putting his own destiny into God’s hands when separating from Lot. And within God’s favor he ended up in the Land of Promise and his own home base of operation for the rest of his life, “by the Terebinth trees of Mamre, which are in Hebron,” as we read in Genesis 13:18. This was 23 years before the events of Genesis 18 and his interaction with the Lord and two angels, and the first time the English word for favor is used in the Bible.
Then Lot leaves, and then the Lord appears and He commands Abram to do the same things that Lot did in verse 10. He said, “Lift up your eyes.”
Notice the changes that have occurred in the promise.
Just the land that He will show him. Now Abram is in the land:
First I show, now I will give.
Now I think that Abram sees clearly that Lot is not intended to be an heir, it is very clear in his mind, God reinforces it by appearing, and Lot has separated from him.
It is not just given to the descendants; it is given forever. And now the promise involves eternal life. So, then He turns and says,