Many People || Abrahamic Promises || Week 1

Welcome to my brand-new series called “Abrahamic Promises.” This series will be a two-week series about the promises God made to Abram in Genesis 12. We’ll break it down into two focuses: people and faith. The promises can be found in Genesis 12:2-3, which says this in the New Living Translation: 

2 I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. 

3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you. 

Abram, or Abraham (which you’ll probably see me use interchangeably by accident), will have many descendants and blessings and be a blessing to others. These are the promises that we’re going to talk about and connect to our Christian walk today. Today’s focus will be on verse 2, and next week’s will be on verse 3. Let’s focus today on having ample blessings by following what God says. 

Blessings by God

God promised all these things to Abram on one condition: do what God says. Stop and drop everything, Abram, leaving your home, family, and possessions, and let me show you the future God has planned for you. How many of us would drop everything to do what God asks us with this promise? Be honest, though. I’m not sure if I could. I’m unsure if I could willingly drop all parts of my life at once and go somewhere that God calls me. What if the voice I’m hearing isn’t God’s? What if this voice is coming from greed or pride? What if it would lead me to a worse future? These questions are running through my mind in this and other situations. Yet, did you see the common theme in my questioning? They’re all framed in a negative light. Questioning if I’m hearing God’s voice leads to doubt. Questioning my motives lead to pride and greed. Questioning about the future leads to anxiety and fear. All the questions I self-answered with a negative outcome in mind.

The actions of God aren’t evil. The God of the Bible is good, so why would a good God lead me down the wrong road. God wouldn’t do that, so why would we do that ourselves? Society makes it easy to happen, but we must fight that negativity, darkness, and self-criticizing and self-deprecating mindsets. It’s not easy by any stretch, and we won’t always have the energy to fight. Yet God is there to help us. To give us the strength, wisdom, courage, and confidence we need to fight. 

So again, Abram was ready to receive all these things by abandoning what he once knew. We know the rest of the story of Abram. Abram didn’t at that moment and was still committed to following God. God might be trying to get your attention and is telling you to move to a place where you can better serve and where God can use your gifts better. It’s a scary idea, but it can lead to success. Do not let the comfort and security of where you’re at now make you lose out on a better opportunity. It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t admit this, but I struggle tenfold. Stepping out in faith is the scariest thing I’ve done. It’s led to more excellent job and ministry opportunities, and it’s led to some hardships that I wouldn’t want to relieve ever again. Again, this isn’t God doing bad things. It’s God making me stronger because of the bad situations. I don’t believe God caused the wrong things to happen, but I believe God taught me a lot during those hard times that made me stronger. 

I could leave this here realistically, but Scripture has WAY more to say. Let’s talk about that from what Genesis 15:5 says:

5 Then the Lord took Abram outside and said to him, “Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can. That’s how many descendants you will have.” 

God didn’t tell him to try and count the stars, and that’s how much money you’ll have or how many followers you’ll get. (Yes, I’m aware that followers might not have been a good biblical comparison, but I’m making it real to us. So shush! :P) God told him that whatever number he could count was how many descendants he would have. Let’s define descendant because it’s a term that I don’t hear much in 2023. Most translations will use the word “offspring” instead of “descendant” in this verse, but they are both the Hebrew word zera (zeh’-rah), which means sowing, seed, or offspring. It comes from the Hebrew word Zara (zaw-rah’), which means to sow or scatter seed. The descendants of Abram are his family line. It’s the length of time his seed was sown to gather offspring. There were forty generations between Abram and Jesus and about five hundred more generations of offspring between Jesus and us. There are over eight billion people on Earth currently. This means God told Abram to count to eight billion, and that’s how many people you will have in your family. It’s an unrealistic thing for someone like you and I would do. Yet, we have seen the power of numbers to make a change in the world. We saw significant changes in social justice areas with the Black Lives Matters movement in 2021. We’re seeing continuous changes in mental health awareness with the Millenial and Gen Z generations. We’re seeing the generations of church cultures move in drastic and scary ways as reports of church attendance go down and younger generations walk away from the church and their faith. Numbers are tangible things that make things real, at least for me. It made it hard to see results in my ministry work, but seeing double-digit attendance frequently year after year was enough. It will take those numbers again to heal the church and heal the broken hearts of those who walked away from their faith to help rebuild their relationship with God. This reinforcement of God’s moral law (Love God and love others) to those who walked away from their faith will build the church again. It will grow the family of Christ and continue the many descendants from the Abrahamic lineage. 

We hear this about the power of numbers in this case in Genesis 22:15-18.

15 Then the angel of the Lord called again to Abraham from heaven. 

16 “This is what the Lord says: Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by my own name that

17 I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies. 

18 And through your descendants, all the nations of the earth will be blessed – all because you have obeyed me. 

Abraham received many blessings because he followed what God told him to do. People’s lives changed due to the faith of Abraham and his descendants. The main takeaway: when God blesses someone, he wants them to let his blessings overflow to others in all circumstances. How do you do that? 

What do you have abundance in? Where are your gifts the strongest? Do you have a lot of free time? Do you have much extra money that isn’t earmarked for something? Our blessings can show up in many different ways. Still, I believe they are generalized into three things: time, resources, and skills. 

If you have free time, are you spending it in a way that blesses the Kingdom of God? Now, I’m not saying that ALL our free time should be spent this way because that would be hypocritical of me. Still, I try to dedicate 1-3 hours a day to writing, recording, or listening to the Word of God to share the wisdom I gain with others. I was spending many extra hours at times to benefit ministry events that I was hosting or that we were doing. Did it get sacrificial at times? Yes. I was sacrificing time with family, friends, and myself. Yet, the glory of God shining in these events was always worth it. Now, I’m not active in my church yet. I’ve been wrestling with how soon I wanted to be active because of consistently working in a church for almost 8 years. Yet, the Holy Spirit has been working with me, and I am getting ready to get involved. I’ve been asked to help with some live-streaming things and will attend a vision meeting with the Pastor soon. It’s a little scary, but I’m trusting the Spirit to guide me in the necessary ways. 

If you have extra resources, how are you using them? Are you hoarding them to yourself and keeping them close out of pride or fear? Are you sharing them with those less fortunate or in need? God wants us to give because of our faith and obedience to him. We should be willing and generous with our abundance to give. Sometimes that requires sacrifice. It could be as simple as a week’s worth of Starbucks in place to help a family with food. It could be as extravagant as sacrificing the price of a vacation to help someone with rent or bills. It’s not giving out of your necessities but giving out of your obedience. I’ve mentioned it before, but I am constantly reminded of how generous I was at the pandemic’s start. I received my tax refund, paycheck, and stimulus payment all at once. I got some things I needed to help with my ministry work and hobbies, but I still had an abundance. I donated $1,000 between my church and my parents’ church and various amounts to 3 other churches I was worshiping with. I haven’t been in a generous spot like that since, but I try to give when, where, where, and however I can. I have this deal with God that I will tithe/offer whatever money is in my wallet to the church at the end of the week. This could mean $40, or it could mean $4. Whatever is extra is what goes to God. God covered what I needed for the week, and what I didn’t need went back to him. 

What about your skills? Are you a great writer? You may be a good leader. Can you teach? How are you putting the skills that God graced you with to use for the benefit of the Kingdom of God? This doesn’t have to be areas within the church. You can put these skills to use anywhere. I’ve had a passion for writing for years, so I started this blog over four years ago. I have a passion for tech, so I helped you in our sound booth for years and held Tech Help Workshops to help our congregation with today’s tech issues. I was our newsletter editor for years because I loved the creativity of sharing the news within the church. I loved teaching Sunday School to all ages. I loved preaching. There are many gifts that I’ve talked about. What are yours? If you don’t know, research Spiritual Gifts Assessments online and take the test. They can help show you your strengths. Pray over your results and see how you can put these gifts to glory for God. 

I’ll wrap this up here. We discussed the benefits of numbers in the many descendants Abram would get. We also talked about how we can take our blessings of resources, time, and skills, share them with others, and use them to benefit the glory of God. We’ll close this series by discussing the blessings vs. curses and how future generations will be blessed through Abraham using Paul’s teaching in Galatians and Romans. Until then, stay blessed.