The descendents of Noah’s third son, Shem, are introduced to us at the end of the story of the Tower of Babel. Several generations down the line, we come across a man named Abram who lived about 4,000 years ago. He and his wife, Sarai, had moved from the land of Ur, near the headwaters of the Persian Gulf, to the land of Harran with Abram’s father, Terah, and his nephew, Lot. They worshipped the gods passed down to them from the time of Babel, of course, and did not know the one true God of their ancestor Noah until one day God spoke to Abram. God told Abram,
“Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you’” (Genesis 12:1-3 NIV).
Out of all the nations in all the world, God chose this one man to start a nation that would change the world. It seemed laughable, though. Abram and Sarai were old, and they knew by that point that they were barren. Here was a God that they didn’t know who was promising to make Abram the father of a great nation.
Abram believed God, however. At the age of 75, he set out from Harran with Sarai, Lot, and all of their possessions to move to the land of Canaan. There God appeared again and promised to give Abram and his offspring that land, even though it was the home of the Canaanites. Once again, Abram believed God. He built an altar and settled there.
Ten years later, Abram and Sarai still had no child. They had traveled to Egypt to escape a famine and returned. They had fought in battles to free his nephew Lot when he was taken captive. So much had happened to them, but God’s promise still had not been fulfilled.
God spoke to Abram in a vision and said, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward” (Genesis 15:1 NIV). Abram had been afraid, but God had never promised a disappointment-free life or a pain-free life. God is not the means to an end but the beginning and the end itself, our reward. Faith is understanding that. Abram told Him that a servant in the household was set to be his heir since he had no children, and God promised him again that would not be the case. “A son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir… Look up at the sky and count the stars – if indeed you can count them. … So shall your offspring be” (Genesis 15:4-5 NIV).
God made a covenant – a formal agreement – with him. At the time, the custom was to seal contracts with the blood of animals. The two parties would walk through the bloody pieces of the animals to say that if they broke their promises, their fate should be the same as the dead animals. That night, God made a contract with Abram in that same way. He made an unconditional promise that Abram would be the father of a nation called Israel, through whom He would save the world. God chose this man, this family, to be the nation through which He would send a Savior to all the nations.
Don’t miss this: God was setting in motion a plan to win all the peoples of the earth back to Himself, and God wasn’t just thinking about the peoples of the ancient world, either. God was planning to bless all the people of the earth for all time, all the way to you and me.
Abram teaches us that faith is being persuaded that whatever God says He will do is as good as done. From that moment on, no matter what mistakes Abram might make, God would keep His promises to him. It wouldn’t be an easy road – God also told Abram that for 400 years, his descendants would be immigrants and slaves in a foreign country, but in the end, God would bring them out of slavery and use them to change the world.
God kept that promise. When Jesus arrived 2,000 years later, the Gospels make clear that He was a son of Abraham. Through Jesus, the whole world has been blessed, just as God promised to Abram, who we now know as Abraham. Abraham was 99 years old when his son was born, the son that would be the father of nations, the father of descendants more numerous than the stars. Abraham had not wavered in his faith that God would do what He had promised to do.
The nations of the world had rejected God and set up false gods in his place, but through the faith of this one man, God came after them. God loved us, and He had a plan from the very beginning to bring us back into his family. That is what He did through Abraham. That is what He did through Jesus. And that is what He will always do for us.
