The Promises to Abraham

  The covenants of promises. The promises God made to Abraham are called covenants or agreements of promises which cannot be broken. The command in Genesis 12:1 (“Go to the land I show you”).   This instruction represented three stages in the separation of Abraham for the new beginning which God planned through him.   First, he left his country – Ur of the Chaldees.   Then when his father died, he left his family who had also been travelling to Haran.   Later he left his father’s house when he separated from Lot.

  The promises were given at different times of Abraham’s life. The importance of the promises increased as Abraham grew older.   (So then faith comes by hearing, the hearing by the word of God, Romans 10:17).   We should not expect to be fully grown in a spiritual sense, but to grow in spiritual understanding just as Abraham did.

  The first promise (Gen12:1-3) had phrases like – I will make you into a nation.   This needed Abraham to accept, what seemed impossible, from the very beginning, because Sarah his wife was barren. So the call to leave Ur was the greatest test of personal faith linked to a promise which could only be made to a man of Abraham’s faith and spirit.   In Deuteronomy 4:6-8 Moses told the nation of Israel of their special relationship with God because of their descent from Abraham “And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today? I will bless you”.   The Lord had blessed Abraham with wealth and he had many servants, camels, sheep and cattle. The same promise was also made to David “I will make your name great like the names of the greatest men of the earth” (2 Samuel 7:9).   All the details that God taught Abraham, he believed.

  The last and greatest promise was on account of Abraham’s obedience to God in being prepared to offer Isaac his only son as a sacrifice. This brought Abraham closer to God than at any other time in his life.

  All promises meet in Jesus the son of David and the son of Abraham (Matthew 1:1).   He was a child of Abraham by birth but also through his perfect obedience and faith.   All this Abraham saw with complete clarity of vision and from Mount Moriah went down to his house justified as the friend of God.

Bro. Joseph Katasi (Lukosi, Uganda)