Starting in GENESIS 12, we will find that Abraham’s relationship with God set the course for the whole Bible in two different ways.
#1) God made promises to Abraham. These promises, known as ‘the Abrahamic Covenant’, is the plan of salvation which becomes more and more clear as the Bible progresses, and
#2) Abraham’s faith in God is seen as the key to our personal relationship with the Lord even today.
Both the Old and New Testaments teach that only those who have a genuine belief in God, and faith in what He says, can have a personal relationship with Him.
And the Bible starts by talking about this man named Abraham, and because of His belief and faith, God promised Him several things. Now, don’t think this man was better than anyone else, because he was flawed and he sinned, just like every other human. But he did have an absolute faith in God.
In GENESIS 12-25, we read about this man. And in chapter 12, we find out about the promises God gave him.
In GENESIS 12:2, God promised to make Abraham the Father of many nations.
In that same verse, God said He would protect and bless Abraham during his lifetime. God also promised Abraham that his name would be great and that he would be a blessing. And on down to today, Jews, Christians, and Muslims all honor the name of Abraham.
In GENESIS 12:3, God promises that He would bless those who blessed Abraham, and curse those who cursed him. Then God gives another promises: Abraham would be a blessing to every person on earth. It was his descendants that gave the entire world the Bible and Jesus the Savior.
Finally, in GENESIS 12:7, God gives a promise that to Abraham’s offspring, He would give the Promised Land, or what we call Israel today. That land will forever be inhabited by the Jews at history’s end.
These covenants, or promises, are irrevocable and cannot be changed. Some of these promises have already been fulfilled and some are partially fulfilled, waiting to be completely fulfilled at history’s end, when Jesus comes back.
As much as we talk about Abraham, it is vital to note that he was not a perfect man, nor did he have any superior abilities. Of the many Bible stories you hear of him, none try to hide his faults and weaknesses. He was a liar, but he was also a man who truly believed in God and made himself available to serve God – in God’s way, not his way.
We can see this in Abraham’s life, and it applies to each of us today, too. That is God does not expect us to be ‘good’ before He accepts us. He accepts people who really trust Him, and then He helps them to become ‘better.’
We do not impress space engineers at NASA by showing them a paper airplane we made and we don’ impress God by talking about how much we love Him. We impress God by ‘showing’ our love to Him by being totally focused on Him and by doing what He has put upon our hearts to do; just like when Abraham left his home and ventured away at God’s request, not knowing where God would lead him.
And because of his great faith in God, God counted Abraham’s faith as righteousness, or the right kind of faith. A perfect example of Abraham’s faith is when he was 100-years old, and his wife was 90-years old, God said they would have a child – and Abraham believed it. How many of us, at that age, would believe such a thing? Not many! We would question it, deny it, and do everything else we could to think it could not happen.
To give you a point of reference as to when Abraham was born, here are some interesting tidbits. Four hundred years before Abraham was born, the pyramids were being built in Egypt; tools and ornaments were being made from bronze in Asia; and pottery was invented in what would later become the state of Georgia in America.
We have been talking about the son God promised to Abraham and Sarah. Let’s talk about him now.
1. HIS NAME WAS ISAAC
As we previously mentioned, God told Abraham that he and Sarah was going to have a baby boy. Sarah didn’t understand how they could do that at their advanced ages, so she tried to help God make that come true. The only way she could come up with so she could understand was to have Abraham sleep with her maid Hagar.
So she told Abraham to do just that, and so Hagar had a son which she named Ishmael. And then, Sarah started getting jealous of Hagar and the feud began. How many of you know that when you try to help God do His job, you mess things up for yourself?
Later, Sarah did have a baby and she named Him Isaac. This is the child that God gave the inheritance of the Promised Land to. GENESIS 21-27 tell the story of Isaac, his wife Rebekah and their sons, Esau and Jacob.
As you read the Bible, you will notice that most teachings refer to the men in the Bible. Please don’t think that women are not important to God. For instance, in GENESIS 24, it shows the concern that Abraham had in finding the right wife for his son, Isaac.
Later in the Old Testament, we see where a prostitute named Rahab had such faith in God that she became part of the ancestry of Jesus Christ. And then, in the New Testament, we find that women were the first ones that God chose to find out about the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb. But the Bible is based upon a Patriarchal society, or one that deals primarily with the male bloodline, and not a Matriarchal society, or one that deals with the female bloodline. The important thing to remember about this is: Everyone has a very special place in God’s kingdom, and everyone is treasured greatly by our God.
We must remember that God wanted Isaac to be the child of Abraham and Sarah, and it was to Isaac that God promised the inheritance of the Promised Land. But Abraham and Sarah tried to help God do His job, and they ended up with another son first; his name was Ishmael. It was customary in those days to give the father’s blessings and inheritance to the oldest boy, but because God promised it to Isaac, it went to the younger son in this case.
And here in the story of Isaac’s sons, Esau and Jacob, we find the same thing. Esau was the oldest and would normally receive his father’s inheritance, but because a bowl of stew meant more to him than the inheritance the youngest son, Jacob, was able to take the inheritance from him. It was through Jacob that God’s promises were passed.
God spoke to Jacob several times in his lifetime. One of these occasions was when God wrestled with him all night long, and then changed his name from Jacob to Israel. The name Jacob meant ‘deceiver’ and the name Israel means ‘God perseveres.’ Those people who descended from him are called Israelites, because through them, God will persevere throughout eternity.
For those of you who are really interested in understanding the things of God and who have a desire to study the Bible for yourselves, you will find out more about Jacob’s character by reading the following passages.
In GENESIS Chapters 25-33, we find out how how Jacob stole Esau’s birthright; how Jacob deceived his father Jacob so he could get his blessings; how Jacob fled to his uncle Laban’s house when he found out his brother Esau was going to kill him for stealing the birthright; we will learn how Jacob married two sisters and how his wives competed; and how he eventually planned to return to Canaan.
In those passages we will also find out how Jacob, as much of a sinner as he was, still believed in God and even prayed for protection as he went back home. And finally, we read where Jacob finally meets his brother again after all those years, and found out that his brother missed him and loved him and didn’t still want to kill him after all.
Let me give you another point of reference showing a timeline of events. It was during this time that the first trumpets were played in Denmark; where the American Indians first discovered how to mine copper in wide-open pits in Wisconsin; that Chinese astronomers kept detailed records of eclipses; and where Europeans first started using horses to carry them.
Jacob had many sons, and the Bible talks about one of them in detail.
2. HIS NAME WAS JOSEPH
We read about Joseph in GENESIS 36-50. We find out that he was the youngest son to Jacob and his older brothers were very jealous of him. In fact, his brothers conspired to kill him. But instead of killing him, they ended up selling him off to some traders from Egypt.
Now, Joseph was somewhere in his teens when they took him away to a foreign land. He couldn’t speak the language, he had no idea where he was going, and he was probably scared out of his mind, just as we would be at that age in those circumstances. He was eventually sold as a slave to a wealthy Egyptian by the name of Potipher, where he rose very quickly to be in charge of all the household slaves in Potipher’s house. It was during this time that Potipher’s wife took a liking to young Joseph and when Joseph rejected her advances, she got angry and said he tried to attack her.
Potipher had no choice but to put Joseph in prison for many years. But even in prison, God favored Joseph by letting him be chosen to be in charge of all the other prisoners. And then, one day Joseph interpreted a dream for the leader of
Egypt. That interpretation allowed Egypt to easily survive a famine and have much food left over. And this led to his release and his becoming the vizier of all of Egypt. He was now the second most powerful man in the nation.
We find out that Jacob led his family from Canaan to Egypt during this famine, and how the entire family was reunited back with Joseph. But when another leader of Egypt came into power, he put all the Israelites into slavery and they stayed slaves for over 400 years.
In GENESIS 50, we see how the story of Joseph becomes one of the most encouraging stories in the Bible, and it reads like an exciting novel. And in spite of his dire circumstances, Joseph held on to his faith in God throughout his lifetime, and in return, God blessed him with great favor and success.
This study finished our trip through the book of GENESIS. This book is setting up the entire direction of the Bible. Let’s wrap this lesson up giving a quick overview of this book.
3. IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS, WE LEARN
How God created the earth and everything upon the earth. It tells us about the creation of man, and how man purposely turned away from God all because he wanted to ‘do his own thing’ even though God had already said not to do it.
That is known as the fall of man, and the sin of eating the fruit from that one tree has kept man separated from God. In brief, it paints a picture for all who would follow them. A picture that shows how man is self-centered and how we always seem to learn after the fact rather than before the fact. And it shows how there are consequences to what we do, and sometimes those consequences end up being punishment.
GENESIS goes on to show how each generation of man got more and more involved in sin, to where God destroyed the entire world, except for one family; the family of Noah. Noah was told by God to build an ark which would carry him and his family, and two of every animal in safety as the rest of the world was destroyed by a flood.
And even after the flood, we see where the ensuing generations were still steeped in sin; even trying to build a stairway to heaven. But they did not build it to get closer to God; they built it out of pride and to impress others. God saw through their plans and He made them speak other languages and since nobody could understand others, they separated according to their languages they spoke.
Besides giving us all the stories, what this book also does is start the foundation of the coming of Jesus. I said we have been separated from God because of our sin. What many don’t realize is that God has given us one bridge back to Him. That bridge is our belief in, and obedience to, Jesus as our Christ.
It shows that when we truly believe in God enough to let Him use us, we start receiving His many blessings. Abraham followed God without hesitation, and because of that, God blessed him by making him the father of all future Jews and Christians.
Abraham’s son Isaac had many problems in his life, most by making wrong decisions. But Isaac truly believed in God, and God blessed him with prosperity with everything he did, including the renewal of a loving relationship with his brother Esau, who had previously threatened to kill him.
And Isaac’s son Joseph suffered many problems because his father loved him more than he loved his other sons. But because Joseph had great faith in God, and lived a Godly life, he was also blessed.
It the book of GENESIS we learn that if we will walk by faith in God; if we will let Him lead us; and if we will try to live according to His principles, we will also be blessed in our lives.
There is a story of a man named Jacob Koshy. He grew up in Singapore and he had one driving ambition in life: To gain as much money as he possibly could. That led him to a life of selling drugs, gambling, and running a prostitution ring. He once remarked that if it was against God, it was for him. And Mr. Koshy ended up being one of the largest drug lords in that part of the world.
All that came crashing down in 1980 when he was arrested and thrown into prison. One of his biggest frustrations was that he was a heavy-duty chain smoker; but tobacco was not allowed in the prison. He had some friends smuggle in tobacco and he rolled it up in the only paper he had; the pages of the Gideon’s Bible.
While he was smoking one of those cigarettes, he fell asleep and the entire Bible burned. The only thing that was left was a piece of paper that had one question on it: ‘Saul, why do you persecute me?’
That question bothered him so much, He got another Bible so he could find out what that question pertained to. It was when he began reading the Bible that Mr. Koshy became called by God and gave His life to Jesus. He came to understand that if God could use someone like Saul, God could use somebody like himself, too.
He began sharing his experience and love for Jesus with other prisoners, converting many of them to Christians. When he got released from prison, he began to minister to others in a church. He eventually married a Christian lady and is currently a missionary in the Far East where he brings others to the saving grace found in Jesus.
It would seem that Mr. Koshy found the secret that was known by many others, including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: To receive God’s blessings, you must be willing to trust Him enough to do things His way, not our way.
CLOSING PRAYER
