The call of Abraham had been the most significant to all the world where from his descendants the Lord has been showing mercy to all sinners after the fall of Adam. Indeed the plan of God is beyond of the expectaion and imagination of humankind. Having fallen into sin, God opens a way of salvation to all people for His sake.
The promises that the Lord had given to Abraham have produced the great result to humankind and to the nation of Israel particularly. In order to reveal and fulfill the promise of the coming saviour mentioned in Gen 3:15, the Lord had chosen Abraham and his descendants as vihicle to accomplish his promises. With regard to these promises the Lord also must show the significant of His people as He had made covenant to His servant Abraham that his generation would be the great nation. In order to accomplish this promise the Lord must bestow him a son, for when the Lord made the covenant with him he had not had any child at all, and provide him a land. (Genesis 15:1-5)
Based on Genesis 17:7 this covenant is the everlasting covenant between God and Abraham and his descendants. This is to say that the covenant that God made to Abraham is eternal till all the promises would be fulfiled. Therefore the phisical seeds of Abraham though they disobeyed and not worship Him, would continue under this covenant. That the Lord still intersted to the children of Abraham as a nation and He will remember them. In the fullness of time he will bring them back to His own.Thus the writer of this paper would discuss the threefold promises of God in Abrahamic covenant as followings: (1) the promise of the heir (seed), (2) the promise of the land and (3) the promise of the people to be the blessing.
THE PROMISE OF THE HEIR
The step of faith that Abraham did to obey and follow what the Lord had said to him was the most significant in the history of the life of Abraham. Abraham did not know about the Lord while he was staying in his father’s house. The call of Abraham was the first experience to hear the voice of the Lord. However, he did believe to what the Lord commanded to him. He believed that the Lord who had called him is the true God and the promised keeping God. Therefore by faith he departed from his country to the land which the Lord would show him (Gen 12:1,4).
In Abraham’s first response, he was childless (Gen 15:3), but through the faith that he received from the Lord, it was the foundation for him to believe what the Lord told him. The Lord told Abraham, "Get thee out of thy country...unto a land that I will show thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make thy name great: and thau shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" (Gen 12:1-3).
After this the Lord also appear to him for the second time to conform to him the land that he stepped on that this land would be given to him particularly unto his seed (Gen 12:7). Truly the Lord kept His word and now Abraham after his return from Egypt and his separation with Lot, this promise was renewed by the Lord to Abraham . The Lord told him saying, "Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee" (Gen 13:14-18).
Based on these promises that the Lord would give the land to him though in that point of time he did not have any child but God in His good time would fulfil what he had promised. Though in human’s understanding it was hard to believe that Abraham would have a child for in the time of his calling he was seventy five years old (Gen 12:4).
Having received the promises from the Lord thrice (Gen 12:1-3, Gen 12:7; Gen 13:14-17), the Lord again came to Abram in a vision to conform to him that the Lord is His ‘shield’ and his ‘exceeding great reward’ (15:1). From these four times God spoke to Abraham, thrice he did not comment at all but he just followed what the Lord told him. In this fourth appearance, Abraham declared his desire as a response to what the Lord had promised. Therefore Abraham said to the Lord “Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and lo, one born in my house in mine heir” (Gen 15:3). The Lord replied to him that though the Lord had not given him any son yet, the servant who was born in his house was not his heir but the true heir will come from his own seed (Gen 15:4). In this confusing situation of Abraham, the Lord further assured him to this coming fulfilment heir of him saying: “Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be” (15:5). Abaraham just believed to this promise even though he did not know the axact time of fulfilment of this promise.
Ishmael
After ten years passed by, the promise of the Lord had not yet fulfilled in the life of Abraham. The promised son who would inherit the land was not known yet. This perhaps was the greatest worried to Sarai his wife that she desired to have a child. Sarai had heard the promises for ten years and yet she did not see any sign of its fulfilment. Therefore Abraham and Sarai became more concerned. Sarai was not patient to wait for the Lord’s blessing. As the custom in those days, Abraham was asked by his wife to take her handmaid, Hagar, as a concubine, that she might bear a child on behalf of Sarai and Abraham listened to his wife (Gen 16:1-3). One year later, “Hagar bare Abram a son: and Abram called his son’s name, which Hagar bare, Ishmael. And Abram was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram” (Gen 16:15-16).
As years went by, the promises of the Lord never changed. The Lord still remembered His to Abraham, and He would fulfil them in His good time. Therefore after the birth of Ishmael to his family, the Lord still did not show to him any sign of his seed. And the Lord said that Ishmael was not the promised son who would inherit the land but from his own seed through his wife Sarai (Gen 17:15-21). And the Lord also said to Abraham with regard to his son Ishmael saying “as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation” (Gen 17:20).
In Genesis 21:6-21, Hagar and Ishmael were sent away for Ishmael was not the promised son. As far as Sarah was concerned, the continuing presence of Hagar and Ishmael in her household threatened her position and authority. Not wanting to become embroiled in the dispute, which was legally Sarah’s to settle, Abraham suggested that she do to Hagar “as it pleaseth thee.” So Sarah made life difficult for Hagar, perhaps by returning her to slave status (which the Code of Hammurab permitted the wife to do) and making unrealistic demands upon her. In any event, Hagar was forced to flee, and she got as far as the wilderness on the way to Shur (16:7), near the Egyptian border (20:1; 25:13).
However because Ishmael was the seed of Abraham, the Lord said that Ishmael the son of the bondwoman also would be a nation (Gen 21:13,18). As Davis commented that “many Arabs claim Ishmael as their father and, therefore, Palestine as their land. The prophetic description of Ishmael as “a wild ass of a man” is rather intriguing.”
Isaac
From the birth of Ishmael, the Lord “was silent for thirteen more years.This was the time of Abraham’s faith testing with regard to the promised heir which the Lord had promised. But the Lord remembered His promise, and he said to Abraham when his wife was ninety years old that she would bear a child. This was very hard to believe that such age can bear a child. The confirmation was given to Abraham by the Lord through the announcement that his wife’s name should be changed to ‘Sarah’ which means ‘a mother of nations.’ Abraham response to this was that Ishmael was the promised seed, but the Lord said “Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed and thou shalt call his name Isaac” (Gen 17:19). Now Abraham understood that Ishmael was not the promised son that God had promised to him but Isaac. This is to say that “Abraham’s heir would be his own child, not an adopted servant.”
Starting with the promised birth of Isaac (Gen 17:21), the Lord told Abraham that the Lord would make the covenant to Isaac and his seed as everlasting covenant (Gen 17:19). This is to say that what the promise that God had said to Abraham would continue to Isaac and his seed after him, and they would be fulfilled by God in the fullness of time. The promise that the descendants of Abraham as a great nation would come to pass (Gen 15:5).
The great evidence for this promise to Abraham seen by the birth of Isaac through his wife Sarah, when Abraham was a hundred years old (Gen 21:1-5). Abraham was convinced to all the promises that God made with him would be fulfilled. As Davis said “God’s elective purposes will be fulfilled through the descendants of Isaac." However above all that the fulfilment of the coming saviour in Gen 3:15 would come from the line of Isaac. This is crucial to know that through the promised son of Abraham, Christians can see how God’s plan worked to bring salvation to sinners. Nothing that man can do for their salvation except looking to Jesus.
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