The third door of our Advent Calendar reveals another jump in time to
ABRAHAM
and yet another great promise.
God calls Abraham (Abram at this point in history) to leave his own country with the astonishing, far reaching and multifaceted promise of Genesis 12.1-3
That he will be given a land
That God will make him a great nation and bless him
That his name would be great and that all peoples of the earth would be blessed through him.
Is this the removal of the curse under which the world had lain since the fall?
If we were opening this calendar door for the first time we might well have thought like that but we know and the subsequent chapters tell us, that great man of faith that Abraham was (Hebrews 11), he too was flawed.
But we also know and can take great encouragement from this promise/covenant God made with Abraham, assures us that God’s plan to send the ‘Serpent Crusher’ is on course and will not fail. There is also a further aspect to this Covenant than there was with Noah.
Noah as we saw yesterday received the promise that never again would God destroy as he did at the flood and the sign of that Covenant – the bow in the sky – is still with us but, Abraham is promised that through him all the people of the earth would be blessed.
I trust that you have paused to ponder what this blessing would be, and how it would be delivered, and have understood that it has comes to all people in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. A truth reinforced by Paul’s statement in his letter to the Galatians that
Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” Galatians 3.8
So this Covenant with Abraham is central to where we are today and helps us to see the key significance of the Old Testament as we rejoice in and figuratively prepare for the coming of Christ, during this Advent season.
What a thrill to see Christ in all the Scriptures (Luke 24.27)