Kingdom Dynamics

The Leap of Faith

Abreham G.

Now YHWH said to Abram,

“Go forth from your land,

and from your relatives,

and from the house of your father 

to the land which I will show you. 

And I will make you for a great nation, 

and I will bless you,

and I will make your name great,

and you shall be a blessing. 

And I will bless those that bless you, 

and those that curse you I will curse, 

and all the families of the earth will be blessed in you”

The story of Abraham and his wife Sarah is filled with suspenseful episodes that engage readers of biblical narratives. To begin with, God called Abraham to bless him, to make him a great nation and a dispenser of divine blessing (Genesis 12:1-3). To be a dispenser of God’s blessing to the families of the earth! That is a big surprise. Until this moment we have not seen God bestowing this privilege on any other patriarch. In fact dispensing blessing is God’s sole prerogative. He blessed Adam and Eve, the first family (Genesis 1:28). He also blessed Noah and his sons with the same blessing as Adam and Eve (Genesis 9:1). After Genesis 12 God was set out to bless all peoples through this man named Abram, later Abraham. For convenience I will use Abraham in this article.

What is the nature of this blessing? In both Gen 1:29 and 9:1 God’s blessing is associated with his creational purpose. He made humans in his own image and likeness (Genesis 1:28). That makes humans unique as they bear God’s image. Hence the multiplying, filling the earth, and the exercise of dominion, the heart of God’s blessing in both occasions, are closely tied to this image idea. God’s desire was to see his image bearers fill the earth and rule it as he would have ruled. Sin temporarily disrupted this plan. God began to restore creation to himself through a process called recreation/redemption. And that process involved a seed through whom redemption is to take effect. That is why the pages of Genesis are dominated with the idea of seed, choice/election, blessing, and sibling rivalry. As the story of Genesis progresses, in the twelfth chapter we stumble on Abraham, a patriarch who is going to play a major role in this grand divine scheme of seed, election, and blessing. The nature of the blessing, therefore, is creational/redemptive in essence. Thus, Abraham (and his seed, Israel who utterly failed its calling) was called to be the channel through whom God would bring all nations to his redemptive purpose. In fact Jesus Christ the seed of Abraham fulfilled that purpose. It is through him that all nations of the earth come to know and worship the God of Abraham.

Abraham with such a noble and divine mission had a problem of his won. The author of Genesis does not want readers to miss that point. He makes it clear that Abraham has no seed because of his wife Sarai.

Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran; and Haran became the father of Lot. Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai; . . .Sarai was barren; she had no child. Genesis 11:27-30).

Before we know of God’s plan for Abraham, the author puts the spotlight on his troubles. The man who is called to bless others lacked the blessing, the seed with whom God would establish his covenant. God kept assuring Abraham that he would give him offspring and land (Genesis 12:2; 7, 13:15-16). But what Abraham was experiencing is far from the truth. He was advancing in age and Sarah’s barrenness didn’t seem to budge. Nothing makes sense until we come to Genesis 15.

And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: “This man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir.” And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”  And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:3-6)

At the end of Gen 15 Abraham did not get a child. What he had was rather a promise of an heir and a covenant by which God bound himself to give the land of the Amorites to his seed. But Abraham stopped questioning God and worrying about his problem. Because he found rest in God as one who has gotten all that God promised him. For that God applauded him. He considered his faith in YHWH as righteousness.

Abraham’s story is our story in the sense that we too are on a journey of faith. The author of Hebrew 11 tells us that Abraham began his journey by faith. He left the known for the unknown by faith. He made the decision to leave his comfort zone to lunge to the unknown by counting the one that called him worthy of his trust. Considering Abraham’s pagan background, faith in this new God is the only thing that made sense. His faith was not rewarded immediately. He had to wait a while to have Isaac, and as for inheriting a land it did not materialize for many generations. We too are like Abraham. We are on a journey of faith. We await the appearance of the seed of Abraham, the Christ who would make everything NEW. He is our HOPE. He is our reward for the WAY (in the early days of Christianity people who followed Christ were called people of the way- Acts 9:2, 19:9, 24:14;22) of life we have adopted. We await for the fulfillment of the promise of a new heaven and a new earth. We look forward to the day when we see him as he is and be lost in his glory. When is this happening? I do not know. But I have counted him who declared it worthy of my trust.

In another sense, we are partakers in Abraham’s blessing through his seed Jesus the Messiah. “I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 8:11). I believe this is an invitation for gentiles to have a part in the story of the patriarch. Paul in Romans 4:23-25 made it clear that our faith in the God (of Abraham) who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead shall be credited for righteousness. In Galatians 3:14 he pointed out that the blessing of Abraham that we gentiles are partaking is the promise of the Spirit. To my understanding then, the blessing is the totality of life in Christ. It is kingdom life. When I say kingdom, I am referring to the kind of life humans are allowed to enjoy as God rules. God’s kingdom is characterized by truth, justice, righteousness, love, peace, joy, prosperity, and more. However, we need to be careful not to be ahead of ourselves in thinking that we have got it all in the now. I am not denying the fact that God is ruling here in the now. We are yet to see it in its fullness at the appearing of the KING, Jesus the CHRIST. All in all, Abraham’s SEED, Jesus the Messiah, at his appearing will punish evil, in all its forms and expressions, and establish God’s physical/ political kingdom here on earth. And we will reign with him. That is why Christianity makes sense. It is a faith grounded in the revelation of God in history, Christ (his death and resurrection) being the pinnacle of the historical revelation, looking forward to a future culmination of that revelation in the glorious appearing of Jesus Christ. This is the divine plan we have become part of through the Abrahamic faith. Let us not therefore cheapen faith to a “name it claim it bonanza“, or to a magic carpet we hang on to for a flight to the world of prosperity. Scripture reading that sees money and material wealth in every passage is unwarranted, unedifying, and selfish. Good life (having our needs met) is God’s gift for every human being. I do not need any other convincing reason for this. The fact that God made us live on a blissful resource rich earth is enough. It is slackness and greed that caused the disparity we see in our world. Poor children of Abraham are not under curse nor are rich Christians uniquely favored. To read Abraham’s blessing in terms of material possession, and Abraham’s faith as the way to it is nothing but capitalism in its ugly form. Those who treat the gospel as a way out of poverty will likely abandon it once they reach there.
 

Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?
James 2:5