Abraham: God's New Grace Initiative; Gen. 11-12

These are not just random events, different events or biographies, but the writers of Scripture themselves wrote a sort of editorialized view of history, a theologized view of what was going on at that time. This is God’s perspective on human history so that we can understand His plan and purposes and how He is working out His purposes for mankind. The unifying principle of the Old Testament is the kingdom of God. This is the overall principle: the kingdom of God and the intrusion of the kingdom of God into human history.

In Genesis chapters 10 & 11 we have the episode of the tower of Babel. We are going to understand Genesis 12:1-3, which is where God calls out Abram to make a special nation of him, by understanding the context. Why, all of a sudden, is God going to work through a specific individual instead of through the entire race? Up until Genesis chapter eleven the human race is homogenous. There are no races, no distinctions in language; there is just a homogenous ethnic unity in the human race. It is through the diversification of human languages in Genesis chapter eleven that the human race is caused to start to divide up into groups. It is interesting that the genealogy of Genesis 10 describes the descendants of the sons of Japheth who are primarily western European, northern European. The sons of Ham would include Africans, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Asians, Indians to some degree. The important thing in what is called the table of nations in Genesis chapters 10 & 11 is that it is these historical names that become the ethnic people group names that are used throughout the rest of the Scripture. When we get into prophecy about the future end times in Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel they are expressed in terms of the people group names that come out of Genesis 10 & 11.

The other thing that we see is that one of the descendants of Ham was Cush—10:8 ^NASB “Now Cush became the father of Nimrod; he became a mighty one on the earth. [9] He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, ‘Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD’.” The word translated “before” should be translated “against.” He is antagonistic to the Lord; he is going to lead another revolt against God. This is the background for understanding what happens at Babel. To understand that antagonism we have to go back to the principles laid out by God in the Noahic covenant. The Noahic covenant is a restatement of the original covenant God made with Adam, except for a few minor changes. In Genesis 9:1 they were told to fill the earth, to spread out. They are to go out and exercise dominion over the earth as God’s representatives once again. Nimrod comes along, a descendant of Ham, and he leads this revolt against the Lord. [10] “The beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.” So he is establishing a kingdom. Throughout the Scriptures we are going to see the conflict between the kingdom of Babel [Babylon, the city of man], which is always representative of human viewpoint thinking and man’s rebellion against God, and Jerusalem, the city of God. This extends all the way through to Revelation where the kingdom of the Antichrist is Babylon, the mother of all harlots.

Genesis 11:1 ^NASB “Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words.” There was a unity of language and because there is man can do more. He can unite together against God. [4] “They said, ‘Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top {will reach} into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’” Man is out to establish himself in antagonism against God—“lest we be scattered.” God had said to scatter over the earth. This was an episode of rebellion and this, of course, man continues to do throughout history and the latest manifestation is the United Nations and all of the moves and attempts toward globalization that are going on. It is man’s attempt to solve man’s problems man’s way. God will always judge that and the results of that are always going top be catastrophe. It will never work and is has never worked. Because of this God curses man and he scatters their language.

Genesis 11:6 ^NASB “The LORD said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. [7] Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech’.” The person who led this was a descendant of Ham: Nimrod. Among the Hamitic languages on the earth there is more diversification, more distinction, than in Japhetic languages. In the Semitic languages, descendants of Shem, they are very similar. So man is scattered by language, and because of language diversification men are isolated, there is genetic isolation, and then the races develop.

In the last part of chapter eleven we see God’s grace in calling out a special person. Man continues to rebel against God, to assert his right to rule, refuses to bow the knee; and God works in a very special way. It is thought that it is in the context of Genesis eleven that polytheism first begins to originate. Polytheism starts to elevate man to a position of god and he imputes to all the gods all the foibles and problems of man; they are just like men. In the midst of all the depravity God has to start His program to establish His kingdom on the earth one more time, and He does that by calling out Abram.

Genesis 12:1-3 ^NASB “Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed’.” This becomes the basic outline and summary for the Abrahamic covenant—the covenant is not established until Genesis chapter fifteen—and it is basically a summary of the rest of the Old Testament and God’s plan for bringing salvation to all of the ethnic groups. He is going to do this by working through one man and his descendants, the Jews, and through them God will provide grace to the rest of the nations.

The covenant that is given here is in the form of what is called a royal land grant. A land grant is one where the king would unconditionally bestow land upon a subject for no particular reason whatsoever, and it was always unconditional in nature. That is important because all of the provisions, the blessings, the promises of the Abrahamic covenant have not been fulfilled. If God made those promises unconditionally to Abraham and they haven’t been fulfilled then the implication is that there is yet a future plan for Israel in which God will fulfill those covenant promises made to Abraham originally.

In Genesis 12:1 we see the separation of one man. Abram is to leave all of the influences upon him, his social background—he came out of a family that was polytheistic. Abram seems to have had some tradition of the worship of the one true God and so God calls him out to leave all of these worldly influences around him, and God is going to start a new plan with Abram. He moves him out to a new land, Canaan, where he will lives as a Bedouin, he will not have a permanent home for the rest of his life. He will spend approximately the next ninety years living in a tent moving from place to place.

In Genesis 12:2 we see the second stage of the promise. After separating one man out God promises that through him He is going to make a great nation. Notice the contrast. What happened in Genesis 11 at the tower of Babel? “We are going to go out and make a great name for ourselves through unification and rebellion against God.” And what does God do in contrast to man’s attempt to build his own kingdom? God is going to call out and begin to establish His kingdom through one man—a new nation—and it is Abram’s name that will be great throughout human history and not the name of Nimrod and the rebels of the tower of Babel. At the end God says, “and you shall be a blessing.” When we look at that in the English is looks as though it is going to be a result, that because God makes his name great he will be a blessing. But that is not what it means in the Hebrew. In the Hebrew it is an imperative verb: “You will be a blessing.” This is a command. Because God will him and make his name great his responsibility is to bless others. Abram fulfills that because when the kings of the east invade the land and conquer the cities of the plains it is Abram who gathers together an army of his own servants and he goes out and defeats the kings of the east. All of the plunder he took was returned to its rightful owners, so he is a blessing to the Gentiles around him.

Genesis 1:3 is interesting in the Hebrew. In the English it appears that the same word is used both times in the phrase, “curse” and “curse.” Two different words are used in the Hebrew. The first word should be translated “the one who treats you lightly/indifferently.” It is not an active cursing it is simply ignoring or treating lightly. Of course, this has ultimate fulfillment in the person who rejects Christ, ignores Christ, who treats the death of Christ lightly. The second “curse” in the phrase is “I will curse” [and bring discipline on them]. Then He says: “And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

So what we see in 12:1-3 are the three great provisions of the Abrahamic covenant. Whenever we think of the Abrahamic covenant we should think of three things: land, seed, and blessing. The covenant is with Abram, not with the Gentiles, but it is through Abram that all the Gentiles will be blessed, and, of course, that comes through the spiritual blessing of the cross. It is through the cross that all are brought to salvation.

What we get from the Abrahamic covenant is a synopsis of the rest of the Old Testament. This lays the groundwork for the founding of the nation, the formation of the nation, the preparation of the nation, and then the ultimate fortune of the nation. God will make Abram’s descendants a blessing to all of the other nations.

Abram is called out (Abraham is the covenant name that God gives him; father of the multitude), he marries Sarai but she doesn’t give birth right away and they get impatient. They substitute man’s solution for man’s problems and Hagar has a son, Ishmael, who becomes the father of the Edomites. The seed goes through the promised son, Isaac, who marries Rebekah. They have twins, Esau and Jacob. Isaac is a believer; Ishamel is not a believer, so it is through the line of regeneration that the true nation develops.