“Abraham’s Children: Blessed, to Be a Blessing”
God is a blessing God, good, gracious, and giving. But there’s something fallen within us that makes us selfish, more eager to get than give. Parents try to help their children become aware of this tendency by sayings such as, “Gimme gimme never gets.” Jesus wants to work within us to become more aware of God’s blessing, and willing to pass on His blessing to others.
Charles Allen has observed, “A hog will eat acorns under a tree day after day, never looking up to see where they came from. Some people are like that – but others are led through their blessings to realize the love of their heavenly Father.”
Our church is currently working on improving the Natural Church Development quality factor called “Loving Relationships”. Selfishness thwarts love, whereas blessing and giving nurture relationships. In a church growth resource dealing with this factor, consultant Tom Clegg notes that 80% of churches are plateaued or in decline numerically. Why is that? Clegg suggests we ask the waiters and waitresses at our local restaurant. They find the “Sunday crowd” tends to be difficult, complaining, critical, gossiping, and stingy. For example, one waitress for a tip was given a plastic weiner-dog on the side of which was written the words “Jesus loves you”. She angrily asked Clegg, “How can I feed my baby with that?” The manner of the “Sunday crowd” is not attracting outsiders to church, or portraying God in a loving way.
The story of Abraham shows that God is not a grinch or a Mr.Meanie; instead, God delights in blessing us and wants to bless others through us.
The Bible reveals God to be a Blesser as soon as Creation is out of the starting gate. In Genesis 1(22,28), as soon as He creates the sea creatures and birds and humans, He blesses them, so they’ll be fruitful and increase in number. In Genesis 3, however, the disobedience of Adam & Eve introduces sin to the picture; what was previously “very good” now is tarnished. Instead of blessing there are curses of the serpent, soil, and pain for women in childbirth. Things go from bad to worse: by Genesis 6(5,11) the inhabited earth is rife with great wickedness, corruption, and violence. (The behaviour’s almost as bad as the House of Commons!) Only one man is righteous and blameless – Noah. His responsiveness to God’s direction to save living creatures from the flood results in renewed blessing, as we read in 9:1: “Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.”
Noah’s offspring multiplied; and so we come to Abraham, whose father Terah originally lived in Ur of the Chaldeans. This civilization and culture reached high levels before Abraham’s time; one of the kings of a site excavated by the Euphrates River is famous for his law code. Terah had relocated the clan some hundreds of miles up the delta. By age 75 Abraham had acquired possessions and servants, in addition to the responsibility of looking after his nephew Lot, son of his deceased brother. God’s call came to Abraham, 12:1: “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” How unsettling! Did Abraham want to protest, “Um, Lord, about this land...Could you give me any details? Maybe an aerial photo? What about some map co-ordinates? Are there grocery stores handy? You know, my workers might grumble about having to relocate - this isn’t in their contract. And would they happen to have Medicare in this new spot? I’m having a little trouble convincing my insurance agent about the risk. Boy, Sarah’s sure going to miss her bridge club. Oh, and a forwarding address would really help; I suppose that’ll be just ‘general delivery’ for now?” We can think of lots of reasons why God’s call would present a major challenge to this established farmer.
Question marks all over the place. Hebrews 11(8) says, “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”
Faith involves risk. In believing and trusting, there’s an element of sacrifice, vulnerability, yielding control. It was the same sort of challenge Jesus gave to His fisherman followers in Lk 14(33): “Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” Everything we have – that’s asking a lot! That takes real commitment.
While faith involves risk, it is also rewarded. Hebrews 11:6: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Faith asks a lot, but it also offers a lot: God is a blesser, a rewarder of those who seek Him and trust Him.
Abraham ventured forth into the vast unknown, hanging onto God’s unconditional promises in vv 2-3. Five “I wills” that the Almighty purposes to accomplish for the one who obeys him. God will bless, first of all, Abraham for obeying: God vows to make him into a “great nation”, and to make his name great - ie honour and renown, he’d be world-famous.
Second, God will bless (v3) those who bless Abraham (or curse those who curse him). In a way, the Lord is making Abraham His representative, or proxy; he’s a Divine Deputy - someone “appointed to act for another”. However people treat Abraham, that will come rebounding back to them, because God’s taking note, He’ll take it personally and amplify the blessing others convey to Abraham. Amazingly, God puts Himself at the service of those He leads (like Jesus removing His outer clothes and girding Himself with a towel to wash the disciples’ feet, Jn 13).
Third, God’s plan of blessing extends far beyond just those who immediately come into contact with him. God will make Abraham BE a blessing - down through the centuries and across the continents. “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Wow! Think of the impact! All peoples on earth – God wants to bless everyone, through this father-in-faith.
Abraham trustingly obeyed God’s command, picked up stakes and started on a long journey into the unknown. But don’t suppose God blessed him because he was perfect. In vv 11-13 he actually turns out to be quite a cad. Seeking refuge from a famine in Egypt, Abraham concocts a plan to protect himself while compromising his marriage and exposing his wife to danger and immorality. She is his half-sister - same father, different mother - so he persuades her to say she’s his sister rather than his wife, because he fears the Egyptian men will be so knocked out by her beauty that they’d kill him to get her. No knight in shining armour, this!
Tim Callaway, Alberta Correspondent for ChristianWeek, recalls this with a touch of sarcasm: “Eager to save his own neck and ensure he’d be around to become the great nation God had promised, dishonest Abraham directs his wife, Sarah, to lie about her identity, thereby promptly landing her in the harem of an Egyptian king. Nice guy! Women all over the world are eager to find husbands of such sturdy moral fibre.”
Fear of man is a dangerous trap, making us do things we normally wouldn’t. Proverbs 29(25) says, “Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe.” Jesus warns us in Matthew 10(28), “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
Abraham wasn’t perfect. In fact, he repeated this cowardly ploy years later with another king, Abimelech (20:2). Yet God undertook on his faltering servant’s behalf. V16 The Egyptians showered Abraham with acquisitions; v17 the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and household, getting their attention and blowing the whistle that something was seriously out of whack. The Geneva Bible comments, “The Lord took the defence of this poor stranger against a mighty king.” Psalm 105(14) says, “for their sakes He rebuked kings”. God set a hedge so the situation didn’t deteriorate beyond repair; He protected both Abraham’s and Sarah’s reputations. So Abraham didn’t have to be perfect in order to still be blessed with God’s protection. That gives us hope when we blow it. God’s mercy reaches further than our indiscretion.
Are Blessings More than Material?
To maintain God is a blessing God is not the same thing as “Prosperity Theology” - ‘live right and God’s going to give you a Winnebago’. In Abraham’s case, the blessing did take material form in the immediate sense. There was physical increase - numbers would have to multiply to become the “great nation” mentioned in v2. Elsewhere God likens the quantity of Abraham’s offspring to dust of the earth or the stars in the sky (13:16; 15:5). By Moses’ time, the descendants of Jacob alone numbered in the millions. As an ancient Jewish litany recalled in Deut.26(5), “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous.” There was also material prosperity; Abraham’s servant later in ch.24(35) making a pitch for a prospective daughter-in-law states, “The LORD has blessed my master abundantly, and he has become wealthy. He has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, menservants and maidservants, and camels and donkeys.”
But blessing has more to do with passing earthly goods along than with holding onto them. Hebrews 11(13) recalls that people of faith admitted they were “aliens and strangers” on earth; we can cling to nothing material when we die. Paul advises Christians to use the things of this world “as if not engrossed in them” (1Cor 7:31).
God’s blessing did not exempt Abraham from hardship. He had to cope with famine like everyone else (v11). Later on, we see him faced at times with conflict, grief, infertility, and being called on to give up the child he held most precious (Isaac). So, there’s more to blessing than material prosperity.
The New Testament emphasizes blessing more in a spiritual sense – not necessarily something you can see or hold in your hand, but valuable in view of eternity and knowing God. It may be the blessing of repentance, as in Acts 3(25f): “[God] said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.’ When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.” Galatians 3 mentions several aspects of blessing: the new birth, in v7 – “those who believe are children of Abraham.” V8, being put right with God: “The 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."” V14 links blessing to receiving the Holy Spirit: “He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.” And Ephesians 1:3 speaks of blessings completely outside this earthly realm, safely ours in heaven: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”
FE Marsh once listed some of God’s blessings for His children – there are Scripture references for each of these: an acceptance that can never be questioned (Eph 1:6); an inheritance that can never be lost (1Pet 1:3ff); a deliverance that can never be excelled (1Cor 1:10); a grace that can never be limited (2Cor 12:9); a hope that can never be disappointed (Heb 6:18f); a bounty that can never be withdrawn (Col 3:21ff); a joy that need never be diminished (Jn 15.11); a nearness to God that can never be reversed (Eph 2:13); a peace that can never be disturbed (Jn 14:27); a righteousness that can never be tarnished (2Cor 5:21); a salvation that can never be cancelled (Heb 5:9). How great and incorruptible, beyond theft or loss, are the good blessings our Heavenly Father confers on us in His Son!
When we consider the blessings of God, it reminds one how a child once described an elevator: “I got into this little room and the upstairs came down.” The Lord brought the glorious things of heaven down into our earthly lives, by His gracious choice, and through our receiving Him by faith.
There’s a famous oil field in west Texas known as the Yates pool. During the depression this field was a sheep ranch, owned by a man named Yates. Mr Yates wasn’t able to make enough money on his ranching operation to pay the principal and interest on the mortgage, so he was in danger of losing his ranch. With little money for clothes or food, his family, like many others, had to live on a government subsidy. Day after day, as he grazed his sheep over those rolling hills, he was no doubt greatly troubled about how he’d ever be able to pay his bills.
Then one day a seismographic crew from an oil company came into the area and told Mr Yates there might be oil on his land. They asked permission to drill a wildcat well, and he signed a lease. At 1115 feet they struck a huge oil reserve, giving 80,000 barrels a day. In fact, 30 years after the discovery, a government test of one of the wells showed that it still could flow 125,000 barrels of oil a day. And Mr Yates owned it all. The day he purchased the land, he received the oil and mineral rights. Yet, he was living on relief. A multimillionaire living in poverty: What was the problem? He didn’t know the oil was there. He owned it, but he didn’t possess it. Like him, there are many Christians today who don’t realize how rich they are in Christ. The blessings are there, provided for us – we just need to tap into them!
And not hog them. God’s plan is to bless “all nations THROUGH” those He blesses. We’re His Deputies. Last month, Montreal-based humanitarian aid organization Health Partners International hosted an even “AIDS in Africa: Engaging Canadians” which drew more than 100 medical and ministry participants, as well as government officials. Dr Elizabeth Hynd is a doctor working with AIDS orphans at the New Hope Centre in Swaziland. She says, “In some villages, we have seen an entire generation of adults wiped out by the disease. We have gone into communities where hundreds of children are completely abandoned and fending for themselves. It was like [the book] The Lord of the Flies. In some areas we support one or two people of grandparent age who are caring alone for dozens of children because the intermediate generation has been wiped out.” Dr Hynd does more than treat medical needs: she has herself adopted 20 children orphaned by AIDS.
While we may be too far away to do that ourselves, Chuck Stephens of the Pan-East Coast AIDS Network in Africa says we can still pray and give generously to programs that address AIDS. He said, “It begins with prayer and then teaches a different level of compassion to Canadian Christians who are still far too inwardly focussed. [If we] dress down a little and skip lunch once in a while, we can afford to help more. Real compassion [means we] feel someone else’s pain.”
Blessing others takes compassion – feeling-with them, identifying with them. We began by talking about how stingy the Sunday crowd seems to waiters and waitresses. To admit the truth, I didn’t use to tip very well. Now we regularly try to leave 10-15%. What changed? Well, we’ve had two daughters serve as waitresses in various restaurants, so now we see it more from their angle.
As God blesses us through Christ, our servant Lord, the Holy Spirit will continue to work in our hearts to care more for others and pass on the blessings we now possess through grace. Let’s pray.