Names of Jesus | Advent DevotionalSýnishorn

Monday, December 2
Genesis 17:1-8 | Seed of Abraham
Author: David Bibee

The Bible tells the story of God with the world, but it is a story with multiple parts. Genesis 1-11 shows us the history of the world’s origins, beginning with Adam and Eve in the Garden and ending with the formation of the seventy distinct nations of mankind that resulted from God’s judgment of languages poured out after Babel. Up to this point, the Bible generally focuses on all people. But in Genesis 12, the Bible zooms in on one man—Abram. God calls Abram to leave his father’s house and to journey to a land that God would give to him and his descendants, promising that although his wife was barren, God would give Abram a son (Gen. 15).

It might appear that the focus on Abram and his Hebrew descendants, which is the focus of most of the rest of the Old Testament, means that God has left the rest of the world and the nations of his plans and purpose. But we need to remember that God’s purpose for choosing him was for the sake of all the world’s salvation: “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:2-3).

In our passage today, we see an expansion of God’s promises. At 99 years of age, still without the promised child, God renames Abram—“great father,” Abraham. God vowed to Abraham that he would “multiply” his family “greatly,” making him “the father of a multitude of nations” (Gen. 17:3-4). Not only would the “seed of Abraham” bring blessing to the nations, but God says that the nations of the world would become children to Abraham when God’s purposes are complete. Through Abraham, God would bring all the nations that were once divided at Babel back into one family because of Abraham’s “seed.”

The coming of Christ into the world signaled the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham. Paul tells us that God’s promise to Abraham was a promise about the gospel of Jesus (Gal. 3:8). The promise, Paul says, wasn’t made to Abraham and to his seeds “referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your [seed],’ who is Christ” (Gal. 3:16). Because of what Jesus has done, Paul says, the “the blessing of Abraham” and “the promised Spirit” has “come upon the Gentiles” (Gal. 3:14). Because of what Jesus, the seed of Abraham, has done, now Gentiles are called “sons of God, through faith” (Gal. 3:26). Now Galatians, Irish, Kenyan, Armenian, English, Italian, Navajo, and all the other countless ethnicities represented in the Church have become “Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” because they have the same faith that Abraham did (Gal. 3:25-29).

History has been filled with bloodthirsty division among the nations of the world, and needless war and tyranny casually afflict the world’s peoples today. But Christ has come to be Lord, drawing the nations to himself. Only Christ offers the way of peace. For “[Jesus] himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility … reconcil[ing] us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility” (Eph. 2:12-14, 16).

This Advent, remember that you are part of a world-transforming movement. Jesus, the seed of Abraham, is joining the world’s tribes that were scattered into one “great nation” of Abraham’s children—the Church. In a world ravaged by division, Christ has come to be our peace.