God’s three promises in Genesis 12
In Genesis 12, God begins to give shape and definition to His redemptive plan. He begins by calling out Abraham and giving him very specific promises. He says to Abraham,
Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 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. (Genesis 12:1–3)
God makes three very distinct promises to Abraham here. Each of these is important to recognize because the promises are key components of God’s redemptive plan and all three—the promise of land, the promise of descendants, and the promise to the nations—must be fulfilled by His chosen King.
THE PROMISE OF LAND
First, God promises Abraham a specific land. In Genesis 12:1, He tells Abraham to go “to the land” that He “will show” him. The whole context of the promise is that Abraham is sent to a new land intended for him to possess. He will not simply dwell in this new place; he will ultimately inherit it with his descendants. “‘To your offspring I will give this land’” (Genesis 12:7).1 Abraham and his physical descendants must inherit the land for the promise to be fulfilled.
The land is presented to Abraham as a permanent inheritance. So, for this promise to be fulfilled, Abraham’s descendants must dwell permanently in the land. The inheritance is also promised specifically to Abraham (see Genesis 15:8), whom we know never owned the land, thus creating tension. If God’s promises are true, then how is it that Abraham never saw the fulfillment of them? If Abraham’s death is the end of God’s promises to him, the promise of the land is forever unfulfilled because Abraham never inherited the land nor did he live to see his descendants inherit it.
The book of Hebrews describes this dilemma when it tells the story of the great men and women of faith. One of the indications of their great faith was that they remained faithful even when they did not receive in their lifetimes what God had promised them.
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. (Hebrews 11:13)
And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. (vv. 39–40)
To understand the redemptive story, we have to understand what the author of Hebrews expressed in Hebrews 11. The redemptive story is deeply connected. God’s promises to the patriarchs remain unfulfilled because it has always been in God’s heart to join His people together across time and then to bring the fulfillment of all that He has promised, as we see in the last verses of the chapter.
If Abraham did not receive his promise in his lifetime, and God’s Word is true, then there must come a time in the future when Abraham is raised from the dead so that the promise can be fulfilled in exact detail according to how it was spoken. Abraham cannot inherit his promises as a dead man, so the dilemma of his unfulfilled promises must mean that a time will come in the future when God will raise Abraham (and the rest of the patriarchs) from the dead and fulfill His promises. This means that the hope of the resurrection, which is so central in the New Testament, was central in God’s redemptive plan from the very beginning. This is not to say that Abraham would have completely understood or expected this, but his willingness to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis 22 shows that he did understand God would raise the dead if necessary to fulfill His promises. Only as the redemptive story develops throughout the Scripture does it become apparent that God’s promises to the patriarchs were not fulfilled in their lifetimes. In later chapters, we will see that the New Testament anticipates a future fulfillment of Abraham’s promises.