Now the Lord
had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and
from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will
bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him
that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed
[Gen. 12:1–3].
The first of the threefold promise is the
land. God says, “I am going
to show you a land, and I am going to give it to you.” The second part of
the promise is the nation—“I
will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name
great.” He also promises him, “And I will bless them that bless thee, and
curse him that curseth thee.” The third part of the promise is that He would
make him a blessing:
“In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” This is God’s
threefold promise.
Now the question arises: Has God made good on His
promises to Abraham? God has certainly brought from him a great nation, and
it has probably the longest tenure as a nation of any people on this earth.
No one can quite match them.
How about the second promise—has Abraham been a blessing
to all mankind? Yes, through the Lord Jesus Christ he has been a blessing to
the whole world. Also the entire Word of God has come to us through Abraham.
God has fulfilled all His promises to Abraham—except the
first one. God had said, “Abraham, I’m going to give you that land.” And
look at what is happening over there in our day. They are holding on to the
land by their toenails, but they don’t have
it. Somebody says, “God didn’t make that good.” Well, let’s not put it that
way, my friend. Let’s give God a chance. Two-thirds of the promise has been
made good right to the very letter. But God said that He would not let them
be in the land if they were disobedient and if they were away from Him. And
they are away
from Him today. As a result they are having trouble over there. Don’t say
that God is not
making good His promise. The fact of the matter is that God is doing exactly
what He said He would do. The day will come when God will put the people of
Israel back in the land, and when He does it, they won’t have only a
toehold. They will have the land all the way east to the Euphrates River and
all the way north as far as the Hittite nation was and all the way south to
the river of Egypt, which is a little river in the Arabian desert. They have
never really occupied the land God gave to them. At the zenith of their
power, they occupied 30,000 square miles, but that is not all that God gave
them. Actually, He gave them 300,000 square miles. They have a long way to
go, but they will have to get it on God’s terms and in God’s appointed time.
The United Nations can’t do anything about it, and neither can the United
States or Russia settle their problem.
My friend, it is very comfortable today where I sit. I
have come to the position that God is running things. It is nice to sit here
without being frightened by the headlines in the newspaper and without being
disturbed by what is going on in the world. God is in control, and He is
going to work things out His way.
Now in the light of God’s three promises to Abraham, what
did he do?
McGee, J. Vernon: Thru the Bible
Commentary. electronic ed. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1997,
c1981, S. 1:ix-57