The King and The Blessing: The Abrahamic Covenant
- beingmade1014
- Dec 16, 2025
- 6 min read
Our next covenant is the Abrahamic. God’s promises to that man and his descendants continue to reverberate through history as the nation of Israel still faces attacks from her enemies. Even the recent tragic attack in Australia and the ongoing bombardment by militia groups are a continuation of the battle for both the land promised to Abraham, but also the existence of a people. So, what was promised to the patriarch of many nations?
In Gen. 12:1-3 we find the initial promises:
- He will become a great nation
- He will be blessed
- He will make his name great so that you will be a blessing
- He will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse Abraham
- All the families of the earth will be blessed through him
Those promises from God are incredible. However, after more than twenty years of nomadic life (during which Abraham had indeed been abundantly blessed by wealth and influence), God renewed the covenant:
- Multiply him greatly
- A father of a multitude of nations
- He changed his name from Abram to Abraham
- Kings will come from him
- He will establish his covenant between Abraham and his offspring
- He will give his descendants the land of Canaan
- He will be their God
- He instituted circumcision as a sign of the covenant
- He changed Sarai’s name to Sarah
- He promised a son – not Ishmael, who was born as a result of Abraham’s flesh and self-effort, but Isaac, the son of promise and of God’s provision
- He will bless Ishmael as a great nation but will establish his covenant with Isaac (Gen. 17:20-21)
Covenants are almost always accompanied by a sign, a seal of the promise. In this case, it was circumcision. For Noah, it was the rainbow. For Adam, it seems to be the animal slain. God had promised Abraham a son, but Abraham elected not to wait on God’s timing and instead tried to take God’s divine plan into his own hands. At eighty-five years old, Abraham took Sarah’s servant Hagar as a concubine (at Sarah’s insistence) and had Ishmael. The number of wars and ongoing strife because of this one choice cannot be underestimated. The Jews and the Arabs have been at war intermittently in one form or another for thousands of years.
We are not actually told that Isaac and Ishmael themselves had a direct conflict, but their descendants have rarely stopped fighting. They both want the land that was promised to Abraham all those years ago. Most Christians and Jews believe that Isaac was the son of promise (as stated in the Bible). However, many Arabs believe that Ishmael should inherit the land since he was the firstborn.
I’m not sure if Abraham fully understood the consequences of his own sin (unbelief), but after Sarah’s death, he went on to have additional children (not explicitly forbidden by God). These six sons became their own peoples and nations, notably the Midianites that Israel encounters at various times in Scripture. Still, going back to the covenant promises found in Genesis, Abraham had to wait. He did not inherit the land himself, and he did not see his line produce kings. He did see the faithfulness of God at many turns. The special fellowship and worship of God was unique among other peoples. He was blessed, and those who blessed him were blessed in turn. However, the two promises I want to focus on today are that kings will descend from him and that through him all nations of the earth will be blessed.
When we first meet Abraham in Genesis 12, there is nothing (seemingly) particularly special about him. We don’t read that he was a great prince or a special citizen of Ur. However, he believed God’s promises and was willing to leave everything he knew behind in order to follow God’s instructions/plans. However, God makes the promise of kings from his line. We know that the kings of Israel trace their lineage back to Abraham. However, many royal lines in the Middle East can also trace their heritage back to him. This moderately wealthy man had followed God’s orders, and he was the start of several lines of kings. Still, the king we are thinking about today is Jesus. He came as Savior 2,000 years ago, but he was also a king. In Israel, the kings and priests were deliberately kept separate.
However, in Zechariah 6:11-14, a prophecy was given that one day a priest would be king. This went against every law that God had ever given. King Uzziah had been judged with leprosy because he attempted to burn incense in the Temple (blending the role of king with priest).
However, in Zechariah, we encounter Joshua, the son of the high priest, as a foreshadowing of the king who would dwell in the temple of the LORD and bring peace. This coming king will rule in perfect righteousness and wisdom. Can you imagine? Even the leaders we might admire are not perfect. They fail and disappoint us. However, Jesus is the perfect, sovereign king. He has both the power to rule (the ability) and the wisdom (knowledge/skill). In the end, we read, “His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems…On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev. 19:12-16). Paul promised that every knee will bow to him – there will be no other kings remaining once Christ returns to earth to reign. Even now, if we fail to remember that heaven rules overall, our hearts will be in turmoil. Again, we could have a separate post about the fact that what God allows, he does not necessarily cause. That is not the purpose of this post, but you can see a few links below if you’d like to do some additional reading on the topic of why God allows suffering.
Next, the promise is that through you, all nations will be blessed. I believe this is a separate promise from the one given that said, those who bless you I will bless and those who curse you I will curse (that’s a whole blog post by itself). How might one man bring blessing to everyone? There have definitely been people through history whose influence has been broad and arguably good (and even more that were incredibly bad). However, a promise that through you, all nations will be blessed? If we go back to history, this doesn’t seem to have been the case. I’m not sure that any one person has been as responsible for more death and destruction when you think about the way his descendants have fought. However, going back to the original covenant – the promised seed. Abraham was the start of a funnel, a narrowing of the pool of possible people through whom the promised Messiah could come. It would proceed through a constant narrowing of Abraham>Isaac (not Ishmael)>Jacob (not Esau)>Judah (not the other 11 sons)>Perez (not any of Judah’s other children, which is a strange thought considering the circumstances of his conception). Jumping ahead several years, Boaz>Obed (born from a union with a Moabite woman who had been spiritually grafted into Abraham)>Jesse>David (not his older brothers)>Nathan (not Solomon or the line of ruling kings), all the way down to a young woman named Mary (not Joseph’s line, which had a curse on it for the purposes of kingship – Jeremiah 22:30).
That is the line into which Jesus chose to be born. It was not the traditional line of kings or blessings. His lineage is filled with those who normally would not have been chosen to receive or bestow the blessing. However, it didn’t matter what the world thought about the somewhat eclectic genealogy. Jesus’ lineage that had immorality, one time pagans, and seemingly unneeded spare heirs tracing throughout its history, not as exceptions but as stories of redemption and God’s larger plan. Jesus was born to be a blessing to all. However, God will not force anyone to accept the blessing (redemption) of his Son. While God is not willing that any should perish, as we have been discussing, this must be a personal choice for belief, surrender, trust, and faith in the Messiah.
Abraham (and several of Jesus’ earthly ancestors) made sinful choices or were born from sinful circumstances. However, that didn’t prevent God from using them to write the story of redemption. He can buy back what we have wasted and restore the areas of our life that have been damaged either by our own choices or our circumstances. He does not waste our pain – he builds our testimony. However, he will only do that on his own terms. We must acknowledge that nothing we have done or can do will make us deserve his blessing. He gives abundant life to all who will draw near and admit their need. The blessing of redemption, full and free, is ready for you this Christmas season. I can’t think of a better gift to receive or a better gift to share than the news of the blessing available to us in Christ.
Resource links regarding why God allows suffering:
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