Officially, Adam being the first link in the chain of Jesus’ genealogy (Gen. 3: 15), the next major link is Abraham. Whereas it might be said that God first began to actively lay the groundwork for the advent of the Christ by issuance of the aforementioned promise to His created but powerful arch-enemy the devil, a. k. a., Lucifer, certainly who is jesus christ, the next major event was that of the assurance given to Abraham on his 75th birthday. At that ripe old age, God told him that every man, woman and child on earth would be blessed on his account (after his becoming a great nation! See Gen. 12: 3; 18: 18). Breaking the news to Abraham twenty-four years later, his still barren wife no more than 10 years younger, God simply, matter-of-factly, self-assuredly, calmly reiterated His earlier promise-then one quarter the age of the century old patriarch and father-to-be, of many nations (at 99 he was actually no longer childless, however, Ishmael, who at 13, was born when Abraham was 86, was not the “child of promise”). Abraham laughed, so God told him to name his son Isaac, meaning ‘laughter. ‘ Because He is Lord of the impossible, this “Laughter” was to born according to promise, one year later (Gen. 16: 19).
Afterwards, within a short time, God appeared again, this time physically to Abraham in the plains of Mamre, making the same promise in the hearing of his wife Sarah (she having apparently not been told of Abraham’s previous encounter with the Lord), in which case, she also laughs. It seems everyone but the Lord of Glory thought that His promise was a ridiculously, preposterous assertion. Nonetheless, Jehovah (the Self-Existing One, who is eternal), “stuck to His guns”, holding fast to His original plan. All the nations of the earth would be blessed from the loins of Abraham, through his wife Sarah (not by his son, Ishmael, born to her servant). The lord would give him a Seed, to facilitate this blessing (Gen. 22: 18). “And in your ‘Seed’ shall all the nations and families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 26: 4; 28: 14).
Acts 3: 25 and Gal. 3: 16 affirm that this promise, its focus having flared from the singular, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to the multitudes of Israel (via the twelve tribes; see Gen. 35: 9-12), finds its final resting place upon the shoulders of the Man from Galilee. It is His blood that provides redemption for a world that would otherwise have perished in the wrath of the Living God, without even the slightest bit of hope. What a blessing! Sadly, many will still perish, given that they reject God’s Provision for their salvation. Sadder still, many of the perishing will be Christians, who refuse service to God and to the Christ, on His terms (most Christians today refuse to get to know the Son, up close and personal, based upon the written word of God-though, like fools, multitudes can be found publicly, around the globe, praying and singing to the affect that they “… wish to know Him, more… “, as if they honestly think and expect Him to fall over in sheer delight, out of Heaven, out of the blue, just to establish a “chummy” relationship with them, on their demand-as when one scrubs a genie out of his bottle! They apparently want the same “red carpet” treatment afforded to Abraham, failing to realize that there was David, Ezra, Nehemiah, etc., and others who never heard from God directly, nonetheless, they racked up impressive lives as faith-filled servants, registering and weighing in on Heaven’s Richter scales as those who mastered the art of spiritual, God-centered living, based squarely upon second-hand information. ). They will have come so close, in their relationship with the Lord, and yet in the end will land so ‘far way’ from an eternity in His presence-spending it instead in the Lake of Fire, with the devil, his angels and the lost who were never savedHave you ever heard this phrase? “You know, nobody’s perfect! ” I have. There is no problem with hearing that, but there is a danger in believing that. The Kingdom of God operates in perfection. The danger in believing that nobody’s perfect is that when Jesus says “Therefore be thou perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” we think He means flawless, or without blemish in design. That’s not what He meant. The word ‘perfect’ means correct, right, and exact. Now this should take away the sting of failure because surely we can be right, we can be correct, and we can be exact when it comes to operating in the kingdom system. The father is always right, He is always correct, and He is always exact.