The Everlasting Hatred (6 page)

This promise of God's protection was confirmed by Isaac when he passed on the divine blessing to his son Jacob, “Cursed be those who curse you, and blessed be those who bless you.” (Gen. 27:29)

Almost four hundred years later, God made even the apostate prophet Balaam pronounce this solemn warning to King Balak, who had hired Balaam to curse the nation of Israel. “How shall I curse, whom God has not cursed? And how can I denounce, whom the LORD has not denounced? …
Blessed is everyone
who blesses you, and
cursed is everyone
who curses you.” (Num. 23:8 and 24:9, emphasis added)

This account is extremely important. These verses prove that the promise of God's protection included all the descendents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

To illustrate how seriously God takes this promise, note that the Hebrew prophet Zechariah, sixteen hundred years after Abraham, warns that the Messiah's first action when He comes to set up God's kingdom on earth will be:

For thus says the Lord of hosts, “After glory He has sent me against the nations which plunder you,
for he who touches you, touches the apple of his eye
. “For behold, I will wave My hand over them, so that they will be plunder for their slaves. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent Me. “Sing for joy and be glad, O daughter of Zion; for behold I am coming and I will dwell in your midst,” declares the Lord. “And many nations will join themselves to the Lord in that day and will become My people. Then I will dwell in your midst, and you
will know that the Lord of hosts has sent Me to you. And the Lord will possess Judah as His portion in the holy land, and will again choose Jerusalem.”
⁶
(emphasis added)

We know this event as the Second Coming of Jesus the Messiah. It is certain that this refers to the time of the second coming because the Messiah sets up His throne in Jerusalem and dwells among His people. According to this prophecy, the first thing He will do is judge all of the Gentiles who have mistreated His people, Israel.

Much more will be said about this important subject later.

The final line of this prophesy in Genesis 12:1–3 is the most important: “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Abraham and his descendents will be the vessels through which all the peoples of the earth will be blessed. The literal translation is, “And in you
I will
bless all the families of the earth.”

This promise reveals the main purpose for which Abraham and his descendents were chosen. They were to be the vessels through which God would reach out to the world with His plan of salvation.

In embryonic form, this promise predicts the provision of salvation for the whole world through one of Abraham's seed. It reveals that the ultimate purpose of God through Abraham and his seed is redemptive.

As the Bible unfolds this promise of blessing, four reasons for why God chose and created Israel are discernable. These are the purposes for which He chose them:

First, they are to receive, write, and preserve the Word of God. As the Apostle Paul testified, “They were entrusted with the oracles of God.”
⁷

Second, the way God deals with Israel in response to their faith or lack of faith is a living historical lesson about God's character. The way God dealt with Israel as a nation teaches principles of how He deals with the individual who believes in Him.
⁸

Third, the Jews are to be the physical race through which the Messiah the Savior of the world would be born. Isaiah predicted the mission of this Messiah, “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make You a light to the Gentiles so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
⁹

Fourth, Israel is called to spread the message of the true God and His salvation to the world.
¹⁰

God expanded upon the original covenant with another essential covenant. It concerns the land on which He would establish the nation given to Abraham and his descendents. There are several promises regarding this land that together carefully spell out: (1) to whom it is given (2) its borders (3) the conditions of ownership, and (4) the duration of its ownership. God foreknew the great troubles that Israel would encounter concerning the rights to their land throughout history—especially during the “Last Days.” So He stated the terms of their “Title Deed” to the land in a comprehensive covenant, backed by His own oath.

As mentioned above, the one condition Abraham had to fulfill was to leave his country and relatives and go to the land that God would show him. Apart from that requirement, which Abraham met, all of the promises that followed were unconditional.

This is what God promised Abraham shortly after He gave him the first covenant:

And the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants
I will
give this land.” God also promised: “For all the land which you see,
I will give it to you and to your descendants forever
. And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered. Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth; for I will give it to you.”
¹¹
(emphasis added)

It is very important to note the features of this covenant God made with Abraham. They have a direct bearing on the controversy raging in the Middle East today. Note first that it is given not only to Abraham but also to his descendents. Second, it is an unconditional covenant. God swore,
“I will
” do this—without attaching any conditions upon the recipients. Third, this covenant is
“forever
,” thus the behavior of Abraham or his descen-dents cannot prevent its ultimate everlasting fulfillment.

The border of the land to be possessed ultimately by Abraham's descendants is spelled out very specifically in the next expansion of the land covenant. Something else is added that is unique in God's dealing with mankind.

Despite his advanced age, Abraham believed the Lord concerning a promised son who would come from Abraham's own body, and offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven. But Abraham still wanted more assurance regarding possessing of the promised land. So he asked, “O Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it [i.e., the land]?”
¹²

God's response is one of the greatest demonstrations of how patient and gracious He is with mankind. God chose to accommodate Abraham's continuing need for strong reassurance. He did this by performing a covenant-making ritual that was the
most solemn and binding known to man in the culture of that time. Here is the account of how God reconfirmed to Abraham the title deed to the land and its boundaries. It is so important that I am quoting the ceremony in its entirety:

So the LORD said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the LORD said to him, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates—the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”
¹³

This passage gives important details concerning the irrevocable nature of the covenant. This strange ritual gets at the heart of the meaning of the Hebrew word for covenant. It comes from the verb
barath
, which means “to cut.” In Hebrew, the expression for
making a covenant is “to cut a covenant.” The Hebrew scholar Franz Delitzsch writes concerning this ritual:

The proceeding corresponded rather to the custom, prevalent in many ancient nations, of slaughtering animals when concluding a covenant, and after dividing them into pieces, of laying the pieces opposite to one another, that the persons making the covenant might pass between them… . God condescended to follow the custom of the Chaldeans, that He might in the most solemn manner confirm His oath to Abram the Chaldeans.
¹⁴

This reveals much about the character of God. Certainly it shows that He is gracious and considerate of our human limitations. It demonstrates that He takes into account our degree of maturity and knowledge of Him in His treatment of us.

As the custom dictated, Abram laid the sacrifice halves opposite each other, making a path in the middle for those making the covenant to walk. The parties would then hold hands and walk together between the sacrifices, taking an oath on the terms of the covenant. They would then swear an oath that the one that breaks the covenant is to be hewn in pieces as the sacrifices had been. We are talking serious covenant making here.

But in this case, a most unusual thing happened. Abraham was put into a deep sleep and shown a vision of God alone walking between the sacrifices and swearing an oath by Himself that He would give the land with its specific borders to Abraham and his descendents as an everlasting possession.