My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Abram entered Canaan along with his family and obeyed the promise of God. God appeared to him in a vision and said to him “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless.”

Genesis 17: 2 And I will make My covenant between Me and you and will multiply you exceedingly.”

Then Abram fell on his face and worshipped God.

The covenant with him was behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations.

Abraham was the name that God put for him.

The covenant that God made with Abraham is our Lord Jesus Christ. Through the blood of Jesus Christ God made the covenant and when he said that you will be a father of many nations and I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you Abraham and Sarah were without children and they were very old.

Also, God had told Hagar only that Ishmael would be born. When God spoke in this manner, Abram might have thought about Ishmael. Today many of us are also thinking like that. This is because we are under the bondage of the flesh, doing according to our fleshly thoughts as our eyes are not opened our mind is doing the deeds of Ishmael and saying this is what God spoke to me and we are thinking wrongly that we are redeeming souls. Without redeeming our soul, we are praying for the salvation of other souls, preaching God’s word, preaching to give fruits unto repentance. What is the use of preaching to others without us being saved, and without us repenting? That is what our Lord Jesus Christ is asking For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?

My dear brothers and sisters, behind this matter that God spoke to Abram there is an important blessing.

Next let us see regarding that –

Genesis 17: 7,8 - And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you.

Also, I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”

When we read this word of God, as a sign that Christ is manifested in our midst we see that it is written that Abram lived in the land of Canaan as a stranger, Canaan was a land that milk and honey flowed, that signifies Our Lord Jesus Christ, what is written as your descendants, that is one descendant which is Christ, Christ alone is our everlasting possession and show this as a pattern God called Abraham’s wife Sarah as a free woman and free woman is Jerusalem.

Therefore, in Genesis 17: 15, 16 - Then God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.

And I will bless her and give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her.”

Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, “Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” And Abraham said to God, “Oh, that Ishmael might live before You!”

But the promise that God gave Abraham before saying your descendant, he thought it was Ishmael and so when God told him about Sarah he laughed and prayed that may Ishmael live before you.

My dear brothers and sisters, many among us are also like this. We do not realize which is the spiritual generation, we live according to the flesh and we wrongly think that we are living as a spiritual generation.

God is saying that again to Abraham to strengthen us. You have a generation after this. This shows what our spiritual growth is.

Genesis 17: 19 Then God said: “No, Sarah your wife shall surely bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.

Genesis 17: 20 – 27 And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation.

Let us pray. May the Lord bless you all.

-        To be continued