Key Verses in Understanding Genesis
By Liaf
Every once in awhile, you hear about or may even participate in a Bible study about the book of Genesis. As a matter of fact, I would say that the book of Genesis is a "very much studied" book. But I've been to Bible studies and classes that teach about the key verses I have outlined in this message and I am amazed at the way the great promises to the patriarchs are severely watered down and not understood at all. Or at least I should say that the great things promised to the patriarchs are reinterpreted to fit the visible circumstances today instead of taking God at His Word. This message summarizes the great promises of Genesis and as such is the key in understanding Genesis. As with the "Difference between Judah and Israel" message, this message does not have anything new that we do not already teach on this site, but rather it summarizes the same themes we teach here when we approach it from the subject of the book of Genesis. My scientific friends out there need not understand that there are various ways to group objects, ideas or whatever. Likewise, we made a summary of Judah vs Israel from a national categorization. Now we will do the summary from a book of the Bible category. Lets open our King James Bibles to the book of Genesis and note the critical verses:
12:1-3: 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.
13:14-17: And the LORD said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.
15:4-5: And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.
17:4-8: As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.
21:12: And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called.
22:16-18: And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.
So from these verses we can safely and emphatically conclude that Abraham was
Regarding point #8, people mistakenly apply that spiritually as meaning people from many nations would become descendents of Abraham. The problem with that interpretation is that MANY people would become ONE. The promise is actually ONE becoming MANY! Therefore, that is not fulfilled in Christians and Jews per se although spiritual descendents are included in the large population size of his seed. Abraham understood this to be physical seed and nations as well. Another erroneous interpretation is that Abraham became the father of many nations thru his other children such as Ishmael becoming the father of the "Arabs" or Esau becoming the Edomites. But this is NOT the true fulfillment. This is an additional benefit God gave to Abraham. The fulfillment was meant to go thru the child of promise (Isaac) as Paul said in Romans 9:7-8 that says, "Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed." In other words, not all of Abraham's physical seed are the promise recipients, but only the physical seed to whom God chose for the promises.
This is shown later when God reiterated the same promises to Isaac, and then to Jacob. To Jacob God said:
28:3-4,13-14: And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people; And give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger, which God gave unto Abraham. I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
And again in chapter 35:
35:10-12: And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel. And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins; And the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land.
Thus we see that many people, a nation AND many nations would come from Jacob's sons (we do not know which ones at this point). This shows separate, individual nations would come from his sons (i.e. tribes of Israel) later on! What was the point? Why? As Paul pointed out, there would be a SEED (singular) who was to be Christ in whom ALL nations were to be blessed thru Jacob's physical descendents (the nations). These nations, in turn, were to be blessed AND a blessing to all people. (In retrospect we now understand that the source of that blessing is Christ, foreshadowed by Isaac, but the physical nations were to be the means to carry that blessing out.)
Which sons of Jacob were these "birthright" blessings passed to? Genesis 48 answers that.
16-19: The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him: and he held up his father's hand, to remove it from Ephraim's head unto Manasseh's head. And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father: for this is the firstborn; put thy right hand upon his head. And his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it: he [Manasseh] also shall become a people, and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed [Ephraim] shall become a multitude of nations.
All the promises of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob went to Ephraim and Manasseh save the promise to rule and law-making functions that went to JUDAH (the tribe of the Jews) as shown in 49:
49:8-10: Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up? The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.
Later on in the Bible, the HOUSE of DAVID was promised similar "birthright-type" blessings such as many descendents, but as a TRIBE, the Jews (Judah) were never promised this. In a sense, this goes without saying since the rulers OVER a certain people would by right be inheritors of what the people themselves possessed. However, this only applied to the rulers--- not the same tribal people of the rulers necessarily. But the actual body of physical people from whom a nation and many nations would come for the rulers to rule over originated mainly from the tribe of Joseph, namely Ephraim and Manasseh.
Of course, we teach here that Ephraim became Britain and her commonwealth--- the greatest empire that ever ruled this Earth. And to a lesser degree came the great nation of the United States as the fulfillment of Manasseh's destiny. Together, we "pushed the peoples to the ends of the Earth" (the ten-thousands of Ephraim and thousands of Manasseh). The numbers in that prophecy by the way do not necessarily indicate actual numbers since both Ephraim and Manasseh reached multiple MILLIONS in population. Rather, "thousands" indicates many people as in a great nation and "ten-thousands" shows many (plural) nations--- over a hundred nations I believe were (and many still are) in the British Commonwealth.
This message was meant to point out the key verses in Genesis. These are very important promises. If you understand these promises from the slant we teach here, then the rest of Genesis falls into place and you will be able to rattle off some amazing facts and insights about Genesis to the envy of any theologian. Needless to say, you will also be able to answer some puzzlers and inconsistencies that the mainline religious establishment either cannot answer, refuses to answer, or avoids altogether.