AN UNBREAKABLE PROMISE 

When God made His promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for Him to swear by, He swore by Himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.’ And so, after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised. People swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, He confirmed it with an oath (Heb. 6: 13-17).

We need to back up a bit to get the gist of what this writer was saying. His readers were suffering persecution at the hands of both Jews and Romans because of their allegiance to Jesus. To the Jews, Jesus was a blasphemer who had been executed by the Romans for treason because the charge of blasphemy was not on their list of crimes. To the Romans, Jesus’s claim to be the Son of God and Lord put Him at odds with Caesar. His followers, therefore, were to be exterminated.

To avoid persecution, they were tempted to go back to Judaism since the Roman government still tolerated the Jewish religion. The writer’s persuasive argument was that Jesus was greater than everything they held dear in Judaism because He was the fulfilment of the types and shadows of their religion. To go back would be to forfeit all the blessings and promises Jesus fulfilled.

God’s promises are backed by His unchangeable nature and are therefore unbreakable. Although Abraham was an old man and his wife both barren and beyond childbearing, God promised that he would be the father of a great nation and have many descendants. Abraham looked beyond the circumstances to the promise of God which had to be fulfilled or God was a liar.

Abraham received what God promised after many years of waiting because he believed God. What was his secret? Faith and patience! If God said it, He would do it, no matter how long it took to keep His promise. It was not about trustworthiness but about timing. God is always painting on a bigger canvas and writing a bigger story than we can see or understand. What He was doing in Abraham’s life had to fit in with every other circumstance around him.

God’s promise to Abraham was so crucial to His salvation plan that He confirmed it with an oath – not because His word was untrustworthy but because He wanted Abraham to know how important this promise was. In the natural it seemed an impossibility for him and Sarah to conceive a child. Abraham’s faith had to rise above human possibilities to take hold of the divine promise and to fix his faith on God’s word and not on his reason.

Intervening years were not an issue to God. The deadness of Abraham and Sarah’s reproductive organs were not a problem. God’s power to intervene overshadowed these natural obstacles. Abraham’s confidence in the trustworthiness of God’s promise was the crux of the matter. Was he prepared to take God at His word and see it through to fulfilment no matter what?

Abraham had to walk a long road of learning to trust God before he was willing to stake everything on God’s promise. He left his homeland on God’s instruction, a God he did not know, and went to a land he did not know because God had told him to go. He settled among strangers, sometimes hostile to him, as a nomad, because God said so. He had no idea what God was doing with him but he trusted Him anyway.

God gave him a son when his heart was ready to receive the child and to raise him to believe in God. He even went to the point of sacrificing his son because God told him to do it. So confident had Abraham become in the promises of God that he was in perfect harmony with Him no matter what He told him to do.

It was this kind of faith that God needed and that He honoured in a man who was tried and tested. The way was open for Him to keep His word because His promise, backed by His oath was Abraham’s anchor.

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead – since he was about a hundred years old – and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what He had promised. That is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Rom. 4: 18-22).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.