“God also said to him: I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation, indeed an assembly of nations, will come from you, and kings will descend from you. I will give to you the land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac. And I will give the land to your future descendants.”
Genesis 35:11-12
“And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.”
Galatians 3:29
This is a repeat of the first words God said to Adam and Eve, to be fruitful and multiply.
Gen 1:28
"God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it."
God never changed His mind nor did His character and heart grow in stages as ours do. He didn't go from mean and senile to meek and gentle in the New Testament through His Son. The same God of the First Testament is still the same one in the New, and both testaments together help us understand and know God. What He wanted from His people in the First testament is still what He wants from us today.
In fact, a theologian named John Goldingay put it quite well saying: "we need the New Testament to give us hope for resurrection life, but we need the First (Old) Testament to remind us of the importance of this life, and to give us hope for this life."
In other words, the Old Testament is actually more relevant for our lives in the now than is the New, because the New Testament focuses our gaze on what is to come when Jesus returns, but the Old Testament shows us who God is and how we relate to Him in this life now.
In the Old Testament God began His self-revelation to us ...meaning the Old Testament helps us understand how God relates to us today! It is not irrelevant after Jesus came as if now animal sacrifices have no significant meaning in helping us understand God. Quite the opposite. The stories in the Old Testament are just as important to knowing God as our past stories are when we share them with others. I shared my history or my life map (significant events in my past that were good and bad) with my friends and it helped them understand and know me better, and in the same way, God is sharing not only His life map and story with us, but our own human life map to help us better understand and know ourselves! The Old Testament helps us know God more as well as know ourselves more.
This makes me want to study the First Testament all over again.
“God also said to him:
I am God Almighty.
Be fruitful and multiply.
A nation, indeed an assembly of nations,
will come from you,
and kings will descend from you.
I will give to you the land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac.
And I will give the land to your future descendants.”
Genesis 35:11-12
God had it in mind to use Abraham as the starting point for bringing the nations to Him, not just to keep His people confined into one nation of the Jews, but God is the God of being fruitful and multiplying. However, in order to get to many He had to begin with one. You can't start getting from one point to another without first taking one step, or you can't build a house before laying down one stone. It always begins with one for the purpose of many greater things. So here we see that the First Testament reveals God's plan for humanity before Jesus or Paul even mentioned the Gentiles as being part of God's family. God already revealed that! Haha.
“And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.”
Galatians 3:29
Then Paul reiterates the First Testament's promises as being the starting point and reason for why we are here when he mentions that the promise of Abraham is the promise we are entering into. God's promise to Abraham has been in effect to this day. We are being fruitful and multiplying from what started out as one man (Abraham) to now the countless nations and people who have entered into that promise!
That same God is still the same! His plans are for us to be fruitful and to multiply. This means that people are important to God.
Our dealing with other people matter to God, and that means our lives are not just our lives, but we affect others around us all the time with our lives. There is no such thing as being someone who does not affect people. You are either working to affect people for the kingdom of God or you are working against God.
Matthew 12:30 says:
"Anyone who is not with Me is against Me, and anyone who does not gather with Me scatters."
Gather or scatter. Are you someone who gathers people around you or scatters away from people?
God's heart from the very beginning has not changed, He had desired for many nations to know Him by using Abraham first and proceeding from there to get to others. He simply picked one nation because that's how things start: with one. And from there He shows us the way to be fruitful and multiply.
It all starts with one.
That is how God has always worked with mankind. He uses one person who is willing to bring about the great plans He has that will happen, which is to increase and gather people to Himself. And when one is willing, God uses that person as the starting point for His work: being fruitful and multiplying!
Everyone wants the riches of being fruitful and the greatness of multiplying in an abundance of goodness, but they forget that it begins with one. It always begins with one. Even now and today, it begins with one decision, one heart (mine and yours) to begin the journey with God of seeing His hand work in our lives to bring about fruit and multiplication of the grand Kingdom of God...through one person! Me. You. Him or her. Each of us have the ability to live with God, which is a big life of good things in abundance or a life without God which is a name in a lineage that will one day be boring and pointless. (See lineage of Esau in Genesis 36?) haha
That chapter was full of names that seemed pointless, but as I read them I realized they probably did not feel like their lives were pointless! It's funny how we all are so affected by what happens to us, what people say or think of us, and our circumstances, but in reality, we are the son or daughter of someone who was the son or daughter of someone and our lineage reads just like the ones I read about of Esau. In the greater scheme of things our worries are probably pointless, but our relationship and belonging to God is not.
Who we are in this life will one day turn into a pointless lineage that others could care less about (the way I could care less about Esau's lineage, haha). However, who we are in relation to God, our understanding of Him and our love for and from Him will be what remains constant and never fading. I get caught up in this life as if I needed to matter, but I'm a name among names that will one day not matter in terms of what I did or how much I accomplished for the building up of my own name.
What will matter is where I end up after my place in the lineage is read. After the things of this life have passed away into boredom and pointlessness, it will reveal the life I carried inside that was not visible: my life with God.
My identity in Christ.
The promise I walked into by faith.
The promise of eternal life and glory.
With my mind set on the glory of His will, and with my heart open to being used as a starting point in some way for God to bring about fruitfulness and to multiply His growing body (the church) I not only see that I have entered into the growing seed of Abraham, but that I am being used to further that growth!
Be fruitful and multiply.
Love of God and others is the fulfillment of the law of God, which was never meant to rescue you from sin, but to guide you into the life God has given us through His Son.
We have been saved, that is why we can love. Not the other way around. No amount of loving others will save you. Only Jesus can save you by His blood, but once we have been saved we will realize that now we can love. Love comes from an abundance not from a need.
Live life and live abundantly!
Jmegrey
John 10:10
"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."
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