Old Testament History
Emma Dodsworth
Explain how Gods promise to Abraham is gradually outworked in the Old Testament culminating in the coming of Christ
God’s relationship to man has been defined by specific requirements and promises, divinely imposed by God, unchangeable, legal agreement between that stipulates the conditions of their relationship. Man can never negotiate with God or change the terms of the covenants; he can only accept or reject them.
God’s response to the rebellion at Babel was to choose a man called Abraham. Abraham was a man that loved and worshipped the one true God. So God told Abraham to get away from the idolatrous people around him, to get away from his family and his father's house and go to a land that God would show him. God made this covenant with Abraham, a personal blessing to Abraham, and that he would become a father of a great nation of people. God tested His own Kingdom promises by asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham obeyed God, but just before he was about to kill Isaac, God provided a substitute sacrifice. Abraham was obedient to God, which renewed the covenant:
“Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and ill-treated four hundred years. But I will punish then nation they serve as slaves, and afterwards they will come out with great possessions…in the fourth generations your descendent will come back here” on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said “to your descendents I give this land”.
God then chooses Jacob, grandson of Abraham and son of Isaac to be the next person in the family line of Abraham; it is from this line that the rescuer-ruler will come. God changes Jacobs name to “Israel” and becomes the name of the nation of people that God promised Abraham. Jacob has 12 sons and their families become known as the “12 tribes of Israel”.
Jacob’s sons are jealous of their brother Joseph as he is