The God Who Blesses

The God who Blesses
Genesis 12:1-3, 15:1-21, 17:1-8

"And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name Great; and so you shall be a blessing."

The Abrahamic covenant remains one of the defining moments in God's redemptive history. Without any previous interaction, God appears to Abram (whose name he would change to Abraham) to announce a promise to make Abraham's name great. In 11:4, we read that humanity again sought to cast off God's plan and instead make for themselves a "name." Instead of striving to worship God, humanity united to strive to glorify themselves and make a name for themselves apart from God. The history of mankind is a story of humanity seeking to make themselves god by usurping God's control. However, in the end, God again brought judgment by confusing the people's languages.
For all man's attempts to reject God, God is still gracious, and so in Genesis 12, God promises to do for Abraham what mankind cannot do. He vowed to make a name for Abraham that would result in the blessing of the whole world. Even more remarkable is that God appeared to man and talked directly with him for the first time since the Garden. By doing so, God indicates that the curse, which separated God from man, will be removed through the covenant he is making with Abraham. Yet the promise of the covenant was not just that God would make the descendants of Abraham into a great nation, but that in Abraham, salvation would come to the world. This would ultimately be fulfilled in Christ, who made the forgiveness of sin possible through his redemptive work on the cross. Furthermore, through Abraham's seed, there would come who would be a ruler over the world (Genesis 49:10).
Within the Abrahamic covenant, we see that God blesses. God is not merely residing in heaven, detached and uninvolved in his exalted position. He is a God who desires to bless people, even those who rejected him. The word "to bless" means to "endue with power for success, prosperity, and longevity. It stands opposite to the curse that came because of the fall. When Adam sinned, humanity came under the curse of death, and all his works and relationships became tainted by the destruct effects of sin. But in God, we discover the blessing of life and the restoration of relationships with him and one another. In the blessing, the curse of sin is lifted, and a person is restored to a right relationship with God. This blessing is the promise of God to give us life  
As we see in the Abrahamic covenant, this blessing is freely by God through his unconditional grace. This blessing is not earned by Abraham but given freely by God. All Abraham had to do to receive the blessing was to accept the promise by faith. In the Abrahamic covenant, we discover the beginning of God's redemptive plan, which would culminate in the coming of Christ. When Christ came, he came to fulfill the Abraham covenant by bringing salvation not only to the nation of Israel but to all humanity. Like the Abrahamic covenant, we do not need to earn the blessing; we merely need to accept by faith the promise given in God's blessing.
The redemptive story of the Bible is the story of a God who desires to bless us even despite our rejection of him. At the heart of God’s being is a personal, redemptive, covenant-keeping God who wants to bless those who accept his promise.  
While sin destroys and brings judgment, God restores and brings a blessing. No matter the circumstances we face in life, we can still rejoice because God is at work to pour out his blessing upon those who accept his salvation by faith. Today, as the hymn writer suggests, "count your many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done." The God of the Bible is a God of eternal blessing.