Reading the Scriptures shows us that all things are possible with God. What He promises, He does. He has the power to fulfill His promises in the most challenging of circumstances, and His timing is always right. One of God’s most remarkable accomplishments is the preservation of the lineage of Christ. We see this preservation throughout the Old Testament, but let’s focus specifically on how God accomplished this in the record of Abraham and Sarah.
First, we will see that God promised Abraham that He would make of him a great nation and that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed. Then, we will see how God kept His promise by bringing needed healing so Abraham and Sarah could conceive a son, Isaac. Thus, God preserved the Christ line through many generations.
The first promise God made in His Word concerning the coming Messiah was in Genesis 3:15, after the fall of Adam and Eve. God declared that the seed of the woman, the coming Messiah, would deal a crushing blow to the adversary. It was many years later that we see God preserve the Christ line through the birth of Abraham and Sarah’s son, Isaac. Before this happened, however, God made a promise to Abraham.
Genesis 12:1,2,4:
Now the Lord had said unto Abram [Abraham], 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.
So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.
At the time God made this great promise to him, Abraham was seventy-five years old, and his wife was barren (Genesis 11:30) and beyond childbearing age. In Genesis 12:2, God says, “I will make of thee a great nation,” but it could have seemed impossible sense knowledgewise for this to come to pass. How could it be possible if Sarah could not have a child? Sometimes in life, it may seem like circumstances are stacked against us. How could Abraham’s line be made a great nation if he had no descendants? But God accomplishes His promises at the appropriate time. Twenty-four years after Abraham left his father’s country to go to a land that God would show him and his descendants, God made a covenant with Abraham.
Genesis 17:1,7:
And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram….
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.
God had made this clear in verse 7: “I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed.” God talked to Abraham about something which was to happen in the future. Abraham believed God’s promise. God overcame Abraham and Sarah’s physical limitations and provided them with a son, Isaac.
Genesis 21:5:
And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him.
According to physical laws, Sarah was barren and too old to give birth. God overcame the impossible to fulfill His promise. Sarah had Isaac as a son, and God’s promise made it possible for Sarah to nurse him and help him grow to maturity. Later, Isaac and his wife had children, and God continued to preserve the Christ line until the birth of our savior.
In the Epistle of Galatians, the Apostle Paul wrote by revelation some details concerning Abraham’s seed.
Galatians 3:16:
Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
Thousands of years after God had made His promise to Abraham, the Apostle Paul looked back and, by revelation, declared that the seed God spoke of in Genesis 21:12, “in Isaac shall thy seed be called,” referred to the Messiah, Jesus Christ. During Abraham’s time, the Christ line was not written down. Only God knew the exact lineage that would extend to the birth of His Son—a line which we can now see in the first chapter of Matthew. Throughout history, the adversary, the Devil, worked to extinguish the Christ line. But God made a promise to Abraham, and He protected the believers in the Christ line.
Fulfilling the redemption plan of humanity was God’s promise from the beginning. God made this possible in part by fulfilling His promise to Abraham and Sarah. Despite seemingly insurmountable circumstances, through their believing, Sarah conceived and gave birth to Isaac. We can be grateful for God’s power and His faithfulness to fulfill His promise to us—our redemption through Jesus Christ, our promised seed!