Hebrews 11:12 Commentary and Bible Study

Both Sarah and Abraham had to believe. They exercised faith at a time when there was no evidence to support that faith – they were both well past the age of child bearing. They set the word of God against all outward appearance and they believed that God would not encourage their hopes in vain. They were convinced that he knew about all the apparently unfavourable circumstances, and yet he had promised. As a result, a whole nation came from them because of faith, a nation which would play a key part in the unfolding of God’s revelation to the world. The covenant God made with Abraham included a promise to make a nation from him, the nation of Israel. Only a minority of them were saved through personal faith, but God taught the world various lessons through that nation. He entered into a special relationship with them in order to reveal his character, to demonstrate his kindness and power. He set them apart as a people in order to train them to respect and preserve the word of God, given over a period of time through their prophets. He preserved them from the grossest of idolatry in order to have people from whom the Christ would be born. They were a type of the New Testament church, God dealing with them in the physical realm in ways that correspond to his dealings with his people in the spiritual realm. But they were also for the most part an unbelieving people, and they showed the hardness of the human heart and that however greatly God blesses human beings, they will never turn to him without the work of the Spirit in their hearts.Abraham only saw Isaac and Isaac’s twin children, but he believed the promise. Were the Jews as numerous as sand by the seashore and as the stars in heaven? The text says only that the number is just as impossible to count. This means more however than just that his descendants cannot be counted. Abraham was a man of the open air and was no doubt a great watcher of the stars. He read them in the best sense. It suggested to him many generations – some bright, some further away and less distinct, and the sand by the seashore suggested an innumerable number of individuals. God’s providence watched over his descendants and made them into a great physical nation, despite, at times, circumstances which seemed to make the fulfilment of the promise very unlikely.