Is it true that people in the Genesis and Exodus are only given promises for future blessings?
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God gave lots of short term promises. Here are just a few from the first 20 chapters of Genesis.
- Genesis 7:4: God promises to Noah to send the rains in seven days time
- Genesis 15:13: a shortish term promise: God says that Abraham's descendants will be enslaved in Egypt in 400 year's time before being freed
- Genesis 18:10: that Sarah would give birth to a son in one year
And God gave some long term promises:
- Genesis 3:15: the seed of the serpent will strike the seed of the woman, but the seed of the woman will crush its head
- Genesis 9:11: that God will never flood the earth again
- Genesis 12:1-3: that Abraham would be blessed, that his descendants would become a great nation and all the nations on earth would be blessed through him
- Genesis 13:15: God promises to give Abraham's descendants the land of Canaan
Maybe you have had the impression that God made no short term promises because Christians often focus on the long term promises. But I think that is natural. Some promises just take time, like the promise to term Abraham into a large nation. Other promises were waiting until Jesus to be fulfilled.
But more than that, God's goal was not to serve his creations, but to inspire them to trust him. God wants to be known and loved as a truthworthy God who does everything he promises to do, and that takes all sorts of promises. Here is what Hebrews 11, the 'Heroes of faith' chapter says:
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:13-16, 39-40, NIV)
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