Count the Stars in One Seed

By Jerry D. Ousley

            If you live away from the city lights, on a clear night just look up.  Multitudes of stars blanket the sky.  Can you count them?  I bet not.  Yet, that is exactly what God challenged Abraham to do.  He told him, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them. … So shall your descendants be.”  (Genesis 15:5).  Just imagine it, if you can.  One, two, three, twenty-three, twenty-what?  Oh no, I lost count!

            God was talking to Abraham about his seed – all the generations of offspring that would come to him.  Not only did God speak to him about his direct descendants, but He also told him that in his seed all the nations of the world would be blessed (Genesis 18:17-18).  It was a promise for all of time from Abraham on.

            Yet, in their desperation for an heir, and because of their age, they tried to make God’s plan work first by thinking that, just maybe God meant that his heir would be in Eleazar, his eldest servant.  Nope, that wasn’t God’s plan.  Then Sarah got the bright idea of giving her servant to Abraham.  Maybe she could bear an heir in Sarah’s name.  Ishmael was born and it caused much friction between Sarah and Hagar, her servant, and she wound up blaming in on Abraham.  By the way, that is what usually happens when we try to make God’s plan work in our own power and time.

            Finally, when Abraham was one hundred years old his first “star” was born.  Isaac became his first, and only son with Sarah.  Abraham was one hundred years old.  Think of it, taking care of an infant son when they were both that old!

            At last God’s promise was beginning to be fulfilled.  But wait, now comes the test.  In Genesis 22 God once again began talking to Abraham.  “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” (Genesis 22:2).  “What?  Just a minute now God; we’ve got one son and, yes, I do love him very much, but I don’t think we’re going to get to as many as the stars in heaven, or the sand on the sea shore if we start offering them up as sacrifices,” is probably what I’d respond with.

            The Bible does not record that Abraham argued one single word.  I think it was because he had finally learned to trust God.  So, he got his son ready, packed up what they needed and brought the wood for the fire and headed to the mountains.  Of course, he knew that God wouldn’t let him down.  And He didn’t.  If you read the rest of that chapter you’ll discover that God let him go as far as binding Isaac and laying him on the altar with the wood for the fire laid out, and he raised his knife to kill his son when God intervened.

            The writer of Hebrews said, “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said ‘In Isaac your seed shall be called,’ concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.”  (Hebrews 11:17-19).  What faith from a common man.  Read more in Genesis and you’ll see how that Abraham wasn’t perfect.  He failed God just like you and me.  But as he failed and God forgave, and then provided, Abraham had learned to trust God.  And God did not let him down.

            He won’t let us down either.  You may feel like you are close to the brink of your emotions.  It may seem like you can’t hold on another minute, let alone days.  But I want to tell you that you can count the stars in just one promised seed, just like Abraham.  God didn’t let him down.  When his descendants left Egypt, counting all the men and the women and children, there were probably in excess of a million people led out enroute to the promised land – promised first to Abraham.

            And yet today, multitudes all over the face of planet Earth are blessed because of his seed.  Jesus Christ, of whom the sacrifice of Isaac was a type (continue reading in Hebrews and you’ll see it), became the seed that became the blessing to all nations just as God promised to Abraham.

            We have hope in Him.  He will bring us through any trial, temptation and/or situation we are currently in or may encounter.  It may seem like an impossibility.  Abraham thought so.  It might seem like God has forgotten what He promised.  Abraham did.  But God does not forget.  When the time is right, He will come through.  It might not seem like He’s working to us, but rest assured, He is.

            Don’t give up.  Just as Abraham could count the stars in just one seed – Isaac – so it may be with us.  All it takes as on seed, just one.  Plant it in your life and you’ll be able to count the stars in that seed.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.?  Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.