Abraham's Seed

One of religious history’s bigger subplots is the question of who is a descendent of Abraham, and therefore the heir to the promise God made to him in Genesis 12:

I will make you into a great nation,
  and I will bless you; I will make your name great,
  and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
  and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
  will be blessed through you.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all considered to descend from Abraham in some way. His first son, Ishmael, is traditionally seen as the ancestor of the Arabs. His second son, Isaac, would be the father of Israel. The Christian claim to inheritance is through adoption: “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:29).

Ironically, Abraham might not be an obvious choice to father three religions. In a questionable (to say the least) act of self-preservation, he had his wife, Sarah, pretend to be his sister so that the Pharaoh could feel free to sleep with her (in particular, without killing Abraham first). The Pharaoh was disgusted when he found out, but that didn’t stop Abraham repeating the trick with the king of Gerar. Ishmael, meanwhile, was born to a concubine, Hagar, with whom Abrahm slept because he and Sarah felt they needed to facilitate God’s fulfilment of the promise. Even his most unselfish moment, his subsequent willingness to sacrifice Isaac, is undeniably admirable, but in an uncomfortable way.

Indeed, the narrative seems designed to present Abraham as an ordinary, not a great man. But such, it turns out, are the people that God tends to choose.

And God can transform the ordinary man who has faith. Despite his character flaws, Abraham was willing to put his trust in God when it mattered:

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (Hebrews 11:8-10)