Genesis 12:2

2. I will make of thee a great nation Great promises correspond with the great sacrifices commanded . 1) He left his nation, but should himself be the founder of a great nation. 2) He sacrificed kindred, but should be blessed with a spiritual kinship, as yet by him unimagined and inconceivable, but hailed afar off by faith. Hebrews 11:13. Hebrews 11:3) He broke away from ancestral ties, but his own name should be illustrious as father of the faithful, ancestor of the Hebrew people, and of the world’s Messiah. 4) Most glorious of all,

Thou shalt be a blessing Hebrews, Be thou a blessing. “It is more blessed to give than to receive;” and, like the great Antitype, Abram’s highest glory was in being a fount of blessing to all mankind. He should be famous, not for what he took from men, but for what he gave to men; not like Sesostris, Caesar, Alexander, for the victories of the sword, but for the grander victories of truth and love.

Abram signifies “the lofty Father,” and to-day Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews contend with each other in the veneration which they show for Abram as a father. Alexander Severus, the Roman emperor, built a chapel in his palace in which all the great religions of the earth were honored; and it is related that the statues of Abram and Zoroaster stood there with those of Orpheus and of Christ. Probably no human name is to-day so widely honored as that of the “father of the faithful.”