Friday, February 12, 2010

Genesis 12

The call of Abraham (vs. 1-3)—This is one of the most important passages of Scripture in the entire Bible because in it God delineates the two covenants by which He will redeem the world. There is a three-fold promise to Abraham (or Abram, as he is known until chapter 17, but I will call him by the better known Abraham). God makes a personal promise to Abraham: “I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing” (v. 2). Obviously, this promise has come true. A second promise was national: “I will make you a great nation” (v. 2). That’s Israel, the Jewish nation, the Old Testament covenant. And then the third promise: “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (v. 3). Notice that “all” the families of the earth will be blessed—not just Jews, but Gentiles as well. This is the New Covenant in Christ, where all of humanity can find salvation. Paul quotes this verse in Galatians 3:8: “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, ‘In you all the nations shall be blessed.’” Read closely what Paul wrote. The promise to Abraham that “in you all the nations shall be blessed” was “preach[ing] the gospel to Abraham beforehand.” Abraham is the physical “father” of the Jewish people, through whom the Messiah would come, and thus he is the spiritual “father” of us all. Through faith and the faith, the Christian system.

So we’ve narrowed down even more where to look for the Messiah: Adam-Seth-Noah-Shem-Arphaxad-Abraham. Don’t look for Him from the Girgashites or the Egyptians or the Assyrians or the Hittites or the Cushites or the Chinese or the Sioux…He’s going to come through the Jews. If only those people had been willing to humbly accept this great honor to be chosen to bring God’s Son into the world…

Abraham and family arrive in Canaan and journey through the land (vs. 4-9)—His nephew Lot was with him (and wife Sarah, of course). Genesis 11:28 tells us that Lot’s father, Haran had died, so Abraham obviously took responsibility for his nephew. As Abraham travels through Canaan, God repeats that this is the land He will give to Abraham’s descendents (v. 7).

Abraham and his “sister” in Egypt (vs. 9-20)—Abraham was one of the greatest men who ever lived, but he was far from perfect. There was a famine in the land of Canaan (v. 10), so he took his family down to Egypt where he did not demonstrate much faith in God. Sarah was a lovely woman and so Abraham was afraid the Egyptians would kill him if they knew she was his wife. So he told her to claim she was his sister--which was half true. A half-truth is still a lie, or disingenuous at best. But where is his faith in God? Jehovah had just told Abraham that he was going to be a great nation; that would have been awfully hard if the Egyptians had killed him. The Lord let it be known to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, that he better leave Sarah alone and thus all ends well. But Abraham doesn’t come out well in this story. Incidentally, he’s going to pull the same stunt in chapter 20 before Isaac was born. Even the great men of faith are flesh and subject to temptation and weakness. I refer the reader to the article “David and Bathsheba” on my Bible blog.

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