GOD CHOOSES A PEOPLE
In last week’s lesson we examined God’s good creation and Adam and Eve’s sin. As we continue to look at God’s Story, we turn our attention to God’s plan to address human sin and the death and devastation it brought. Genesis 4-11 contains several stories demonstrating how sin continued to worsen and spread in the generations following Adam and Eve. The Lord reached a moment of regret for making humans when He observed their corrupted thoughts and unbridled sin (Gen 6:5-6). The pinnacle of human depravity surfaced in the tower of Babel (11:1-9). People thought they could obtain community, security, and identity by their own initiatives without God. God confounded their language and scattered them across the face of the earth.
This study skips the events surrounding Noah and the flood. It also skips the details concerning the tower of Babel (where people tried to build that tower to the heavens to reach God on their own), which occurred after the flood. So God had to deal with the sinful people that lead to the flood and then again with those who built the tower. How would God bring salvation to lost, scattered humanity? God could have rescued people from sin any way He wanted, but He chose to work with one man, Abram and his descendants. God decided to choose a people for Himself who would do His work of evangelism in the world. So our story of God’s plan for that one man begins in Genesis 12.
Read Genesis 12:1-3 A Plan of Blessing
God’s Story is one of divine provision for human need and people’s response to that provision. Our greatest need is to be restored to a vibrant relationship with God. This lesson can help us decide whether we are fully willing to trust and obey God. Abram, later to be renamed Abraham, had the same choice. When God called him, Abram moved out in faith from UR to Haran and finally to Canaan. God then established a covenant with Abram, telling him that he would found a great nation. Not only would this nation be blessed, God said, but the other nations of the earth would be blessed through Abram’s descendants. Israel, the nation that would come from Abram, was to follow God and influence those with whom it came in contact. Through Abram’s family tree, Jesus Christ was born to save humanity. Through Christ, people can have a personal relationship with God and be blessed beyond measure.
The concept of covenant was not new. God made a covenant with Noah before the flood, If he would trust God and come into the ark, then God would preserve his family through the flood (6:18). God made another covenant after the flood: He would never again destroy the earth and life upon it by a flood (9:11). In the first instance the covenant was conditional upon the people sharing in it. The second was an unconditional promise. God’s covenant with Abram had a new and distinctive dimension. God was seeking a faithful people through whom He could do a redemptive work in the world. God promised to bless Abram but God had one condition: Abram had to do what God wanted him to do. This meant leaving his home and friends and traveling to a new land where God promised to build a great nation from Abram’s family. At our ages, how would we respond to these conditions? (We would be very reluctant at best! It would certainly take a lot of faith.) Abram obeyed, walking away from his home for God’s promise of even greater blessings in the future.
God may be trying to lead us to a place of greater service and usefulness for Him. The challenge for anyone faced with that type of decision is to not let the comfort and security of one’s present position make one miss God’s plan for them. So God called Abram to enter into covenant with Him and to become the originator and ancestor of a nation of people who would live in covenant with God. Note that the word covenant does not appear in these verses that record the call of Abram. In Genesis 15:18, however, the relationship between God and Abram is described as a covenant relationship, and the concept of covenant became central in the Hebrew conviction about their relationship with God. The Hebrews became the “covenant people”, which was especially crucial for the Hebrews. It became a focus for their development as a people and for all their subsequent national history. God’s gifts bless most richly not when we are “possessed” but when they are permitted to flow through life like a stream of living water.
Read Genesis 12:4-7 A Response of Obedience
“So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him”. We are told Abram was 75 when he obeyed God’s call and he lived until he was 175 (25:7). Abram’s way of life in Canaan was the way of a semi-nomad, but it was not a mere migration. Abram was on a mission! God planned to develop a nation of people He would call His own. He called Abram from the godless, self-centered city of UR to a fertile region of Canaan, where a God-centered, moral nation could be established. Though small in dimension, the land of Canaan was the focal point for most of the history of Israel as well as for the rise of Christianity. This small land given to one man, Abram, has had a tremendous impact on world history. Abram did not go alone or travel empty-handed when he left the community, security, and identity he had known in Haran. We are told Abram took Sarai, Lot and all the possessions they had accumulated with him. How are we confronted daily with the choice to trust God or ourselves to provide life’s necessities? (Choices of where we go, what we eat, on what to spend money, to read the Bible, what to watch on TV, what book to read, etc.)
The first stop Abram made in Canaan was at Shechem (means “shoulder” because it rests on the shoulders of two mountains where Joshua would later perform a covenant renewal ceremony –Josh. 24:1-25). Shechem was in the center of Canaan, where the “oak of Moreh” was located. “Moreh” means teaching and apparently this was a Canaanite religious center. More importantly than the place, is the act of worship there. Abram built an altar to the Lord who appeared to Abram and declared that this land would be given to Abram’s descendants. This promise had two significant meanings. First, it identified the land of Canaan as the land God had promised to the people of Abram for a national homeland. Second, it indicated that a new religious day was dawning. At the center of pagan religion God was declaring His sovereignty. Altars were used in many places for sacrifices but for God’s people altars symbolized communion with God and commemorated notable encounters with Him. Abram was reminded by altars that God was the center of his life. Regular worship helps us remember what God desires and motivates us to obey Him.
Read Genesis 15:5-8, 13-17 A Relationship of Faith
God called Abram and his descendants and had given them good land. The missing piece of the puzzle was God’s motivation which was “relationship”. God sought (and still does) a relationship with His people, even though they (and us) had distanced themselves from Him by sinning. The relationship God established with Abram was a major key in God’s Story. What God did, described in verse 5, calmed Abram’s fears about how Abram’s foreign-born house slave would become his heir because he had no son by Sarai (15:2-4). God said to look at the sky and “count the stars”—“your off-springs will be that numerous.” Maybe we need reminders of our own journey of faith with God. What could we establish as physical reminders of our journey with God? (Maybe we could look to the sky, maybe we need to look at the beauty of nature, maybe we need to see our families grow, maybe we must be at church regularly!) Abram wasn’t promised wealth or fame; he already had that. Instead, God promised descendants like the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the seashore (22:17 too numerous to count. When God said “if you are able to count them”, God was indicating the enormous task He had given Abram and indicating that Abram needs to get away from distractions. There are times when that is true for us as well! What Abram did not yet fully understand was that God was planning all along to give him a son by Sarai. God’s blessings are beyond imagination!
Although Abram had been demonstrating his faith through his actions, it was his belief in the Lord, not his actions that made Abram right with God (Romans 4:1-5). We, too, can have a right relationship with God by trusting Him. Our outward actions- church attendance, prayer, good deeds- will not by themselves make us right with God. A right relationship is based on faith- the heartfelt inner confidence that God is who He says He is and does what He says He will do. Right actions will follow naturally as by-products.
Then God gave Abram some insight to the future. Possession of the land by the Israelites would not take place for 400 years. During this time Abram’s descendants would be enslaved and oppressed in a land that did not belong to them. God gave Abram yet another promise in this prophecy- God would judge the nations they served (meaning Babylon, Assysia, etc.) While verse 17 seems difficult to understand, it put the seal of God’s commitment upon the covenant. In the darkness at the end of the day, Abram saw “a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch” pass between the divided part of the covenant sacrifice. God affirmed His covenant with Abram by giving Abram a sign. The fire and smoke suggest God’s holiness, His zeal for righteousness, and His judgment on all the nations. God took the initiative, gave the confirmation, and followed through on His promise. God’s passing through the pieces was a visible assurance to Abram that the covenant God had made was real. Unity would come again across the face of the earth. The tragic fragmenting effects of Babel would be overcome at last. God had a purpose for Abram descendants greater than their most expanded imaginations could conceive. God’s thoughts are indeed higher than our thoughts (Isa. 55:9). He would finally make the world one again and He is always ahead of mankind in His wise and gracious purpose. As in the days of Abram, God continues to choose a people to be His witness in this world—to continue God’s Story.