Firstfruits from the Nations 5

The Call of Abraham

“Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing… And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Genesis 12:1-4

For many Christians, the Old Testament with its laws, curses, and ethnic specificity is, in juxtaposition to the New Testament, narrow and harsh – nearly absent of grace. It is true and providentially fitting that a new degree of grace was introduced with the coming of Jesus (John 1:14, 17). But the entire biblical story, properly viewed, is a story of God’s disposition to save. Over and again, He takes initiative to spare and redeem a race that is in ardent rebellion against Him. Scripture, Old and New Testaments, is the story of God making a way for wayward creatures, post-Eden, to get and remain in fellowship with Him. This is the lens which really ought to color our reading of the Old Testament: God’s initiative-taking disposition to save, which would culminate and be finally satisfied in the person of Christ.

In Genesis 11, in the days shortly after the flood, the people of the earth banded together to build a city and a name for themselves, in direct rebellion to God’s dictate to Noah to multiply and spread over the earth. God came down and confused their languages, Himself assuring the dispersion which He had commanded. But happily, as the rest of the redemptive story would play out, God scattered the nations not as an end to itself, but with the view to regathering them into a new people, who would call upon His name from all the tongues of the earth, so that the entire earth would be filled with His glory.

God’s saving initiative is brought to the fore in the very next chapter when God selects Abram, an idol-worshiper from Ur of the Chaldeans, to leave his home and go to a land that God would show him. It is noteworthy that the generations from Adam to Noah to Abram are summarized in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, while the thirty-nine which remain cover only the lifespans of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. There is no missing the fact that this is a significant man, who fathered a significant family which will play the central role in the drama of redemption for centuries to come.

Abram’s call is accompanied by promises. First God would make of Abram a great nation, He would bless Him, and He would make His name great (v. 2). Notice, the would-be constructors of Babel had expressed, “let us make a name for ourselves” (11:4). Shortly after interrupting their autonomous attempts to build a legacy, God swears to Abram that He will make Abram’s name great. The end for this special, elective favor from God is that Abram “be a blessing” (v. 2) and that in him “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (v. 3). This would be the case in spite of the opposition Abraham would endure, for God promised, “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse” (v. 4).

Some attach a lot of significance to the debate over whether the Hebrew behind the last verb in verse three should be translated passively, “shall be blessed” or reflectively, “shall bless themselves” because of the Hithpael form used in the restatement of the blessing in Genesis 22:18; 26:4. For now, it is probably sufficient to say that the rest of the biblical witness leaves no room for guessing as to what this blessing is or how it will be experienced by the nations. The blessing is ultimately none other than the seed of Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ, who would spill out his lifeblood to purchase for Himself a new race of ransomed men and women without respect to ethnicity (see Gal. 3:16). The blessing is transmitted as followers of Jesus obey His call to make disciples of every nation. The flower of worldwide proclamation was not yet at bloom in Genesis 12, but certainly this promise was to have the effect of guarding Abraham against exclusivity and egocentrism even in his day. God was temporarily narrowing His revelations and covenants to one man, family and nation, but only so that blessing could be, in the proper time, expanded across the entire earth to the descendants of the other peoples who had migrated from Babel – the seventy nations listed in the table of Genesis 10. Is it any coincidence that Jesus sent his second wave of witnesses out as seventy (Luke 10:1)? The blessing of Abraham had arrived, embodied in Jesus Christ, and the time had come for all families of the earth to be blessed.

Notice that God asked Abram to leave his home and family (v. 1), which echoes the call of Jesus for ambassadors of His name to do the same. In both cases, it is promised that the one who goes will receive back from God more than he left behind, both land and family (Mk. 10:29-30). Abram and his wife acquired people in Haran, who accompanied them to Canaan (v. 5). Whether these were servants, fortune-seekers, or followers of Abram’s God is not specified. But it seems that already Abram was attracting to himself others from outside of his family who would know the blessings of the covenant between he and God. Already God is blessing Abram by adding to his number, and already, Abram is being a blessing. Notice also that God moves Abram from Ur of the Chaldeans, a place of relative obscurity northeast of Canaan, to the center and cross-road of the earth, the geographical stage upon which the unfolding narrative of salvation history would be centered up through the time of Christ. God is preparing this nobody from nowhere to be a blessing to the world. Scripture relates that “at that time the Canaanites were in the land” (v. 6). This worshiper of Yahweh was now to sojourn and live in the midst of this foreign, idolatrous, observing people whom he existed to finally bless.

Let no one tell you that God’s missionary nature kicked into gear at the end of the ministry of Christ as a sort of supplemental or eleventh-hour plan. Israel was chosen as God’s special instrument to bring about worldwide salvation. Built into the very first promise to the father of the Hebrew people is the reality of universal participation in the covenant of grace. Have you been called out by God? Have you been blessed in Jesus Christ? Have no doubt that He intends for you not to indulge in that blessing privately, but to engage in the on-going fulfillment of this ancient Abrahamic expectation by heralding the good news wherever there are not yet worshipers for Christ.

From the very beginning, the God of Abraham has been disposed to redeem and bless, and He has created a way to do so that brings much honor to the Godhead and much joy to all the peoples of the earth.

~~posted by Ambassador