So what is God going to do about the mess the world is in? That is the central question that leaps out at anyone who reads the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, or who turns on the evening news. The first eleven chapters of Genesis begin well and end badly. Genesis begins with God's marvelous creative activity and God declaring that it is all good. Things begin to go south immediately thereafter. Adam and Eve want to be like God. One of their sons murders his brother. Evil expands so greatly that God decides to begin again with Noah and his family…though even after God saves them from the flood Noah gets drunk and his son…well let's just say the Bible does not go into all the details but it isn't pleasant. Finally humanity returns to the original sin of wanting to be like God and tries to storm heaven. With that kind of behavior (even in metaphoric story) little wonder the world is in the shape it is in.
As chapter 12 opens everything changes. We move from a world which seems almost mythic (meaning stories intended to explain spiritual truths) to a world very much rooted in history. While there has been an ongoing debate about the historicity of Abraham (just as there has been much debate about the historicity of much of the Bible) the language of the Abrahamic stories is ancient. Words and names which are used in this portion of Genesis are not used again. The cultural norms described fit well with what historians and archeologists have discerned about the time in which Abraham would have lived. In other words, I believe, we can with relative certainty know that by chapter 12 we have moved into the realm of the historic and out of the mythic. I believe that is important not only because of the role Abraham plays in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths, but because of the promises that God makes to Abraham.
The Abrahamic story begins with a call and a promise from God. God asks Abraham to risk everything in exchange for three things; land, offspring and blessing. While much of the world today focuses on the first promise, land (this is at the heart of the fight over the land of Israel in the Middle East), we ought to be focused on the second and third promises. We will begin with the third promise first. The third promise is not only that Abraham himself will be blessed but that he will be a blessing to the entire world. "And by you all of the families of the earth will be blessed." (Genesis 12:3) The concept of blessing is not simply that someone will be healthy, wealthy and wise, but that they will be whole in every aspect. This means they will be whole in their relationship with God, neighbor and creation. Thus through Abraham, God is going to restore this broken creation.
The second promise to Abraham, offspring, is one that offers us a glimpse into how great God's blessings will be. Abraham is told that his offspring will number more than the stars in heaven and the sands on the seashore. In other words, God's blessings which will somehow come about through Abraham will impact not just a small group of people (the Jewish people who are biological descendants of Abraham) but a massive swath of humanity. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Rome makes it clear that anyone who believes in Jesus is included in those offspring (more about that later).
Where this leaves us then is with two important points. The first point is that God is not going to allow sin and evil to have the last word as regards God's great creation. Instead God will work toward the redemption of the world. The second point is that God is going to use ordinary human beings as the means of this redemption. God will neither start over (as with Noah) not will God simply wave God's "hand" and make everything better. God is going to get down and dirty with humanity in the process of redemption. Over the next several weeks we will look at the slow, yet steady work of God as God works with humanity toward the redemption of the world.
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