We are looking at Gen 12 today.  You may like me always have heard that Abram was from Ur of the Chaldeans and God spoke to him so he took everything he had and left his home country to travel to Canaan, a land that God had promised to his descendants.  While yes that happened it didn’t really happen like that. 

Check out Gen 11:31

Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Caldeans to go to Canaan.  But when they came to Haran, they settled there.

It seems likely to me that God spoke to Abram’s father first.  He was the one that uprooted his family and moved them away from their home.  Abram was living in a foreign country when God spoke to him.  Sure he may had been there for a while, but Abram was accustomed to two things.  1.  He knew that when God spoke to you, that you were bound to obey.  2.  He was able to move his family on and complete the purpose that God gave him, and the purpose that his father had when he first moved his family. 

Gen 12:1-3

The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people, and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.  “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you;  I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

John Stott said in his article “You Can Tell the World”, that, “these are perhaps the most unifying verses in the Bible; the whole of God’s purpose is encapsulated here.”

Here is why!  God who created the universe, then the earth, then mankind, saw fit to choose a family that would impact all of the generations to come in the history of the world.  God makes several promises and similar to the Noahaic Covenant, he does not require much of Abram.  Here is the requirement, “Leave your country, your people, and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.”  We already talked above about how he had already left his country, and his people, all that was left was to leave his father’s household.  He did have to demonstrate the faith to uproot yet again and go. 

Now lets look at God’s promises.  I see three of them.  1.  I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you.  2.  I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.  3.   I will bless those who bless you and curse whoever curses you and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. 

First God promises to make Abram’s descendents into a great nation.  This is obviously fulfilled in the nation of Israel.  Only 3 Generations past Abram we have the beginning of the Israelites.  Abram’s son Isaac had a son named Jacob who had 12 sons who became the father’s of the 12 tribes of Israel.  (there is more to this one, but we will revisit it later)

Second, God promises to make Abram’s name great and that he would BE a blessing.  This is fulfilled as well, in that Abram was quite famous in his own day, but he is still famous now.   This occurred immediately and over many generations. 

Third, the promise that through Abram all people’s on earth would be blessed.  This is the main thing.  This shows God’s intention.  It was not only to choose a family that he could bless, and lavish upon.  The blessing that God has promised Abram here is given so that it can be a blessing to the whole world.  

The phrase made famous by the Perspectives Class is, “blessed to be a blessing”.  God chose to bless Abram so that all peoples on earth would be blessed. 

-Chad