Church On Mission | Blessing to the Nations

What this episode covers

About the Talk: Abram’s father, Terah, moved his family from Ur of the Chaldeans (Babylonia) with the plan to go to Canaan. However, they settled in Haran (roughly halfway to Canaan), where they stayed until Terah died (Genesis 11:31-32). It was here that God said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you” (12:1). Stephen, speaking centuries later, understands that God in fact had spoken to Abram while he was still in Babylon (which perhaps explains why Terah moved his family in the first place): “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Harran. ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you’” (Acts 7:2-3). God’s purpose in causing this family to move - a huge journey of approximately 2,200 miles, including the additional trip to Egypt - was for the blessing of all the nations: “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” (12:2-3). There is no suggestion that Abraham was anything other than a moon worshipper, along with the rest of the people in Ur - it is God alone who chooses him to be the channel of blessing and he does so for the purpose, ultimately, of fulfilling his promises of Genesis 3 & 12 and of keeping his covenants of Genesis 6, 9, 15 & 17. This is clearly God’s way of ensuring that his commission to Adam & Eve and then to Noah - “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth” - becomes a reality, despite the intervening scattering of the people across the earth (Genesis 11:8-9). God may have scattered them, but he will still bless them; and he chooses Abram (later renamed Abraham) to be the channel through whom that blessing will come. And this is the beginning of the rest of the story of the Old Testament. From Abram to Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, through Moses and Samuel, then the judges and kings, God is calling a people to live for him as his special possession, distinct from all other peoples and thus showing his greatness to those other peoples. Sadly, of course, the story proceeds in ever-decreasing cycles of corruption and godlessness until God’s people reap what they have sown and God finally sends the Assyrians and then the Babylonians to them as his instruments of judgement. And yet God will not give up on his promise that “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” The decisive change in the story comes when Jesus arrives - it is no longer the descendants of Abraham’s ethnic nation that will be the channel of blessing, but the descendants of Abraham’s faith - those who, like Araham, believe God and whose faith is credited to them as righteousness (see Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3ff; Galatians 3:6; James 2:22). So “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you (Abraham)” the father of faith and through your descendants of faith (Galatians 3:7,29). This has always been, and still is, God’s mission - to bless all peoples as they are enabled to trust him and his gracious provision of a right relationship with him through faith in his Son Jesus Christ. The blessing is found in Jesus alone, but it comes through the church, the descendants of Abraham’s faith.

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