1Now Yahweh said to Abram, “Leave your country, and your relatives, and your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you. 2I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who treats you with contempt. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”
4So Abram went, as Yahweh had told him. Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5Abram took Sarai his wife, Lot his brother’s son, all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they went to go into the land of Canaan. They entered into the land of Canaan. 6Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, Canaanites were in the land.
7Yahweh appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your offspring.”
He built an altar there to Yahweh, who had appeared to him. 8He left from there to go to the mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to Yahweh and called on Yahweh’s name. 9Abram traveled, still going on toward the South.
10There was a famine in the land. Abram went down into Egypt to live as a foreigner there, for the famine was severe in the land. 11When he had come near to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “See now, I know that you are a beautiful woman to look at. 12It will happen that when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ They will kill me, but they will save you alive. 13Please say that you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that my soul may live because of you.”
14When Abram had come into Egypt, Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. 15The princes of Pharaoh saw her, and praised her to Pharaoh; and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. 16He dealt well with Abram for her sake. He had sheep, cattle, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels. 17Yahweh afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. 18Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this that you have done to me? Why didn’t you tell me that she was your wife? 19Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now therefore, see your wife, take her, and go your way.”
20Pharaoh commanded men concerning him, and they escorted him away with his wife and all that he had.
Did you notice a change in the mood of the book as you read chapter12? God does a new thing in making a promise to bring blessing to every nation through the family of Abraham. They will be his people and he will be their God and so Genesis moves from creation to corruption and now to a covenant from God himself. God tells Abraham ‘I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and all the families on earth will be blessed through you.’ (verses 2&3)
Abraham and his wife Sarah are waiting to become a great nation but they remained childless. Frustrated that the promise was not being fulfilled at their pace, Abraham and Sarah try to manipulate the situation and Abraham gets a servant girl Hagar pregnant in the hope to start a nation through her son. This ended very badly in hurt, jealously and anger. God had to intervene to deal with the hurts that this caused. Eventually Abraham and Sarah have a son of their own and call him Isaac and a great nation begins.
There is, of course, another part to this covenant. Abraham is not just called to be a nation he is called to be a blessing. God calls for his people to be an example, a help, a source of justice and charity to the surrounding nations. In this way they would show the world what it really means to serve the one true God.
Today as the people of God we need to learn much from Abraham and Sarah. We acknowledge that as individuals and as a church we should never manipulate the message of God for our own benefit for it only leads to hurt. We also need to acknowledge that we were never meant to be blessed and then just sit there and do nothing. We can’t just hoard all the mercy, forgiveness and joy that God bestows on us. We need to be active in reaching out to those in need and be an example of what real Christian living should be. We need to be the people we are called to be so that we can be the church the world needs us to be.
God is God and His intention is to bring blessing