Genesis 12-50 is full of the rich, personal stories of Abraham and his extended family (Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph). It is with them that redemption began to be fleshed out. The remainder of the book tracks the peaks and valleys of their lives in contrast to the singular and constant faithfulness of Yahweh in His desire to bless humanity.
These stories also expand upon what it means to be called and chosen by God. An important truth we learn is that God chose Abraham and his descendants to be the vehicle through which He blessed the world. This is clear from the start. He told Abraham, “You will be a blessing” (12:2) and again, “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (v. 3). The chosen were not to exist for themselves! They existed to be a channel of blessing to the world. What was true of Abraham and Israel is true of the church. We do not exist for ourselves and to think and act as though we do puts on the same destructive trajectory that Israel would later fall into.
A second truth we learn is that God calls and chooses based on His sovereign will and purpose rather than ours. His blessings are the result of His grace rather than our goodness. He reminded Israel of this in Deuteronomy 9:4-6. Jesus told His apostles of the same truth in John 15:6. We witness this in the Genesis narrative, which at times, reads more like a bad reality show than part of a holy book. It’s most graphically illustrated in Jacob. He was a con man of the first order who got by not by trusting in God, but through scheming and deceitfulness. Yet God blessed him! Over and over! He took advantage of Esau’s hunger to obtain his birthright. He and his mother conspired to deceive his elderly, infirmed father and stole the blessing intended for Esau. Even granting that God has blessed Jacob as a way of blessing the world, we’re still not comfortable with His choice of the scoundrel, but that’s okay because we’re not God and we can’t expect to fully appreciate His choices. But we do know that history has borne out that He always knows what He is doing!
These stories also remind us there is no such thing as painless growth. Abraham’s strong faith didn’t just happen, it was forged in the fire of a 3-day father-son trip he took with Isaac to Mt. Moriah. Joseph experienced more than his share of suffering in order to be used by God to save the world during the famine. And Jacob? He left Canaan to seek a wife. In Paddan Aram, he met a man named Laban who gave him a 14-year master class in deceitfulness and manipulation. Then before he could re-enter Canaan, he separated himself from everything he had and wrestled all night with a representative of God before Jacob/“deceiver” could become Israel/“one who prevails.” As result, he went into the promised land a new man—broken but blessed. He understood he didn’t wrestle with God to get something but to become something—broken to his old ways and determined to hold on to God and His ways.
Isn’t that exactly what we need?
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 