Hope Awakening: The Promise for All
Written by Jennifer Andes
“I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will find blessing in you.” Genesis 12:3, ESV
After the Fall, sin quickly and wholly enters the world. Genesis 4 through 11 tells the story of both the population of the earth and the downfall of humanity as sin overtook people. It is important to understand that every human enters the world with the stain of sin because of the choice Adam and Eve made. God commanded people to be fruitful and multiply, which led to more and more sin in the world.
By the time of Noah, God was fed up. (Not really because God doesn’t have human emotions, but if we were to assign an emotion to Him, this is what I would say.) The people became so wicked that God decided to wipe the earth clean. Everyone, every human from infants to ancient, died in the great flood. Only Noah and his family were spared because God recognized Noah as the only righteous man on earth. Noah followed God and it saved Him. It would be wrong of me to not highlight the fact that God allowed Noah to preach repentance to the people for decades before the flood. The entire time Noah constructed the ark, he also preached to the people and encouraged them to turn to God. Not a single soul listened to Noah.
After the flood, God promised Noah to never again destroy the earth’s people. The rainbow is our sign of this covenant! The command was given to again be fruitful and multiply. As you might imagine, nothing changed. Sin increased with the population. In fact, they even decided to build a tower for themselves to reach heaven! God responded by scattering all of the people and confusing their language. Thus, we went from one nation and language to the multitude of nations and languages present today.
This is pretty bleak!
Enter, Abraham (Abram).
Despite all the sin and wickedness, God loves us so much that He continued on with His grand redemption plan. He decided to make a set of people holy (which means set apart), to be called His people. God spoke to Abraham and asked him to blindly leave his family behind and follow God to an unknown place. And Abraham obeyed. What is powerful about this obedience is the fact that Abraham’s family worshipped other gods. Abraham may not have even known the one true God! But when He called, Abraham gathered his family and belongings and walked in obedience. This led to God’s great covenant with His people. Abraham would be the patriarch of the Israelites, and God promised to bless them, make them a great nation, and all the families of the earth (not just the Israelite line) would be blessed because of Abraham’s faith.
Noah and Abraham were important figures in the Old Testament, ordinary men called to do extraordinary things in God’s redemption plan. We, as Christians, are ordinary men and women called to do extraordinary things in God’s plan too! Christ will return. Like Noah, we should preach the Gospel to the lost in a broken world, planting seeds that could lead to their eternal salvation. Like Abraham, we should be obedient when God calls us to do things that don’t make sense, trusting that His ways are higher and better than ours.
All praise and glory be to Him, forever and ever!
Reflection: Challenge yourself today to read through the genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1. How many names do you recognize from your own Bible study and readings? The more time we spend dedicated to reading Scripture, the more familiar we become with these people. They were all ordinary people called to play an important role in the coming of Christ, simply by acting in obedience.