Introduction to Abraham, Part 1

As Bob Wiley might say, "Baby Steps." One improvement at a time and hopefully one day we will arrive at something close to a first-class Sunday School class and a first-class blog. Soon we will have handouts each Sunday with something similar to a lesson outline on them. One day I envision, perhaps, a power-point presentation. By next week, I think, we will have a downloadable podcast available. In the meantime let me give you some notes from last Sunday's introductory lesson on Abraham and perhaps highlight some of the the things we discussed. Here goes:

And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”
(Galatians 3:8 ESV)

Several things stand out to me when I read this passage. The first is how Paul personifies "the Scripture." The Scripture foresaw. The Scripture preached the gospel to Abraham. The Scripture spoke to Abraham, saying . . . Yet when we look at the passage in Genesis that Paul references we see that it is the LORD who is the one referenced as doing all these things. Paul equates Scripture, the written revelation passed down to us through the ages, (in this specific case, Genesis) with God himself. What 'Scripture' says is what we read that God had said. Ponder on that, but don't get sidetracked for we are moving on.

Next, note that when God gave his initial covenant promise to Abraham in Genesis 12, according to the Apostle Paul we, that is the Gentiles, were in view as recipients of that promise. In you, Abraham, shall all the nations (read: Gentiles) be blessed. Paul points out that this is prophetical of the time that he was living in when the gospel would be taken to the Gentile world. That is profoundly relevant for you and me today because we (very likely most of us, anyway) are Gentiles, and we are finding a promise of blessing being made to us in what many (most?) scholars believe to be the second century B.C., and we find that the world-wide Church was in view, indeed has been in God's plans, all along. God has always planned to save a people for himself of every tribe, nation, kindred, and tongue.

But he starts with Abraham.

Which is precisely why we are starting with Abraham.

Really, why is Abraham that important and what does it have to do with me, today, living in 2013? Everything. But in order for me to demonstrate that we have to put Abraham in his historical and Scriptural context.

We first come across Abraham at the end of the 11th chapter of Genesis. A lot has taken place before Abraham, or Abram, has come on the scene, and all of it is important if we are going to undersatnd what it was that God was doing in Abraham's life and what makes it relevant to us. So let's take a look at that in the next post.