Kingdom: partnership with God (Genesis 12:1-9)

The whole earth belongs under God’s sovereign authority, but the nations went their own way (Genesis 10) and the kingdoms tried to take over God’s world (Genesis 11). God responds by calling Abraham into partnership with himself.

God launches a different kind of kingdom. Genesis 12 is the bridge from the nations to God’s nation. Abraham is the bridge to a new world in partnership with divine leadership:

Genesis 12:1-3 (NIV)
¹ The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. ² “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. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

What an amazing promise for a couple who expected their names to die with them since they could not have children (11:30). God blessed the world with fruitfulness (1:22, 28; 5:2; 9:1), but the earth was less responsive as barrenness and death took over as humans pulled away from God (3:16-19). Abram and Sarai are themselves of a sign that God is restoring creation through them.

Their descendants will be a great nation (verse 2). Greatness isn’t measured by human standards like physical size or military dominance. The greatness of their nation is the blessing of God’s presence and leadership. With God at the helm, this nation will be guided by the wisdom of God’s instruction and the voice of his Spirit (the Law and the Prophets).

This nation is the antithesis of Babel, the undoing of human sin, the restoration of what God decreed in the beginning (1:26-28). The God–Abram partnership restores what humanity is missing, what the other nations don’t have: life in God’s reign.

How other nations treat his people is something God takes personally (verse 3):

• Those who bless God’s nation participate in their blessing (Isaiah 19:23-25; Zechariah 8:20-22), for all nations belong to him (Exodus 19:5).
• Those who curse God’s kingdom are cursing its King (Psalm 48:1-7), making themselves God’s enemies (Psalms, 18; 60:17; 92:9-11; 108:10; 110:1-2; 144:6).

This is precisely the criteria God’s anointed uses to sort sheep from goats: “The King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me’” Matthew 25:40 (ESV).

What’s crucial, therefore, is Abram’s response to God’s call. Does he partner with God as Noah had done? Does he believe God and participate in what God said?

Genesis 12:4-5 (NIV)
⁴ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. ⁵ He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

This is the foundation for the rest of the Bible. Abram and Sarai believed God and put their allegiance to God into action. They became the founders of God’s project to restore the whole of creation to heaven’s government. They left the region of the Babel-builders because they were looking for a city under God:

Hebrews 11:8-10 (NIV)
⁸ By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. ⁹ By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. ¹⁰ For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

From the moment Abram and Sarai entered this partnership with God, the Biblical narrative becomes the story of how God establishes this city, the kingdom that invites God’s reign. The Sinai covenant established Israel as that kingdom, so Jerusalem was the city of the Great King, the place where God lives among his people (Psalm 48:2).

Abram has reached the land where God’s reign is reestablished on earth (verse 5). He begins to explore:

Genesis 12:6-9 (NIV)
⁶ Abram travelled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. ⁷ The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him. ⁸ From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. ⁹ Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev [south].

Everywhere he goes, Abram erects altars to the Lord. The altars stand as markers of God’s authority, like planting a flag or staking a claim for God.

Great start, Abram! The kingdom of God consists of God as king, and the people who partner with God’s leadership by giving him their loyalty — the obedience that comes from faith.

But what happens if we aren’t faithful to God along the way? Will human unfaithfulness undermine God’s plans? That’s what the second half of Genesis 12 explores.

What others are saying

Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People (Zondervan, 2010), 81:

God’s blessing was not for Abraham and his family only. He would be the father of a particular nation through whom blessing would come universally to all nations. “We”, then, if we are in Christ, are part of that family of Abraham, no matter what nation we come from.
But if, in Christ, we inherit Abraham’s blessing, we also inherit Abraham’s mission—that is, to go and be a blessing, to be the means by which God’s blessing comes to others … to participate in God’s promised mission of bringing people from all nations on earth into the sphere of God’s redemptive blessing through Christ.

N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, (London: SPCK, 1992), 263:

The narrative quietly insists that Abraham and his progeny inherit the role of Adam and Eve. There are, interestingly, two differences which emerge in the shape of this role. The command (‘be fruitful …’) has turned into a promise (‘I will make you fruitful …’), and possession of the land of Canaan, together with supremacy over enemies, has taken the place of Adam’s dominion over nature.

Michael F. Bird, Evangelical Theology: A Biblical and Systematic Introduction (Zondervan, 2013), 502:

The Abrahamic covenant enacts the mission of God to reach into the world through his chosen people. Thus, the reign of the Lord is exercised in and through Abraham’s family, and the response that is required is principally faith in the promises and obedience to the subsequent commands.

Related posts

• YHWH launches a nation of his own (Genesis 12:1-3)
• God shows up (Genesis 12:4-9)
• Looking for a city (Hebrews 11:10)

[Image: Canaanite gate from Abraham’s era, near Tel Dan. Photo: Allen Browne, 2017-05-14.]