April 12, 2015: Not For You – Jon Gettings

Tribes. In the Ancient Near East the center for living was your tribe. It was your family, bloodline, home, identity – it meant everything – and without it you were nothing. You worked for the well being of your tribe, accumulated possessions, fought battles, made alliances, to preserve the tribe. And it was this way for everyone in the known world at that time.

And with one word God blew all of that up. He spoke to Abram and said what the gods had said to others before Abram, “I will bless you.” But he did not stop there. He then told Abram, “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Wait, What?

This is new. Nothing like this had happened before. A tribe existing to bless other tribes? This call is not just for Abram, it is also the call for his descendants, namely the people of Israel. God chose them to be the people through whom he would redeem the world. And it is in this call, this blessing, this promise that the story of Jesus begins.