Genesis 11

¹⁰ These are the generations of Shem. When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood. ¹¹ And Shem lived after he fathered Arpachshad 500 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹² When Arpachshad had lived 35 years, he fathered Shelah. ¹³ And Arpachshad lived after he fathered Shelah 403 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹⁴ When Shelah had lived 30 years, he fathered Eber. ¹⁵ And Shelah lived after he fathered Eber 403 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹⁶ When Eber had lived 34 years, he fathered Peleg. ¹⁷ And Eber lived after he fathered Peleg 430 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹⁸ When Peleg had lived 30 years, he fathered Reu. ¹⁹ And Peleg lived after he fathered Reu 209 years and had other sons and daughters. ²⁰ When Reu had lived 32 years, he fathered Serug. ²¹ And Reu lived after he fathered Serug 207 years and had other sons and daughters. ²² When Serug had lived 30 years, he fathered Nahor. ²³ And Serug lived after he fathered Nahor 200 years and had other sons and daughters. ²⁴ When Nahor had lived 29 years, he fathered Terah. ²⁵ And Nahor lived after he fathered Terah 119 years and had other sons and daughters. ²⁶ When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran. ²⁷ Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot. ²⁸ Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. ²⁹ And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. ³⁰ Now Sarai was barren; she had no child. ³¹ Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there. ³² The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.

Genesis 12

¹Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ² And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”⁴ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. ⁵ And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, ⁶ Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. ⁷ Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. ⁸ From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. ⁹ And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

The old line on Baptists is that Baptists think dancing is a sin. Now I personally do not think dancing is a sin, though I do think it is a sin when Idance…because I am such a terrible dancer! But, anyway, true or not, that is the old line: Baptists think dancing is a sin. There is one exception though, one time in which Baptists give a pass to dancing. I am speaking of the song, “Father Abraham.” Do you remember that song? Remember the motions that go with it? “Father Abraham” is one of those songs that gets in your head and stays there, like the “It’s A Small World” song at Disney World. If you have ever sung it, you remember it, and, to make it stick even more, somebody back in the day added little dance moves. Remember?

Father Abraham had many sons
Many sons had Father Abraham
I am one of them and so are you
So let’s just praise the Lord.
Right arm!

Father Abraham had many sons
Many sons had Father Abraham
I am one of them and so are you
So let’s just praise the Lord.
Right arm, left arm!

Father Abraham had many sons
Many sons had Father Abraham
I am one of them and so are you
So let’s just praise the Lord.
Right arm, left arm, right foot!

Father Abraham had many sons
Many sons had Father Abraham
I am one of them and so are you
So let’s just praise the Lord.
Right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot!

Father Abraham had many sons
Many sons had Father Abraham
I am one of them and so are you
So let’s just praise the Lord.
Right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot,
Right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot, turn around!

On and on and on…and onit goes, until, by the end, we all look like Elaine off of that episode of Seinfeld (whose dancing George Costanza memorably referred to as “a full body dry heave”).

So there you have it: the one permissible Baptist dance, “Father Abraham.” I suppose it makes sense, though. The story of Abraham’s call should make us want to dance, for behind the genealogy and the names and strange locations there is good goodnews!

In the calling of Abram we see God choosing a particular people with universal intent.

If we are not careful, we might miss the amazing shift and pivot that takes place between Genesis 11:9 and Genesis 11:10. Genesis 11:9 concludes the section on Babel, which means it ends with worldwide confusion, conflict, and fragmentation. Then, in verse 10, we shift to another genealogy, another list of names. We might be tempted to think, “Oh boy! Here we go again!” But as we saw with the Table of Nations in Genesis 10, these lists matter. They matter a lot! In this case, the list represents a sharpening of biblical focus away from a worldwide focus and to a focus on a particular people instead. Let us hear our text:

Genesis 11

¹⁰ These are the generations of Shem. When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood. ¹¹ And Shem lived after he fathered Arpachshad 500 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹² When Arpachshad had lived 35 years, he fathered Shelah. ¹³ And Arpachshad lived after he fathered Shelah 403 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹⁴ When Shelah had lived 30 years, he fathered Eber. ¹⁵ And Shelah lived after he fathered Eber 403 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹⁶ When Eber had lived 34 years, he fathered Peleg. ¹⁷ And Eber lived after he fathered Peleg 430 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹⁸ When Peleg had lived 30 years, he fathered Reu. ¹⁹ And Peleg lived after he fathered Reu 209 years and had other sons and daughters. ²⁰ When Reu had lived 32 years, he fathered Serug. ²¹ And Reu lived after he fathered Serug 207 years and had other sons and daughters. ²² When Serug had lived 30 years, he fathered Nahor. ²³ And Serug lived after he fathered Nahor 200 years and had other sons and daughters. ²⁴ When Nahor had lived 29 years, he fathered Terah. ²⁵ And Nahor lived after he fathered Terah 119 years and had other sons and daughters. ²⁶ When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran. ²⁷ Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot. ²⁸ Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. ²⁹ And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. ³⁰ Now Sarai was barren; she had no child. ³¹ Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there. ³² The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.

Genesis 12

¹Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ² And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

You can feel the movement of the text funneling down to a tighter and tighter focus and view. In fact, you could argue that Genesis 11:10 reflects a radical shift in the unfolding story of scripture. We might even say that you can divide the focus of scripture up in this way:

• Genesis 1-11:9: Focus on the World
• Genesis 11:10-Malachi 4:6: Focus on a Chosen People, Israel
• Genesis-Revelation: Focus on the Savior, Jesus Christ

That is to say, we move from the worldwide concerns of creation, the curses after the Fall, the lineages of Cain and Seth, the worldwide flood, the Table of Nations, and the confounding of the nations at the Tower of Babel to the more narrow focus of Seth’s lineage and, specifically, of  Abram and his call to, eventually, the coming of Jesus out of the lineage of Abram. As we will see, the ultimate goal of the story, the revelation of Jesus, reflects back on the entire story revealing that it really was all about Jesus.

What we see, then, in this genealogy at the end of Genesis 11 and the calling of Abram in the beginning of Genesis 12 is the election of a particular people but with universal intent. It is not as if the world spoken of before our text is neglected. Rather, the calling of Abram represents the unveiling of God’s plan to save the world. Put another way, in the calling forth of a people, Israel, as represented in the person of the patriarch Abraham and as culminating in the person of the Lord Jesus, we see a particular election with universal intent. Yes, the focus has narrowed, but the goal is cosmic in scope. Yes, a person and therefore a people are called out, but they are called out so that the world can be reached!

Walter Brueggemann captures this particularity and universality nicely when he writes:

The purpose of the call is to fashion an alternative community in creation gone awry, to embody in human history the power of the blessing. It is the hope of God that in this new family all human history can be brought to the unity and harmony intended by the one who calls.[1]

Particularity: “an alternative community”

Universality: “all human history”

For this reason, we see signs of hope in the genealogy mentioned in the latter half of Genesis 11. For instance, R.R. Reno points out a distinguishing characteristic of this genealogy when compared to the genealogy of Genesis 5.

In the genealogy leading up to the flood, the generations are marked by birth, but also by the refrain “and he died.” The account of the descendants of Shem omits this refrain. The accent falls upon the future represented by birth: the covenant of life.[2]

This refusal to use the term “and he died” gives a note of hope to the genealogy of Shem’s descendants in Genesis 11. Von Rad also observes this of Genesis 12:3:

The thought of judgment…is here almost overarched by the words of blessing (notice the singular “him who curses you” in contrast to the plural “those who bless you”).

That is, the blessings will be greater than the cursings. Thus, this genealogy is bathed in hope and optimism. God is announcing that He is about to do something wondrous in the world!

This particular people was to be a people of radical faith, obedience, and worship.

The wondrous thing that God was announcing He would do in the world had to do with the choosing of a people, the Jews, who I will often refer to simply as “Israel,” for the term is familiar to us. But the choosing of this people begins with the choosing of a person named Abram, who will come to be named Abraham.

Genesis 12

¹Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ² And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” ⁴ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. ⁵ And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, ⁶ Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. ⁷ Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. ⁸ From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. ⁹ And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

Let us first consider the bird’s eye view of God’s calling of Abram. Why would God choose a particular people out of the all the peoples of the earth to be His people? We must remember, again, that God’s intent is worldwide in scope. Yes, He elects Israel, but He does so in order to reach the world. I have always appreciated how C.S. Lewis summarizes this idea in Mere Christianity. He writes:

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended—civilisations are built up—excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down. They are trying to run it on the wrong juice. That is what Satan has done to us humans. And what did God do?…He selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was—that there was only one of Him and that He cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process.[3]

Imagine, if you will, that you are watching a playground filled with small children. The children are unruly, belligerent, and increasingly violent. As you watch, your heart sinks. They are colliding with one another, cursing one another, saying cruel things to one another. Think here of The Lord of the Flies! Then imagine that an idea occurs to you. You decide to go to one little boy and one little girl and pull them aside. They are still in the playground, but, now, you begin to invest in them, to pour into them a different way of playing there. You start sending messengers to them with words from you. Let us call these messengers “prophets.” Then you tell this little boy and girl that you want them periodically to do certain things that will help them remember that you are there, that you are watching, and that you stand in a relationship with them. So you give them rites and symbols and rituals and prescribe certain periodic actions that will help them remember. Let us call this “worship.” Then you give them written letters and books that contain your word and ask them to read and learn and memorize and follow what they find there. Let us call this “scripture.”

Now why might you do such a thing? You might do this because you truly love all the children in the playground but you know that if you can start small with these two and teach them what it means to honor your presence and live in the way that you want them to live then they can be equipped to reach all the others! So you would have chosen those two but your ultimate goal would be to reach and transform everybody on the playground.

This is not a perfect analogy, but neither is it a bad one for what God was doing in calling Abram. He was calling out a particular people to be His people. But what did this call entail? What were to be the characteristics of these called out people? Simply put, God’s call and Abram’s response reveal that this people was to be a people of :

• radical faith
• obedience
• worship

Abraham believed God. Abraham goes to the land to which God called him. And Abraham worshiped God! Paul made much of Abram’s faith in Romans 4 in his explanation of justification by faith.

¹ What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? ² For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. ³ For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

Abram was saved not because of any inherent virtue but because he believed, he put his faith in the Lord God! This is the same way we are saved today. Gerhard Von Rad says of our text:

God now brings salvation and judgment into history, and man’s judgment and salvation will be determined by the attitude he adopts toward this work which God intends to do in history.[4]

This is true insofar as “attitude” refers to “faith.” By grace Abram was saved through faith! So are all who trust in the Lord!

And in Genesis 12:8 we are told that Abram “called on the name of the Lord.” This is a most illuminating phrase! Brueggemann says of the phrase, “‘To call on the name’ means to turn to the one named as the single referent of life.”[5] Yes! That is nicely put. Abram had made God the single referent of life.

Faith. Obedience. Worship. These were to be the characteristics of the called out man and the called out people, Israel. It is also to be the characteristics of the church today!

More than that, they were to be a people from whom God would eventually bring the Savior of all.

On what basis can I say that the characteristics of the called out people are to be the characteristics of the church? I can say this on the basis that this text is truly about much more than Israel. It is about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ! The Protestant Reformer Johannes Brenz writes this of the transition we find in the Bible beginning with Shem’s genealogy in Genesis 11:

Indeed, now Scripture turns its attention to that for which it was chiefly established. For Holy Scripture is not concerned with commemorating the history of all nations, or only with morality, or with the political concerns of one nation or another, nor was it given to teach the arts…Rather, it is concerned to describe true religion and the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that we may thereby pursue true righteousness and eternal salvation…For the primary goal of the sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament pertains to this, aims at this: to describe the offspring of Abraham, who were a people divinely chosen, first, so that Christ would be born from them, and second, so that they might be the custodians of God’s promise regarding Christ until he should come.[6]

Yes, the story of Abram is preparatory for the coming of Christ, for Christ Jesus was an Israelite in terms of His earthly family. In fact, the New Testament is filled with provocative allusions to Abram that make this wider point: the calling of Abram was really all about getting us to Jesus.

Thus, we find this in Matthew 1, in the very first verse of the New Testament:

¹ The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

The link between Abraham and Jesus is established in the very first verse of the New Testament! Then, in Matthew 3, we find Jesus chastising the unbelieving Jews by pointing out that “children of Abraham” need not necessarily be limited to a certain biological people (i.e., biological Jews).

⁹ And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

Here is a fascinating assertion that God can invite whomever He wants into the family and line of Abraham! In Matthew 8, after observing the faith of a Gentile Roman centurion, Jesus says:

¹¹ I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, ¹² while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

This is astonishing, not to say highly offensive to those Jews who saw themselves as the exclusive objects of God’s affection. Here, Jesus goes further than He did in Matthew 3 by saying not only that God can invite whoever He wants to the family table, but also that God can cast out the disobedient sons who have rejected the truth of His own heart and plan of salvation.

In Galatians 3, Paul fleshes this idea out even more by arguing that Christ opens up the blessings promised to Abraham by God to the whole world, to all who will receive Him and call on His name!

⁷ Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. ⁸ 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.” ⁹ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— ¹⁴ so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

Here is an unbelievable statement! “It is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham”! The implications of this are revolutionary! They are revolutionary because they tell us that this story of Abram, of Abrsham, truly is our story, the story of all who receive the Lord Jesus who was the whole point of Abram’s calling in the first place! Paul makes this abundantly clear: “so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles”! This is staggering!

Yes, the story of Abram’s call is the story of Jesus. The story of Jesus is the story of God’s call to the whole world to come home, to come into the Kindgom, to be born again. This message will be highly offensive to those who believe that they alone are the point of the story! Indeed it was highly offensive to Jesus’ contemporaries.

In John 8 we find the single most scandalous assertion concerning Jesus and Abraham. Here, Jesus is once again conflicting with the religious leaders of Israel. They appeal to Abraham in their attempt to express their outrage at Jesus. The conversation unfolds like this:

^53 “Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” ⁵⁴ Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ ⁵⁵ But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. ⁵⁶ Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” ⁵⁷ So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” ⁵⁸ Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” ⁵⁹ So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

Jesus says two things that will guide our unpacking of Genesis from this point forward:

“Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”

“Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

No wonder that the unbelieving Jews “picked up stones to throw at him.” Jesus had just dared to say that He, Jesus, was the whole point of Abraham’s calling, that Abraham rejoiced when Jesus came in flesh to the earth, and, indeed, that Jesus was Abraham’s Lord!

Here Jesus was laying all of His cards on the table. He, Jesus, was the God who called Abram and the object of Abram’s saving faith! So this means that all who trust in Jesus get a place in the story of Abram, for Jesus is the point of Abram’s story!

Now the song and dance make more sense!

Father Abraham had many sons
Many sons had Father Abraham
I am one of them and so are you
So let’s just praise the Lord.

We dance because this is a story worth dancing to! The calling of Abram sets into motion a whole series of events that will reach their fulfillment in Bethlehem! So, yes, let’s just praise the Lord!

 

[1]Walter Brueggemann, Genesis. Interpretation. (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982), p.94.

[2]R.R. Reno, Genesis. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010), p.135.

[3]Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity(C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) (pp. 50-51). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

[4]Gerhard Von Rad, Genesis. Revised Edition. The Old Testament Library. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1972), p.160.

[5]Brueggemann, 124.

[6]John L. Thompson, ed. Genesis 1-11. Reformation Commentary on Scripture. Gen. Ed., Timothy George. Old Testament, vol. I (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012), p.337.