All Families Blessed

An old man stands at the edge of a city, looking out at the open road. He does not know where it leads. But God has spoken to him, and he is going.

His name is Abram, and later God will rename him Abraham. He lives in Haran, a busy trading town in the north, far from the land we now call Israel. His family had come there from Ur, in the south, near the great rivers. Abram is seventy-five years old. He is wealthy, with flocks, herds and servants. But he has one great sorrow. His wife Sarai has no children. In the ancient world, your family was your future: your name, your land, your hope. And Abram has no son to carry any of it on. Then one day, the God who made heaven and earth speaks to him.

God says: leave. Leave your country, your relatives and your father's house, and go to the land I will show you. Notice what God does not say. He does not give a map, or a name for the place. Just go. And then come the promises. “I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing.” God goes on. “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you. All of the families of the earth will be blessed in you.” All the families of the earth. Not just Abram's family. Not just one nation. Every family, every people, every language, everywhere. A childless old man is told that the whole world will be blessed through his children.

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him. Sarai came, and his nephew Lot, with all their animals and servants. They travelled south, hundreds of miles, into the land of Canaan. Picture the slow line of camels and donkeys, the dust, the tents pitched each night under the stars. When they reached a place called Shechem, God spoke again. “I will give this land to your offspring.” Abram built an altar there to worship. He still had no children. He still owned no land. But he trusted the promise, and he kept walking.

Many years went by. God kept his word, and Abraham and Sarah had a son at last, Isaac, born when they were very old. Then came the hardest day of Abraham's life, on a mountain called Moriah, a story we will hear next time. And when that day was over, the angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven and repeated the great promise, stronger than before. “I will bless you greatly, and I will multiply your offspring like the stars of the heavens, and like the sand which is on the seashore. In your offspring all the nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” Stars you cannot count. Sand you cannot count. And through one family, a blessing for all.

Haran was a real place, and its name has lasted for about four thousand years. Ancient documents from the city of Mari, written on clay tablets in the eighteenth century before Christ, mention it as an important town on the trade routes of northern Mesopotamia. Its ruins, still called Harran, lie in southeastern Turkey, near the border with Syria. Abram set out from a town at a busy crossroads of the ancient world.

All families blessed. You'll find it in Genesis chapter twelve, verses one to three, and chapter twenty-two, verses fifteen to eighteen. The New Testament begins by calling Jesus the son of Abraham, the child through whom God's blessing would reach every nation. So here is a question to carry with you. If God's blessing is meant for every family on earth, who could you share it with today?