Scripture Story for the Week
Genesis 12:1-9
God’s Covenant with Abram
Abraham (previously Abram) is known as the father of many nations. This covenant between God and Abraham sheds light as to why he gets that title. Here we see God, who would call Abraham His friend, ask him to leave home, and with only general directions, and travel until God says stop.
While Abraham didn’t know exactly where He was going, He was comfortable in Who he was travelling with. Similarly, Jesus calls us to follow Him as the Way of life but He does not show us exactly where we're going. Abraham trusted his friendship with God – and God sent His own son Jesus to foster trust in Him also. That night when Jesus said, “Trust God and trust also in Me” was followed later with this truth, “there is no greater love than a man lay down his life for his friends. And you are My friends if you do what I say.” As you read Genesis 12, consider how you fit into that covenant. Then finish by revisiting the covenant God made with you through Jesus (Matthew 26:27-28).
Genesis 12:1-9
God’s Covenant with Abram
12 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.”
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.
6 Abram traveled 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.
Like every rabbi in his day, Jesus had two things. First he had a yoke. Not a literal yoke; he was a teacher, not a farmer. A yoke was a common idiom in the first century for a rabbi’s way of teaching the Torah. But it was also more: it was his set of teachings on how to be human. His way to shoulder the (at times crippling) weight of Life – marriage, divorce, prayer, money, sex, conflict resolution, government – all of it. It's an odd image for those of us who don't live in an agrarian society. But imagine two oxen yoked together to pull a cart or plow field. A yoke is how you shoulder a load. What made Jesus unique wasn't that he had a yoke; all rabbis had a yoke. It was that he had an easy yoke. Secondly, Jesus had apprentices.
In Hebrew the word is Talmidim. Is usually translated as “disciples,” and that's just fine, but I think an even better word to capture the idea behind Talmidim is “apprentices.” To be one of Jesus’ Talmidim is to apprentice under Jesus. Put simply, it is to organize your life around three basic goals: (1) Be with Jesus; (2) Become like Jesus; (3) Do what he would do if he were you. The whole point of apprenticeship is to model all of your life after Jesus. And in doing so to recover your soul.
J.M. Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, p. 76, 77