Second Sunday in Lent: Old Testament, Genesis 12:1-9                         

Genesis 12:1-9

The garden account of creation by a limitless God culminates in the creation of the first couple. Human beings who are privileged by the near presence of their Creator and the task of bearing fruit for all He has planned. In an amazing rush, the first eleven chapters bring the entrance of almost everything that marks human life: marriage, children, murder, arrogance, faithfulness, persecution, all the fun stuff. There is a great global judgment on the failures of those early families from which you would think people would learn. But just a couple of chapters hence, we have the height of arrogance played out as mankind dares to make the heavenward climb without the Creator’s assistance. Second major judgment.

Now in the midst of the world “sorting” out its languages and attendant pagan cultures, God chooses one family. From the very bowels of “anti-god” in a land called Ur, God places His hand, His heart and the world’s future in the hands of a man named Abram. A father he will become. A father unlike any human father before or since. For he will carry the words of promise of the salvation of the world with him and will plant those “word-seeds” in all the generations to follow.

Fruit takes time. And the fruit from the ground of Abram’s heart will take all of human history to sort out. But unlike the building of the tower in chapter eleven, God is in the midst of this family. And all who call upon the Lord Jesus today are the seed of that family. Our faithfulness to God, when it shows itself, is always due to those earliest of promises given to “faithful Abram.”

Watch for the fruit certainly. But even better, look for the One who plants the seed.