Gen 12:1 An offer you can't refuse

Gen 12:1   Now 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. (ESV)

Well, now that the preliminary questions have been answered (except the one about leaving his father's household) and the scene has been set I can get into the meat of the promises that God made to Abram. My main concern is to capture something of the huge significance of these and their impact on my life, church, nation and world without getting bogged down. This is not a commentary or a preach or a teaching series. It's just a blog. Let me read this promise again and let God speak to me.    

Actually the first thing that hits me is the command before the promise. I don't think they are easily separated. God tells Abram to leave his country his people and his "father's house" and go somewhere many miles away to a place that he has not yet seen. But this isn't about Abram. God is making his strongest clearest move yet in a plan that gives purpose to the whole of creation.

The command and the promise are intimately linked, like a bullet and the explosive charge that propels it forward. Abram is blown out of Ur by a wind of promise, or looking at it another way Abram is attracted forward by future blessing. The commentators say that the syntax implies that the promises are conditional. That may be but this looks to me to be a case of what theologians term an 'effectual calling'. A more familiar expression might be "an offer you can't refuse". When I became a Christian I responded to the gospel promise of forgiveness, fellowship with God and eternal life. These blessings were conditional on my repentance and faith, yet when God called me he opened my heart to respond ensuring that I would not refuse. The gospel is more than a statement we need to be persuaded of in order to get saved. It is the heralding of God's glorious grace with the power to change the heart and waken the dead.

Reading this passage I am not given the impression that at last God found someone who would respond to his "go". Rather it resounds with the purposefulness and confidence of a sovereign God. The gospel explodes with such supernatural force that souls wake from their sinful slumber and take flight into the purposes of God. As I look out over a company of people and proclaim Jesus as saviour and Lord, people will respond. As the church heralds the gospel in a city people will stream to it. God said "go to the land". We say "come to the saviour". To those whom God chooses to bless, these are offers impossible to refuse.