Reading the Bible Together

The Passage for the Day

1 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.     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. 7The 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.

Points of interest:

• ‘The LORD had said to Abram’—as I mentioned in the introduction, the Bible often narrows its focus to one individual or family.  This is certainly one of those cases.  The first eleven chapters of Genesis mostly look at things on a global scale: the creation of the world; the judgment, and subsequent rescue, of the whole earth; the spreading of humanity into a multitude of nations that fills the whole earth.  Then, here in chapter 12, we’re introduced to Abram (more commonly known as Abraham), and for the next thirty-eight chapters Genesis follows his history and the history of his immediate family.
•  ‘I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you’—Abram is childless, and he and his wife are already beyond child-bearing years.  In Abram’s culture, to have no children was a great shame, a sign that he was cursed.  God says, ‘Far from it.’  Abram is uniquely blessed, will be all the more blessed, and will be the ancestor of a great nation.  He is destined not simply to have a son to carry on the family name, but to be the father of a multitude.
•  ‘and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you’—Abram’s descendants will be a great nation, but the greatness isn’t at the expense of any other nation.  Rather, the blessing of Abram’s children is to the benefit of everyone else.  God pays special attention to Abram, while at the same time caring deeply for the rest of the world.
•  ‘Abram went, as the LORD had told him’—while the people of Babel actively resisted God’s mandate to go and fill the earth, Abram quickly and wholeheartedly moves on when God prompts him.  Maybe this is what distinguishes Abram.  He has a trusting relationship with God, and because of that he’s able to accept the blessing God has for him.  It’s not so much that God prefers Abram, as that Abram actually says ‘yes’ to what God offers. 
•  ‘To your offspring I will give this land’—the land eventually becomes the land of Israel, named after Abram’s grandson.  In the 400 years between God’s promise here and the people of Israel inhabiting the land, it came to be known as the Promised Land.

Taking it home:

•  For you: It can be frightening to step out beyond what is safe and well-known, but Abram’s story tells us that the greatest opportunities often involve stepping into the unknown.  Have you felt any nudges to move beyond your comfort zone recently?  Ask God to give you the faith to step out and see what happens.
• For your six: Abram’s relationship with God is based on two very simple things: God speaks to Abram, and Abram hears God speaking.  Pray that your six would have just that kind of relationship with God.  Ask God to speak to them, and pray that they would be able to recognize when God does.
• For America: God promises Abram that his nation will be blessed, but not at the expense of other nations.  I think God is saying something that applies uniquely to Abram, but maybe God is also stating a general truth: the welfare of the nations is intertwined; they rise and fall together.  Especially during difficult economic times, it can be tempting for nations to pull back from the rest of the world and try to solve their own problems.  History tells us that it does indeed make things worse in the end.  Pray that our nation would resist the urge to seal off from the rest of the world and go it alone, and ask God to bless us in ways that are of real benefit not just to us but to the rest of the world as well. 

²³ Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. ²⁴ But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. ²⁵ He did not need human testimony about them, for he knew what was in them.

John 3

Jesus Teaches Nicodemus

¹ Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. ² He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

³ Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.”

⁴ “How can anyone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. ⁶ Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. ⁷ You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ ⁸ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

⁹ “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.

¹⁰ “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? ¹¹ Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. ¹² I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. ¹⁴ Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵ that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

¹² See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. ¹³ But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. ¹⁴ We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold firmly till the end our original conviction. ¹⁵ As has just been said:
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion.”

¹⁶ Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? ¹⁷ And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? ¹⁸ And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? ¹⁹ So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

¹³ And the LORD said to me, “I have seen this people, and they are a stiff-necked people indeed! ¹⁴ Let me alone, so that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.”

¹⁵ So I turned and went down from the mountain while it was ablaze with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands. ¹⁶ When I looked, I saw that you had sinned against the LORD your God; you had made for yourselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the LORD had commanded you. ¹⁷ So I took the two tablets and threw them out of my hands, breaking them to pieces before your eyes.

¹⁸ Then once again I fell prostrate before the LORD for forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water, because of all the sin you had committed, doing what was evil in the LORD’s sight and so arousing his anger. ¹⁹ I feared the anger and wrath of the LORD, for he was angry enough with you to destroy you. But again the LORD listened to me. ²⁰ And the LORD was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, but at that time I prayed for Aaron too. ²¹ Also I took that sinful thing of yours, the calf you had made, and burned it in the fire. Then I crushed it and ground it to powder as fine as dust and threw the dust into a stream that flowed down the mountain.

²² You also made the LORD angry at Taberah, at Massah and at Kibroth Hattaavah.

²³ And when the LORD sent you out from Kadesh Barnea, he said, “Go up and take possession of the land I have given you.” But you rebelled against the command of the LORD your God. You did not trust him or obey him. ²⁴ You have been rebellious against the LORD ever since I have known you.

²⁵ I lay prostrate before the LORD those forty days and forty nights because the LORD had said he would destroy you. ²⁶ I prayed to the LORD and said, “Sovereign LORD, do not destroy your people, your own inheritance that you redeemed by your great power and brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. ²⁷ Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Overlook the stubbornness of this people, their wickedness and their sin. ²⁸ Otherwise, the country from which you brought us will say, ‘Because the LORD was not able to take them into the land he had promised them, and because he hated them, he brought them out to put them to death in the wilderness.’ ²⁹ But they are your people, your inheritance that you brought out by your great power and your outstretched arm.”

For the director of music. A maskil of David. When Doeg the Edomite had gone to Saul and told him: “David has gone to the house of Ahimelek.”

¹ Why do you boast of evil, you mighty hero?
Why do you boast all day long,
you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God?

² You who practice deceit,
your tongue plots destruction;
it is like a sharpened razor.

³ You love evil rather than good,
falsehood rather than speaking the truth.

⁴ You love every harmful word,
you deceitful tongue!

⁵ Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin:
He will snatch you up and pluck you from your tent;
he will uproot you from the land of the living.

⁶ The righteous will see and fear;
they will laugh at you, saying,

⁷ “Here now is the one
who did not make God his stronghold
but trusted in his great wealth
and grew strong by destroying others!”

⁸ But I am like an olive tree
flourishing in the house of God;
I trust in God’s unfailing love
for ever and ever.

⁹ For what you have done I will always praise you
in the presence of your faithful people.
And I will hope in your name,
for your name is good.