1-11-2020

       Good Morning All, 

          Genesis 12:2; “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

      2020; you know what that means!  The politicians are in Iowa and the race for president of the United States is under way (still continuing?) again.  The media talking heads are picking the front runners, the way out of the running guys, the ones that need to fine tune their message.  So, we will hear the people who run for president make a lot of promises.  They will promise to reduce your taxes, increase government spending on things that are important to you.  They will change the laws so that your views are considered, and you will have great prosperity.  There will many promises made and usually very few, if any, are kept.

    In our verse, we see part of the promise that God made to Abraham.  We call it the Abrahamic covenant.  It is THE promise.  God promised Abraham that he would have many descendants, he would be a great nation and that through him all the world would be blessed.  This was made to Abraham by God and is unconditional and unbreakable.  Unlike the promises of politicians, this one means every word.

    It is the promise that, because of Jesus, is our promise.  Because of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, we are now the heirs, the heirs to this great promise; we are the heirs to this great undeserved, unbreakable covenant.  We are a great nation.  This is what Peter was talking about when he said, “once you were not a people but now you are God’s people (1 Peter 2:10).  We are God’s chosen people.  We have his blessings and his grace poured out upon us.  He took us, a lost bunch of lonely, destroyed sinners and made us his chosen, holy people.  He made us into a great nation.  We are a nation where we are freely forgiven by God and given the inheritance of life everlasting and the certainty of this eternal life with God in the perfected creation.

    We are blessed in that we have this promise to love out right now.  We have God’s promise to love us, to listen to us, to protect us.  We are his people and we are blessed by him right now with his love showered upon us.

    We are his people and we are to continue the work which Jesus started.  When Jesus came into this world, he brought healing; he brought about the reconciliation of man to God.  He began the process of restoring the broken and the wounded, making them whole again.  We are to be a blessing to the world by bringing about healing and restoring the lost and the broken, the hurt and suffering.  We are to bring God’s Word of healing to the lives and struggles of those around us.  We are his people and we are to be a blessing to those around us.

Father of all joy and peace, in you we have hope.  Through your love we have the blessings of this life which you so luxuriously shower upon us.  We are your people; guide us by your Spirit to bring about hope and healing.  Lead us to be the blessing in this world that you desire us to be.  In the precious name of Jesus, we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret