Genesis 11:31 Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan; and they went as far as Haran, and settled there. 32 The days of Terah were two hundred and five years; and Terah died in Haran. 12:1 Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; 2 And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; 3 And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” 4 So Abram went forth as the LORD had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
Out of all the people on earth at that time, why did God choose Abram to call out and go to the land that would become Israel? Why did God promise to make Abram into a great nation and bless him? It is a haunting thought to think about this when one thinks of why God does things. Abram was most likely a pagan in the land of Ur who worshipped false gods. But we must also remember that while God operated on sovereign grace, this grace was also connected with the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent. The Bible, though some think of the genealogies as boring, gives us a direct link from the seed of the woman (Seth) to Abraham. This is vital. In Genesis chapter 5 a genealogy is given that traces the line of Seth from him to Noah. Then in Genesis 10 we have the lines of the children of Noah traced, and the blessed line of Shem is traced to Tera (Abram’s father) and Abram himself. What we see, then, is the promise of God to crush the head of the serpent being remembered as we see the seed of the woman continuing on. By sovereign grace God makes a line from the woman and then takes Abram from that line.
On the one hand it is easy to get lost in the genealogies and miss the bigger point, but all of this is still the plan of the sovereign God who saves sinners by grace alone. The curse of God on the serpent is grace to those who will be delivered from the bondage of being children of the serpent and become children of God by grace alone. But if we did not have the Scriptures giving us the sovereign grace of God in setting out this line by grace, all we would see is the sovereign grace of God choosing one man from a group of idolaters and starting a nation through him that would eventually be the physical line of Christ Jesus. In the New Testament, all the spiritual seed of Christ are in the line of the seed of the woman. There is nothing about works or merit for salvation, it is all of grace and nothing but grace. Here we see the intent of God to show how much He loves His own glory and how much the love within the Trinity flows. God saves sinners apart from anything in them to make them meritorious or desirable.
There was nothing but sin in Abram by nature or action when God chose Him. The Scripture gives us no reason at all why God would choose Abram but that God chose Abram. No reason is given why God chose Abram from all the other people on earth to be the father of a nation. No reason is given why God decided to make Abram great and bless him. What we see, when the Lord graciously opens our eyes, is the beauty and marvel of God being moved by Himself to keep His promise in crushing the serpent and saving sinners. What we see is the grace of God which is always moved by God’s love for God rather than anything found in sinners. How easy it is to get lost in trying to figure out this and that and simply miss the real glory of the passage and that is God’s hand of grace working a way to manifest the glory of His grace and the grace of His glory. It is God on display in this text and not another. We must learn to view Scripture through the lenses of God’s love for Himself and His glory rather than focusing on Abraham. We must learn to view Scripture through the lenses of the will and plans of God rather than the will and plans of men. Humanism and idolatry are there when we focus on man rather than God.
In Genesis 1 and 2 we see nothing, but then God created. In Genesis 3 we see sin, but then the grace of God. In Genesis 6ff we see the sinfulness of man and the judgment of God, but Noah was shown grace. Then in Genesis 11 we see an idolatrous people as part of the Chaldeans, but God. It is just like in Ephesians 2:1-3 where we see man as dead in sins and trespasses just following the ways of the world, “but God” is what happens in verses 4-5 when He makes man alive because of His love and also because of His grace. It is so common in our day to point men to self and to the will of self, but Scripture knows nothing of that. Instead of that, it looks to the inability and helplessness of man and points man to the ability and help in the free grace of God.
God Loves... Himself 
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