Sunday, May 4, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Genesis 10-12
Key Verse
Genesis 11:11 — “And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.”
Devotional Thought
Genesis 10-12 traces the great scattering and the great calling. The sons of Noah multiply into the nations—Japheth’s isles, Ham’s Babel and Nineveh, Shem’s line down to Eber and Peleg, “for in his days was the earth divided.” Names we cannot pronounce become peoples we know: Philistines, Canaanites, Egyptians. Then Babel: one language, one proud resolve, “let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name.” God comes down to see it—an irony too deep for words—and confounds their speech, scattering them across the earth. The chapter closes with a quiet genealogy, generation after generation of Shem’s line, until we reach Terah, and Abram, and Sarai, who “was barren; she had no child.”
On this Lord’s Day, when many of us gather with the people of God, it is worth remembering that we gather as the scattered. Our languages, tribes, and nations are Babel’s legacy. Yet into that scattering God speaks a word of gathering: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee.” Abram is seventy-five, settled in Haran, and God asks him to leave everything familiar. The promise is staggering—a great nation, a great name, blessing to all families of the earth. And Abram went.
Notice where this story sits: right after Babel’s proud name-making comes God’s gracious name-making. The world tried to seize a name and lost its voice; Abram receives a name by faith and becomes a blessing. Not because Abram was strong—he wasn’t. Not because Sarai was fruitful—she wasn’t. Grace chose the barren and the wandering.
And notice, too, that Abram’s faith is not flawless. Famine drives him to Egypt; fear drives him to call Sarai his sister. Yet God preserves him even in his failure, plaguing Pharaoh’s house and sending Abram out with his wife and all he had. Our failures do not cancel God’s promises. The God who called Abram out of Haran is the God who keeps His covenant even through our stumbles.
This May Sunday, we who are scattered by sin and language and distance are invited into the same promise: in Abram’s seed, all families of the earth are blessed. The call still comes—leave what is familiar, go where God leads, trust the promise more than the famine.
Reflection
- Where in your life is God asking you to leave what is familiar—like Abram leaving Haran—and trust a promise you cannot yet see fulfilled?
- When famine or fear tempts you to take matters into your own hands, as Abram did in Egypt, what does this passage reveal about God’s faithfulness to His covenant despite your failures?
Prayer
Father, we come as the scattered children of Babel, our tongues confused and our hearts prone to wander. Yet You spoke to Abram and called him out of Haran into a land of promise, and in his seed You have blessed all the families of the earth. Teach us to leave what is familiar when You call, to trust Your promise more than our famine, and to rest in Your faithfulness even when our faith falters. Preserve us as You preserved Sarai in Egypt, and make us a blessing to those around us this day. In the name of Jesus, Amen.