The Greatest Story Ever ToldSample

Act 2: Rebellion, Part 2—The In-Between

What God prophesied to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, He promised to Abraham in Genesis 12. And our good, loving, three-and-one Creator God always keeps His promises. 

God promised Abraham that there would come a day when the whole world would be blessed through his family. At the time God made this promise, Abraham was a nobody from nowhere, and God was telling him that someday his family would bless everyone from everywhere! 

There were just a few things that needed to happen first. You see, God was preparing humanity and the world for the day when sin would be defeated, and Jesus would become king. 

God picked a specific family to become a set-apart nation to bring salvation to the world. That family grew and grew until eventually, a famine hit their land. So, they traveled to Egypt to find food. Little did they know, their trip to Egypt for food would result in 400 years of slavery. 

Why would God allow His people to go through that? He promised that He would bless them and use them to bless the world! How is that supposed to work while they’re slaves in Egypt? Did God abandon them? 

No. God was always working. He is always working. Even in the waiting. Even in the in-between. Before God does something significant through us, He often does something significant in us. 

God wanted this specific family to become a set-apart nation. A nation that was very different than the other nations of the world. A nation that embraced the things God embraces. A nation of people who understood what it was like to be powerless and abused so that they would use their power for the good of others and not just themselves. 

And it worked! For a while at least. The problem was that this set-apart nation was still full of sinful people. They kept rebelling against God. God kept giving them grace. Because our good, loving, three-and-one Creator God always keeps His promises. And He promised that there would come a day when this set-apart nation would bring salvation to the world. 

This is the story the Old Testament tells. The story of God picking a specific family to become a set-apart nation that would eventually bring salvation to the world. Because it was from this nation that Jesus would be born.