God, in Genesis 12:3, provides Abraham with a promise: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
The Old Testament missionary message begins with God’s original revelation of Himself in Genesis 1, but His missionary mandate is first made clear in His promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3. God promises Abraham the second verse that He will make him into a great nation. Where God scatters humanity throughout the world after they try to make themselves great by constructing the tower of Babel, God is now going to make Abraham and his bloodline into a great nation. God chooses Abraham to be the channel through which He will divulge His presence to all humankind. The Lord called him to separate himself from his accustomed social and spiritual setting and migrate to a strange country, where God directed a 100-year spiritual renovation, shaping him into the father of
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Where was he going? God is not entirely precise about that. The Lord just tells Abraham to go without specifically telling him where to go. What is specific is that God is calling him out of his father’s house, and away from his idolatry.
In Genesis 12:3 our unique God has now chosen a man to have a unique relationship with all humankind. Though His election of Abraham and his offspring serves a specific purpose in His mission, God’s mission through Abraham to the nations is not at all specific to just the Israelites.
In Exodus 19:5-6, God tells Moses that if the Israelites follow His commandments they will be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” At the same time, He exhorts his ownership of the whole world. His election of Israel as a “kingdom of priests” is to achieve His mission to all humankind. To be a holy nation, wholly God’s, Israel must separate themselves from all the other nations and stay untarnished by sin if they are to signify the holiness of God before the rest of the