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Looking BACk to Advent is only part of the meaning of Christmas. Looking FORWARD to Jesus' second coming was his main fixation. (Special thanks to Rev. Elliot Cherry of Midtown Fellowship Church- 12 South Site- in Nashville, TN for the insights provided here. Check Elliot's pulpit ministry out here.)

God is now ready to mark Abram out as a unique family of God, his agents of transformation in a broken world. But the manner and means that he does that will strike many as bizarre, but when you understand the meaning of circumcision, the purpose of the church emerges.

As God makes big promises to Abram, the patriarch asks a perfectly natural question, "How can I know this is all going to work out." God's response to that simple question results in one of the most astounding passages in all of Scripture, and the key to what we mean by "grace."

Genesis 12 is the break-through point in the "story thus far." Suddenly, God calls a childless pagan to be the head of a new family that'll carry the mission of God through to completion. It's a commission that God's people still have even in our day, to remake the world for his glory.

We live in a world that totters on the brink of collapse, it seems, from a lack of certainty about the world. But God's covenant (contract) with Noah shows that God's people can have a radical foundation for our relationship with the world, with justice, and in our own hearts.

There is a very strange tidbit of a story in Genesis 6:1ff that is so odd that many are tempted to consign the Bible over to an absurd document of superstition. But if you dig into its meaning, you might find it opens us up to an unseen realm where God orders the world.