Genesis: God’s Chosen People
Is This Favoritism?
To continue this look at Jacob and the future nation of Israel, we must understand who God’s chosen people are and why they are His people, to begin with. As we have seen in recent posts, God has made a covenant with Abraham that he will be the father of many nations and have multiple descendants. Not the least of which includes Christ Himself. Through these very people, God reveals to the rest of the world His glory, His law, and His gospel. As the Bible Project correctly notes, “The last line of God’s blessing to Abraham says, “And all families on earth will be blessed through you” God chooses this one family to be the vehicle of his blessing to all families.” God chose these people from the very beginning, and from the very beginning, He had a plan for them. But why just these people? Does God picking Israel as His chosen nation and people show God’s favoritism? Is God bigoted toward other people and nations because of this? How can we rest in a God whose love seems to only be for the nations that He chooses? All of these questions are vital to answer and yet can be easily answered by looking at two points, who are the nations of Israel and what did they do? With these two prompts in mind, let’s dive in.
Who Were They?
To start, let’s look at who the nations of Israel were. These nations are known in the Old Testament as ‘The 12 Tribes of Israel’. Genesis 49 gives us a great picture with insight as to how the 12 tribes of Israel will ultimately come to be. In this chapter, Jacob gathers his sons before him one last time to bless them and prophecy to them about what God has shown them for their lives and those that come after them. Once all of this is concluded, Genesis 49:28 tells us, “All these are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is what their father said to them when he blessed them. He blessed them, everyone with the blessing appropriate to him.” To see just who these 12 men were, we are given a list earlier in the story to see what the names of each of these men are and which wife of Jacob they came from. Genesis 35:22-26 says, “...Now there were twelve sons of Jacob— the sons of Leah were Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn, then Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun; the sons of Rachel were Joseph and Benjamin; and the sons of Bilhah, Rachel’s female slave, wereDan and Naphtali; and the sons of Zilpah, Leah’s female slave, were Gad and Asher. These were the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Paddan-aram.” These are the 12 sons of Jacob and the future 12 tribes of Israel that will fulfill the covenant that God made with Abraham. But what about people that don’t come from the lineage of one of these men? Does this mean that they are not able to be saved or rescued by God? By no means! Remember that in the original covenant between God and Abraham, God tells Abraham that ‘all nations’ through him would be blessed. If that’s true, why even have a chosen people? Why not just bless Abraham and use him to bless the world right from the get-go? This question is answered when we look further into why God chose these nations in the first place.
Why Choose?
So why did God choose these 12 tribes? The first answer to this question is that He needed to fulfill His covenant with Abraham. But beyond that is the reason that was addressed at the beginning of this post. Christ Himself will ultimately come from one of these nations. In fact, if we go back to when Jacob blessed his 12 sons before he died, we see him say this to Judah in Genesis 49:10 “The scepter will not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes, And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” This ‘scepter’ that we see mentioned here leads us to believe that a king is coming from the tribe of Judah that will never end His reign. This king of course, is Christ Himself. This leads us to the ultimate answer to this question. Why did God choose these 12 tribes? Because of Christ. Just as we have addressed in multiple posts previous to this one, God has made a way for His people to be saved because of His righteousness and nothing else. If Christ coming through the line of Judah was dependent on Judah never sinning, Christ would have never come. If God could only have a chosen people who were perfect and sinless, God would never have a chosen people. It is only because of God’s righteousness and God’s perfect plan to save humanity that He chose a fallen man, to bring forth fallen nations, who would ultimately bring forth a perfect savior.
This is indeed how ‘all nations’ are blessed through Abraham. Because whoever repents and believes in the gospel of Jesus Christ is blessed and considered a child of Abraham because they have partaken in this covenant. It doesn’t matter what your background is or what nationality you are, all are welcome to become children of Abraham and God’s chosen people by believing in the gospel. This is why Jesus tells us in John 14:6 “Jesus *said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” Jesus does not tell us that the way to the Father is by being born of a certain nation or by following a certain set of rules. We only get to the Father by Christ and Christ alone. God’s chosen people may indeed have been brought forth from Abraham through the sons of Jacob, but this was by no action of their own. God chose for Himself a people in order to show the world His glory and righteousness and lead the lost back to Himself. Just like we learned from the Abrahamic covenant, I hope and pray that as we look at these covenants, people, and nations that God has chosen, we wouldn’t turn a blind eye to them simply because they were written in the Old Testament. May we take the truth of all of God’s Word and use it to lead our lives to be more like Christ.
Sources
[1] Blue Letter Bible. (n.d.). Blue Letter Bible. https://www.blueletterbible.org/
[2] Quinn, C. (2024, July 15). Who has God chosen? BibleProject. https://bibleproject.com/articles/who-has-god-chosen/
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