000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

According to Rabbi Nathan 1), but Genesis knows nothing of this association.
Nevertheless, the preacher could help the congregation trace the
development from serpent-as-misguided-creature to serpent-as-devil as a
way of helping the congregation recognize how tradition changes over
time. Other passages in the New Testament allude to this text, for example,
2 Corinthians 11:3; 2 Timothy 2:14; and Revelation 12:9–15; 20:2.
Second Sunday in Lent/Year A
Genesis 12:1–4a
Second Sunday in Lent/Year A 33
Genesis 1–11 is primeval history focusing on God’s attempt to work with
all peoples at once to bless the human world. In Genesis 12:1–3, God
works with one family as a model for others. In Genesis 12–16, the ancestral
couple is known as Sarai and Abram but in Genesis 17 God changes
their names to Sarah and Abraham to represent the divine promise.
Sarai and Abram had moved from Ur to Haran, the latter roughly five
hundred miles from Canaan (Gen. 11:27–32). God’s call to Sarai and
Abram is an act of sheer grace, unmerited favor. Nothing suggests that
God chose them because they had merit. The couple is to go from Haran
to the as-yet-unnamed land that God would show them. They separate
from their family, an act that was dramatic in antiquity.
The promise to Sarai and Abram contains six parts: (1) God will make
of them a great nation. Their influence is not self-serving but is in the service
of blessing. Because of the circumstances of the ancestral couple
(Abram was seventy-five years old and Sarai was barren, Gen. 12:4; 11:30),
this part of the promise seemed unlikely. (2) God will bless Sarai and
Abram. Blessing, here, refers to total quality of life: material security, supportive
community, shalom. (3) God will make their name great so that
they will be a blessing. As we learn from the changes in names in Genesis
17:5–6 and 15–16, this promise is not for the self-glorification of the two
human beings but is missional, for their names and their life story point
to God’s power to bless. (4) God will bless those who bless Sarai and
Abram. But (5) God will curse the one who curses Sarai and Abram. (6)
In them, “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
By immediately beginning the journey, Sarai and Abram model how a
person or a people should respond to God’s call. In Genesis 12:7, God
indicates that the land of Canaan is the land that God will give them. A
morally troubling point is that God eventually took the land away from
the Canaanites to give it to the descendants of Sarai and Abram.