COMA on Genesis 12:1-7

Just received a "friendly mid-week reminder" from leaders to do my preparation for GLUE bible study this Friday, so might as well do it now.

As I mentioned in passing in my last post, this term we are looking at Biblical Theology, which is defined as "the study of God's unfolding plan in the Bible which shows that the central purpose of God is the cross of Christ". So in other words, looking at how the whole Bible is ultimately all about Jesus Christ's work on the cross, and how God has been planning this all along. (Btw, if any GLUE leaders are reading this, please tell me if I'm saying anything heretical.)

This is obvious enough in the New Testament, since it was written after Jesus had already come, but not so obvious when reading the Old Testament.

So anyway, we're looking at Genesis this week. COMA is an acronym for Context, Observation, Meaning and Application - these are the things we're meant to consider about a passage, to be able to read the Bible without misinterpreting it. But I think COMA is a rather unfortunate acronym, especially when you've only had three hours sleep, so to make it more stimulating for myself, I'm going to use MOCHA:

Meaning (do this third);
Observation (do this second);
Context (do this first); and
Help! I can't figure out how to do
Application

Context (Where does it fit?)
Well, this passage is about Abram (that's Abraham before his name was changed) and God telling him to go to Canaan. Go back a few chapters and you'll find the story about Noah and the flood. Abram is a descendant of Noah's son Shem. Chapter 11 is about the Tower of Babel and the scattering of the world's people. So the setting for God calling Abram is a bit of a messed up world - people were really bad so God punished them with a giant flood, and then later people were still bad and tried to gang up against God, so God confused them and scattered them all over the world.

Observation (How is it written?)
Genesis is a historical narrative, and in this passage we have the main characters of Abram and God. The basic plot is that God does some talking to Abram and he obeys.

Meaning (What's it saying and what does it tell us about the bigger picture?)
God tells Abram to "Leave your country...and go to the land I will show you". He promises that He will bless Abram and make him into a great nation, and that all people on the earth will be blessed through him. Which is, like, pretty major stuff. So I guess this passage tells us that not only is God going to punish the sinfulness of humanity, like with the flood and the Tower of Babel, but He will also bless us, which I assume means that at some point the punishment will end. Jesus, Abraham's descendant, will ultimately end God's punishment of humans and bring us eternal blessing.

Help! I can't figure out how to do...
Ok, ok I'll try....

Application (Why does this matter? How does it instruct us?)
Hmmm....now this is where I get stuck because I think I've kind of covered it in Meaning. The passage shows that God is faithful to His people and is planning to do great things, i.e send Jesus. Maybe another thing is that Abram's faithfulness and obedience to God kind of reflects the faithfulness and obedience of Jesus to his Father. Hmmm, not really sure, think I'll just ask on Friday (yes, taking the easy option now). Oh yeah, and I'd like to acknowledge my study Bible: couldn't have done this without it :)