This is John from Bible Project, and we are in the middle of a series called The Family of God.

How God created all humanity as one family.

And while we've become different tribes and nations spread out all over the land with different languages and cultures,

the biblical hope is that all of humanity will come together to represent God with all of our diversity.

Now, the entire plot of the Hebrew Bible is that God is going to accomplish all of this through one family,

the family of Abraham and his son Isaac, who become the nation of Israel.

But here's the thing, Abraham has lots of other kids other than Isaac, like Ishmael, his firstborn.

And he also has a lot of children from his wife Ketura, a woman he marries when Sarah dies.

In fact, in Genesis chapter 25, we get a list of all the names of these other kids and their descendants

and the nations that they become.

And it's easy to get bored when we read genealogies in the Bible.

But this one's really important.

What's happening, these genealogies are populating the biblical world,

and you're going to meet all of these families again later in the story, and they're all hostile.

These are the nations that Israel fights against throughout the story of the Bible.

In the end, this is all sibling rivalry.

This is a very realistic depiction of the human story, a strange sibling.

It's a thing.

And somehow, through it all, God is going to bring blessing to all of these nations, through Israel.

But what we learned pretty early on is that God didn't choose Israel

because they are a gold standard of what it means to be human.

He's choosing to bring his blessing to the many nations through one family.

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