Abraham, Our Father

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0:00 Okay, so tonight we're going to begin by discussing, we're going to go backwards a little bit. Tonight we're going to be talking about Abraham, our father in faith. But before we talk about Abraham, we have to talk about Abram. And before we talk about Abram, we have to see how the narrative in Genesis 1 through 11 prepares us for Genesis 12 when Abram comes onto the scene. He actually comes onto the scene in the end of chapter 11, but he'll really be on the scene in chapter 12. And the first 11 chapters of Genesis are almost kind of like a preface or an introduction to what's going to really begin, really get going with Abraham, our father in faith.

1:04 And so we have these different genealogies in Genesis 1 through 11. We begin with Adam, we begin with Adam, and we see that through Adam, Adam fathers Cain, who's the firstborn, but Cain does not get the blessing of the firstborn, the blessing that the father gives to the son. Rather, he sins. He murders his brother Abel, and the other son who's given is the son Seth. And Seth retains the blessing. Okay, so we see genealogies going down from Seth. And from Adam, we have 10 generations through Seth. So we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. And then the 10th generation is in Noah.

1:54 And so the narrative continues through Noah, and Noah has three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Shem is the firstborn. Shem does not forfeit the blessing of the firstborn, but we do see a particular curse given through Ham to Canaan in Genesis 9. Now, going through Shem, going through Shem from Noah, we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and then the 10th generation is with Terah. And Terah has three sons, and his firstborn is going to be Abram. Abram.

2:50 And all throughout Genesis, Shem and Abram are the only two firstborn sons not to forfeit the blessing that's given to them. We'll see with Jacob and Esau. Esau is the firstborn, but Jacob gets the blessing. Because Esau sells his birthright for a cup of porridge, for a bowl of porridge. He's so hungry. We'll find out next week when we get into the rest of the patriarchs. Patriarchs means order of fathers. Patris Arche. The order of fathers. So these are our fathers in faith. And so Genesis 1 through 11 brings us to Abram.

3:40 And right before Abram, we have, in Genesis 11, we have the Tower of Babel. And in the Tower of Babel, we see God disuniting humanity by confusing their languages when they try and build this Tower of Babel. Now, the people who built the Tower of Babel were the descendants of Ham. The Hamite king Nimrod went to the land of Shinar, and then they built this tower, okay, which you could be likened to. It could actually be one of these ziggarets from, you know, in the Middle East. And your textbook shows one of those. And so we have this line through Ham trying to make a shim for themselves, trying to make a name for themselves. And I want to introduce you, if I haven't already, and I believe I did mention this in a previous session, is the Book of Jubilees.

4:35 And the Book of Jubilees is intertestamental literature. Okay, so it's between the Old Testament and the New Testament. It's not a part of Scripture. It's not divinely inspired. But it is a commentary on the Book of Genesis, a Jewish commentary. And so if we want to see how Jews read this narrative, a great way to go is to the Book of Jubilees. And, of course, there's no copyright, so you can find it online. You can just do a Google search for Jubilees. And Jubilees gives us some of the interpretive clues for Genesis 1 through 11. And one of the things that Jubilees talks about is how Ham was trying to kind of, basically, you remember he uncovered the nakedness of Noah. And so this term, uncovering nakedness, implies maternal incest, uncovering the nakedness of your father.

5:54 And so we see in this intertestamental literature that just as Ham, the reason that Ham did this, that he uncovered the nakedness of his father, and then possibly the fruit of that maternal incest is Canaan. And Ham did this in order to assert his authority, to try and get the birthright. Just as Absalom did this to his father David in Jerusalem. Absalom kicked his father David out of Jerusalem and slept with the concubines. And this was to say, hey, look, I'm now the king. I'm, like, going to have a coup, like what's going on in Thailand right now, you know, to make this kind of contemporary. But Noah, in response to this, blesses Shem by saying, you know, blessed is the God of Shem.

6:51 And then he curses Canaan. So we have curse and bless. We have blessing and cursing. And this is in Genesis 9. And this will, again, the reason I'm telling you this is because this will lead as an introduction into what we see in the narrative of Abram. And so Jubilees talks about how Ham, as Ham did this to Noah, as he tried to basically usurp Noah's authority as the father figure. So Canaan did this to Seth by settling in the land that was rightfully Seth's, which is the land of Canaan. Okay, so the land of Canaan, let's say here's the Sea of Galilee. Here's the Jordan River.

7:41 I'm sorry. Did I say Seth? Okay, thank you. Scratch that. The land of Shem. Thank you for the correction. It just proves I'm not infallible. So we have the Sea of Galilee. It goes down to the Dead Sea down here. We have the Great Sea, as it's referred to in the Bible, or the Mediterranean. And I know the Rexroads are very familiar with this territory after that cruise, which next year they're going to give to me because they're going to like this Bible study so much. And so this land of Canaan, we're told in Jubilees, is rightfully the land of Shem, not the land of Seth. Okay, and so we're going to see Abram starting on this pilgrimage to the land of Canaan. And later on we'll see Abram's descendants taking over the land of Canaan.

8:39 And Jubilees says, this is right because, hey, this is Shem's property. This is what he deserves. This is not Canaan's. Canaan usurped Shem's property just as Ham tried to usurp Noah's authority in Genesis 9. Do we know how that happened? I mean, how did Canaan get it? How did he get it? I don't know. I think he ran out there and he... Yeah. I guess he put his stake out first. I guess it was like... What's that movie where they're Irish and has Tom Cruise in it? Yeah. What's it called? Far and Away. Yeah, it's like Far and Away, I guess. You know, they ran out there. But Canaan tripped, you know, Tom Cruise and got there first and put his flag in the land. And so let's turn to Genesis 12.

9:31 And let's start reading the Genesis narrative. But before we begin reading the narrative, go ahead and turn there, is to note that what God is trying to do from the time of Adam is that God wants to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. God wants to reunite the human family. And so, guess what? The human family is being reunited under Nimrod, Ham's descendant. The Tower of Babel. Humanity is coming together, speaking the same language, building a tower. You know, so God should be happy about this, right? Well, no. God wants unity, but he doesn't want unity born out of violence or political motives or, you know, barbaric power. This isn't the type of unity that God desires.

10:21 God rather desires unity through humility, unity through the covenant. He wants unity on his terms, not on man's terms. And so we're going to see, we see humanity trying to go its own way, making a name for itself. And then we see God uniting humanity through Adam, through Seth, through Noah, through Shem, through Terah, through Abram. And then later, through Isaac, then through Jacob, then through Judah, and all the way down through Joseph and Mary into Jesus. And this is how God's going to reunite the human family. And so, okay, let's go ahead and turn to the narrative in Genesis chapter 12. And where did God call Abram from?

11:13 Ur, the Chaldeans? No. Actually not. That's what I thought at first. I was reading something, and I said, oh, he called him out of Ur. Now, it does say that Terah, in verse 31 of chapter 11, it says that Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and brought them out of Ur, the Chaldeans, to go to the land of Canaan. Okay, so Terah was the one who brought Abram out of Ur. But God didn't call Abram out of Ur. God called Abram out of Haran. And in your book, where is it? I believe it's like around page 77, or maybe that was last week. We were looking on page 77. But we'll see the journey, the map, of where Abram traveled.

12:05 Page 89. Thank you. Page 89 in your books. You'll see the map. And you'll see how Abram comes from Ur, which is in Mesopotamia, around modern-day Iraq. Goes through Babylon, goes up, and he's in Haran, is where God calls him out of. And so Haran is way in the northeast. It's in Assyria. When, in the day of Israel, when Israel was in the land, this would be the Assyrian empire, Haran. And so God calls him out. And we see in chapter 12, the Lord said to Abram, Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father's house to a land that I will show you. Now, God doesn't say, you know, he says, the land I will show you, but he doesn't give the coordinates.

13:03 He just says to a land that I'll show you. And then he makes a promise. God makes a three-fold promise. And I'm sure you're already well aware of what this three-fold promise is if you've read the chapter. But I'm going to go ahead and write them up here. The first promise is he says, I will make of you, he says, go to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you. So he says, go to this land, and I will make of you a nation. Excuse me, a nation. And so this is the first promise. The second promise is, I will make your shim great. Or in other words, I will make your name great. So that you will be a blessing. Okay?

13:51 And this is a Hebrew idiom, just like to uncover the nakedness of your father is an idiom for maternal incest. So, I will make a shim for you is like saying, I'm going to make a kingdom for you. I'm going to make a dynasty for you. Okay? This is a Hebrew idiom. I'm going to make a name for you. So, this is the promise of a kingdom. And we'll see more about this in Genesis 17. Okay. And then, interestingly, he says, I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you. So, we see cursing and blessing. And, you know, not necessarily in that order.

14:43 And this is kind of a literary clue. The author is saying, hey, when was the last time that there was cursing and blessing? Back with shim, right? God blessed shim and cursed Canaan. And in the same passage, we have him saying, I will make your shim great. Okay? I will make your shim great. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. It's like a literary clue. He's kind of alluding back to Genesis 9. And he's saying, what, what's, what, basically, what I'm doing is I'm, what I wanted to do through shim is what I'm now doing through you. You're, you're through shim's line, and I'm going to continue this, this, this covenant. I'm going to continue this divine plan of salvation through shim, through you.

15:35 All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you. Now, this is huge. Because all the communities of the earth, not just the Arameans and just the Israelites, or just the Edomites and just the Israelites, So this is going to be worldwide blessing. And another way of saying worldwide is Catholic. Remember, Catholic comes from the two Greek words, kata, holos, according to the whole, all encompassing. And so in the Catholic Church, we, God's salvation is blessing doesn't come to just those who are of Israel by the flesh, but rather anybody and everybody from any nation worldwide can become a part of God's family.

16:35 And so we'll see that the concept of Catholicity goes all the way back to Genesis 12, verse 3. Okay, let's go ahead and continue here. Abram went as the Lord directed him, this is in verse 4, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he left Aram. I'm sorry, Haran. Okay, so Abram was 75. Now what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to go backwards again a little bit, and I'm going to set you up, because the author has set us up in a good way. This is a good setup. And let's turn back a little bit to chapter 11, verse 10. Chapter 11, verse 10.

17:35 And we'll see that we have another Toledoth, another genealogical line. This is the record of the Toledoth, or of the descendants, of Shem. When Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arpachshad, two years after the flood. Shem lived 500 years after the birth of Arpachshad, and he had other sons and daughters. Okay, so here's Shem, and Shem lived how long after the birth of Arpachshad? 500 years. So let's go ahead and count this up.

18:22 Now numbers are important to Hebrews. Numbers are never just given there just arbitrarily. There's literary clues here, and we're going to look those up. Now I put this A here with a period after it to abbreviate Arpachshad, because we're going to be going through some names here that are going to be a little difficult. So Barbara, would you please keep reading, beginning with verse 12. When Arpachshad was 35 years old, he became the father of Shelah. Arpachshad lived 403 years after the birth of Shelah, and he had other sons and daughters. When Shelah was 30 years old, he became the father of Eber. Shelah lived 403 years after the birth of Eber, and he had other sons and daughters. When Eber was 34 years old, he became the father of Peleg.

19:18 Eber lived 430 years after the birth of Peleg, and he had other sons and daughters. When Peleg was 30 years old, he became the father of Roy. Peleg lived 209 years after the birth of Roy, and he had other sons and daughters. When Roy was 32 years old, he became the father of Seiroth. Roy lived 207 years after the birth of Seiroth, and he had other sons and daughters. When Seiroth was 30 years old, he became the father of Nahor. Seiroth lived 200 years after the birth of Nahor, and he had other sons and daughters. When Nahor was 29 years old, he became the father of Terah. Nahor lived 119 years after the birth of Seiroth, and he had other sons and daughters.

20:10 When Terah was 70 years old, he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Terah. Okay, thank you so much, Barbara. And so what I'm doing here is I'm saying that what we're doing is we're counting up the years here, beginning with our Pachshad's birth. And here an Abram was born, and the narrative picks up when Abram is 75 years old, right? Okay, let's go ahead and add these up here. We have 5 plus 9 is 14, that's 16, that's 25. We'll carry the 2. We'll have 5, that's 8, that's 11, that's 14, that's 17, 29, 36. 165 years have passed since the birth of our Pachshad, right? And Shem lives 500 years after the birth of our Pachshad, right?

21:03 So Shem, by the time the narrative picks up in Genesis 12, has another 135 years of life left. In fact, Abram lives another 100 years. Abraham dies at the age of 175. So, since he has another 100 years to live, Shem actually outlives Abraham by 35 years. And being, back then, I mean, it wasn't like, you know, you maybe kind of forgot who your grandfather was, because maybe you had a divorce in the family, and, you know, you moved on, and you moved to another country or something. No, back then, families were tight-knit. Yeah, certainly.

22:02 And who was the last person to receive the blessing? Shem, right? Let's skip forward a little bit, and we'll go to Genesis 14. Genesis 14, verse 18. And we have this really weird pericope. A pericope is like a section of scripture, okay? And it's about this mysterious character named Melchizedek. Now, Melchizedek, in chapter 14, verse 18, is shown in the midst of these battles between these kings and Abram and these kings. And so we have Melchizedek. And Melchizedek's name means what? Melchizedek means king.

23:04 And Stek means righteousness. Or, you know, one who has justice. King of righteousness. And who is Melchizedek king of? Who's his kingdom? Salem. So he's the king of Salem. And Salem comes from the same root as shalom, which means, if you're Jewish and you say shalom, what are you saying? Peace. Okay? So it's like Pax Christi, peace of Christ. Well, we say shalom, Christi. Okay? Or shalom, peace of the Messiah, shalom, Mashiach. There you go. Okay, so we have, so he's the king of peace. Do you guys ever remember one of these titles of Jesus?

23:55 He's the prince of peace. I will live my life for you. Who, you guys listened to, who authored Prince of Peace? Okay, you guys don't know. Okay, so we have this king of righteousness who's the king of Salem. And by the way, guess where Jerusalem gets its name from? Jewish tradition has it that Melchizedek was king of what later would become Jerusalem. Okay, and Melchizedek blesses Abram with what? What are the gifts he blesses him with? Bread and wine. And is Melchizedek from the line of Levi, the son of Israel?

24:53 So is Melchizedek a Levitical priest from Levi? No, Levi hadn't even been born yet. Israel hadn't even been born yet. I mean, so in the time of Jesus, to be a priest, you had to be from the tribe of Levi. You had to be a Levitical priest. But the New Testament says that Jesus is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, who was without number of days. Now, some people interpret that as saying, okay, well, Melchizedek just appears on the scene and then he disappears. It must be like he was never born or he never died. And that's what Jesus is like. No, that's not what Hebrews means when it says that Jesus is a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Rather, Melchizedek is a priest. And he gets his priesthood from being the firstborn son.

25:43 Okay, by being the son of, who is Shem the son of? Noah. He doesn't get his priesthood from being a Levite. And we'll notice that Jesus is not from the tribe of Levi, but he's from the tribe of Judah. So how can Jesus be a priest, the Pharisees say, or the Jews say? How could Jesus be a priest if he's not from the tribe of Levi? Well, we'll learn later on that the Levitical priesthood was not, it didn't come from the beginning. The Levitical priesthood was kind of like putting a patch or a bandage on a wound. And the Levitical priesthood is done away with, with Jesus. But we'll see more about that later. But I'm just bringing this up so that later on when we talk about the Levitical priesthood, you'll see what I mean. And that when the book of Hebrews says that Melchizedek was without number of days, what it means is that in order to be a Levitical priest, you had to prove your lineage all the way back to Levi.

26:39 You had to prove, you know, your birthright all the way back to Levi. Well, Melchizedek doesn't have a birthright going back to Levi. In fact, he's much older than Levi, as Levi doesn't even exist yet. And so that's what the author of Hebrews means. And so here we have a great foreshadowing of Jesus. We have the King of Righteousness, who's the King of the earthly Jerusalem, which means peace. And he blesses Abram's family with bread and wine. And in the New Covenant, we'll see the King of Righteousness, who's the King of the heavenly Jerusalem, who blesses his family with gifts of the Eucharist. Okay, bread and wine become his very own body and blood. And in this, so let's see this narrative.

27:31 We have, Blessed be Abram by God Most High, the creator of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High, who delivers your foes into your hand. Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything. Okay, so I just wanted to bring this up, because this is a very important passage. And get this, the earliest Jewish commentaries on scripture, in the Targums and Midrash, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, even Martin Luther, knew that Melchizedek is Shem. This is common knowledge. I think the book of, I think the book of Jubilee states it as well. Not sure, but I would, I would, I would not bet the house on it, but I would bet five bucks. Now, nobody bet me, please. Because that five, that five dollars can really multiply here. Okay.

28:19 And so that, that's, this is just a really cool little biblical insight that kind of, it continues the narrative. It shows how, uh, Abram is here to continue the, the covenant blessing. Now, now we're going to get into a really, oh, by the way, Melchizedek is both a king and a priest. And Jesus, as Messiah, is not just our high priest, and he's not just our king. But he's both king and priest. He's a royal priest, a royal priest, or a priestly king. Which, uh, which Melchizedek really foreshadows Christ. Yes. Did you say, uh, Melchizedek was Shem? Yes. One in the same person. One in the same person. I'm sorry, I'm just kidding.

29:08 One in the same person. Does that count? How do we know that? Well, Shem is, still has 135 years to live in the time of Abram. And the last person to get the blessing in Genesis was Shem, through Noah. And now we have, it's like, and now we have this royal priest king blessing Abram. So where does he get this blessing to bless from? Noah got his blessing from his birthright. How does, how does Melchizedek get the blessing to bless Abram with? And, and it, it may not seem as, as big of a deal to us. Because we're like, well, couldn't you have just blessed him because he was a nice guy? And, you know, I say God bless you. I mean, does that mean I have to get my blessing from somewhere? Well, we're, we're getting this interpretation from early Jewish commentaries. This was what, this is the way that they read the Bible.

29:56 This is a Hebrew worldview. And so, and it kind of shows how the narrative continues, how Shem, uh, passes on this blessing to Abram. Yes? So, in order for Shem or anyone to pass a blessing on, are they about ready to die? Or, how do they, how do they decide it's time? How do they decide it's time? Pass the blessing on. You know, I don't know. Um, I know that the, uh, um, I know that in, in some cases the, the blessing was passed on right before death. Other times not. Like, for instance, Ham wasn't near his death, uh, when he, I mean, I'm sorry.

30:46 Noah was not near his death when he blessed, uh, the God of Shem, and then he cursed Canaan. It would just happen to be when, after he built a vineyard and he got drunk. The narrative doesn't say he was on his deathbed. So, apparently he gave his blessing at that time. We'll see that when, uh, later on, that when Jacob supplants Esau and fools his father, uh, Isaac, Isaac gives the blessing to Jacob and not to Esau. Even though that Isaac loved Esau more and wanted to give the blessing to him. But there, there was a little, there was a little tomfoolery going on. And so, we see the blessing being given, and the, the blessing couldn't be taken back. I, I, Isaac couldn't take the blessing back from Jacob and give it to Esau once it had been given and had been given. Um, and so, and he was, and he was so old, scripture says that Isaac was so old that he couldn't see.

31:41 So, you know, he was so poor a vision and what, and Esau was really hairy. And it says that, um, Rebecca, their mother, uh, wanted Jacob to get the blessing. So, she dresses Jacob in like fur. And so, he goes up and lets, you know, Isaac kind of feel his arm. And then, he gives the blessing to Jacob thinking that he's giving the blessing to Esau. Um, and so, with regard to age, I don't think that's really necessary. You have to be on your deathbed. But this is a way of passing on the covenantal authority. Who's going to be the head of the household and of the representative of the covenant. And so, the, uh, biblical scholarship is showing us that before Levi. Yes. Sure, sure, go ahead. No, the, no, the blessing, the blessing, the blessing is where God is working through the covenant.

32:39 Where the covenantal authority continues. Basically, it's an authority that you have. Okay? So, we're going to see later on when the blessing continues through the kings of Judah, they're going to have the covenantal authority. And if you break off from the kingdom of Judah, you, you aren't in, you aren't, you aren't doing what God wants you to do. He wants you. I would, I would say that the people between Shem and Abram did have that authority. Uh, that he, that they're just showing that the blessing went to Abram. They're, the author is really trying to emphasize that. Now, it may be the case that they never got the blessing. That, yes, Abram is a descendant from Seth.

33:27 I mean, I'm sorry, from Shem. But, and then Shem really did live to be that age. And he really did give the blessing directly to Abram and didn't give it to any of his children. But he gave it to his great, great grandson. Yeah, this is not, this is not like divine communication. This is not, I'm, because I have the blessing, I can talk to God. That's not what that is. Rather, having the blessing is, is like authority. And you, and you get this authority from your father, not directly from God. It's happening through human mediators. Right, he did not. And that's an, that's an important point that you bring up. Because actually, that's the next point I'm going to make. Is that God did not directly give the blessing to Shem.

34:19 Okay? I mean, God, before the blessing was given through human mediators. It was given from father to son. And, and, and notice that, from father to son. You know, the father blesses the son. Or he'll curse the son. And the curse is, is redemptive. It's not purely punitive. But the punishment of the curse is meant for redemption. It's meant for good, eventually. And so, we have a, the father blesses the son, or curses the son. And this is happening in humans, or blessing or cursing. And then with Abram, we don't just have his father, Terah, or just Shem blessing. But we have God himself blessing Abram. And so, this shows that God is a father who's blessing his son, Abram. Who he wants to bless the rest of his children, all the families of the earth, basically through Abram.

35:19 So, God wants to bless all of his children. He considers all the families of the earth his wayward children that he wants to bring back into line under the covenant. And this is where we move into Genesis 15. So, let's go ahead and turn to the beginning of Genesis 15. I'm skipping over some of Genesis here, some of the narrative. I'm passing over the four kings, Abraham and Lot partying, Abraham and Sarai in Egypt. By the way, do you guys know, Abram came from Ur of the Chaldeans, which was a very wealthy place. It's where his family originally came from. And then he went forth to a land that God called him to go to. And there was a famine in the land. And he goes down to Egypt. He comes out of Egypt.

36:06 He comes back to the land. His nephew, Lot, gets in dire straits. And Abram acts as the redeeming kinsman to kind of redeem Lot from this situation. And so, he redeems Lot, gets him out of this situation. Do we know of anybody else in salvation history who humbled himself and took the form of a slave? You know, came down from where he was rich and went down to Egypt. As soon as he got to the promised land, he went right down to Egypt and then he came back up. And then he ends up redeeming his kinsmen. Abram is a type of Christ. Christ comes down from heaven, goes to the promised land. He's born in Bethlehem.

36:53 Almost immediately, he goes down into Egypt. He comes back and he redeems us through his paschal mystery. So, again, Abram is a type of Christ. Now, in Genesis 15, we have, Sometime after these events, this word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram, I am your shield. I will make your reward very great. But Abram said, O God, what good will your gifts be if I keep on being childless and have as my heir the steward of my house, Eleazar? Abram continued, See, you have given me no offspring, and so one of my servants will be my heir. Then the word of the Lord came to him, Know that one shall not be your heir. Your own issue, your own seed, your own son will be your heir. He took him outside and said, Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can.

37:50 If you can. He only says it once, I'm just giving emphasis. Just so, he added, so shall your descendants be. Abram put his faith in the Lord who credited it to him as an act of righteousness. He then said to him, I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, and this is where people say, you know, God did bring Abram from the Ur of the Chaldeans. Well, he did through his father Terah, but the call began in Haran where he really called him, to give you this land as a possession. This land as a possession, the land of Canaan, which shouldn't be Canaan's, it should be Shem's. O Lord God, he asked, how am I to know that I shall possess it? God answered him, Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.

38:45 He brought him all these, split them in two, and placed each half opposite the other. But the birds he did not cut up. Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram stayed with them. As the sun was about to set, as the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram, and a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him. Then the Lord said to Abram, Know for certain that your descendants shall be aliens in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation they must serve, and in the end they will depart with great wealth. You, however, shall join your forefathers in peace. You shall be buried at a contented old age. In the fourth time span, the others shall come back here.

39:36 The wickedness of the Amorites will not have reached its full measure until then. When the sun had set, and it was dark, there appeared a smoking brassiere and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces. It was on that occasion that the Lord made a covenant, a berit, with Abram, saying, To your descendants, and the Hebrew is Zerah, which literally means seed, to your seed I give this land. From the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenazites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephime, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

40:26 Okay, now, what did we learn from the emphasis I laid upon Scripture? When God commanded Abram to look up at the sky and to count the stars, how many stars did Abram count? It hadn't gotten dark yet. That's right. It didn't even get dark. It was still day. So what kind of faith would you need to see the stars if you can't even see the stars? See, there's more in the text than what you readily see on first glance. The first time this was pointed out to me, I said, What are you talking about? I didn't say that. I looked back at it, and I went, Oh my gosh, it does. Okay? And how many stars did Abram see?

41:17 One. The sun. Right? So, Abram sees one star, the sun, and God says, you know, count the stars and how many descendants you'll see. And Abram only saw one of his, you know, figuratively speaking, he saw one of his sons, he saw Isaac. He didn't get to see all of the billions of sons that he would end up having, especially in the new covenant. But he saw Isaac. And by faith, Abram knew that God was going to bless him through Isaac. And so, Abram had this great faith. And it says, Abram put his faith in the Lord who credited it to him as an act of righteousness. Abram had this great faith.

42:05 And this is what pleased God. And this is very important because later on, Paul, in the epistle to the Galatians, is going to refer back to this text as an argument against those people who say that you must be circumcised when you're a Christian to be saved. And Paul will say, no. Let's go back to Genesis 15, 6. Abram put his faith in the Lord who credited it to him as an act of righteousness. Is Abram circumcised now? No. Is Abram pleasing in the sight of the Lord through faith? Yes. But circumcision is not there. And this is why we have Paul making this argument in Galatians back to this verse. Is that Abram was justified before the Lord he had a right relationship with the Lord without ever being circumcised.

42:56 And this is going to be very important for Paul. Okay, so. We're going to start here with Genesis 15. And in Genesis 15, this covenant, this berit, is made with Abram. And the nature of the covenant making... By the way, when it says that you would enter into a covenant, it would say you would cut a covenant. And that comes from the sense of cutting the animals. That through the sacrificial animal, you're establishing this covenant. And so you're cutting the animals, so you're cutting the covenant. And we see that the animals were cut in half, right? And so this is like a covenant oath. God is...

43:42 God himself is going in the smoking brassiere and the flaming torch is going between the animals saying, if I transgress my covenant, let what happened to these animals happen to me. Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye, chop me in half, pour salt to my bleeding wounds, let me be cursed, basically. If I transgress this covenant, now God doesn't have to do this. God already promised. That's all we should have. I mean, we don't need a covenant beyond God's promise. And Hebrews 6, which we covered in an earlier session, talks about how God's covenant is just God just loving even more. He's just saying, guys, look, you can trust me, really. And so we have this covenant made with Abram and we have animal pieces in part of the covenant cutting process.

44:33 Covenant pieces. We also have a darkness enveloping Abram. Let me see here. Where is the darkness? Verse 12. A deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him. So we have this darkness and there's terror. We also have smoke and fire. So we're having a barbecue. And this will eventually foreshadow Independence Day barbecues. And then we have a prophecy of Egyptian slavery.

45:25 By the way, you guys should go over to A&M to like the Lupo's bookstore and they have those really cool Aggie seat cushions. I really recommend those. So we have a prophecy of Egyptian slavery. And notice, not just the promised land, but all of Arabia is promised. All of Arabia. This, at the end of chapter 15, from the Wadi of Egypt, I mean, from the Wadi of Egypt, way down at the Wadi of Egypt, all the way to the Euphrates. I mean, this is a huge land that's being promised. And we see this especially being fulfilled when we have Israel wandering in Arabia. Okay? Israel is in this land, but not fully.

46:13 It hasn't gotten to basically the center of this land, the land of Canaan, which it's eventually going to aim towards. And this covenant will be fulfilled in the person of Moses. And when Moses formed, when God forms a covenant with Moses at Mount Sinai, part of the Mosaic covenant is animal sacrifice. This is a big part of it. At Mount Sinai, darkness, there's darkness and terror. The Israelites are afraid to climb Mount Sinai because they didn't purify themselves. Actually, they didn't abstain from sexual relations as they were supposed to, as God had commanded them. They couldn't hold themselves back. And so we'll see more about that when we get into it.

47:00 Smoke and fire envelop Mount Sinai. And right before Sinai, they're in Egyptian slavery for 400 years. So this covenant made with Abram is going to be, is basically making a covenant out of the first promise, land and nationhood. And through Moses, Israel is going to become a nation. This is going to be the covenant at Mount Sinai is what this covenant points to. And so you, Israel is going to become a nation. Worship is going to be centered upon the tabernacle, which is a, the tent of the nomadic people. And Torah is going to be the law of the covenant, the first five books. The Torah.

47:47 Remember the Tanakh? The Torah, the Nebim, the Ketuvim? And then let's go ahead and see here. Now between this covenant and the covenant of circumcision in Genesis 17, a big event occurs. Does Abram continue in his faith? And does he, you know, wait for Sarai to have a son? No. Rather, she actually, at her prompting, he goes into his Egyptian concubine or maidservant, Hagar. And bears, and she, and Hagar has the son of Ishmael.

48:35 Ishmael. Through Hagar. And for you guys in the back who can't read this, the doctor's up here. Okay. He'll give you his card afterwards. And I'm going to keep writing. He asked me before the study to write smaller and smaller. So, so don't blame me. Okay. And then, so basically, he does not, adhere to God's promise, but he goes ahead and tries to, you know, go through a loophole and say, aha, I'm going to have an heir through Hagar as I can't possibly have an heir through Sarai. Now, notice that Hagar is an Egyptian and Abram has already been to Egypt and he brought Hagar out and now he's kind of going around God's covenant by using this Egyptian concubine.

49:25 Now, later on in history, one of Abram's descendants, or actually a whole slew of them are going to go down to Egypt and they're going to depart Egypt with wealth just like Abram did and then they're going to, they're going to still have Egypt stuck on their hearts. Okay, the life of Abram is kind of like a foreshadowing of what's going to happen to Israel. Okay, so now we go to, let's go to verse 15 at the end of 16. Hagar bore Abram a son and Abram named the son whom Hagar bore him ishmael, which means God has heard. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael. Okay, Abram was 86 and then we skip one verse to verse 1 and it says when Abram was 99 so 13 years went by.

50:15 Boom, it's like those movies, you know, when the scene kind of fades out and it says 13 years later, you know, this is what's happening here. And notice that Ishmael is 13 years old when the narrative picks up. when Abram was 99 years old, chapter 17 verse 1, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am God the Almighty. Walk in my presence and be blameless. Okay, has Abram been walking in God's presence and being blameless? No, this is like a, you know, this is almost like a judgment. God's saying, come on, walk in my presence and be blameless. between you and me, I will establish my berit, I will establish my covenant and I will multiply you exceedingly.

51:03 Now, what does Abram's name mean? Abram. Exalted father. Exalted father. When Abram prostrated himself, God continued to speak to him. My covenant with you is this. You are to become the father of a host of nations. No longer shall you be called Abram, your name shall be called Abraham, for I am making you the father of a host of nations. What does Abraham mean? Father of a great multitude. So he goes from being an exalted father to being a father of a great multitude. And we'll see this fulfilled in the next covenant that the covenant in Genesis 17 will point two.

51:54 I will render you exceedingly fertile. I will make nations of you. Kings shall stem from you. Okay, so we have kings will stem from you. I will maintain my covenant with you. And your descendants after you throughout the ages as an everlasting covenant to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land in which you are now staying. The whole land of Canaan. So we have Canaan being promised. Narrows it down a little bit more. As a permanent possession and I will be there God verse nine God also said to Abraham now we're at Abraham and this covenant now is being made with Abraham not just Abram God also said to Abraham on your part you and your descendants after you must keep my covenant throughout the ages.

53:03 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you that you must keep every male among you shall be circumcised. So the covenant that comes right after Genesis 16 is I misspelled circumcised didn't I circumcised it has an S not a Z look at me okay so the punishment kind of fits the crime you know Abram was unfaithful he didn't stay in this faith and he commits this kind of lack of faith and so he gets circumcised and circumcision is kind of like the symbol of having a hard heart this is kind of Jewish thought that before you're circumcised it's kind of like and circumcision is like getting off the old flesh and kind of like newness comes from that and we'll see Saint Paul pick this up in Colossians when he teaches about baptism okay circumcise the flesh of your foreskin verse 11 that you and that shall be the mark of the covenant between you and me so this is also known as the covenant

54:21 of circumcision throughout the ages every male among you when he is eight days old shall be circumcised by the way this is why there's a venerable ancient tradition of Christians baptizing their children on the eighth day and the early church Christians pick this up from circumcision on the eighth day including houseborn slaves and those acquired with money from any foreigner who is not of your blood yes both the houseborn slaves and those acquired with money must be circumcised thus my covenant shall be in your flesh as an everlasting covenant if a male is uncircumcised that is if the flesh of his foreskin has not been cut away such a one shall be cut off from his people he has broken my covenant okay this is in a certain sense kind of the covenant oath by which you enter into the old covenant for men anyhow and it's so serious that if you don't do it you're in trouble as for your wife Sarai

55:25 do not call her Sarai her name shall be Sarah I will bless her and I will give you a son by her him also will I bless he shall give rise to nations and rulers of peoples shall issue from him okay Sarai and Sarah are different versions of about the same name and they mean they indicate royalty among a woman like a princess or a queen okay this is kind of the most prevailing interpretation I've seen is princess so if you want to name your daughter princess go right on the head name her Sarah okay and then Abram said to God let but this is verse 18 I'm skipping a verse then Abraham said to God let but Ishmael live in your favor come on God look I procured an heir through Hagar what about him let him live in your favor God replied nevertheless your wife Sarah is to bear you a son and you shall call him Isaac okay because in verse 17 Abraham prostrated himself and laughed and said can a man be

56:34 born can a child be born to a man who is 100 years old or can Sarah give birth at 90 so he laughs so Isaac's name means he laughs okay and in verse 20 as for Ishmael I am heeding you I hereby bless him I will make him fertile and will multiply him exceedingly he shall become the father of 12 chieftains and I will make of him the great nation but my covenant I will maintain with Isaac whom Sarah shall bear to you by this time next year okay are you in the medical field okay you guys ever see babies getting circumcised in the medical field at all actually Gloria here worked in the was it you who worked in the same hospital when I was born Hillcris Baptist hospital in January of 1979 Gloria was working in surgery in surgery when I was born there really odd small world man Texas gosh we're just a bunch of inbreeds we all live in the same place so here we have Isaac is supposed to be born in one

57:35 year and God says get circumcised now so Abraham is thinking here he's saying okay she's going to have a son through me in one year and I have to get circumcised right now I mean you have three months buddy to gear up I mean to basically get over your wounds and then notice in verse 25 I'm skipping down a little bit verse 25 and his son Ishmael was 13 years old remember 13 years old when the flesh of his foreskin was circumcised now among Israel Israelis and Arabs circumcised at 13 years old they're real mainly you know it's a rite of passage it's like their quinceanera or you know their bar what's a bar mitzvah would be the guy right it's like their bar mitzvah not the bat mitzvah but the bar mitzvah we're going to circumcise you at age 13 but the Israelites were a little bit more merciful they did it on the eighth day so and notice and notice here that we have infants entering into the

58:43 covenant with no I mean they didn't have anything to do with this on the eighth day their parents choose it for them and in the new testament we'll see Paul saying that baptism is the circumcision of the new covenant and the early church fathers would point to this and they would say see St. Paul is talking about baptism being a new circumcision and pretty much all Israelites were circumcised in the eighth day it never happened beyond that because you were always circumcised by your parents unless you were a God fearer and you became an Israelite and you're really fearing God before you become an Israelite because that's why things will issue from Sarah we have circumcision the land of Canaan being given and here we have a foreshadowing of the covenant that's going to be made in 2 Samuel 7 with David and with David's son Solomon and under David and Solomon the kingdom the structure is going

59:55 to be not a nation but a kingdom and the worship is going to be centered not around a nomadic tabernacle like a tent that you can pick that the Levites pick up and carry to the next destination but rather it's going to be a temple built in Jerusalem and the law of the covenant is going to be the wisdom literature the Psalms are going to be the hymnal for the temple okay the wisdom literature in Jewish tradition emanates from Solomon and the wisdom literature is very all encompassing it talks about the Psalms talk about all the nations okay they include it's more catholic it includes more than just Israel whereas the first five books pertain you know just Israel Leviticus is just for the Levitical priests and the holiness code for the rest of the people of Israel and this is very nationalistic whereas this becomes more kingdom like not so much nationalistic and then we're going to read in

1:00:59 Genesis 22 of the third covenant that God makes with Abraham now again this second covenant Genesis 17 is a fulfillment of the second promise in Genesis 12 verse 2 and that promise was I will make your shim great I will make a dynasty for you I will make a kingdom for you and so yes Genesis 17 reminds you of Adam and Eve and the temptation Sarah gives Hagar to Abram and you know what I'll bet you that that's not just coincidence I'll bet you that's part of the narrative is that just as Noah committed kind of the same kind of sin as Adam did Noah got basically got drunk from the fruit of the vine so Adam got basically ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and so Abram kind of eats the fruit of you know he's not supposed to have yeah that's very it's a great insight that's really good at least he gets it and not the woman Eve got labor and she got he got circumcised so you know

1:02:21 there's pain for both parties here okay so let's go ahead and turn we have Genesis 18 we have Abraham entertaining visitors and I love verse 15 of chapter 18 verse 15 of chapter 18 because she was afraid Sarah dissembled saying I didn't laugh but he said yes you did and I just love that verse it's just like stick it to you okay so Abraham intercedes for Sodom chapter 19 we have the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah we have the story explaining the origin of the Moabites and the Ammonites in chapter 19 starting with verse 30 and then we have chapter 20 Abraham at Gerar 21 we have the birth of Isaac so a year has passed and we have the birth of Isaac so it says in verse 3 of chapter 21 Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son of whom Sarah bore him okay verse 12 of chapter 21 but God said Abraham do not be distressed about the boy or about your slave woman heed the demands of Sarah no matter

1:03:35 what she is asking of you for it is through Isaac again God emphasizes through Isaac the descendant shall bear your name okay we have the we have in verse 22 and on in chapter 21 we have the pact or the covenant at Beershevah which we covered in a previous study session where we talked about the covenant between Abimelech and Abraham the seven ewe lambs it's the covenant of seven or it's the covenant of oath it's the Beershevah covenant oath and seven are like the same word Shavah and now we get to chapter 22 and this is one of the most fascinating aspects of the Old Testament I think it's just absolutely amazing because it's such a foreshadowing of the new covenant I just gave it away so and this covenant is going to be made with Abraham's Zerah or his seed the Hebrew word is Zerah you put an H here just for linguistic purposes and so this is where the third promise in Genesis 12 3 that

1:04:53 worldwide blessing is going to happen through Abraham and now Abraham's descendants Abraham's okay verse 1 of chapter 22 sometime after these events God put Abraham to the test he called to him Abraham ready he replied then God said take your son Isaac your only one not Ishmael but your only son now Abraham has two sons but God is saying your only son because this is the covenant is going to be happening through so we have an only son okay whom you love and go to the land of Moriah there you shall offer him up as a holocaust from a height that I will point out to you it's early the next morning Abraham saddled his donkey took with him his son Isaac and two of his servants as well and with the wood that he had cut for the holocaust him on the third day so we have the third day Abraham got sight of the place from afar then he said to his servants both you both of you stay here with the donkey

1:06:10 while the boy and I go over yonder we will worship and then come back to you there upon Abraham took the wood for the holocaust and laid it on his son Isaac shoulders because Abraham's too old to carry the wood so we have this young strapping man Isaac carrying the wood up this mountain in the land of Moriah okay and laid in on his son Isaac's shoulders this is in verse six while he himself carried the fire in the knife as the two walked on together Isaac spoke to his father Abraham father he said yes son he replied Isaac continued here are the fire and the wood but where is the sheep for the holocaust son Abraham answered God himself will provide okay and the Hebrew there is Jehovah Yireh God will see to it or God will provide then the two continued going forward when they came actually I'm sorry Jehovah Yireh actually isn't in that verse it's actually going to be in verse 14 there's a different

1:07:25 verb used for in verse 8 don't let me confuse you verse nine when they came to the place of which God had told him Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it next he tied up his son Isaac and put him on top of the wood on the altar and so this event is known as the Akedah among Jews because it's the binding that's Hebrew for the binding of Isaac allows for himself to be bound to the altar so Isaac is involved in this willingly in this event then he reached out this is in verse 10 and took the knife to slaughter his son but the Lord's messenger called to him from heaven Abraham yes Lord he answered do not lay your hand on the boy said the messenger do not do the least thing to him I know how devoted you are to God since you did not son okay so not only the only son but he's beloved he's an only beloved son as Abraham looked about he spied a ram caught by its horns in the thicket

1:08:36 the thicket is where the lamb was and he offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son Abraham named the site Yahweh Yireh hence people now say on the mountain the Lord will see to it or the Lord will provide again the Lord's messenger called to Abraham from heaven and said I swear by myself again here's the covenant oath that affects the covenant you have to in order to have a covenant you have to have the oath I swear by myself is God was God going to swear by you know Hercules or Zeus no from me your beloved son I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing all this because you obeyed my command so we have worldwide blessing catholic blessing not just national blessing

1:09:49 or just you know a national kingdom type blessing but this is going to be worldwide all the families all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed and so we have the faithful father we have Abraham is being faithful to God he's being a father who's faithful and we have this holocaust on Moriah and we have the third dimension Isaac is bound to the wood the thicket kind of you know the ram is kind of caught in the thicket we almost kind of have an imagery of like thorns kind of keeping the ram in this thicket okay so we have thorns and we have a pre enactment of the new covenant we have God the father the faithful father offering his only beloved son who right before he's offered he is crowned with the crowning of the thorns he's bound to the wood of the cross he carries his own cross up Calvary and guess where Calvary is it's in the land of Moriah let me see if I have the verse here

1:11:04 if I wrote it down it's in first chronicles actually I have it written down here in my Bible is where it is it's in Moriah is in first chronic I'm sorry second chronicles three one in second chronicles three one we learn that Solomon built the temple in the land of Moriah on one of the on one of the hills of Moriah and so here's the temple mount in Jerusalem in the land of Moriah Calvary is right outside of the gates of Jerusalem on one of those hills and so we have Calvary is one of the hills actually in the land of Moriah so this again is I mean just the imagery is just popping out you see this is how Jesus could say to the disciples on the road to Noah we saw him in Adam we saw him in Abraham now we're seeing him in Isaac we're seeing him in this whole we're going to continue to see Jesus all throughout the Old Testament and so here what we have here is we have a map we have a blueprint

1:12:20 for the rest of the Bible we're going to have salvation history going through Moses and eventually through King David and right up into Jesus and on through into the church age and salvation history right now is still going forward it hasn't ended yet okay now let's turn to Hebrews chapter 11 and those of you who have the Bible tabs are just going to be right there so put your siblings to shame and tell them that they need to get those Bible tabs Hebrews 11 verse 17 Hebrews 11 verse 17 Barbara would you please read verses 17 and 18 by faith Abraham when put to the test offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises was ready to offer his only son of whom it was said through Isaac descendants shall bear your name he reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead and he received Isaac back as a symbol by faith regarding things still to come Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau okay that's

1:13:56 good thank you so Hebrews tells us that Abraham was expecting somehow for his son to be raised from the dead now is the author of Hebrews just putting words in the mouth of Moses or whoever wrote Genesis is maybe the author of Hebrews going too far and reading the resurrection back into this event I would say not I would say that the author of Hebrews is right in line by saying that Abraham by faith expected to receive his son back in the resurrection and this is a shadow of things to come because God said I mean how many times did God said through Isaac your only son through Isaac not through Ishmael through Isaac no not through Ishmael through Isaac and then God says kill Isaac I what's Abraham to think God can't go against his promise he certainly can't go against his covenant and now he wants me to kill the only one through whom we're going to have kings

1:15:03 being issued and a nation growing up and worldwide blessing and now you want me to kill him I mean the only explanation I could find is if Abraham somehow Isaac were to be raised from the dead but he's still obeying him by sacrificing him but still you have to have faith in the resurrection I mean you got to have the faith that the resurrection is going to happen you know that's still faith I mean if someone I mean if God were to say to me okay Carson I want you to go slay your wife right now and he doesn't say anything about the resurrection he just says that we're going to have an heir through my wife and he says go slay her and so I kind of infer that from that there might be a resurrection I mean that's still a lot of faith that's still saying okay I I'm thinking that possibly there's going be a resurrection okay where's the angel you know I mean still a lot of faith it's still the obedience

1:16:11 that happens and also what's really interesting is other pagan gods demanded child sacrifice and we'll find out later on in the life of Israel that Israelites actually succumb to this and they actually end up offering their children in sacrifice to these pagan gods because they basically take on this idolatry and so in a certain sense this is God saying I'm not like these other gods who demand child sacrifice you may have thought so for a moment but rather I'm a God of love so let's go ahead and close in prayer since we've hit the 830 in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen heavenly father you are faithful you are faithful and we thank you for your faithfulness we thank you for a God who is so generous who is so trustworthy and so with great awe and great thankfulness I just thank you I thank you for these scripture verses for these passages that really confirm

1:17:32 my own faith that really helped me see what you did in Jesus and what your plan is for us as Christians and so I just offer you so much thanks I also ask that as we depart from this place this evening that we would go forth from this study tonight with a greater appreciation of your love may we reflect that love in our lives may we follow Abraham our father in faith may we offer our lives to you in self sacrifice but we know Lord we cannot do this without your grace so we ask for that grace we praise you and we bless you amen in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen