40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 29

Episode Date: November 4, 2015

A bunch of bunny trails and Abraham making the same mistakes again. It's not a half bad episode. Have a listen....

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, Dan here. Dear listener, if you enjoy 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, I'm guessing that you would enjoy some of the other things we have going on at the newchristholdfast.org. We have a new article up every morning, Monday through Friday. We have five podcasts, a videocast, and we're doing a conference in February. There's other things we want to do, and all of this takes an enormous amount of time. All of this content is free, but we do need to be able to hire somebody to help us manage it, to get it out on time, and to keep the quality high.
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Starting point is 00:01:24 Good morning. And Chad Bird. Good evening. All right, good morning. Whatever time of day it is you're listening. It's good day, guys. Good day. Good day.
Starting point is 00:01:35 Howdy. Howdy. Howdy. Here in Texas. Howdy. That should be your go-to. Yeah. Howdy.
Starting point is 00:01:43 It's my new social media all-internet response and greeting is howdy. Howdy. So, Chad, where are we at in this particular narrative in Genesis? Well, we are in chapter 20. We're about halfway through the story of, it's like the same song, second verse story, with Abraham trying to, not trying to, but telling everybody that Sarah is his sister and not his wife. so we're about uh i don't know halfway through chapter 20 something like that all right i'm sure i'm sure i know people don't like like the uh the pleasantries so let's just let's just give them the
Starting point is 00:02:30 the the goods man all right let's do it let's do it uh just a brief recap here uh one of the last major episode we we covered was the story of sodom and gomorrah after that uh we pick up with really focus on Abraham and Sarah again. They still don't have a son. They still only have Hagar and Ishmael, but Isaac has not yet been born. And they take a journey south. They've been living at this place called the Oaks of Mamre for a while, and they head south from there, and they go to this place called Gerar. And there's a king there by the name of Abimelech. And the same thing happens with Abimelech that happened with Pharaoh way back in chapter 12, because they get down there, Abraham says that Sarah, his wife, is his sister, and Abimelech takes Sarah into his harem. So this is, at least to this point, it's almost the exact same situation that we encountered with Pharaoh in Egypt.
Starting point is 00:03:41 And a little bit different scenario of events here, because what happens with Abimelech is that God appears to him in a dream and more or less tells him that he is a dead man because he has taken a woman who is married. And Abimelech protests this. He says, he says that he didn't know he hasn't come near her. She said, and he said, Abraham and Sarah both said that they were nothing but, nothing but, but siblings. And as we talked about last time, Abimelech claims that it's because of the integrity of his heart and the innocence of his hands that he hasn't touched Sarah. And we have this great line, at least I think it's great, in verse 6, God responds to Abimelech by saying, yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also kept you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her. So, so much for Abimelech claiming that
Starting point is 00:04:51 it was uh because of his integrity and his self-control and his whatever that prevented him from touching sarah no god did that and as i believe we talked about in the last episode uh we we tend to follow in abimelech's footsteps here by uh you know thinking that it's because of our ability to resist temptation that we don't sin and the truth is that it's god that keeps us from sinning. It's not some kind of innate ability that we have that because we prayed so hard, because we resisted so much, because we kept ourselves free from situations in which sin might arise, therefore we have not done this or that, usually major sin is what we're talking about. Well, you can say all that, but the truth is that it's God that keeps you from sinning.
Starting point is 00:05:46 And he's the one that does not allow these things to happen. So there's no room, in other words, there's no room for kind of, I'm going to make up a word here, a Bemelechian boasting. There's no room for us to claim that it's because of our own abilities that we have resisted some temptation. So that's kind of where we're at. I believe we covered most of that last time. and uh god concludes what he said to abimelech by uh telling him what he needs to do and then what abraham is going to do he says now therefore restore the man's wife for he is a prophet and he will pray for you and you will live but if you don't restore her know that you shall surely die
Starting point is 00:06:36 you and all who are yours so we have this strange situation where the guy that lied is the one who ends up being the prophet and the one who's going to be the intercessor for abimelech who as far as we can tell didn't didn't really realize the gravity of the situation that he had he had put himself in yeah it seems like abelma's greatest mistake was you know a rushed engagement yes yes marion girl's really man that's a rat but she's old too you know i mean you gotta i mean you gotta strike well to go get it going while it going is good i mean so yeah yeah i can't quite figure out what would have been this you know this intense attraction of a 90 year old woman that abimelech just couldn't resist but you know i guess to each his own and it would seem like that
Starting point is 00:07:36 it is it is pretty clear in scripture that god doesn't have like a huge problem with like rushed rushed marriages no he seems actually pretty big on that you know setting people up arranged marriage is all that he doesn't uh i've talked to my my own daughter about that possibility she doesn't she really doesn't share that viewpoint i've noticed she's not she's not into that no she's really not into that no she's she's much more into making up her own mind there yeah i mean nowadays what if you meet someone and you marry them and like this all transpires within the course of a year it's like whoa hey whoa dude kind of rushing into things aren't you this like Like, this guy's, like, this girl shows up, and he's like, all right, put my eyeballs on her, bring it on.
Starting point is 00:08:26 Yeah. The end. Let's get this done. Call the preacher. And apparently that's a huge, huge sin. Yes, yes, yeah. Apparently that was not, it was not a good idea. Oh, so here we have, once more, we have a really messy situation because of, well, Abimelech, but mainly really because of Abraham.
Starting point is 00:08:51 He's the one that's the cause behind much of these messes that he and Sarah find themselves in. Now, I do want to point out that this is the very first occurrence in the scriptures of the title prophet. First time it's occurred. So we had the first occurrence of priest back in Genesis 14. That was Melchizedek. And this is the first occurrence of prophet. Now, it's interesting, you know, I guess because of that. But it's also interesting because in this particular usage of prophet,
Starting point is 00:09:30 it really doesn't fit with what we think of as a prophet. I mean, when most people hear a prophet thinking in terms of a biblical prophet, they don't think of somebody that prays for somebody else. They usually think of a prophet as someone who forecasts the future. So he's a foreteller. But there's really, I guess if you were to classify it, you have kind of three things going on with biblical prophets. The first thing that the biblical prophets do is they foretell,
Starting point is 00:10:05 not foretell, but foretell in the sense of they're basically preachers, is what the prophets are. They are preachers who are inspired by God to convey the words of God to Israel. And that doesn't mean that they're talking about the future. They could very well be talking about the past or the present or the present tense. David is a prophet in the sense that he wrote the Psalms, which speak God's word to address an individual or a nation's situation, whether they're hopeful or suffering or whatever they might be going through. So the main duty of a prophet is basically a preacher.
Starting point is 00:10:44 He's a forth teller. He tells forth the words of God to the people. but of course another thing they do is they foretell in the sense that they they do talk about the future quite a bit they talk about the future of the nation of israel they talk about the the coming the coming messiah sometimes they foretell gloom and doom you know jeremiah is all about gloom and doom he's talking about how the babylonians are going to come in and they're going to destroy jerusalem they're going to take israel into captivity because of the ongoing rebellion of of god's people so there is certainly a foretelling that that takes place
Starting point is 00:11:22 although i would argue that that is uh really secondary to what the prophets do most of what they do is simply preach they're preaching to the people in front of them just like a pastor does on sunday morning but here we have uh the the first occurrence of prophet has nothing to do with either one of those uh abraham is not really going to be preaching he's not really going to be foretelling the future. He's simply praying. He is serving as an intercessor between Abimelech and God, so he will pray for you, and you will live, and we've already seen Abraham in this role, right? When we were right before Sodom and Gomorrah got destroyed, Abraham serves as a prophet there in the sense that he was an intercessor. He says, well, you know, what if
Starting point is 00:12:09 there's 50 righteous people? What if there's 45? What if there's 40, 30, 20, 10? So Abraham has already proven that he has served in this kind of prophetic role in being an intercessor. And the other prophets did this too. You have the prophets Isaiah or Jeremiah or some of the other ones. They pray on behalf of the people. So the prophets were the Old Testament preachers. They were preachers who did a few things that preachers today don't do in the sense that they foretold the future but most of what they did is very pastoral in character they preached and they prayed they gave god's word and they took the words of the people and they brought those to god in prayer you know what you notice about abraham is despite all of abraham's um
Starting point is 00:12:56 massive glaring shortcomings abraham does seem like a man uh aware of himself and therefore he's a man of little malice. He seems very willing to pray for others. You don't have these stories of Abraham being full of wrath or something, going out. I mean, you see him go and rescue Lot and stuff, but there's no account of Abraham where he's just violently angry and judgmental of sinners and this sort of thing.
Starting point is 00:13:37 And it seems that that's probably because he's aware of the kind of guy he is and his own sins, his own failures. He doesn't have like a Jonah complex about interceding for sinners. Yeah, yeah, that's a great point too. And you see this in daily life a lot of times, too, that those who are most aware of their own sinful condition are most likely to be those who are most compassionate toward others who share that same condition. Whereas the better I think that I am, usually the worse I'm going to think others are. It's kind of this blindness.
Starting point is 00:14:32 Like you said, he's self-aware. But if I'm self-unaware, if I'm unaware of my own depravity, if I'm unaware of just how bad I am, then chances are I'm going to, if I'm blind to that in myself, I'm going to have 20-20 vision when it comes to seeing that in others. and along with that comes this kind of superiority and arrogance and malice and all these other vices yeah I think that does ring true
Starting point is 00:15:04 with Abraham it does seem like this is something that a prophet and you're talking about pastors a lot of times they're taught in certain circles anyway depending on what sort of theological tradition you're from uh but but we do use this language of pastors being prophets or speaking
Starting point is 00:15:25 the word of the lord and one of the things that a prophet does need is a willingness to intercede for sinners for for people that don't deserve intercession to be willing to to go to god for messed up people uh this is this is part of being a pastor uh that that's for that's really important if you're going to be a prophet or if you're going to be a pastor then you you need to be comfortable with going going uh to god on behalf of some uh some real gnarly stuff and in a real way good yeah yeah that's what it is and some sometimes people have sinned against you or people that have sinned against each other or i mean all i mean there's no short i mean just as when you're past if you're a pastor you end up experiencing all of this but
Starting point is 00:16:25 you just see all kinds of all kinds of awful things uh and you you have to be uh you have to be someone who's self-aware and uh and then can approach those things with compassion and can be willing to go to god on behalf of these people you can't you can't be this is what made jonah a crap prophet more than anything else was that that he that he had no compassion on sinners it's that that's that's jonah's problem that's that's why he's not a good prophet uh it's not because he speaks lies it's not because it's not because he's a false prophet in the sense of uh of saying things that god hasn't said it's his unwillingness to go to god or to go and speak the word of of uh repentance and forgiveness of sins to people that he doesn't
Starting point is 00:17:19 think deserve that that that will also make you a bad prophet all the more he knows remember jonah says that i i knew you would have compassion or mercy on them something like that i knew that you know he knows that god is going to do that he doesn't want that but uh that's another way that um you know modern preachers though can in a sense foretell although it's uh something that we would say is is is true as it's spoken it's it's nonetheless true right then this word of forgiveness this word that you are forgiven okay and they are foretelling or forth telling the word of god to their people there in a real sense they do um they do bring the word of god and then in another sense they're not quite hearing directly from god and forth telling like has already been
Starting point is 00:18:15 pointed out yeah yeah no i think that abraham could have very easily just been like i'm not praying for this guy this guy just took my wife i mean yeah i mean like i told him it was my sister but i didn't like tell him to take like look at this guy i'm not praying for this guy yeah in fact while you guys were talking i i was i was reminded of uh exodus 32 and talking about intercession this is after after israel makes the golden calf you know moses has been up at the mountain for for 40 days getting all these words getting all these words from god and uh and of course god's mad and uh he he says to moses this is this is an amazing contrast because uh who comes out here sounding like the compassionate one the lord i'm in i'm in exodus 32 verse 9
Starting point is 00:19:05 the lord said to moses i have seen this people and behold they are an obstinate people now then leave me alone this is god talking now then leave me alone that my anger may burn against them and that i may destroy them and i will make of you a great nation this is all god talking leave me alone moses i'm sick of these stiff-necked people i'm going to destroy them and i'm going to Start over with you. He's going to be like a new Abraham, I guess. So Moses hears all this, and Moses ends up being, Moses is a prophet, ends up in this intercessory role.
Starting point is 00:19:50 He pleads with the Lord, and he says, Oh, Lord, why does your anger burn against your people? Now notice, God said, leave me alone. And he says, I have seen this people. And then Moses turns it around, and he reminds, oh lord why does your anger burn against your people whom you have brought up out of the land of egypt with great power and with a mighty hand and then he goes on and uh basically you know praise that god's going to spare them and at the end of it the lord changes his mind about the harm
Starting point is 00:20:22 which he said he would do to his people so you talk about a an intercessory role by a prophet god is ready to smite israel wipe them out and start over with moses and moses said no no no no god we we can't do that that's not the kind of god you are yeah uh you've redeemed these people and we can't let the egyptians say hey look what god did to his people he brought them out of slavery and then he burned them up in the desert no that that's not going to work That's why everybody needs a pastor, so that everyone needs somebody that won't leave God alone, or else it might just end. It might just be bad. It is interesting, because God is like, you have to leave me alone, because as long as you're interceding for these people, I'm going to end up forgiving them again, and all that stuff.
Starting point is 00:21:19 I was like, so just knock it off and just let me just take him out. But it is sort of dependent on Moses because Moses, he's like, as long as you're interceding for these people, as long as you're asking on their behalf, as long as you're pleading to my mercy, like I can't deny myself, so I need you to tone it down so I can burn for a while here. and then just rage out on these people.
Starting point is 00:21:52 Yeah, yeah. Just imagine if Jonah had been the one that God sent to redeem Israel from slavery in Egypt. Jonah would have been like, yeah, let's get it going. Start the barbecue. Start the barbecue. Yeah, I'm going to find me a plant, get some shade, sit back and watch the fireworks.
Starting point is 00:22:11 Yes. Start a new nation with me? That sounds great. Yeah. I'll raise them upright, Lord. You know I will. That's right. Okay, okay. I know that we're not going through Exodus, so we don't want to spend a lot of time here. I understand, but I got to just point this out real quick, because I think this is one of the few instances, besides coming out of Egypt,
Starting point is 00:22:34 the Exodus itself. Here's an image of Christ here, one of the rare instances in Moses. Usually, Moses is the lawbringer. He's the one that's crushing you with the law, the hammer of God's wrath um but here we've got the the reflection of christ as intercessor that um that shadow foreshadowing christ as intercessor on our behalf is our great high priest in heaven and i just think that's uh that's wonderful yeah that is great that is great yep uh in fact in deuteronomy uh god says he's going to he's going to raise up a prophet like moses and uh this this prophecy the messiah yeah and uh you know that's that's that's the kind of prophet that the christ is you have his high priestly prayer right in in john he's uh and all the way to the cross father
Starting point is 00:23:25 forgive them for they know not what they do you talk about someone who is uh in a in a prophetic intercessory role that's our lord he is standing in the gap between us and and the wrath of god actually taking the wrath of god in himself for us yeah and christ is not only like we're way on a on any trail here but oh well guys this is our show uh the uh and christ is like moses i mean since they raised up someone like moses um christ is a preacher of the law no doubt about it i mean i mean you read the gospels and uh jesus could lay down some law i'm telling like no one's business he could lay down some law you have heard that it was said that i say unto you that's right that That dude will lay the law down in all its weight.
Starting point is 00:24:15 He does it quite a bit. He does it with the Pharisees all the time. I mean, just brutal law. The difference is that, well, you have like what John says, that the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. So you have this. You do have the gospel on the heels. It's not the Ten Commandments don't come down by themselves.
Starting point is 00:24:40 But you have Jesus, you know, is saying, hey, man, I didn't come as someone that came to abolish this stuff. I uphold it, and I deliver it full strength. In fact, I even interpret it for you, and that's not great news. You know, it's not great news. Let me tell you what this really means, you know. Oh, it's worse than I thought. yeah you have the you have the full impact of the law and you have the full impact of grace
Starting point is 00:25:10 with christ he he brings out more of the clarity and the intensity of the law than anybody else does but then at the same time he brings out the clarity and the intensity and the depth of the grace of god like no one else has you know it's almost like he is god almost like It's almost like he's the best preacher ever. Yeah, it's almost like he is God incarnate. It's almost like that. So, yeah, how did we get down that trail? I forgot.
Starting point is 00:25:45 Oh, yeah, the prophetic role. That's right. Yeah, Moses has to intercede for this guy. Moses as the interceder, yeah. And, you know, it's great comfort to realize that it's not just like Christ prayed for us while he was here on earth. He prayed for us even before his incarnation. And some of the fathers talk about how beginning with the fall of Adam and Eve, Christ became our interceder. He's the one who stood in the gap for us.
Starting point is 00:26:18 And then, of course, he prays for us during his earthly life. And then he's our high priest. He's at the Father's right hand, and he intercedes for the saints in accordance with the will of God. He's always speaking our prayers to the Father. So we have God talking to God for us. We have the Son of God talking to his Father. It can't be any better than that. So we do need a priest to have access to God.
Starting point is 00:26:48 And we have one. We have a great high priest, Jesus Christ. indeed so how does this shake out with this guy what say what brian go ahead how long did any of these these uh earthly priests live i mean and to have to be in such close proximity to uh god's presence all the time i'm surprised that moses lived as long as he did or that abraham did i mean just no wonder like you see the pictures of uh moses coming down from the mountain and his hair's turned white. That would be a stressful situation. Those were actual Polaroids, by the way. Contrary to common conception or perception, whatever, they
Starting point is 00:27:33 didn't have Polaroids back then. That's my personal opinion. Then we've got in like Hebrews 7 28, it says that, you know, God or the law points men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, the promise, the gospel, which came later than the law appoints a son who has been made perfect forever now he intercedes there for us we never have to look for the next high priest or the new thing it's christ yeah there was a there was a built-in inferiority uh to the old testament priesthood i mean you have you have sinners occupying the office and because they're sinners they have to offer sacrifices both for themselves as well as for the people and they die so every and there was a of course a whole
Starting point is 00:28:20 succession of them so they're they're sinful they uh they have to ex they experience death and there's a whole multitude of them because of course they keep dying so all of this is a built-in inferiority that's part of the old covenant that's what the hebrew the book of hebrews is all about the imperfection of the old covenant uh in order that by that very imperfection it served a prophetic role the very imperfection of the old covenant pointed toward the need for perfection that we finally find when there's one sinless high priest who lives forever and is able to bring all of the inferiority of the old covenant into perfection or into completion by summing everything up in himself so you know when you're reading all this old testament stuff
Starting point is 00:29:10 a lot of times this is this this there's a prophecy that's built into it it's pointing forward to what is to come by its very uh lack of lack of perfection so how does this go down with um how does this go down for this guy it uh it works out abimelech ends up you know looking like a actually like a pretty decent guy uh abraham not so much but uh we're used to that by now so abimelech he gets up early in the morning and you got to give it to the guy you know he's he doesn't try and hide everything he calls all his servants together he tells them everything that's happened and everybody's scared to death and then abimelech calls uh calls in abraham and he's got this whole string of questions you know what have you done to us and he's how have
Starting point is 00:29:58 I sinned against you that you brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? He says, you have done things to me that ought not to be done. When he talks to God, he's excusing himself. But when he talks to Abraham, he's mad and he has every right to be. He was lied to. And then he finally says, what have you encountered or what have you seen that you have done this thing? So Abimelech is thinking to himself okay there's got to be some reason that abraham did this i mean he might he must have seen something that scared him uh you know he he experienced something in our in our in our city or in our culture which made him think oh i gotta make up this story about about sarah so there's got to be some impetus behind abraham's deception abimelech is the first psychologist
Starting point is 00:30:49 yeah what is this thing yeah sit down here on my couch yeah sit on the couch uh how do you tell me how you feel about this abraham yeah and abraham oh my goodness i i just can't really offer many excuses for him uh because he he starts out you know he's like uh he makes all these excuses he says because i thought surely there is no fear of god in this place and they will kill me because of my wife now that would be what we would call it a breaking of the eighth commandment you should not give false testimony against your neighbor because he is he's imputing motives to these people that are baseless these are all uncalled for false assumptions about these people so he says uh you know i didn't see any fear of god in this place therefore on the basis
Starting point is 00:31:45 of that assumption i thought oh they'll kill me and take my 90 year old wife so he lies and then it gets even worse because then he then he uh kind of engages in this weird casuistry he says besides you can you can sort of hear him hear the tone of his voice well i thought you'd kill me and besides uh another point that i would like to make uh your honor is that she actually is my sister I mean, when you think about it, because she's the daughter of my father. She's not the daughter of my mother, but she's the daughter of my father, and she became my wife. So really, she was first my sister, half-sister, and then later on, she became my wife. So in calling her my sister, really, I'm going even farther back in our history than more recently.
Starting point is 00:32:37 You can just see him coming up with all sorts of legal phrasing and excuses for his behavior. But he's not done yet. He's not even done yet. There's a massive, okay, to be like, all right, so here's the thing. I know you guys don't fear God like I do, so I made up this stuff. like it does not work at all like like i've got so much i mean i i know i know that you i know that you guys don't do the right thing so i made up this stuff man like that does not
Starting point is 00:33:20 doesn't work yeah and you're not you're not you know holy like i am and as evidence of that he points to the fact that he married his half sister this is this is not going well for abraham at all and then he's so has sort of a you know a uh almost a blaming of god going on here and and so she'll say he marries her and he says it came about when god caused me to wander from my father's house that i said to her this is the kindness which you will show to me everywhere we go say of me he is my brother so he he's sort of blaming god and he's also of course including sarah on the on the deception as well everyone's fault but mine everybody's fault but mine yeah he never he never takes the blame oh you gotta love abraham talk about uh a guy that's just full of
Starting point is 00:34:20 faults and yet god still loves him still uses him so i mean that's uh that's what uh abraham says And you would think the next verse would say, and Abimelech laughed at Abraham's reply. But no, it doesn't say that. Abimelech then took sheep and oxen and male and female servants and gave them to Abraham and restored his wife to Sarah. And not only that, you know, he does one better than Pharaoh. You remember Pharaoh was so mad that he kicked him out of the country. But Abimelech says, look, my land is before you. Settle wherever you want.
Starting point is 00:35:04 And to Sarah, he says, behold, I have given your brother. A little dig. Yeah, I think that's a little dig. Yeah, you can almost, you know, sense that there was a slight pause. Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. behold it is your vindication before all who are with you and before all men you are cleared so like i say you know we when we talked about the whole uh story of of this happening in egypt pharaoh came out looking like a pretty good guy well it's no different here abimelech in my opinion if
Starting point is 00:35:42 there's any uh any star of this chapter it's him we're talking about horizontal righteousness he's the one who comes out looking pretty righteous to me i'm i think that this this is uh that's where air quotes were invented I have given your brother that's what that's where Eric that's that's where that's the first instance in all of human history where air quotes brother close inspection of the Hebrews old manuscripts have quotation brother your brother that very well me may be the best line in this whole chapter oh my goodness yeah so again abraham is do he he gets away with you know what this is because people hate this in real life they hate it man christians hate it
Starting point is 00:36:35 when this happens when it's like and he got away with it consequences yeah i know away with it he like he benefits from it yeah i mean the dude gets even richer he's already rich he's like oh here We'll have some other male and female servants. Here, let me deposit some money in your bank account while I'm at it. Yeah. You can hear all the righteous being like, there's consequences. Don't you know?
Starting point is 00:37:02 You can't just walk away from this, and then you can't have it cost you nothing. You can't lie and then marry your half-sister, lie about it, and then profit from it. it's just wrong it's uh it's it's the reversal of every moral expectation that we have and that is what the gospel is yeah that is what that is what the gospel is it's the uh jesus in his parables and in his actions is constantly scandalizing people because he doesn't act in accordance with our ways of moral and ethical thinking because we think if you do a which is
Starting point is 00:37:42 wrong you need to suffer b you do this the consequences are that and christ completely reverses that you know these these lazy guys sit on the marketplace all day they show up they uh fiddle around for an hour and they get the same pay as the guys who've been out there sweating all day it's just it's wrong and yet it's right it's wrong according to the law it's right according to grace and of course god's done with abraham now right he's like i'm never using you from this point forward never again yeah that's right yeah the very next verse abraham prayed to god and god healed abimelech and his wife and his and his maid so that they bore children so the guy that comes out looking the worst in this story ends up being the very one
Starting point is 00:38:29 whose prayer god answers and he of course yeah he's not done with him he uh he keeps on keeps on using him because that's the kind of god we had he doesn't throw people away when they've married their half-sister and lied about it and caused all courts all sorts of all sorts of grief uh he has he has a surprising god who uh acts in ways that we would never anticipate yep yeah you would anticipate god being like all right i'll forgive you but that whole father of many nations and that whole Isaac thing, that's done now. That's done. That's done.
Starting point is 00:39:07 I'm revoking my promises. I'm using Abimelech now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this is quite a story because it shows us just how contemporary all this Old Testament stuff is because this is our story just told in a different way. this is our narrative this is mine this is yours everybody listening this is our narrative we're uh you know you lie you you do deceitful things you you screw up big time and you think
Starting point is 00:39:41 you think oh this is it god's done with me and then god turns around and is and and shocks shocks shocks you by uh being gracious and forgiving and merciful and continuing to use you in great and unexpected ways. That's it. And I think that's the end of that story and I think that is the end of this show. This is it, yeah. We have
Starting point is 00:40:04 actually finished in 40 minutes. We have finished in 40 minutes and I think we ended something when we anticipated ending it, despite all the rabbit trails. Yeah, just wait for the next episode. We're finally going to have the birthday
Starting point is 00:40:21 of Isaac. Oh, yeah. There's no messianic foreshadowing there. Oh, yeah. Just wait. I had this great insight this morning into how, this is a little teaser here, the life of Abraham is a prophetic embodiment of the life of Israel, so that as you see his life,
Starting point is 00:40:51 you really see the future life of Israel acted out all the way to this birth of a promised seed and the sacrifice to come. Ho, ho, ho. Baited breath, everyone. Okay. Well, thank you, guys. And thank you, other guys, for joining us.
Starting point is 00:41:11 And, yeah, so come back next time where we will get some birth of Isaac. so we will see you then

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