40 Minutes In The Old Testament - The Lost Episode 21 Live from HWSS

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Chad and Daniel are joined by Erick Sorensen live from the Here We Still Stand Conference to record the long-missing episode 21 covering Genesis 15. 1517 Podcast Network Chad Bird's New Book 1517 YouTube Donate  

Welcome to 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, live from undisclosed location. But here we are. We're in a bunker deep below the earth. Welcome to the Here We Still Stand bubble. Many years ago, five years ago, we recorded an episode, episode 21 on Genesis 15. This episode is lost. I've been asked for years by hundreds and hundreds of people, what happened in this episode? Where is this episode? Why are you guys so afraid of Genesis 15? Why won't you discuss it? Do you hate covenants? All of the stuff that you would expect.

The truth is we did record it. It just vanished. And so today, what we're going to do live for everyone is we are going to record episode, I don't know what it is, 230 something, but it's actually episode 21, where we go, we hit the reverse button and we go all the way from 1 Samuel and just rewind all the way back to Genesis 15. Let's do it, Chad. What are we looking at with Genesis 15? Is there any context we need to set up in case people... Yeah. You know, it's kind of strange when I was looking at the text preparing for this I had to like in my mind go back because I was stuck in first Samuel so I had to keep thinking okay no no no we're we're with Abraham again or actually we're with

Abram not even Abraham yet so yeah we got to go way back but I'm glad we're doing it and it's perfect because we got Eric here with us and so we got the New Testament we got the Old Testament this is this is one of those texts where if you're reading it you'd be like oh that's like big in the new testament too yeah it's romans galatians galatians yeah so it's a it's a hugely important text which is probably why people were so concerned that we never did it what do these guys have against faith and righteousness and covenants it's too easy yeah it's too easy it's too easy yeah so kind of get the context here we we meet abraham and his family a couple chapters before this genesis 12 of course and then the immediate context is genesis 14 of course which

is all about the pursuit of the kings by Abraham, the appearance of first the king of Sodom, and then the mysterious priest-king Melchizedek. And we have the exchange between Melchizedek and Abraham, and the chapter finishes up with a dialogue between Abram and the king of Sodom. So that's kind of where we find ourselves contextually. and the the context is important because the way that chapter 15 starts out is after these things of course if that's the way a chapter starts i'd be like okay after after what things and interestingly the the english word translated as things is devar or plural devarim and in hebrew

devar can mean word or thing so it could be after these words the word of the lord came to him or after these things, the word of the Lord came to him. Either way, it's good to kind of keep that context in mind as we're going through the chapter. Just kind of give you the big picture. So Genesis 15 is, you could kind of divide it into two different sections. The first one is verses 1 through 6, and that's mainly the promise of a seed, of an offspring, of an heir to Abraham. And then the second part, verse 7 through 21, is the promise of land. And a lot of other discussions that take place within that. And that's where we have the language of covenant that Dan mentioned earlier. So let's start out here with the opening couple of verses here.

So after these things, after these words, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision saying, do not fear Abram. I am a shield to you. Your reward shall be very great. And Abram said, oh Lord God, what will you give me since I'm childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. And Abram said, he didn't even wait for a response, right? And he said, since you have given no offspring to me, one born in my house will be my heir. Okay, so the first thing that always jumps out at me in this particular chapter is something actually we talked about not very long ago in 1 Samuel 3, and that is the appearance of the word of the Lord. Most of the time, i think anyway most of the time when people hear the word of the lord came to so and so they think

oh he heard a voice right again that's what you think right so the prophet's sitting there and all of a sudden this word pops into his ears right now this particular chapter first samuel three which is where young samuel has this he receives this appearance of the word of the lord And then Jeremiah chapter one, where the word of the Lord comes to him, all three of these indicate that this is not just an audible word. I mean, this is a visible, tangible, seeable word. Like a word made flesh, would you say? Yeah, like a word becoming flesh, we might say.

Yeah. So, of course, when you hear word in the Old Testament, and then your mind jumps to the New Testament, it immediately goes to like John 1, right? the word became flesh or in beginning was the was the word so as we always do i mean we want to take this as as directly to christ as we can so we'll do it right here so after these things the son of god came to abram basically yeah so this is the word of the father this is the means by which the father makes himself known and in this case visible to abram i think these words are interesting

enshadowing so if you got if you got the son of god coming to you saying this fear not which is a nice thing yeah yeah this is actually this is also one of the reasons most common command yeah this is why you also think this is jesus this is like the most jesus he doesn't jesus doesn't say anything more this is true they jesus the most common word of jesus in the entire new testament is some version of fear not be not afraid all this have no fear said to peter all the time yeah This is something he's interested in you knowing, is that you shouldn't be afraid. And he says this, I am your shield.

Your reward shall be very great. Reward for what? This is a fantastic thing to have from God. Hey, I'm your shield, and your reward for me being your shield is going to be amazing. This is pretty gospel-y right out of the gate. It's like me going to my daughter and saying, I am your father. Your reward for that is going to be awesome.

Yeah. All gift. Yeah, all gift. Like, I'm about to reward you just for being my, just for being mine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the things that sticks out to me in these first few verses here

is how much the promise needs to be constantly repeated to us. This isn't the first time that Abram has been delivered a message that he's going to be blessed in a profound way by God. And yet, what does Abram say right at the get-go here? Like, I don't see it. And so, you know, one of the things about faith

is that it needs to have the promise constantly repeated in order for it to be sustained. It's the promise that ultimately Abram hangs his hat on, and of course we hang our hat on. Yeah, that's a great point to make. In fact, interestingly, these are the very first words, very first recorded words of Abram to God, which is an interesting way to start out.

So the very first words that we have recorded anyway is basically him saying, what gives? you know yeah right okay you're you're my shield my reward's gonna be very great but there's a there's a problem here you know i i'm old uh i have no children and so it's gonna be kind of hard for me to receive this reward that you're talking about it seems like he's saying hey your reward's gonna be very great and abram's an old man here so he's like hey i'm i'm your shield your reward's gonna be awesome for me being your shield uh and abram's like so what like i'm i'm I'm 90 years old or whatever.

I don't have any kids. Which was everything back then was offspring. Yeah, like I'm not going to be able to pass this on. I'm about to die, man. I'm going to give you this great reward at the end of your life, and you have no one to share it with. Yeah, precisely. Well, speaking of that, I mean, do we know anything about this Eleazar of Damascus?

I mean, he's sort of this mystery figure here that no one seems to know much about. No, this is the only time, by name anyway, that he shows up. Yeah. Now, if you go forward a few chapters to when Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for Isaac, he sends a servant, and we assume it's Eliezer, but we're not told by name that that's who it is. So this is all we know about this particular guy. Now, we do know from ancient Near Eastern documents that this was not unheard of.

You know, if there was a couple that were childless, they could adopt a servant of their household to basically take care of them in their old age. And if he was faithful, then he would basically receive what a son would have received. Sure. Yeah. So at this point in their lives, Abraham and Sarah are probably thinking, you know, not going to happen. Yeah. Not going to happen.

So Eliezer has been good to us. He's been a good servant. And so we're going to pick him. Yeah. So that's kind of what he's saying here is that do something right. This is kind of a lament, you might say. Right. So his very first words to God are, take the form of a lamentation.

I mean, I love what you're saying, God, but there's a huge gaping problem in the promise that you're giving me. So let's go on and we'll see what happens. Verse four. So what happens? The word of the Lord comes to him. So this is a second reference to the Devar Yahweh, this word of the Lord, son of God coming to him.

And he says, that guy, this man will not be your heir, but one who shall come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir. Now, I say this all the time, but it is true. Every time that I re-look at a text, I learn something new. So I learned something super cool about this that you would not have known when you originally recorded this podcast. Bonus content. Bonus content. This is why the episode was truly lost, so that at this point I could make this particular insight. Okay, so that phrase, one who shall come forth from your own body,

and which I think ESV just has is like your own son, right? That's three words in Hebrew, and those particular three words in Hebrew, one coming forth from your, actually it's like from your... Loins or... That's your innards. Yeah. Yeah, like from your insides. Those three words in a row occur only two places, two places, here and in 2 Samuel 7,

in the promise that God makes to David, that one from your own body will be the one that I will raise up to be your king, to be the king, to be the one who's going to inherit this everlasting kingdom. Of course, 2 Samuel 7 is this huge mountaintop promise of the Messiah. So look at that. You put this promise together with the seed, with that same exact Hebrew phrase in 2 Samuel 7. These are situations where it's like the Spirit is tapping on the shoulder saying, hey, make the connection here. Draw a line between this promise of a seed to come to Abraham and then the seed that is to come to David. And so you kind of have these twin poles that are reflective of this promise that begins in Genesis 3.15, the seed of the woman, seed to Abraham, seed to Isaac, seed all

the way finally to David. So anyway, cool connection there. So God is saying, one from your own body. And then he takes him outside. So evidently they were like in the tent or something. They're inside. And the way I like to think of it is like, Abraham, he's filled full of these doubts. What's going to happen? All he can see is kind of his own little world, right? His own little tent world. And so God like pulls him outside. He's there visibly before Abram. He says, listen, come on, let's, let's get out of your little tent. Let's get out of your little world. We're going to go outside. I'm going to show you something. And he says, look toward the heavens, count the stars if you're able to count them. And he said, so shall your, well,

you could translate that different ways. Descendants be, or so shall your seed be. The thing is in Hebrew, the word for seed is Zerah, which can either be singular, so your seed can be your singular son, or your seed can be your collective children, grandchildren, all of your offspring. And I think kind of that double entendre is intended here. So your descendants are going to be that many, but there's also a clear connection here with the seed that he's promised back in Genesis 12, and that'll be re-promised in Genesis 22. Do you think part of the reason that he takes him out to look at the stars, you know, to try and number the stars, is to sort of also remind him of just who he's dealing with? You're dealing with the God who created all of this.

It's not a problem for me to give you a son. Don't fret. Don't worry. It's going to happen. Like, if I, as the creator of heaven and earth, can put all of these innumerable stars in the sky, I am perfectly capable of putting one little baby inside your wife. Yeah, yeah. I can handle it, in other words.

Yeah, this seems like this is a Job moment, right? Where were you when I created the whatever? Like, the platypus, take your pick. And similar to what happens to Job, we'll see something similar happens to Abram here. Yeah, it's true. It's true. So this is the whole setup, because we're about to come to a kind of a climactic verse here, right? It's the whole setup.

Abraham is in a situation where, you know, all the proof that he can see, his age, his wife's age, says ain't going to happen. So everything that would be kind of the normal conclusion one would draw based upon the situation that he's in would say not possible. God now says is not only possible but is going to happen so the only thing in other words that Abram has to rely on here is the son of God giving him his word right yeah that's that's the whole context and so that is a lead-in to our very next verse then he believed in the Lord and he reckoned it to him as righteousness so in Hebrew the verb for believe is the basis from which we get our word amen or amen. So to aman is to believe. So you could really translate this as something like, and Abram said, amen to the Lord. Yeah. He believed, he aman'd in the Lord. So there's

your faith. He put his trust in, he believed in, and he, that is God, reckoned it to him as righteousness. There's a fascinating Hebrew construction that's going on here that we see replicated a couple of different places. So to reckon or to account is chashav. That occurs a lot of different places, but a couple of places in particular. And so notice very important details of this. He reckoned it, right? So what's it? Well, it is referring back to what precedes the belief. The aman. Yeah. So he's the aman. So he reckoned that aman, that saying amen to God, he reckoned that to him as righteousness. So he credited that faith to him as righteousness. Similarly, and this gets to our, like our Romans four passage, same construction occurs in Psalm

32, where he prays, don't impute iniquity to me, except there it's imputing iniquity, and here it's imputing or crediting righteousness, but it's the same exact construction in the Hebrew. So, in other words, Abraham believed in the Lord, and the Lord reckoned, credited, accounted that believing to him as righteousness, which is huge in the New Testament. Yeah, this is, I mean, this verse is really used by Paul to say, this is why we can say you're saved by faith apart from works of the law. Like, this is the big verse that Paul uses. This is his verse to say, and that was always the way it was. Yes, yes.

The law came hundreds of years later, Paul will say. This started first, and the law didn't nullify this covenant here that God makes with Abram. Correct, yeah, yeah. I mean, the idea, you know, Chad, I know that this is a burning frustration with you all the time, but there is this idea, like, you know, the New Testament comes along, and people are reconciled with God very differently than they were before because you have Jesus. This is not the case.

I mean, obviously God is able, as we see here, to reckon people righteous by believing in a promise delivered by his son, who in fact he knows will go and ratify this covenant. Yeah. Well, I mean, and the thing, we've all gotten the question many times before, how were Old Testament people saved?

You know, there's always a, how did they get saved before Jesus came? And the answer is by faith in the promise of Jesus, by faith in the promise of Jesus is coming. You know, it's always been by faith in the promise of God. And Paul will detail that in, you know, at great length throughout the New Testament. And again, it's really, it is the hub of our theology.

I mean, this idea of imputation or reckoning to someone righteousness, even though we clearly see, even in this passage, that Abram is displaying some signs of maybe some unrighteousness before this faith as he's clearly doubting God's promise to him. Because at this moment, he does believe the Lord's promise. God says, you're seen as righteous in my sight.

Perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is perfect. I mean, this is one, if you're ever talking to someone and they're like asking that question, you know, well, how did people in the Old Testament, you know, how did they, how were they saved? Well, just take him right here in Genesis 15. Well, there's your answer right there.

He believed and it was reckoned him as righteousness. So, you know, it doesn't matter if people are looking forward to the work of Christ or looking back to the work of Christ. The work of Christ is delivered always in the same way through the promise that's given. So here, actually the one who is going to fulfill the promise, that's what's really cool about this.

The one who's going to fulfill the promise is like standing in front of Abram. So this is the pre-incarnate son of God standing there saying, listen, see the stars? So shall your descendants be. And Abram looks at him and he's like, I believe. Amen to Jesus, right? No, it is for Jesus to say, so shall, this is Christ.

So shall your offspring be, which by the way, if you're taking a singular, is me. And even if you take a multiple, I'm one of, and they will all be found in this. so that the many offspring will all be reconciled in the one offspring, right? So you have him talking about himself to Abraham in this, like it's a crazy thing.

It is. And it explains why Abraham was so righteous going forward. Right. Vertically. This is really horizontally. Vertically, yes. One thing that occurs to me, you know, when Jesus is talking to some of his theological opponents

and he specifically mentions Abraham saw or looked forward to my coming and rejoiced. Yeah. Well, quite literally, Abraham sees him here and rejoices. Yes. So this is quite, and of course they're like, what are you talking about? You know, you're not old enough.

And Jesus is like, oh, you have no idea. Oh, you have no idea. Before Abraham was, I am. Yeah. Yeah. I was hanging out with him, making him promises. All right, so we could probably talk about that verse for the whole rest of our time.

This is the kind of episode that we actually have to get through this entire chapter. We can never go back to Genesis 15 again. Yeah. Okay, so that ends, the sixth verse ends the first section. It's a promise about the seed, which is directly connected to the person of Christ. Now we're going to transition,

verse 7 through the end of the chapter, to the promise of explicitly of the land along with the prophecy of the Exodus to come. And that is going to directly connect with the kingdom of this seed who is to come. So you see this twin focus in the Old Testament where you'll have a focus on the person of the seed, the Messiah, and then also on the land,

which is iconic of his kingdom. So you've got both of these going on in this chapter, which is why this chapter is so hugely important because you've got the person and then his work, his kingdom, both promised here. So I'm thinking, and I'll explain why in a second, but I'm thinking probably some time passes between verse 6 and verse 7. And the reason I say this is because when you look at what's about to happen, it's during the day.

So he takes them out at night to show them the stars, but what's about to happen is going to happen during the day, and then you're going to have darkness falling. So probably there is a time gap between verse 6 and verse 7. So he said to him, I am the Lord. By the way, first time that self-designation occurs in the Old Testament. It occurs a lot of other times, but this is the first time. I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess it.

Now, again, it's important to look at the language it's used here. the verb the verbal form who brought you out that particular form is used in two different places beginning of exodus 20 giving the 10 commandments and the beginning of deuteronomy 5 beginning of 10 commandments so this way that god designates himself as the the one who brings out the one who exoduses people occurs here exodus 20 and deuteronomy 5 which of course when you're reading that in the hebrew especially it's like oh so i want to i want to connect what's about to happen here with God giving the words of the covenant in Exodus 20 and then Deuteronomy 5. So in other words, God is saying, listen, I'm the God who exodus you already, Abram. I brought you

out of your own exile to the land that I'm about to give to you. So what Egypt was for Abraham's descendants, Ur was for Abraham and his family. So I brought you out to give you this land. Now he responds with a question. Oh, Lord God, how may I know that I shall possess it? Possessed could be translated also as inherited. I think probably what Abram is doing here is saying, basically, can I get that in writing? Yeah.

Can we, I mean, I'm glad you're making the problem, but can we like somehow ritualize this? I mean, can we like get some paper? Can I get an objective means by which I can lean on? Yes. Yeah. Can we do something? In other words, it's kind of like, you know, we're going to make a contract. Okay. So we'll draw it up. And then you put your signature. I'll put mine. Dana put his. Well, when we put our signature on something, that's more or less a ritual for us. I mean,

it's a way that we ritually connect ourselves with whatever this document is. That's the way that we do it these days. But back then, of course, they didn't do it that way. Back then it was a lot more bloody. It was a lot messier. In fact, so if the three of us, so we're living in a society where Akkadian was a spoken language, right? So way back. And the three of us, we're going to enter into a contract together. Then Eric might say, you know what?

Let's go kill a donkey. And by that, you would mean let's go make a covenant. Yeah. Yeah. Or if you look in some other context, it would be let's go kill a donkey's foal. Let's go kill a baby donkey. Let's go murder a baby donkey. Let's go murder a baby donkey.

Well, in that idiom, that meant let's go make a covenant. Yeah. Because when you made a covenant, there was always death. There was always blood. Let's bring it back. Let's start killing donkeys again. Come on. We can do it.

We need a lot more donkeys killed. Let's go kidnap the neighbor's cat. Yeah. So that's what's about to happen here. Abram is saying, how may I know? In other words, can we do something which is going to make sure that this is ritually enacted? And God is going to go along with this, right? He's like, okay, yeah, sure.

I'll tell you what, you get all the stuff. You bring me a heifer and a goat and a ram and a turtle dove and a young pigeon. So I'll get, you know, Abram, he's like, I guess he has all these animals, right? He's going to kind of rustle them up, get them all together. So he brings them all to God and he cuts them in two and he laid each half opposite the other,

but he didn't cut the birds because when you sacrifice birds, you did it differently. Leviticus chapter one will tell you all about how you're supposed to wring the head off the bird and pull his feathers off and all this other stuff. We talked about it. You can go back in the archives. We didn't skip that one.

We did not skip Leviticus. We were excited about that one. But the other ones he cut in half. So it kind of made a pathway, if you will, so that they could kind of walk through these. And the birds of prey come down. Abram drives them away. Maybe we can come back to that if we have time

because that's kind of interesting. But let's see what happens. So the sun goes down. A deep sleep falls upon Abram. Tardema in the Hebrew, same word used for the deep sleep that God put Adam in when he took Eve out. And then a terror and a great darkness fell upon him. And then we have this prophecy, verse 13 and following,

about the coming exile, enslavement, and all of the ill treatment that the Israelites will receive in Egypt. So he says, what's going to happen is your descendants will be strangers in a land that's not theirs. They'll be enslaved, oppressed 400 years. I'll judge the nation and I will bring them out and they're going to have many possessions.

But as for you, you're going to go to your fathers in peace. You'll be buried a good old age. And in the fourth generation, they shall return here because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Okay. So God is more or less saying, this is what's going to happen. In time to come, your descendants are going to endure this exile and I will judge that nation and bring them out.

It's all a little bit ambiguous because he's not told where this is going to take place. I mean, we know it's Egypt, of course. This is a prophecy of what's going to happen in Exodus. If you've read Exodus, you're like, I know exactly what this is. I think this is explicit. I think maybe he's talking about Exodus. It is interesting just in the language here of how much God is sort of shown as the, you know, in charge of affairs here. You know, I mean, this idea of the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.

You know, this is a little puzzling when you hear it, and yet you do get this sort of, maybe a little sort of hint behind the veil of the hidden God here, where all of a sudden you're saying, oh, there's a, you really are in charge of a bigger world. It makes sense that great darkness and terror would fall upon Abram in the midst of such a God.

Yeah, absolutely. And it shows you that God is not just kind of a, as many of the gods back in this time were, They were just understood to be geographically restricted, right? So you're the god of that particular area and of that particular people, and that's it. So you don't really interact with the Canaanites or maybe the Egyptians. You're just the god of this particular nation. And this began, I mean, we see it already in other parts of the pre-Genesis 15 story.

But this indicates, yeah, listen, I'm not just in charge of this little particular acreage. I'm in charge of the Amorites. and I'm going to be down in Egypt and I'm going to be punishing them. So in other words, I'm the God of gods and the Lord of lords is already implicit here. Yeah, this iniquity of the Amorites is a weird statement that, I mean,

just means these Amorites aren't done sinning yet. Yeah. Which is a crazy thing for God to say. These guys got a lot more sinning to do before this is all done. You think it's bad now? You just wait. Just wait.

We got like centuries of sinning that are just going to come. But at the same time, you do have kind of hinted at that God is very patient, right? Yeah, exactly. That's the first thing that comes out to me, yeah, is how patient is God? That he waits as long as he does before he's like, okay, okay, done. Even when he knows that that's going to be the result, like these guys, I'm going to wait a real long time with these guys. I mean, they are not going to turn around, but I'm still going to be extremely long-suffering.

Yeah. And this is, I mean, the revealed God is a God who somehow or another in the person of Christ looks over a place like the city of Jerusalem and says, oh, how I long to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you are not willing. Or presents himself in Isaiah as constantly reaching out his hand to a stiff-necked people, stiff-necked and obstinate people. And so he presents himself at times as being like a frustrated father, at other times like a frustrated spouse that is constantly pursuing his adulterous spouse or his wayward children, that these kinds of pictures are constantly there for us. And so it does display his sort of long suffering in all of this. Even as his promise goes forward, he is this long

suffering God, really wanting all to come to repentance as the New Testament says. Yeah, even the Amorites. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love the Hebrew idiom of when God says, I rise up early and send the prophets all the time. So it's like every morning God gets up, has a cup of coffee. He's like, all right, who's the prophet I'm going to send today? I'm going to keep trying. And they're all hiding because they don't want to go. No, no, no. Not me. Not me. I'm good. Maybe they'll listen to me. Who knows, right? Okay. So this is what's going to happen. He kind of lays it all out there. Okay, verse 17. So God says this, but he's not done because he's about

to do something that is unforgettable. So the sun begins to set. It's really dark. And then all of a sudden there appears two things, a smoking oven. Oven here is a word that's used in other contexts described. It's basically kind of a cone-shaped oven that they would bake bread in. They found in all sorts of archaeological sites. So this would have been something that they were familiar with. This is a smoking oven. I don't think it's the oven that's so much important as the smoke. And then you have a flaming torch. So you've got smoke and you've got fire. Smoke and fire together become extremely important kind of images of God and lots of other places. You think immediately of like mount sinai yeah in fact the same word that's translated here is torch is used there

to describe it's translated usually as lightning flashes that accompanied god's theophany there mount sinai oh you think of the pillar of fire yes yeah yeah so smoke and fire are pretty common iconic images of the appearance of god so and i'm guessing the like the the flaming torch is referenced especially because that's going to be connected with the exodus which you just finished talking about, smoke and fire. So these are the visual embodiments of God. But what they do is what's most important. It says they pass between the pieces. Hmm. I mean, it's a really graphic image. You've got these animals, their bodies split in two, separated you got blood all over the place you got this smoking oven and flaming torch

and they're just kind of walking passing between these sacrificed split in half animals with blood all over the place now we'll come back to that let's see what he says first on that day the lord literally made it literally cut a covenant so in the old testament you don't really make a covenant you cut a covenant. You kill an animal. You kill an animal. That's why it's sick. You literally cut one.

The closest thing we have, I guess, is we cut a deal, right? Yeah. We cut a deal. Well, they cut a covenant, but I mean, when we cut a deal, we don't actually cut something. When they cut a deal, they were quite literal. Bring out the butcher knife. We have some animals that we're going to cut.

So the Lord cut a covenant with Abraham saying, to your descendants, this is the word seed again, to your seed, I've given this land. And then we have the geographical boundaries given from the river of Egypt, which is not the Nile. It's another river that separates kind of the inhabited part of Egypt from the Sinai wilderness.

So from that river of Egypt, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. And then we have a list of all the ites. This is the longest list of ites that we have. There's like 17 such lists. Usually there's five or six or seven nations, but we get all 10 listed here. the Kenites

the Kenizzites the Kadmonites the Hittites the Perizzites the Rephianites oh there's no sorry they're not all ites

the Rephianites yeah there you go the Amorites the Kenonites the Girgashites the Jebusites so the only one

who left out was the Budlites but that appears to have the list sorry he had to do it I joke in there oh man

that was bad I think the stream viewers just took a dive we just lost half of our viewers oh man good job Chad

so we got we got all these people 10 10 different uh peoples listed and then we have these boundaries river of egypt river fetus which interestingly even at the height of their kingdom they never possessed that much land even like during david and solomon's reign they never had that much land but god is basically giving it to them in this covenant that he makes okay let's kind of go back here and look at some of these details. The most significant detail is only God passes between the pieces. And this is not how this is supposed to work, right? You're supposed to split these things for, you both go through and you're basically saying, if we break the terms of this agreement, someone's going to come cut me in half. Yeah, aren't you basically supposed to meet in the

middle, sort of grab each other and basically say, we're ending up like this if I don't hold it to my end of the bargain. Exactly. Yeah. And we, there's one of the biblical texts in Jeremiah 34, where we have this kind of language is given, uh, about people who have made a covenant in that context, they made a covenant like this and then they broke it. And so Jeremiah is taking them to task for, for doing that. He's basically saying, oh, well, she, you made a covenant like this. So you're saying this should happen to you because you broke it. But we know from other ancient New Easter documents that this was not just an Israelite thing. This was a way people commonly conducted covenants. I mean, it would be certainly an encouragement to keep the covenant,

right? It means a whole lot more when you're doing this than if you're just signing your name to a document. But yeah, ideally, in most situations, that's what would happen. So Abram and God would have walked between these pieces, but only God moves between these, which means there's only one thing it can mean that God is obligating himself to keep a covenant unilaterally, one way that he has made with Abram. And Abram is just like watching all this go down. Right. And the reason being is because God knows

that Abram would not keep up his end of the deal as it was to be that they met in the middle. He knows humanity is not going to reach their end of the bargain. Look at the nation of Israel. I mean, when the law comes... Look at 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, episode 22, which is, this is 21.

on look at the next episode where uh this is abraham would have been a split man by the end of that chapter yeah well it just dawns on me you know the nation of israel being offered the law and they say we'll do it all oh yeah yeah we'll do it all this will be a problem it takes a about 3.8 seconds before that's all all done yeah right right so the fact that well two things the fact that god alone does this means this is you know i i don't know that i would even translate this covenant only because when you think covenant, what do you think? What do you think? An agreement between two parties, right? Yeah. This is nothing more than a solemn promise presented in a covenant kind of ritual, but this is a solemn divine promise that God is going to be faithful to his

word and he's going to keep it. So this is Christ appearing to Abraham saying, listen, this is what I'm going to do. And I'm going to make sure that you know that I'm going to do it because I'm going pass between these bloody pieces. And I mean, it's remarkable, but God is basically saying, if I break my covenant, then may I be broken apart like these animals were. And of course, we will break this covenant.

Abraham will break this covenant. Everyone will break this covenant. And God, of course, will in fact be broken. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this, I mean, ultimately this particular story takes us through the rest of the Old Testament.

And we meander all the way to Jerusalem, where a sacrifice does take place and it's the blood of the very one who is standing before Abram that is spilt in order to pay for all of the Abrahams and the Sarahs and all the other sinners, including ourselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Ereks. So this is the Lord swearing that he's going to do this for Abram, putting his life on the line, we might say, as he actually will later on. And then this becomes, so the first part of the chapter is God saying, I'm going to give you a seed, and the seed is going to point to the person of the Messiah, going to lead to the person of the Messiah.

I'm going to give you land, and this land is going to be a kingdom for Israel, which itself is going to be a preparation for the kingdom that the seed will establish when he becomes incarnate. And then this kingdom will then begin to spread beyond the river of Egypt, beyond the river Euphrates, to the uttermost ends of the earth. Pretty great. We did it. We did it.

We're at 40. We did it. We got 40 minutes. Episode 21. Episode 21, live from the HWSS bubble. I feel so much better now. I do. I feel like we've really—

Way off my shoulders. We're always tied. Dear people watching online, stick around. Don't go anywhere. Maybe you've got to go to the bathroom. Maybe you'll get that snack. Whatever you've got to do. Coming up in 15 minutes or so, we are going to be hearing from the Thinking Fellows live.

Yep. So stay tuned. The Thinking Fellows will be up in 15 minutes. Thank you guys so much for joining us. Stick it out, man. We've got two days of great content. We're just getting started. Thank you.