Theology in the Raw - Old Testament in the Raw Week 6: Genesis 12-22

Episode Date: March 12, 2020

This week in OT in the Raw, Preston discusses the Abrahamic Covenant and how it relates to the gospel, Abraham’s fragile faith, the weird covenant ceremony of Genesis 15, and the startling incident of Genesis 22--“go kill your son. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Follow him on Twitter @PrestonSprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

🎵 Okay, well, so for today we're going to cover quite a bit of ground, which means we're not going to go, we're not going to linger on every passage in this section of Genesis, but I'm going to try to get through chapters 12 through 36, which I've called patriarchal history. And you could almost say 12 to 50 is patriarchal history, but 12 to 36 is Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. and then beginning in chapter 37 to 50, the last part of Genesis is focused on what people call the Joseph story, the story about Joseph. So it really takes a focus, it hones in on one person at the end of Genesis.

Whereas here in this section, we're looking at several people. I do want to look pretty closely though though, at Genesis 12, 1 to 3. And then we're just going to kind of do a broad overview of the life of Abraham. And then a really quick look at Isaac and Jacob. Because again, for those who missed the very first class, I want this to be like a survey of the Old Testament. Not looking at just every single passage, every single verse, but I want to get a broad overview, partly because I want to finish the class before I die. But also, I think there's, you know, there's a place for spending two years

in Genesis, absolutely. But I think there's also a place of kind of giving that broad overview of, you know, the Bible, or in this case, the Old Testament. So I do want to start picking up the steam a bit. But before I do, I want to look at Genesis 12, 1 to 3. But before I do that, I want to look at Galatians. So if if you do have your Bibles, you can go to Galatians. If not, here's well, I'm only going to put one verse on here, but I do want to kind of survey a few. Well, I can just kind of survey the whole chapter, really. In Galatians 3.8, Paul says that the Scripture announced

the Gospel in advance to Abraham, and then he has a quote. Well, in the way our English translations have it, there's a quote, all nations will be blessed through you. Now, that may seem somewhat insignificant, but I mean, here Paul says that the gospel was preached to Abraham.

Now, we typically think the gospel is like about Jesus, and it is, obviously, but who is Jesus? He's the Messiah. What's the Messiah? The Messiah is the promised seed that was, well, yeah, he's the seed that was promised to in the garden, actually, as a promise of judgment on the snake in Genesis 3.15, that promise is carried on through the life of Abraham and throughout the whole Old Testament,

so that the seed that was promised, the seed, the offspring that was promised in Genesis 3.15 carries on through the lineage all throughout the entire Old Testament. And, you know, later on it ends up being, if I can say, funneled through the line of David, so that when Jesus is the promised heir, the son of David, the king, sorry, I'm fumbling with my words here, it's a time change, messed me up, that Jesus is the promised king through the line of David, but that's, so that's

what Paul's getting at here, but he quotes Genesis 12.3 and says that this is the gospel. So the gospel isn't just talking about Jesus, like, you know, he died for your sins and everything, which obviously that's part of it. But it's also saying that this Christ, this Messiah, is the promised heir that was originally promised to Abraham in Genesis 12.3. But if you look at, in Galatians 3, I'm just going to keep reading from verse 8. It says, you know, the scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and he told the good news ahead of time to Abraham,

saying, all the nations will be blessed through you, so that those who have faith are blessed with Abraham, who also had faith. And then Paul gets into this real meaty theological passage here in Galatians 3, 10-14 about how the death of Jesus was kind of the fulfillment

of all these promises in the Old Testament. And then in verse... Let's go to verse 15 in Galatians 3. Paul says, brothers, I'm using a human illustration here. No one sets aside or makes additions to even a human covenant that has been ratified. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. And then Paul says, he does not say and to seeds, plural, as though referring to many, but referring to one and to your seed, who is Christ. So here, all Paul's doing here is he's going back to Genesis 12, one to three, and he's, he's unpacking how this passage in Genesis 12 is kind of... Thank you. Gosh, that was killing me.

He just unplugged it. Is that the heat or air? It's the fridge. It's the fridge. Oh, okay. So all our stuff's going to go back. I feel like I was like yelling over it. It's like, what is that? So all Paul's doing here is he's going back to Genesis 12, 1 to 3

and unpacking what he sees as the gospel embedded here in this promise. So all that to say, this passage, I wasn't making stuff up last week when I said, you know, this is one of the most significant passages in all of Scripture. I mean, Paul agrees with me, which is a good thing. So we can go back to Genesis 12, one to three and look at this passage. I'll just read it. It says, the Lord said to Abram, again, Abram and his family, you know, he's moved from Ur of the Chaldees to, and they're just traveling.

They're just leaving Ur, and now they stopped in a place called Haran, which if I can do my little Middle East map here, this is the Mediterranean Sea. Here's like Sea of Galilee, Jordan River, Dead Sea, here's Egypt, can't see anything, here's Egypt down here, here's Israel, okay, Zach, got an idea kind of where this is at, okay? So, and this is not drawn to scale, but then what's all this here?

This is just nothing but desert. Like 400 miles of desert. You try to travel through this, you die back then. There's no water. But there is water over here with the Euphrates and the Tigris. I forget which one's which. And then you have mountains up here and everything. So you have, you know, water and inhabit land that you can live in, land that you can travel through.

Because, I mean, again, back then, if there wasn't water in the area, you can't travel or live there. Okay, so Ur is down here. Haran is up here. So when we left chapter 11 in Genesis, this family is leaving Ur, and they travel up to Haran. And this is where Genesis 12, 1-3 takes place. There's not a ton of significance about that.

I like a kind of, I like a picture where things are happening, you know? So it's in Haran where God makes a promise to Abram. And again, we don't think of Abram as some righteous, God-loving, Yahweh-worshiping person. He is from Ur. Ur, you know, they worshipped tons of pagan deities.

In fact, their main deity that they worshipped was a moon god named Nana. I don't know how to pronounce it. I think it's Nana or Nana. And Nana was filled with all kinds of, I mean, horrific practices. And I'm not quite sure

about child sacrifice, actually, to that God, but this is a pagan deity. This was Abraham's religion. So God breaks into Abram's life while Abram was still a pagan worshiper. And this is the point I made last week, that it's God taking the initiative to enter into Abram's life. Not because Abram's an amazing person,

but because God is an amazing God. So Yahweh says to Abram, leave your country, your people, and your father's household. Go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through

you. And that's that phrase that is quoted in Genesis 3.8,'s there's three main elements here that I want to focus on. You have land, nation and blessing. OK, and then this kind of comes together here at the tail end here. So go to the land land I will show you. And then later on, I mean a few verses later, God says I'm going to give you this land. So the land,

this land is part of the promise that God is making to Abram. I will bless you is another part of the promise. So you have land, blessing, and then nation. I'm going to make you into a then nation. I'm going to make you into a great nation. Which means, you know, descendants, right?

I'm going to, you're going to have, and later on, you know, look up at the sky and see the stars and you're going to have as many descendants as there are stars in the sky. Which, not quite, but as we now know, there's 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars, but from his vantage point, there's just a lot of stars up there,

and you're going to have a lot of descendants. But it's this part here which Paul focuses on. I guess I already circled it. I don't need to keep doing it. But all peoples of the earth will be blessed through you. So it's not just the nation that comes from you, Abraham, that's going to be a blessing. Now that's what we know as Israel, right? I mean, the descendants of Abraham are what we call Israelites, or the Jews, Jewish people.

But all peoples, it's like different kinds of people, just non-Jews are going to be blessed by you as well. And this is Paul's point. If you're familiar with Galatians at all, the whole point of Galatians is that Gentiles don't need to become Jews in order to become part of the family of God.

And that was, I mean, this is, and for some of us, that doesn't seem too exciting, doesn't seem that significant. But this is a main thread in the entire New Testament, especially in Paul's writings. Because Paul was called as the apostle to the Gentiles. And part of the, I mean, really, if you read the book of Acts and read Paul's letters, one of the main questions that the early church had had to do with the Gentiles coming into the Jewish faith. Do they have to take on the dietary laws? Do they have to take on the Old Testament law?

Is the new covenant that Jesus is establishing, is it just like the old covenant, or is it different? These are the main questions that were at the forefront of people's minds in the first century. We see in the book of Acts. So I'm getting a little bit off track here, and if this isn't familiar,

I might not really sink in, but in the book of Acts, the first time they had a big kind of church council, a big church gathering was in Acts 15. And the whole thing had to do with what do the Gentiles need to do to become part of this Jewish faith? Do they need to take on these dietary laws and so forth? And they decided no, that the Gentiles don't need to take on,

they don't need to stop eating pork. They don't need to even observe the Sabbath in the same way that the Jews did. They don't need to become Jewish in their practices in order to become a follower of the Jewish Messiah. Anyway, so all of that is born here in Genesis 12, 3. That Abraham, I'm not just going to bless the physical descendants that come from you, what we would call the Jewish people.

I'm going to bless other people, but the blessing is going to come through you. Namely, through Jesus. Jesus is going to open up the blessings that are going to go to non-Jewish people or the Gentiles. Is that making sense? Any questions about that so far? The term blessing is kind of vague. And I think we sometimes we use the term blessing in an ambiguous way, right?

I mean, when someone sneezes, we say, bless you. It's like, what does that mean? What did we just say? I don't even know. Or, you know, we'll ask God, bless this meal. What is, you ever stop and think, like, what exactly are we asking God to do? Should I change the flavor, make sure we don't get sick from it? Or like, wow.

I mean, it's just, it's kind of in our language. We say blessing a lot without really thinking through it. And so in the Old Testament, blessing, a blessing did have to do with right favor with God, becoming right with God. So what we would consider kind of like spiritual blessings. But in the Old Testament, it did often also include material blessings. That aspect of being blessed does not really transfer under the New Covenant. This is one of the differences between Old Covenant and New Covenant. In the Old Covenant, if you had good favor with God, that often came with health, tons of children, and their children, you know, came with lots of cattle and sheep and goats, like that was kind of the wealth, the symbol of wealth back then. But in the New Testament,

it's almost, I won't say the opposite, but it's almost like, no, God's going to bless you with salvation, and that's probably going to come with a lot of suffering and persecution. So just on a practical level, the whole like health and wealth gospel has some, like they often go to the Old Testament for that idea, and they do have some, there's some basis in that in the Old Testament. It's just the big reason why I don't think it's accurate, that if, hey, if you're, you know,

it's because it doesn't transfer to the New Testament. Like, the Gospel that is ratified in Jesus Christ doesn't come with the promise of all this material blessing, whereas in the Old Testament, there is some of that there. I have a question. Yes.

So, I've always been taught that if our country, or if a country blesses Israel with a friendship and so on, that our country, the country that dies will also be blessed? I would say that resonates with what I'm saying. I think in the Old Testament, if there was no New Testament, there might be something to that. We do see nations being rewarded when they treat the Jewish people well.

We see this in Persia and Babylon and others. Or nations are punished when they mistreat God's people. But none of that transfers to the New Testament. In fact, in the book of, I mean, loads of passages, but Romans 9-11 would be a good one. Just because you are ethnically Jewish does not mean you're in good favor with God. Your Jewish ethnicity means nothing

in and of itself under the New Covenant. So I would say that that idea is inaccurate. So yeah, so I would say that that idea is, it's inaccurate, I would say. Yes, yeah. Right. Yeah, so yeah, I think that's not accurate. And people could dispute that or whatever. Now, that does not mean that God does not have some sort of special favor on Israel or some future plan. Again, going back to Romans, in Romans 11,

you seem to... I mean, there's debates about what's going on there, but I mean, it seems to be that God still has some future work He's going to do with the nation of Israel or Jewish people or Israelites, and I think that's valid, but I think it's going beyond that promise to say if a nation blesses that country, then that nation's going to be blessed. I think there's no New Testament evidence for that. Yeah, just to look

ahead, there's another... You see this promise reiterated all throughout Genesis. This whole Genesis... I'll put it in parentheses here. Genesis 12, 3 promise that, again, the one that Paul says is the gospel. Through your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Let me...

I want to make a point here, but I want to make sure I'm not going to make it later. Sorry. This morning I was going through all the notes, and I was reworking the order in which I was going to talk about things, and then I kept reworking and reworking. I'm like, man, I don't know if I made it more confusing than it originally was. So it's interesting that land, seed, and blessing,

and by seed, I mean, you know, this is the promise of a nation. And, so plural nation, and the individual seed, I'll just put it in caps here. a seed is kind of like you know it's it's plural and it's singular uh that i'm going to bless you with tons of offspring a whole nation but then there's also that singular seed and this is this exactly what paul does right in galatians you know it's not just the seeds but it's actually the seed jesus christ who's going to mediate the blessing here. What's interesting is land, seed, blessing. These are themes we saw already in Genesis 1 to 11, or even Genesis 1 and 2. Even things like, you know, God created the plants, seed-bearing plants, and they kind of

reproduce on their own, and be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth in Genesis 1-28. and be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth in Genesis 1.28. God blessed each day, you know, and said it was good. And on the sixth day, he said it was very good. Land, you see the, I mean, that's just another term for earth in Genesis 1. You know, that God is creating the land. He's making the land flourish and he's creating, you know, animals to walk the land and humans to rule over the land. So it's interesting that there's just a connection here that, again, the promises given to Abraham are still intertwined with God's hand and promise on creation as a whole.

And also, what's also interesting, at least, I don't know, I find it interesting, is you see kind of a down payment of these promises throughout Genesis. Again, if you're familiar with Genesis, there's certain passages like, well, in Genesis 21, or no, 23, Genesis 23, where Abraham, there's a whole like half a chapter devoted to Abraham haggling with some people in the land about where to bury Sarah who just died. And you're like, why is this passage in the Bible? Like, who cares, you know, about them going back and forth? And you know, and then Abraham actually ends up paying a really high price because he keeps telling the guy, no, no, I want to pay for this land,

this plot of land to bury my wife. And the guy's like, no, no, I'll just give it to you. And Abraham's like, no, I want to pay full price. And then the guy says, all right. And I think he charges him like 400 shekels, which if you do some research, it's like, wow, he should have taken the freebie, right? Like the guy was going to give it to him anyway.

And you're like, why is that even in the Bible? If that wasn't in the Bible, would my faith be hindered at all? In a sense, yeah, it would. Because that's a down payment that God is giving Abraham a piece of the land. He is the rightful owner of that plot of land where he's going to bury Sarah. There's another passage in Genesis 21 where he's haggling over a well, and they go back and forth on who dug this well, and I dug it. Okay, well, it's my well then. And again, if you do a little research, whoever owns the well owns the land around that area.

So even things like the well and burying Sarah and having this tomb that he owns, these are small glimpses that God is starting to fulfill this promise to give Abraham the land, that he's going to be rightful owner of the land. rightful owner of the land. What about blessing all peoples of the earth will be blessed through a descendant of Abraham?

There's a big, huge incident later in Genesis where we see this happening. Does anybody want to guess what I'm thinking of? It's always scary. A descendant of Abraham mediating, and I'll just say physical blessing to people who are not Israelites. What's that? Okay, that's one. There's actually two i was thinking of that's one

melchizedek is not an israelite and he is blessed with a tenth of abraham's wealth or we get to get the whole idea of tithing from a tenth and he is not uh he's not an israelite he he's he's an example of and we'll come back to melchizedek he's an example of, and we'll come back to this, because he's an example of the nations being blessed by a seed of, well, in this case, by Abraham himself. The big one I was thinking of is Joseph going down to Egypt. And there's all kinds of crazy circumstances that bring Joseph to Egypt. But remember, there was a massive famine in the land,

and then it's through Joseph's wisdom, I mean, God's wisdom through Joseph, that he ends up telling people, you know, store up for seven years, because there's going to be a famine in seven years, and there's a huge famine, and all the nations, tons of nations come down to Egypt to buy grain and get food,

and they are blessed by, ultimately, through the seed of Abraham, through Joseph. So we see glimpses of this promise being fulfilled. God keeps giving down payments. I'm going to come through. I'm going to come through. Even, you know,

there's that one chapter in 36, where, I think it's 36, where Jacob has all these kids through four different women. And it's like, there's a lot of intimacy going on in that chapter. It's just like, boom, boom, he's just popping all these kids everywhere. No, obviously the chapter is just summarizing it. I mean, you know. But that all, you know, right there, 12 kids.

And then they're going to have kids and they're going to have kids is an example of the nation coming into being. Not that it matters a whole lot, but I have in your notes where I got the date of Abraham's life. And in case you're a numbers person, I know some people love timelines and numbers. I'm kind of like that. I love staring at timelines and seeing how everything works out. And we don't need to look at it, but 1 Kings 6.1, that one verse is probably the most significant reason why we can even come up with all these dates in the Old Testament. That verse talks about

precisely when Solomon started building the temple and it says it was, I think, 480 years after the Israelites came out of Egypt. So then we can go back there and then we can find other verses that kind of keep going back and back and back, which actually gives us a pretty precise date for the birth of Abraham. Now, again, there might be some disputes

about certain dates, but I think the best date for the birth of Abraham would be 2166. Which is why I like to just give a round number and just say, you know, when you think of Abraham, just think 2000 BC. This is not the desert anymore. This is just a timeline.

So, 2000 BC for Abraham. And then Moses is going to be another 500 years, okay? Just to give you an idea. And then David. Just kind of get your mind around where these figures are at. Let's talk about... Again, any thoughts, questions?

About kind of the setting here? Oh, this is what I was going to... Yeah, I do have it on here, actually. That you see partial fulfillment of God's promise, especially at the end, that the nations are being blessed through a seed, an offspring of Abraham. So God's promise is made in Genesis 12, but in the Old Testament time when people made a promise

they would always go through some kind of covenant ceremony. People didn't just verbally make promises. I mean, they did that but it didn't really mean much until they went through a covenant ceremony and this is what we see in Genesis 15 which is a really bizarre chapter from our vantage point, because we

don't have covenant ceremonies, or at least not like they did back then. And I'll just summarize it. Well, shoot, I'm skipping over some stuff here. Yeah, you know what let me come back to genesis 15 in a second because i do want to just at least mention um in genesis 12 after god makes these promises to abraham he turns right around and almost squanders the promise and this this is what i love about abraham he's human he messes up a lot and we we sometimes we uphold abraham as being a little bit better than he really was but he's very human which gives me hope because that means you know god can look upon us with favor not because we're perfect but because of how good he is he He makes these promises to Abraham, and just a few verses later, there's a famine in the land,

and Abraham leaves the land, a promise, goes down to Egypt, lies about his wife. He's afraid that he's going to get killed, because apparently his wife's really beautiful. And they end up taking his wife, and he almost loses his wife's really beautiful. And he ends up, they end up taking his wife, and almost, I mean, he almost loses his wife here, because he was scared that he was going to be killed, and that they were going to take her anyway.

So just a few verses later, he almost, if it was up to him, the promises would be done by the end of chapter 12. But God comes through. He breaks in and speaks to this king, this Pharaoh, who had his wife, and says, this is not your woman. You need to give her back, and so on and so forth. And so Abraham gets his wife back, not because of him, but because God In chapter 14, we mentioned Melchizedek. After Abraham goes to war to go and get Lot back, there was a big war that happened.

Lot was taken captive and his family and taken up north. Abraham goes up. And this just shows how mighty and how strong Abraham is. I mean, he's got all these warriors that are kind of on his payroll, and so he goes up and actually defeats these nations, gets Lot back, and comes back. And then kind of out of nowhere, he had this weird incident here in 1417, where it says, after Abraham returned from defeating, I'm not going to try this, Shadar Lamar or something like that. That's a cool name, actually. And the kings who were with him,

the king of Sodom went out to meet him in the valley of Shaveth, that is the king's valley. Then Melchizedek, this is the first time this guy comes out of nowhere. Melchizedek, king of Salem. Do you know what city Salem ends up becoming? Yeah, Jerusalem.

Jerusalem, shalom, peace. Jerusalem or Jerusalem means, you know, Yahweh is peace. So this is not Jerusalem yet. This is hundreds of years before Jerusalem becomes, you know, the main hub of Israel. But he is the king of Jerusalem, which is just kind of interesting, knowing how significant Jerusalem will become in the story of the Bible. And he brought out bread and wine. Two significant ingredients for what we now know about bread

and wine in the New Testament. And he was a priest to God Most High, which is a, I mean, that's referencing Yahweh. So who is this guy? Like, he's a priest to Yahweh. He's, in a sense, I mean, he's king of a Canaanite city because what we now know as Jerusalem was part of what used to be Canaan.

So here's a Canaanite priest. But he's worshiping Yahweh. It's like, how does this happen? And he blessed him and said, Abram is blessed by God Most High, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and I give praise to God Most High who has handed over your enemies to you.

Remember, I will curse those who curse you. And Abram gave him a tenth of everything. And then it kind of moves on. We don't really hear about him again until he shows up in the book of Hebrews. And there's the book of Hebrews. And there's the book of Hebrews chapter 7 talks about that Jesus is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

Now that, you know, Jesus is a king and he's a priest. He's a king because he comes from the lineage of David. But which Israelite tribe is the one where the priest came from? What's that? Abraham?

Levi. Levi, yeah, Levi. They came from Levi. So you have two different tribes. Judah is the tribe that David comes from that the king is supposed to come from but Levi is the one where the priests come from so how is Jesus both I mean he can only be from one or the other he's of the lineage of David but he's also a priest but he's a priest according to the order of Melchizedek meaning there's a different kind of priest whose lineage is outside of even

the tribe of Levi. So that's the sense that, you know, that's the point of Hebrews, you know, in saying that Jesus is a priest, even though he's not of the tribe of Levi. Now, some people say that Melchizedek is kind of like a pre-incarnate Christ. Have you guys heard that? And that comes from the book of Hebrews chapter 7, but I don't think Hebrews seven is that explicit on that. So I don't, you know, um, there's nothing in the text of Genesis that clearly says that this is like a divine figure, Melchizedek. It just says he's a human figure. Um, so I don't, I, I don't, I think there are pre-incarnate manifestations of Jesus or pre pre-incarnate, I think, yeah. That God does manifest Himself

before incarnating in Jesus. I think He does manifest Himself physically in the Old Testament, which could be, we can say, that's a pre-incarnate Christ. Of the three persons within God, I guess Christ is a good candidate for the one that's being manifested.

But I don't think Melchizedek is clearly a pre-incarnate Christ. Have you guys heard that, or do you have any thoughts on that? No? Am I going too fast? Does this go okay? Okay. I know I'm covering a lot. All right, let's come back to Genesis 15, this covenant. And in the Old Testament, or not just the Old Testament, but just in the Old Testament era, there's two different kinds of covenants. One would be an unconditional covenant. One would be a conditional covenant.

A conditional covenant is like an if-then. If you do this, then I will do this for you. And you have in the Mosaic covenant, the covenant that God's going to make with Israel 500 years later from now, you have a lot of if-thens, like in Deuteronomy. If you do this, then I will bless you. If you obey me, then I will do this for you. The Abrahamic covenant, the covenant that God makes with Abraham, is an unconditional covenant. Not if you do this, then I will do this for you,

but I will do this for you, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. And we saw this again in Genesis 12, where if it were up to Abraham, the covenant would have ended by the time Genesis 13 comes around. But this is an unconditional covenant. God will give Abram a seed, meaning descendants and a singular offspring that's going to be the Messiah.

He will bless him, and he will give him the land. These are things that no matter what Abraham does or doesn't do, God is going to do. And we know it's an unconditional covenant because of Genesis 15. So in the old well in the old testament era when somebody was going to make a covenant like a conditional covenant they had this ceremony that seems really creepy kind of odd but they would take an animal or several animals they would cut them in two they would put they would put one half of the animal over here, the other half over here,

and then the two people making the covenant would walk between the dead carcasses. I mean, it's a whole bloody mess, right? I mean, you've got blood everywhere. You have this dead animal. It's really creepy. So, for instance, if Winston, say Winston had a, these are not

biblical figures, okay? Say Winston had a camel. Oh, now it's like I'm alluding to cigarettes here. Winston and camel. Winston, we'll just go with it. Well, Winston had a camel, and Wayne had a beautiful daughter. And Winston is like, hey, I'm going to give you, I want to marry your daughter, and I'm going to give you the camel in return. This isn't too far outside what actually used to happen back in these days.

And so Winston's going to give the camel, Wayne's going to give his daughter, and Wayne's like, well, my daughter's a little too young. She's only 11 right now. I's going to give the camel. Wayne's going to give his daughter. And Wayne's like, well, my daughter's a little too young. She's only 11 right now. And I'm going to wait two years until you can marry her. Because I married women really young back then. But so I, but I need to make sure you're going to keep your word.

I'm going to give you my camel now. And I'll wait for two years. But I want to make sure if I do this for you, then you will do this for me. Okay, we both need to keep our half of the bargain. So what would happen is the two would walk between the blood. See if this works. Took me a long time to do this. I hope you appreciate it.

They would both walk between the animals. Winston keeps his conditions, and Wayne keeps his conditions. What do you think the symbolism is here? Why do they have to have these dead animals on each side? dead animals on each side. It's a very vibrant and sober reminder that if you fail to keep your half of the bargain, you'll become like these dead animals. It's screaming out, like, it's just,

this will happen to you if you don't keep your half of the bargain and i even added um in your notes a few different um a and e stands for ancient near east so here's some ancient near east like that time period um examples of people doing this very thing um and these come from different uh sources here I don't even know what this is. I got this from another book that was referencing some source outside the Bible. The Hittite Treaty there, the second one. You read about Hittites in the Old Testament. And then there's another example in Jeremiah 34. This is the only other biblical parallel to this kind of ceremony where you divide the animals

in two and walk between them. So that's what's going on in Genesis 15 when God says to Abraham, take for me a heifer, a goat, and ram, each three years old, along with the dove and the young pigeon. And then they brought,

then he, Abraham, brought all these to God and cut them in two and laid each half opposite the other. Again, if you don't know this about this ceremony, it just seems like, what in the world is going on? But back then, any person reading this back then would be like, oh yeah, this is the, they're just going through the covenant like we, you know, but like we do all the time. So you would expect this to happen. Abram and God dividing the animals. And these are the two people, persons making this covenant.

And so you would have Abram saying, okay, I'm going to obey you. I'm going to do all these things to keep my half of the bargain. And God's like, okay, if you obey me, then I'm going to keep my half of the bargain. But's like, okay, if you obey me, then I'm going to keep my half of the bargain. But that is not what happens in Genesis 15. God takes this covenant ceremony and turns it on its head because while the two animals are laying there, Abram is over here sleeping. It says a deep sleep falls upon Abram and it says that God

in the flaming torch and there's different ways to translate it. Some translations say like an oven and a fire pot or something like that. What verse am I looking at here? When the sun had set and it was dark, a smoking, mine says a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch appeared and passed between the divided animals.

And that seems really weird. And it's kind of hard to picture and the translations are, we're not sure exactly what this is. The main point is you have fire, a symbol of, and light, a symbol of God's presence.

This is representing God's presence passing between the animals. So God promises to keep his half of the bargain while Abram is asleep because he, this is not a conditional covenant. This is a unilateral, one-way promise. I will bless you. I will keep my promise. I will send the Messiah. I'm going to give you this land. I'm going to give you descendants. I'm going to bless the nations through you, even if you fail to obey me. Now, there's times when Abraham obeys God. There's times when he responds well in faith and everything. Even a few verses earlier in Genesis 15, 6, it says,

Abram believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. So I'm not saying Abram's like the worst guy in the world. I'm saying he's human, just like all of us. The covenant doesn't rest on his shoulders. And so, I mean, just look at the next chapter, too. We don't need to read it, but this is the whole, in chapter 16, the whole incident with Hagar, in chapter 16, the whole incident with Hagar, where Sarah still doesn't have an offspring. She's been infertile. She can't get pregnant. And so seconds, well, we don't know how, probably not seconds, but shortly after God promised to give him this heir, this seed,

he says, well, it can't come through Sarah because we keep trying and she's not getting pregnant. So Sarah says, well, why don't you have a child with my slave woman, Hagar, and that will be the promised heir. That was a common practice back then. I'm not saying it's therefore okay, but I don't think the main problem going on in Genesis 16 is that Abraham's having an affair. Now, if this happened today in our culture, we would say that's adultery, that's an affair, that's whatever. But back then, it was common for somebody, if they had a concubine or a slave woman, okay, then that's problematic, obviously, for several reasons.

And if your wife was infertile, you can use the slave woman as a surrogate to kind of bear, and it would be your offspring. So that's, again, I'm not saying that's okay, just because it was common back then, but the main problem here is that Abraham is just not, he's not believing God's promise. He's letting something like, you know, the infertility of Sarah, he's like, well, she can't have a child, so obviously God, you know, it's not going to happen through Sarah, rather than trusting God to do a miracle. So all of this is connected to Genesis 3.15.

God's going to send a snake-crushing seed through Eve, and that seed is going to come through Abraham in Genesis 12. God solidifies that this will happen through the covenant ceremony in Genesis 15. So all throughout Abraham's life, we see he does have faith, and that he was credited righteousness through his faith. And we sing about the faith of Abraham, Father Abraham.

I forgot how that song goes. But it is a fragile faith. It's faith like it's faith that we have, right? I mean, we have faith. That's why we're Christians, but we go through periods of doubt. We go through times when we're not acting

like we actually believe the stuff we say we believe. I go through that a lot. I'm like we actually believe the stuff we say we believe. I go through that a lot. I'm like, man, okay, I say I believe all this stuff, but man, I look at my life and I'm like, do I really believe this? And it's like, well, yes, and no, yes, we have faith, but it's always going to be an imperfect faith. I mean, there's several things in Abraham's life that shows that he isn't really fully trusting God's promise. You know, you have the whole Abraham and Hagar incident. And then even in Genesis 17, he's like, God, just fulfill your promises through Ishmael.

And God's like, no, it's going to come through Sarah. And then he's like, OK, I believe you it's going to come through Sarah. And then he's like, okay, I believe you it's going to come through Sarah. And then in chapter 20, he lies about her again. I mean, this is like, really? The whole thing that happened in Genesis 12, where he went down to Egypt, and his wife's beautiful, and tell them you're my sister,

so they don't kill me, and ended up taking, the Pharaoh takes Sarah into his harem. The same thing happens again, only this time with one of the, with, oh, what's his name? Genesis 20. Abimelech.

One of the kings in kind of southern Israel at this time, or southern Canaan at this time. I mean, it's almost word for word the same incident. And again, this just shows that Abraham is having a hard time actually obeying the God that he says he believes in. Finally, finally, finally, finally, God gives Abraham a son in chapter 21. Finally, this is, you know,

I forget how many years it's been. Decades since Abraham first received that promise. And now finally, he gets a son. And then the very next chapter, God's like, all right, go kill your son. And he's like, you want me to do what with the promised seed? Now, we sometimes talk about the whole Isaac incident, the sacrifice of Isaac in terms of like,

look how much Abraham loved God. He's going to give up his son. Would you give up your son if God says, go kill your son? We kind of make a really strong moral point out of the story. And I think that's a point of the story. But I think the main point is more theological, not just a, you know, do you love God more than you love your kids, but God's promise is on the line. Is he going to trust God with this promised seed? So I, you know,

I've heard people ask, you know, if God said, go kill your son, you know, would you do it? And I'm like, well, I don't think God would say that. I was like, well, he did it back then. I'm like, well, yeah, he, but this is a really specific thing going on with this specific heir, this promised seed, this promised, the Genesis 3.15 promise is on the line here, the Genesis 12 promise is on the line here. This is a really specific thing going on here. I don't think this is like showing that every now and then God likes to say, hey, go kill your child, This is like showing that every now and then God likes to say, hey, go kill your child and I'm going to test you in that. The location is really interesting here.

There's so much going on in Genesis 22. You have a foreshadow of the Messiah, the very one through whom the Messiah is going to come, namely Isaac, who is going to be offered up as a burnt offering. On the mountains of Moriah, chapter 22, verse 2, take your son, your only son, your one and only son, whom you love,

and this is language that we see in the New Testament referred to that's used of Jesus, go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about. Moriah comes up later when God tells Solomon to build a temple on the mountains of Moriah, namely Jerusalem. And then, of course, Jesus is crucified on the mountains of Moriah. It

doesn't say mountains of Moriah in the New Testament, but that's the same, obviously, you know, Jerusalem, the same place where God, where the temple was built, where God's presence dwelt for so many years, and the same place where Isaac was almost offered up as a burnt offering. But God, you know, you know how the story plays out. God, at the last second,

he stops Abraham from killing his son and then says, there's a ram caught in a thicket, go and offer that animal in the place of this child. Child, he's probably a teenager by now. And this animal is going to be a substitute for the death of this son. And then all throughout the Old Testament,

we see that theme reiterated, an animal in the place of this son. And then all throughout the Old Testament, we see that theme reiterated, an animal in the place of a human. But then when we get to the climax of the story in Christ, it flips, right? It's a human as a fulfillment of all these animal sacrifices, a human on behalf of the rest of humanity and allows the promise to extend to the nations.

Questions or thoughts about any of that stuff? I know we're covering a lot of ground. Yeah. So, just for a second, because I struggle with this right here, and I haven't until, like, the last two years. I've heard this story my entire life. And I've just accepted it as, you know, just kind of like, oh, you know, it's significant. But not really thinking about it deeply.

And maybe it's because I have so many kids now. But I'm like, this is one of those stories where i feel like there's a glimpse of god that i don't understand and that i and that i have kind of chalked up to as well maybe one day when i'm in you know spending eternity with them i'll understand this better because i just because i'm looking at abraman and he obviously has this relationship with God, and he understands his voice. And even in the New Testament, he says, well, it references like, well, Abraham believed if he did follow through with killing Isaac,

that God would resurrect him. There was a measure of faith there. But I'm still like, if I heard God saying, go sacrifice your son, my first thought would be, it's not that time. And then the Bible says that inside of God, there's no darkness at all. And also, when you

see the child sacrifices to mold, he says, well, this thought hasn't ever entered the mind of God. And at the same time, though, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. No, it's good. It's just like all of a sudden I struggle with this story and at the same time it's not hurting my faith in the sense of

I still believe God is the creator that he's my savior. All of those things. It's just like wow this is a trip. Do you have a thought on that? Well this is the name of the second one. So child sacrifice is something that was common at one time

in the pagan world, maybe where Abraham was. And maybe part of this is God saying, you don't do this anymore. I've got no grace to help you. Entering, just for the audio, so if you all out there in the podcast world didn't hear the question, so we're struggling with just the

ethics of this whole incident. And then you were saying maybe God's entering into this familiar practice, child sacrifice, and kind of meeting it where it's at, but then saying we're not going to you know, the fact that he didn't go through with this, he's kind of showing that he doesn't want to do

this. And that, I think, first of all, I resonate with both of what you guys said. I've struggled with this for years, especially in the kind of more, like, if we just view it for the moral lens, like, if God, when people say, well, if God told you to do this, what would you do? And I say, I wouldn't do it. Like, I'm with you. I'm like, I would think that I'm here. God wouldn't command that, but he did here. I'm like, yes, but I think there are things that God says and does that are part of the storyline of Scripture that doesn't mean that's how, it's essential for that moment in the story, but isn't how God continues to act. The big one for me is, and the one that gets me even more than this, is the whole Canaanite

conquest, the conquering of Canaan. It's like, go kill everything that breathes. I say, okay, the Canaanites are really bad. Okay, but women and children? I mean, if you think too deeply about the book of Joshua, it's like, I can't even think about it too deeply. But again, I think that was a unique thing in that time that doesn't mean this is how God's going to continue to act. That still doesn't, that helps a little bit, but I still wrestle with it.

We do know a few things. I think we can assume that God wouldn't have let Abraham go through with this. So he knew, and this is an assumption, but the way the story plays out, God would not have let Abraham do this. But Abraham was still going to go through with it. But again, in a sense, there is an element of faith here that he's going to do something that he's like, I cannot believe God has asked me to do this, but I'm going to still obey, even though I don't understand. But then he did say, we're going to go worship to his servant that was with him, and we're going to return. Like, he says, we're going to go worship, and we are going to return.

Yeah, okay. Who wants to go first between you two? And he also, I don't know if he's asking, he said, God is mine. Right. Yeah, yeah, he, you know, hey, Dad, we're going to go sacrifice an animal. Where's the animal God will provide? So, but he's still, he's about to,

it's almost like he, I just wonder if he's like, I know this isn't going to go through. I know this knife is not, he's not going to, maybe it's the blade's going to fall off. Maybe some, this, he cannot, or maybe God's going to resurrect through. I know this knife is not, he's not going to, maybe the blade's going to fall off. He cannot die. Or maybe God's going to resurrect him or something. He, Isaac cannot stay

dead, I think is what's going on in Abraham's mind. Yeah. My boys look at this maybe in a little bit less dramatic fashion. I don't think, I think God was testing him. He began Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But he's dealing with a man who has never done everything the way he wanted him to. This was a major test for, you know, to carry on from that point. And I have always thought that that was the thing. And I've even heard it. When I took Old Testament in college, I even heard my professor kind of bring that up. Yeah, and I think that comes from James, James 2. Abraham, our father, he was justified. This is a whole other question about faith and works,

but he was justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar. I'm just kind of skimming this here real quick. Yeah, so I mean, the whole point that James draws out here is that it wasn't just, you know, mental belief in God. It was actually, you know mental belief in God it was actually you know belief that resulted in action you know and that idea of testing too

I think that's Hebrews right where I think it uses the language of God testing Abraham or even in Genesis I think it says that so so yeah I you know I I think it's okay for some things in the Bible, even though we're trying to kind of get our arms around this

and make sense of it, I think it's okay for there still to be that lingering, like, ooh, I still have lingering questions and even difficulty with this. It's okay. With the whole Joshua story, I will always have that, okay, I believe the Bible,

and I can kind of see, okay, why God did this then and everything, but I'm still not 100% comfortable with it in my humanity, and I still trust that there's a mystery in God that we won't fully either understand or be comfortable

with. Does that help at all? I mean, not help, I'm just kind of agreeing. John, I mean... No, it's... No, it's good. Let me close in prayer, because it's 1025, and we'll come back

next week and finish up the life of Abraham, then Isaac, Jacob, probably finish the rest of Genesis next week. God, we thank you for loving us. And Lord, you gave us your word, and so often it's such a blessing and challenge to us. And sometimes it is. There are things that we don't understand or just don't seem to sit right.

And we just want to acknowledge that, Lord. And we just ask that you would strengthen our faith and not that we have to be so okay and just with everything that is said in your word, but we do want to trust you in the middle of that and obey you as Abraham did in whatever aspects of our individual lives are going on where we have tests and trials and challenges to our faith. I pray that you

strengthen our faith so that we can honor you, Lord. In Christ's name, amen. Thank you.