The Bible Recap - Day 016 (Genesis 12-15) - Year 3

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. If you never got around to listening to our six rep episodes from before our daily recap started, I would encourage you to take time to do that today. You can listen to all six episodes in a little more than an hour, and they will really help you out. We also offer bonus episodes via our Patreon community. You can check out today's show notes for a link to our Patreon if you want to join us and get bonus content from the Bible recap each month. This month, we're covering some helpful tips and resources for how to study your Bible instead of just read it. So for those of you who come away with more questions and answers each day,

Starting point is 00:00:43 this will be great at helping you find information quickly for the deeper questions you're asking. Okay, we're back to Genesis now. When we were last here, before we dropped in on Job, a man named Abram had just been born through the bloodline of Adam and Noah, the Anoas son, Shim. According to the timeline Genesis marks out, Abram was born almost 2,000 years after Adam, but only about 300 years after the flood. And just like Adam and Noah before him, God continues his unique relationship with this family through Abram.

Starting point is 00:01:15 In 12-3, God tells Abram that he's going to bless him so that he may be a blessing. That blessing doesn't terminate on Abram, it's ultimately about way more than him. It's about how the Messiah will be born through his bloodline someday, through this family, which is a blessing to all the families of the earth. But this is way over Abram's head at this point. Initially, God just promises to bless him with land and possessions, but there's one problem. The land God promises him is currently inhabited by the Canaanites. We talked about them on day three. They were the group of people that were generally regarded as enemies of God. There was a famine in the land at the time, so Abraham and his wife, Sarah,

Starting point is 00:01:54 moved to a different place, Egypt, and Abram's nephew Lot, goes with them. As well as all their servants and animals and possessions, there's some weird stuff that happens where Abram is afraid of the Egyptian Pharaoh. He thinks he's going to steal Sarah and kill him, so Abram convinced the Sarah to pretend to be his sister, which she sort of was. She was his half-sister. Pharaoh did kidnap Sarah as Abram feared, and she was basically made to be a part of his harem of lives. God was not okay with that, and he had big plans for Sarah, so he brought the truth to light via some classic plagues in order to get Sarah released. Mind you, she was about 65 years old at this point, so she must have been a stunner. I'm guessing she was like the Michelle Fiverr of her day.

Starting point is 00:02:35 After they left Egypt, they went to the Najib, which is a desert region. Got to bless them with so much, and they had so much stuff that it wouldn't all fit in the desert. Though to be fair, I guess there would be stiff competition for the tiny patches of grass to feed their livestock, whatever. So they decided to split ways and Abram leaves the first choice of land up to his nephew. Lot wasted zero time in picking the land that looked to be the most beautiful and fruitful, but the bad news was that it was near all the wicked people. He set up camp near the Dead Sea, you might even have some salt or some lotion from his old neighborhood, but then a war broke out not long after Lot moved there and he and his people got taken as captives when Abram, his uncle, found out. He and the 318 warriors who lived in his

Starting point is 00:03:19 house, big house by the way, chased after lots of kidnappers for about 160 miles until they caught up with him and got him and his people back. In 1418, we read something important that may not have seemed important. It says, Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was priest of the God Most High. We don't have time to dig too deep into this, so I'm going to put a link in the show notes with more info, and if you don't know how to find the shownotes on your particular podcast app, try googling the name of the app you're using along with the words shownotes.

Starting point is 00:03:52 But I just want to point out that his name means King of righteousness, and he was the King of Salem, which means peace. The King of peace and righteousness. And he brought out bread and wine. Sound familiar? And he was a king and a priest. Two roles that are rarely combined. So what we have here in Melchizedek is a picture of Jesus, an archetype, a model. We'll see this guy a few more times as we read through the Bible together, so just remember that name, Melchizedek. In chapter 15, God makes Abram a promise that he's going to have a son.

Starting point is 00:04:26 This is awesome, unless you're Eleazar of Damascus, who was the original heir of Abram's massive fortune. But Eleazar's hope was in the fact that both Abram and Sarah were super old, and it did not seem possible for them to have a child. But that's what God said, and we see in 156 that Abraham believed God despite his age. We also see that Abram's belief in God's Word counted as righteousness. Not as actions, not as sacrifices, is belief. This is consistent with what the rest of Scripture teaches us as well.

Starting point is 00:04:58 Even in the Old Testament, faith in God's Word was what connected people to God, not obedience to the law. For more on that, check out Hebrews 11. What happens next between Abraham and God is pretty peculiar on the surface, but it has some really beautiful, rich meaning if you dig a little deeper into it. Even though Abraham believed God, he basically asked God for confirmation. So God told Abraham to do all these weird things, cutting animals and half and whatnot. Then a deep sleep falls on Abram, which reminds me of the deep sleep that came on Adam in 221 when God was bringing Adam into a

Starting point is 00:05:32 new season too. That was when God made Eve. But here, God shows up on the scene not too miraculously hand Abram the promised child, but to make a covenant with him. And this is where my God shot comes in. This really weird scene of passing between the cut-up animals was an ancient covenant-making practice between a king and a servant. I don't have time to cover how beautiful this is, so if you want more info on this,

Starting point is 00:05:55 check out the link in our show notes, but here's the short version. Typically, the servant would walk between the cut-up animals as a way of saying, I take the curse of this covenant that I will be cut in half like these animals if I don't fulfill my part of the covenant. So for God to show up in the form of fire, which is typical of the presence of God in the Old Testament,

Starting point is 00:06:16 and pass between those cut-up pieces here is unheard of. He's a promise maker, and he's where the joy is. He's a promise maker, and he's where the joy is. As we move to Scripture, you'll see several names of God referenced. And as we keep looking for Him and for our God shot as we read His word each day, we thought it might be helpful to give you a more comprehensive guide to the names and attributes of God. So we've built out a PDF for you that not only lists the names and attributes of God, but also the Scripture references where you'll find them. We'd love to share that resource with you. If you want to get this free PDF, all you have to do is go to the

Starting point is 00:06:50 BibleRecap.com forward slash names and submit your email address. That's the BibleRecap.com forward slash names. The Bible Recap is brought to you by D.Goo. Discipleship and Bible Study Group groups that meet in homes and churches around the world each week.

The Bible Recap - Day 016 (Genesis 12-15) - Year 3

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