The Bible Recap - Day 016 (Genesis 12-15) - Year 5

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

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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 prep 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. 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 Innois 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. In 123, 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 Abram and his wife, Sarah, 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 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 herm of wives. 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. After they left Egypt, they went to the Najib, which is a desert region. God had blessed 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 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 house, big house, by the way, chased after Lot's 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 Godmost High. We don't have time to dig too deep into this, so I'm gonna put a link in the show notes with more info. And if you don't know how to find the show notes on your particular podcast app, try googling the name of the app you're using along with the words show notes. 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. This is awesome, unless you're a Leaser of Damascus, who was the original heir of Abram's massive fortune. But, Leasers' 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 Abram 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. 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 Abraham,

which reminds me of the deep sleep that came on Adam in 221, when God was bringing Adam into a 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. 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, 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, and pass between those cut-up pieces here is unheard of. He's a promise maker, and he's where the joy is. As we move through 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 thebibelrecap.com forward slash names and submit your email address. That's thebibelrecap.com forward slash names. This episode is brought to you by Way of Them. They're a great place to find your favorite Christian music. What if you listen to Christian music on Way of Them

for 21 days and see how God uses it to make a difference in your life? To listen to Way FM, click the link in the show notes or text the word day to 919-799.