S3 E14 God Speaks To Abram, And Everything Changes

We trace the arc from Noah and Babel to Abram’s call and show how God’s command and promise form a pattern for trust, identity, and mission. Ur’s sophistication, Abram’s likely monotheism, and the symbolism of crossing water connect Genesis to discipleship and baptism today.

• framing God as the main character
• harm of taking Scripture out of context
• Noah’s stumble and righteous imperfection
• nations from Shem, Ham, and Japheth
• Babel’s ambition and language scattering
• why genealogies compress generations
• shock of a speaking God calling Abram
• choosing a barren couple to launch a nation
• Ur as advanced city and weight of “go”
• evidence Abram recognized the Creator
• leave country, kin, and father’s house
• nomadic fears met by divine promises
• blessing for all families, not isolation
• numbers, triads, and mercy motifs
• Great Commission as echo of Genesis 12
• Euphrates crossing and roots of baptism
• Abraham as friend of God and model of loyalty

Keep your chin up. God is good. Buckle up for Genesis 15 next time

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:20

Hello, all you Bible lovers out there. This is Barb from Biblically Wired. I'm out of Minneapolis. And we are in the process of trying to get to Mount Sinai so that we can see what happened on Mount Sinai. And it will absolutely

Framing God As Main Character

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explode as we go through this intro and we start to see God as the main character and we start to read this text through the eyes of the Israelites. This is good hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the study of how to study the Bible. And this is good hermeneutics. We don't want to take things out of context. I came from a background. Many people have come out of backgrounds where stuff is taken out of context and it's very damaging. Very damaging. If anyone's been in that situation, there is a ministry out of Colorado called Be Emboldened. It's one word, be and then emboldened. And there are groups and um blogs, and you can get therapy, and it's just a very powerful place. I myself went through and had a wonderful counselor, the founder of Be Emboldened, named Naomi Wright. I just thought I would put that out there. We just got done reading about the rainbow and Noah, and I'm wondering as you read this, if you were quite shocked, because it's shocking. As soon as we hear about the rainbow that God set into the

Context, Hermeneutics, And Healing

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sky, we then hear about them coming off the boat. The first thing that we see Noah do in verse 20, chapter 9. Then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard. And it goes on to talk about him getting drunk. Now, why is God mentioning this? I mean, for many reasons, he's mentioning this, but let's think again about God being the main character. The fact that he started his plan or his desire to walk with people with an innocent man, and now he's restarting with a righteous man. In both cases, he's quite quickly showing us that neither the innocent man or the righteous man will stay sin free. And I don't think he is putting this into Noah's story for any reason to, you know, um put him on the spotlight or on the stand. I think what he's doing is reminding us that the righteous will still sin. Now it's interesting because of Jesus, we are considered righteous. So we're considered righteous because of Jesus, but that doesn't mean we're always gonna act righteous. So we see then in chapter 10, we see first of all, Shem gets the blessing, and Ham and Japheth, the other two brothers, do not. Shem's descendants are called the Semites, Abraham, David, and Jesus descended from Shem. Ham's descendants will settle in Canaan, Egypt, and the rest

Noah’s Failure And Righteousness

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of Africa, and Japheth's descendants will go north to Europe and Asia Minor. So that's kind of how the world began again. And we really see this covering, it's crazy from Shem for out of interest. The Hebrews, the Chaldeans, that's where Abraham came from, the Assyrians, the Persians, and the Syrians. I mean, that's a lot, a lot, a lot of people coming out of Shem and people groups. Ham, it's the Canaanites, the Egyptians, the Philistines, those tough, tough Philistines, the Hittites and the Amorites. And Japheth, it's Greeks, Thracians, and Scythians. So it's very fascinating how they can go back and find all this lineage. Chapter 10 talks about the descendants of Noah. And guess where we go then? And this is what blows my mind in the first 12 chapters of Genesis. We go through 1,500 years of history. So these little bits and pieces that we read, not a word is not powerful, not a word isn't demonstrating something about God and humanity and this great plan of God's going forward. So, of course, what happens? The Tower of Babel right before Abraham. Chapter 11. Let's listen to this because we're gonna get that east and west. Remember, when we're going God's ways, we are going west. When we're going away from God, we are going east. Sin is taken care of in scripture, east to west. Going toward going west is going toward God. And that's how he sets up his temple. There's hints of this in the writing. It's not always this way because Jonah will go west when he runs away from what God's doing. So it's not solid, solid, but when you see east and west, pay attention. There's a reason God is bringing that to the light. Chapter 11, verse 1. Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. It came about as they journeyed east that they found a plain in the land of Shinnar and settled there. They said to one another, these people who speak the same language and the same words, come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they used brick for stone and they used tar for mortar. They said, Come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name. Otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. So we don't know exactly what's going on, but we know that God needed to stop this, and he confused their language, and they were scattered then abroad over the face of the whole earth, and they couldn't build that city, and that time period is called the time

Nations From Shem, Ham, Japheth

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of Babel, and it's language confusion. All right, so this is right before, as a matter of fact, in chapter 11, right after that, we see the descendants of Shem. I want to say things about genealogies because people have figured out that genealogies are not actually factually exact. Genealogies and scripture often will skip a few generations and maybe talk about people the original audience would have understood. And we see that in the book of Ruth. Boaz is descendant of Rahab. And scholars argue about whether Rahab was his mother or his grandmother. Either way, he was part Hebrew and part Canaanite because Rahab came from the Canaanites. So just out of interest, sometimes they skip a few generations, and we don't know exactly why, but they're proving a point. And if you really get into genealogies, I know you can find it. All right, so Genesis chapter 12. Here we are. This is what we're gonna focus on. We kind of have the background. We know that Abram is gonna be, Abraham is going to be that father of the Hebrews, and he ends up being the father of all believers in Jesus Christ. Abraham is probably the most famous man in the world to ever live outside of Jesus Christ, and that is debatable, but I think I have a pretty good grasp on that, and I think you guys would agree. He's up there, right? He's up there. Now, when we read chapter 12, verse 1, we don't realize this is a blow your shawl off moment. This is like what in the thunderation is going on. Now the Lord said to Abram, whoa, whoa, okay, wait, what is going on here? We don't realize that in this time they believed in foreign gods, and these foreign gods did not speak to humans. These foreign gods did not speak, right? They're not gonna come up to you and call you by name, they're not gonna know things about you. We've already discussed the fact that people were created in a lot of their stories to be slaves, they're not important. The gods in the land are important. And here we have the God of the universe coming and saying something to Abram. It's it's it's blow your mind stuff. And what does he say? He says, Go forth from your country. Go, go, go,

Babel And Scattered Languages

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go. So this is a serious command from God to Abram. Now, I just want to say this, and this is nothing against other ministers, other pastors, anything against it at all. But I've been very curious why a lot of people will say, and I'm serious about this, nobody has a clue why Abraham was picked. Nobody knows anything about Abraham. He was just a regular dude, and it's a great thing to think about him being a regular dude. Of course, he was regular, but that's not that's not the deal here. That is not the deal. We know about the seed promise. And at the end of chapter 11, we see that his dad is part of the seed promise. His dad's name is Tara, which means delay. And Tara had three sons, and Abram was chosen to be the seed bearer. But what's fascinating about this to me is Sarai is childless. So why would God choose Abram as the seed bearer? Well, one brother had passed, the other brother had kids. He looks like the real dude. It looks like the person God would pick, but no, God's gonna go after Abram. Why? Because God is making a new start. He made Adam from dust, he took Noah through this ark, and now he's gonna take a barren couple and make them the start of a nation. Only God can do this. Only God could even think about this. If we were reading this story and we got to this point, it's jaw-dropping that Abram and Sarai are chosen as the start of a nation when she's Aaron. And I have to tell you guys, the coolest part about that in my mind is Sarai does not have a baby until Abram's a hundred. She's 90, I want to say, when she has Isaac. And what's so cool about it in my ways, or in my eyes, is that God waited so that we would know that all of Sarai's eggs were gone. Like there is no way that Sarai could have had a regular birth, her egg, Abraham's

Genealogies And Their Purpose

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sperm, unless one of her eggs was resurrected. And believe it or not, this is the root. Sarai is the root, the foundational piece of resurrection itself. Because there is no way Isaac could be born unless life was brought into a barren womb. Now, isn't that mind-blowing? The story of Abram and Sarai is so um not complex really, because God's not really complicated, but it has a zillion layers. And here we are with the word go. Go forth from your country. So God asks Abram to go forth from his country. Well, what's his country like? I gotta tell you guys, archaeologists say that Mesopotamia, the place that Abram was raised and lived in, is the first nation on earth. The first time the world went from tribal to city, and it wasn't just this rudimentary city. This was a very polished uh place. This was a renaissance city. This place had art, it had fashion, it had um loans, it had rudimentary kind of credit cards that you could use. It had the start of a stock market. They had many inventions

Enter Abram: A Shocking Call

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that came out of Mesopotamia and this land of Ur, you could go to Dakar, Iraq today, and you can see the temple to the god of Nana that Abraham would have seen. So this is kind of neat stuff. We're getting to the time where we can find stuff and we can pinpoint where this history is taking place. Now, there we go again. Now, doesn't that make God uncomplicated? If he was to go to anyone before Abraham, who grew up in the land of Mesopotamia, if he was gonna go to anyone in the generations back under Shem and say that I want to make a nation out of you, that person wouldn't have even known what a nation is. But God was waiting for someone to make it uncomplicated. So that nation was brought about, Abraham knew exactly what he was being blessed with and called to do. Okay, so people say, and I have to tell you, I, if you ever listen to me teach, I will talk about Grandpa Swindall because I love Chuck Swindall. Well, I got his book on Abraham, and he himself, I don't think, has done much digging into this. Sorry, Chuck Swindall, but he says that Abram was probably polytheistic, and that just didn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense to me that Abram would be polytheistic walking down an alleyway and suddenly hearing God's voice um stop him. So I have to tell you guys, I've been looking into some commentaries on this, and I want to go through some of the things I fleshed out and the reason I believe he was monotheistic. He believed in one God, not polytheistic, as everybody believes, or a lot of people believe. So there's a Genesis commentator, a theologian named Victor Hamilton. Incredible, incredible man, and he's got a thick, chunky book on Genesis. He's very well respected. And this is what he writes about Genesis 12, 1, where it says, Now the Lord said to Abram, God's voice comes to Abram without warning, and the patriarch is perceptive enough to recognize that voice the first time he hears it. So Dr. Hamilton emphasizes that it is apparent in the word that Abram was wise, and it is by his obedience that we can construe that Abram already had faith in this creator God. Now, theologian Kenneth Matthews also has an incredible reputation amongst all scholars, and he writes in his Genesis commentary that what we see between God asking and Abram obeying is an existing relationship. All right, so obviously, no scholar or theologian has authority over our beliefs and they don't want authority. Um, and we might be opposed to these theologians, and that is okay, this is not a salvation issue. But I like to delve into these things is because I believe

Choosing A Barren Couple

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the more we understand the context of Abraham, the more we can gain insight into the minds of the Israelites around Jesus and the disciples. This has long-term effects. Investing in this time period has long-term effects. Okay, so let's talk about Josephus. What does Josephus write? Josephus has a book, and it is the history of the Hebrews. Rome asked Josephus to write down the history of the Hebrews. Josephus was raised as a Jewish person. He turned his back on the Jews at one point. Um, he ended up in Rome. He's very intelligent, he has really, really interesting writings. People take them to heart. Most theologians use them as a reference. To me, he's like a boots on the ground historical writer. He's like somebody who has heard the oral tradition around Abraham. So this is what he says. Josephus regards Abram as having sagacity, which is intelligent and discernment. Abram's life, he says, showed an urgency to change all men's worship from idols to the one true God of creation. Joseph, Josephus also describes Abram as a man of great evangelistic qualities. He writes, guys, that Abram believed that there was but one God, the creator of the universe, and that as to other gods, if they contributed anything to the happiness of men, they only received that power from God himself. All right. So in his writings, what I thought was interesting is there's a Chaldean historian named Berosus. Now, Abraham was from Chaldea, right? Ur is in the land of Chaldea and Mesopotamia. It's like state, county, city kind of thing. And what does he write? Barosis wrote. He quotes from him that in the tenth generation after the flood, there was among the Chaldeans a man right righteous and great and skillful in celestial science. Josephus says, we understand this to be Abram. Now, look at this. This is crazy, guys. And I'm just going over this so you will know. I did my due diligence and I believe Abram was monotheistic when God approached him. So ancient historian Eames writes about Hacatius of Abdura, the fourth century BC, a Greek historian. So this is outside biblical context. This is moving outside the lens of the biblical story, right? So this Greek historian, he wrote an entire book on Abraham's history. We only have fragments today. Wouldn't it be cool to read it? But his writings emphasize the repeated stories of Abram teaching royal courts and commoners how astrology demands the belief in a creator. So there we go, you guys. He was a cosmic genius, is the way I say it. He was incredibly keen about creation. And we know they use the stars, they use the stars and the planets in their

Ur’s Sophistication And The “Go”

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daily life, not like we do. So I just thought that was really, really incredible. And I had to share that. And I just have to go down this alleyway because I want us to be confident in what we're seeing here. God tells him to go. And what does he tell him to leave? If you break down the seven things God says here, he gives Abram three things to leave. Then he says, I will make you a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great, and so you shall be a blessing, and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. So what are the three things that he is asked to leave? Abram is asked to leave his country, and then his relatives, and then his father's house. And where is he told to go? To the land which I will show you, which I call an undisclosed location. So come on, Abram, what you gonna do about this, right? What I see, Abram leaving, is similar to our call when we become believers in Jesus Christ. So Genesis 12 1, it first gives three things. Abram needs to leave. He is altogether leaving literally. Literally the comforts of his life. Your country is your land. That includes the gods. Gods were gods of a particular portion of land. If you go outside that boundary, you leave your God. You leave your God's protection. You leave anything, any of the blessings you got from that God are gone if you leave their land. So he's leaving his land, which is the gods, which is his generational blessing, which is his future income. That's his 401k. That's anything he's been leaning on for his future. Then leave your relatives. Your relatives in the ancient world are your protection. That is like everything. They went after anyone who went after you. They would gather up and protect your home, protect Sarai, protect everything you own together. Relatives stuck together. Lastly, your father's house. That is also family, inheritance, etc. But your father's house is also leaving your emotional, kind of your emotional foundation. Now, what we see here is a biblical triade. Now, this is a hermenetical tool. When you look at one, two, and three, country, people, father's house. The way this is put, it is giving emphasis on father's house. The hardest thing for him to walk away from is his father's house. Leaving his country, leaving his relatives, nothing as hard as leaving his father's house. And it's really cool because Rabbi Yehoshua B. Gordon, he teachers teaches in this lecture called Lak Lakah. And I listened to hours and hours of his lectures on Genesis, and I was kind of blown away because he talks about the fears one would have of a nomadic life. When you are nomadic, anything can kind of get to you, right? When you're in a city, you might have walls around your city, you might have more of a brick home, you

Was Abram Monotheistic

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feel better going to bed. I don't know about you guys, but if I've lived in kind of more of a wispy tent, I would feel at risk, at risk to the environment, at risk to anybody coming by, at bandits and whatnot. So this nomadic life had a ton, a ton of fears. And also, what this rabbi Yehoshua says is there are three things that are hard to acquire when you're nomadic. One, children are hard to bear and raise because you're always on the move. You're always on the move. And apparently that's very hard for the body of the male and female. It's harder to have children when you're nomadic. Two, your fortunes decrease because you have to focus on something other than wealth. You're focusing on survival. So you're focusing on surviving when you're nomadic. And three, it is hard to build a reputation because you're in multiple places. So going nomadic, what God was saying, going nomadic was literally leaving all those comforts, all that assurance, all that protection or false protection, really, because God is our protector, but you're leaving that all behind. So now look at the first three promises God gives him. God knows his heart. Look at this. You will have children, you will be prosperous, and you will have a reputation. Those are the three things that are the hardest to gain when you're nomadic: children, prosper, prosperity, and reputation. And the most significant thing here to emphasize is reputation. In the ancient world, you lose everything when you lose your reputation. So look at God right away, telling him what he needs to leave, and right away giving him this assurance that I'm gonna give you the things that you think come from the people around you, the land around you, your savings, your 401k, your friends, everything that you honor or you have placed above me, I'm gonna strip away. You're gonna have none of that. You're gonna walk with me, and we are going to be in a relationship. So here again, God is showing his heart, his pursual, his promises, and his love, his pure love for humanity and the world. He wants to start a nation from Abraham and Sarai. Abraham and Sarai are not starting a new nation. So what's going on here, guys, is they're 70 nations. God is not making a 71st nation. He is pulling from the 70 to make a new nation. He's not creating new people. This is not brand new DNA. None of that is true. He is showing his love for the world by taking people of the world, and who knows how many bloodlines went with Abram? Because Abram and Sarai were not solo with a couple donkeys walking through the Euphrates and off to the west. No, that is not true. They went with quite an entourage. A huge, huge caravan had to have been with them. To live as a nomad, you need people who have skills in so many areas. You need shepherds and tanners and shearers and farmers and on and on and on. All of that was needed by Abraham.

Voices From Josephus And Others

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So he was not going away just him and Sarai. He was taking quite a bit of people with him as they traveled west towards God's way. Now, by God affirming all of these worries that Abram would have had about being a nomad, he's saying, I'm all in. I am all in. Abram, I know I'm asking you to be all in, but I'm all in. But what I found fascinating too is Jewish thought takes these three things he needs to leave behind even a step further and pairs leaving your country with leaving your will and desire. Leaving our birthplace is paired with leaving our emotional and behavioral self. And leaving our father's house emphasizes leaving our intellect behind. So, guys, in this case, in Jewish thought, Abraham was asked to leave behind his will, desires, society, emotions, behaviors, and even human reasoning. In Jewish thought, Abraham was to walk away from everything like a blank slate and saying, God show me the way and God show me how to be your son. Now notice Jesus states in Luke 14, 26, If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even their own life, such a person cannot be my disciple. So the large crowd listening to Jesus would have understood this is a similar call to Abraham, to their father. So that's Luke 14, 26. I have to give a caveat here. Hebrew and Greek do not have a word for hate. So many languages do not have the hate word. I've heard Chinese doesn't even have the word hate. The best translation is choose or not choose. And I find it fascinating too because that used to kind of give me the shivers. Ah, you know. Now my husband and I, we had to leave our church, our reasoning, our will, our society, uh, everything behind when we left our old church. We left everybody we knew, and it was a very, very scary thing. But do you count on a church or do you count on the creator of the world for your future, right? Now, I want to clear up that God, Jesus is talking about a disciple here. There are people who are believers, they're born again, they're saved, but to be a disciple, to be someone who goes, to be someone who goes, like the Great Commission, to go and make new disciples, that's a different thing. And what Jesus is saying is you gotta be on board with my way. You gotta be on board with my heart for the world. You gotta be on board to take ridicule from people around you, keep your chin up, and power on. Now, in Luke also chapter 9, verse 62, Jesus says, No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. Wow. No one who puts a hand

Leave Country, Kin, Father’s House

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to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. I have to say, in our current thinking, it's more so ready. If you no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is ready for service in the kingdom of God. So we don't need to have quaking knees here. If we are looking back, we're just grieving our past. We are wanting one foot and two boats. We're wanting to please the people in our past and be part of something huge that Jesus is doing in the future. We're not in the right spot to be used powerfully in the kingdom of God. We are of two minds, so to speak. Wow. So we can just see God telling him to go, and then we're gonna see him give purpose. And isn't this interesting? Isn't this what he did with Adam? Isn't this what he did with Noah? He's gonna give purpose. You will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who curse you, all the families of the earth will be blessed through you. Now, if we had a you all version, he this is plural. All the families of the earth will be blessed through y'all. Ya all. This is not just Abraham, this is the descendants of Abraham, and this is us. The world should be blessed through us. I have to take us back here and give us a little number lesson here, and I'm sure you noticed seven things, seven promises, as seven is complete, right? And five times it says blessed, bless, or blessing. And we know five is the number for mercy and grace. So when we keep chopping this down, we got to go back to numbers here and take a look. But look at Genesis 12 1 again. It gives three things that Abram needs to leave. So what is he leaving? He is altogether leaving the comforts of his life. That's what the three is. And it once again shows up in the covenants of God's, the commands of gods, etc. So I want to go on to say Jesus by his words gives us his command and purpose before he goes up to heaven in the ascension, Matthew 28, 19 and 20. His words echo God's pattern of command and purpose when he says to the disciples, and I think this is so, so cool, because being a disciple of Jesus Christ who was a rabbi, rabbis gave purpose and blessings and commands to their disciples when they were passing away. So the disciples would have expected Jesus to do this before his ascension. They are waiting for some marching orders. They are waiting to know what would please Jesus as they continue to grow and walk with him through the Holy Spirit. Okay, so Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. And then what does he say? Go therefore, and one, make disciples of all the nations, two, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, and three, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you. And then he ends it with, and I just think this is so beautiful. I am with you always to the end of the age. And where he knocks every rabbi off the charts here is Jesus is not leaving them as orphans. When other rabbis died, they left their disciples as orphans. Their disciples were known as orphans. But Jesus is saying, I am with you always to the end of the age. So beautiful. But look at those three things. Make disciples of all the nations, baptize

Nomadic Fears And Divine Promises

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them in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to follow all that I commanded you. So this is our command and our purpose to go, go. And we're personally led as part of the team in the body of Christ. And but we got to notice that Jesus did not sit again and give the disciples each personal commands, accolades, future plans that were rosy. Actually, he was like, guys, you're gonna suffer for the gospel. But Jesus, as a rabbi, gave the disciples what they would expect because they knew God's patterns of command and purpose. They wanted to know their purpose. Their rabbi was leaving them. Jesus was in body form leaving them. They did not have the Holy Spirit yet. They are ready, they want to be equipped for this call. So isn't that just fascinating? So I wanted to start that out because the covenant of Abraham is so incredible. It is portioned out in eight portions of Abraham's story, which we would not go through all of them. Um, but if you ever get my study later, I'm gonna go through every single one of them. But it goes on in verse four then to say, and this is chapter 12, verse 4. So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. Now Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took who? Sarah, his wife, and Lot, his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. Thus, thus they came to the land of Canaan. Now, I just have to give an amazing fact here. In order for them to get to Canaan, they had to cross the Euphrates. Abraham's crossing of the Euphrates is another first mention. It is the route of baptism. It is the root of baptism because they are going through water, they are leaving many gods, and they are going to one God. As a matter of fact, Abram is called a Hebrew because he is one who crossed over. What did he cross over? He crossed the Euphrates. Isn't that just massive? There are so many roots in the Torah. As a matter of fact, and I think I've said this in an earlier teaching, but rabbis say that there is nothing in the word that is not rooted in the Torah. And I've been challenging that with the New Testament, and I just keep seeing roots and I keep seeing roots and I keep seeing roots. And there are many water crossings to come in scripture, but when we were baptized, we become part of that. Part of Abraham crossing that Euphrates, part of going from many gods to one God. To publicly align myself with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a powerful, ancient, beautiful thing. And wow. He was loyal. There are three times in scripture he is called God's friend. And doesn't God deserve a friend? I mean, that's what he wants. And Abraham, oh my gosh, his heart, his obedience. We see him wishing and washing, but we see his faith grow through the story. We're not going to go through the nitty-gritty. Next time we are going to go to Genesis 15 because we're going to talk about the covenant and the most powerful piece of Abraham's life, as far as I'm concerned, when it comes to the cross of Jesus

A Nation From The Seventy

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Christ. And this is the thing that a lot of people have said they never knew. In all their life, they never knew what a big part of the gospel the covenant of Abraham is. As a matter of fact, one of my favorite Bible teachers, Ryan Habena, he comes out of village schools of the Bible, who I've also taught for. He says there's no way to understand the cross without understanding Abraham. Again, God's the main character. What do we see? We see he is uncomplicated. We see he comes to Abram and he first addresses his heart as God knows this is a big ask on this man. So as we go forward, we're going to see how this plays out. We've had the innocent man and then the righteous man. And now we have Abram and Sarai going off with the promise that they will become a nation one day. How is this going to rock and roll? Buckle up. The next teaching's amazing. God is good. Keep your chin up. And thank you again for joining me. I am so humbled here in Minnesota.