The Sanctuary: Walking With God Season 2 Episode 8 – Why Did God Choose Abraham?

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 8 of The Sanctuary: Walking With God! In this episode, theologian Dan Robb and scientist Mark Wadsworth dive into the life of Abraham, examining his story through the lens of history.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Welcome to the Sanctuary. It's a podcast about walking with God. I'm Dan Rob, I'm the theologian, and this is Elvis Presley. He's entered the building.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Yeah, baby.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

And uh he Yeah. You don't have to know if he's dead or yet. He's alive.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

I've been reincarnated as a physicist, but you have been. Where's that peanut butter?

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Yeah. Yeah, there you go. If you want him to sing a hunk of hunk of burning love, you know, send in your request now.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

So that's just a little gasp. That's a little gas up. Nothing to do.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Right. Jesus. Golly. Well, he is Mark Wadsworth. He is the scientist. And off camera beforehand, uh, he was mentioning he wanted to do a science episode. And uh I told him that was a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Uh say anything to get me to shut up.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

I'll say anything if I don't have to know. If it doesn't have to work, yeah. Yeah, if I don't have to work. We are uh if you have a comment, a query, a conundrum, or a quagmire, and you know what those are, then please email us at contact at sanctuary bb.org. Or you can check us out on the Facebook page where you can see pictures. I like the most recent one of you and I.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yeah, hanging out after the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Hanging out at the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah, that's a pretty good picture.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

People ask which one was which.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

And I said, you know, I'm the one with the beard.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

There you go. Yeah, that's that's pretty easy. And you'll have no idea if you're listening to this or you're watching it on Rumble because you'll go, I haven't seen that. So you gotta join the Facebook group just once. Just once.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

And it'll only take one visit to the optometrist afterwards to get your eyes right again.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Pretty much. You'll you'll rub your eyes and go, I can't unsee that anymore. Oh, the humanity. Oh this is horrible. Oh, golly. Yeah. Hopefully that won't happen. I know I talked last episode at the end about doing an episode on end time stuff and Nephilim and things, and I'm still doing the study for that. So uh I found some interesting connections between Revelation 9 and Joel, chapters 1 through 4. It's kind of interesting. Um, but it's all one of those things where I really need to have my ducks in a row if I'm gonna talk about this.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

And I have to admit, I'm I'm actually in NRG now, the Nephilim Recovery Group.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yeah, because it's like you know, you get you get too much of that stuff, and I know I can tell.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

You start growing extra fingers, yeah, more teeth.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Yeah, I was I was I thought I might have to bust out the straitjacket for you tonight. But uh the incredible bulk. The incredible bulk. Vaux. No, thank thankfully not. But anyw, we're gonna start a series on Abraham, and uh depending on when I receive the episode on science-y stuff and things and elements and periodic tables uh from Mark, that's when we'll do that one. But I thought, you know, as we're as we're talking, and we're in Genesis here, and we're talking about, you know, Genesis 10, and then we get onto Genesis 14, and it's like Abraham's involved. And this week I was just thinking about Abraham, good old Abe, and I I thought, you know, um, you don't really spend a lot, you don't really think about what culture or time that he lived in, yeah, and how so strange is what he does, you know, and he takes a everyone's you know, you got Genesis 10, you got Nimrod and all that building up to Genesis 11, yeah, and then you get Abraham's call later in uh Genesis 11. Well, you get you hear about him in Genesis 11, and then you get his call in Genesis 12, and you're like, this guy is it's almost like another Noah in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

The thing is, you know, you grow up in Sunday school and you hear the stories about Abraham, but they don't really put him in the proper time frame with everything else that's going around. Yeah, so you just say, Oh, he was this really great guy that loved God and mostly did what God wanted him to do. Yeah, but you never really think about what's going on around him. Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Yeah, he's he's punching a time clock, you know, working there. That's a shepherd, you know. It's like, hey, how's it going, Sam? Good job, Abraham. All right, you know. Morning, Ralph. Morning, Abraham. Yeah, sorry. Pretty much.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

You get that illusion you're older than I am.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

There you go. That's what we try to do here on this show is uh say things that have no relevance whatsoever. That's right. Not even my own mother knows about this show. So there you go. Uh just kidding, but seriously. Uh Abraham lived in the city called Ur. It's a Sumerian city, and it's uh ancient uh it's the ancient city that practiced polytheism. So that's the environment he grows up in. And before I get into any more of it, let's go to Genesis chapter 11, verse 28 through 30. And let's meet good old Abe here. I'm gonna call him Abe. He's probably gonna be irritated by that.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

I bet he is.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

Uh he's probably gonna want to get in line. He probably will cut and cut in line in front of Daniel.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Uh just don't call him Hammy.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Yeah, don't call him Hammy. You're real Ham. Ah, no, too soon. All right. Verse 28, uh, New King James and Haran died before his father Terah in his native land in Ur of the Chaldeans. Verse 29, then Abraham and Naor took wives. The name of Abraham, Abram's wife, sorry, not Abram, my bad, uh, formerly known as Abram. Uh his wife was Sarah, and the name of Naor's wife was Malkah. Close enough. Yeah, it's pretty close. You gotta love these names I'm daring myself with. Uh the daughter of Haran, the father of Malkah, and the father of Ishka. I see where he, yeah, I see why he named her that. Uh, but Sarah was barren and she had no child. So you get a little bit of what's going on here. You don't really get the full picture until you go to Joshua chapter 24, verse 2. And they give you a little bit more of what's going on. His background here. And Joshua said to all the people, Thus says the Lord, God of Israel, your fathers, including Terah. Interesting that he is he is considered that. The father of Abraham and the father of Naor dwelt on the other side of the river in old times, and they served other gods. Why, Dan, are they serving other gods? Well, I'm glad you uh I'm glad you asked that.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Yeah, Jim. Yep, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. Wapner at six. All right. Uh no. Wow, it's gonna be that episode already. Okay. It's better than me falling asleep uh during the podcast. Oh man, okay. So Abraham he grows up essentially be with the backdrop of the Tower of Babel and in Nimrod's backyard.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

So i if you go to Deuteronomy, which we're not doing, I don't think, but I don't have that, I'm sorry. No, it's fine. Uh but you kind of get the impression that you know, if if you take uh the late Dr. Michael Heiser's take on things at the time uh just prior to this, God has basically told mankind, you know, kind of sick of y'all. Does none of y'all listen to me? Yeah. So you go, I'm gonna assign my sons, different sons of mine, to each one to a different group here, and they're gonna tell you how show you how to actually effectively worship me. And of course, you know they didn't do that. They were too busy, you know, waxing their surfboards or whatever it was else that they were doing. They realized that was that was too cool of a gig for them to do what dad told them. Um and so you've got the whole world basically out there in the middle of this, you know, these guys worship this basically angel. I mean, if you want to think of it, it's not an angel, but you know, some god. And this one that worships another one, and this one instead of worshiping the one true God. So that's kind of where where Abraham grew up, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:52

He did, you know, and I'm skipping ahead before I get to some of these perspectives on Abraham, but you know, it's uh it's a situation where the flood happens. And for people that say that it was a localized flood, I think the growing gosh, the growing sentiment among even some scientists is that uh it was not it was a it was a worldwide flood. It was a worldwide catastrophe that that enveloped everything and affected everything.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Yeah, even the uh so-called respectable geologists who don't want that to be a global flood have a really hard time explaining why there's this rock uh strata that exists almost over the entire earth that could have only been created by massive amounts of water. Yeah. Yeah. We'll find out one of these days.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

We'll find out we'll we'll join the when we get to heaven, we'll join the uh pre-flood class that Jesus will be teaching. So, you know, so I'm really excited about that. Uh I'm already No, he's probably yeah. Anyways, uh we mentioned this before when we talked about the flood in the past podcast, I think maybe a year or two, maybe more ago. Uh they all run together, right? They do. They do. But you know, if you're getting off the ark, you know, there's a reason why God sends the has the promise of the rainbow, you know, because probably every time it rains after that, you're thinking to yourself, oh, is this is this happening again?

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

Or is God really gonna keep it because you're you're you're and you then you're you're not too many generations away from that, let's say. Now you're still kind of iffy about it because you're being told of what happened, the God of this world. And it's it's one of those things, and this is something that I think is kind of a I see it in people today, which is stuff goes wrong in their lives or whatever, and they wanna the immediate reaction is I'm gonna blame God for something like this.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Well, of course, right? And they can't be their fault.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Right, and and they, you know, the people that I hear this from quite often, you know, it's in it's in um it could it's it's some situation that they were in, and maybe their faith wasn't really that strong, quite possibly. Um maybe it was. I I'm not here to judge either way, but whatever it was, that shift starts to happen in their life, and they start to go, man, God did this, and they don't know about the reason why the flood. And this and the reason for the flood was just the utter evil that was on the planet, and how everything, flesh include all flesh, was corrupt. Now, when I say that, I don't mean like, well, I went, I accidentally got off the plane, I'm in Las Vegas, and there's gambling everywhere, and there's legal prostitution somewhere, you know, whatever. And drunkenness and all of that. That's not the kind that that's talking about, that's angling more towards a genetic problem, if you will, which you have the backdrop of the sons of God taking the daughters of women, uh, daughters of man, sorry. But so all of that, and I think it was God's mercy that was like, I'm I'm just gonna reboot everything, and that's gonna help human it's gonna save humanity. And quite often God, in his wisdom and his mercy, you know, situations happen to us that we might think are really horrible or this or that, but we may not even understand the outcome that got produced out of it.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

You know, and it lest you think that well, it's just a story, because there's no way these people could have forgotten what happened. It hasn't been that long, you know, it'll be in their memory. At the risk of you know, making some of our listeners angry or you know, whatever. It's too late. I point to what's happening right now. Yeah. You go back seventy years, uh well, eighty years, seventy, eighty years, and you look at the stuff that was happening in Europe back then. You look at the rise of these dictatorial communist-based countries who killed literally millions of people. I'm not talking about the Nazis, I'm talking about Stalin and Lenin and you know, and the other uh countries, Mal, all this. And uh, you know, the communist regime that was supposed to come in and make the world great. Right. Well now here we are, you know, 70, 80 years later, with the younger generation saying, hey man, communism looks fantastic, we should do this. And it's like, but but you don't don't you know. Well, we never learned about that. So we're gonna do it again. That's kind of crazy.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

It's it's funny, even the the communist regime in Vietnam has realized, you know, oh we we do need to have some capitalism in here, you know. We can't just uh be doing this over here, we have to open it up a little bit, you know. So they're they're playing with that over there. And uh it's just the I mean you go go to any of those countries. I mean, you go to Cambodia, you see the you literally actually get to see there's a there's a spot in Cambodia uh where they threw people down because the killing field or the kill yeah, the killing field. It was really a killing hole, is really what it was. And you know, you see in this display that they have these mannequin type figures and they show, you know, what they were what was being done to them by this pole pot guy. And uh it's it's horrid, you know, to to think that somebody could do or would do that to their own people. Yeah. And really it hadn't the craziest part of it is is that if you was killing off all the all the educated people, and you know, it just set back the country, you know, hundreds of years. And you know, if you had glasses, up you're the one. You're that's right, you're not making it through because you gotta be smart.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

So you bring that back to the story with Abraham here, right? I mean Abraham Abraham is uh a few generations out past the flood. But something else has happened since the flood. You know, there was the Tower of Babel. So, you know, the third rebellion, if you want to look at it that way. Right. And so but he is uh positioned in this uh point in time where God has chosen that he is going to do something to basically reintroduce himself to mankind. Yeah. Right? Because man has just said, ah, you know, we don't want you.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

God's like, yeah, okay, you go do your thing, I'm gonna go do my thing, and there's this guy.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

There's this guy, yeah. Well, in the extra biblical material about Abraham, it it kind of gives us a little bit more of the picture. Um, again, it's extra-biblical material, so it's one of those things where you can go. It's interesting to read, it's thought-provoking, but it's not in the Bible. I am talking about stuff from the Quran. The Quran's Islamic perspective was that it states that Abraham rejected idolatry of his people even before his formal prophetic call, viewing him instead as a I'm gonna pronounce him Hanaf. Yeah, uh, basically meaning an upright, primordial monotheist.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Huh.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

The mid-rashtic uh Jewish tradition, again, that's their tradition, suggests that Abram deduced the existence of the one true creator on his own at a young age before God actively revealed himself to him.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

That would kind of make sense, right? Because otherwise, why would Abram even have listened to God?

SPEAKER_02 17:09

Right. And I'm sure there are, you know, you're coming out of the flood, I'm sure God was there, but again, like you said, you know, these people are divided up between these sons of God. So uh there's a in the the Midrashtic tradition holds that Nimrod cast, I like this story, it's interesting, uh, cast Abra Abraham into a fiery furnace for his heresy against the state gods. But Abraham emerges miraculously unharmed. Uh the reason for this is he smashed Terah's gods. And there was a really big one there, and in the story he's like, the big one did it. And and uh no joke, that's what that's what they have. Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Kind of you look forward to Daniel. It's kind of like, you know.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Oh yeah, yeah. There's a little, and that's just one of the that's the tradition that's in the midrash. It's just one of the stories that are in there that give you, like I said, they're extra, but they're fun, kind of fun stories to learn about. Josephus uh says Abraham was the first to declare that God was sole creator of the universe. Um the connection with Nimrod is interesting because you have the world's first tyrant, and in a lot of ways, Nimrod does represent a type or maybe a prototype of who the end times antichrist will be, who that gentleman will be. Um and Abraham is the exact opposite. He, you know, it's this guy, and you read into some of the other accounts of Nimrod from gosh, gosh, I want to say, like, even in Freemasonry, you read some of these accounts of him, like he's angry at God, and he's he's you know basically saying to God, you know, if you get out of line again, like he did with the flood, you know, I'm gonna come up there to you know in heaven and I'm gonna do something, you know. So there is this level of arrogance there. Again, not in the Bible, but you do read about him being a mighty warrior and you know, all of these things. So it's it's interesting, he definitely unites all the people, and it is one of the reasons why when we do read Genesis 11, 6, and it says, And the Lord said, indeed, the people are one, they have they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do. That's a great question, actually. Or a statement of this is what you decided to do? This, right here? Okay. Now nothing they that they propose to do will be withheld from them. A statement is a very interesting and telling statement about what they had done. And when you go back to Genesis 6 and you think of that pre-flood world, you know, there's a lot of different stories about the pre-flood world and the technology that they had. Yeah, there's a lot of things that people find when sites like Ubekli Tepe, and you just look at even the monoliths that have been left behind that that survived the flood. You know, we talked on an episode about the Sphinx, you know, showing water damage, you know, there on it. And you think, how could people build something like that? Well, you saw the pharaohs that came after that, you know, you saw what they decided to do, and you can tell real easily that's not uh that's not whoever did this, you know. So you have a lot of technology, a lot of building, all of that. Even in the Inca Empire, you know, it's like you have what whatever these sons of God or giants or whatever built that, and then you see what the Inca did on top, right? You know, slapping stuff together, you know, and they wouldn't even take credit for what they had for all of it there. So, anyways, that's just something interesting to think about uh as these guys look like they might have overlapped in some way. I don't think there's anything definite that we have that proves it, but it is a kind of an interesting here to look at. Let's skip down, let's go to Hebrews chapter 11, verse 8 through 12, and we get a little bit better picture of Abraham and his calling here. By faith Abraham obeyed, and when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise, as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. He waited for the city which has foundations. Whose builder and maker is God. That's an interesting statement when you consider the fact that, you know, all of these guys before, you know, you got Cain, you got Tubal Cain, you got Nemrod, they're great, what city builders, you know. And here's an Abraham who's going out and just a nomad. He's a nomad and basically living, I don't want to say hand to mouth, but you know, God provided for him. And when you read Genesis 14, you realize he is a wealthy guy, but God had definitely blessed him. Verse 12. I'm sorry, verse 11. By by faith Sarah also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore us a child which had which was past the age, because she judged him faithful, who had promised, even though she laughed. Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead, were born as many as the stars in the sky, and multitude innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore. Interesting. Like Noah before him, who probably had maybe never heard of a boat, he was told to build that. Abraham's told, hey, you need to rise up and go.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

Get up, get out of here.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

Yep. And he did. He he left all the polytheism, and God essentially, God singled them out, brought them out of all of that stuff, because once it's when you get into a community where your religion is a certain thing, it's gonna be a matter of time before you're influenced by them, if you hadn't been already. And so he God separates him for a good reason, spares him all of that, gets him out of there. Um I was thinking about this in Abraham's call, and we sometimes think that God's calling on our lives is some mystical thing that uh I have to sit cross-legged and with my palms out, listening to weird music, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Stare at that corner of the ceiling.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

Looking for the ding of the chime, which isn't really Christianity, but uh right. But we all think of that when we think of meditating, you know, our mind drifts to that. But God's calling is not something that's mystic, it's not something that's a mystery. You know what it is and when you're supposed to do it. And God's not mysterious. Um if you don't know what it is God's calling on your life is, then in all honesty, keep doing what you're doing where you're doing it. God, if he wants to move you and do something through you, you're gonna know. And then if you're still unsure about it, ask God for wisdom in making whatever decisions. Because oftentimes what God does is he uses the desires of our heart, and he uses that to change us, he uses that for his purposes as well. Um, on the other hand, now I will say it's I think it's important that sometimes we just do need to take action. And I love this quote, and it is Marcus Aurelius. I I read it this morning, I thought it was interesting, I thought it was funny, actually, uh ironic, but uh reading from a stoic here. But he said, often injustice lies in what you are not doing, not only what you are doing, and the implication there is when you see something, do something. You know, take it's your role to do something. Otherwise, it's implied consent.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

It's implied that you're because you haven't said something.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

That kind of goes along with that concept of sin is not necessarily just something you do. It can be something that you're not doing that you should be doing.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

Yeah. Right. So, and that's the thing. Um we live in a I think it's still a free country. Uh you would know it in some ways. Uh I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Uh we haven't checked in the last 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

Exactly, yeah, yeah, exactly. So uh who knows? But yeah. But in in some ways, you know, you can be, you can make, you know, oftentimes you see somebody that's uh a certain way, you know. I don't need to necessarily enforce my perspective onto them per se. However, though, I can still take a stand, you know, for what I believe and respect the other person for their free will that they have and let them know, you know, where you where you are. And I always look for an invite from people in order to do something like that. I don't I don't go up and make it a habit of uh, you know, purposely going where go going to a location where I know there's nobody that's on my side and uh purposely seek things out, you know, to get death threats. But you know, I mean some people do, some people feel led to do that and feel that that's important work, and I think that that's great that they that people it's their calling, man. It's their calling, not mine. So and all of us, you know, I always think of um Jeremy Myers, you know, I remember asking him, like, I'm you haven't come up with any new podcasts lately. And his response to me was I haven't had anything to say. And I the more as time goes on, I I go, yeah, he's right. You know, he's got a life, he's doing things. Nothing has, you know, gotten on his heart to say something, and when it does, he's like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get it, I'm gonna podcast, you know. I think the same thing is true, you know, for Christians out there. It's just, you know, if God hasn't put anything on your heart, you know, and you're wondering, like, should I be doing something? That's a great invite from God to tell for you to pray and ask him. And then be looking for what he may or may want you to do through that. And it could be one of those things where you step out in faith and maybe you do fall on your face. Or maybe it doesn't quite work out the way you wanted it to. Either way, it's a success because you did something other than the norm and you learned a lot and had to lean on God in order to go through that, so your faith increased. So it's really maybe it didn't work out to the goal or thing that you thought it would be. That you thought it would be. Exactly. Yeah. But it did for what God wanted it to be.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

And quite often it's somebody else comes along, they see what you did, you inspired them, and then they take it and they're able to add other layers to it, and then they build off of something on there. You really have no idea how God is going to use the things that you say, your actions, you modeling Christ-like behavior, and the lives of those around you. And yes, there are Christians who, you know, check the box. God got an hour this week, I went to church. There are those Christians out there. However, there is so much more to the spiritual life than just going to church or going to the Wednesday night prayer meeting or singing in the choir. There's so much for God for us that has for us to do. Indeed. So Abraham is just, he is just your stereotypical, you know, ancient Middle Eastern guy who God singled out and he decided to obey the call. And while scripture doesn't say it, you gotta wonder how many other people did God call and they didn't respond. You know?

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Good point.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

So it's just uh I think for all of us, you know, we should be actively praying and asking God, what would you have me do? And wait and see and sit with it and see what he what he might or might not have for you. I don't know, I can't be the judge of anybody. So I don't know what God has on your heart. So Mark, any any uh other thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 30:43

No, it's uh I think you've hit the nail on the head, man. We did we gotta be more like Abraham and have faith and step out and do things, even if it's something we're like, are you sure you want me to do that? So, you know, we do that, I think God rewards us.

unknown 31:00

Yeah, he does.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Um if we don't do that, yeah, you know, God may not punish us, but I don't think we'll we'll get to where God wants us to be uh in in the time frame that God wants, unless we're willing to step out in faith.

SPEAKER_02 31:15

Willing. I think that's that's a big that's a big word, and it's one in which that we need to take to heart.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:23

Well, folks, thanks for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe and smash that like button. And next time uh we're gonna be looking at Genesis 15 and this uh interesting covenant experience that uh Abraham has. Yes. So remember, uh, we're not saved because we're eternally faithful to the Savior, we're saved because He is eternally faithful to us.