Hey everybody, I'm Matt. This is the 10-Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and we're on a little side junt right now from the book of Galatians that we're working through together. Paul, the guy who wrote Galatians, keeps bringing up Abraham. I'm like, well, it looks like he's assuming that everybody he's writing this letter of Galatians 2 knew who Abraham was and what the deal was there. He's quoting the Old Testament stuff about Abraham. So it seemed right for us to dip back into the deep recesses of the Old Testament and go and brush up on our knowledge of who that guy was and what God said to him so that we could kind of get on the same page, get up to speed with the Galatians. So we started working on that yesterday, and we're going to pick up right where we left off, right after my buddy Jeffrey plays some nice intro music. Here we go. We just roll right into Genesis chapter 13. And now there's this weird family falling out between Abraham and Lot. And then Lot gets himself into trouble, and Abraham has to leverage some things to try to bail him out, and they sort of fall in in the same neck of the woods with some really corrupt people. And at this point, Abraham still doesn't have any kids, but he has his promise hanging out there, and stuff has been good. I mean, the money's been good. He's avoided getting killed and getting his household wrecked, but also it's been a little icky, certainly up and down, certainly morally compromised through the first three chapters that we see of Abraham's life. But now we get to chapter 15, and still nothing about the promise of God is back on the table for negotiation. That is all at all still counts. Everything God promised still counts. After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Don't be afraid, Abram. I'm your shield, your very great reward. Huh. So God's not balking at all, he's not backing down. But then Abram said, Oh sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless? And the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus. Don't worry about who that is. And Abram said, You've given me no children, and so a servant in my household will be my heir. This is very forward, right? On Abraham's part. He's negotiating with God. If anything, he's kind of griping back at God, who made him rich and spared his life. Then the word of the Lord came to him, quote, This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir. And he took him outside and said, Look up at the heavens and count the stars, if indeed you can count them. Then he said to him, So shall be your offspring. And then here we go, Genesis fifteen, six. Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. He also said to Abraham, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it. But Abraham said, O sovereign Lord, how can I know that I'll gain possession of it? He's still whining and negotiating with God when God's being so good to him. It's very interesting. Verse nine. So the Lord said to him, Bring me a heifer, a goat, and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon. Abraham brought all these to him, and he cut them in two, and there's a whole bunch of sacrificial language here that's going to sound very strange and foreign to us. And as the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the Lord said to him, Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces, these are the pieces of what Abraham sacrificed, cut up. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, Kenesites, Cadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Gergeshites, and Jebusites. There is a lot more to Abraham's story, and it it follows a lot of these same plot beats. This isn't the last time that we hear covenant language between God and Abraham. This isn't the last time that Abraham takes a negotiating tone with God. I guess on the one hand, you could look at that and be like, Abraham, what are you doing, dude? You've been given so much. Just shut your mouth. Beggars can't be choosers. But then on the other hand, you can be like, well, Abraham knew God really well, and he knew God's character, and he had a sense of what the give and take was, what was acceptable in the relationship, and God had made himself available to Abraham in this way. So in a way it was a gesture of faith that Abraham believed he could negotiate with God and have these conversations. I've never known exactly how to read it. Sometimes Abraham does stuff, and I think I would never have the courage to do that. Even if a miracle happened, I wouldn't have the courage to do that thing. Other times Abraham does stuff and it just doesn't fit with my conventions and how I think about what makes sense and what doesn't. And I think to myself, oh man, I but I don't think I'd make that mistake. Dude, you're coming off stupid right now. Maybe a lot of it is just lost in moral translation, cultural translation, because it is 4,000 years ago, 2,000 years before the book of Galatians that we're working on together right now in this podcast. But Abraham, regardless of when you read it or what context you put this in, he's an up and down guy who clearly did not earn these promises from God, did not earn his right standing before God. Genesis 15, six. Abram believed the Lord and he credited it to him as righteousness. Abraham is the man of faith, and it is out of this faith, not his perfect goodness, but out of this faith, that the whole spiritual and physical family tree and lineage that takes us all the way down to Jesus and to the arrival of the Holy Spirit and the gospel going out, and all the things that get us all the way to Galatians, and even all the things that get us to right now, all of that flows out of the fact that Abraham believed God. I mean, ultimately it flows out of the work of God, but Abraham believed him, and he was the man of faith. And those who have faith, four thousand years ago in Abraham's time, two thousand years ago in Paul in the Galatians' time, or right now, years ago in our time, those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. And Paul's not making this up. I mean, he just got done quoting the language of the covenant. All nations will be blessed through you, so that when the Galatians would have read this letter, they would have been like, uh, that's in the Bible. We're outsiders genetically, we're not descended from Abraham in a literal sense, but Paul is saying, if you have faith in God, if you believe God as Abraham did, then as it was credited to him as righteousness, so it is credited to you as righteousness. And this isn't just one option for how to find that right standing before God. It is the only option. It is the only way. The closer we pinch zoom in on the complex, complicated, very relatable, up and downs of life, fairly normal guy Abraham, the more it demystifies him, and we see clearly what Paul is saying. He wasn't right with God because he was perfect or awesome or just different and better than people or that he's the chosen one, he had the birthmark, that was the one who was prophesied to learned to wield the power and deliver us all. Nope. He was a dude who felt pressures, like you and me feel. Sometimes he handled them well, sometimes it looks like he handled them poorly, but he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. And that standard still exists all the way up to the time of Galatians and all the way up to the time of now. Indeed, it is why the Galatians, and if you're not Jewish, you and me are included in this great redemptive plan, because all nations were promised to be blessed through Abraham, regardless of how well he got everything right or didn't get everything right, and I am so grateful for that, because he didn't get everything right. And I want to be part of all of the nations who will be blessed through Abraham through this promise by God. Paul's going to assume that people have a grasp on the basics of this Abraham story moving forward in Galatians 3.10 and on really into chapter 4. So hopefully that gives us enough of a foundation. If we get into a little further and there's some details we're missing, we'll zip back real quick and fill that in. But otherwise, we're going to press ahead here for another chapter in the book of Galatians and see where it takes us. I really enjoy doing this with you. Thanks for making the time to hang out with me every day. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.