Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And for the life of me, all week, I've been trying to follow the trail of crumbs that the Apostle Paul, the author of the book that we're working on right now, the book of Galatians in the New Testament, I've been trying to follow this trail of crumbs that he has left for us from deep in the New Testament all the way back to the beginning of the Old Testament to where Abraham lives. But every time I try to go back to follow up on what Paul is talking about, because he brings up Abraham here in the book of Galatians, every time I try to do that, Jesus gets in the way. Because right here, like this far back, I start flipping through pages to go back to Abraham, like, oh, it's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those are the books that have Jesus on screen and doing stuff. And then I think of something, I'm like, oh, this relates to the conversation. And then we get bogged down there. So I'm not even going to look at those pages. I'm looking away right now. I'm looking, I'm looking at the ceiling. That's why I sound different. And just by feel, I turned way back, way, way back to the Old Testament here to the book of Genesis, where we meet and start to get a sense of what the deal is with this first really relatable human character in the whole Bible, Abraham. As we pinch zoom in on his story, we see that he's not perfect. He's I mean, I said he was relatable, right? He has flaws, he has redeeming things, he has logic, moral logic that you see him running, he has mental self-preservation processes that he's running to get out of trouble and take care of the people under his care. He's very, very much like us in that he's pretty cool and pretty flawed, and he seems like a pretty good guy, and you know, he jokes a couple times as well. But the key point of the life of Abraham, like the biggest legacy that he leaves, I think, is that he didn't do anything other than believe God. We don't get any background on him in terms of who he was or what was special about him. He's not the chosen one, he's not the one who was predicted. It's not all about some latent powers that he has to tap into, and the mentor character will come along and draw those things out of him until eventually he ascends to his role of great delivering hero. Nope, something like that. He was a guy with a dad and a grandpa who lived in a place and then moved to a different place. He got married and he did not have any kids. The end, that's everything we know about Abraham. And that wouldn't matter at all if he were just one more person from the ancient world who came and went, maybe we just have a record of their name or whatever, but he's a big deal because he's celebrated as an example of faith throughout the whole Bible. Paul writes around fifty and change AD to this fledgling group of Christian believers in central modern day Turkey. He writes to them, Consider Abraham. He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Understand then that those who believe are children of Abraham. Oh, so I mean, the language makes it seem like you would want to be someone who is in the intellectual or genetic tradition or spiritual tradition of Abraham. The scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham. Quote, all nations will be blessed through you, unquote. So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. Wow, what a bunch of nice stuff to be said about a guy who gets such a generic introduction in the Old Testament. Okay, so we get Abraham's little biography, and the very next thing is God just picks him. The Lord had said to Abraham, Leave your country, your people, and your father's household, and go to the land I'll show you. I will make you into a great nation. This is all God promising him things, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all people on earth will be blessed through you. Did you catch that? That's what was being referenced over in Galatians that I was just reading. This is the gospel message that the blessing of God, the unmerited favor of God, earned and paid for by God, the forgiveness of sins, this is going to come through this chain of events, this line of people, this great nation that God is just making out of nothing from this Abraham guy. Well, what did Abraham do? So Abram, he went by Abram back then, he's going to go by Abraham later on. So Abram left as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. So there you have it. I mean, it's just a guy who moved. Probably most of you have moved. It's not that big a deal. But God said to do it, and he believed God, even though there's no indication that he had any great history with God. There's no indication that there had been a whole bunch of miracles or stuff to warm him up. Just apparently God showed up and said that. The text doesn't tell us what God looked like or how the conversation went. I mean, some other times when God appears in the Bible, things light up. There's a burning bush that doesn't get consumed by the fire. Here, God just said it, and as the reader, you I guess can imagine what that was like. Maybe that was miracle enough that Abraham was so overwhelmed. He was like, I mean, clearly a celestial entity, the God of all gods, just talk to me. That's miracle enough. I'll do whatever you say. For whatever reason, Abraham believes God and it's credited to him as righteousness, and the promises keep coming. When Abraham makes it to Canaan, God shows up and is like, uh, you know, paraphrases mine, you successfully moved. And then he says, quote, to your offspring I will give this land, unquote. So Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him. But then Abram continues to move. He's a bit nomadic, that's sort of his shtick, and he goes to Egypt because food is scarce, and he goes to Egypt, and when he gets there, he's like, Ah, this is gonna get weird with my wife. I'm the head of a household. I assume that Abram would have reasoned that they would imagine that Sarai, even in her advanced age, would have been the like some sort of lovely princess or heiress to another household. Maybe they'd married each other to make peace between these two wealthy households. I don't know quite what the reasoning was, but Abraham was like, hey, they're gonna want my wife. So he isn't totally honest with them, and even though Sarai and Abram are vaguely related, sounds weird now, different times back then. Abraham doesn't really lean into the we're married part. He leans into the this is my sister part. And so the Pharaoh at the time in Egypt is like, cool, well, whenever fancy, powerful, beautiful women come here and their people are wanting to be under the umbrella of my protection, that's fine. You just come into my harem or you become part of my household. And so Pharaoh takes her into his palace. I'm not exactly sure how far into that that we're supposed to read, but Abraham gets what he wants. He gets treated well for her sake, and he becomes really wealthy in Egypt. But then God comes back on Pharaoh's household, and it's kind of like a preview of what happens later in the book of Exodus. He plagues the household because Sarah is there and married to the guy who you know God picked out. It's Abraham's wife. This is weird. And that becomes apparent to Pharaoh, and he's like, Hey, what the heck, man? Why what have you done to me? Why don't you tell me she was your wife? Why'd you say she's my sister? So I took her to be my wife. Now then, says the Pharaoh, here's your wife. Take her and go. Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abraham and his men, and they sent him on his way with his wife and everything he had. That really does echo the Exodus stuff that we get a little bit later on. But as you can see, there's your first chapter of Abraham doing things on screen. I'm not going to go through his whole life. But it's complicated, right? It's uneven, like we've been talking about. Does that sound like a good guy? Well, dude's got a lot of pressure. I mean, this isn't just a family road trip with, you know, the wife and he didn't have kids yet, but maybe kids in the minivan. This is a whole household. It's a whole thing. I mean, he's got people who are depending on him. It's a very different way of life. It's four thousand plus years ago. He's got all of that weight on his shoulders, and he's willing to do some shifty political things, even leverage his own wife? Well, maybe with a slightly different set of ethics, somebody might look at that and be like, ah, that was so sacrificial of the two of them for the good of the whole household. Yeah, I may it's complex, right? Well, God didn't like it, as is evidenced right here, and that's not what he wanted the guy who he had set apart to do. But God doesn't break the deal with Abraham. That never even comes up. God's not like, okay, well, I made a deal with you. Now you're not going to be a great nation. Now I am not going to give you that land that I promised. Now I am not going to bless those who bless you, and I'm not going to bless all the people of the earth through you. Uh-uh. It's not even on the table. Doesn't even come up. I'm looking at the time. We're only going to take today and tomorrow on the rest of this Abraham story. Then we really need to get back to where Paul takes our newfound knowledge of Abraham forward in his discussion here in Galatians chapter three. So tomorrow we'll pick up where we left off. We'll round out these thoughts on who Abraham was and what actually happened there and what God actually promised. And then we're back into the text of Galatians three moving forward. That's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.