Speaker 1: Three thousand years before the first church was built, God
Speaker 1: made a deal with a man. To seal that deal,
Speaker 1: he told the man to cut five animals in half
Speaker 1: and line up the pieces. Then God put the man
Speaker 1: to sleep and walked between the bloody halves alone. Both
Speaker 1: parties were supposed to walk through. Both parties were supposed
Speaker 1: to swear their lives, but God took both sides of
Speaker 1: the oath. So who was this man and why did
Speaker 1: God choose him out of everyone on earth. If you
Speaker 1: want to understand why God chose Abraham, you first need
Speaker 1: to understand what Abraham was walking away from. And what
Speaker 1: Abraham was walking away from was the most sophisticated civilization
Speaker 1: on the planet. The city of Ur sat in the
Speaker 1: fertile crescent of southern Mesopotamia in what is today southeastern Iraq.
Speaker 1: And when I say city, I don't mean some cluster
Speaker 1: of mud huts around a well err In the third
Speaker 1: millennium Bcee was a metropolis at its peak under the
Speaker 1: Third Dynasty, roughly two thousand years before Jesus, Er had
Speaker 1: a population of around sixty five thousand people, which made
Speaker 1: it one of the largest cities in the entire world
Speaker 1: at that time, the streets of Rr were laid out
Speaker 1: in organized grids. The houses had two stories, with interior courtyards,
Speaker 1: drainage systems, and private chapels on the ground floor. Archaeologists
Speaker 1: have uncovered schools where children learned mathematics and writing in
Speaker 1: Cuneiform script on clay tablets. There were courts of law,
Speaker 1: trade guilds, and a complex economy built on agriculture, textile production,
Speaker 1: and long distance commerce that stretched from the Indus Valley
Speaker 1: in modern day Pakistan to the shores of the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: And the plumbing alone would have impressed the Romans two
Speaker 1: thousand years later. Homes Inur had terra cotta drainage pipes
Speaker 1: running beneath the floors. The wealthy had private bathrooms. Some
Speaker 1: residences had thirteen or fourteen rooms arranged around a central
Speaker 1: courtyard where families gathered in the evenings. If you stood
Speaker 1: in one of those courtyards and looked up, you would
Speaker 1: see the same stars that God would one day use
Speaker 1: to illustrate a promise. But the thing that dominated everything,
Speaker 1: the structure you could see from miles away as you
Speaker 1: approached the city across the flat Mesopotamian plane, was the
Speaker 1: great Zigarat imagine a massive stepped pyramid rising seventy feet
Speaker 1: into the air, built with millions of mud bricks, its
Speaker 1: core held together with layers of woven reed matting, and
Speaker 1: its exterior surfaces coated in baked brick and bitumen. At
Speaker 1: the very top sat a small temple, and that temple
Speaker 1: was the home of Nana, the moon god. Nana, also
Speaker 1: known as Sin, was the patron deity of Er. Everything
Speaker 1: in the city revolved around him. The calendar was organized
Speaker 1: around lunar cycles. The festivals, the sacrifices, the economic rhythms
Speaker 1: of planting and harvesting were all tied to the phases
Speaker 1: of the moon and the worship of this god. The
Speaker 1: high priestess of Nana was often the king's own daughter.
Speaker 1: The temple complex wasn't just a religious center. It was
Speaker 1: the administrative and economic heart of the entire city state,
Speaker 1: and the worship of Nana was not casual, it was totalizing.
Speaker 1: Every commercial transaction in Er passed through the temple. Economy,
Speaker 1: grain stores, textile workshops, cattle records, all managed by the
Speaker 1: temple scribes. To be a citizen of Ur was to
Speaker 1: be a worshiper of Nana. There was no distinction between
Speaker 1: civic life and religious life. They were the same thing.
Speaker 1: This is the world Abraham was born into. This was normal.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing that gets lost in Sunday school retellings.
Speaker 1: Ur was not just religiously pagan. It was intellectually sophisticated
Speaker 1: in ways that make the Abraham story even more astonishing.
Speaker 1: The Scribal schools of Ur produced some of the most
Speaker 1: advanced mathematical texts in the ancient world. Sumerian scholars at
Speaker 1: Ur and the surrounding cities had already developed a base
Speaker 1: sixty number system, which is why we still divide ours
Speaker 1: into sixty minutes and circles into three hundred and sixty degrees.
Speaker 1: They had sophisticated astronomical observations. They tracked the movements of Venus,
Speaker 1: predicted lunar eclipses, and mapped constellations with remarkable accuracy. These
Speaker 1: were not primitive people fumbling in the in the dark.
Speaker 1: These were brilliant minds building a civilization of extraordinary complexity.
Speaker 1: And their brilliance was entirely framed by, dedicated to, and
Speaker 1: oriented around a religious system that worshiped the moon. So
Speaker 1: when God called Abraham out of this world, he was
Speaker 1: not pulling a naive shepherd out of a dusty village.
Speaker 1: He was pulling a man out of the beating, intellectual
Speaker 1: and spiritual heart of human civilization. It's as if God
Speaker 1: reached into Mit or Oxford or Silicon Valley and said,
Speaker 1: to someone embedded in the most dominant worldview of the age,
Speaker 1: everything you have been taught is incomplete. Follow me. And
Speaker 1: this is where the story gets misunderstood. We tend to
Speaker 1: imagine Abraham as a proto monotheist, someone who was already
Speaker 1: inclined toward the One True God, someone who just needed
Speaker 1: a little push in the right direction, a man sitting
Speaker 1: in his tent, gazing at the stars, already questioning the
Speaker 1: idols around him. That is a much later tradition. It
Speaker 1: comes from rabbinic midrash, written thousands of years after Abraham lived.
Speaker 1: Beautiful stories about young Abraham smashing his father's idols and
Speaker 1: debating the logic of polytheism. Those stories are meaningful, they
Speaker 1: carry theological weight. But the text of Genesis itself tells
Speaker 1: a very different story. Joshua, chapter twenty four, verse two.
Speaker 1: The text is blunt. It says that terror Abraham's father
Speaker 1: served other gods, the Hebrew verb used is avad, which
Speaker 1: means to serve or to worship. It is the same
Speaker 1: verb used for the Israelites serving Pharaoh in Egypt. Terra
Speaker 1: did not dabble in idle worship. He was devoted to it,
Speaker 1: and his son grew up in that devotion. Acts chapter
Speaker 1: seven confirms this. When Stephen, in his speech before the Sanhedrin,
Speaker 1: describes the God of Glory appearing to Abraham while he
Speaker 1: was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, the
Speaker 1: implication is clear. Abraham did not seek God. God sought Abraham.
Speaker 1: The initiative was entirely divine, and this is the first
Speaker 1: shock of the Abraham story. God did not choose the
Speaker 1: most righteous man available. He chose a man embedded in
Speaker 1: a pagan culture, the son of an idle worshiper, a
Speaker 1: resident of a city whose entire identity was built around
Speaker 1: the worship of a moon deity. He chose someone who,
Speaker 1: by every measurable standard, should have been the last person
Speaker 1: on the list. But that was exactly the point, because
Speaker 1: if God had chosen so someone who was already righteous,
Speaker 1: already seeking, already inclined toward monotheism, then the story would
Speaker 1: be about human merit. It would be about Abraham earning
Speaker 1: his place through spiritual achievement, and that is precisely the
Speaker 1: opposite of what the Abraham story is designed to teach.
Speaker 1: The election of Abraham is a story about grace before
Speaker 1: the word grace had been invented. And to grasp how
Speaker 1: radical this was, you need to see what ERR's religion
Speaker 1: actually looked like up close, because it wasn't just abstract theology,
Speaker 1: it was visceral. In nineteen twenty two, British archaeologist Leonard
Speaker 1: Woolley began excavating the Royal Tombs of Er. What he
Speaker 1: found there changed our understanding of Mesopotamian civilization forever. The
Speaker 1: tombs contain staggering wealth, gold helmets beaten so thin you
Speaker 1: could see the craftsmanship in every curve. Lapis Lazuli jewelry
Speaker 1: imported from mines in what is now Afghanistan more than
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred miles away. Harps decorated with bull heads made
Speaker 1: of gold and silver. The artistry rivaled anything produced in Egypt.
Speaker 1: But the most disturbing discovery wasn't the treasure. It was
Speaker 1: the bodies in the tomb of Queen Poibi. Wooli found
Speaker 1: the remains of dozens of attendants, soldiers, musicians, and servants,
Speaker 1: all arranged in orderly rows, all apparently having consumed poison
Speaker 1: and died voluntarily to accompany their queen into the afterlife.
Speaker 1: One tomb, known as the Great Death Pit, contained the
Speaker 1: remains of seventy four people, mostly women, dressed in elaborate finery,
Speaker 1: lying in neat rows, as if they had simply laid
Speaker 1: down and gone to sleep. Wooley found a woman who
Speaker 1: appeared to have been late to the ceremony. She had
Speaker 1: a silver hair ribbon coiled in her pocket, not yet
Speaker 1: put on. She arrived, lay down among the others, and
Speaker 1: died before she could finish preparing herself. This was ritual
Speaker 1: mass death, human sacrifice on an organized, institutional scale, and
Speaker 1: it was connected to the religious system that Abraham grew
Speaker 1: up in. Now I want you to hold that image
Speaker 1: in your mind, the silver ribbon in the dead woman's pocket,
Speaker 1: because later in this story, when we talk about the
Speaker 1: binding of Isaac on Mount Moriah, you need to remember this.
Speaker 1: Abraham came from a world where the sacrifice of human
Speaker 1: beings to please the gods was not just imaginable, it
Speaker 1: was normal. It was expected. It was woven into the
Speaker 1: very fabric of religious life, and the God who called
Speaker 1: Abraham out of that world was about to rewrite every
Speaker 1: single rule. Genesis Chapter twelve, Verse one. Three Hebrew words
Speaker 1: that split history in half lesch lecha in English. Most
Speaker 1: translations render this as go or go forth, and that
Speaker 1: translation is fine, it's accurate, but it misses something that
Speaker 1: anyone who reads Hebrew will tell you jumps off the page.
Speaker 1: The verb lek already means go. That's all you need
Speaker 1: to give a command. God could have simply said lek
Speaker 1: go and the sentence would have been grammatically complete. But
Speaker 1: he adds lecha, which is a reflexive form. It literally
Speaker 1: means go to yourself or go for yourself. This is unusual.
Speaker 1: Hebrew scholars have debated the significance of this construction for centuries,
Speaker 1: and the consensuses that it carries a meaning far beyond
Speaker 1: simple geographic relocation. Letch letcher doesn't just mean leave your country.
Speaker 1: It means embark on a journey into who you really are.
Speaker 1: Go toward the person I created you to be. Leave
Speaker 1: behind the identity that your culture and your family and
Speaker 1: your city have imposed on you, and discover the identity
Speaker 1: I have for you. God was not just asking Abraham
Speaker 1: to change his address. He was asking Abraham to change
Speaker 1: his entire understanding of reality. And what God asked him
Speaker 1: to leave was devastating. The text says leave your land,
Speaker 1: your birthplace, and your father's house. In Hebrew, this is
Speaker 1: structured as a narrowing focus. Land is the broadest category,
Speaker 1: your entire country, your geographic identity. Birthplace narrows it to
Speaker 1: your community, your social identity. Father's house narrows it for
Speaker 1: further to your family, your personal identity. God is systematically
Speaker 1: stripping away every layer of belonging that Abraham has everything
Speaker 1: that tells him who he is, everything that gives him status, security,
Speaker 1: and meaning in the ancient world. And in exchange, God
Speaker 1: offers him a promise so absurd that it borders on cruel.
Speaker 1: I will make you a great nation. I will bless you.
Speaker 1: I will make your name great. All families of the
Speaker 1: earth will be blessed through you. Abraham is seventy five
Speaker 1: years old with a barren wife. He has no children,
Speaker 1: no heir, and no land of his own. And God
Speaker 1: tells him he's going to become a great nation that
Speaker 1: his descendants will be as numerous as the stars. Try
Speaker 1: to sit with how that sounded to Abraham, not to
Speaker 1: you reading it from the comfort of knowing how the
Speaker 1: story ends. To him and in Haran, probably still mourning
Speaker 1: his father Terror, who had just died, with his elderly
Speaker 1: wife Sarah beside him, and some nephew named Lot, tagging
Speaker 1: along with no GPS, no map, no destination beyond a
Speaker 1: land that I will show you. The destination itself is unnamed.
Speaker 1: God doesn't even tell him where he's going. That detail
Speaker 1: alone would have been terrifying to an ancient Near Eastern mind.
Speaker 1: In that world, gods were connected to specific places. To
Speaker 1: leave your land was to leave the protection of your God.
Speaker 1: To go to an unknown land was to walk into
Speaker 1: territory controlled by unknown and potentially hostile deities. Abraham was
Speaker 1: being asked to step off the edge of everything he knew,
Speaker 1: with nothing but a voice and a promise. And here
Speaker 1: is where the story takes its first extraordinary turn Genesis twelve,
Speaker 1: verse four. So Abram went three words. He didn't ask
Speaker 1: for details, didn't try to negotiate a better deal, didn't
Speaker 1: request a sign to confirm what he'd heard. The text
Speaker 1: simply records that he heard, and he went now. Later
Speaker 1: in the story, Abraham will argue with God. He will
Speaker 1: question God's plans, he will laugh at God's promises. He
Speaker 1: will try to take matters into his own hands in
Speaker 1: ways that create generational chaos. Abraham is not presented as
Speaker 1: a plaster saint. He is presented as a deeply flawed
Speaker 1: human being who, in this one moment, did something that
Speaker 1: the Bible treats as the foundation of all faith. He
Speaker 1: trusted a voice he had never heard before, from a
Speaker 1: God he had not grown up worshiping, and he walked
Speaker 1: away from everything. The New Testament Book of Hebrews, chapter eleven,
Speaker 1: verse eight says it plainly by faith, Abraham obeyed when
Speaker 1: he was called to go out to a place he
Speaker 1: was to receive as an inheritance, and he went out,
Speaker 1: not knowing where he was going. This is what faith
Speaker 1: meant before it became a theological category, before it became
Speaker 1: a word on a bumper sticker or a chapter heading
Speaker 1: in a systematic theology textbook. Faith in its original biblical
Speaker 1: form looked like a seventy five year old man loading
Speaker 1: up donkeys in the dark and walking into a desert
Speaker 1: because a voice told him to and the land God
Speaker 1: sent him to was not empty. When Abraham arrived in Canaan.
Speaker 1: The text tells us that the Canaanites were already in
Speaker 1: the land. Abraham was not walking into an inheritance. He
Speaker 1: was walking into someone else's home. He was a stranger,
Speaker 1: a foreigner, an alien in a land already claimed by
Speaker 1: other peoples with other gods. He would never own more
Speaker 1: than a single field in that land during his entire lifetime,
Speaker 1: a field he had to purchase from the Hittites at
Speaker 1: full price to bury his wife. Sarah. The man to
Speaker 1: whom God promised an entire country, spent his whole life
Speaker 1: as a tent dwelling nomad, never settling, never building, never possessing.
Speaker 1: And yet the text says that at Shechem, at the
Speaker 1: Oak of Moray, God appeared to Abraham and said, to
Speaker 1: your offspring, I will give this land. And Abraham built
Speaker 1: an altar there. That altar is everything. It is Abraham's
Speaker 1: response to the absurdity of the promise. He cannot see
Speaker 1: how any of this could possibly come true. He has
Speaker 1: no children, he owns nothing, He is old, his wife
Speaker 1: is old. The land is occupied, and he builds an altar.
Speaker 1: This is the behavior of a man who has decided
Speaker 1: to act on a promise he cannot verify from a
Speaker 1: god he is only beginning to know. And that willingness
Speaker 1: to walk into the unknown on the basis of a
Speaker 1: word is what the Bible calls faith. Trust not perfection,
Speaker 1: not piety, not religious performance, just trust. But if you
Speaker 1: think Abraham walked in trust from that point forward, the
Speaker 1: very next chapter proves you wrong. A famine hits Canaan,
Speaker 1: the land God just sent Abraham to, cannot feed him,
Speaker 1: and Abraham panics. Genesis twelve, verse ten. Abraham goes down
Speaker 1: to Egypt, and on the way, he turns to his
Speaker 1: wife Sarah and says something that reveals just how fragile
Speaker 1: his faith actually is. At this point, he tells her
Speaker 1: that when the Egyptians see how beautiful she is, they
Speaker 1: will kill him to take her, so he asks her
Speaker 1: to say she's his sister. Think about what is happening here.
Speaker 1: The man who just obeyed God's voice and walked away
Speaker 1: from everything is now lying to protect himself. He is
Speaker 1: offering his wife to another man's household, letting Pharaoh's court
Speaker 1: believe she is available, because he is afraid of being killed.
Speaker 1: And that is exactly what happens. Pharaoh takes Sarah into
Speaker 1: his household. Abraham, because of the deception, receives enormous wealth, sheep, cattle, donkeys, servants.
Speaker 1: He gets rich off of lying about his wife. But
Speaker 1: then God intervenes. He sends plagues on Pharaoh's household. Pharaoh
Speaker 1: figures out the truth, summons Abraham and says one of
Speaker 1: the most cutting lines in the entire Bible. He asks
Speaker 1: what Abraham has done to him? Why he didn't say
Speaker 1: she was his wife? Then he says, take her and go.
Speaker 1: A pagan king is lecturing the Father of faith about honesty.
Speaker 1: This is Genesis being brutally honest about its hero. Abraham
Speaker 1: didn't descend from his spiritual mountaintop and walk in perfect
Speaker 1: faith forever. He stumbled almost immediately. He chose fear over trust,
Speaker 1: self preservation over obedience, a human scheme over divine protection.
Speaker 1: And the Bible puts it right there, just verses after
Speaker 1: the Great Calling. And here's what makes this failure remarkable.
Speaker 1: God doesn't abandon Abraham. God doesn't say, well, I chose
Speaker 1: the wrong guy. Let me start over. God rescues Sarah,
Speaker 1: protects the covenant, and keeps going. The promise survives Abraham's
Speaker 1: failure because the Covenant was never dependent on Abraham's performance,
Speaker 1: It was dependent on God's character. That distinction changes everything
Speaker 1: about how you read the rest of Genesis. Abraham's nephew
Speaker 1: Lot has been traveling with him since Haran. Both of
Speaker 1: them have accumulated herds and servants, and the land cannot
Speaker 1: support them. Both their herdsmen are fighting, and Abraham, in
Speaker 1: a moment of genuine generosity, tells Lot to choose any
Speaker 1: part of the land he wants. Lot looks east and
Speaker 1: sees the plain of the Jordan River. The text says
Speaker 1: it was well watered everywhere, like the garden of the Lord,
Speaker 1: like the land of Egypt. Lot chooses the best land,
Speaker 1: the easy life, the fertile valley. He pitches his tents
Speaker 1: near Sodom. Abraham stays in the hills of Canaan, the
Speaker 1: dry land, the difficult land, the promised land. This scene
Speaker 1: is subtle, but the text is making a point. Lot
Speaker 1: chose by sight, looked at the land, saw what was good,
Speaker 1: and took it. Abraham had been called to walk by faith,
Speaker 1: not by sight, and the man who walks by faith
Speaker 1: ends up with the promise. The man who walks by
Speaker 1: sight ends up near Sodom. But Abraham's quiet life in
Speaker 1: the hills didn't last long because something happens next that
Speaker 1: almost never gets mentioned in sermons. The War of the
Speaker 1: Kings Genesis fourteen opens with a battle. Four kings from
Speaker 1: the east, led by Shedorlaomer of Elam, have been dominating
Speaker 1: the cities of the plain for twelve years. In the
Speaker 1: thirteenth year, those cities rebel. In the fourteenth year, Chedalaomer
Speaker 1: and his allies sweep through the region, crushing every army
Speaker 1: in their path. They defeat the Rephaiem, the Zuzim, the Emim,
Speaker 1: and finally the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the
Speaker 1: Valley of Sidim, the Victoria Eastern Kings loot Sodom and
Speaker 1: Gomorrah and take captives. Among those captives is Lot. When
Speaker 1: Abraham hears this, he does something astonishing. He gathers three
Speaker 1: hundred and eighteen trained men born in his household, and
Speaker 1: he pursues a coalition of four kings who have just
Speaker 1: defeated multiple armies across the entire region. Stop and think
Speaker 1: about what this means. Abraham is not just a spiritual figure.
Speaker 1: He is a military leader. He has over three hundred
Speaker 1: trained warriors in his personal retinue. This is the household
Speaker 1: of a wealthy desert chieftain, not a wandering mystic. The
Speaker 1: man who built altars also drilled soldiers. Abraham chases Chedalauma's
Speaker 1: forces all the way to Dan, nearly one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty miles north. He divides his men, attacks at night,
Speaker 1: and roots the combined armies of four kings. He recovers
Speaker 1: all the people and possessions that have been taken from Sodom,
Speaker 1: including Lot. This is the same man who lied about
Speaker 1: his wife in Egypt because he was scared. The same
Speaker 1: man who couldn't trust God to protect him from Pharaoh
Speaker 1: is now charging into battle against four kings to rescue
Speaker 1: his nephew. Faith is not a straight line. Faith zigzags.
Speaker 1: Abraham is brave one day and terrified the next, and
Speaker 1: the Bible records both because the point was never that
Speaker 1: Abraham was consistent. The point was that God was consistent.
Speaker 1: And then, on the way home from this battle, Abraham
Speaker 1: has one of the strangest encounters in all of Scripture.
Speaker 1: He meets a man named Melchizedek. Genesis fourteen, verse eighteen. Melchizedek,
Speaker 1: king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was
Speaker 1: priest of God Most High. The name itself is Hebrew.
Speaker 1: It means king of righteousness, and he is King of Salem,
Speaker 1: which is an ancient name for Jerusalem. Salem means peace,
Speaker 1: so his full title is essentially King of Righteousness, King
Speaker 1: of Peace. He appears out of nowhere. The text gives
Speaker 1: us nothing about his family, his origin, or how a
Speaker 1: priest of God Most High could possibly exist in Canaan,
Speaker 1: before Israel, before the Covenant, before any of the structures
Speaker 1: of Biblical religion have been established. He just shows up,
Speaker 1: blesses Abraham, and Abraham gives him a tenth of everything.
Speaker 1: But here's the detail that shows how much Abraham has
Speaker 1: grown since Egypt. After the battle, the king of Sodom
Speaker 1: offers Abraham all the recovered loot, keep everything you earned it,
Speaker 1: and Abraham refuses. He says he has lived, did his
Speaker 1: hand to the Lord God Most High, possessor of heaven
Speaker 1: and earth, that he would not take a thread or
Speaker 1: a sandal strap or anything that belongs to Sodom, so
Speaker 1: that no one could say I have made Abram rich.
Speaker 1: The man who got rich off lying about his wife
Speaker 1: in Egypt, now refuses legitimate spoils of war because he
Speaker 1: wants it to be clear that his wealth comes from God,
Speaker 1: not from the King of Sodom. Abraham is learning slowly, imperfectly,
Speaker 1: but he is learning. The Egypt disaster taught him something,
Speaker 1: and the encounter with Melchizedek confirmed something. He is beginning
Speaker 1: to understand that the God who called him is not
Speaker 1: just another deity to be managed or appeased. This God
Speaker 1: is the possessor of heaven and earth. But the hardest
Speaker 1: lesson was still coming, because now came the waiting. If
Speaker 1: I could only show you one chapter of the Bible
Speaker 1: to prove that this book is stranger and deeper than
Speaker 1: you ever imagined, I would show you Genesis fifteen. Because
Speaker 1: Genesis fifteen contains one of the most bizarre, most profound,
Speaker 1: and most theologically explosive scenes in all of ancient literature,
Speaker 1: and almost nobody talks about it. Here is the set up.
Speaker 1: Some time has passed since Abraham arrived in Canaan. He
Speaker 1: has had military victories, he has accumulated wealth. He has
Speaker 1: met Melchizedek and refused the King of Sodom's offer. By
Speaker 1: worldly standards, Abraham is doing well, but the one thing
Speaker 1: God promised him, the thing that would make everything else possible,
Speaker 1: has not happened. He still has no son, and in
Speaker 1: Genesis fifteen, verse two, Abraham finally says what he's been thinking.
Speaker 1: He tells God that he remains childless. The heir of
Speaker 1: his house is Eliezer of Damascus, his servant. This is
Speaker 1: not a prayer of worship. This is a complaint. Abraham
Speaker 1: is telling God respectfully but directly, that the promise is
Speaker 1: not working. Years have passed, nothing has changed. The great
Speaker 1: nation God talked about still consists of two old people
Speaker 1: and a household staff. And God's response is to take
Speaker 1: Abraham outside at night under the vast Mesopotamian sky and
Speaker 1: tell him to look up and count the stars. Then
Speaker 1: God says, so shall your offspring be now? Modern city
Speaker 1: dwellers have no idea what this looked like. You and
Speaker 1: I might step outside and see a few dozen stars
Speaker 1: through the light pollution. Abraham, standing in the ancient Near
Speaker 1: East with zero artificial light for hundreds of miles in
Speaker 1: every direction, would have seen something that looked like the
Speaker 1: sky was on fire. Thousands upon thousands of stars, the
Speaker 1: milky way blazing overhead like a river of light, the
Speaker 1: sheer overwhelming enormity of the cosmos laid bare, and God says,
Speaker 1: that is how many descendants you will have. Verse six
Speaker 1: records Abraham's response, he believed the Lord, and he counted
Speaker 1: it to him as righteousness. Stop here. This single verse
Speaker 1: may be the most important sentence in the entire Bible.
Speaker 1: The apostle Paul builds his entire theology of justification on
Speaker 1: this verse. In Romans chapter four and Galatians chapter three.
Speaker 1: Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation partly on the basis
Speaker 1: of this verse. The entire Christian understanding of salvation by
Speaker 1: grace through faith traces back to this moment under the stars.
Speaker 1: Abraham believed, and that belief, that trust was credited to
Speaker 1: him as righteousness. Not his obedience because he had already
Speaker 1: disobeyed in Egypt, Not his sacrifices because the sacrificial system
Speaker 1: didn't exist yet, Not his moral perfection because he had
Speaker 1: already lied about his wife. His trust. But what happens
Speaker 1: next is where things get truly extraordinary and disturbing and
Speaker 1: world changing. Abraham asks God a reasonable follow up question
Speaker 1: in verse eight, he asks how he can know that
Speaker 1: he will possess the land. He's asking for a guarantee,
Speaker 1: a contract, some kind of assurance that this promise is binding,
Speaker 1: and God tells him to bring a heifer three years old,
Speaker 1: a female goat three years old, a ram three years old,
Speaker 1: a turtle, dove, and a young pigeon. Abraham brings them,
Speaker 1: cuts the larger animal in half and arranges the halves
Speaker 1: opposite each other, creating a pathway of blood between the pieces. Now,
Speaker 1: if you are a modern reader, this scene makes almost
Speaker 1: no sense. It feels random, barbaric, and disconnected from anything meaningful.
Speaker 1: But if you are an ancient Near Eastern reader, you
Speaker 1: know exactly what is happening, and it would have made
Speaker 1: your blood run cold. This is a covenant ratification ceremony.
Speaker 1: In the ancient world, when two parties made a binding agreement,
Speaker 1: they would cut animals in half, lay the pieces in
Speaker 1: two rows, and then both parties would walk between the
Speaker 1: pieces together. The symbolism was explicit and understood by everyone.
Speaker 1: May what happen to these animals happen to me if
Speaker 1: I break this covenant? Walking between the pieces was a
Speaker 1: self curse, a blood oath, the most serious, most binding,
Speaker 1: most irreversible form of commitment that existed in the ancient world.
Speaker 1: We have archaeological evidence of this practice from Hittite treaties,
Speaker 1: from Mari texts from Assyrian vassal agreements. Jeremiah chapter thirty
Speaker 1: four references this exact custom centuries later, confirming its ongoing significance.
Speaker 1: A treaty from the ancient city of Alalach, dating to
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century BCE, roughly Abraham's time, describes exactly this
Speaker 1: kind of ceremony between a vassal king and his overlord.
Speaker 1: Both parties walk through, both parties swear. So when God
Speaker 1: tells Abraham to prepare the animals, Abraham knows what's coming.
Speaker 1: They are about to make a covenant. Both of them
Speaker 1: will walk between the pieces. Both of them will swear
Speaker 1: with their lives to uphold the terms. Except that is
Speaker 1: not what happens. Genesis fifteen, verse twelve. As the sun
Speaker 1: was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abraham, and
Speaker 1: dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. The Hebrew word
Speaker 1: used for this sleep is tadamah. It's the same word
Speaker 1: used in Genesis too, when God put Adam to sleep
Speaker 1: before creating eve. This is not ordinary rest. This is
Speaker 1: a divinely imposed unconsciousness. God knocks Abraham out. And notice
Speaker 1: the emotional texture of this moment. It's not peaceful sleep.
Speaker 1: The text says, dreadful and great darkness fell on him.
Speaker 1: The Hebrew word for dreadful is ahma, which means horror
Speaker 1: or terror. Something terrifying is happening, and Abraham is experiencing
Speaker 1: it at a primal level, even in his uncon conscious state.
Speaker 1: And then verse seventeen, when the sun had gone down
Speaker 1: and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a
Speaker 1: flaming torch passed between the pieces. A smoking fire pot
Speaker 1: and a flaming torch. These are symbols of divine presence,
Speaker 1: the same kind of imagery that will later appear as
Speaker 1: the Pillar of Cloud and the pillar of Fire leading
Speaker 1: Israel through the wilderness. This is God himself moving between
Speaker 1: the pieces and Abraham. Abraham is asleep. Do you understand
Speaker 1: what just happened? In a covenant ceremony that requires both
Speaker 1: parties to walk between the pieces and swear their lives,
Speaker 1: God puts Abraham to sleep and walks through alone. God
Speaker 1: takes both sides of the oath. God bears the full
Speaker 1: weight of the covenant. God says, in effect, if this
Speaker 1: covenant is broken by either party, let the consequences fall
Speaker 1: on me. This is staggering. In every other ancient Near
Speaker 1: Eastern covenant, both parties shared the obligation and the risk.
Speaker 1: Here God assumes everything, the promises, the obligations, and the
Speaker 1: consequences of failure. Abraham contributes nothing, Abraham signs nothing, Abraham
Speaker 1: swears nothing. Abraham is unconscious. The entire weight of the
Speaker 1: covenant rests on God's own character, God's own faithfulness, God's
Speaker 1: own willingness to bear the cost of broken promises, even
Speaker 1: if the one who breaks them is Abraham or his descendants.
Speaker 1: And God also reveals something else. During this ceremony between
Speaker 1: the Sleep and the Fire, God tells Abraham that his
Speaker 1: descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs.
Speaker 1: They will be so evans. They will be afflicted for
Speaker 1: four hundred years, but God will judge the nation that
Speaker 1: enslaves them, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.
Speaker 1: This is a preview of Egypt, of the Exodus, of
Speaker 1: the entire trajectory of Israelite history compressed into a prophecy
Speaker 1: spoken to a sleeping man between rows of dead animals.
Speaker 1: Scholars call this a unilateral covenant, a one sided agreement,
Speaker 1: an unconditional promise, and it is the foundation on which
Speaker 1: everything else in the Bible is built. And if you're
Speaker 1: paying attention, you've already noticed the foreshadowing a god who
Speaker 1: takes the curse of covenant breaking upon himself, a God
Speaker 1: who says, if my people fail, let the punishment fall
Speaker 1: on me. That theological thread doesn't reach its conclusion for
Speaker 1: another two thousand years on a hill outside Jerusalem, on
Speaker 1: a Roman cross, where the descendant of Abraham bears the
Speaker 1: covenant curse in his own body. But we are getting
Speaker 1: ahead of ourselves, because before we get to the cross,
Speaker 1: we need to talk about what happened between the Covenant
Speaker 1: and the crucifixion, the years of waiting, the failures of faith,
Speaker 1: and the moment Abraham took matters into his own hands
Speaker 1: and created a wound that the Middle East is still
Speaker 1: bleeding from today. Here is something the Bible does that
Speaker 1: almost no other religious text in the ancient world does.
Speaker 1: It shows its heroes failing after the covenant. In Genesis fifteen,
Speaker 1: after the Stars and the blood and the fire. You
Speaker 1: would expect the story to accelerate. God made a promise.
Speaker 1: Abraham believed, now the promise should come true. Instead, years
Speaker 1: pass many years, and nothing happens. Arrah cannot conceive month
Speaker 1: after month, year after year. The promise remains unfulfilled. Therefore,
Speaker 1: Abraham and Sarah decide to help God out, and this
Speaker 1: is where the story gets painfully human. In Genesis sixteen,
Speaker 1: Sarah suggests that Abraham sleep with her Egyptian servant, Hagar
Speaker 1: and have a child through her. Before you judge this,
Speaker 1: you need to understand that in the ancient Near East,
Speaker 1: this was a perfectly normal and socially acceptable practice. We
Speaker 1: have contracts from ancient Mesopotamia, from the very culture Abraham
Speaker 1: came from, that specifically addressed the procedure for a baron
Speaker 1: wife providing a servant as a surrogate. The Code of
Speaker 1: Hamarabi mentions it. Marriage contracts from Nuzi, an ancient Hurriyan city,
Speaker 1: contain clauses almost identical to what Sarah proposes. Abraham was
Speaker 1: not doing something scandalous by the standards of his time.
Speaker 1: He was doing something perfectly legal and culturally expected, and
Speaker 1: that is precisely the problem because God's promise was never
Speaker 1: about what was culturally expected. God's promise was about what
Speaker 1: was humanly impossible, and the moment Abraham resorts to a
Speaker 1: human solution for a divine promise, things go sideways. Hagar conceives,
Speaker 1: and immediately the household collapses into jealousy, resentment, and cruelty. Sarah,
Speaker 1: who suggested the arrangement, turns on Hagar and treats her harshly.
Speaker 1: The Hebrew word used is anna, the same verb used
Speaker 1: to describe how the Egyptians will later oppress the Israelites
Speaker 1: in slavery. Sarah, the future mother of Israel, treats Hagar
Speaker 1: the way Pharaoh will one day treat Sarah's descendants. The
Speaker 1: irony is savage. Hagar flees into the desert, pregnant, alone,
Speaker 1: in slaved and abused. She runs toward Egypt, toward home,
Speaker 1: toward the only life she knew before Abraham's household swallowed
Speaker 1: her whole. And here the text does something extraordinary. God
Speaker 1: sends an angel to find Hagar, not to find Abraham,
Speaker 1: not to rebuke Sarah, to find Hagar, the enslaved Egyptian
Speaker 1: woman running through the wilderness. The angel finds her at
Speaker 1: a spring on the way to sher and tells her
Speaker 1: to go back, But he also gives her something. Abraham
Speaker 1: God a promise her son will be named Ishmael, meaning
Speaker 1: God hears, and he will be the father of a
Speaker 1: great people. And Haga responds with something that no other
Speaker 1: figure in Genesis does before her. She gives God a name.
Speaker 1: She calls him Elroy. The God who sees me a
Speaker 1: slave woman, names God before Moses, before the prophet, before
Speaker 1: any formal theology of divine names has been established. This
Speaker 1: is not a footnote. This is the text telling you
Speaker 1: something about the character of the God who called Abraham.
Speaker 1: This God does not only see the chosen. He sees
Speaker 1: the used. He sees the forgotten. He sees the runaway
Speaker 1: slave pregnant in the desert. Ishmael is born. Abraham is
Speaker 1: eighty six years old, and for thirteen years he raises
Speaker 1: this boy, loves this boy, and almost certainly believes that
Speaker 1: Ishmael is the promised son. But then God shows up
Speaker 1: again and changes everything. Genesis seventeen. Abraham is now ninety
Speaker 1: nine years old. God appears and establishes the covenant of circumcision.
Speaker 1: A physical marker, a sign carved into the body of
Speaker 1: every male in Abrahamham's household, a permanent reminder that they
Speaker 1: belong to a God who has claimed them. The significance
Speaker 1: of circumcision in its ancient context is worth pausing on.
Speaker 1: In the ancient Near East, other cultures practiced circumcision, but
Speaker 1: usually as a puberty right or a pre marriage ritual.
Speaker 1: God takes this existing cultural practice and radically redefines it.
Speaker 1: He moves it to the eighth day of life, to infancy,
Speaker 1: before the child can choose, or understand or consent. The
Speaker 1: sign of the Covenant is placed on the body before
Speaker 1: the person has done anything to earn or deserve it.
Speaker 1: This mirrors the logic of the Covenant itself. You didn't
Speaker 1: earn this, You didn't choose this. This was placed on
Speaker 1: you by a God who chose you before you could
Speaker 1: choose him. God changes Abram's name to Abraham, meaning father
Speaker 1: of many, and Sarah's name to Sarah meaning princess, and
Speaker 1: God says, Sarah will bear you a son, and you
Speaker 1: shall call his name Isaac. And Abraham's response Genesis seventeen,
Speaker 1: verse seventeen, Abraham fell on his face and laughed. He
Speaker 1: laughed The father of faith. The man who believed God
Speaker 1: and had it counted as righteousness, fell down laughing at
Speaker 1: the promise of God. And the Hebrew verb used here
Speaker 1: yitshak is the very word that becomes his son's name,
Speaker 1: Isaac means he laughs. This is not presented as sinful.
Speaker 1: This is presented as human. Abraham is overwhelmed. He is
Speaker 1: ninety nine years old and his wife is eighty nine,
Speaker 1: and God is telling him they are going to have
Speaker 1: a baby. Of course, he laughed. And then Abraham says
Speaker 1: something incredibly revealing. He says, oh, that Ishmael might live
Speaker 1: before you. In other words, God, I already have a son.
Speaker 1: Can't we just work with what we have? And God
Speaker 1: says no, Sarah will bear a son. His name will
Speaker 1: be Isaac, and the Covenant will be established through him.
Speaker 1: This moment is gutting if you slow down long enough
Speaker 1: to feel it. Abraham loves Ishmael, he has loved him
Speaker 1: for thirteen years, and God is telling him that Ishmael,
Speaker 1: though blessed, is not the child of promise. The plan
Speaker 1: that Abraham and Sarah devised on their own, the human
Speaker 1: solution to the divine delay, is not the plan God
Speaker 1: had in mind. And then comes Abraham's most audacious moment
Speaker 1: before the binding of Isaac. In Genesis eighteen three, visitors
Speaker 1: come to Abraham's tent near the oaks of Mamray. Abraham,
Speaker 1: displaying the extreme hospitality that was the highest virtue of
Speaker 1: ancient Near Eastern culture, rushes to prepare a meal for them.
Speaker 1: He asks Sarah to bake bread from the finest flower.
Speaker 1: He runs to the herd and selects a tender calf.
Speaker 1: During this visit, the Lord tells Abraham that Sarah will
Speaker 1: have a son within a year. Sarah, listening from inside
Speaker 1: the tent, laughs to herself, and God says, is anything
Speaker 1: too hard for the Lord? Sarah denies, laughing she's afraid,
Speaker 1: and God says, you did laugh. There's a tenderness in
Speaker 1: this exchange that gets lost if you read it too quickly.
Speaker 1: God is not angry, he is acknowledging the absurdity of
Speaker 1: what he is promising a ninety year old woman having
Speaker 1: a baby. Of course, she laughed. The whole family laughs
Speaker 1: at this promise, and God names the child after that laughter.
Speaker 1: But then the conversation shifts and Abraham does something that
Speaker 1: no other figure in Genesis does. God reveals that he
Speaker 1: is about to investigate the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah
Speaker 1: because of their grievous sin, and Abraham argues with God.
Speaker 1: He draws near and asks, will you indeed sweep away
Speaker 1: the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty
Speaker 1: righteous people in the city? And then he bargains fifty,
Speaker 1: then forty five, then forty, then thirty, then twenty, then ten.
Speaker 1: Each time God agrees, if there are ten righteous people
Speaker 1: in Sodom, I will not destroy it. This scene is
Speaker 1: astonishing for several reasons. First, Abraham is interceding for a
Speaker 1: city that is not his own. Sodom is not his people.
Speaker 1: He has no obligation to care about them, but he
Speaker 1: does because his nephew Lot lives there, and because Abraham
Speaker 1: has developed something that the pagan world of his time
Speaker 1: largely lacked, a sense of universal justice, a conviction that
Speaker 1: the God who judges the earth must do right. Second,
Speaker 1: Abraham is not afraid to challenge God. He is respectful
Speaker 1: but relentless. He pushes and pushes, and God doesn't punish
Speaker 1: him for it. The text implies that God welcomes the conversation.
Speaker 1: This is not a God who demands blind submission. This
Speaker 1: is a god who invites dialogue. But here's the part
Speaker 1: that breaks my heart. Abraham stops at ten. He doesn't
Speaker 1: go lower. He doesn't ask what if there are five?
Speaker 1: What if there is one? And in the end, not
Speaker 1: even ten righteous people can be found in Sodom, and
Speaker 1: the city is destroyed. Only Lot and his daughters escape,
Speaker 1: and even that rest is messy and traumatic. Lot's wife
Speaker 1: looks back and becomes a pillar of salt. That image
Speaker 1: a person unable to let go of what they're leaving behind,
Speaker 1: echoes across the Bible and into our own lives. Abraham
Speaker 1: walked away from Ur without looking back. Lot's wife couldn't
Speaker 1: do the same with Sodom. The Abraham who negotiated with
Speaker 1: God is a man who has grown enormously from the
Speaker 1: man who left er. He has gone from silent obedience
Speaker 1: to active partnership, from passive belief to engaged wrestling. And
Speaker 1: then finally, Isaac is born. Genesis twenty one, Abraham is
Speaker 1: one hundred years old, Sarah is ninety, and the impossible happens.
Speaker 1: The child of Promise arrives. The boy whose name means
Speaker 1: laughter is born to parents who literally laughed at the
Speaker 1: idea that he could exist. Sarah says, God has made
Speaker 1: laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh over me.
Speaker 1: For the first time in the Abraham story, there is pure,
Speaker 1: uncomplicated joy. The waiting is over, the promise is fulfilled.
Speaker 1: The old man holds his baby son and knows that
Speaker 1: everything God said was true. But the joy does not
Speaker 1: last because another loss is coming. As Isaac grows, the
Speaker 1: tension between Sarah and Hagar becomes unbearable. Sarah sees Ishmael,
Speaker 1: now a teenager, playing with Isaac. She tells Abraham to
Speaker 1: cast out the slave woman with her son, and the
Speaker 1: text says this was very displeasing to Abraham. The Hebrew
Speaker 1: phrase is va yeerra hadavar mehd. It was very evil
Speaker 1: in his eyes because Ishmael is his son too. He
Speaker 1: loves Ishmael. He has raised Ishmael for over thirteen years,
Speaker 1: and now Sarah is telling him to send this boy
Speaker 1: into the desert. God tells Abraham to listen to Sarah,
Speaker 1: but God also promises again that Ishmael will become a
Speaker 1: nation too because he is Abraham's offspring. So Abraham rises
Speaker 1: early in the morning, takes bread and a skin of water,
Speaker 1: gives them to Hagar, puts them on her shoulder along
Speaker 1: with the child, and sends her away. Read that sentence again.
Speaker 1: Slowly he rises early. He packs the supplies himself, He
Speaker 1: puts them on her shoulder, he sends them away. This
Speaker 1: is not a man who is indifferent. This is a
Speaker 1: man who is dying inside. Every detail suggests a father
Speaker 1: who cannot bring himself to do this, and does it
Speaker 1: anyway because he has been told to trust God with
Speaker 1: the outcome. Hagar wanders in the wilderness of Beersheba. The
Speaker 1: water runs out. She puts Ishmael under a bush because
Speaker 1: she cannot bear to watch him die. She sits a
Speaker 1: bow shot away and weeps. And God hears the boy's voice.
Speaker 1: The Angel of God calls to Hagar from heaven and
Speaker 1: tells her not to be afraid. God has heard the
Speaker 1: voice of the boy. Lift him up and hold him
Speaker 1: fast with your hand, for I will make him a
Speaker 1: great nation. And God opens her eyes and she sees
Speaker 1: a well of water. The God who sees Elroy he
Speaker 1: sees again. He sees the slave woman again, He sees
Speaker 1: the boy again. He provides water in the desert the
Speaker 1: same way he will one day provide water from a
Speaker 1: rock for the Israelites in Sinai. Ishmael survives, He grows
Speaker 1: up in the wilderness of Paran. He becomes an archer.
Speaker 1: His mother finds him a wife from the land of Egypt,
Speaker 1: and from him comes a line that Islamic tradition traces
Speaker 1: directly to the prophet Muhammad. One family's pain, two civilizations,
Speaker 1: four thousand years of consequences, and now God has one
Speaker 1: more thing to ask of Abraham, and this one makes
Speaker 1: everything else look like a warm up. Genesis twenty two
Speaker 1: is the most analyzed, most debated, most agonized over chapter
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible. Philosophers like Kirkgard have written entire
Speaker 1: books about it. Jewish scholars have spent millennia interpreting it.
Speaker 1: Christian theologians see in it the foreshadowing of everything they believe.
Speaker 1: Islamic tradition honors it as one of the greatest acts
Speaker 1: of submission in human history, and the reason it haunts
Speaker 1: us is because on the surface, it looks like the
Speaker 1: thing Abraham left behind. Remember er, Remember the royal tombs,
Speaker 1: Remember the silver hair ribbon in the dead woman's pocket,
Speaker 1: Remember that the world Abraham came from was a world
Speaker 1: where the gods demanded human sacrifice. And now in Genesis
Speaker 1: twenty two, verse two, the God who called Abraham out
Speaker 1: of that world says, take your son, your only son, Isaac,
Speaker 1: whom you love, and go to the land of Mariah
Speaker 1: and offer him there as a burnt offering on one
Speaker 1: of the mountains, of which I shall tell you your son,
Speaker 1: your only son, the one you love, Isaac. The Hebrew
Speaker 1: piles on the specificity each phrase, narrowing the focus like
Speaker 1: a knife being sharpened. And notice that God says, your
Speaker 1: only son, even though Ishmael is alive, Isaac is not
Speaker 1: Abraham's only biological son. He is the only son of
Speaker 1: the covenant. God is specifying the cost with surgical precision.
Speaker 1: And the first question everyone asks is how could a
Speaker 1: good God do this? Hold that question. We will get
Speaker 1: to it, but first look at what Abraham does. Genesis
Speaker 1: twenty two, verse three. Abraham rose early in the morning,
Speaker 1: saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men
Speaker 1: with him and his son Isaac, and he cut the
Speaker 1: wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to
Speaker 1: the place of which God had told him. He rose
Speaker 1: early again, just like when he sent Hagar away. Abraham's
Speaker 1: darkest moments begin at dawn. He did not delay. He
Speaker 1: did not argue the way he argued for Sodom. He
Speaker 1: did not negotiate. He did not laugh the way he
Speaker 1: laughed at the promise of Isaac. He simply got up,
Speaker 1: prepared the supplies, and started walking. Three days of war talking,
Speaker 1: three days from Beersheba to the mountains of Moria. Three
Speaker 1: days of traveling with your son beside you, knowing what
Speaker 1: you believe God has asked you to do. Three days
Speaker 1: of silence, of agony, of whatever was happening inside this
Speaker 1: man's mind. On the third day, Abraham looked up and
Speaker 1: saw the place from a distance. He told his servants
Speaker 1: to stay with the donkey. He said, I and the
Speaker 1: boy will go over there and worship and come again
Speaker 1: to you, Come again to you, both of us. I
Speaker 1: and the boy will come back. The author of Hebrews
Speaker 1: in chapter eleven interprets this moment directly. He says that
Speaker 1: Abraham reasoned that God was able to raise Isaac from
Speaker 1: the dead. Abraham had resolved to obey God's command, but
Speaker 1: he also believed, somehow, against all logic, that God would
Speaker 1: find a way way to keep his promise, because if
Speaker 1: Isaac dies, the Covenant dies, and Abraham had seen enough
Speaker 1: of this God to know that the Covenant would not die.
Speaker 1: This is faith at its most extreme, not faith as
Speaker 1: a warm feeling, not faith as intellectual agreement with theological propositions.
Speaker 1: Faith as walking up a mountain with your son and
Speaker 1: a knife, believing that the God who promised you descendants
Speaker 1: as numerous as the stars would not let that promise fail,
Speaker 1: even if you could not see how. Then comes the
Speaker 1: moment Isaac speaks, and his words shatter you. Father. Isaac says,
Speaker 1: here is the fire and the wood, but where is
Speaker 1: the lamb for the burnt offering. Isaac is not a baby.
Speaker 1: Most scholars estimate he was somewhere between his early teens
Speaker 1: and mid twenties. At this point, he was old enough
Speaker 1: to carry the wood up the mountain. He was old
Speaker 1: enough to understand how sacrifices worked, and he noticed that
Speaker 1: something essential was missing. Abraham's answer is one of the
Speaker 1: most loaded sentences in all of Scripture. God will provide
Speaker 1: for himself the lamb for a burnt offering my son.
Speaker 1: In Hebrew, this sentence is ambiguous in a way that
Speaker 1: feels intentional. It can mean God will provide the lamb
Speaker 1: for himself, or God will provide himself as the lamb.
Speaker 1: The grammar allows both readings, and if you are a
Speaker 1: Christian reading this text, that ambiguity detonates like a bomb.
Speaker 1: They reach the summit. Abraham builds the altar, he arranges
Speaker 1: the wood, He binds Isaac and lays him on top.
Speaker 1: And here is another detail that gets overlooked. Isaac lets
Speaker 1: himself be bound. This is not a toddler who doesn't understand.
Speaker 1: This is a young man, likely stronger than his elderly father,
Speaker 1: who could have resisted, who could have run, who chose
Speaker 1: not to. Jewish tradition emphasizes this point the Akadah. The
Speaker 1: binding is not just a test of Abraham's obedience, It
Speaker 1: is a test of Isaac's willingness. Father and son walk
Speaker 1: together into this moment. Both are choosing. Abraham reaches out
Speaker 1: his hand and takes the knife, and the Angel of
Speaker 1: the Lord calls from heaven Abraham Abraham. The double name
Speaker 1: In scripture, when God says some one's name twice, it
Speaker 1: signals urgency and intimacy. Abraham Abraham. He says, here, I
Speaker 1: am do not lay your hand on the boy or
Speaker 1: do anything to him. For now I know that you
Speaker 1: fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your
Speaker 1: only son, from me. Abraham looks up, and caught in
Speaker 1: a thicket by its horns is a ram. He takes
Speaker 1: the ram and offers it instead of his son, and
Speaker 1: Abraham calls the name of that place, Yahweh Yira. The
Speaker 1: Lord will provide. The text adds, as it is said
Speaker 1: to this day, on the mount of the Lord, it
Speaker 1: shall be provided. Now Here is where the geography becomes theology.
Speaker 1: Second Chronicles, chapter three, verse one identifies Mount Mariah as
Speaker 1: the location where Solomon would later build the temple in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: The mountain where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son is the
Speaker 1: same mountain where the temple stood, The same mountain where
Speaker 1: for centuries Israel would offer sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins.
Speaker 1: The same mountain complex where, according to Christian tradition, Jesus Nazareth,
Speaker 1: a descendant of Abraham through the line of Isaac, was crucified.
Speaker 1: Abraham named the place the Lord will provide, and the
Speaker 1: text says, on the mount of the Lord it shall
Speaker 1: be provided. Future tents. Something will happen on this mountain
Speaker 1: in the future that will fulfill the meaning of this moment.
Speaker 1: The ram caught in the thicket is a substitute, an
Speaker 1: animal dying in the place of the sun, and this
Speaker 1: principle of substitution, innocent life offered in place of guilty life,
Speaker 1: becomes the central mechanism of the entire sacrificial system of Israel,
Speaker 1: and for Christians, it becomes the interpretive key to the
Speaker 1: death of Jesus. So why did God ask Abraham to
Speaker 1: do this? The answer requires understanding what the test was
Speaker 1: actually about, and it was not about whether Abraham was
Speaker 1: willing to kill Isaac. It was about whether Abraham had
Speaker 1: made Isaac into an idol. Remember where Abraham came from, Er,
Speaker 1: a city of idols. Abraham left that world behind, but
Speaker 1: the temptation to idolatry doesn't disappear just because you leave
Speaker 1: a city. Isaac was the miracle child, the impossible son,
Speaker 1: the fulfillment of everything Abraham had waited twenty five years.
Speaker 1: For Isaac was the proof that God was real, that
Speaker 1: the promises were true, that the covenant would continue. And
Speaker 1: therein lies the danger, because when the gift becomes more
Speaker 1: important than the giver. When the blessing becomes more important
Speaker 1: than the one who blessed, When your identity becomes wrapped
Speaker 1: up in what God has given you rather than in
Speaker 1: God himself, you have built a new idol. God was
Speaker 1: not asking Abraham to become a child killer. God stopped
Speaker 1: the sacrifice. God never intended for Isaac to die. The
Speaker 1: entire point was the willingness, the internal posture, the answer
Speaker 1: to the question Abraham, is there anything in your life
Speaker 1: that you love more than me? And Abraham's answer, spoken
Speaker 1: not in words but in action, was no, nothing, not
Speaker 1: even the sun. He waited twenty five years for. After Mariah,
Speaker 1: the next major event in Abraham's life is the death
Speaker 1: of Sarah Genesis twenty three. Sarah dies at the age
Speaker 1: of one hundred and twenty seven in Kiriathaba, which is
Speaker 1: Hebron in the land of Canaan, and Abraham comes to
Speaker 1: mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. The Hebrew
Speaker 1: uses two verbs lispod to eulogize and live Kota to
Speaker 1: weep for her, the public mourning and the private grief.
Speaker 1: Abraham does both, and then he does something practical, something
Speaker 1: that reveals both his faith and his realism. He negotiates
Speaker 1: with the Hittites to purchase a burial site the cave
Speaker 1: of Makpela. This negotiation in Genesis twenty three is one
Speaker 1: of the most detailed commercial transactions in the entire Bible.
Speaker 1: Abraham approaches the sons of Heth. He calls himself a
Speaker 1: stranger and a sojourner, a resident alien. He asks to
Speaker 1: buy a burial plot. Ephron names a price of four
Speaker 1: hundred shekels of silver. Abraham weighs out the silver and pays,
Speaker 1: and this is the only piece of the promised land
Speaker 1: that Abraham ever legally owns. After decades of wandering, after
Speaker 1: altars built at Shechem and Bethel and Hebron, after a
Speaker 1: covenant where God promised him the entire land, Abram's sole
Speaker 1: real estate transaction is a cemetery. He buries Sarah in
Speaker 1: the cave of Machpela, and when Abraham himself dies, his
Speaker 1: sons Isaac and Ishmael will bury him there beside her.
Speaker 1: Isaac and Ishmael together at their father's grave. That detail,
Speaker 1: buried in Genesis twenty five, verse nine, is one of
Speaker 1: the most quietly extraordinary lines in the Bible, the two sons,
Speaker 1: the child of promise and the child sent away. The
Speaker 1: one who stayed and the one who was cast out,
Speaker 1: stand together at the grave of the man who loved
Speaker 1: them both, whatever wounds existed between them, whatever the years
Speaker 1: in the desert had done to Ishmael, he came back
Speaker 1: for the funeral. He stood beside his brother. They buried
Speaker 1: their father together. Abraham died at the age of one
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy five, owning exactly one piece of real
Speaker 1: estate in the promised land, a cemetery. The man to
Speaker 1: whom God said all this land will be yours died
Speaker 1: with a grave. And yet the text says he died
Speaker 1: in a good old age, an old man, and full
Speaker 1: of years. The Hebrew word for full there is savia,
Speaker 1: which means satisfied, content complete. Abraham died satisfied, not because
Speaker 1: he had received everything he was promised, but because he
Speaker 1: had walked with the God who promised it. He never
Speaker 1: saw the nation of Israel. He never saw the temple
Speaker 1: on Mariah. He never saw David or Solomon or the prophets.
Speaker 1: He never saw a baby in a manger in Bethlehem.
Speaker 1: He never saw any of it. But the covenant he
Speaker 1: carried walked into that future without him, from Abraham to Moses,
Speaker 1: from Moses to David, from David to the prophets, from
Speaker 1: the prophets to a teenage girl in Nazareth, who said,
Speaker 1: let it be to me according to your word. From
Speaker 1: that girl to a cross on a hill that the
Speaker 1: Bible calls the place where God provided the mount of
Speaker 1: the Lord Moriah, where Abraham said, God will provide himself
Speaker 1: the lamb, And two thousand years later, on that same
Speaker 1: mountain complex, a man who called himself the Good Shepherd said,
Speaker 1: no one takes my life from me. I lay it
Speaker 1: down of my own accord, the lamb that God provided,
Speaker 1: the covenant that God made in the dark, walking through
Speaker 1: the blood alone, while Abraham slept the promise that said,
Speaker 1: if this fails, let the cost fall on me. It
Speaker 1: was always heading here, from the first word spoken to
Speaker 1: an old man in a pagan city, from the first
Speaker 1: step taken into the unknown, from the first star counted
Speaker 1: in the dark four thousand years ago, an old man
Speaker 1: loaded up donkeys in the dark, and the world has
Speaker 1: never the same. If this story changed how you see
Speaker 1: the Bible, subscribe next week we are going deeper into
Speaker 1: the story of Jacob, the man who literally wrestled with
Speaker 1: God and walked away limping that one is even wilder
Speaker 1: than this. The video is on screen now