1485 - “The Abrahamic Covenant” Part 1, Genesis 12

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is podcast 1485. Today is the first of three chapters that we're going to look at in relationship to the Abrahamic covenant. This is chapter twelve. And in chapter twelve, we get something of an idea of those who were the zeros, those who were not people of faith, who were not part of the great heroes of the faith. But today we're going to begin with the man that is mentioned over and over again in the Old Testament, and really the one that God used to begin the lineage of faith. His name was Avram, the High Father. That's what Abram means. And Abram was in the land of Mesopotamia. He came from the city of Ur. That is over a hundred miles outside of what is modern-day Baghdad. It would have been Babylon during the days of the time of Daniel and the time even before that. The time of Daniel would have been the Neo, the New Babylonians. There was a Babylonian empire well before that, during the time of Babel. You can read about that earlier in the scriptures. But Abram came along, heard the call of God saying, get out from where you are, from your family, from the place where you were reared and raised and accustomed to, because I'm going to take you from here and I'm going to give you a land. I'm going to give you the title deed to land. Now often you will hear people say, Well, where does it say anywhere in history that God gives a certain piece of land as a title deed to the seed of Abraham, that is, of Isaac and Jacob. Jacob's name was changed to Israel, you'll recall. Where does that happen? Well, God gives that land and the title deed to it and the parameters of the land in Genesis 15. Now, I want to remind you that when people talk about historical documents, the most read historical document in world history has been what we call the Torah, the Old Testament. It is read by people all over the world, not just Jews, not just Christians, but by secular people as well, people from other faiths. And in chapter 15, God lays out the very parameters of where this land that God was going to give to this hero, this man Abram, and he does that in chapter 15 and verse 18 and 19. He says to your descendants, I have given this land from the river of Egypt, that's in the south, to the great river, the river Euphrates. Now he could have said the great river, and everyone wouldn't have known what that was, but why did he say the Euphrates? Because there were several great rivers, and he didn't want any mistaking about it. He said, I'm going to give you the Kenites, the Kenesites, the Cadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Raphaim, the Amorites, the Canaanite, the Gergasites, and the Jebusites. He said, I'm going to give all of these people who are inhabiting this land to you. I'm going to give them into your hand. Now God gives us an insight into Abraham's greatest fears. It's amazing how when we read about these great heroes of the faith that we see that they had fears just like we do. That they were ostraca, they were broken vessels, they were people that were sinful, they were sinners. Abraham deceived people, he lied to people, he committed adultery. And the result of his adultery, it didn't matter whether his wife wanted him to or not. God had said, A man will leave his father, his mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And from the beginning, that's the way God meant it. A man and a woman together, not many men and not many women, not men on men and women on women, but rather one man, one woman together at one time. But Abram didn't follow that. His wife said, I'm not going to be able to have a child. I can't figure all this out. Nothing's happened so far, Abram. And so I want you to go into my handmaiden, my servant, and Abraham did as his wife said, just like Adam did, and he got not only like Adam did the whole human race, but his people have fought with the sons of Ishmael, that is, the child that was out of this adulterous relationship, this unauthorized relationship, and they have fought down through the annals of history and will until Messiah Jesus comes again to set things straight. And so Abram made a mess of things, but God is in the business of cleaning up our messes because he is the fixer, he's the redeemer, he's the reconciler, he's the one that puts it all back together again. And by the way, aren't you glad? So in Genesis 15, God made a covenant, he cut a covenant with Abram, and it's amazing to me that God did not bring that about for a long period of time in what we read of Genesis 17. Because it says in chapter 15 and verse 1, after these things, the word of the Lord, notice that's all caps, that's the personal name of God, YH, W H or Y-H-V-H, depending upon whether you're Ashkenazi or whether you are Spartic in your pronunciation. So he says after these things, the Lord, that is the tetragrammaton, the personal name of God, came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not be afraid. I am your shield, I'm your protector, I'm the one that surrounds you. That is the word here for shield, and your exceedingly great reward. I am your portion, I am your provider, I am the one that will sustain you, I'm your sustenance, I am the one that is going to be all that you need, Abraham. And so as he talked with Abram, then God to Abram said, I know what you're thinking. Now God knows what we're thinking. I don't know what you're thinking. You don't know what I'm thinking. You may think you do, but I may think I do, but we don't read minds. We don't read motives. And even when somebody tells you this was my motive, the heart is deceitful and it is wicked, who can know it? And so sometimes you think you're doing something out of one motive and God will show you no, you were doing that out of another motive. And so God said to Abram, I know that you're afraid. Don't be afraid. Why did he say do not be afraid? Because he was afraid. What was he afraid of? Well he goes on to say, But Abram said, Oh, now this is a clue. Abram said, Lord God, what will you give me, seeing I go childless and the heir of my house as Eliezer Damascus? Look, you have given no offspring, indeed one born in my house as my heir. Now why was Abram saying that? It's because the whole reason that he came was because God said, You follow me and I'll give you a lineage. I will make you a promise, I will give you an ancestry, I will give you a lineage, I will give you the promise of a great name, of great fame, of land, of people that will come after you. But Abraham said, Look, I'm getting old, and I fear that you're not going to keep your promise. I fear I'm gonna get old and I'm not gonna be able to perform. And the word of the Lord came to him and said, This one shall not be your heir. In other words, Eliezer is not gonna be your heir, but one will come from your own body that will be your heir. Then he brought him outside and said, Look now, look toward the heaven and count the stars if you're able to number them. Then he said to me, So shall your descendants be, your lineage. And he, Abram, believed in Hashem, in the Lord, in Yah, and he accounted it. He put it on his account for righteousness. Paul is the one that quotes this as the time when Abraham truly was saved and declared righteous by God, when he believed the promise that God had made about what he was able to do. But Abraham was fearful. He was getting old, and he couldn't figure it out. You see, this is what's happened to us so many times. God says he gives us a promise out of his word. It is a rahema, it is in context, it is exactly what God says he's going to do. God lays down precept, a principle, and pattern in Scripture, and we claim that. But then we get frightful and say, Well, it's not turning out like I thought it was. This is not going to happen like I thought it was. And we try to figure it all out, and God says, wait just a minute. I'm not depending on the natural. I can go above natural. I am supernatural, and that's exactly what God did. He said, Look, Abram, don't you worry about the timing of this thing. I told you it's going to happen, and it's going to happen. And you know the story. You know about Hagar and Ishmael. That's all in chapter 16. Now, even after God told him, Don't worry about this, I'm going to handle it. I'm going to supernaturally take care of this. I am the one that is your provider. I'm your Lord. Still he went ahead and did what his wife told him instead of doing what God told him, just like Adam. It's a curse. Chapter seventeen When Abram was ninety nine years old and he was getting along in years now, then here the Lord Hashem, Yah, appeared to Abram and said unto him, Almighty God, El Shaddai, I am El Shaddai. That's what the word that's translated Almighty. And it's translated Almighty, but I do not believe that's the greatest translation. It's a good translation, but I believe the best translation to get to the heart that ties in with all that God said down through Abram's life, especially chapter 15, when he said, Look, Abram, I know what you're fearing, but I am the one who protects you. I'm the one that surrounds you, and I'm the one that is able to perform everything I said. I can do whatever I told you I can do, and I'm not dependent upon the natural. And the reason is God supersedes the natural. He is supernatural. He's above natural. And he said, I am Almighty God. Now, when he revealed himself to that, this is the first time we have this particular phrase related to God in the Bible. He says, I am El Shaddai. Now, what does that word mean? Well, El is the word, like in Elohim. It's the word for God, the one who is high, the one who is lifted up, El. He is God. He's the all-knowing God, the all-seeing God, yes. But El Shaddai, Shaddai is a particular word. You notice it has double D. The reason is because it has what's called a dogish forte in it, and that doubles the sound of that letter, that dalet. Now, that's just in grammar. Simply because that's the way that you write it out. You transliterate that, a D and a D shadai. But it is an intensifier. It's not just a doubler, it's an intensifier. And it's there for a reason. The word shad, the base word for shad, people argue about this, but one of the greatest Hebrew scholars of the last century I studied under, studied under two or three. But the one that I studied under first was Dr. H. Leo Edelman, and he shared with me that the word shad is a reference to a woman's breast. It's the idea of a mountain. That's right, shad as a mountain, not har as in harmegiddo, not that kind of mountain, but a mountain as in a woman's breast, like a mountain. It rises up from her chest. And that mountain, that shad intensified, is used for sufficiency. It's the idea of colostrum. It's the idea of what a newborn mother has before her milk comes in, and her milk is healthy for the baby. That baby can live on that milk until it's time for whole food and for stronger food. But the first liquid that comes into a woman's breast is called colostrum. And in it is all the vitamins and nutrients that newborn needs. It is totally sufficient. And physicians will tell you, OBGYN, OBGYN will tell you that it is sufficient for the nourishment of that child for everything that child needs in its early time. Now, this is exactly what God is saying. He's saying, I am El Shaddai. And El Shaddai means that he is more than sufficient. And so this is why I translate Almighty God as all sufficient God. God was saying to Abraham, Abram, don't you fear? This is what he was saying in 15, I am all sufficient, and I'm going to reveal myself to you at a time. And so Abram tried to fulfill the will of God in his own way, and it always leads to trouble when we do that. You see, we can't do God's work in a human way with our own human ingenuity. What we have to do is walk by faith, not by sight, and trust God that he will lead us every step of the way. But where we get in trouble is when we step away from God. And this is what Abram did. It's what Adam did. I could go down the list. You know, you're already, you're ahead of me. You're already thinking of all these different ways that people stepped out of the will of God. But here's what God said to Abram, I am the all-sufficient one, and I am going to do what I told you to do. This one is not going to be the heir. Ishmael's not going to be the heir. Isaac is the heir. And when Abraham understood this, the scripture says he laughed, and then his wife laughed. Ever how you take that, the end result is the boy's name was laughter, Yetsack. Because you see, God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all you and I could ever ask or think. Yes, think. That means imagine. And so Abraham could not imagine it. He could not imagine that he would be not Avram, but Avraham. He would be the father of multitudes because he was old. Sarah was already past childbearing. Not only had she gone through menopause and heandropause, but her womb had died. But aren't you glad that God is able to raise from the dead not only a human being, but also God is able to bring to life the dead parts of our body. That's exactly what he did with Abraham and what he did with Sarah. And so God said, Abraham, son, you just you just hold on. I'm going to show you who I am. I am El Shaddai. I am all you need. And let me just say to you who are listening to this podcast, God is all we need. Listen, the Holy Spirit lives in the life of every follower of Jesus. He is all we need. The word of God is sufficient. It is all we need. Jesus is all I need. He is all I need. I think there's been a song or two written about that. For On the Way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org. Then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.