Abraham

Welcome friends, back to the Pastor Talk podcast,
the second episode in our
newest series as we talk about the real people of faith.
Today we’re going to be
turning our attention away from Moses who we talked about last week and today
we’re going to be talking about Abram or Abraham as he is named later on in his own story.
He is a really interesting character and very nuanced and complex
and so we start with a little bit of his background and his story as it goes throughout the Bible.
I think a case could be made that Abraham is a
foundational character, in fact a case could be made that we should have started with him,
but I think in some ways Michael his story is more nuanced,
more complicated certainly than Moses’ story.
Moses’ story has some
complications in it.
Maybe because Abraham’s story is less singularly
focused it adds dimensions that I think make Abraham an interesting and I
would say difficult character.
It’s really tough I think to put Abraham in a
single box.
There are there are moments where he shines as a man of faith.
There are other things he does that seem questionable.
I think the telling of his
stories reflect the the kind of prehistoric or very ancient story that
we’re a part of the way this narrative is told.
There are times that God is very
active and hangs heavily over the story and other times that the focus is
really on Abraham navigating things on his own and God stands very much in the background.
There are times God seems easily offended.
Other times God doesn’t
seem to be bothered by the goings and comings of people and some of what they
do and I think maybe in that sense and for those reasons this story is a tough
first podcast.
Maybe it works better as a second step.
In some ways Moses is more accessible I think.
For someone who maybe doesn’t know exactly where Abraham
fits within the biblical story,
Abraham comes into the story about Genesis chapter 12.
So not in the very beginning beginning.
There’s a little bit before
Abraham but really he does create a bridge character between some of the
more classic Israelite stories of the Old Testament and creation and the beginning.
And so we start in Abram’s story pre really any sort of Israelite understanding.
He’s called out from a pagan nation.
God says go from your country,
your people and your father’s household to the land that I will show
you.
And so immediately Abram’s called out of the life that he once lived in
with the family and the place and ostensibly God’s and called by the God
to move as an act of faith into a new chapter of life.
Yeah and I suppose you
could say this to some extent about Noah but I think Abraham is the moment
or the place in the larger narrative of Scripture where God becomes not simply
the God of the universe,
the God of creation,
but the God of a people.
And why
that starts with Abraham is really never explained.
Which is a very Scripture like
thing for the Bible to do.
The Bible is not into giving us the directions and
the decisions of God that God doesn’t have to be justified and so the Bible
doesn’t explain that stuff to us.
But we just simply meet this person Abram
at the time and God says go.
And there’s wonderful in these moments where some of
Abraham’s stories are difficult to read.
I think they are wonderfully metaphorical.
They open themselves to us.
And to Abram’s credit his response to go and I’ll show
you a new land doesn’t even tell where he’s going.
He says go and I’ll basically
tell you when you get there.
And the full,
the Bible’s full take on Abraham’s
response is so he went.
God says go,
so he went.
And in that sense and there are lots
of those in this narrative,
Abraham is clearly a man of faith.
God says it,
Abraham does it.
Now I don’t know if there are exceptions to that.
There are some interesting detours to it.
And that detour happens right away.
So right in chapter 12 God says go,
Abram does it.
God responds and goes.
And then literally in that same chapter,
the next major section,
he gets to Egypt and he
starts to be a little worried about Pharaoh and he actually offers up his
wife to the Pharaoh and says she’s my sister.
And that, you go from a man who’s
willing to leave everything behind to follow God’s Word.
And then when he is literally just,
you know, one major step down in that journey,
he’s giving away his wife in fear of his life as if God has left him.
Yeah, there’s two versions of this story.
It happens once in Egypt and it’ll happen again with a king named Abimelech.
But again, this is my point earlier.
There are times where Abraham seems left to navigate things on his own and we could question
how he does that here.
You know, he may be right.
He may be in danger,
but the way the Pharaoh handles it
is seems gracious, seems himself to some extent faithful.
And let’s be honest,
the people telling these stories love hearing that Egypt
got the short end of the stick and that somebody brought hardship on Egypt and specifically the Pharaoh.
So there’s a little bit of smiling when it’s a strange
story for us, but for the people who told it and heard it,
there’s a little dig at
Egypt built into that text.
There’s some talk here when you’re thinking of
biblical scholars and some of the more textual criticism that the setting of
Abraham, both historically and in sort of the history of literature,
marks him as one of, if not the very first person to emphasize monotheism.
And that is a
thing that makes him distinct is it’s not just that God calls,
but it’s that the God calls.
And that calling is one away from the polytheism that would have been
absolutely unquestioned at this time in history.
Yeah, that’s a good point, Michael.
And really Abraham gets credited as the
father of three major religions,
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
And the common denominator among those three is that idea of a single God and really far
into the future from Abraham,
far into even Jesus time.
In fact,
in some parts of the world continuously,
but even in Western culture,
well into much of our established history,
people are comfortable with this idea of a multitude of deities and gods.
And this is so uncharacteristic for its timeframe.
And
you know, rightly gets credit for living that out on the front end of that whole
that whole philosophy or that whole theology.
So continuing in his story a little bit,
he is this initial lead into the idea of
monotheism.
He also gets to Egypt.
He gets nervous.
He offers up his wife as a wife to the Pharaoh.
And now his nephew comes into the picture.
And so we have this
whole relationship that revolves around his conversations and actions with Lot.
Yeah, there’s several storylines that branch off of Abraham’s tale and that involve Lot.
Sodom Gomorrah is largely a Lot story.
Lot’s daughters,
Lot’s wife, the pillar of salt and the aftermath of that.
There is this business where Lot and
Abraham find a good land,
but Abraham feels that it’s not big enough for both of them.
And so he tells Lot,
“You decide.
You go east, I’ll go west.
You go west, I’ll go east.
I’m going to leave it to you.” And of course,
Abraham gets the better end of the deal.
At least he does well,
but Abraham does well wherever he goes.
But yeah, this idea, in fact, early in the story right after they leave Egypt,
I think Lot gets captured and Abraham takes some of his people and they have to
go conquer some kind of nomadic people and to rescue Lot to get him back.
And Abraham is able to do that as well.
A couple of things in the story that I like.
I mentioned this idea of,
I think when you preach Abraham,
it’s a wonderful story to use as a lens
or a jumping point.
And so there’s a couple of things early in the story.
One, the Bible tells us in at least two and I think a couple more places that Abraham journeys by stages,
which is an interesting way to think about the faith,
that we are always journeying in stages.
And following God’s call to go to a new land,
Abraham passes through Canaan and God tells him,
“This is the place your ancestors are going to get,
but you keep going.” Which is a very strange part
of the text.
Abraham needs to go and to build wealth and to gain a people and a following.
But I always thought it must have been so odd to be led through a place and hear God say,
“This is where your people are going to live,
but you’re not.” And I don’t wonder what Abraham made of that.
And you can’t really overstate how significant in Abraham’s story his family and
relationships are because as this story continues,
the fact that he and his wife have not yet had a
child becomes a dominant theme.
God promises him that he’s going to be the father of many nations.
And yet Abraham is deeply struggling with the turmoil of not having a son,
not having an heir
that will continue on to make that promise even possible.
And so he takes some action to try to
step into where he doesn’t think God is acting enough.
Darrell Bock Yeah, and I think the struggle
to have children is painful,
is hard in any age.
But again,
remember that this is a time in which
sons inherit all of their father’s estate.
And the idea of afterlife really at this point is
that you live on in your children and that they carry your name forward and such, particularly sons.
And so this is not only emotionally difficult.
This is socially difficult.
This is
theologically difficult.
You know, God blesses people.
And so this promise of,
you’re going to have a child and Abraham and Sarai struggle with that.
They aren’t living that out.
And again,
we see Sarah really in this instance.
Abraham goes along with it,
but Sarah really comes up with this plan B in which she takes her maid Hagar and gives her to Abraham.
And the idea is Abraham will have children through Hagar,
but they will essentially have been provided by Sarah.
And it works and doesn’t work all at the same time.
Paul It sets up things like many of our choices do,
a whole series of futures that they could have never anticipated.
It’s both them trying to fix God’s problem and also creating a ton of
problems that they don’t see coming down the line.
Paul Yeah. And sometimes the thing that you think you want turns out not to be at all.
And so Sarah,
when Hagar conceives,
Sarah believes that Hagar gets kind of uppity with her.
And whether that’s true or not, or whether that she’s sensitive,
but she accuses her of it.
And Abraham responds by
sending her away.
She tells him, I don’t want her around here.
And Abraham goes along with it.
And
there’s a little side note there.
She goes out in the desert.
An angel is with her,
cares for her.
A promise is made over her child as well, Ishmael.
And it’s certainly not as good as
the promise given to Isaac,
but God is involved in that situation as well.
And then they’re kind
of out of the picture for a while,
but it must have been, again,
sometimes we don’t think of
these characters as people.
I think we talked about that a little bit last week, but imagine
Sarah gives a maid to her husband.
He gets her pregnant.
She gets mad about it.
She argues with her husband.
They send that woman and her soon to be child away.
And
imagine the dinner table the next month or so.
It’s hard to wrap your head around
what that looks like relationally.
Right. And the complications for Abraham just continue on,
because you’ve got the guy who’s cowering by Pharaoh.
And then as the story goes on,
he starts interceding for Sodom with God.
He starts negotiating with God,
trying to say, “Hey,
let’s keep this city from getting destroyed.” Ultimately,
he’s not successful in that,
but it’s amazing how the guy who seems spineless in one story and another suddenly has a massive backbone.
Yeah. And the relationship between God and Abraham is very interesting.
And this moment where he’s bartering with God,
“Well, you wouldn’t want to destroy the city if there was 50 people.
Well, what if it was 40 people?” And he gets him all the way down to 10.
And evidently, there aren’t 10, and so it still happens.
And maybe that’s why God’s going along with it.
It’s a strange story,
but it does say something of Abraham’s relation,
which is, I think, a depth to the character, Michael.
It would be easy to read,
and we’re going to see in a few
chapters an instance of it that is really troubling,
where God simply says,
“Do something, and Abraham does.” But he’s not a robot.
He struggles.
Just before that,
we’re told that he was 86 when Ishmael was born,
and 13 years later, when he’s 99,
God shows up again and says,
“Hey, I haven’t forgotten.
You’re going to have a son.
And by the way,
your name is now Abraham.” Not Abram anymore,
but it’s Abraham.
And
in the midst of this,
God also says, “This is where we institute the covenant of circumcision,
marking God’s people.” And God has this long-drawn-out command that he gives Abram.
And then it says,
“Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself,
‘Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred?'” So fascinating.
The first thing he does,
post-name change.
God changes his name,
which means like the father of multitude.
“I’m going to make you the father of many.” And his first act as this new person, Abraham,
is to fall face down,
laughing at this ridiculous thing that God has said.
And the relationship between God and Abram is fascinating.
I think we see it in that bargaining text as well.
He is not simply mindlessly obedient.
There is a give and take relationship here,
which I think is really interesting.
Yeah. And that brings us up to probably one of the greatest tests of Abraham’s life,
at this point, Abraham’s life and faith.
He is, of course,
miraculously, he does have a son.
And God comes to him and says,
“Abraham, I’m calling you to sacrifice this son,
to take him up onto a mountaintop and to kill him.” Which would have been a very common,
though still gruesome and not altogether pleasant thing,
even in that time.
Other cultures were aware of this practice.
But in scripture,
it speaks with a very common voice
against, in fact, all of the conquest narratives.
That’s one of the things leveled against the
opponents is what they’re willing to do to children.
Here, God calls Abraham to do this.
Abraham grabs his knife,
grabs his son and a party,
goes out to the mountain,
goes up to the mountain.
And we have this story where God stays the knife at the very last possible moment.
Yeah.
We begin that story with the words,
“God tested Abraham.” And test isn’t exactly a
pass/fail kind.
It means put a hard thing in front of it.
He made him deal with something.
But the sense is here that God is trying to find out if Abraham is completely faithful.
And this, by any standard,
Michael, is I think one of the more difficult texts in the scripture,
that God would put a parent through this,
that a parent would obey seemingly going along with it.
And again,
typical of the Abraham stories,
we don’t get argument,
we don’t get struggle,
we don’t get a long night of,
“Can I do…” We simply get,
God says, “Do it,” and Abraham
goes to do it.
Now, there’s a Jewish interpretation of this that says,
“Abraham knows he’s being
tested and he’s essentially playing chicken with God as to who’s going to blink first.”
And, you know,
you’d like to think maybe that’s true,
but that’s not exactly how the text
paints it.
But there is this moment that I think is hard to connect with,
but it’s very profound
with Abraham,
the one who has received the covenant,
in obedience holding the knife over
the one Isaac, who has been given as covenant,
willing,
it seems,
to do whatever God asks,
trusting God more than anything else.
And that’s an uncomfortable story for most of us.
And in fact, it’s so uncomfortable, it’s hard to give Abraham a lot of credit for being faithful.
We almost are more inclined to judge him as monstrous than we are to credit him as faithful or as obedient.
But the story clearly makes it that way.
God intervenes and then says,
“Now I know because
you were willing to do this,
I’m going to give you the full blessing.
I’m going to do all the
things that I said,
and I now know something about you.
You pass the test, essentially.”
And it’s not, I don’t know that it’s anybody’s favorite story.
I think you,
I don’t want to dig into too deeply yet,
but I do think it’s worth saying,
put this in conversation with a guy who falls in his face laughing when God makes this promise
you’re going to have a son.
And then when God says,
“I want you to kill that son that you got
miraculously,” he seems willing to do that.
There’s a deeply complicated character here,
and I think that’s intentional.
The biblical authors are not intending to provide a clean,
I would even say,
sort of whitewashed wall.
This is a person who’s got texture,
they’ve got grays, they’ve got just a lot of things happening under the surface.
And what maybe we do as a
real disservice to Abraham is we memorize our children’s Bible stories of him,
and then we act as if that is the full picture.
And the truth is,
he’s a much more nuanced character than that.
Yeah,
and he leaves that place calling it Jehovah-Jireh,
or the Lord will provide.
And you do have a sense that it may simply be that Abraham is a man who has such complete
trust in God that he’s able and willing to throw himself on God’s commands.
But it’s a challenging story.
I don’t think anyone can read that story
without some real soul searching.
And to its credit,
I think that’s on purpose.
I think the story intends to do that to us.
Yeah, absolutely.
And Abraham leaves that place, Sarah dies.
We have some relational things.
Yeah, so fascinating.
The text hasn’t mentioned it before,
but from this point on,
the text points out that Sarah is not where Abraham is.
When she dies, she’s in another place.
And there is one school of thought that asks the question,
did Sarah hear what had happened
and was unable to look at Abraham?
I mean, was she so upset that they sort of resided separately
in different towns from then on?
And that’s not Scripture.
That’s guessing at Scripture.
And so you want to be careful with that.
And we told you we’d try to identify when we do that.
But it is fascinating that the Bible hadn’t mentioned that she lives in a different place
until the post Isaac sacrifice story.
And then it tells us she was living in a different town
when she passed away.
And he secures burial for her.
At this point, it says he’s advanced in years
and yet he’s going to get married again,
gets married to a woman named Kutura and has six more kids.
So which is an interesting part of the Abraham story too.
It is this story of struggle
and barrenness, but Abraham himself is always seen as this man of virility and strength.
And so he’s well into his hundreds.
He lives to 175.
So I’m not sure if it tells us how old he is when he gets remarried,
but he begins having sons.
I think he has six children at this point.
And then he himself dies at 175 years old.
And the covenant,
though God was good to Ishmael and to all of his other children,
it is clear in Scripture that the covenant passes from Abraham to Isaac.
And I think this is really an interesting place to sort of pull back a little bit and to see,
we’ve gone through some of these stories of Abraham’s life.
But there’s an interesting
thing here, I think, in how he operates as a bridge from the early Genesis accounts.
You have
kind of thing that happens in the text.
And then Abraham and everything that’s going to follow him
is really the story of this covenant.
And so I think it’s worth digging in there for just a moment.
On one hand,
Abraham seems chronically unable to stand up in certain moments and
tow the lie in the covenant.
He falls on his face when God promises stuff and he’s laughing at God.
Then on the other hand,
he seems like a zealot who’s willing to go to the edge of the universe
to do whatever it takes to uphold the covenant.
And this covenant, which passes to his son and son and son,
all throughout Scripture,
we hear resonances of God making that covenant to this person
becomes the very covenant that God is true to all the way to Jesus and beyond.
The apostle Paul in
New Testament is referencing this covenant and pointing to Abraham as a exemplar of faith.
Yeah,
I think,
again, to Abraham’s credit, it’s hard to paint him with one brush.
He has this journey by stages in his faith.
As we read his story,
there are times that it’s very
inspiring, times it’s a little troubling.
And in those ways,
the situations are larger
than life, right?
I mean, we can’t really put ourselves in those kinds of moments,
but it feels like he’s human.
It feels like he’s a real man navigating these things,
sometimes with absolute clarity and focus and other times wavering or unsure.
And I think for most of us,
that feels a little bit like a place we’ve been to.
You know, we are journeying by stages.
We’re seeking to follow God.
Sometimes the implications of that are crystal clear,
big and loud and go do this.
And then we struggle whether or not to do them.
Sometimes we are able
to trust.
Sometimes we struggle.
And other times we find ourselves in those places where
the voice of God doesn’t seem particularly clear.
And we find ourselves trying to navigate
relationships and situations and do our best.
And I think there’s a familiarity to that in the
Abraham story that helps us resonate with a person who in other words or in other ways is
probably larger than most of our life experiences.
I’ve got to be careful in this series that I
don’t overuse this and bore people,
but I do think one of the significant reasons we can trust the
scriptural account is because of its willingness to show some of these raw aspects of these characters.
Because if you read some literature of ancient religions,
they’re not very often
going to portray characters in a very nuanced form.
Most of the time,
these founding characters have all the power,
all the insight, all the strength.
They’re the winners.
They get it right
all the time.
That’s why they’re worth following.
That is not the case,
especially with this person,
Abraham.
You have an account of someone who has moments of deep connection with God.
In fact, we passed by the story of Melchizedek and this idea that God does a good thing and Abraham just
gives away loads of stuff just readily.
He’s just willing to give.
He’s a person whose faith enables action,
and yet also when things get hard,
situations become complicated,
when he feels threatened,
suddenly that faith is,
it buckles.
It’s far less secure,
and the biblical account of Abraham includes all of it. Yeah,
it’s a telling reality, I think, Michael,
that if you look through the lens
at this story with the question,
“What does God ask of Abraham?” This isn’t Hercules
who’s called to the 12 Great Labors.
This isn’t one of those religious stories in which
the main character, the protagonist, is given this unimaginable accomplishment they have to go do.
Interestingly enough,
all Abraham has really asked from God is to trust,
and that makes him a very compelling first character of the covenant,
because so much of the scripture is going to take us back to that place.
We are rarely, if ever,
called to do those unimaginable things.
Most of our faith is
lived in that simple challenge to trust,
to have faith,
to go when we’re invited to go, to believe,
to hang on, to do the simple stuff.
I think,
in some ways, that makes
Abraham a very real kind of character,
a very helpful kind of character. It’s for that same reason,
I think, that Christians throughout all time have latched
on to him as an exemplar of faith,
because fundamentally,
we are all tempted, I think,
to make Canaan our focus.
What I mean by that is we tend to focus on the thing that we want
or the way we think things should be,
and we trust God,
“Yeah, God’s going to get me to that place
or to this moment in life,” and the truth is, Clint,
most of the time we walk past Canaan.
Most of the time,
we get to the thing we think we want the whole time,
and then we realize,
“Oh, wait, life pushes us beyond it,” because that was never the goal.
It was always about the willingness
to say, “I’m ready.
Here I am, God.
Send me.” Abraham,
I think, exemplifies that in his own life and story. Yeah, and it’s
dangerous to read some of those foundational biblical stories as metaphor,
but maybe there’s metaphor in it.
When he gets the thing that was supposed to be the
thing, he has his son,
then the first question is,
“Could you release that as well?” And you think
how often we have those things in our life that we really take our success,
our families, our houses, our jobs, our whatevers,
that we take as a sign that God is with us,
and we hold them tight.
And what if God said,
“That’s the very thing I demand from you.
That’s the very thing I ask of you.
Let go of that.” And again,
that’s not a fair equivalent to a father being asked to offer his son,
and in order, I mean, to suggest it is,
but it’s a question in there somewhere,
and I think it’s a good one. We also always have to come to these stories recognizing that Abraham,
Sarah,
Lot,
these are not the sum of the characters of these stories.
God is the central character of
Abraham’s story.
God calls.
Abraham goes, of course, but God is present at every leg of this journey,
and it’s significant that when God makes this covenant,
when we say covenant,
we may not connect exactly to what that means in this timeframe.
It’s an agreement that has contractual
obligations on both sides.
Both parties are connected by this agreement,
and the truth is,
as you see it play out,
Abraham is unable to keep the full burden of the covenant.
He can’t be true
throughout the whole process,
but God is.
God is faithful to the covenant,
and what’s fascinating is this story of God asking an unimaginable gift.
God is then willing to do with his own son, which
Old Testament scholars would not be comfortable with that statement,
but Christians throughout time have,
pointed to how God kept the covenantal
request that he asked of Abraham when he gave his
own son to die for us.
And it would be a miss,
I think, for us to look at Abraham to point out,
yes, he’s a complicated character,
he gets it right,
he gets it wrong,
but then to point out
that yet even with his failings and misgivings,
his weaknesses and his strengths,
God, even with Ishmael, God is still branching off of those choices and actions and moments,
and God is making good of that in this sort of plan that Abraham could have never seen in action.
Yeah, I think there’s a helpful pattern in these stories in which the outcome,
the outcome is determined.
You know,
God says to Abraham,
“I’m going to make you a great nation.
You’re going to have a son.
You’re going to be the father of a multitude of people.”
But the way there is fluid.
It’s dynamic.
And I think that’s helpful.
You know,
we live in an era in which there are those who would like to argue that everything is mapped.
And I find these stories a somewhat helpful corrective.
The plans of God are absolute,
and the purposes of God will be unthwarted.
But it’s not always a straight line that takes us there.
In fact,
it is sometimes in the wandering
and the missteps that we gain the greatest understanding of what it means that God is
with us, that we are called on this journey,
that we are moving toward that promise,
and even what that promise is.
And I find that I’m glad that the Bible didn’t
boil that all down and make it simple.
I like that there’s layers.
I like that there’s
uncertainty.
I like that it leaves some of the question marks there, because again,
that feels like life.
I don’t know what it’s like to get told to,
“Hey, get up all your stuff and get out.” I don’t know what it’s like to wait for years and years and
years to get something and then be asked to give it up.
But I understand a little bit of those
things, and it feels real to me.
I imagine there may be someone listening
into the conversation today who might say,
“I feel like an impostor in church.
I feel like I don’t
have the faith that other people have.
I don’t have the biblical knowledge.
This guy, Abraham, I don’t really know anything about him.” And I think what’s a powerful thing is to recognize
Abraham didn’t know anything about God.
I mean, we don’t have a backstory,
really, to this man.
So God calls.
He responds in faith.
He’s willing to learn on the road.
And that’s something I think
all of us could benefit from.
Instead of trying to strive to look like something or be able to talk
like something, if you have an idea of what a Christian is,
it’s far more helpful to be willing
to trust God and to take the first step of a faith journey.
That is to try to pretend something.
Correct me if I’m missing one,
Michael, but I cannot think of a single story in the Bible
where a character comes to God first.
The primary movement for anyone who knows anything of God
is God comes to them.
And again, I think that’s a wonderful lesson.
We’re not expected to figure God out.
We’re invited to follow.
And sometimes that means
following without many answers.
Where are we going?
I’ll tell you when we get there.
Well, what’s wrong with this place?
Oh, it’s a good place,
but that’s not your place.
What do I do here?
I figure it out.
What do I do here?
I’ll tell you.
And again, that feels to me
what it’s like to try and live out faith.
And I think that’s helpful.
And on the whole,
makes me mostly an Abraham fan.
You could also say that about family.
We all know something about complicated families,
about how these relationships are hard and things go and choices are made that we wish hadn’t and
struggles and even conflicts.
I think Abraham is another really gracious reminder
that there is no such thing as a perfect family system.
There’s no such thing as everybody
always getting along and understanding it,
that God’s able to work through the mess and the
complicated relationships that we have.
And many of us are deeply grieved by those relationships.
God is still present even in places that we find struggle.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
Again, there really aren’t any stories in the Scripture of the person
who has it all figured out.
And God says, “Hey, because you’ve got it all figured out.”
Welcome to the team.
Yeah, let’s go.
That’s not generally how it works,
which I think is great news for
all of us who don’t have it figured out.
So that’s a little bit on Abraham.
I hope there was
something in there that might have spoken to you.
I hope that it might have piqued some interest.
If you wanted to read,
that’s Genesis 12 following.
You get most of the Abraham stories,
a few Lot stories,
a couple other stories thrown in there.
But in six or eight chapters,
probably a little bit more like eight or 10 chapters,
you would have most of the Abraham
story if you wanted to get in and read it.
Otherwise, we hope that something in this
has been helpful.
We appreciate you listening.
Absolutely.
We want you to know that at nine
o’clock central time on Wednesdays,
we are releasing the next episodes of the podcast on Facebook.
You can watch that as it broadcasts out live via Facebook premiere.
The perk of that
is Clint and I will at least be in the comments there and happy to engage with any questions or
conversations that get struck up there.
In fact, this is a great time if you’re joining us today.
Drop in a question that you might have or a thought.
We’d love to see that.
But in addition to that, if you’re joining us by podcast,
once again, please, if you wouldn’t mind,
give us five stars there.
That helps us a lot.
And of course, share with anybody who you think
might be interested.
We’re glad to continue this series about the real people of faith.
Look forward to seeing you next Wednesday.