M'Cheyne Bible Recap: Reflections on Abraham's Story

In this episode, Nate discusses Abraham's story in Genesis 12-16, highlighting the importance of waiting on God's for his promises, as well as the significant point that all of our chapters in the M'Cheyne Bible Reading Plan are highlighting real people, in real places, in real history. God is able to bridge the divide between Creator and his creatures and enter into relationships with not just people like Abraham and Sarah, but people like you and me as well.

Chapters

• 0:14 Promises and Patience in Bible Reading
• 14:46 God's Word's Power in History

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:14

Welcome to another episode of the All of Life podcast. I'm your host, nate Playborn, and we are underway in our third week of doing the McShane Bible reading plan. If you've been keeping up with it, we are kind of in the middle of Matthew at this point. You know we're on Matthew 16, would be today's reading. We're in Acts 16 as well. If you're doing either one of just the New Testament plans, acts 16 is kind of an interesting pivot in the book of Acts. You may have noticed, if you did today's reading, that all of a sudden Luke is using we to describe the journeys that Paul is on, which is strongly implying that now Luke is along for the ride for the rest of the book of Acts. If you're keeping up with the Old Testament readings, we are kind of getting into the middle of Abraham's story. We started that back on Friday with Genesis 12 and we're a little more than halfway through Nehemiah as well. He's running into issues with getting the wall rebuilt and having to focus on the importance of doing that while also defending the area there while they're trying to rebuild. So there's a lot of different things we could talk about here.

Speaker 1: 1:32

I just wanted to offer some initial encouragement, though that if this is a new plan for you and that you're just trying it out this year, that you know, don't feel too bad if you've missed days. I will tell you I've missed days over the last couple weeks and just because of the way, the way I like to approach this, I end up making up for those days. I did several chapters of reading this morning to kind of get back on track and to even to think about things that I might want to talk about on here. But I wouldn't sweat it too much If it's, if it is a new habit. You usually can't expect a fully formed everyday version of the habit to be there right as soon as you try to start it. So consistency over time is a lot more significant than whether you've you've missed a day here or there. That's not that big of a deal and hopefully you know it's something you can ease into if it's something new for you. If you've been doing reading plans with New City over the past few years, you know last year's plan was several chapters a day, so this is just a little bit more than that, and then the traditional CBR plan. It was always two chapters a day. So if you are doing one of the Old Testament cycles and one of the New Testament cycles. This is still about the same.

Speaker 1: 2:50

So I wanted to talk a little bit about Genesis and Abraham's story that we started last Friday in Genesis 12. We are talking about this as well. I guess this is a little bit of a plug. We were talking about this as well in our Sunday morning Bible study. That's the group called when Bible Meets Culture, where we were originally using Christopher Watkins' book Biblical Critical Theory and for the fall it was almost more of a book study centered around that book and I decided after seeing how that went over the fall that it would actually work better to switch to back to being a Bible study and using that book as a resource and kind of a commentary on some social and cultural issues, but making our main focus the text. And so this last Sunday we were in Genesis 9 through 11, talking about the end of the flood story, the table of nations in Genesis 10, and then the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. This coming Sunday we're gonna be talking about Genesis 12, 13, and 14, which was the Bible reading for this past weekend.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Just kind of as you're if that is a cycle that you're keeping up with in the McShane plan. I just wanted to underscore the importance of Genesis 12, one through three. We you know we preached on this a few years back, but just as you read those verses, you may have noticed as you came out of chapter 11, that we've been dealing with all sorts of different characters and big picture issues that relate to all of humanity. And then all of a sudden, we're gonna focus on this one guy and his family and God is gonna call him in Genesis 12, one and say go from your country and from your kindred and your father's house to the land. I will show you and I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing, which is where we got our name for the sermon series a few years back blessed to be a blessing. And then God says again further in verse three I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you, all of the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Speaker 1: 5:03

Now, if you were, if you've been keeping up with the readings, you saw that beginning to Abraham's story and then we read about him going down into Egypt. And then we read him in lots separating and lot taking a different path than Abraham, and then Abraham having to come to lots rescue. And then we get the chapter we had yesterday, genesis 15, and it says after these things, genesis 15, one says after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. Fear not, abram, I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. But Abram said oh Lord, god, what will you give me? For I continue childless and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abram said behold, you have given me no offspring and a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said look toward the heaven and number the stars, and if you are able to number them. And then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.

Speaker 1: 6:19

Now I just wanted to pause on that a little bit and it's maybe not as obvious as we're reading through this, but if you think of the timeline, god had called Abram back in chapter 12, and for us at home reading, you know, we read chapter 12 on Friday, we read chapter 13 on Saturday, 14 on Sunday, and then you read 15 yesterday. So in the span of three days, you get the promise to Abraham and then you get Abram questioning the promise, which is a reasonable thing to do In terms of real time, though, I think, if I remember this right, there's about a 20-year gap between God's initial call and promise to Abraham at the beginning of chapter 12 and then this conversation that's recorded in Genesis 15. So just think about that for a minute. Think about God has promised Abraham. He's asked him to go from his country, to leave everything he knows, to go to a land that God will show him, and God has promised to make him great, to bless him, to bless those who bless him, curse those who curse him, but the implication being, in order to make him a great nation, he's going to have to start having kids and he's going to have to have kids who have kids. But 20 years after this, still nothing has happened, and so I think sometimes it can be helpful for us to realize we can read these stories very quickly, but some of these people that were reading their stories about, they had to sit and wait for God to follow through on his promises. And he does follow through on his promises, but he doesn't follow through as quickly as we would want or as quickly as we might hope, and there ends up being a lot more waiting than we would be comfortable with. And so it's entirely reasonable for Abraham to ask the question that he asked of hey, god, you said you were going to make me a great nation, but I still, we're still without children and I still am going to have to pass on all of my possessions and my estate to this guy, eleazar of Damascus. And so God reaffirms this promise to him, and it says in verse six he believed the Lord, and the Lord counted that to him as righteousness. And so we still have Abram choosing to trust God after waiting and waiting and waiting and not seeing any fulfillment of that, yet he still is going to press on.

Speaker 1: 8:53

One way we could even read the next chapter that comes up, the story of Sarah and Hagar, which was today's reading is that, if you read 15, god promises Abraham that his own son would be his heir, and so what he does in 16 actually makes a little bit more sense, because he doesn't specify that Sarah will be the mother of the child, just that the child will be Abraham's own son. And so they follow a convention that was acceptable back then, that she would essentially be a concubine for Abram. Sarah would be the main wife, hagar would be the concubine. And then Hagar gets pregnant and bears Ishmael and I think sometimes we're quick to rush this as well. He wasn't trusting God, he should have been more patient, but he's been waiting for 20 years and then he gets this reassurance of the promise that it will be his own child. Doesn't really make sense to him how that could be Sarah, and so he does what does make sense to him and pursue this way of going about it.

Speaker 1: 9:58

And that's actually gonna explain a little bit of what happens in the next few chapters, where God comes back to Abraham and promises and clarifies that Sarah will in fact be the one who is the mother of the child of promise. And so we read in Genesis 18, the three men show up and then let's see if we're looking. I'm looking ahead just a little bit. In verse nine they say where is Sarah, your wife? And he said she is in the tent. And then the Lord said I will surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah, your wife, shall have a son, and so it's not explicitly promised that Sarah will bear the child until we get to chapter 18.

Speaker 1: 10:44

And so I think some of these things that happen in Abram's story, where it seems like he's kind of bumbling around or he's trying to rush things or he's trying to do things out of order he seems I have found that it makes more sense to read it, as he is trusting God, he's going with what information he has and he's trying to follow what he thinks the Lord is promising him. And that's why he gets used again later in, you know, in Romans, for instance, when Paul uses Abraham as this example of faith, it's not because he does everything right and it's not because he's blameless. It's because he trusts God and he is willing to wait. And then he's willing to try things that maybe are not the best, but he's still assuming God is gonna follow through and provide a child for him. And so what happens in chapter 16 happens in chapter 16, which even has its own redemptive arc to it. Obviously, this is another example of polygamy, or taking a second wife is not outright condemned, but you just read the way 16 unfolds and the implication is that's not God's intention. It was not God's intention for Abram to go about things that way or for the people in Abram's family to have multiple wives. That doesn't work out in any of these stories that we're gonna read in the rest of Genesis.

Speaker 1: 12:08

But even in the midst of that, even with Hagar being sent out and being really turned out to potentially die, the angel of the Lord appears to her and gives her a promise about Ishmael. And we even have an example I think this is one of the only examples, or at least it's a very rare example of Hagar actually gives God a name in Genesis 16, 13. So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are a God of seeing, or you are a God who sees me, for she said, truly, here I have seen him who looks after me. And then, therefore, the well was called be'er lahay rooy. It lies between Kadesh and Barad. She actually gives a name to God you are the God who sees, because in her suffering, in her misfortune, the Lord appeared to her. And so we just have all these.

Speaker 1: 13:05

There's a lot of people who are struggling, who are suffering, and God shows up for them in surprising ways throughout Genesis, and so we do well to be attentive to those things. We could kind of connect this a little bit ahead to Matthew and just the way Jesus is going from place to place and the way he's talking to people, the way he's interacting with people. There's some similar connections there, but the real thing I guess I wanted to close with, though, is the thing that ties together really Genesis, matthew, acts and even Nehemiah is really the importance of real people in real places. It's something that we're not maybe as aware of as unusual, but if you're reading it against some of the other Ancient Near Eastern, maybe you're not, you're not this curious that you're reading ancient Near Eastern mythology and literature, but maybe you're comfortable enough taking my word for it that the the emphasis on specific places, and you know when you're reading in Matthew, when Jesus is going from a specific place to a specific place to another specific place. They're all places you can look up on a map, and it's actually interesting if, if you're so inclined, that you have the map in your Bible and you're using that as you're reading some of these chapters to kind of see when Jesus goes place to place, and even in Acts, as the missionary journeys are starting, where we're reading in Acts, to be able to See where Paul is going place to place, that these are events that are rooted in real space, real-time human history, with real Characters involved there.

Speaker 1: 14:46

They're not mythological creations, they're real people who have real stories, and we have God Coming down in the form of his son and Jesus to interact with People and we have him coming down in Genesis to interact with, to interact with Abram and Sarah, and so the it's it's connecting the natural and the supernatural.

Speaker 1: 15:12

If we think about some of the stuff we've talked about in other podcasts With, with Ben and I talking about some of the first couple catechism questions of, there is a distinction between Creator and creature and yet God, as the Creator, is able to bridge that gap between Creator and creature and to interact with his creation in history and not just in a Story that someone made up and it got recorded and passed down.

Speaker 1: 15:35

And so, as we're reading through the rest of Genesis, as we're reading through Matthew, as we're reading the rest of Nehemiah and that's going to lead us into Esther, as we're reading Acts and seeing Paul's missionary journeys, we're reading real historical accounts of the way God has interacted with humans, and there's lessons in there for us.

Speaker 1: 15:54

There's things to meditate on and there's things that are hopefully an encouragement for us in the places that we find ourselves.

Speaker 1: 16:01

And so, as we continue to Try to build our habit of Bible reading, to get better at being consistent with it to, we are Expecting that God will meet us in this Bible reading, that he will be there for us, that he will Speak to us through his word, and so it's that's my hope, as I'm Reading these chapters each day, and I hope that, as you sit down and make time for spending time in God's word, that that will be your expectant Hosture is that God is going to speak to you. He's going to meet you in his word as you're reading these chapters each day, and it's not just something you have to do to follow the common rhythm or to check things off, and so I Hope that that's what you find in these next few days. If you're interested in well as well in Studying more about Abraham, you're welcome to join us on Sunday mornings. You can find the info for that In the app. You can ask to join the group and get the exact info of time and place. I