Abraham: The Father of the Faithful (Hebrews 11:7-19) | Worship Service

Potluck Sunday Instructions and Room Setup

The sorrows of those who run after another God Shall know their drink offerings of blood. I will not pour out or take their names on my My chosen blinds of all the night. We're full today, but when you have food in the kitchen, everybody comes to eat.

So we're welcoming you to Kootenai Church. Would you please join us as we sing this morning... I forgot what we were singing. Oh, what a day!

There's something in the air that should tell you today is a potluck Sunday. And it is that smell of food. Just out of curiosity, so we can have some idea of how many tables to set up. How many of you are planning to stick around for the potluck?

Okay. Looks like we're setting up all the tables. So we're doing something different this year when we get ready to set up the tables and the chairs. We are going to vacate this entire room except for a crew of people who are going to be setting up tables and chairs.

Everybody who's not involved in that needs to leave this room. We can get it set up in just a few minutes. It'll actually go very quickly. Now if you're wondering, am I on that crew? The answer is no.

Everybody who's on that crew knows that they're on that crew. And they're going to be in here. So if you are wondering, what can I do to help? You can help by leaving this room and staying out there somewhere.

In the foyer, in the office area, in the bathrooms, in the janitor's closet, in one of the Sunday school classrooms, the nursery, the parking lot, Sandpoint. It doesn't matter where else. Just not inside this room.

We are going to open up the upstairs doors for you. If you want to go up and see what is upstairs and the progress that has been made up there. Because there's a number of people here who have never been upstairs.

They've never seen the upstairs. So that will be your opportunity to do that. So those doors will be unlocked and you can go upstairs and mingle around there. And then you will know because we will get the word out when it's time to come back in here for the lunch.

And there's a group of ladies who are assigned to do the kitchen work as well. So it's just better to have fewer people do that. And by vacate the room, I don't mean stand around the perimeter. I mean vacate the room.

Like fire drill vacate the room. Are we all clear? Okay. And everybody's going to stay out of this room unless you are arranging to have your picture taken for the directory. And that's in this room back here, the back of the sanctuary.

Then one of the security guys who will taser you if this does not apply to you, will let you through the doors into that room to have your picture taken. And then you will be ushered immediately out of this room out into the foyer.

No questions? Okay. Very good.

Abraham Justified by Faith in Romans 4

Turn your Bibles to Romans chapter 4, please. Romans chapter 4. We're going to read this entire chapter together. This has a quotation from one of the passages that we're going to be looking at today back in the book of Genesis.

Romans chapter 4, and it describes Abraham and his faith and his righteousness. So after making the case in Romans 1 through 3 that all the world is guilty before God, Paul is now going to answer the question, how is it that we are justified or made righteous in the sight of God?

How is our guilt removed? And the answer to that is by faith, Romans chapter 4. What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.

Just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works, blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.

Is this blessing then on the circumcised or on the uncircumcised also? For we say faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it credited? While he was circumcised or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised.

And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be credited to them, and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also follow in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham which he had while uncircumcised.

For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is nullified.

For the law brings about wrath, but where there is no law there is also no violation. For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all, as it is written, a father of many nations have I made you.

In the presence of him whom he believed, even God who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. In hope against hope he believed so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which was spoken, so shall your descendants be.

Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead, since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb. Yet with respect to the promise of God he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith giving glory to God and being fully assured that what God had promised he was able also to perform.

Therefore it was also credited to him as righteousness. Now not for his sake only was it written that it was credited to him, but for our sake also to whom it will be credited as those who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.

He who was delivered over because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification. Will you stand with me as we pray? Let's bow our heads. Our Father it is a great salvation that you have graciously and lovingly bestowed upon all who believe.

We are thankful that in Jesus Christ all of our sins have been taken away and that spiritually we as Gentiles according to the flesh are the spiritual children of Abraham. We thank you that through him you have blessed all the nations and will continue to do so in the future.

You have blessed us with salvation and though we did not warrant it, we did not merit it, there is nothing in us that had earned salvation or could earn salvation. By your grace you have credited righteousness to us on the basis of faith and faith alone.

And so we praise you for that. The salvation and deliverance from our sins is not according to works and not according to keeping the law for we could never work righteously enough and we could never obey the law fully enough to be seen as righteous in your sight.

We thank you that you have taken away the weight of our sin, the debt of our iniquity so that we may stand before you as your children, worship you in spirit and truth and be considered and counted as righteous based upon what Christ has done.

What a glorious gospel this is and what a blessed hope we have who are heirs of Abraham's promises through faith in Jesus Christ. We praise you and we ask your blessing upon our fellowship and our worship.

May we lift our hearts in praise and honor to you our great God and may you be honored in all that is sung and prayed and preached and read and said here today for the glory of Christ our King in whose name we pray.

Amen.

Communion and Romans 5:6-8

This morning we're going to do communion.

And so to prepare for that we're going to turn to Romans chapter 5, 6 through 8. For while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.

But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Join us as we sing, My Savior's Love, What Tongue Could Tell. Compare what tongue could tell, my Savior's love, my Savior's love.

The Faith of Abraham in Hebrews 11

Turn now if you will please to Hebrews chapter 11, Hebrews chapter 11. I'll give you a moment to turn there and then we'll open with prayer. Let's bow our heads. Our Father, you have been so gracious to give us your word and in it we see the redemptive plan that you have ordained from before the foundation of the world to save a people for yourself, to do so through covenants, to do so through men whom you have chosen.

And we are grateful for your work in history which has brought us to the present and has now brought salvation to us. And we cannot rightly thank you for your work in the present without understanding and knowing how you have worked in the past and the ways in which you have made promises and kept promises.

For our certainty that we shall stand in your presence faultless and blameless with exceeding joy, righteous in your sight, all rests upon your willingness and your ability to keep your promises. And so we thank you that you are a promise-keeping God and we pray that you would encourage our hearts with that truth and remind us again of how gracious you are, how perfect you are today.

We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. When we talk about certain subjects or certain themes, it's very often that there's usually one name or one place or one part of that subject that sort of rises to the surface as being an exceptional example of whatever you're talking about.

For instance, you cannot really discuss the subject of basketball, the history of basketball or the game of basketball without the name Michael Jordan sort of bubbling to the surface at some point in that conversation.

Michael Jordan, though he's not the only basketball player who has ever been great, he certainly stands as a star amongst all the rest and shines brighter. His pure athleticism, his skill, his character, his talent, his leadership ability, all of those make him stand out among all the rest of them.

When you talk about preachers and preaching and the history of preaching, there's one name that is right in the middle of that room, one name that shines above and beyond all of them, and that's Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

He's called the Prince of Preachers for a reason. And though there are other great preachers like Whitefield and Calvin and Luther and Jonathan Edwards and in our own day John MacArthur, those are other great men, when you talk about influence and when you talk about that subject, it's just Charles Spurgeon is right there.

He's the elephant in the room. He is the most shining example of what you mean, an example in that area, the most shining one that you could possibly name. And in the area of faith, when we start listing the heroes of faith and going through Hebrews 11, there's one name that bubbles to the top.

There's one example who outshines them all, one example that is most stunning, most stellar, whose name has to be mentioned in that discussion, and that is Abraham. We've talked about Abel and Enoch and Noah now, but I would dare say that Abraham outshines all of them, and he is our subject here today and for the next, I'm not even going to try and guess how many weeks here in Hebrews 11, because there is a lot in Abraham that we have to unpack and unfold.

Now to say that Abraham is the example of what we mean by faith is not to say that Abraham is flawless, or that he is without faults, or that he is without sin. There are times when Abraham did not live up to his faith.

There are times when he was in fear, where he doubted, where he did things that he should not have done. Abraham left and fled to Egypt in fear. In fear, he said that Sarah was not his wife. In fear, he eventually took, because he feared that God wasn't going to fulfill his promise, he eventually took Sarah's handmaid and made her his wife, and bore a son through her, trying to fulfill God's promise in his own way and in his own time.

And there have been 4 ,000 years of horrific ramifications because of that one fault. So we know that Abraham's faults are plain as day, they are visible for us to see, we know what they are, and so is his faith.

And I'm certain that if we had as much material given to us about Enoch and Abel as we have about Abraham, that we would probably know a lot more of Enoch and Abel's faults. Because we read through Hebrews chapter 11, and we see Abel and we see Enoch, and we think, okay, these are men of whom nothing in Scripture, sinful-wise, or their failings are recorded, nothing at all.

Well, it's because there's almost nothing in Scripture recorded of them compared to Abraham. If we had, I mean, we have Abraham in Genesis 12 through Genesis 25, into Genesis 25, that's 13 chapters of Abraham's life covering basically a little more than a century of time.

And if we had that much material written about Abel and Enoch and Noah, we would know a lot more about those men's faults, wouldn't we? So there's plenty to look at in Abraham's life where he failed to measure up, but there's also plenty to see in his life where he was a perfect example of the kind of faith that the author of Hebrews 11 is talking about.

The centrality of Abraham in biblical history is difficult to overstate. It's difficult to overstate. Without Abraham, you have no Moses, you have no David, you have no covenant, you have no Israel, you have no nation, you have none of the rest of the Old Testament.

If there is no Abraham, then our Bible ends with Genesis 11. I know that that's not possible, but you know what I mean? He's just a central figure for all of the Old Testament. Everything in the Old Testament revolves around him.

You cannot explain the existence of the nation of Israel, either back then or today, without referring to Abraham and the promises that God made to Abraham. You cannot understand the redemptive flow of God's plan and the covenant that He made with David and a kingdom and a land and a nation and the Exodus and Moses and all of the feasts and all of the covenant of Moses without reference to Abraham.

He's central in all of that. And you can't understand how it is that God has fulfilled His promise to bring salvation to the Gentiles without coming back to Jesus Christ, who, guess what, is a descendant of Abraham and a fulfillment of the promises, some of the promises that God gave to Abraham.

So the centrality of him in our Bible is difficult to overstate, and so it is going to be necessary for us to have a good understanding of who Abraham was, why his faith was such an example, and what we can learn from the life of Abraham.

Now, if you're somebody, if you're a Christian who thinks that because Jesus has come and He has secured these spiritual blessings for us, and therefore we can focus on our New Testament and our spiritual realities in Jesus Christ, and that we can just unhitch our faith from Abraham and we don't have to pay attention to him or anything that went on back then, I am here to tell you that that is a woefully mistaken idea.

Because things that are going to happen to you in the future are going to happen to you in the future because of what God said to Abraham almost 4 ,000 years ago. So whether you are a premillennialist, a postmillennialist, or an amillennialist is going to be in large part determined by how you understand the promises that God gave to Abraham.

Your eschatology, your view of the end times, is going to be determined by how it is that you interpret the promises given to Abraham. And that's not the only thing that is going to determine your eschatology, but it's going to play a very large role in how you view what is going to happen in the future.

Now, just because you might be a postmillennialist does not mean that you're going to have a postmillennial future. And the amillennialists are going to have an amillennial future, and the premillennialists are going to have a premillennial future.

Whatever is going to happen, however that's going to unfold, it's going to unfold, and all of us, pro-, post-, pre-, post-, and all, all, all of those prefixes, we're all going to be carried along with whatever happens.

In other words, if my premillennial eschatology is correct, it doesn't matter if you're a postmillennialist or amillennialist, you're going to experience the same things that I am.

But guess what?

We're all going to experience that because of something that God said to Abraham back in the book of Genesis. So his centrality in this cannot be overstated. Really, this comes down to the questions, what is the covenant that God made with Abraham?

Was it conditional, or was it unconditional? Will it be fulfilled literally or spiritually? Who are the recipients of the promises that God gave to Abraham? To whom were those promises made, and whom are those promises for?

Those are some of the key questions that we have to answer when we're talking about what is going to happen to us in the future. So we can't avoid these subjects. We're not trying to avoid these subjects.

I actually don't even want to avoid these subjects, because I love these subjects. So that's what we're going to dive into, because that issue of the land and the promises made to Abraham, that comes in here in Hebrews 11.

So of all of the people that we have been looking at here in Hebrews 11, Abraham takes a center stage. More time, more text is given to Abraham than any of the other examples. There's mention of Abel.

There's mention of Enoch, a verse on Noah. But then as the author fast-forwards through 2 ,000 years of history to the time of Abraham, then he just hits the brakes, and we are with Abraham from chapter 12 of Genesis all the way through chapter 24 of Genesis.

And here in Hebrews 11, we have Abraham from verse 8 all the way through the end of verse 19. This is all about Abraham. The author of Hebrews 11 devotes more time and attention to Abraham than any of the other examples.

The second one is Moses, and we don't get to Moses until down in I don't know what it is.

You'll see it.

We get to Moses down later on in the text. But as if the author, even after Abraham Well, verse 19, you'll look at it. Verse 19, that's speaking of Abraham. Verse 20, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau. Verse 21, by faith, Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons, Joseph in worship, leaning on top of the staff.

Then verse 22, then Joseph. So he goes from Abraham to Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and his 12 sons, and then he parks on Moses again in verse 23. And then we get a long discussion of Moses from verse 23 to 29.

So the bulk of this chapter is taken up with Abraham. Second on the list in terms of amount of text and explanation is Moses. Why these two men? I think these two men are significant. These two men are significant because they are the two predominant figures of the Old Testament.

The two most well-known, the two, I would say, most significant figures of the Old Testament are Abraham and Moses. Abraham being the founder of the nation, the forefather of all the Jews, every Jew could trace his lineage back to Abraham, and they rightly honored Abraham.

He is the central figure of the Old Testament, without which there is no Old Testament. But then second to him you have Moses. Moses was the giver of the law. He was the redeemer of Israel. He brought them out of Egypt in fulfillment to God's promise.

He was a lawgiver. He was a prophet. And his role in Israel is also difficult to overstate just in terms of the covenant that God made with the nation in the presence of Moses, Moses being one of the mediators of that covenant.

So we have really between these two men, Abraham and Moses, we have two covenants, the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant. These are two different covenants. They're two different terms to the covenant.

They're made with different emphasis and for different purposes. But these two figures, Abraham with the Abrahamic covenant, Moses with the Mosaic covenant, these two men stand almost singularly above the rest in all of the Old Testament.

And it's interesting to me, and I don't know even what to make of this, but the author of Hebrews 11 doesn't mention David. I don't think there's any significance to that, other than he just gets done with Moses, and he's like, time's going to prohibit me to tell of all the other people.

There's obviously a list of other people that he could name. But the two most significant and founding forefathers of the Jewish nation were Abraham and Moses. So we're going to read now, beginning at verse 8, and we're going to read through verse 19.

I want you to look for two subjects that the author handles and he deals with as he highlights the episodes from Abraham's life. He's going to talk about two specific promises, the promises of land and the promise of a son or a descendant.

Those are the two promises, land and son. These are the two things that the author focuses on in verses 8 through 19. First of all, beginning at verse 8, notice that this, verses 8 through 10, has to do with the land.

Verse 8,.

So this is the promise of land. Abraham is told to go out, God would take him out of one land and put him in another land. That's the promise of land. Verse 11, This is the promise of a son. This is the promise of a son.

By faith, Sarah conceived and a son was born. But now the author, in verse 13, returns to the promise of land. All these, that is, Abraham and Sarah and the ones he's mentioned thus far, all these died in faith without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed, if they had been thinking of that country from which they had went out, they would have opportunity to return.

But as it is, they desired a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. Notice that that whole section there has to do with the promise of land and Abraham dwelling in the land still is an alien and a stranger.

Then in verse 17, the author returns back to the promise of the son. By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son.

It was he to whom it was said, In Isaac your descendants shall be called. He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type. Now do you notice the pattern?

The promise of the land, the promise of a son, back to the promise of the land, and then the promise of the son. There's a pattern there. Land, son, land, son. But there's something that happens as the author works his way through that progression.

There is an escalation that takes place. Now maybe you'll notice it when I say it this way. In the first section, verses 8 through 10, in that first section, the author is talking about the promise of land, but he's simply referencing the fact that God said to Abraham, I'm going to take you out of this land, go to that land, and Abraham went.

So he went into the land, he obeyed God, and God settled him, put him into that land. But then he talks about the promise of a son, and it's just the conception of the son. But then when he returns back to the promise of the land in verse 13 to 16, he is describing the fact that Abraham dwelt in that land as a stranger and an alien, even knowing that he would never possess that land in his own lifetime.

Then he moves on to the promise of a son, and there it is not the promise of conception, the bearing of the son that is mentioned, but Abraham offering Isaac up on an altar. Now do you see the escalation that takes place?

I'll give you a land. It's one thing to believe that God will take you in one place and put you in another place. That's faith. I can believe God for that. That's easy. But then to turn around and come to the next level and say, you're going to dwell in that land as an alien and a stranger, and you will never actually possess it in your lifetime.

Do not go back to the previous land. You stay here because I'm giving it to your descendants after you. That's next level faith, right? To just say, go from A to B. Okay, I can believe God from that. But then to say, once you get to B, you're never actually going to possess B in your lifetime, giving it to your descendants, then you're believing God for something beyond just moving from A to B, aren't you?

Same thing with the son. I'm going to give you a descendant. By faith, Sarah conceived and she bore a son. I can believe God for a conception. That's relatively easy. That happens all the time, right?

Happens all the time. But then to take that promised seed, that promised son, and put him up on an altar, to tie him down, and to raise the sacrificial knife over his chest and be willing to sacrifice him, that's next level faith, is it not?

There's an escalation that takes place. It's one thing to believe God for a conception. It's another thing to believe God for a resurrection. And that's the point that the author is making. Abraham believed God, he got the promised seed, but then he was willing to sacrifice that son on an altar.

That's next level faith. That's user achievement unlocked. You get characters, you get extra things in the video game for that. I don't know, I don't play the video games, but that's a whole other level of faith, when you're willing to believe God for that.

So there's an escalation that takes place, and a progression here, even in how the author develops it. And that just shows us that Abraham's faith was one that progressed over the course of his life. And you're going to see here in a moment that Abraham was not told everything right at the beginning.

He was given more and more information, and Abraham believed God and progressed in his faith more and more as time went on, over the course of his life. Now, in keeping with the way that we're surveying these heroes of the faith in Hebrews chapter 11, we're going to go back and we're going to get the context of Abraham's life.

So jump back now with me to Genesis chapter 12, please. Genesis chapter 12. Today we're going to look at Genesis 12, Genesis 13, Genesis 15, and Genesis 17. And I smell the same food that you do, and I am as anxious for this sermon to be over more so than you are, so don't be panicked by that.

We are going to go through these three chapters. We're just going to be looking at these promises that God gave to Abraham and how they were fulfilled. Back to Genesis chapter 12. Remember, the story of Noah ends with Genesis 9.

That's the flood. You get into Genesis chapter 10, and that gives us the descendants of Noah. It traces the lineage of Noah. You get the feeling that the purpose of Moses in writing Genesis was not just to give us quirky things about the history of the world.

The purpose of Moses in writing Genesis was really to give us the history of Abraham because he's just fast-forwarding through history, and he gets to Abraham, hits the brakes, and stops. Then the rest of the book, chapter 12 through the end of the book, is Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his 12 sons, and they land in Egypt.

That is what the author wants us to see. It is the unfolding of these promises. That's not to say that nothing else before Genesis 11 was actual history or there was allegory or anything like that. It's all literal truth, and that happened just as it was explained to us.

But it is to say that the point of Moses is to get us up to Abraham, to give us the background, and that's what the genealogies do. So you read in Genesis 11, verse 10. You have in chapter 11, the beginning of chapter 11, the dispersion of the peoples at the Tower of Babel.

Then you have the descendants of Shem in Genesis 11. Look at Genesis 11, verse 10. These are the records of the generations of Shem. Shem was 100 years old and became the father of Arpoxad two years after the flood.

And so like Genesis chapter 5, in Genesis 11, you can take the lifespans of these patriarchs and you can overlap them according to how old they were when they had a son and then how long they lived after they had that son and how long that son lived before he had a son, etc.

You can overlap the lifespans there, and you can see who was a contemporary with whom. And you'll notice if you were to compare, and we're not going to do this this morning, Genesis 11 with Genesis chapter 5, you would notice that you get into Genesis chapter 11 and the lifespans of those patriarchs drop off precipitously.

You go from Noah living 350 years after the flood to Abraham a few generations later only living 175 years old permanently. Now that is not because the environmental factors of the world had changed after the flood.

They had, and that may have had some impact on lifespans. But it's my belief and my contestation that those decreased lifespans have to do more with the genetic bottleneck that took place at the flood.

So that before the flood happened, you had people being able to intermingle and intermarry all over the place. And the genetic mutations that were happening with reproduction before the flood, all of a sudden that was bottlenecked down so that after the flood you had basically first cousins marrying first cousins again.

And there was a concentration of mutations, genetically harmful mutations, because there are no genetically beneficial mutations, genetically harmful mutations that have warped and corrupted and made us all mutants.

We're all intellectual and physical mutants compared to people who lived before the flood. And not the good kind of mutants that put wings out their back and have laser vision and all that nonsense that you see.

We are genetic mutants. And so this is a decrease in the lifespans that just immediately drops off in the seven or eight generations right after the flood. So you can see how some of these lifespans overlap.

And all of this is just to set up Abraham again. Noah lived 350 years after the flood. Noah was alive during the lifespan of everyone in Genesis chapter 11 except Abraham. Noah died three years before Abraham was born.

Noah's lifespan overlapped Abraham's father, Terah, by 136 years. Now whether they knew each other or spoke to each other or were ever met, that is an entirely different issue. Scripture doesn't give us any indication as to yes or no either direction.

But the lifespan of Noah and the lifespan of Abraham's father, Terah, they overlapped by 136 years. Noah died, as I said, three years before Abraham was born. And Abraham's life and Shem, Noah's son, their lives overlapped by 150 years.

Noah's son, Shem, died 25 years before Abraham died. And so there's a constant... And after the flood you would have had this massive explosion of population right after the flood. So by the time we get to the point of Abraham, we again have hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people, alive on the face of the planet.

Now where was Abraham located? He was in Ur of the Chaldeans. So let's pick up the story in chapter 11. I lied to you. We're not starting in chapter 12. We're going to start in chapter 11.

I forgot that.

I should have reread through this before I got up here to preach it. Genesis 11, beginning of verse 27. Now these are the records of the generations of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

Abram, for those of you who may not know, Abram and Abraham are the same person. Later on God changes his name to Abraham. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot.

So Lot was Abram's nephew. Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth in Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and Eschah.