Summer Session (6) Sunday School July 9

family. The world is a lie of Satan to normalize chaos family.

To say that such things as homosexual mirage, it's not really a marriage, to say those things are normal, to say that that cohabitation, which the

Bible calls fornication, is normal, to bear children outside of marriage is normal, to have multiple divorces and remarriages is normal.

Chaos, brokenness, sin, and the attempt is to normalize chaos family.

Well family is always chaos, it's always problem, it's misery, it's always a mess. And we are living at a time when that is very much at the forefront of a lot of discussion, a lot of debate.

And that's not unique to our generation, not unique to our time, our century, our decade.

It was going on even in the days of Jesus Christ and his apostles, and they talked about these controversial issues, and they were not in agreement with their culture.

They were not simply repeating the established opinions of the people around them, but they were challenging them to think about how

God has made us. Jesus said, have you not read in the beginning that God made them male and female?

And for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, for the two shall become one flesh.

So for Jesus the answer is quite simple. No matter what deviation man may try to engineer when it comes to family,

Jesus says we have to go back to the beginning, to the creation, to the definition that God has given, inherent to the design that he has created for our understanding of what family is all about.

And so we've thought about family and creation, we've talked about what it means to be made in the image of God, and that if there was one very quick way to talk about the uniqueness of being made in God's image, which only humanity is made in God's image, is that by the nature of our design we are made in such a place that we are in relationship with God and one another and the created order as no other creature is.

We've been made to love God supremely, to love each other rightly, and to steward the creation responsibly, and no other creature was made that way.

No other creature has that intersection of relationships, and God treats men and women according to his image, holds them accountable for how they respond to him, how we respond to each other, what we do with the things that God entrusts to us.

And so we've been thinking about how the image of God is at the heart of what it means to be male and female, man and wife, parents and children.

We talked about the impact of sin on the family, and why it is that it's not something wrong with God's design that there are problems manifested in families, but there's a problem with our sin that it's not the issue with how

God designed it, it's the issue with us who would deviate from his design and rebellion.

And so we've looked at Genesis chapter 3, a whole survey of Genesis chapter 3, trying to understand what went on there as a story that helps explain where we are right now.

And now we're going to continue through the story of the Bible and thinking about family by moving through the cycles of the covenants, the stories that God tells about Noah and Abraham and Israel and David.

And I want to point our attention to Romans chapter 5,

Romans chapter 5, and I want to read verses 12 and 15 and 17 with some comment.

Before we do that, let's pray. Heavenly Father, I just thank you for this day. I thank you for the gift of your word, the clarity in which you give it as we consider your son

Jesus Christ. I thank you for the hope that we have in him, and I pray that you would guide our thinking so that we would be in agreement with you, that we would value what you value and rejoice in what you rejoice.

We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. So Romans 5 and verse 12 says,

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sin.

So through one man sin entered the world. We know who that is, it's Adam. And death through sin, that's what

God's promise was. And the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. We've talked about that the pagan conception of death is non -existence.

The biblical conception of death is separation, a destruction of relationships between God and one another and the created order.

Separations. Even when we die, our soul is separated from our body.

It's a separation, you see. Death spread to all men because all sinned. Now verse 15 tells us,

But the free gift is not like the offense. If by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man

Jesus Christ abounded to the many. Previous verse reminds us that Adam was a type, a picture of Jesus who was to come.

The second Adam, the last Adam. And then in verse 17 it says,

If by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one

Jesus Christ. So as Paul is trying to grab for the whole story, as he's trying to explain everything in a short amount of space, what does he do?

He talks about the first Adam and the last

Adam. There is a parade that moves from the fall of the first Adam to the advent of the second

Adam between Genesis 3 and the very first Christmas.

There's a parade. And each, and in this parade we have covenants.

You could think of them as floats in the parade. Noah, Abraham, Israel, and David.

And there's another covenant called the New Covenant. Each covenant comes majestically proceeding down the main street of history.

Each one attended, surrounded by servants and signs and promises.

Each one coming right after the other, connected by various themes. And in the last covenant turns out to be more than the parade itself.

It turns out to be a whole new town square, indeed an entirely new city. Now to move from the ruined image of God, Adam, to the risen image of God, Jesus Christ, is a redemptive saga.

Preparation for the last Adam is announced in Genesis 3 .15 and that has continued throughout the covenants that God makes with Noah and Abraham, Israel, and David.

And all these covenants are in the shape of the image of God. In other words, every time God makes a covenant, you go read it for yourself.

Go read the covenant God makes with Noah and all the way to David. Each time he makes a covenant, he describes relationships with him.

How is it going to work? How are his servants going to relate to him now?

He describes how those made in his image should relate to one another. And he tells them how they're supposed to view the world around them, what they're supposed to be doing.

Each one of the covenants that God makes, he mediates his truth, his holiness, his authority.

And each one of these covenants is given to one of his servants. Each covenant looks back at the creation, how things were with Adam and Eve in the garden before sin.

And each one looks forward to Christ as the ruined image of God is situated in a restorative hope, looking forward to the fuller revelation of the promised seed, who is

Jesus. And God makes these covenants known to his creatures and he formalizes these relationships with them through signs and promises.

It happens again and again and again in the story of the Old Testament until finally

Jesus comes and says, and now for the new covenant. There are many covenants in the

Bible. You'll have perhaps Jacob and Laban making a covenant. Of course, you have marriage as a covenant.

You have covenants made between nations. But there are some that bear the weight of the whole story, the big ones, the important ones that we're talking about.

And these covenants that God makes with Noah, Abraham, Israel, and David bear the weight of the whole story.

They bring the bones and the sinews and the skin. The very shape of the image of God is restored through these covenants.

The shape is, but not the substance. Not the substance.

The living breath of the image of God is only brought by Christ, who takes up all the former covenants, known as the

Old Covenant together, and fulfills them because he is the image of the Invisible God.

And he makes a new covenant by his blood and sends forth his Holy Spirit. So, that is a basic survey behind my definition that we've been working with on Sunday nights.

A biblical redemptive covenant is a restorative, looking back to Eden, and revealing, looking forward to Christ, a restorative and revealing relationship that the

Creator formalizes with man. God knew Noah and Abraham and Israel and David before he made covenant with them, but he formalized that relationship.

And he gave them promises, and he gave them signs, all because he's pointing them to his

Son. So, now we could study that for a whole other summer session, but what

I want to do is try to see where does family fit into these things? I mean, after all, the image of God is central to Jesus's definition of family.

When they wanted to ask him about marriage and divorce, he goes to Genesis 127, where the description of the image of God is given to us.

So, for Jesus, if we're going to talk about family, you've got to start with the image of God, and all the covenants are all about the image of God.

So, obviously, family is going to feature a large in these covenants, and we need to think about that because we're building an understanding of what family is, according to the

Bible, not according to our culture. So, we start with Noah, and there's a lot of fanfare that leads up to the

Noah float coming down Main Street. A lot of fanfare, a lot of preparation, and it has to do with sin's impact on the family.

Now, I've got a handout for you. I hope that you... there's a handout right here next to Jonathan.

You've been drafted. Sorry. Now, the handouts are all right next to you. Does anybody need a handout?

Thank you, Kyle. These are two pages from the manuscript that I'm writing for this class.

They are not consecutive, but this is page, I think, 36 and 43 of the manuscript, and the reason why

I'm handing this out front and back is simply so that you could look at the structure of the story, how the story flows, and Noah's story, the cycle in which we meet

Noah and the covenant that God makes with Noah begins in chapter 4 and moves through the end of chapter 9.

Now, we see that life continues after the judgment.

There's an exile from Eden. Is it all over? Is it all over for humanity?

No, they continue. They live by God's grace. They live. And there is farming, and Eve names her first two sons.

She names them Acquired and Breath, Cain and Abel. Both of those names speak to them being gifts from God.

And then Cain murders Abel and is cursed from the earth. He is exiled from men. God marks

Cain to restrain a cycle of violence, and then the violence continues anyway, through Cain's descendant

Lamech. And what is the problem with Lamech? He's a polygamist.

He is a sexual deviant. Ada and Zillah, hear my voice, he says. His wives, plural.

In contrast, the descendants of Adam's third born, Enosh, call upon the name of the

Lord. Seth and Enosh, well, they are true sons of God. And then after ten generations, from Adam to Noah, the world becomes very restless, and we find in chapter 6 that the sons of God themselves are embracing sexual deviance, and their descendants make names for themselves through violence.

And then God exiles mankind from the earth through a flood. He makes a covenant with Noah to restrain the cycle of violence, and then after the judgment, the life continues for humanity through farming.

And then Noah grows a vineyard, and we hear a story about his sons, their significant names, and how one of them is cursed, just like Cain.

So you can see how there is a pattern. This is called a chiasm. This is how stories were told in the ancient

Near East, wherein the point of your story is in the middle.

Now, we read stories where the point is at the end, when Sherlock Holmes solves everything, or the great conflict to which everything has been accelerating is finally sorted out at the end of the book.

We make jokes about, are you the kind of person who reads the end of the story first? But very often, most often, the stories being told in the ancient

Near East are told in a bit of a circle, and the main point is at the center.

And so we have a series of parallels, and you can see that in your handout about the story of Noah.

And this is important that we recognize it, not because it's simply interesting, but because it explains things.

You know how you're reading in Proverbs or Psalms, and there's like a couplet, a Hebrew parallelism, and you read the first line, and then you read the second line, and you realize that the first line explains the second line.

And the second line sheds light on the first line. And by looking at them both together, you are more informed.

You understand better. That's what's going on here. These are just parallels. But by reading one in light of the other, we are better informed about what the story is all about.

So what do we see going on in Genesis 4 through 9? We see that the disasters of sin and death are showing up all through family.

Brother murders brother. Lamech boasts of murder to his multiple wives.

Fathers beget children and they die. Chapter 5. The world fills up with men who mimic

Lamech. Chapter 6. And what are all these things pointing to?

What Paul said, death spread to all men because all men sinned.

You see you're reading about it here in Genesis 4 through 9. So the image of God, what's the problem?

The image of God is no longer rightly relating to God, to one another, to the created order.

Death has made a separation. And God does not toss out his design for the family.

He rather affirms it in Genesis. The last verse of Genesis 5 through the end of Genesis 9 where we begin to hear about Noah.

God speaks to Noah about his household, his family. He addresses

Noah and includes his family ten times. Over and over again.

Noah, you and your sons. Noah, you and your wife and your sons and their wives.

Noah, you and your household. Ten times. God is not throwing out the family, he's affirming the family.

He's showing how important the family is. Now in addressing this world that has been filled up with violence in chapter 6,

God observes the world is filled up with violence and so he promises to fill up the world with water.

He prepares an exiling judgment like he did for Cain. He addresses

Noah and he promises to make a covenant with him but he includes an important detail. I think it's very interesting. So if you can flip over to Genesis 6, we're gonna be hopping around in Genesis 4 through 9.

But in Genesis chapter 6 when we start reading, our attention is immediately drawn to the floodwaters.

Oh, this is gonna be bad, right? It catches our attention. But think about the details that God gives.

Verse 17 of chapter 6. And behold, I myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth to destroy from under heaven all flesh which is in the breath of life.

Everything that is on the earth shall die but I will establish my covenant with you and you shall go into the ark.

You, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you.

They shall be male and female. Of the birds and after their kind, of animals after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive.

So you see what Jesus is, what the Lord is doing here for Noah? One married couple and three married couples.

A total of four married couples, but he addresses them as one and as three married couples.

And oh, hey look, that's what marriage looks like. Hey look, that's what marriage looks like. Hey, that's four times over.

Here are four married couples, a man and his wife, a man and his wife, a man and his wife. They go on to the ark.

Also, the animals are brought on, how? Two by two, two by two, two by two.

Isn't that interesting? It kind of recalls the parade of animals that God brought before Adam so he would name the animals and among all the animals no help meat was found for him, emphasizing to him that, hey, they're all coming past you two by two, but you're all by yourself and you need to help meat.

You see, not good for the man to be alone. And so this pattern is also put here in Genesis 6.

And the pattern of one male for one female, each in their own family, each after their own kind, is repeatedly emphasized in chapters 7 and 8 of Genesis about the flood story.

Now we've got to think, animals do not tend to be monogamous. No lion gets down on three knees and proposes to a lioness and they live happily ever after on the savanna.

That doesn't happen. You've watched the nature shows, it's brutal. So why is

God having all the beasts, even the beasts, all paired off, male, female, one for one, one for one?

Well, think of the pattern in the story of Noah, the chiastic pattern here.

Genesis 6, 1 through 4, provides us the reason why the world had gotten so bad that God needed to judge it with a flood.

But you see how it pairs with Genesis 4, 19 through 26 in your pattern? Both passages speak of sexual deviance.

Both passages speak of violence. Both passages speak of sons of God.

Both passages speak about the importance of a name. Let's look at Genesis 4 for a second.

What do we have here? We have Lamech. We have two wives for Lamech. Here is a sexual deviance.

He marries two wives. And I think Jesus would have asked him, have you not read?

The two shall become one flesh. It doesn't say the three shall become two fleshes, or the three shall become one flesh.

It's the two shall become one flesh. So we see that Lamech is sexually perverse.

He's in rebellion to his maker. Also, we see that Lamech is unjust.

He does not engage in eye for an eye, the Latin lex talionis, eye for eye.

He engages in lex marica, you wrong me, I'll end you.

You sneer at me, I kill you, Chicago style. So after hearing about polygamy with Lamech, and violence flowing from pride as he's boasting about how he killed this guy, then we hear about God -giving sons.

Here in chapter 4, he gives Seth to Adam and Eve. He gives Enosh to Seth. And these

God -given sons are contrasted with polygamous Lamech. We hear that these God -given sons start calling upon the name of the

Lord. They're faithful and they're worshiping. And I think it's kind of important that the children of polygamous

Israel, to whom Moses is writing this, needs to know. They need to know that polygamy is not for them.

Isn't that relevant to the children of Israel? Israel himself, who was polygamous, that Moses is probably underscoring some things for Israel.

Yeah, you're not going to do that. And then Genesis 5 conveys a steady march of generations by means of family.

Generation after generation shows Genesis 2 .24 playing out over and over again.

And then we come to chapter 6, the parallel passage to Genesis 4, the end of Genesis 4, the parallel passage to Genesis 6, 1 through 4.

Look at this. Now, it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth.

It's the same thing that happened with Cain's genealogy. There was a multiplication of men on the earth. And daughters were born to them that the sons of God, we met some sons of God in chapter 4,

Seth and Enosh, calling upon the name of God. They saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful.

And they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. That's not a description of there being a lot of eligible young men and eligible young women and then pairing off.

They're not pairing off. The sons of God are taking wives for themselves, all whom they choose.

Do you see that? It parallels with Lamech. They're just grabbing as many as they want.

That's the sense of the text. Therefore, the Lord said, my spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh, yet his days shall be 120 years.

So, in 120 years, the floods coming. There were giants. Anybody have a different term for giants in your text?

The Nephilim? Yeah. There were giants on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them.

These were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Okay. There's a lot of connections here, but sons of God are acting like Lamech.

They are completely corrupted now. They are also taking a plurality of wives. Their choices are not based on God's Word, but just like Eve, the desire of their eyes.

They're determining good and evil for themselves, aren't they? Just like Eve did. And so, they look upon the daughters of men like Eve looked upon the fruit and they take all that they desire and God starts the countdown.

Okay, 120 years and the floods going to come.

Why he must act in this way is given to us here in the text. The earth was full of giants. That's the

New King James translation. Nephilim is a transliteration of the Hebrew word.

So, if you were able to read Hebrew, you would say Nephilim, but you read English and so you read Nephilim. They just put the consonants and the vowel points in there for you.

Really fun thing. Looking at an old lexicon, an equivalent translation of this word

Nephilim is feller. Straight up a feller.

Now, we use that in the South. Boy, you're a big feller. But no, it's the verb fell in all of the violent meaning of felling someone and being one who fells others.

And this word is used throughout the Old Testament to talk about those who lay in wait and fall upon others and strike them down.

Let us fall upon him. Absalom's plot to take down David is full of this word.

Let's fall upon them. So, what are we reading? We're reading about people, the giants on the earth.

They were fellers. They were violent men.

Lamech was a feller. Nimrod was a feller. We read that it wasn't just this time period, but other time periods that the

Nephilim show up. Goliath was a feller. A time of violent men.

And notice, it happened when there was an increase of sexual deviance. These men and their sons from many wives are men of renown.

They made their fame by violence. Just like later on,

Nimrod builds Babel to make a name for himself.

And he was a hunter of men, a violent man making a name for himself. What I'm trying to do is,

I know there's a lot of different interpretations about this passage, but I'm trying to situate the text in its context so that we're seeing how to read it.

It's an analogy of Scripture. I'm going to compare Scripture with Scripture to see what this says. Other translations will say, well, these are because of the word fall, fallen, say these are fallen angels, these are demons.

I disagree. But, what is going on?

Polygamy is the problem and violence is the problem. These are the problems with Lamech and with Genesis 6, 1 through 4, polygamy and violence.

And so, what does God do? He answers both of them directly. He makes particular arrangements with Noah.

He answers the problem with polygamy by doing what? Two by two by two by two by two by two by two.

Even when it doesn't make sense for the animals to go two by two because that's not what the animals do. But God does it anyway as a sign.

Who gets on the ark? Those who keep with his design. Who gets on the ark? Those who honor his design for marriage.

One male for one female, two by two by two. And what does he do to answer the violence?

He fills up the world with water. You see how he's answering the problem?

The problem is given to us in the text and the solution is given to us in the text. And then after the flood concludes,

God reiterates the creation mandate. He blesses Noah and his sons and says to them, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth.

Oh, that sounds familiar. Sounds like Genesis 1. That's right. He blesses these four families and calls them to the special work of his image and then further commands that all creatures, whether beast or man, who kill a man from the violence issue, they ought to be executed by men.

And he follows that up with the repetition of the creation mandate all over again in Genesis 9, 7, saying the reason why you're going to kill a beast that kills a man and the reason why you're going to kill a man who kills a man is because man is made in my image.

You see? So what does he do? He says, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. Hey, Noah, you and your wife.

Hey, each son and his wife. This is how we're going to do the creation mandate through my design for the family.

Marriage. One man for one woman. That's how we're going to do this, answering the problem of the polygamy that came before the flood.

And then he says, if there's going to be more of bloodshed and violence, here's what you're going to do. You're going to put an end to that through capital punishment.

You see how he solves the issue of the violence and says, here's how we're going to stop that. So God is being very focused in this.

Now, being fruitful and multiplying on the earth is not compatible with polygamy or any other kind of sexual abomination.

And while you might do the math and think, hey, that might be a good idea, actually you have forgotten to factor in, in your math, the widespread mortal violence, the widespread deadly violence that always comes with sexual deviance.

Genesis 4 19 through 24 and Genesis 6 1 through 12 demonstrate that sexual deviance precedes, follows, and promotes violence.

This is one of the reasons why in the Ten Commandments, the sixth and seventh commandment are placed together.

Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery. The stories of David's household, how did that go?

Sexual deviance, deadly violence. That's how that went, right? Sexual deviance, deadly violence.

How many times did that happen in David's life? Quite a few cycles, wasn't there? The wisdom of Solomon and Proverbs.

When Solomon warns his son against sexual deviance, do you know what one of the warnings is about?

How it leads to deadly violence. More than once he talks about that.

The preaching of the Old Covenant to prophets, they make the connection too.

Sexual deviance and deadly violence. And you can think of anything from the disruption of the entire society to the unwanted children of sexual liaisons being offered up to Molech and Chemosh.

Also, just think of the bloodlust of the harlot in Revelation. Sexual deviance and violence.

And so we should not be surprised at the violence of the French Revolution, which came on the heels of all manner of sexual perversions.

We should not be surprised at the decades of sprawling American violence, which has bloomed in the wake of the sexual revolution of the 60s.

How many times do you hear the comment, I don't understand why there's so much violence? We used to drive up to school and we all had rifles sitting in our back window.

Never had this problem before. Well, you're living on this side of the sexual revolution.

All throughout the scripture and all throughout history, whenever you have sexual perversion, you have a outbreak of violence.

Now, why are they connected? Why are sexual deviance and mortal violence correlated? Because God made man in his own image, male and female.

He created them, bringing them together instantly in the creation story as husband and wife.

Sexual deviance, you see, is a brutal attack on the image of God. It is an attack on the image of God.

Sexual abstinence, on the other hand, singleness, as Paul talks about it in Corinthians, does not lessen the image of God in a child waiting for a marriage or an adult without a spouse.

It doesn't lessen the image of God in that person's life. But every sexual deviance, by definition, must deny and seek to obliterate some facet of the image of God.

Proceeding from the intellectual and emotional and spiritual assault upon the image of God, physical, the physical assault on the image of God, that's no great leap to go from the sexual deviance to the deadly violence.

The sexual deviance is the intellectual, emotional, spiritual assault on the image of God.

And what is murder? It's the physical assault on the image of God.

That's no great leap. All sexual deviance moves toward bodily destruction.

Have we not seen that? Name any sexual deviance, and it always entails some kind of destruction.

It's only marriage that preserves the wife's body for the husband and the husband's body for the wife. 1

Corinthians 6 .15 through chapter 7, verse 7. It's the only design. And God approves of marriage, and he blesses it.

Marriage 13 .4 says, marriage is honorable among all and the bed undefiled, but fornicators and adulterers

God will judge. And we see that in the story of the flood. So God makes his covenant with Noah.

And there is a lot of great stuff about Noah that I'm not going to talk about this morning.

So that was three pages gone, but that's enough for Noah.

Let's talk about Abraham. God's covenant with Noah clarifies the image of God and affirms the family.

And we see that the creation mandate, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, that has to be pursued by families who fear the

Lord. Families who fear the Lord. Bloodshed must be answered by justice, and the creation must be managed by God's standards and values.

So all this is about the image of God. Love God supremely, love each other rightly, steward the creation responsibly.

Same is true of the Abrahamic covenant. Now God calls Abraham out of Ur.

You can trace this on the other side of your handout. And the centerpiece, you can see there's a double peak in the center.

Genesis 15, the whole chapter, and then Genesis 17, verses 9 through 27.

And the centerpiece of the Abrahamic story is about how

God formalizes his promises to Abraham, and he cuts a covenant with Abraham in chapter 15.

And then he establishes that covenant with Abraham and gives him a sign.

He seals this whole covenant with a sign, circumcision, which involves a cutting. Cuts a covenant in chapter 15, gives him a sign, circumcision, which involves a cutting.

And why this? The sign of circumcision fits with the promise of the seed.

Remember Genesis 3 .15, there's a male heir who will become the new Adam, the image who will be victorious over the serpent.

But this sign not only signifies there's going to be a male heir, there's going to be a male heir, but it also signifies separation.

There is a cutting off and a removal of the flesh. There was a sifting between sons in Genesis 4 through 9.

Seth, not Cain. Lamech from Adam and Methuselah, not

Lamech from Cain. Shem, not Ham and Canaan.

There is a sifting of the sons. And there's also a careful track of sons through the successive generations in chapter 5.

Those two themes together account for circumcision. Circumcision is what?

It speaks of a separation, a separation, a cutting, a separation, but it also speaks of a succession.

There's going to be a male heir, it's going to be a male heir. So separation and succession. Those are the two words that go with circumcision.

Separation and succession. And those are the two themes that pair up in rhythm throughout the entire story of Abraham, beginning in chapter 10 of Genesis and ending in chapter 25 of Genesis.

So, for example, just follow the pattern. Chapter 10, we hear about Noah's sons and their descendants.

In chapter 25, Abraham's sons and his descendants. The beginning of chapter 11, we hear that the nations are divided by God's judgment, right?

The Tower of Babel. And we also have the relatives of Abraham listed with the lands in which they lived after that separation.

Like, how did Abram end up in Ur? How did he end up in Haran?

And then how did he end up coming to the Promised Land? Well, those two together partner with chapters 23 and 24.

Chapter 11 begins by talking about the nations divided by God's judgment. Chapter 23 talks about Abram as a foreigner among the nations.

He doesn't own any land. He's going to buy some land from some foreign nationals to bury his dead.

And then, in chapter 11, the conclusion of chapter 11 talks about the relatives of Abraham in the lands in which they lived.

In chapter 24, Abram's sending his servant back to the lands in which his relatives lived to get a wife for his son.

And you can look at all the other connections, if you wish, and you know it's kind of broad. You can get another piece of paper and kind of slide across.

But even down to the details, I wanted to share this with you because of the beauty of God's Word. Just the beauty of God's Word and how he leaves clues everywhere.

I mean, even something as simple as Abram traveling to a tree and stopping at a tamarisk tree or a terebinth tree.

And in the paring passage down in chapter 21, he plants a tamarisk tree.

Simple things like that. How he deals with Lot. And in the whole story of it,

Abram is either separating from some group, some person, or God is promising succession.

You're going to have a lot of descendants, and they're going to enjoy this land, and there's a great hope ahead of you. And those two things partner back and forth, back and forth, separation and succession.

And the centerpiece of the story is about the covenant that God makes, promising him, promising

Abraham many descendants in the land. And then the sign of circumcision, which is a sign of separation and succession.

And he clarifies that it's Isaac, not Ishmael, who is the heir. That's the big picture of the story of Abraham.

And next time we get together, we're going to kind of look at some of those key passages.

I want to look at chapters 12, 15, 17, 22. And I want us to think about how family is so central to the way in which

God is dealing with Abraham. How he deals with Abraham and his marriage. How he deals with Abraham and his true heir.

What kind of promises that God makes that were related to family.

But we're going to leave it there for now. I've got a few minutes left. I did not realize how much material there was for Noah and Abraham when

I made my outline, scheduled the weeks out. So we may end up skipping a few things.

My goal is to get to a week or two where we can talk about what it's like to live as families under the reign of our

King Jesus. What does that look like? How are we to engage in that?

The direction that we receive. Because I think it's going to be really important that we talk about that.

And the things that we skip, as the Lord wills, and I have the time, we'll make sure that those things are edited and prepared.

And at some point, we'll have the whole manuscript for you guys somewhere down the road, as the

Lord wills. Okay? So a lot of good stuff in there. I had a whole thing about the rainbow, sorry. I'll throw that up on my blog.

Alright, any questions before we depart? Yes, very good.

The succession side of it is simply this. That God had promised a male heir, and all the males of the covenant were to be circumcised the eighth day.

And so, as they continue in the creation mandate of a husband and a wife, bearing forth children, okay, the sign of circumcision is going to be evident within the marriage relationship.

And all the children born from that relationship that are male will also be circumcised.

And so, from generation to generation, the hope is maintained. And God actually says in chapter 17 that if someone is not circumcised, out.

Yes. Yeah, they must keep up on that side, otherwise they're out. Yep. Yes.

Yes, yeah, so all sexual deviance is part of the culture of death. It brings forth death.

That sounds biblical. It's a good thing to recognize.

A lot of people want to parse and split hairs on certain things. Okay, well this is fine, but this isn't fine.

But we have to go to the Scriptures to get our definitions, so. All right, let's close with a word of prayer.

Father, I thank you so much for the opportunity you've given to us. Lord, I pray that you would bless our study of your word.