From a Tree to a Single Branch

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I want to invite you to take out your Bible and turn to Genesis chapter 11.
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Hold your place at verse 10.
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We have arrived today at a turning point in our study because today we will complete the prologue of Genesis.
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We've been in this study for a few years now and we need to understand why we have taken that time, why we have devoted so much time to the first 11 chapters of Genesis.
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The book of Genesis is broken into two parts.
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The first 11 chapters are what we call primitive or primeval history.
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I don't like the word primitive because it indicates somewhat of a lack of intelligence or technology, but they had all that.
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They were in some way smarter and more intelligent than we are.
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They had technology and things as the Bible says.
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They had cities.
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They had instruments.
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They had all kinds of art and science and a sense of that.
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So I would just say this is the history pre-Abraham because after chapter 12, everything is going to focus on the family and the line of one man.
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Genesis chapters 1 through 11 give us the birth of everything.
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A few sermons in, when I first started the series in Genesis, I did a sermon entitled The Beginning of Everything.
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And I showed how throughout Genesis we literally have the beginning of everything in the world.
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And Genesis 1 through 11 is the foundation of that beginning.
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In fact, this is the reason why I think Genesis 1 through 11 is one of the most contentious sections of the whole Bible.
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People want to argue the Bible.
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People want to debate the historicity, the truthfulness, the veracity and tenacity of the Scripture.
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And oftentimes when they do, they go right to Genesis chapters 1 through 11 and they make that their starting point for their attack.
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And the reason for that is they know that's the foundation.
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If you want to tear a wall down, you don't start with the top.
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You start at the bottom.
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If you can knock the bottom layer off, then everything else crumbles.
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And that's what they're doing when they attack Genesis 1 through 11.
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They're attacking the foundation of everything else.
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The devil knows that.
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And if he can cause us to doubt what the Bible says in Genesis 1 through 11, then it's like the first domino that causes the rest of the dominoes to fall.
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And once a person abandons the truth of Scripture, particularly the truth of our origins, who we came from, why God created us, where our faith goes as far as who God is and who we are, then it's not too big of a leap for us to abandon the whole thing.
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So if you've wondered why we've spent so much time on it, that's the reason.
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I want us to understand that Genesis 1 through 11 is historical and it is trustworthy.
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And we have God's account of history right here.
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And it should amaze us every time we take a look.
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I wouldn't mind starting again.
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I know you would.
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But I wouldn't mind starting over and do the whole 11 chapters again because this is the fountainhead of everything.
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It should amaze us every time we take a look.
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So today as we end the prologue, I know you're super excited because we're going to do another genealogy.
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This is the third time in, what, six weeks that we've had a really long genealogy that we're going to work through.
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But hopefully in those other previous lessons you understood the value of why they're there and hopefully today you will as well.
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So we're going to read this genealogy.
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We're going to read verses 10 to 32 and then we will study.
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Let's stand to give honor and reverence to God's Word beginning at verse 10 of Genesis chapter 11.
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These are the generations of Shem.
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When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpach Shad two years after the flood.
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And Shem lived after he fathered Arpach Shad 500 years and had other sons and daughters.
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When Arpach Shad had lived 35 years, he fathered Shelah.
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And Arpach Shad lived after he fathered Shelah 403 years and had other sons and daughters.
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When Shelah had lived 30 years, he fathered Eber.
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And Shelah lived after he fathered Eber 403 years and had other sons and daughters.
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When Eber had lived 34 years, he fathered Peleg.
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And Eber lived after he fathered Peleg 430 years and had other sons and daughters.
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When Peleg had lived 30 years, he fathered Rehu.
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And Peleg lived after he fathered Rehu 209 years and had other sons and daughters.
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When Rehu had lived 32 years, he fathered Sarug.
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And Rehu had lived after he fathered Sarug 207 years and had other sons and daughters.
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When Sarug had lived 30 years, he fathered Nahor.
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And Sarug lived after he fathered Nahor 200 years and had other sons and daughters.
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When Nahor had lived 29 years, he fathered Terah.
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And Nahor lived after he fathered Terah 119 years and had other sons and daughters.
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When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
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Now these are the generations of Terah.
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Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
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And Haran fathered Lot.
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Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred in Ur of the Chaldeans.
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And Abram and Nahor took wives.
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The name of Abram's wife was Sarai.
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And the name of Nahor's wife, Milca, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milca, and Isca.
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Now Sarai was barren.
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She had no children.
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Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife.
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And they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan.
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And when they had come to Haran, they settled there.
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The days of Terah were 205 years.
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And Terah died in Haran.
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Father in heaven, as I seek to give an understanding of this text, I pray first and foremost that you would keep me from error.
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For God, I am a fallible man, and I am capable of preaching error.
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And I pray that you would keep me from that.
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I pray that you would also keep me from cowardice.
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Lord, that I would preach with boldness.
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Not self-aggrandizing or prideful boldness, Lord, but humble boldness.
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Knowing that this is your word for your people.
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I pray that you would open the hearts of the people to hear your word.
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Lord, that it would not just go into the ear and even into the mind, but down into the heart.
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And I pray, Lord, for those who know you, that today would be to them a time of instruction, training, correction, and even rebuke if necessary.
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And Lord, for those who do not know you, whether they be young or old, that today might be the day of salvation.
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That you might work that miracle of regeneration that only you can do.
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Giving life where there is not life.
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Life to dead spirits.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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Genesis 1-11 is filled with pivotal moments.
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And we have come to another pivotal moment in the story.
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Man has just gone from one language and one people to being divided by his tongue and separated into many languages and nations.
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Genesis chapter 10 tells us that there were 70 nations that were divided.
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That's the number of nations, if you count through Genesis chapter 10 and you count through the nations, it tells us there were 70 different distinct groups that were divided out of Noah's sons.
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And we know when they were divided and how they were divided because that division is told to us in chapter 11 verses 1-9.
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That's what we talked about last week.
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Man was united in his language and he was united in his rebellion against God.
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He was building a tower, we remember, to the heavens that he might make a name for himself.
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Rather than seeking God through his means and seeking God's name be glorified, man wanted to build his own, as it were, gateway to heaven and, in a sense, become his own God.
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This has been the desire of man since the beginning.
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We want to be our own God.
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And as we noted two weeks ago, some of the groups went north.
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After the fall of the Tower of Babel, after that division, some of the groups went north.
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Some of the groups went south-westwardly into Egypt and into Africa, what we would now call Africa.
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But a group of them went into the Arabian Peninsula.
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And that would have been the descendants of Shem.
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Remember, there were three brothers.
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The Japhethites went northward, the Hammites went south-westward, and the Semites went into the Arabian Peninsula.
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And that's how the Bible begins to draw us to a point.
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It's like a tree.
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The reason I titled the sermon today, From a Tree to a Single Branch, is because up until this point we've been dealing with the whole tree of humanity.
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From Adam to Noah, we deal with the tree of humanity.
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And we've gotten the whole story of the whole tree.
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We've gotten the story of the sons of Cain and the sons of Seth.
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We got the story of all these different nations growing into a tree.
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Well, when you get to chapter 10, that tree gets 70 different branches.
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That one tree goes in 70 different directions.
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And you can't follow 70 different timelines of human history.
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You've got to follow one.
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And so God wants us to do that.
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He wants us to focus on one line of human history.
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And so we go from one large tree that breaks into 70 different branches, and He says, we're going to focus on one branch.
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We're going to focus on one line.
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And that is the line of the man who was called the friend of God.
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The line of the man called Abraham.
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So, that's what this genealogy does for us.
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This genealogy takes us from Shem, who is who? The son of Noah.
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So this genealogy takes us from Noah to Abram, who would eventually become Abraham.
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And what I want to do today is I want to, as I always tend to break things into threes, I want to look at three things today.
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I want to look at the observations from the text.
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I want to look at the objections that are made to this text, because there are some objections that skeptics like to make against this particular genealogy.
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And we're going to look at two of them.
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And we're going to seek to understand what the objection is and how we would respond to those objections.
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And then we're going to finish by looking at what's the overall objective of this text.
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So let's look first at some observations.
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When we look at Genesis chapter 11, beginning at verse 10, what we notice immediately are some striking similarities between this genealogy and the genealogy that we studied in chapter 5.
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Both of them begin with the Hebrew word Toledot.
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Toledot means generations.
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They both begin with that phrase, these are the generations of this person.
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These are the generations of Adam.
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These are the generations of Seth.
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It's a way of describing a marking post in Genesis.
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You guys remember me talking about, right? We said the Toledots are the marking posts throughout Genesis.
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Every time the story shifts to focus on a new individual, or every time the story shifts to focus on a new point in the story, it begins with these are the generations of.
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These are the Toledot.
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These are the marking posts.
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And so we see that at the beginning of chapter 5.
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We see that here in chapter 11, verse 10.
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Chapter 5 gives us from Adam to Noah.
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Chapter 11 gives us from Shem, the son of Noah, to Abram.
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And both follow the same pattern.
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Both of them have this pattern.
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This person lived this many years.
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This person fathered that one.
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And then he lived this many years afterwards.
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In fact, the biggest distinction between the genealogy in chapter 5 and the genealogy in chapter 11 is in chapter 5 there is a reoccurring statement that does not come up in chapter 11.
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The reoccurring statement is, and he died.
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If you go back to Genesis chapter 5, it says this person lived this many years.
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He fathered this child.
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He lived this many years.
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And he died.
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This person lived this many years.
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He fathered this one.
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He lived this many years.
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And he died.
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And it's over and over and over and over.
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Ten times.
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And he died.
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And he died.
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And he died.
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And he died.
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Sounds like I'm saying, and he died.
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Sorry, Andy.
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That's not what I'm doing.
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And he died.
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But then we get to chapter 11 and it doesn't say that.
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We get to chapter 11 and each of them simply ends with he had other sons and daughters.
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He had other sons and daughters.
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He had other sons and daughters.
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In fact, the only one that death is mentioned is Terah, and that actually leads us into the call of Abraham in chapter 12.
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So that isn't even really connected to the overall genealogy.
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That's just pointing us to the next part of the story because it's after Terah dies that Abraham actually makes it to Canaan.
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He actually goes that direction.
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So we have the chapter 5 and he died and he died and he died in chapter 11.
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It doesn't say that.
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And you say, well, why not? Is this just an omission by Moses? Is this just an oversight? Did he change his methodology? I don't think so.
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And again, at times like this, we do have to use a little bit of sanctified not imagination, but a little bit of sanctified interpretation trying to think about why in the world would it not focus on the death.
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And I think the reason is, and again, what I think is not gospel, but I give you what I think.
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I think the reason is is because this particular genealogy is focused on hope and promise.
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You see, the reminder of the genealogy between Adam and Noah was that judgment was coming and death was coming for everyone in the flood except for Noah and his family.
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And so the death was the point.
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Even in the godly line of Seth, men die.
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And he died.
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And he died.
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And he died.
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But now we're looking forward and in a positive sense, we're looking upward to Abram.
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And we're looking forward to what God is going to do in Abram.
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And that is establish a promise in Abram that will be fulfilled in Jesus Christ where there will be no more death.
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Where in Christ, death will be no more.
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O death, where is thy sting? O death, where is thy victory? It has been conquered in Christ.
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And again, I can't prove that's why it's omitted, but I do have a sense in that this is looking forward to the promise of God.
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This is moving forward to the promise that is going to be given in Abraham and fulfilled in Jesus.
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Both of these genealogies, again, more observations, both of these genealogies are also similar in that they both end with one family being the focus and three sons coming from one man.
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If you read the genealogy in chapter 5, this one had this one, this one had this one, this one had this one, then you get to the end and Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
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Then you read this genealogy, this one had this one, this one had this one, this one had this one, until you get to Terah and then you have Terah who had three sons, Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
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So again, there seems to at least be a demonstrably similar connection between chapters 5 and chapter 11.
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It takes us from Adam to Abram, is what it does, because in chapter 5, you have 10 generations from Adam to Noah.
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Then you get to chapter 11, you have 10 generations from Shem to Abram.
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So there's 20 generations from Adam to Abram.
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Now, could there be others in there? Could it be that some of these genealogies skip? It's possible, but as we look at the narrative, what we have to understand is this is more than just giving us history, this is giving us God's point and purpose in the whole story, because this is what both of these things create for us.
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They create for us a narrative pattern.
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God establishes a man, Adam.
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Then later He establishes a new man, Noah.
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Man becomes sinful and rebels against God.
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That happens under Adam.
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That happens under Noah.
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With Adam, they had the pre-fall men of renown that were hateful and terroristic.
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And then in the times after Noah, you had the people of Babel who were what? They were building a name for themselves, and it was all about their own name, right? And so we have the same scenario.
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God brings judgment first through the flood, then the confusion of languages.
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Out of judgment, there comes a remnant.
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With the flood, it was Noah and his three sons and their wives.
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Eight people.
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But what is the remnant out of the story of Babel? What is the remnant out of the tower of Babel? Abram.
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Abram becomes the remnant.
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Abram becomes the focus.
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Abram becomes, as it were, the line of focus for the story.
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And the focus on Abram's immediate family happens beginning in verse 27.
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If you look at verse 27, it says, now these are the generations.
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What do you notice there? Good Bible students.
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Another Toledot.
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Right? Remember the Toledot? These are the generations of.
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We saw that earlier.
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But now it's focusing even tighter.
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Not only are we going to look at the Toledot of Shem, not only are we going to look at the generations of Shem, but we're going to focus in specifically on one man.
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And it's not Abram, actually.
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It's these are the Toledot.
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These are the generations of Terah.
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Who is Terah? He's the father of Abraham.
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And he fathered three sons.
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Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
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Now, Haran dies fairly early on in the narrative.
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He dies, but only after he had fathered children.
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At least one.
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And Lot was the son of Haran, who will become important later.
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Y'all remember the story of Lot.
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We'll talk about him later on in the story.
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And he also, I said at least one, he had at least three, rather, because he has two daughters.
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He has one son.
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He has Lot that we know of.
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He could have had more, but we know he had Lot.
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And certainly he had two daughters, Milcah and Iscah.
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And what will begin a very odd trend.
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There is some weird intermarrying in Genesis.
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I mean, wait until we get to Lot and the whole situation there.
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That gets real weird.
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But the story is, it says here Nahor married Milcah.
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Well, who is Milcah? Milcah is the daughter of his brother.
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So, Nahor marries his niece.
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And Sarai is the wife of Abraham.
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But guess what else she is? She's the daughter of Terah.
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We don't learn that here, but we learn that later.
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That she's actually the daughter of Terah, apparently through another mother.
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So, I hope this doesn't offend anybody, but I love, Kent Hughes, I've been reading his commentaries, I'm going along preaching, and he says, what we're reading is the story of Terah's tiny inbred family.
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Terah's tiny inbred family.
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Because you got this one's married, and this one, this one's married.
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It's really an odd story.
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But that's not the part of the family that we should really focus on.
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Because, honestly, at that time, there was a lot of intermarrying, because the world was different then.
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And I don't believe it was a sin then to do that.
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Later, when the law is given, there are certain laws about who you can marry and how far distance a person has to be, cousin-wise, and things like that.
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But at this point, they are not living under the Mosaic Covenant.
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Therefore, it's not commanded.
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And I do believe the further along we get in human history, the more genetic problems begin to develop, and the more dangerous it becomes to marry into families and close family members.
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And that's why today, you shouldn't marry your sister, you shouldn't marry your cousin, you know, well, at least first.
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I don't know how it works.
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I just know, just be careful.
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And if you're going to ask me to do the wedding, don't.
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But at least at this part in the narrative, that's not the part.
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It's said without any fanfare.
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It's said as if it's not strange.
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It's just given the account.
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This is what happened.
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It's not as if it's odd.
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But the thing that's not said here, and the thing that I think we need to understand about this family, is that this family is coming out of Mesopotamia, which Mesopotamia simply means between two rivers.
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It's the area between the Tigris and Euphrates, what we would now call modern-day Iraq.
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And this is an area which is known to be an area of paganism.
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In fact, when we look historically, back at this particular time in history, what little evidence is left, I mean, it's been thousands and thousands of years, but what little evidence is left is that the people that worshipped in this particular area had begun to worship the moon god.
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And so, when we see the names that are here, we actually learn that a lot of the names that are coming up here actually reference that religion.
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Terah actually is the name, Terah's name means moon.
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Yerah means a lunar month, or a time of the moon.
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Sarai is equivalent to the Akkadian Saratu, which means queen, and was the name of the wife of the moon god's wife.
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Milka is the same as the goddess Malkuthu.
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In the title of Ishtar, the daughter of the moon god.
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So, all of these names sort of have ties to paganism.
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And they tie the family to, not the worship of Yahweh, but the worship of the false moon god, Nana, would be the name of the moon god.
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I know your grandmother should go by Nana, maybe.
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It's not Nana, Nana.
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But, and if you want to just see something very quickly, I do want to show you this.
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Turn in your Bibles to Joshua 24, because one might say, well, you know what, even though their names are tied to the moon god, Terah had to be a godly man, he had to be a god worshiper, because look how good Abraham was, look how good of a son he was, certainly.
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But if you go over to Joshua 24, what Joshua says about the ancestors of Abram has to be taken into account.
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And in Joshua 24, verse 2, it says this, Notice what he says there.
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He says it with no hint of trying to hide the issue.
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And he names specifically Terah, and he mentions that he is the father of Abram and Nahor, he doesn't mention Haran, but he mentions those other two, and he says, and they served other gods.
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Now some people have tried to argue that perhaps Abram never served another god.
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That maybe Joshua is just talking about Terah.
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Maybe he's just saying Terah was the idolater and Abram was never an idolater.
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I think from the text you can't make that argument.
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It simply says our fathers.
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It references Terah, it references Abram and Nahor, and it says, and they served other gods.
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But here's the thing.
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Why would it be impossible to imagine that God saved Abram out of idolatry? Why would it be hard for us to think that God could save him out of that? See, we don't want our faithful heroes to have any marks on their ledger, but they do.
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We don't want our heroes to have any sins, but they are sinners.
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And if Abram had bowed down to the moon god, if he had climbed the three-tiered ziggurat, which is in Haran, which is where they went to after they left Ur of the Chaldees, if he had climbed up there where they did human sacrifices, and he had cried out to the moon god, as shameful as that would be, God can still save him out of that.
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And in the same way, we have to be reminded by this.
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Let's go application for just a moment.
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God can save you and me as well.
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You may say, I grew up the son of a terrible person and he taught me all kinds of terrible things and we did all kinds of terrible things together.
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I was a drunk and I was a scoundrel and I was a hater of God.
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God can save you too.
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There is no idolatry.
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There is no sin that God's love and Christ's blood cannot cover.
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So, did Abram actively serve the moon god? We don't know.
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But we know his family was a family of idolaters.
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Joshua confirms that.
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The evidence supports that.
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And it reminds us that Abram, though he becomes a hero, certainly was not a perfect man from a perfect family, but rather a man used by God.
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So that's the observations that we see in the text.
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Now I want to look at some objections to the text.
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Because as you probably know, I have a particular inclination in my own heart towards apologetics and I love to study apologetics.
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I love to teach it.
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It's what we're teaching in the academy right now.
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It's one of my favorite courses to give.
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And anytime you're studying the Bible and you're looking at different parts of the Bible, you'll learn that skeptics attack everything.
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But sometimes they key in on very specific things.
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And this particular genealogy has been under the, as it were, the scrutinizing eye of many unbelievers for a long time.
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And I want to provide for you just the arguments that they make and then the answers, the response to those arguments.
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Now some of you may say, why even tell us? We're happy not knowing.
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No, you need to know.
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It's not good not to know.
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Because one day you may be sitting across the table from somebody who says, you know what? I have a hard time believing the Bible.
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There's contradictions in the Bible.
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There are no contradictions in the Scripture.
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And if you understand the laws of logic and you understand the law of non-contradiction and you understand what a contradiction actually is, you'll learn that there is not one single contradiction in the whole Bible.
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But there are claims.
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There's whole websites devoted to claiming biblical contradictions.
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And while the Word of God stands on its own and we simply can proclaim it to be true, there are times where we give an answer for the hope that is within us.
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And sometimes we give an answer for some of the arguments against the text.
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So what are the two arguments? Number one, the first argument is that there is a contradiction regarding Abraham's call and the contradiction, the argument of the contradiction basically is this.
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When Abraham was in Ur of the Chaldees, he went from there to Haran, according to this text.
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And by the way, Haran is not the name, it is the name of his brother, but it's a place as well.
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And the argument of the contradiction is that it's from there that he goes to Canaan.
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And yet later in the Bible, in several places, including in Nehemiah and in the book of Acts specifically, it says his call came in Ur.
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So the question is, so the argument is this.
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We're later told the call comes in Ur, but he doesn't go from Ur, he goes from Haran.
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So where was he when he got the call? Was he in Ur or was he in Haran? Nehemiah 7, or excuse me, Nehemiah 9, 7 says this.
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You are the Lord God, the God who chose Abraham and brought him up out of Ur of the Chaldees and gave him the name Abraham.
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So right there it seems to indicate that the call came from Ur.
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You go to Acts 7, Stephen is proclaiming the truth of Abraham.
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He says this.
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Brothers and fathers, hear me.
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The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran.
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So Stephen very clearly indicates that God appeared to Abraham before he went to Haran.
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So the question is, when did he get the call? Well, I think that's the answer.
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I think the answer is he did receive the call before he went to Haran.
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But then we come to the issue of, well, why did he go to Haran then? Why did he not go straight to Canaan? And why this seemingly interesting and odd interlude? Well, let's go back to Genesis and look at it.
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If you look at verse 31, it says, Terah, who's Terah? Terah is the father of Abram.
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Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son, Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan.
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But when they came to Haran, they settled there.
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So, this text seems to indicate that Terah's the one who wanted to go to Canaan.
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Is that the case? Well, this is one of those times where we have the Bible showing us God's means in bringing about His will.
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Because God's means in bringing about His will and getting Abraham where he wanted to go, by the way, I'll jump between Abram and Abraham sometimes just because of my brain, but getting Abram where he wanted to go, He uses the means, and one of the means that He uses is the father's desire to go.
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Did Abram receive a call to go? I believe he did.
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When did he receive it? I believe when he was in Ur of the Chaldeans.
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Could he receive a second call when he was in Haran? Possibly, but I don't see any evidence of necessity.
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It could be.
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Could not be.
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We don't know because it doesn't say.
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But what it does say is they all went, but they only went so far.
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Abram was called to go to Canaan, but instead of going to Canaan, they went and they stopped in Haran.
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Why did they stop in Haran? Because the text tells us Terah wouldn't go any further.
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They set out to go to Canaan, but Terah stopped them.
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Now, there's some argument that the reason why Terah stopped there was because Haran was actually a center for moon worship, and Terah didn't want to continue, but he wanted to stay where his people were.
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He wanted to stay and worship the moon god, and so Abram stays there until Terah dies, and then he goes.
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You say that sounds really odd.
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Yes, but it's not a contradiction.
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This is Abram honoring his father.
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He's going with his father, but he is not disobeying God.
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He's simply going as God has commanded him, perhaps by a route that we wouldn't have taken through Haran.
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So, is it a contradiction? No, it doesn't contradict the narrative.
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It doesn't contradict what we'll learn next week when we see Abram going into the land or being called to go into the land, but at the same time, Abram's obedience to the call of God is a centerpiece of biblical theology.
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If this were a contradiction, then it wouldn't have taken 6,000 years or 5,000 years to figure it out.
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There's no contradiction in this text as to the narrative.
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Terah goes with Abram, or you can say it the other way.
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Abram goes with Terah, but they only go as far as Haran, and then Terah died.
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So, is there a contradiction? No, there is not.
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The second one's a little harder, not harder to reconcile, but the second argument of the contradiction has to do with math, so it's hard for me.
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That was kind of a joke, but really not.
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I could invite Lori to come up here.
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She's a math teacher, and this is what the skeptics claim.
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The skeptics claim that Abram would have been 135 years old when he left Haran because in Acts 7, verse 4, it says he left after his father died.
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Now, again, I don't want to bore you with details, but these are important because here's what the argument is.
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If you look at Genesis 11, 26, what does it say? Terah had lived 70 years, and he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
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Right? Well, if you look at Genesis 12, and verse 4, it says, Abram went as the Lord told him, and Lot went with him.
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Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.
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What's 70 plus 75? I really don't know.
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145.
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Thank you.
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70 plus 75 is 145.
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But how old was Terah when he died? Look at verse 32.
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205 years.
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So the skeptic says there's 60 years missing.
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There's a 60-year gap that cannot be accounted for.
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But here's the answer, and it's really simple.
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If you look again, and please do look again with me at verse 26, it says when Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
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It doesn't say that he fathered them that year all at the same time.
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It says that when he was 70 years, he became a father, and the three sons were Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
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You say, well, that's the order.
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It went Abram first.
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Not necessarily, because if you go back to Noah's story, Japheth is mentioned first, and he's the youngest.
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Japheth, Ham, and Shem.
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It puts it in reverse order.
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So if we follow, as I showed you earlier, if we follow the pattern of the previous genealogy where the youngest son is mentioned first, then what is most likely the case, Haran was born when he was 70, Nahor was born at some unspecified time after, and Abram would have been born when Terah was 135 years old, which would have put 75 years later, I think, I'm doing the math right, put him leaving Terah's house after Terah died at Abraham's 75 years old.
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There's no contradiction.
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You just gotta learn how to read.
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And when I say read, you gotta learn how to read the whole thing.
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So it's simple.
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It's not hard.
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And you say, why'd you spend 20 minutes on that? Because I think it's important.
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You may not think it's important.
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I hope you do.
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But here's the thing.
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Skeptics will always try to attack the veracity of the Bible.
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But if you hold fast to the text, you will be vindicated because the text is the truth.
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The Bible says, sanctify them with your truth.
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Your word is truth.
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This is why I am a presuppositional apologist.
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That means when I give my defense of the Bible, I start with the Bible.
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And I trust in the Bible.
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Because this is the fountain of truth and the foundation of all of our knowledge.
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The Bible says the fear of God is the beginning of what? All knowledge.
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The person who doesn't believe in God, the person who doesn't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, his knowledge is on loan.
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Because he's borrowing from our worldview to get where he is.
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So third thing.
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And that's the objective.
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What's the objective of this whole text? What are we supposed to learn from all of this? Here it is.
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Very simple.
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God is actively preserving his elect people.
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God is actively preserving his elect people.
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He made a promise in Genesis 3.15.
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What was it? He said it to the serpent.
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There will come a seed of the woman who will do what? Who will crush your head.
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And this genealogy continues the story to the serpent head crusher.
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And it's pointing us.
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This is a bridge, if you will.
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This is a bridge to get us further along in the narrative.
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Moving forward from primeval history to patriarchal history where God will continue telling us how he plans to fulfill his promise.
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And the end of this genealogy ends with Abram.
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And that should be of no surprise to us.
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Because who is Abram? Outside of Jesus Christ, wouldn't you agree with me that Abram is one of the most important people in all of human history? I mean, honestly, couldn't you boil it down to just a few? Adam, Noah, Abram, Moses, David, and Jesus? It's interesting that we think about the covenants.
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That's the covenantal structure of the Bible.
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Right? We go from Adam to Noah.
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We go from Noah to Abram.
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We go from Abram to Moses.
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We go from Moses to David, and from David to Jesus.
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And so standing among them is Abram.
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And all of them would point to Abram as having a very high significant point.
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In fact, you probably know this already, but do you realize there are three monotheistic religions in the world? The three largest monotheistic religions, all three, monotheism means one God.
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The three largest monotheistic religions in the world is Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
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Christianity is the largest.
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Islam is the second largest.
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Judaism is the third.
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All three of them claim Abram as their ancestor.
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But don't let that, don't let you think for a moment that I'm saying they all serve the same God, because they don't.
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But they all claim Abram as their spiritual ancestor.
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Who holds true claim to Abram? Turn in your Bible, and we'll look at that as we close.
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Turn to John chapter 8.
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Who holds true claim to Abraham? Yes, he does, Dino.
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That's right.
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God holds claim to Abraham.
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Praise the Lord.
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Out of the mouths of babes.
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And in John chapter 8, Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees.
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Listen to what he says.
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Go to verse 37.
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We're going to begin reading here.
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It says, Jesus is speaking.
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He says, I know that you are offspring of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my words find no place in you.
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I speak of what I have seen with my father, and you do what you have heard from your father.
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They answered him, Abraham is our father.
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Jesus said to them, If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did.
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But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.
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This is not what Abraham did.
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You are doing the works your father did.
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They said to him, We were not born of sexual immorality.
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We have one father, even God.
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Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me.
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For I came from God, and I am here.
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I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.
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Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.
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You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.
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He was a murderer from the beginning, and had nothing to do with the truth because there is no truth in him.
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And when he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
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But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me.
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Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell you the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever it is of God hears the words of God.
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The reason why you do not hear them is because you are not of God.
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The Jews answered him, Are we not right in saying you are a Samaritan and have a demon? Jesus answered, I do not have a demon, but I honor my father, and you dishonor me.
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Yet I do not seek my own glory.
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There is one who seeks it, and he is the judge.
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Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.
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The Jews said to him, Now we know you have a demon.
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Abraham died, as did the prophets.
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Yet you say, if anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.
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Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died, and the prophets who died? Who do you make yourself out to be? Jesus answered, If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.
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It is the father who glorifies me, of whom you say he is our God.
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But you have not known him.
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I know him.
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And if I were to say to you that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him, and I keep his word.
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Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.
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He saw it and was glad.
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So the Jews said to him, You are not even fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham.
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Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.
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Abraham is claimed by Muslims, but their faith is not his.
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Abraham is claimed by modern Jews, but their faith is not his.
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Abraham, the man of faith, is only rightly claimed as an ancestor of those who have faith in Jesus Christ.
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Because Jesus himself said, Abraham looked forward to my day.
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He saw it and was glad.
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Who are the descendants of Abraham? Those who have faith in Jesus Christ.
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So where are you today? Are you in Christ or outside of Christ? Do you have faith in him or do you not? Do you stand before him as an object of his love? Or do you stand still, refusing to bow the knee to him as Lord? The Bible says, Whosoever believes in the Son has eternal life.
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We come into a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, which brings about faith and repentance.
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So if you are here today and you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, I want to pray for you.
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I want to pray that he would give you the gift of the Holy Spirit, whereby you would repent of sin and trust in his Son.
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And if you do know the Son, know this, it is in knowing the Son that you have life and you are the true sons of Abraham.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for your truth.
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I thank you for what we have learned in the first 11 chapters of Genesis and I look forward, Lord, as we move next week into the remainder of the book.
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Father, I pray that you would bless our time now as we move into the time of the Lord's Supper and receiving of the wonderful promise that Jesus has given to us through his body and blood.
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And Lord, if there are those again here who do not know you, I pray that today, even today, they might turn from sin and turn to him.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.