Abraham Catch Up

 Abram Catch Up

Read Genesis 11-19

Note:  Genesis chapters and verses are noted not linked.

The 11 am service will have the main story from chapter 20, so for now, I want to do a quick flyover of the 9 chapters about Abraham that we have covered so far.  Don’t miss the 11 am service as it will address what happened in chapter 20.  I will put a few questions in here for those who remember the story. Here we go…

Abram comes from the line of Shem one of Noah’s sons. 11:10-26

Abram’s family lived in the land of the Chaldeans.  This was pagan country. 11:27-28

Abram’s father was named Terah . 11:27

Here’s a question for you. Abram’s father, Terah, had three sons.  Two of them were Nahor and Haran.  What was the name of the third son? Abram.  11:27-32

Lot was Abram’s Nephew.  Haran was his father. Haran died while everyone was still living in Ur in the land of the Chaldeans.

Abram’s father took his family from Ur in the land of the Chaldeans and moved north to a place called Harran. 11:27-32.  Terah, Abram and his wife Sarai, and Terah’s grandson, Lot, made the journey. We don’t hear anything about Nahor.

While in Harran, God called Abram to leave Harran and his father’s household and go to a land that God would show him. This is what will come to be known as the Promised Land, but that’s yet to come at this point. 12:1-3

How old was Abram when he left his father’s household? He was 75 years old.  Imagine living at home until you were 75.  If mom keeps doing your laundry that might be a sweet deal. 12:4

What other male relative came with Abram? Lot.  We don’t see that God called Lot to go with Abram, but he went anyway and will be part of several stories in the chapters ahead. 12:4

Abram next went to Egypt.  Why? There was a great deal on an AirB&B—No, that’s not it.  There was a famine in the land.  Turn your biblical clocks ahead to the story of Joseph and think on that one for a while. 12:10

In Egypt, Abram tried to pass his wife off as his sister for his own safety. 12:10-20

Pharoah discovered the deception as a result of serious diseases inflicted on him.  He sent Abram and crew packing but with great wealth. That’s quite the trick.  You deceive the Pharoah and surely are not much of an ambassador for the one true God, but you make out like a bandit. 12:10-20

Now we come to a point where Lot and Abram went separate ways.  Both seemed to be successful and had many flocks and their servants were always fighting over who got what pastures.  So Abram said to Lot:  You go where you want and I will go somewhere else. Who settled in the land around Sodom and Gomorrah?  Lot did.  It was that greener pastures sort of thing. 13

Here’s a cool fact for you. Abram had an army.  How many men composed his army? There were 318 men in Abram’s army and they defeated 4 undefeated armies.  Why did Abram go to war?  Because Lot was captured and taken away by these armies as part of the spoils of war. 14:1-16

To whom did Abram make a tithe following his victory? The tithe was made to God but Melchizedek was the priest, and also the king of Salem, which you know better today as Jerusalem. 14:17-20

Following this meeting and blessing, to whom did Abram say he would take nothing from him? The king of Sodom. Abram somehow knew that this whole Sodom business was ugly and he wanted no ties with it.  He probably couldn’t figure out why his nephew still wanted to live there. 14:21-24

Abram had been in the land for a while and still didn’t have any kids. He was worried that his estate would go to Eliezer of Damascus because Abram was childless. 15:1-3

God told Abram that his heir would be of his own body.  Abram believed God and God counted his belief (faith) as righteousness. 15:6

How was the Promised Land defined in this covenant? God promised Abram many descendants and told Abram that they would reside in a land promised to them. What land?

When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” 15:17-20

I think he left out the gigabytes and terabytes and the smaller tribes of the megabytes and kilobytes.

What creative solution to this childlessness business did Sarai and Abram concoct? Sarai told her husband that he should do the deed with her maidservant and make a child.  He did and Hagar, Sarai’s servant, got pregnant.  Hagar started pressing her luck and there was animosity between her and Sarai.  Sarai came to Abram and told him it was all his fault. Abram told Sarai to do what she wanted with her servant.  She mistreated Hagar and she ran away. 16

What name was to be given to this child? Ishmael.16

Was this the child of the promise? No.  God will fulfill his promise.

Did God tell Hagar that she was on her own? No.  The angel sent her back to Sarai but promised to provide for her and her son. 16

How did the angel describe this child that was to come? A wild donkey of a man. 16:12

Was Abram circumcised? Not until chapter 17.  This was not a medical procedure.  It was a sign in the flesh between God and Abram and all his Abram’s household and all of Abram’s descendants.  The covenant was that God would make Abram the Father of Many Nations.

God did one more thing that was a sign of things to come in short order.  He gave Abram and Sarai new names, names appropriate for the Father of Many Nations and his wife.  They were Abraham and Sarah. 17

Three visitors came to see Abraham.  They were the Lord and 2 angels.  They said that Abraham and Sarah will have the promised child in about one year.  Sarah laughed.  God heard her.  She said that she didn’t laugh. God said, “Yes you did.”  Imagine getting into a back-and-forth about what you did or didn’t say with God. 18

The two angels headed towards Sodom and the Lord told Abraham that he would destroy the city and surrounding area because of its wickedness.  Abraham bargains with the Lord for the city, asking will you destroy the righteous along with the wicked.  Abraham asked the Lord if he would spare the city if there were 50 righteous men in it.  The Lord said for the sake of the 50, he would spare the city.  A negotiation of sorts ensues.  What about 45. OK.  What about 40. OK.  At the end of this dialogue, the Lord said if there were 10 righteous men in the city, he would spare it, and he left. 18

We might wonder why Abraham cared about Sodom.  When he met with the king, he didn’t want to have anything to do with him.  Why did he care?

We don’t know for sure, but it might be because Lot lived there, and he had a family now.

Little did Abraham know that God had already set in motion a rescue for Lot and his family, at least those who were willing to be rescued.

The short version of this story is that Sodom and Gomorrah and much of the surrounding area were toast.  Burning sulfur started raining down at sunrise.  On that day, the best part of waking up might have been Folgers in your cup because the rest of the day was nothing but destruction.

The two angels had rescued Lot and his wife, plus the two daughters that were unmarried and lived at home.  There may or may not have been other daughters that were married.  Genesis only tells us of the two.

During the night, the angels grabbed these 4 people and got them out of the city, then set them loose with instructions.  Run for the hills (actually the mountains) and don’t look back.  Both parts of this instruction were important.

Lot convinced the angels that he couldn’t survive in the mountains and they let him take shelter in a small town near the mountains which would be named Zoar, which means small town.

Lot’s wife ran away for a while but at some point, after dawn, she looked back and became a pillar of salt.  There is plenty of speculation on why she looked back and why she turned into salt, but from this chapter we just get the account.  She looked back and turned to salt. 19

Most people remember the story up to this point, but there is a little more.  Lot and his daughters moved to the mountains.  That was where the angels originally wanted to send them, but Lot thought Zoar would be better.  As it turned out, he was afraid to live there.

So, they moved to the mountains and lived in a cave.  Apparently, they had no neighbors.  The solitude might have been good for Lot, but the 2 young women felt it was the end of the world.  They had no prospects for husbands or for children.

They could do something about the second part, so on consecutive nights, they got dad drunk and had sex with him and conceived.  Apparently, Lot was oblivious to the process.  That must have been some wine!

The older daughter had a son and named him Moab and the younger had son and named him Ben-Ammi. 19:30-38

And that little soap opera brings us up to chapter 20 and a story that sounds a lot like one we heard before.

So, that is the 10,000-foot overview—a quick flyover of 9 chapters with the son of the promise and the testing of Abraham’s faith yet to come.

Keep on reading.

Amen.