Welcome to our course in Introduction to Salvation History. This is lesson seven, our Father Abraham Part 1. As always, let's begin in prayer before we dive into the scriptures. The name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come by will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trust pass against us, and lead us not into temptation but to the rest from evil, Amen. And the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Okay, we're going to be spending this lesson, as well as next lesson discussing the patriarch Abraham. There's a lot to say. And even then we have to cover all of the highlights here for his life, but we want to begin a whole new period of phase, a stage, a chapter of Salvation History with the patriarchs. And it all begins with Abraham.
A last lesson, a last number of lessons we've been discussing, what many call the prime evil history period, where you have creation, the fall, you have the flood, the great flood, and then the Tower of Babel, Genesis chapters 1 through 11. Then here in Genesis 12, we begin a whole new phase on the patriarchs. And there's a very important segue, really, the Tower of Babel, as we discussed last lesson, is the transition into the call of Abraham. So really quickly, I want to do a recap on the narrative context of the Tower of Babel, because it flows in very, very nicely into why God calls Abraham at this particular point.
So very quickly, if you remember that the descendants of Ham, right, you've got the good line and the bad line. The bad line is Ham's descendants, and the good line is Shem's descendants. Well, the descendants of Ham ultimately end up congregating under the leadership of this dude Nimrod. I love his name Nimrod.
They build this tower that's supposed to reach into the heavens in Babel. They do not call upon the name of the Lord, which means they do not worship the one true God. They're not an obedience to God, but they want to make a name for themselves. Keep that in mind for this lesson as well.
Soon we're going to see a connection that's very powerful. They want to make a name for themselves, right? So therefore, they're united in rebellion against God, right, because they're trying to force entry into heaven. It's the epitome of hubris, right, trying to get into heaven without God and against God.
But it's also rebellion against Noah, his firstborn son Shem, who is the heir of what we call the Adamic blessing, right, the blessing and the promise of Adam that goes through the good line, right, Adam to Seth to Noah to Shem and so on and so forth, right? Well, they're all rebellion, rebellion against God and Shem trying to make a dynasty for themselves. And so God has to come down and scatter them, right? They need to scatter their efforts to break apart this desire to be unified in this rebellion sin and God has to stop that.
And so he confuses their speech, their language, and then they go and congregate across all the earth, right? All the various nations come from this, right? So God doesn't want this. God wants to rebuild the family of Adam, right?
The unity of the human family is important and sin is the thing that divides us, that scatters us, right? So God is going to want to reunify the human race and humanity in the new Adam, Jesus Christ, but that's going to take a long time. He needs to slowly, and he chooses, I should say, slowly rebuild the family of Adam so that way he can unify it all in the family of the new Adam, Jesus Christ. And the way he does that is to call Abraham.
So Genesis chapter 11 is the Tower of Babel and everything that we discussed in response to the Tower of Babel comes chapter 12, surprise, surprise, the call of Abraham. So that's why you see in Shem's genealogy at the end of chapter 11. He really serves as the segue between Babel and the call of Abraham. So we find here chapter 11 verse 27 through 32.
It talks about the descendants of Torah, who's a descendant of Shem, right? He's the father of Abraham. He's the father of Abraham, Nahor, and Huron. Huron was the father of Lot.
So this is the official entrance of Lot to the character Lot, Abraham's nephew. And then Huron died and then it says they go on, they leave from Ur of the Chaldeans. And then there's something really shocking. I have to point out quickly here in verse 30.
It says, all of a sudden, Sarai, Abraham's wife is barren. She had no child. And that's really shocking. You're the reader and you're reading a genealogy.
You're reading about how father had a son who had another son and so on and so forth down the line. So it's really shocking in a genealogy to all of a sudden read how Abraham's wife, Sarai, is barren because this is going to presumably be the end of the genealogy unless they had a son. And that is where the plot thickens. That's where the drama begins.
How is Abraham later Abraham? And if I end up using the names indiscriminately, as I'm talking, then you'll forgive me here. But at this point in the story, he's just Abraham. His name will be changed to Abraham later on.
We'll see that. But you've got an issue here. Is his line going to continue? How and when?
Where is he going to get a son? That's a great segue into the story of Abraham and who will become Abraham, right? So this whole transition between the problem of Babel since scattering humanity, God having to stop their evil designs. And then the call of Abraham is how we continue into our next stage of salvation history.
So I've got a couple of quotes here for you from the Catechism here in the notes. Catechism 59 says, in order to gather together scattered humanity, God calls Abraham from his country, his kindred, and his father's house and makes him Abraham. That is a father of a multitude of nations in you. All the nations of the earth shall be blessed.
It is in you, all the nations of the earth really will be reunited. We're brought back together again through the new Adam, Jesus Christ. And as we saw last time, it's going to begin to happen at Pentecost. Pentecost is the first moment when all nations will come and be reunited in the one family of God, the Catholic church, right?
So then paragraph 16, your notes goes on. The people descended from Abraham would be the trustees of the promise made to the patriarchs, the chosen people called to prepare for that day when God would gather all his children into the unity of the church. They would be the root unto which the Gentiles would be grafted once they came to believe. So this word promise, we're going to talk about that.
There's really a threefold promise that God is going to give Abraham when he calls him in the first verses of chapter 12. We're going to get there in just a second. And then you can see yet again as the catechism teaches, God wants to gather all his children into the unity of the church. All right.
That's the segue in the bridge from the primeval history period of chapters one through 11 into the patriarchs here. Genesis 12 through 50 as God begins to call his people. Right. So really quickly here are some biographical details about Abraham.
He lived roughly in the year 2000 BC, which is a great easy number, a year to remember. It's not like you have to remember, I don't know, 1852. He was going to remember that. So 2000 BC.
So 2000 BC is a good round number to talk about his life. His name means exalted father. Abraham means exalted father, which is really kind of humiliating for him because as we pointed out in the genealogy, Sarah is barren, right? So his name means exalted father, but he has no kid.
He has no son. So as he's going down to the pub or wherever, he's like, Hey, exalted father, how you doing it? It's like a sting in his side. Every single time someone calls his name, exalted father, it kind of hurts a little bit because he's still waiting for his son after all of these years.
Okay. He's a priest, very much like Adam and Noah. He is a priest who builds altars and performs sacrifices. He is explicitly called a prophet in Genesis 20 verse seven.
He's a chieftain of a large tribe. So we couldn't quite say he's a king, but kind of like a lowercase king, right? Or a king light, a light version of a king. So he's priest, prophet and chieftain.
He comes from the land of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia. That's approximately modern day Iraq. And Ur was a very important city. He had a powerful economy.
It was very, very influential. I had a towering ziggurat. You can even Google this today, which is kind of a nice interesting connection with the tower of Babel, which probably would have been a ziggurat, right? So Abram leaves this ziggurat.
Was the tower of Babel the ziggurat in Ur? We don't know that speculation, but it is kind of cool to see that connection. He leaves Ur. He's called from Ur to go and follow God.
So one important thing here in your notes, letter F, this is really crucial. And a lot of people miss this. But if you read Judith, chapter five, verses six through nine, we don't have time in our lesson today to do this, but it's in your notes. We get a detail that Abram and his father and his family would not worship the pagan gods.
They did not worship the pagan gods of the people that surrounded them. So therefore they were driven away from Ur to go to Huron. We're going to see this right now, actually, in the end of chapter 11. So they are faithful to the one true God, and that makes a lot of sense because of Noah, and then Shem, and the genealogy, right?
They call upon the name of the Lord, which is an expression of true proper worship. It makes total sense that Abram and his family do not worship the false pagan gods. They're persecuted for their faith, essentially, and then driven out. And that brings us to chapter 11, verse 31.
It says, Tarat took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Huron, his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, and his son, Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Calvians to go into the land of Canaan. But when they came to the city of Huron, it's a little bit confusing, there's a person in Huron, and then a city of Huron. When they came to the city, they settled there, right? And this is north of the promise, kind of northeast of the promise.
You can get an atlas, a really good atlas, like the home and Bible atlas, it's in your suggested reading. You can see these precisely where they are. But Abram's family stops there. And that is where we're picking up with chapter 12, verse 1, when God calls Abram to leave everything.
Okay? So let's reach chapter 12, verses 1 through 3. It says, Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred in your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you and him who curses you, I will curse. And by you, all the families of the earth shall bless themselves, or all nations will receive us. Worldwide blessing is another way to express it. You'll see this in some of the readings.
All nations will be blessed in Abram. All the families of the earth will bless themselves because of Abram and his faith. Okay? So this is important.
This is a threefold promise. You know, one mega promise, and of course that God gives to Abram, but there's really three parts to this. And later they're going to be elevated to the level of a covenant. So God makes a promise.
Think of that. I'm going to be a blessing that I kind of really like. The difference between a promise and a covenant in this respect is kind of like an engagement ring and a wedding ring. God promises I'm going to make of you, you know, a great nation and a great name and worldwide blessing here.
And then later on it's like, you know, a wedding ring, right? It's an oath, right? It's bound by blood, you know, all kinds of engagements can be broken off and they do happen. You know, engagements are broken off.
But a wedding is till death you part, right? There's a song. Oh, there. So I really kind of like that analogy.
So this is what God says, you know, we read it verse one. Hey, leave everything. Leave all that you know to a land that I will show you. Abram has no idea what he's expecting.
This is going to be a big act of faith. He can't go on to travel, or whatever these websites are. Nowadays, we can plan our trips and see some pictures and kind of anticipate what we're going to experience. Abram doesn't have all of that.
So he needs to go by faith. He needs to leave and journey by faith. And this is where God gives him this threefold promise. So let's look at each one of these promises one by one, give you the outline and then we're going to see later on in his story how each of them are raised to a level of a covenant, a covenant oath, a sworn oath.
All right. The first one here is that of a great nation. Now to be a nation, you have to have two things. You have to have people in Abram's case.
He's got to have descendants and he's got to have the land. So God says, look, I'm going to give you this land, the land that I will show you. I will give it to you. The land of Canaan, the promised land, we call it, but he still needs descendants, right?
So Abram needs an heir and from this heir is going to continue to be fruitful and multiply and he will have this great nation. That's crucial. So he's expecting two things, many descendants and the land that he is going to travel to. Now one thing that's interesting that you're going to read or hear from time to time is that this land of Canaan, it was originally meant for Shem and his descendants.
It was part of the birthright, it was part of the blessing that Noah gives to Shem and Ham tried to usurp. If you remember that story from a previous lesson here, Ham remember forced himself and his mother in order to try to take the authority, the power and the birthright and the blessing from his older brother. All right. So it was a power play.
Well, Ham's descendants, the Canaanites, go in and usurped that land that was meant for Shem's descendants, specifically now the Israelites, as we're going to see. So really what one of the reasons why God gives it, the land to Abram and his descendants is because it originally belonged to them. Now there are other reasons that we're going to talk about when we get to the period of the conquest of the promised land, we're going to discuss the complicated issue of how is it that the Israelites can take the land. So stick with me and we'll cover all of that stuff then.
But I want to point out right now that Ham's descendants probably usurped it here. In fact, they did usurp it when it was meant to go to Shem and his descendants. All right. So this promise of a great nation of the land and descendants will be upgraded to a covenant oath in chapter 15 when Abraham sacrifices some animals.
So there again, I made a mistake. It's Abram at this point in the story, but bear with me here. Okay. I'll do this all the time.
So chapter 15, the sacrifice of animals, that's when it's going to be upgraded and we'll see it. Now, when is this promise fulfilled? So if God makes three promises, which are later three oaths, he is going to be faithful, right? So when is he going to fulfill the oath of giving Abraham a great nation, descendants and land?
Well, that's going to be with the characters Moses and Joshua. Moses is going to lead the great nation of the Israelites out of Egypt and then Joshua will bring them into the promised land and conquer it and allot the territories to the Israelites. And we'll cover that much later on as well. Okay.
So the second promise here is that of a great name. So already if you're listening and paying attention, you should be a little alarm bells going off in your head because the word name was so important in the story of the story. The Tower of Babel, right? They want to make a name for themselves.
Those guys at Babel, right? And that's rebellion against God and shim here. They are trying to grasp at the blessing, seize it, take it for themselves. Well, it's really ironic here because what God says to Abraham is, look, obey me and I will make of you a great name.
I will make of you a great dynasty. Kings will come forth from you. You have only to be patient and to obey and to trust me. You don't need to be like the folks at Babel, seizing it for themselves.
Just trust me and I'll give it to you. This is a big theme in scripture. We saw it all the way back in Genesis. You remember when Satan says to Adam and Eve, hey, just take the fruit, take the fruit and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil.
But the ironic thing was they already created the image and likeness of God. All they needed to do was stick with God and they'll have the blessing. So there's kind of an echo of that going on right now and we're going to see it in many, many times in scripture in the future. Okay?
So I'll make of you a great name, meaning I'll make of you a great dynasty. Kings will come forth from you. And this promise is elevated to the level of a covenant oath in chapter 17 with a sacrifice of his own flesh in the institution of circumcision. So if I didn't say this, it's important, every covenant has a sacrifice as the shedding of blood.
Then we're going to see this progression take place in our story. So circumcision is the sacrifice that takes place in chapter 17, elevating the promise of a great name to an oath. And when is this fulfilled? When do we see kings come forth from Abraham's line?
Well, this is of course with the greats, David Solomon. Now we're going to see God establishes a covenant with David as well and his son Solomon in his whole line, right? The great dynasty, the Davidic dynasty that lasts even till this day, right? We'll talk about that in the New Testament.
So that's when it's fulfilled in the period of salvation history, the kings of David of David and Solomon and the rest are fulfilling this great oath. And number three, we have in you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves. You could think of it as worldwide blessing. That's how you're often going to read or hear it from other great speakers and teachers and scholars worldwide blessing.
Right. So the whole world was scattered torn apart, destroyed by sin and rebellion against God, starting with Eden and going all the way to the recent story of the Talmud, Babylon, everything in between, right with fratricide and all kinds of violence and sexual morality. The humanity is torn apart by sin. Well, now God is going to reverse that, as I said at the beginning of this lecture.
He's going to reverse it. And he's going to begin to call everyone back to himself through Abraham. All right. So that's important to keep in mind, by the way, God calls Israel in order to bless all nations.
A lot of people might think, especially anti-Christians, oh, you know, God is all about Israel. Only Israel isn't that just so one side. It doesn't. He love all the rest of the world.
Well, obviously he does, but he calls Israel as we're going to see in the Exodus story to be the first born son amongst all nations to bless all nations. We'll see all of that later. Okay. All right.
Now this promise is elevated to a covenant oath in chapter 22. Now with the willingness for him to sacrifice his own son Isaac. That's a beautiful story. We're actually going to see that in the next lecture, lecture eight.
All right. So this is the first verse that we've ever fulfilled when his God faithful to this oath, to bless all nations. Well, that is clearly in Jesus Christ has only begun son, right? And the church that he calls all nations into beginning with Pentecost.
All right. So great, great plot here. This is the, this really is the plot of the rest of scripture here. It sets the stages for the rest of the, for the rest of salvation history and how God is going to be faithful to these various.
Oh, this is Dr. Nick Levy, thank you so much for listening. If you'd like access to my complete courses, please visit www.scriptchurchintradition.com. God bless.