Give me the thumbs up. Okay, there we go. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Good to see each one of you here today. And I am the Taos Tabernacle Choir today, which means you all have to sing big. We've got several of several out all week. And Brenda wasn't here this week because of the loss of her brother. And Brenda is the one that tells me, hey, you got to have rehearsal so we can sing Sunday. And it was Saturday night and I thought, well, we haven't done rehearsal yet. All I got is some songs, so I'm leading it. Which means you sing big. Okay? Especially since some of it I can only sing bass. And if all you have is the bass part, it's not a symphony. So let's put it together. How majestic is your name? Number 52 is the hymnal. The hymn number is the hymnal. There in front of your Lord our Lord. How majestic is your name in all the earth. Almost. I'm going to stop there because I want to get all this set right now. I'm ready. Stand together. Let's sing him number 52. How majestic is your name in holy earth. Hy majestic is your name in all the earth. Oh Lord, we praise Your name, we magnify your name prince of Babies. Finally, God. Oh, it got almighty. Enter over a few pages to number 661. Great is the Lord. Give number 61. Just by his power we truly trust in his love. Praise is the Lord he is faithful and true. Highest mercy he proves his love praise is the Lord and worthy of glory. Now lift up your voice, Lord. Great is the Lord, great is the Lord he is what Gray went through in mercy he proves we are loved. Great are you, Lord, and worthy of Lord. Amen. Let's bow for a word of prayer. Heaven to Father. Thank you for the greatness of the Lord, the majesty of the Lord. As we come here into this small and simple place, we're still in awe, dear Heavenly Father, at the wonder and the glory of our God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Savior. And so we come today and as is our prayer, Heavenly Father, that not only today but also the days of this week, the worship we give would be an encouragement to us. The study we give and to the Word and the insights that come from there would give us some insights even through the Spirit, working through these words all through the week. And we pray especially for each one of us. Dear Heavenly Father, the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart might be acceptable on the video. God, our rock and our redeemer, we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. You be seated. Ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for being here on this beautiful day as we gather here in the Lord and somewhere I left my bulletin down over here so I can come over here and get it and tell you all the good things happening. I suspect I could probably even do it without the bulletin, but just in case, here we go. And you see the goodness there that is happening. Fellowship supper. We're having TBA to be announced, but if I know you're coming, I'll send out a text. If you'd like to be on the text, it'll come tomorrow. The issue is tomorrow. I will be at Sam's and I'll see what's on sale. And that's what we're having on Wednesday night. But it'll be good, I'll promise you something meaty and hardy. How's that? We're having meaty and hardy supper on Wednesday night and you can bring something that would complement it. How's that? Yeah, figure out something that goes with anything. Bring it. Wednesday night, we'll have a good supper. 05:00 and the Bible study, the book of Hosea. That's been a fun one to go through here on Wednesday night. 06:00, right here in the room. And kids, is this science club this week? I put it on there, but I wasn't sure. Okay, science club after school on Tuesday. All the other activities that are on there as well. You all should come just to look at toddler tunes sometimes. It's fun. Three, four, five little two year olds singing and dancing on Tuesday mornings. If you're ever in the neighborhood, just stop and peek in the windows and watch as Madison does toddler tunes. It's a lot of fun in there. And thanks, Madison, for that good work. Again, put on your calendar November 13, which is coming up real quick. Two weeks from today, I think. It is, isn't it? Two weeks from today we'll have our Thanksgiving potluck lunch. We'll have turkey and we'll have ham, and you all will bring everything else. We will have a signup sheet by Wednesday because Madison is going to remind me, yes, we'll have a sign up sheet by Wednesday. Brenda, who normally reminds me of everything, has been out this week. Her brother passed away last Monday. The service was on Thursday, and she'll be back in this week. But nonetheless, we pray for her and we'll be glad to have her back. All the other activities that are there. You like the pastor's trip to the Holy Lands. January 31 is the day we leave. Ten days in eleven days. I guess if you count that travel day in Israel really is going to be a fascinating trip. I'm excited to go again after a two plus year little hiatus on traveling to Israel. And so if you're interested in that, I'll be happy to give you the details on that and see if we can go and have some fun together. Well, that is plenty for the announcements. Glad to have guests worshipping with us, as always. And let me see, let me look in my bag of tricks here and see what we've got going. Here. How about today? Evangelical Garbage by Randy White. There you go. And that'll be the gift for today if you introduce yourself. And we'll start with John over here. He's been here before. John right behind. I'm glad you're here today. Thank you. Now, I know I didn't give you all this book. Did I give you this book last time or was it something else? You don't remember this one, so it must not be this one. Okay, I rotate. And since you were all were here within the last few months, I thought, well, I don't want to give the same gift. And I know I didn't give it to you all because I just wrote it this year, so it's a fairly new one. I'll give those to you in just a moment. Good to see again, everybody. Here today as we worship the Lord, we'll have good time together, both in music, making a joyful noise unto the Lord and in preaching as we're going to look in a little bit into Genesis, the 15th chapter, and learn a little bit more about the life and times of Abraham Abram as we'll see him today and all the good activities this week. Why don't you stand and greet someone, say hello to them, and we will join back in worship here in just a moment. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, why don't you take your hymnal now and turn to hymn number 336. Come, Thou Almighty King help us Thy praise help us Thy name to sing I'll get it here and that's exactly what we're praying. Help us Thy name to sing we need the Lord's self here. I need the Lord's self let's stand together him number 336. Come. Thou Almighty King. Come how old my heighty king help us my name to see help us to praise father all glorious Lord all victorious come and reign over us ancient less and give Thy word success spirit of holiness on us peace in and on the last to the great one in three the higher praises me in several more thy sovereign majesty may we in glory and to eternity love and and then turn back a few pages to Him. Number 612. Face to face with Christ my Savior face to face what will it be when with rapture I behold Him jesus Christ to die for me face to face I shall behold Him far beyond the starry sky face to face and all his glory I shall see Him by and blind to the last face to face a little moment face to face to see Him know face to face with my redeemer Jesus Christ who loves me so pace to face I shall be home far beyond the starries won't that be a good day? When with rapture I behold Him do you know, this is a strange thing because there's a lot of Christians, and especially in the days that hymns were written. There are a lot of Christians, believers, preachers, theologians who believed in a pretribulational Rapture like I do. And yet there are very few songs that talk about rapture. This is one of them. When in Rapture, I behold him and talking about how now we just see him dimly, but then face to face. That'll be a good day, won't it? On that day, maybe today. Leave the crockpot on. Let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for the wonderful encouragements and the promises we have in scripture. And it is our prayer, dear Heavenly Father, that as we look forward to that blessed time of the Rapture, that we would be faithful in the meantime, working and living and being faithful and looking forward to the Lord's return and sharing a witness of Jesus Christ all through. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated. We'll have a time of offering now, and you notice on your bulletin we have our Missionaries of the Month. This wonderful little couple right here, the Eric and Rebecca Elrod and their three children, Olivia, Emilya and Elliott are pictured there, their newest Elliott. They live and work in India and our missionaries there. Eric has been here in our church before, once in person and once he preached online in my absence at one point. They are our Missionaries of the month. So if you give back there in the box march missions that will go to the Elrods this month, if you give on march, of course, it goes to the ministry of our church. We won't pass a plate, but there is the box back there. You can either go during this time or later on at any time, but let's have a little word of offering. I tell you what, name that tune. Here we go. I happen to have this right here. Whoever can name the tune gets Paul's Epistle to the Romans, graphically presented this wonderful full color outline of the book of Romans written by yours truly. You get but Only if you can name that tomb. This one has a value of $17.95, ladies and gentlemen, if you can name that tune during this office. Let's see what we can do here. Thank you. Music video. And do we have a winner. Can anyone name that too? It's pretty. That's not the name of it, but it's pretty. Nobody? I had a feeling I was kind of safe on my book. Some of you will know it when I say the name of it. That is, he didn't throw away the clay. He didn't throw the clay away I believe he didn't throw the clay it's an old Southern gospel song. You should know it in Oklahoma, right? Yeah. Now that I say it, bing. You can hear that he didn't throw the clay away. Or he didn't throw away, which I should get that correct here. He didn't throw the clay away. That's what it is. He didn't throw the clay away. You all look it up. You can go online, I'm sure, and get that. But as you do, you can bemoan the fact that you did not get a free copy of Romans graphically presented. But we do come today to Genesis, the 15th chapter in our journey, five weeks now in this journey of the life and times of Abraham. And before we get into Genesis, chapter 15, I do want to give just a little bit of context to help pull in what we've got, because some of chapter 15, no surprise, will relate to what is in chapter 14. And we looked at chapter 14 last week. You may remember that there was a battle of four kings versus five kings. The four kings, this one's difficult to say because both sides were kind of the bad guy, but one side was kind of the bad or bad guy. How's that? You got the worse and you got the bad. You got the bad and the worst. Okay, the four kings were the worst. They were the really bad guys. They came from Mesopotamia, which is where Babel is from. And in fact, the very first one that was mentioned in chapter 14, verse one was Amrafell, King of Chenar. Cheinar is the place where the Tower of Babel was built. This emrafell, I think, is really key to the story. It's the reason that right out of the bat on chapter 14, you have this introduction of Amrafell, king of Chenar, and the other four kings that come along with him, and they come against five kings. These five kings are kings of the Jordanian valley or the Jordanian plain. Now, at that time, later on, of course, I know. And even today, if we were to go to the Jordan Valley, maybe January 31 or so, and if we were to go to the Jordan Valley, we would think of all of the things biblical that took place in the Jordan Valley, like crossing the Jordan River and Jesus's baptism and the Jordan and John the Baptist and all those things. Well, at this point, the Jordan Valley, you remember, and we're talking especially the southern Jordan Valley was a place I would say very different than it is today. And it's a place that did not have any biblical significance to it yet. Of course, we're only in Genesis, chapter 15, none of that has happened. And all of the kings this is well before Abram has inherited any land, so none of it is given unto the children of Israel yet. And all those Jordanian kings are not guys that you would want to invite to your Sunday school picnic, but in this case, they're the oppressed. And so five kings of the Jordan Valley. And the most famous of those kings are the king of Sodom and the king of Gomorrah. Of course, we know what's going to happen to Sodom and Gomorrah later, after this story. So you've got basically the king of Babylon going against the king of Sodom. Who are you supposed to root for? Yeah, neither. You're right. The only reason we're rooting for Sodom, the king of Sodom, is because our buddy Lot lives there. Remember, nephew, lot is down in Sodom. And so that's probably really the only reason the story is even included. No, I take that back. Erase that sentence off the record. There's more reason that it was included, but one of the main reasons it's in the story is lot is down there. So here come the four kings. They are against the five kings. The five kings have been paying tribute to the four kings, but they quit paying tribute to the four kings. The four kings come to say, you're going to keep paying tribute or we're going to wipe you out. Well, it goes round the lab out a little bit. You can go back to last week's sermon to see that. But eventually the five kings of the Jordan valley succumbed to the four kings of Babylon. And along with that, Lot and his wife and his family and all of his possessions get taken by, specifically, Am Rafael, king of China, the Babylonians, take it well. This is where Abram comes into the story. Abram, who's been keeping a close eye on Lot, says, I can't just allow this to go on unchecked. And so he calls 318 of his trained fighting men, and those 318 men go up against these victorious kings, and they win. What a turn of events. The 318 guys can defeat these kingdoms here, and they do. And in defeating those, then they take care of once and for all the enemy, I think, is it the marines that say it's God's role to judge and our role to set the appointment. Get that? Joel looked at me like, I'm not sure what he's talking about. But anyway, Abraham set the appointment for Amriifelle to go before the judgment seat. Now. We speculated last week. And in a previous sermon on 30 amazing Bible stories you may not know. I fleshed this out a little more that Amrafell very well may be the same guy who built the tower of Babel. Nimrod. That he's going by a title here. King Ammerfeld. But it's actually Nimrod. King of Cheynar. The guy that built the tower Babel and did. Of course. So much that was evil in all of this. It's a speculation. The text doesn't completely say, but it does say something interesting, and that is that as soon as this battle was over, all of a sudden we've had four kings. We added five kings. Now we've got nine kings. And in comes a 10th king, Melchizedek, king of Salem, out of nowhere, here he is. And he brings bread and wine and says, I'm a priest of the most high god. And Abram gives him a tithe of everything, and the priest of the most high. God says, Abrams on my side. Abram goes from that place and says, I'm on his side. And this strange little occurrence, parenthetical occurrence, takes place. And then the King of Sodom, who's now been set free, says, hey, you can have all your stuff. And Abram basically says, hey, I'm with Melchizedek, I don't need your stuff. I'm with the king, with God most High, the possessor of heaven on earth, I won't even take a shoelatchet from you. And that's the end of the story. But we pick up this week in Chapter 15, and in Chapter 15 we see what almost seems to be disconnected, but I think actually it becomes very connected through it all. And we put this together. But before I get there, let me give you some artwork. Here is Nimrod by our friend Gustav. Dort remember him? We've had some of his artwork before. He always did. I don't know what you call that pencil work. Let's call it that's not the proper term, but did this pencil work? Here this, by the way, remember Gustav Dora? He impresses me every time because he did like one hundred and fifty zero of these before he died at age like 54. And he illustrated the Bible. And when he was done illustrating the Bible, he illustrated Dante's trilogy, the Inferno, the Purgatory, the paradise. And this happens to be an illustration from Dante's Inferno. I don't know if you remember or not, but in Dante's Inferno I know I'm speaking to people who are well heeled and so you probably do remember, but in Dante's Inferno there were a couple of guys, and I'll leave it to you to put in their name, that were given a tour of hell and they kind of went down in the various levels of hell. It was Dante's idea of what hell would be like, but they came to a particular level. And guess who they met? Nimrod down there in the Inferno, and he is chained up, as you can see here, and there's a horn around his neck. Had something to do the poem or part of the Inferno here down at the bottom. I tell you what, I can't read it all because it's a little no, I think I can read it. I like the first two lines anyway. Seed idiotic. There it is. Here's the seed idiotic, keep to thy horn and visit thyself with that. Now you got to hit the whole poem to get it. But the point is, here's our guy Nimrod as Gustav Doray and Dante. Picture him after the battle with Abrams, 318 men with that, let's pick up in Genesis, Chapter 15 and we have the beginning ideas. And there is this response from God. Now, again, so that you don't forget it, had a battle, the sort of good guy's lost. Abram comes and saves the day. Melchizedek strangely comes and blesses and honors him. Abram now seems to stand independence, says, I don't want I don't need any of your stuff. And this is where we pick up in Genesis, chapter 15, verse one, it says, after these things the word of the Lord came unto abram in a vision, saying, fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. Now, I don't know about you, but I would be kind of thrilled if the Lord showed up in a vision and gave that kind of word to me. Fear not, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. This sounds a little bit to me, if I can echo the New Testament a little bit prematurely, it sounds a little bit to me like God saying to Abram, well done, good and faithful servant. I like this work that you have done. Now, in bringing all that together, let me pick on these first words of verse, chapter 15 that we may kind of just take as part of the narration in chapter 15, verse one, where it says, after these things the word of the Lord came to abram in a vision I would want to emphasize and not skip after these things. Now again, that could just be very rudimentary next and we move on to another story. But I think those words a little more are connecting this chapter with the previous chapter, just in case we forget to connect it. In our mind, saying what you are about to see relates to what you have seen, that chapters 14 and 15 really do come together as a whole. And we put this after these things. Now the reason I say that is because you didn't have to say after these things. If we took those words out and just read chapter 14 and chapter 15, and then we took a quiz on it and said, which came first, the battle or the vision from God? Well, the battle came first and after these things we could do it without the words, right? So when you don't have to have those words, I sort of dig in and want to say, okay, well, why did the Lord inspire those words after these things? I think my own personal interpretation is to take that and say, okay, chapter 15 is very logically connected to chapters 14. Now what is this connection that is here? But let me stop right there. I suspect if you open up a commentary off the shelf on chapter 15 of Genesis, it is not going to mention any kind of connection with the Battle of the Five Kings. And the battle of the Four Kings. It's simply going to move on and eventually it will get to and spend most of its time on verse six, which we're not even going to get to today. Verse six, Abraham believed and it was credited unto him as righteousness. Now we're going to go through verse five today, but the commentaries wouldn't speak about it. The preachers wouldn't speak about it. If you went online and found a sermon on Genesis 15, they wouldn't say, okay, this is built upon chapter 14. And here I am already I've spent, what, a minute and a half already emphasizing that this goes with chapter 14. It was a minute and a half, right, that this goes with chapter 14. Why the emphasis? Well, something else unique happens. It says, after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Ah. Remember that we let scripture interpret Scripture, and doing so, we always look back in scripture to read that which has already happened. Well, if you're reading really meticulously and closely and persnickety, you realize the Lord has never spoken a vision before. He's spoken before, certainly, but now he comes to abram in a vision. Now, I don't know what all to add to that. Does this mean he was asleep or what happened? It doesn't appear because the Lord is going to talk to Him directly and Abraham is going to talk to the Lord. But is this all taking place in his mind, in a dream, in a subconscious, or what does it mean? The only thing I can add to that is it's almost the difference of going from just having the radio to then having the television. Now I have a vision of what took place. Now, you could have a great communication in just a radio, right? You could have a great drama in a radio, but you have to paint a picture so much more in word only than just showing it here. I think there's something here that God really kind of says, hey, Abram, I want new and improved communication. I want to step this up a level here. You've been hearing my voice. Now I want to actually show you that, which I'm going to show you. I want you to kind of be immersed in the experience. You've been to one of those 3D theaters, haven't you, where they poke in the back and spit water at you and tilt your chair and all that kind of stuff. It's an immersive experience, right? And the vision has to be so much, even if it's a dream, this is the first time someone has woken up and said, whoa, I was right there in the presence of God talking to Him. So this is a new thing. Okay, so we got two things going on here. After these things, God spoke to Him in a new and improved manner. Could it be that my speculation was right, that Nimrod the great enemy of God? There has never been a greater human enemy of God on Earth up to this point at least other than Nimrod. Could it be that Abram schedules the appointment for the justice to take place and God says, I tell you what I'm going to do. First of all, I'm going to send this mysterious guy Melchizedek, who I think God would say is my son, the preincarnate Jesus Christ. I'm sending him to have his first, if you will, on Earth encounter of Jesus Christ. And then after that takes place, I am going to talk to Abram, in fact, to mankind, to any man in a manner which is more effective and immersive than any way I've ever talked before. There's something behind this that if it's not that, it's something else. But there's certainly something behind this in which God is given a big thumbs up on this whole thing here. And so he comes to Abram and he does give this big thumbs up. As the word of the Lord comes, so the Son of God, God the Son, has shown up. Now, God the Father, shows up in this vision and he brings this out. That the first time we have it. Now, the word of the Lord has come before again. But now the word of the Lord came to him in a vision, and he says to him three things. First of all, he says, Fear not. We're going to pick up on that in just a moment. But it gives them really two blessings that are unbelievably great blessings. I am thy shield and I am thy exceeding great reward. Now, I don't know that we have to pause all that out. I think that you and I would just kind of agree. I can't think of a better gift that God could give there. Right. I am your shield, and I am your exceeding great reward. This is a good thing to have right here. God is my shield, and God is my exceeding great reward. Can it get any better than this? Probably not. Now, is it too much? I don't think so. Is it too much to say all of this was after these things? All of this is connected to Chapter 14, which means all of this is connected to the death of Amarifell or, as we suspect, the death of Nimrod. Now, obviously here today, I have not built the case that Amrafell is Nimrod. For that, you have to go back to other stuff. That's an old sermon a long time ago where I did the whole sermon on it. But I think you can make a case that will, as I often say, you'll be able to convince the ladies and gentlemen of the jury. In a civil case I don't know if you can do it in a criminal case where the standards are a little higher, but in a civil case, all the circumstances point to this is Nimrod right here. Now, with that God comes immediate response. The immediate response turns out to be very good. And then we go on verses one through three. We're going to pick up on Fear Not. And then we're going to pick up on verses two and three. And here we have a picture of Isaac's servant placing a bracelet on Rebecca. This was done by Benjamin West, who died in. 1820. So it was sometime before 1820. Benjamin west is an American artist who painted a number of very famous pictures. If you've ever seen the famous picture of Benjamin Franklin with his kite and the electricity and gathering the electricity that came from Benjamin West, a lot of colonial art came from him, but he also did a lot of religious art. And here we have a picture of Isaac's servant placing a bracelet on Rebecca. Now, Rebecca in fact, Isaac is not even a glimmer in anyone's eye yet, and certainly not Rebecca, who would come later. So why did I choose a picture of Isaac's servant? Does anyone remember the name of Isaac's servant? And I was going to give away a Ford F 150. That would be Eliezar. So here we have a picture of Eliezar of Damascus, and that is going to come up as we get into verses two and three. And so the lord appears to him in vision, saying, fear not. That's verse one. Fear not. We're going to hit that in just a moment. I'm your shield. I am your exceeding great reward. And then in verse two, Abrams said, lord God, what will thou give me? Saying, I go childless. And the steward of my house is leasar of Damascus. And Abram said, behold to me, thou hast given no seed. Lo, one born in my house is mine heir. Okay, let's pull that apart just a little bit. Remember, and especially by the time we get to verse six, abraham believed it was credited unto him his righteousness. Abraham, I would say, is the hero of the faith, or the hero of faith. If we decided we wanted to commission an art of the great heroes of the faith and said, okay, who do you think we ought to include? Nimrod? Anybody for nimrod. No. Definitely Abraham would come up very high on the list, if not, first on the list here is a man of faith. We got to include Abraham. So here he comes, and he's pictured but this great hero of the faith. I want you to notice when God decides to give new and improved kind of communication, the very first thing he says is, fear not. Now, that might be just because you and I would probably be kind of afraid when God showed up in a vision, right? I mean, fear would probably be the natural response. So, I don't know. I suppose it's like if you were to walk into the presence of someone of great strength and power and might and dignity and fame and all that kind of stuff, and you were to say, oh, yes, your highness, your supremacy, you're excellent, I don't know what. And you began to get a little bum fuzzled because of the greatness of the one before you. The one might say, come on, man, I put my pants on the same way as you do. Maybe it's that kind of introduction, but it does come up a number of times. I don't know. Did I put the count on there? I didn't. It comes up quite a few times. The fear not in the Bible, you can look up that phrase and find it quite a few times. Normally it's when God shows up. Fear not is the word he gives. But if you look at all those contexts, you find that they were always afraid. So that was a pretty good thing to say. So can we just kind of assume here that even on top of God just showed up right here, I'm afraid. Let's just kind of assume he was already afraid before God showed up. Now you might say, how in the world can he be afraid? He just had 318 of his trained men go out and they took care of business with those five kings and he is the undisputed champion of the ring. The problem is revenge. And could it be that Abram is saying, well, now I got to find, how do you do? Because now those who survived went home to Babylon mad and it won't be long until they send more troops, bigger troops. They're going to be after me. Maybe Abraham really was afraid. I think I would kind of be. Have you ever bit off more than you could chew accidentally? You didn't really plan to, but circumstances work that way. You did what you had to do. You did what anyone would have done. And then, sure enough, boom. And now you're like, oh, my goodness, what have I done? How did I get myself here? So God comes again in 15, chapter one, and he says, Fear not. Let's just suppose that this great hero of the faith was afraid. And then in verse two, Abrams said, kind of catch this a little bit before I tell you that I've reminded you many times that it is a little bit dangerous to assume someone's attitude when all you have is text. We have messed up on that a thousand times, right? But you can sometimes kind of read a person's attitude from the things that they write. And here we only have the written we don't have the audio, but in the written record of what Abram said in verse two, lord God, what will thou give me? Can I stop right there? I am your exceeding great reward. What are you going to give me? What can you give me? It's a little bit of an unexpected response anyway, wouldn't you say? What will you give me? What will thou give me? Seeing I go childless, it almost is as if, and I think it would be fair again to read this here, it's almost as if Abrams saying, yeah, last time you promised me something. That's been years now and I still don't have a child. You promised me a child. Why should I take your word now? It's a pretty bold way to approach God, who appears to you in a vision, right? Especially when you're afraid. But sometimes when you're afraid, you do get overly confident, overly boisterous. Maybe. This is what's going on in Abram as he gives this. Okay, what will thou get me? Seeing I go childless? I'm interpreting that as you promised me a lot last time and you really haven't come through. I'm supposed to have this great nation and I don't even have a child. In fact, it goes on to say, the steward of my house is Eliasar of Damascus. Now, again, a little dangerous to read the attitude in here, but it kind of looks to me like he's saying, best I can do is Leazar of Damascus, which is sort of throwing Leasar a little under the bus, you know, I don't want him to be inherit everything I've got. Elias are of Damascus. You gotta be kidding. And yet, this is kind of what I read here. It's kind of like the governor's race in New Mexico. I have a feeling all weathermen will vote for Mark Ron Kitty. And the only reason I say that is because all the ads against him are he's just a weatherman. I'm thinking every meteorologist in the world has just lost your vote there. I mean, what if just a weatherman. But anyway, that's just for your pure enjoyment. Moving on, we see here. This I don't know. Again, this attitude that he's got. I tell you what. Let me see if I can pull up the scripture here on Bibliphy, created right here in town of Mexico by Nathan. Let's go to Genesis 15. I think I can do this where you can see it. Let's see. I'm going to push the S there, which is for strong's concordance. And then I'm going to push the I, which is for interlinear. Okay, I think you can sort of see this. Let's go over here to verse two. This is the word I want you to see right here. It's in blue, which is a little hard for you to see here maybe, but Abraham said that word right there. You read Hebrew? That way. It's amar. Amar. It's a simple word. Said abraham said. As a matter of fact, I think we can hover over it. And amar to say, okay, that's what it means. Abraham said. Now, that's in verse two. I want to jump down right here. Abraham said amar. You've got it right there again. Okay, so literally, what it says is amar, abram. Abram. Said amar, abram, amar, abram. Now, normally what you would have in the Bible, there's a little pattern that comes up here. The Bible often says, let's say he said, she said, he amar, blah, blah, blah, she amar, blah, blah, blah, he amar, she amar, he amar, she amar. And that particular word amar is used all through the scripture to go from one person to the next. Now, if, let's say, Abram says something, we're not going to see Amar again until the other person in the party, in this case, it's the Lord. When the Lord says something, then we'll see him r. So Abram said, duh, duh, duh. The Lord said, dah dah dah. That's the pattern we expect to see. Okay, that's fairly simple, right? But here, notice it says, An Abram said and then the very next verse, an Abram said, well, the truth is that I already knew that Abrams talking. Lord, what would I give me saying I'm childless, the steward of the house is Eliasar of Damascus. And Abram said, behold, thou hast given me no seed, and lo, one born in my house is mine heir. Seems to be kind of the same thing. Well, what's going on here is that, again, there's this pattern in the scripture that when there is a repetition of Amar and it's the same person, you should read into that a pause, a contemplation, a silence from the other part. Now, let's look at it this way. I don't know, this might help if you would put yourself when you are, I don't know, 13 years old. 13 years old with your mom and your dad. Son, I'm going to give you everything I've got. Well, you ain't never given me anything. And the response is you feeling it like you were 13. A silent response that says from mom or dad. Do you really want to say it that way? You want to stick with that statement? They don't have to speak it at all. But there's a pause there. The Lord doesn't say anything. So again, we pick up chapter 15, verse two. Lord God, what will thou give me saying I'm childless, a steward of my house is Elias armed Damascus. Behold, thou has given me no seed, and low one from my own house is mine heir. A little bit different attitude in verse three, from verse four. Now, again, are we reading between the lines too much? We're definitely reading between the lines, but there definitely is this repetition and definitely we can see sort of this is the first of the pattern of repeating the same guy said and having a little pause in there. But we're going to see more of that here in just a moment. And so it looks like God gives a pause and allows for a little bit of a modified response. And that modified response comes in after that silence of God. Now, put all this together. And what I want us to see in the life and times of Abraham is that this great hero of the faith kind of seems to be one who is growing in his understanding and his walk with God. Things are changing over time, and we're kind of watching it change over time. Remember back a few sermons ago when he first went into the promised Land and he shows up at Bethel and builds an altar there. God speaks to him and the first thing he does is move on and he just keeps moving and he doesn't doesn't stop. And he ends up down in Egypt, you know, and we were saying, Abram, you overshot it, you walked right through it, you missed it. And lo and behold, the next thing that happens is he starts walking back and he ends up back at Bethel where God had showed up. It looks like Abram has this kind of relationship with God, maybe not unlike ours, in which he is a little bit shooting in the dark. I'm trying to figure this out as we go. I'm trying to do the right thing. The great man of faith not always getting it right. The great man of faith. Now even he carries out this work against Nimrod as we take it and yet not even sure he knew exactly all the implications. All he knew is, what can I do? I'm between a rock and a hard place. And then he grows. He has this experience with the pre incarnate Christ. Now he grows. He has this experience with Almighty God who says, I am your great you're exceeding great reward. I'm going to talk to you now in this new way. You don't need to be afraid. You can set aside that fear that you're caring as any normal man would. And then Abram sort of gripes and groans a little bit and then he says, I'll change that just a little bit just to a statement of facts. I don't have a child. I don't have a child. What am I supposed to do in relation to this particular promise? I don't have a child. Doesn't that sound kind of like you and me and our relationship to God a little bit? That we sort of trip a few times, we stumble a few times, we mess up a few times, we get onto God a few times and then we listen to his silence a few times and then we come back and say, let me rethink this. I'd like to go a different way. One of the reasons I point this out is again, because we do have Abram pictured as this icon of faith and yet when you really look at it, maybe in his walk with God, he's not so much different than you and I are. Maybe he does struggle with some of these things. Let's go on to verses four and five in which the Lord is now going to speak. And here we have a picture. This is not old art, this is new art. This came from the James Webb telescope and it's the picture of they actually call this either the fingers or the hand of creation. And up in the sky, south in the Milky Way and the brown stuff, there is actually some gases that come as I don't know if you read the scientists from newly birthed stars and the gases that explode from that and you see it but the shape that it has is kind of a hand out there. And so it's the hand of creation is the idea that they have given us as if there was a hand of creation. But it's a nice picture of the stars from the James Webb telescope, better than we've ever seen it before. I think this thing only was the hand or fingers of creation we're only discovered first of all in the 1970s and then the Hubble telescope got it better. And now you got these visions, pictures that come from the James Webb telescope that actually has to do with what we're about to see. And let's go to chapter 15, verse four. Behold, the word of the Lord came unto him saying, this shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. A little reminder. We're not talking Leasar of Damascus, Abram, he's not going to be your heir. But Abram is saying, he's all I got. I could die today. I've lived a good life and I don't have an heir. And so the Lord comes again and reassures him. But I want you to notice something in verse four. In fact, let's just pull the scripture up here again so that I can point it out. In verse four. In fact, I want to point out that word right there. So the word of the Lord came unto him notice that came is italicized which you've been here long enough to know that means that it's not actually a translation of any word. There is no underlying Hebrew word there, it's just given because the translators needed to get from Hebrew to English and we didn't have a way to say that without inserting some word. And the problem here is there is no verb we can't have. Do you feel like you're 13 again, you can't have a sentence without a verb. Grammar requires a verb, so we have to stick in a verb. But Hebrew doesn't necessarily have to stick in that verb. Again, what it literally says is the word of the Lord unto him saying now, the interesting thing about this is that Hebrew scholars would argue that the form of the Hebrew here actually means the word of the Lord had already back there came to him that this is not part of the conversation, this is not the Lord's response. And if it is, it's a reminder of a response to say, hey, don't you remember that I said, he that shall come forth out of thine own bow shall be thine heir. So in a sense, whether the Lord is saying it right then and right there in verse five or whether he had previously said it before, I think that the truth is certainly there. In fact, let's back up just a little bit. Genesis, chapter twelve, verse verse seven says the Lord appeared unto Abram and said, unto thy seed will I give this land. Okay, that was pretty plain in chapter twelve, wasn't it? You could also go to chapter 13, verse five and 13, verse 15, not verse 515. And the land which I give, which thou seest to thee, I will give it, and to thy seed forever. So we pick back up in chapter 15, verse four. The word of the Lord came, or reminded him, or already had come, and said to him, we're not talking leasar. This shall not be thine heir. He that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine. And then you have that famous concept in verse five. And he the Lord brought him abram. The Lord brought abram forth abroad and said, look now toward heaven and tell the stars if thou be able to number them. He said unto him, so shall thy seed be. Go look at the stars and tell them is the word. Look now toward the stars and tell the stars if they'll be able to number them. Now, when we use the word tell, we think of tell the stars. I'm telling you, okay, that's not the way the Hebrew word means count. And the English word, you say, well, why did they pick the wrong English word, right? They say tell when they mean count. Because if you look up in 1611, the word tell often meant count. And that was the meaning of the word tell. So you can just take that as count. Now, again, some people would come and say we should update and not use old archaic words that we don't use it that way anymore. I kind of disagree. I think that we should take young, bright children like this and teach them languages change. And because language change, you have to go back to that time and see what it meant in that time. That'll help you in a lot of ways, not even just reading the Bible, but it helps you in a lot of ways through life to say, okay, let me go back and see what exactly that means. My mother used to say when she was exasperated she was a Baptist preacher's wife and so she could not cuss. But when she was exasperated, she would say, by all means. Did your mother ever say that? By all means? I haven't heard that in a long time. I haven't even heard my mother say that in a long time. But I do remember one time, I probably was about 3rd, 4th grade. I remember after she did that, by all means, I said, what does viol mean? What? Vial. Vial means I always thought she was saying viol. I didn't know what viol meant. So she explained it to me a little bit and by all means, I'm about to kick you out of this house. Now, how did that go? They're phrases we used in the past. We had to go back and look up those phrases. We had to learn. Well, tell is one of these tell. Where are we? Look now toward heaven. Tell the stars if they'll be able to number them. Okay. By the way, tell is not just count, it's actually make tally marks. Tally. We probably get tally from the same route would be my guess. So go tally them. Sit there, get your little notch and make there's five, there's ten, there's 15, and see what you can do. Now, something interesting happens here and I'm going to go back here and put it on the screen so you can see it as oh, no wonder I'm in the wrong place. That doesn't say what I think it ought to say. We want 15. Five. Okay. So he brought him forth abroad and said, look now toward the heaven. Now, said Anyone want to guess what Hebrew word that is? Amar. Amar. You got it? The Lord amar. The Lord said, look now toward heaven and tell the stars if you'd be able to number them. And he the Lord amar, so shall thy see be. Remember when you got double amar for the same person? It means read a little bit of a pause in here so it doesn't say that. The Lord said, look to the heavens and count them. And Abram said, I can't count those, but clearly there's a pause here. Look toward heaven. Tell the stars if they'll be able to number them. So shall thy seed be. Gives him long enough in that pause looking up at the stars to say, I can't count them. He doesn't have to say it. It's obvious in that pause I ran out of two by four on my tally sheets here. I can't count them. None of that is voiced. But I think very much you see that in this. And again, I love these little patterns in the scripture that you only see if you're totally meticulous. As a matter of fact, I would say most of us could be totally meticulous in all our lives and never catch them. But there's this good thing, and that is that Hebrew scholars especially have been ruminating over little things like this for three or 4000 years. And you can read their stuff and they point these things out and then you go and verify it and say well, sure enough, I never did see that. But you're exactly right. So here we've got the first two uses of this double Mr kind of thing where there's this pause read into. And that's something you don't have to know Hebrew. You don't have to be able to see Mr. You just look at somebody said and then if they say again, put a pause in there between those two statements. And I think that again, here what you've got is, go ahead, tell the stars. If you're able to number them. Insert Jeopardy music, then so shall thy seed be. And that I don't know. Can we call that a dramatic pause of looking up into the sky, and I doubt that you could say it more strongly than after that, shall we call it a pregnant pause? Goes along there for nine months. It seems like it's an uncomfortable pause. And then the word of the Lord, so shall thy seed be. And with that, I think Abraham comes along and leads us to the next verse which says, and he believed in the Lord. He believed in the Lord. Nimrod shows his muscle, abram kills him. The Lord says to his son, go down there and show yourself and tell him thank you. And then the Lord himself says, I'm going to speak to you in highfidelity like you have never seen before. And abram. I'm a little scared. I'm a little mad. And God says, hang on, you're getting ahead of the game here, Abram, it's going to be okay. And we'll pick up there next week with Abram believed and it was credited unto him as righteousness. In the life and times of Abram, we learn a lot about the life and times of Abram. We also learn a lot about the word of God, don't we, in the way it is so rich and powerful in its explanation of what is happening. And though this is not really about us, it's about the life and times of Abram, wouldn't you agree that there's a lot of things, a lot of similarities that we can see in our own walk with the Lord to say, oh yeah, if that was Abram, then I take a little encouragement in that. I take a little comfort in that because I've been scared, mad a few times in my life and impatient with God and wanting him to come through. And the great hero of the faith might look at us and say, you should see my T shirt. Been there, done that, that's that word of prayer. Heaven and Father, we are grateful that these revelations from scripture do give us so much information, but also just a little bit of the insight into man and man's relationship with God and the walk with God. And here is a man again that becomes the icon of faith and yet did have his struggles and his missteps. And in that we're encouraged and we know that we have the greatest blessing and that God has through his son Jesus Christ, taking care of all the missteps and sins and just outright turning our fist into God's face. And yet God has said, it's okay, I offer you a gift, a gift of eternal life through the death barrel and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. We're grateful for that. And as we walk in that, dear Heavenly Father, help us to grow in grace and our love for one another, our love for you, and our love and understanding of the word. We pray this in Jesus name, amen. Well, I hope you'll come back Wednesday night as we have a wonderful supper with your side dishes. And we'll look forward to that in the book of Hosea. And then back next Sunday morning regular schedule. Except that this is fallback week. You gain that hour, you lost in the spring. So Saturday night, put your clocks back an hour and then show up. If you don't, what happens? You show up early or late or I never can't figure it out. But anyway, someone will be here. Someone else who forgot to change the clock will be here as well. Thanks very much for being here. God bless you all. You are dismissed. He didn't throw away the clay. Go look it up.