Episode Transcript
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Well, tonight I'm excited to turn
back to genesis after many, many years
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of not preaching this book. Of
many years ago I preached through Genesis One
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through eleven and then stopped and then
moved on to other things, and now
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I'm excited to return and preach through
chapter twelve and and so many chapters after
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that. I'm however, we are
going to start at the end of eleven
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tonight, in Genesis Eleven. I'm
beginning in Verse Twenty Seven, Genesis Eleven,
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verse twenty seven through thirty two.
This is God's holy and inspired word,
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and give your attention to it now. These are the generations of Tara.
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Tara fathered Abram, Nahor and Hurn, and hurn fathered Lat Horn,
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died in the presence of his father
Tara, and the land of his kindred
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in her of the Chaldeans. And
Abram and Nahor took wives. The name
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of Abram's wife was Sarah. The
name of Nahor's wife Milka, the daughter
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of Haron, the father of Milka
and Isca. Now Sarah I was barren.
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She had no child. Old Tara
took Abram, his son, and
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lot, the son of Harun,
his grandson, and Sarah, his daughterinlaw,
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his son Abram's wife, and and
they went forth together from her of
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the Chaldeans to go into the land
of Canaan, but when they came to
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run, they settled there. The
days of Tara were two hundred and five
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years, and Tara died in Harn. In your bibles you are all very
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used to seeing chapters and verses,
and these are very, very helpful for
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getting around our bibles, for coming
up with Bible reading plans, for communicating
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with one another where we are in
the God's word. I'm very glad we
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have them, but we also have
to remember that, like perhaps the study
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notes in our bibles or the headings
above the text, the verses and chapter
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numbers are not original, they're not
inspired, they're not a part of God's
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word as he gave it to us. They were added much later. This
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is important to remember because we want
to be careful that, even as we
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pay attention to chapter numbers and verse
numbers, we don't want to miss the
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headings that God himself gives us,
the headings that are in fact inspired,
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our part of God's word. Now, different books of the Bible rely on
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different structures and communicate those structures to
us in different ways in genesis. One
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of the major ways in which this
book is divided is by what we see
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here in Verse Twenty Seven. These
words. Now, these are the generations
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of this heading heads up ten different
parts of the book of Genesis. We
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might say that there are ten books
in Genesis. This book is number six.
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So if you go back to genesis
two, for for example, you
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will find that after the prolog of
Genesis, Chapter One and two, two,
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two, verses one through three,
in verse two four, we have
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this these are the generations of the
heavens and the earth when they were created
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in the day that the Lord God
made the Heavens and the earth. Book
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Two starts this way in genesis five. This is the book of the generations
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of Adam. Book three in Genesis
Nine says these are the generations of Noah.
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And then tonight we come to book
six, skipping a few there.
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Now, these are the generations of
Tara. Now, though, Tara starts
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this book, book six of Genesis, it's really one of his sons that
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will become the primary person of interest, and his name, of course,
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is Abram later changed and better known
by his name Abraham. Abraham is really
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the center of these next chapters here
in a book six, it's a long
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one. It starts in Chapter Eleven, here at the end of Chapter Eleven,
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goes all the way through the beginning
of Chapter Twenty Five. That indicates
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to us in part the importance of
Abram, of Abraham, and of course
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we know this not only from the
Old Testament but also the new, and
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in that we learn and remember.
Perhaps the Abraham's life is more than about
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Abraham's life. It's about God's dealings
with him, God's dealings with the world
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and even with us. Perhaps some
of you have sung in a Sunday school
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class or at home with your parents. Father Abraham had many sons. Many
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sons had father Abraham. I am
one of them and so are you.
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So let's all praise the Lord Right, right, arm, left, Armond,
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so on. Right, we sing
this song and it actually means something
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very important. What does it mean? It means exactly what it says.
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Father Abraham had many sons. I
am one of them and so are you.
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When we put our faith in Christ, the offspring that was promised to
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Abraham. Well, much more about
that later in this to this man God
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promises. We will read in chapter
twelve a great promise. He calls him.
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You can read this or simply listen
in verse one. Go from your
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country and your kindred in your father's
house, to the land that I will
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show you and I will make you
a great nation, and I will bless
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you and make your name great,
that you will be a blessing. I
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will bless those who bless you,
and him who dishonors you I will curse,
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and in you all the families on
the earth, are of the earth,
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shall be blessed. This promise gets
repeated at many times and in many
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ways, and indeed in the New
Testament proclaims very clearly that when we believe
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in these same promises that were promised
to Abraham, fulfilled and culminated in Christ,
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we are we belong to this family. So perhaps that generates a little
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more interest in you, in hearing
this genealogy, because this is one of
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the things that we have before us, our genealogy, this is our family
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history. Right. These generations of
Tara that come to Abraham tell us something
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of our own family, our own
life, the place from which we have
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come. They also are, in
some ways, symbols of the kind of
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work or represent a representations of the
kind of work that God often does in
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salvation, and I'll show that to
you in a moment. I'll just add,
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before we look at some of the
details of this passage, that I
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hope that you will find this passage
encouraging as we consider the places out of
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which God calls us. Perhaps it
will be especially encouraging to those of you
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who are not born into godly homes, because what we see in Abraham is
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how God can establish great faith,
a mighty and holy religion, even out
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of idolatry and brokenness. So let's
start with some observations about the text.
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This family story here that we have
in just these few verses is very dense,
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so let's slow down and make sure
that we're following it and understand it.
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One it teaches us lessons here and
it also prepares us for later things
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that will happen in the book of
Genesis us. The first thing that we
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observe in chapter or in Verse Twenty
Seven is that Abraham are, I'm sorry,
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Tara, has three sons. Tara
has three sons, Abram, Nahor
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and Harun. All three sons have
wives, but not all have children,
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at least not right away, because
we read that Sarah, Abram's wife is
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barren. She can't have children.
So starts out pretty simply. Abram,
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Nahor and Harun, the sons of
Tara, but it gets very mixed up
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after this. The first thing we
read is that Haroun has a son,
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Abraham's brother, Tara's son, Harun. He has a son, the son
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is lot, and there's also a
daughter that we learn later on, MILCA.
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But sadly Haraun dies at a young
age. You read this in Verse
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Twenty Eight. Harun died in the
presence of his father, Tara, in
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the land of his kindred. What
does this mean? Well, it means
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that Tara loses a son and lot
and Milka lose a father. Remarkably,
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Milka marries her dad's brother, Nayhore, that is her uncle, and they
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have children. What about Abram?
Abram Marries Sarah. Later she is called
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Sarah. Perhaps you'd know that.
What we learned later on in Genesis is
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that she is also Tara's daughter,
but by a different mother. So Sarah,
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Abram's wife, is his half sister. Now this isn't that important right
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here, but later on it becomes
important because Abraham will tell some half truths
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about his sister Sarah I. The
important point here and now is the one
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that scripture makes. She can't have
children. Now that only is a sad
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thing and a difficult thing, especially
in a family that wants children, especially
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in a culture that thrives and depends
upon children being produced, but it has
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theological implications as well, because you
remember back in Genesis chapter three that it
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was through the offspring of the God's
of God's Holy Line, that a child
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would be born who would undo the
curse, who would fix everything that was
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broken, broken things that we see
here in this family. Death, loss
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of parents, loss of children,
infertility and more. A child would come
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who would solve these problems, who
would make everything right. But Sarah I
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was barren well after Harun's death.
Some time after that we read that Tara
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takes his family, Abraham, the
now fatherless son Lot, Abraham's wife,
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Sarah, and they leave or of
the Chaldeans to head to Canan. That
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might surprise you because of course you
maybe, maybe not of course, but
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some of you know that eventually that's
the destination, that's the goal. Tara
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and leading out with his family to
Canan, but they don't make it.
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Instead they settle in a place called
Harun. Don't let that confuse you.
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There are two hurns in this passage, one a person, right the son
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of Tara, and then also the
place. By the way, don't let
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those kinds of things annoy you about
scripture. If you feel a little frustrated,
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just remember how many Christophers there are
in this congregation. and or perhaps
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you have traveled up north of Paceon
and driven by Christopher's creek, or you
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know these common names are common in
our culture as well, just as they
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are in the Bible. So don't
be overly annoyed. Instead, do your
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best to track. So they leave, they had to Canaan, they don't
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make it all the way. They
settle in a place called Harun, and
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it's there that Tara dies. So
in this dense story, in all of
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these events and people, what kinds
of things do we find? Well,
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we find the same kinds of things
that we find in our own families,
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the kinds of things that the writer
of Ecclesiastes describes as life under the sun,
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life under the curse. We find
death, untimely death. We find
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tragedy. We find broken families,
we find mixed up families, we find
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infertility, complicated family relationships, we
find traveling moves changes. Interestingly, not
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all the family seems to go Nahor
is not listed here when they move.
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Does this remind you at all of
your own family? Maybe not all of
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it, maybe parts of it,
maybe other things you could add. These
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things remind us that when God calls
Abram out of the Earth Coldea's and into
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the place where he would set his
name, he calls him out of a
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world that is cursed, the same
world that we experience our families are brokenness,
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death as well. We can add
to this even more when we remember
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are and when we when we notice, perhaps on the idolatry out of which
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we are also called. It's not
just a mixed up, in broken world
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out there or in them, but
it's in US too. And we see
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this in Abram's family. Despite Abram
and Abraham's great name as a man of
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faith, a man of God later
on, it did not begin this way.
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This family were not worshipers of the
one true God, but we know
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this well, according to various Old
Testament scholars, we can see this in
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various ways of the test the text
suggests that they were worshipers not of Yahweh
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but of a Moon God, ironically
called sin. Why do we think this?
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One Old Testament, scholar, Brusotki, puts it this way, offers
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this evidence. First, Er and
Harun were important places in the Moon God
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cult at the time. Second,
Sir I and Milchi are probably named after
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the name and title of sins,
that's, the Moon God consort and daughter
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respectively. In other words, they're
named after these pagan gods. And Tara's
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name may be related to the Word
Yur Ra, meaning moon. All of
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these things fit together and also fit
with what we have in Joshu and fourteen,
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where God says to his people now, therefore, fear Yahweg and serve
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him in sincerity and in faithfulness.
Put away the gods that your father's served
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beyond the river and in Egypt and
serve Yahwa. You see the point.
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Israel didn't come and the family of
the Lord, these sparkling, Wonderful God
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fearing creatures, know they're the fathers
of our fathers. Where idolaters and many
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of this it's much the same for
many of us. A many of us
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didn't we're not raised in Christian homes, or perhaps we only can go back
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a few generations of Christians and find
people that are worshiping the creation instead of
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the creator. A remarkable passage when
we consider what we read earlier in the
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Psalms, in our call to worship. God is God over all creation.
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He set the great lights, it
said in and Psalmone thirty six, the
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great lights in their places, both
the sun and the moon. As great
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as they are, though, they
are not greater than God, and yet
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people worship them. They still do. But this ought not to be.
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And so God, in saving the
world, calls us out of this,
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calls us away from the Moon,
God's sin and from any kind of sin,
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the transgresses, the law of God
and all of these events we begin
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to see what book six of Chat, of Genesis is going to be all
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about, what all of the Bible
is all about, which is God's grace
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in our lives, his calling us
out of sin and darkness, out of
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brokenness and tragedy, out of death, out of mixed up families and all
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kinds of difficulties, to to settle
us, to settle us in a place
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and with a people, brothers and
sisters and fathers and mothers that are devoted
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to him and to him alone.
This ultimately happens because he fulfills these promises
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in an offspring that is born of
a barren woman, born of Sarah,
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another miraculous birth that that aleads to
more and more miracles that eventually lead to
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Jesus, born of a virgin,
a miraculous birth, a mark of God's
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power and grace and desire to save, a mark of his steadfast love that
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continues generation after generation after generation.
And so it is God's call to us
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to hear him as he is,
to see in his word, His grace
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and depend and to depend upon him, both as he reveals himself here and
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in all the scriptures. And when
we do believe in him, when we
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put our faith in the God of
Abraham, we will enjoy all the blessings
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of abor him, and God will
be true to his promise that in him
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all the families of the Earth shall
be blessed, even US Amen,
