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That's connectwithskip.com. Now, let's get into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig. Genesis Chapter 12. Now, we have been studying Genesis, and we have seen that so far we have dealt with events.
Although people are mentioned, it's been solely about events, major events. The creation or the formation of the heavens and the earth, the formation of the universe. That was followed by the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and their story of bringing sin into the world. So the formation of the universe, the fall of man. Then we saw the flood, the flood that was a universal flood that covered the entire earth as God judged that entire generation, and they all perished as the waters covered the entire face of the earth, and we even noted the geological evidence for that. Then we looked at the fallout that comes from man's rebellion. We saw the Tower of Babel. We saw the judgment as God confused their languages and dispersed them on the face of the earth. And now we turn a corner in our study of Genesis.
A very distinct division happens between Chapters 11 and Chapter 12. You might say we're looking at the forming of a nation, if you want to keep it all alliterated points up to this point, keeping with the F's. This is the formation of the nation of Israel.
And we go from studying great events to studying great people. And we will primarily, for the next 39 chapters, look at the biographies of Abraham, called Abram at first, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Those four will dominate the landscape in the Book of Genesis. Now just to let you know how important this is to God, the first 11 chapters of Genesis cover some 2,000 plus years historically.
The next 39 chapters only cover 350 years. So God really didn't say a whole lot about cosmology and creationism and all of the things he could have said he left out. That's really not important to the story. What is of primary importance to the story is the generations and genealogy of a guy named Shem. And we'll see how one comes from that lineage named Abraham, and that will be the focus of the rest of the Bible. The genealogy of Shem, and part of that will be culminated in the Lord Jesus Christ, who will come and then come again. So you've got 2,000 plus years of church history in the first 11 chapters, 350 years of, did I say church history? Not church history, history. And now 350 years in the next 39 chapters.
In that 2,000 years of history in chapters 1 through 11, we've covered about 19 generations. Now, the next 16 chapters, right the middle of Genesis, will deal with one person, Abraham. Abraham. He's called the father of faith, or the father of those who believe.
And we're going to look at his story, his testimony, and tonight we're going to look at two things, his testimony and his testing. And that comprises the 20 verses of chapter 12. Now, you probably know that there are three world religions, as they like to say, that want to trace their spiritual heritage, at least in part, back to Abraham. Or at least pay reverence to Abraham.
And that would be the Jewish nation, principally, followed by Christians and also Muslims. All of them look to Abraham and revere him. However, if you've ever read the Quran and any of the writings about Abraham, they have the story written a little bit differently. When it comes to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they'll take Isaac out of the picture and put Ishmael as the promised son, and in Genesis 22, the one that Abraham almost sacrificed to God. So they will rewrite the story, but nonetheless, those three great religions pay homage to Abraham.
So we have a bulk of material that focuses on Abraham. That's in the Old Testament. But that influence carries on into the New Testament. You'll have one chapter of the book of Romans that uses Abraham as a prime example of justification by faith.
You have two chapters in the book of Galatians that does sort of the same. He, as I said, is used as the example, the example of faith. Abraham believed God, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness. So he becomes the example of what it means to be justified just by trusting in God apart from your own works. Because the writer in the New Testament, Paul, will say that Abraham came before the dispensation of the law, hence faith is predominant over the law. Not only that, but the writer of Hebrews in chapter 11 will mention Abraham in that hall of faith.
We'll briefly look at that verse tonight. And then three times in the Bible, Abraham is called the friend of God, the friend of God. Once in 2 Chronicles chapter 20, once in Isaiah 41, and once in James chapter 2. He's called the friend of God.
To this day, Arabs call Abraham al-khalil, God's friend, or friend of God. Now, it says in chapter 12 that the Lord had said to Abram, get out of your country and from your family and from your father's house to a land that I will show you. Now, we do need to go back a few verses because, well, it's been a month.
And we may have forgotten some, certainly I didn't get to cover all that I wanted to. But more importantly, Abram's story, Abram's story begins in chapter 11. And so I think we should begin a few verses back because there's a lot I believe we have skipped over that really forms the personality of Abram. Now, his name is Abram right now, not Abraham. He will be called Abraham. God will change his name.
God likes to do that. Abram means exalted father. Abraham means father of a multitude.
That's what God will make him and we'll even see part of that promise tonight. Verse 24 of chapter 11 begins that story. Nahor lived 29 years and begot Terah. After he begot Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and begot sons and daughters. Now Terah lived 70 years and begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
Now just stop right there for a minute. You see the name Haran? That's the name of a person. But it's also the name of a place that they will settle in for a period of years.
I'll explain why in a little bit. But just for the sake of tonight's Bible study, just so we don't confuse the place with the person, if you don't mind, I'm going to call the person Haran and the name of the place Haran. That was the original way you'd pronounce it with the emphasis on the last syllable. So I'm going to call the place Haran but the person Haran, just so we can get those two and not get them confused in our minds. This is the genealogy, verse 27, of Terah. Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
Haran begot Lot. Haran died before his father Terah in his native land in Ur of the Chaldeans. Then Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai. The name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah. But Sarai was barren.
She had no child. And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram's wife, and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan, and they came to Haran and dwelt there. So the days of Terah were 205 years and Terah died in Haran.
Excuse me, Haran. Now the Lord had said to Abram, Get out of your country from your family, from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. Abram came from a place mentioned twice in chapter 11, Ur, or Ur of the Chaldeans. This is in southern ancient Mesopotamia, what is today southern Iraq. Now Ur of the Chaldeans was the greatest commercial, most advanced cultural city of that time, the spade of the archaeologist has revealed. It was the capital of ancient Sumer, S-U-M-E-R. It was the capital. It was a highly advanced civilization.
The city of Ur of the Chaldeans at the time of Abram had about 300,000 people. And so many people lived in that ancient walled city. It was an advanced civilization. Again, the archaeological discoveries have revealed advancements in musical instruments and in crafts. There was a university there with a giant library. They specialized in astronomy and in mathematics.
It was an advanced culture. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we return to Skip's teaching, if you want to understand something, it's important to examine its foundations. That's why studying the book of Genesis is so vital to understanding the rest of the Bible. In Skip Heitzig's book, You Can Understand the Book of Genesis, he takes you on a fascinating journey to where it all began, from Adam and Eve and the fall of man to the birth of the nation of Israel, you can understand the amazing story of God's love and our redemption in Christ. We'll send you a copy of You Can Understand the Book of Genesis, as thanks for your gift of $50 or more to reach more people with God's love through Connect with Skip Heitzig.
Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy when you give. Now, let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. At the same time, it was one of the centers of idolatry, idol worship. And so in the center of that town was a huge temple and a ziggurat or a tower like the Tower of Babel that stretched up into heaven. There was a lot of different gods and goddesses that were worshiped in Ur of the Chaldeans. I'm painting the picture so you know where the father of faith came from and what his digs were like, what his hometown was like. A lot of different gods of nature.
It was animistic in that it worshiped nature and ascribed deity to much of the natural world. One of the principal gods, in fact, the principal temple in Ur of the Chaldeans was to the moon god, called, interestingly enough, Sin, S-I-N, the moon god. So Abraham was, and originally he was a moonie and his family. Turn with me to just go a few books forward to the book of Joshua.
More information is given in that book. Joshua chapter 24. Joshua tells us about Abram's background. Joshua chapter 24. Notice it says, Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and called for the elders of Israel, for their heads, their judges, for their officers, and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all of the people, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor, dwelt on the other side of the river in old times, and they served other gods. And then I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river, that is the Euphrates River, and led him through the land of Canaan, throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac. So we have a little bit of the home life of Abraham, or Abram at the time, shining through. He was raised in an atmosphere of idolatry. According to some of the ancient sources, we don't know if it's true or if it's just a fable, that Terah was a dealer in idolatry.
He made statues, little idols, and sold them, and Abram was his assistant. And so, no doubt, there was the worship of the moon god and the other gods of nature in that household, and it rubbed off on Abram, and he was not a believer in Yahweh until God appeared to him, and drew him out of that culture and brought him into the new land. Now go back to Genesis 11. I think we've painted an adequate picture of Ur of the Chaldeans.
Something else we can't Skip over, however. Notice in verse 28, something happened in the home life of Abram growing up that caused great pain and responsibility. Verse 28, then Haran, that is the brother of Abram, son of Terah, Haran died before his father Terah in his native land Ur of the Chaldeans. That's a tragedy. It impacted Abram's life.
Just keep that in mind as you study about him. There was loss. I lost my brother when I was 22 years of age. It made a profound and lasting impact on my life. And if you've ever had somebody in your family die, the very moment of the death notification is fastened in your mind forever. You know exactly where you were and what you were doing, and you can even get in touch with those emotions. If you've ever watched somebody die, you vividly remember that. I watched my mother die. I remember where I was when I heard that my father had died. I remember where I was when I heard my brother had died.
It makes a lasting impact. And so this tragedy, this pain of loss, shaped the early life of Abram. We have to keep that in mind when we study who this man was because now he will be saddled with the responsibility of raising his brother's son Lot, and he will take Lot with him, and he will form part of the story in chapter 12, 13, 14, etc. Now there's an old Jewish fable that says the way Haran died was that his father, Terah, told his boys that they had to worship all of the gods of Ur of the Chaldeans, and one of them was the god of fire. They refused to do that, and so the father threw the son, Haran, into the furnace, and he died burned to death in front in view of his father.
Now we don't know if that's true or not. It just says he died before his father. It could mean, number one, that his father watched him die. He died before his father. Or it could mean not just directionally, but it might mean chronologically. He just died before his father died.
It could mean one of those two things. Either way, he died, and Abram will raise his son. Something else we have to make note of, because the Bible will make a huge note of it, verse 30. But Sarai, this is Abram's wife, she'll be called Sarah later, was barren. She had no child. So you have a guy coming out of an idol-worshipping country whose brother died after he had a son, and you have Abram himself and his wife, Sarah, who were unable to have children. They were infertile. They were barren. All of that shaped his past life. Now that's a setup for the rest of the story, because you know that what God does is miraculously intervene and give them a son named Isaac, a son of promise, in a miraculous way.
He was barren, however. Did you know that in ancient cultures, a woman who was barren was seen as being cursed by the gods? If you were in a polytheistic culture, you were cursed by the gods, because if you were blessed by the gods, you would have children, and if you were extraordinarily blessed by the gods, you'd have many children.
Now that kind of superstition makes its way even into Judaism, because Jacob, who will have two wives, one named Leah, one named Rachel, once Leah finds out she's pregnant, you remember what she says? She says, the Lord has looked upon my affliction. That's what she called being unable to have a child. It's an affliction. I'm infertile.
I'm afflicted. Then when Rachel finds out that her sister got pregnant and she didn't get pregnant, she turns to her husband and grabs him and says, give me children or else I die. She didn't want to be left out. She didn't want to be under any kind of divine curse. And unfortunately, that stuck within the traditions of Judaism for generations, even some of the ancient rabbis.
I found a rabbinical saying. One of the ancient rabbis said there are seven people that are excommunicated from God. Number one, a Jew who has no wife. Number two, a Jew who has a wife and who has no child. It was seen as quite an affliction, a stigma, if you will. So I imagine that after they got married, Abram and Sarah planned their lives. We're going to have lots of kids, but she never could get pregnant. And I've talked to infertile couples, 6.1 million Americans, 10% of the adult reproductive population today is in that stage, in that state. And there are other ways God can bless, but it's a very distancing thing for somebody trying to have children every time they see a family bring their child for dedication. It's a hurtful thing. That's the kind of pain that they were experiencing.
Well, they moved to Haran, but here's what we often pass over. Look in verse one. Boy, all of this were in verse one.
See, I told you we couldn't get through 13. It'll be God's grace if we get through chapter 12. Notice it doesn't say the Lord said. It says the Lord had said to Abram, get out of your country from your family and from your father's house to a land I will show you. Well, when had the Lord said that? The Lord had said that not after this move to Haran from Ur of the Chaldeans, but when he was in Ur of the Chaldeans, God told him then, appeared to him then and said, get up and go.
And he got up and he went, but he didn't go all the way. He stopped in Haran and spent at least 15 years there before he finally made it into the promised land. In fact, he doesn't obey till verse four of chapter 12. Notice it says, so Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him and Lot went with him. And Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. So God had said for him to leave. So he left, but he wasn't leading.
His father was, chapter 11 verse 31, Terah took his son Abram and grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram's wife, and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan and they came to Haran and dwelt there. So they didn't go all the way, but they stopped at a town and they didn't leave that town till the old man dies. Once the old man is dead, then Abram goes into the promised land. This is what it would be like if God said to us in Albuquerque, I want to bless you so much, I'm going to blow your mind with a blessing, but for that to happen, you have to move to Mexico City. So you go all the way from Albuquerque and you stop and live in El Paso. That's a border town, but it's not Mexico City. Haran was a border town. It was the very edge of Mesopotamia before you got into the land of Canaan.
So they stayed in that border town for about 15 years. Now why did they go to Haran? Well it's interesting, if you compare the names of Terah's relatives with some of the names of the area around Haran, they're identical.
That is, either the people were named after those places or the places were named after the people. So a lot of historians believe this, that the father of Abram, Terah, originally was born in the land of Haran. That's where he was born, that's where he lived. And he migrated 600 miles to the southeast over to Ur of the Chaldeans, where he raised his family. But later on, he got older in life and after God had appeared to Abram and Abram said, you know, I think we ought to get out of here. His dad said, good idea, I've always wanted to go back home. I want to go back to Haran, where I'm from.
And so they migrated back, but they stayed there. We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you Pastor Skip's insightful book, You Can Understand the Book of Genesis, to help you better understand the story of God's great love and His amazing plan for our redemption. To request your copy of You Can Understand the Book of Genesis, call 800-922-1888.
That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. For more from Skip, be sure to check out the many resources available at connectwithskip.com slash store. Come back next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross. Cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.
