Genesis 22:19-24 KJV
19 So Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba.
20 And it came to pass after these things, that it was told Abraham, saying, Behold, Milcah, she hath also born children unto thy brother Nahor;
21 Huz his firstborn, and Buz his brother, and Kemuel the father of Aram,
22 And Chesed, and Hazo, and Pildash, and Jidlaph, and Bethuel.
23 And Bethuel begat Rebekah: these eight Milcah did bear to Nahor, Abraham's brother.
24 And his concubine, whose name was Reumah, she bare also Tebah, and Gaham, and Thahash, and Maachah.
Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program. Welcome to a cafe. My name is Pastor Clark Covington, your host, your Bible teacher today at the cafe. If you're new to the program, we are daily podcast 15 minutes every single day, looking through God's word, looking at what the word means literally and also to what we can get from it. And we do that by comparing scripture with scripture and by taking our time with these chapters and verses, we're on episode, I don't know what, 297 of season two. And so we're creeping up on the latter part of a year, almost over half, well over half a year. And we are still in Genesis, I think it's like page 17 or 20 in my Bible. I mean, we haven't gone far and that's intentional because we want to soak up every lesson we can from this great book that God's given us. And there's so much here for us to learn about in Genesis. And I've said it before, I don't know if we will spend as many episodes on some of the more denser books in the Bible, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, getting into some of the laws, some of the genealogies, but as I study those and I spend a fair bit of time studying those, for better or worse, I find those to be actually very, very interesting as well and applicable and all kinds of stuff. I mean, reading some arcane thing, you know, some arcane law that we have today and then you can link it back to this biblical example. One example is like God commands the Israelites to, and I've given this example one other time, but build like a railing around their deck, which is on their roof, you know, because they didn't want them to be guilty if someone fell off because in Bible times, their deck was on their roof. And I think there was more to that, like they would, you know, dry out their crops there. If you remember when the Israelites spies were hiding in Rahab the harlot's home, they hid them on the roof, they're her patio under, you know, some stuff, right, so you'd be drying out your crops up there, spending time up there on and on, but God said, put a fence up there, put a railing up there so no one falls off and you're not held liable until this day. I mean, at least in North Carolina, if you build a deck onto a house, it's got to have a railing around it. It's got to have, you know, a fence type structure around it and I'm no builder, but it's incredible to read something in the Bible and then see this today and just say, man, God's wisdom and God's ways are still permeating in our laws and our society. That's one of like a million examples. The word suburb is in the Bible. That's a neat one. So many others, you know, so many others. You just say, wow, you know, who would have thought? But anyways, got the, that's the whole point of that little introduction and the reason why I've given it multiple times is that you can't, like, you can't exhaust God's word, right? So if we had a whole year on just a verse or just a chapter in the Bible, even in that whole year of studying it, we wouldn't exhaust it. There's still more principles to be pulled from it. There's still more that God would have us to know from it. I really believe that that's why God's words called the living word. That's why even though the earth and everything burns up, God's word never does. It lasts forever. It's eternal. It's something that's eternal, I believe, will be teaching us in some way, instructing us and giving us insights for eternity forever for millions upon millions upon millions of years. This will all rain true. And so you see like just a glimpse of that eternity when you study God's word. It's absolutely beautiful. And here we are in Genesis 22 and we're still sticking around 19. So verse 19 in Genesis 22, let me pull it up here. So Abraham returned unto his young men and they rose up and went together to Beersheba and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba. And so we tackled in the last episode the idea the young men were faithful and obedient. And a lot of their obedience was shown in what they didn't do. They didn't try to go up to Mariah. They didn't try to run away after. They didn't try to convince Abraham of something, they didn't go into cahoots with Isaac or anything else. They were just obedient. So like what's not said there is really a picture of their obedience. We got into this principle of how the young should submit to the elder, right? And that's important in church. And then the elder should then lead by example and not take advantage of the young. And so that is often the church scandal is oftentimes the elder is taking advantage of the young. And I'm going to bring that into another layer. It's the elder spiritually taking advantage of the babe in Christ. And we are not to do that. The Bible really speaks against that. And so you can have someone that's that's you know age wise naturally by how we want to say it biologically younger than another. But they're old in the ways of God and they do something they shouldn't. Or you should literally you could literally have someone that's young like a young person and something bad happens to them by someone that's older, right? And that is horrific and sadly all over the church every denomination. Absolutely horrible you know when a young person or a young person is taking advantage of by someone that was put in a position to be trusted. That's why by the way in the ministry anything that we do we always have several people there like no matter what you know there's always got to be at least two you know you always need a witness and that's among the most trusting of circumstances because you just never know what's going to go on. A great example of that a movie called play the flute if you haven't watched that movie great Christian movie absolutely love that movie play the flute it used to be on pure flicks I don't know if it is or not anymore it looks like it's even maybe on YouTube but awesome movie youth pastor gets falsely accused there were not there was not another witness in there for him that's why we always keep to everywhere okay all that to say they returned they returned to bear she but what does that mean they went back to God and what we're going to do after this break is discuss how sometimes it's hard to go back to God even after a magnificent things happen stay tuned hey it's break time around here thank you for listening to kjv cafe if you haven't already visit kjv cafe.com for more information and can you imagine the emotions that Abraham is feeling here he's thinking he's going to lose his child and in the New Testament I think Paul writes that he believed I think it was in Hebrews he believed Abraham believed that that God would resurrect Isaac right so he thought he was going to lose his child that God would resurrect him potentially he thought he was going to be the one that killed his child the promised child and now all of this is resolved everything is okay going back to bear she but they've seen God show up they sacrificed the ram surely they worshiped God in that moment the angel showed up so God himself showed up you know when Moses would speak to God he was glowing literally reflecting the glory of God he was glowing to put the veil on must have been incredible experience this right there like that right there oftentimes can lead to a Christian falling into some kind of problem right because you have the high high and then often you have the low low the modern day example might be like if God were to really bless a ministry right like unbelievably bless a ministry that just is overflowing you know like and I don't even I'm just making this up but like imagine like a food pantry that was barely getting by right and they prayed prayed fervently one night God please help us and the next day ABC home makeover whatever show shows up and they're saying instead of making over a home we're going to make over this food pantry and they you know jazz it up and throw all kinds of money into it and give it all kind of publicity and donations are coming in and volunteers are coming in and there's all this emotion there and then six months later you read the food pantry clothes down you know that is the kind of thing or worse you know a church is doing really great and they have a moment of something happening and the next thing you know there's a scandal with someone in the church right you read about it all the time sadly in fact if you ever read about some great school Christian school or church or something oftentimes there is this latter moment of falling down and we see here Abraham returns to bear she but that's where he came from remember he was dealing with the King of Garar a bill a Bimalak he had the treaty and stuff that's where he came from he went back to his first love amen he went back to his first love revelation to one through five unto the angel the church of Ephesus right these things say if he that hold it to seven stars in his right hand who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks I know thy works and thy labor and thy patience how thus cannot bear them which are evil and thou has tried them which say their apostles and are not and has found them liars and has born and has patience for my name sake has labored and has not fainted nevertheless I have somewhat against thee because thou is left thy first love remember therefore from once thou art fallen and repent and do the first works or else I will come under thee quickly and will remove thy candlestick out of his place except thou repent we see here in Revelation two a fascinating picture of the church at Ephesus and Jesus speaking to them through John on the Isle of Patmos who's having this vision this conversation with Jesus Jesus is saying you've done a lot of good stuff you're you're working for me your patient you can't stand evil and that's how I want it I'm holy so you be holy depart from that evil and you're doing that you're calling out those false apostles you found them to be liars and you're calling them out and I've called you to do that too you've had patience for my name sake and you haven't fainted you've kept going you haven't quit you haven't given up right nevertheless I have somewhat against thee because thou has left thy first love they had become entrenched in I don't know how you say whether you want to say legalism or just the work of the ministry or just the doo doo doo or maybe to the point where they had become self righteous because they had done all these things and we're living as God called us to live and how can't you live this way or they became coldhearted they stopped spending time with Jesus right and I believe that again the Lord had blessed the church because Ephesus had all of these great things happening that they had done these compliments that Jesus paid them and of course we can learn more about them and by reading what Paul wrote in the book of Ephesians to the church of Ephesus and so we know they're not perfect but yet we know they had done a lot of good things and we see that Abraham is not going to fall into the trap of having one without the other oh Abraham you had great faith but now you're going to be puffed up and now you can't be bothered with finding a place to bury Sarah or making sure Isaac marries out of the family line right you're too puffed up for that right that doesn't happen he goes right back to being a humble me Abraham faithful Abraham he goes back to where he had built that grove and presumably that altar to praise God in Bathsheba he goes back to where he had come from you see so there's a idea here that we should live our application that we should live whether we're blessed by God or whether we're stricken that we should live for him in all times in all ways and I believe the idea here is and I believe this was what Jesus was saying to the church of Ephesus and I pray God to help me say it correctly that they weren't taking time to check in amen that they weren't taking time to go to God in prayer earnestly and say let me settle down God right the biblical concept is like temperance not too high not too low got let me settle down okay we've had some moments here that's been incredible but I also know there's been a lot of struggles there was famine and Canaan land you know got in trouble with Pharaoh got in trouble with the bimlic you know they messing around a bimlic servants are messing around with the well over here there's been a lot of problems so let me settle down and not get too high or too low and just trust you and praise you throughout it all and we should also to have the same posture that we trust God that we praise him throughout it all that we stay close to our first love that we check in with God like what is wrong with praying in the morning dear Lord please put on my heart if I've done anything to sin against you Lord please show me if there's anything getting in the way of our relationship right because we understand that sin separates us from God right God's holy he cannot stand sin and we understand Christ paid the penalty for all that sin at the cross at Calvary but then once we accept him a Savior now we're saved we're expected to live like Christ and Christ was sinless not only did he depart from sin he never sinned at all now we know that we can't not sin Paul writes it to depart from sin and completely be to leave the world but we are to do our level best to stay away from it and part of that is to check with God to pray without ceasing to return to our first love to keep that idea of biblical temperance and moderation and who knows what that looks like in day to day life for you but the idea is that we are seeking him throughout our day that he is preeminent in our life that he is the priority of our life and I wish I could go on for time sake I'll stop here and pick up with a little bit of this tomorrow as well as the line of Rebecca we'll get to that tomorrow as well so tune in then thank you for listening take care god bless and amen thanks for listening to KJV cafe and we'll see you at the cafe tomorrow.
