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Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Leigh Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. If you never got around to listening to our six prep episodes before you started this trip through tbr, let me encourage you to do that today. You can listen to all six episodes in about an hour, and they will really help make sure you do this well and that you don't lose momentum. Okay, we're back to Genesis now. When we were last here, before we dropped in on Job, a man named Abram had just been born through the bloodline of Adam and Noah via Noah's son Shem. According to the timeline Genesis marks out, Abram was born almost 2,000 years after Adam, but only about 300 years after the flood. And just like Adam and Noah before him, God continues his unique relationship with this family through Abram. In 12:3, God tells Abram that he's going to bless him so that he may be a blessing. That blessing doesn't terminate on Abram. It's ultimately about way more than him. It's about how the Messiah will be born through his bloodline someday through this family, which is a blessing to all the families of the earth. But this is way over Abram's head at this point. Initially, God just promises to bless him with land and possessions. But there's one problem. The land God promises him is currently inhabited by the Canaanites. We talked about them on day three. They're the group of people who are generally regarded as enemies of God. There's a famine in the land of the time, so Abram and his wife Sarai move to a different place, Egypt. And Abram's lot nephew goes with them, as well as their servants and animals and possessions. There's some weird stuff that happens where Abram is afraid of the Egyptian Pharaoh who thinks he's going to steal Sarai and kill him. So Abram convinces Sarai to pretend to be his sister, which she sort of is. She's his half sister. And Pharaoh did kidnap Sarai, as Abram feared. And she's basically made to be part of his harem of wives. God is not okay with that, and he has big plans for Sarai. So he brings the truth to light via some classic plagues in order to get Sarai released. Mind you, she's about 65 years old at this point, so she must be a stunner. After they leave Egypt, they go to the Negeb, which is a desert region. God has blessed them so much and they have so much stuff that it can't all fit in the desert, though to be fair, I guess there would be stiff competition for the tiny patches of grass to feed their livestock, whatever. So they decide to split ways and Abram leaves the first choice of land up to his nephew. Lot wastes zero time in picking the land that looks to be the most beautiful and fertile, but the bad news is that it is all near the wicked people. He sets up camp near the Dead Sea. You might even have some salt or some lotion from his old neighborhood. But then a war breaks out not long after Lot moves there and he and his people get taken as captives. When Abram, his uncle, finds out, he and the 318 warriors who live in his house big house by the way, chase after Lot's kidnappers for about 160 miles until they catch up with them and get him and his people back in 1418 we read something important that may not have seemed important. It says Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was a priest of the God Most High. We don't have time to dig too deep into this, so I'm going to put a link in the Show Notes with more info. And if you don't know how to find the show notes on your particular podcast app, try doing a web search of the name of the app A along with the words show notes. Or you can find all the show notes@thebiblerecap.com shownotes but for here and now, I just want to point out that his name means king of righteousness. And he is the King of Salem, which means peace. The king of peace and righteousness. And he brings out bread and wine. Sound familiar? And he is a king and a priest, two roles that are rarely combined. So what we have here in Melchizedek is a picture of Jesus, an archetype, a model. We'll see this guy a few more times as we read through the Bible together. So just remember that name. Melchizedek. In chapter 15, God makes Abram a promise that he's going to have a son. This is awesome. Unless you're Eliezer of Damascus, who is the original heir of Abram's massive fortune. But Eliezer's current hope is in the fact that both Abram and Sarai are super old and it doesn't seem possible for them to have a child. But that's what God says, and we'll see in 15:6 that Abram believes God despite his age. We also see that Abram's belief in God's Word is counted as righteousness, not his actions, not his sacrifices, his belief. This is consistent with what the rest of scripture teaches us as well. Even in the Old Testament, faith in God's Word is what connected people to God, not obedience to the law. For more on that, check out Hebrews 11. What happens next between Abram and God is pretty peculiar on the surface, but it has some really beautiful, rich meaning if you dig into it a little deeper. Even though Abram believes God, he basically asks God for confirmation. So God tells Abram to do all these weird things, cutting animals in half and whatnot. Then a deep sleep falls on Abram, which reminds me of the deep sleep that comes on Adam in 2:21 When God is bringing Adam into a new season too. That's when God makes Eve. But here God shows up on the scene not to miraculously hand Abram the promised child, but to make a covenant with him. And this is where my God shot comes in. This really unusual scene of passing between the cut up animals is an ancient covenant making practice between a king and a servant. I don't have time to cover how beautiful this is, so if you want more info on this and trust me you do, check out the link in our show notes today. But here's the short version. Typically the servant would walk between the cut up animals as a way of saying, I take the curse of this covenant that I will be cut in half like these animals if I don't fulfill my part of the covenant. That's not what happens here. God shows up in the form of fire which is typical of the presence of God in the Old Testament. And he passes between those cut up pieces. This is unheard of. No one could even imagine a God who would take the penalty on himself. He's a promise maker and he's where the joy is. As we move through scripture, you'll see several names of God referenced. And as we keep looking for him and for our God shot as we read His Word each day, we thought it might be helpful to give you a more comprehensive guide to the names and attributes of God. So we've built out a PDF for you that not only lists the names and attributes of God, but also the scripture references where you'll find them. We'd love to share that resource with you. If you want to get this free PDF, all you have to do is go to thebiblerecap.com names and submit your email address. That's thebiblerecap.comnames.