Wednesday Bible Study - Foundations of Redemptive History Pt. 2 (Session 3)

Yeah, I'll just pray. All right, if we can all make our way to our seats. We'll begin here. All right. Welcome back, everyone. You might need to rush to your seats. I'm going to go ahead and open us up in prayer. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you for bringing us back week to week. God, what a privilege it is to be able to open the Word together. God, to be able to individually study this text and come together now to share what it is that you've shown us. God, thank you for speaking to us through your Word. Thank you, Lord, for not leaving us empty. Thank you, God, that we have daily bread that sustains us. Thank you, God, for the great joy it is to hear from the words of you, our Father.

And pray, God, more than anything, not that our intellect will be tickled or, Father, that we would just kind of go through the motions of understanding factually what happened. But, Lord, that we would see you understand to greater depths who you are, that our worship would be richer and genuine. And, Father, ultimately, you would receive all the honor and glory. Thank you, God. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. For the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea. A great-eyed priest whose name is love. Whoever lives in plea, I have a strong and perfect plea. A great-eyed priest whose name is love. Whoever lives in plea, I have a strong and perfect plea. A great-eyed priest whose name is love. Whoever lives in plea, I have a strong and perfect plea. A great-eyed priest whose name is love.

My name is love. Whoever lives in plea, I have a strong and perfect plea. A great-eyed priest whose name is love. Whoever lives in plea, I have a strong and perfect plea. A great-eyed priest whose name is love. Whoever lives in plea pleads for me. My name is grave. My name is grave and on His hands. My name is written on His heart. I know that while in heaven He stands, no tongue can bid me this deep part. No tongue can bid me this deep part. When Satan tempts me to despair, and tells me of the guilt within, of word I look and see him there, who made an end of all my sin.

Because a sinless Savior died, my sinful soul is counted free. For God the just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me. To look on Him and pardon me. Behold Him there, the risen Lamb, my perfect spotless righteousness, the great unchangeable I am, the King of glory and of grace. One with Himself I cannot die. My soul is purchased by His blood. My life is hid with Christ on high.

With Christ my Savior and my God. With Christ my Savior and my God. One with Himself I cannot die. My soul is purchased by His blood. My life is hid with Christ on high. With Christ my Savior and my God. God with Christ my Savior and my God. As we seek your face, may we know your heart. As we seek your face, may we know your heart. God with us, may we know your heart. God with us, may we know your heart.

The QR code is going to be very important. If you're planning on inviting someone, then you yourself should probably be the one filling this out. That's probably going to be the easiest way to do that. Please, please take advantage of this. Use this time. And maybe even in the small groups and in our home groups, we can share. If we are inviting people to the volleyball outreach, you can share it with your small group so that the small group can together be praying for that individual. Okay. Well, before we break off into our small groups, we'll go ahead and do a quick review. Alright, so we're going into God's covenant with Abram now in chapter 15. And so for reviewing chapter 13 and 14 before we do that, remember we're trying to do two main things as we're doing inductive study, observations, interpretation, and application.

And I remind you, please do not make it difficult for small group and home group leaders to kind of like pull teeth or whatever. I know there's been a lot of great discussion going on, but do the study before coming. And to simplify it all, I think the easiest way I could put it is, look, read the narrative and see what happened. And so you're asking that question. What is going on? What is happening? And then after you do that, you're trying to see how does this apply? And the greater redemptive story, and even in my life today, how is that going to apply? So, some personal thoughts from chapter 13 and 14. I just kind of threw together some random things. But remember that Abram, remember he made that altar at Bethel in chapter 12?

He made that altar after the initial covenant that God gave to Abram, when he called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans. And then he went to Egypt after he made that altar. So he calls upon the name of the Lord, he goes down to the Negev, and then into Egypt. And then remember what happens in Egypt. It's just utter failure. It's utter failure with Pharaoh and Sarai. And then now imagine coming back to Bethel from Egypt. So it says he goes from Egypt, from Bethel into Egypt. And then from Egypt, after his failure, he goes back to Bethel. And he arrives there seeing the altar that he made after the covenant that God had given to him. But now he's coming back with an understanding of his own sins, his own weaknesses and failures.

And I bet he was likely reminded of the covenant that God had given him. Because Abram had tried to take that into his own hands. Now, when he first received this covenant from God, Abram had nothing. Remember, he just came. He was a nomad. He had nothing. And I remember what it was like. This is just a personal reflection. I remember what it was like when God first opened my eyes, and I began to follow him. I had nothing. And it was really easy to follow after him. And Abram, you know, he goes into this new promised land that God had called him to. And he builds these altars. And he worships and he calls upon the name of the Lord. And then he goes into his first test, right? In Egypt. Now, when he comes up out of Egypt, he comes with all this stuff.

Now, Abram has so much. How difficult it must be to walk in faith when all of a sudden you have so much more to lose. Abram, when he tithes, what we studied last week, when he tithes, remember that all he has is that blessing promise from God that he had been given. And it's with the purpose to bless the world. So, again, this is my own just musings, but I have many more blessings that God has given me today that I've picked up over the years of life lived. I remember that I must constantly come back to a place where I remember my first love. I think a lot of that might have happened with Abram. You know, he goes into Egypt with nothing. And then what happens in Egypt is he fails, and he comes back with so many of God's blessings.

He came back with gold and silver and livestock. You can imagine being at this altar, remembering again who it is that he serves, who it is that he's following, and why he's surrendering to this God. And so I remember what it was like when I first became a believer and I came with empty hands. But today I have so much. It's important to come back to this place where you remember nothing compares to what we've been given in Christ. Okay. Lastly, I know this Melchizedek thing was, it could have been a little bit tricky. Go back to Hebrews chapters five through seven and just study that on your own. I was thinking of taking some more time today, but I don't think we're going to have the time. But Melchizedek, remember that he was a king, but he was also a priest.

That's the main thing you need to understand about Melchizedek. And then in the story, Abram tithes to Melchizedek and then Melchizedek blesses Abram. And so there's a very tangible blessing. Now remember, God says he is going to bless. He is making it more and more tangible, more and more communicative, more and more that could be seen and felt and understood as Abram is going on in his life. Now, all of what was going on with Melchizedek, the purpose was to point forward to Christ, who is the priest king, representing us to God, God to us. As Melchizedek, he, and this is the point, he predates the Levitical priesthood and the Mosaic law. It's before that, right? So Christ comes with a better covenant because the Mosaic covenant, we're going to talk about that just briefly today.

It came with all these conditions, but this predates all of that. And so this whole line of unfurling is needed to communicate to mankind their desperate need for the Messiah Savior. So Melchizedek blessing Abram is supposed to look forward to Jesus. Here's the last line then. Jesus comes from the line of Abram, but he also predates Abram. Or he comes from the line of Abraham, but he predates Abram. Does that make sense? So that was the point of Hebrews chapters 5 through 7. Okay. That's a lot. I know that's a lot. I know that could be kind of hard to boil down. But the point, I hope you're able to see a little bit of it, that even the Levites, the priests, they came out of Abram. And then Melchizedek, who is supposed to represent Christ, is actually the one who gives the blessing to Abram.

Okay. All right. Oh, just a quick warning. Please, please beware ChatGPT. Okay. Beware of ChatGPT. So you have to be careful because number one, just like, you know how like in past studies we've said, don't jump to the commentaries first, right? Go into the text, really read it. Break it apart into chunks, like we're going to do today. Just into chunks and try to understand. Do cross-referencing. Try to remember things. And then before you go into something like ChatGPT, because it can be a helpful tool, but it can't be something you run to so quickly. Okay. Please, please, please be aware of that. Secondly, I'm actually coming across things in ChatGPT that are like, kind of like, not the best, like, understanding of some parts of the text.

Okay. So you have to be careful. I know some of you guys are like, "Oh, in the way that MacArthur would understand it," or something like that, right? But you don't want to do that because the goal here is not to be like, "Well, I want to know what this man would say about it," right? That's wrong. That's exactly the opposite of what we're trying to do here. ChatGPT, you can be abusing this like crazy, and you come with all these facts, and then we're just going around in a circle. You abused it, and it did you no good. In fact, it can be very damaging. The point is, we want to wrestle with the text. And by the way, a side benefit is, wrestling with it actually helps you retain it. Okay? All right.

So I just wanted to remind you of that. Here are the personal study questions. We'll come back at 8 o'clock. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.