This is the Baymaw Podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we continue to look at the kind of partner God has chosen in Abraham.

And we're going to be reading Genesis 18 to 22 covering that whole chunk today. We're actually not going to read the whole thing.

But we are going to start in Genesis 18 where we see Abraham modeling hospitality. So Marty, I think you're going to read that.

Yeah, probably maybe you could go back in while recaptured a little bit of where we've been.

If you remember, we've been talking about the preface of Genesis. This greater all these eight different stories where the author or authors of Genesis, God through Genesis is trying to convince mankind to trust.

To not live out of their fears and insecurities, but to trust that they've got the love and the value and the acceptance of God.

Because if they're going to live a life dominated by fear of what they're not and dominated by fear of what they don't have, if they're going to act out of insecurity, the stories are going to end in a tragedy.

And that's what the preface showed us. And out of the preface into the introduction, we met this guy by name of Abraham.

And we've seen throughout his life, we've seen of, um, do incredible things that we just hadn't seen yet in the story put his life on hold, put his name.

As far as he could tell throwing his legacy away in order to give Yiska, Sarah, dignity and to marry a baron woman, we've seen him struggle to try to figure out what it means to trust the story.

He's not perfect. He's just like you and me.

He put his trust in Egypt, but he learned from that. He didn't let that mistake define him. He didn't let, he didn't settle. One of the themes has been coming all throughout the story of Genesis.

His God doesn't want people to settle until they can find their way back to the tree of life.

Um, and Abraham doesn't settle. Abraham doesn't settle. He learns from his mistakes. He doesn't settle in his mistakes. He doesn't let those bad chapters define him.

And, uh, and he picks up right where he left off. And so we see him give up, load to not once, but twice. And we see him struggle again to struggle to figure out what it means to trust the story and, and, uh, and God meets him there and, and wrestles with him in that and gives him some more promises.

And then, uh, Abraham continues to struggle and he kind of screws up the story with, with Hagar using his perspective and his limited insight to try to figure out what God's doing and, and that kind of falls apart and blows up in his face.

Um, but God comes to him and says, you're still the guy. And in fact, I'm going to give you a mark. I'm going to give you the sign of the covenant.

So instead of the story of Noah where God says, I'm keeping the sign of the covenant. God says, I like this partnership of, and I'm going to give you the sign of the covenant. I'm going to give it to you in a way you're not going to lose it.

Uh, but I'm asking you to buy in a little bit more into the relationship. I'm expecting a little more out of view of, and I did out of Noah and the people early in the story.

And so he invites me into the covenant of circumcision. And that's where we're going to pick up. And the reason I do the review like that is it's really important to remember the, um, the context of this not just dive into the story, but always to remember the context of the story, where it lands, what it's coming after and what it's heading into. That's just really important to keep our eyes on that. So we're picking up right after the story of circumcision. And the question here is.

Okay, so as I've run this sign of this new covenant, this, this covenant of circumcision that he's made with God. What is what kind of a guy is is I'm going to be in this new covenant. What kind of a.

What are we going to see of Ram's what's the next thing that we're going to see come out of of Ram in his walk with God. What's going to be the defining mark of of who he is as a, as a follower of God. So that's where we're going to pick up. We're going to pick up here in Genesis 18.

...