By the time the major prophets are writing in the Old Testament, the Abrahamic covenant has a layer of meaning that's about hope for restoration, especially during exile.

Ultimately, in the New Testament, Paul adds this brand new layer of meaning to say that everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, can be the spiritual heirs of Abraham because of how that

covenant was fulfilled by Christ. If you go back in time and just look at the original covenant,

there is no layer of meaning about Christ visible. It's about land and generations to come and blessing the earth.

That's what the original covenant is about. But by the time we're in the New Testament, Paul is

explaining to us this is about Christ. Christ made it so that all get to participate in this covenant.

Welcome back to Come Follow Me with Fair. My name is Jennifer Roach Lees. Today we are going to talk about Abraham. We are in Genesis 12 through 17. This is week eight of Come Follow Me. This week is actually kind of part two to what we started last week.

So let me let me go back a little bit. Pause and go listen to it. If you haven't, that might be the better thing to do. But I will sum up for you.

We talked about the covenant God made with Noah and how it might be easy to think of covenants as this static thing that never should change and never should have new layers of meaning, but that's not really how

covenants are presented to us in scripture. And so today we're going to pick up that same idea with

covenants and we're going to talk about the covenant God makes with Abraham. So last week we were talking about the meaning of covenants and

how meaning is revealed over time. And for some people, that might feel kind of frightening or like a

problem or it worries them. But it's part of how our church views the world. It's part of our theology. It's part of

our belief that revelation is ongoing, that these things are being unfolded over time.

Last week's episode, we'll give you all the details on that. Here's where we're going this

week. At different times in scripture, different meaning has

been put on things like, say, Noah's covenant, the noatic covenant. Sometimes it's about a little

flood of the earth. Other times it's about God promising that his mercy will outlast his anger.

Other times it's about obedience, bringing righteousness. At other times,

it's about accepting suffering just like Christ did. And each time a scripture writer talks about

this covenant, they are not erasing the previous meaning. They're adding to it. The covenant does

not change with each new scripture passage. It's just expounded upon. So we come to Abraham

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