Okay, I have a lot going on in my head today. So forgive me in advance if I feel like I'm all over the

place. I promise if I can get these thoughts out clearly, I think it will be helpful for you as a man who is trying to love Jesus more and become the man God's called you to be. A couple weeks ago, my pastor, who many of you guys know, Caleb, he did, were teaching through the book of Genesis. and he was talking about this Abram covenant that God makes with Abraham or Abram at the time.

And I want to just like. We're teaching through the book of Genesis. And he was talking about this Abram covenant that God makes with Abraham or Abram at the time.

And I want to just like paint the picture for you in case you're unfamiliar.

God tells Abram and his wife, Sorai, that they're going to have many, many children.

The crazy thing about that promise is that they don't have any babies yet, and they're very,

very old. And so God says, go look up at the stars or go try to count the dust. Like, that's how many children you are going to have. And in your lineage, one of your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandkids will be the savior of the world. He's talking about Jesus in case you you miss that. So God says to

Abram, you're going to have lots of kids and I'm going to save the whole world through one of your

children. Okay, so it's great promise. But you could imagine Abram and his wife Sarah. The Bible says

that they actually believe God, but there are times if you watch their story throughout the

scriptures that sometimes they have doubts. Like, is God really going to fulfill this promise? We're getting pretty old. So Abram, in one of his moments of doubt, says, God, how can I, how can I know? Like, how can you keep telling me I'm going to have all these babies? I'm starting to get a little, I'm starting to question the promise. How can I know? And God essentially in Genesis 15 says, well, let's shake on it. The interesting thing about biblical, ancient biblical times is when they say let's shake on it, which they didn't actually say that, but that's how we would kind of translate what's happening in the scriptures in our day and age. Like God's saying, well, I'm giving you my word. But in their days, it was way bigger than just like, hey, let's shake hands on it and you can trust me on my word. It was much bigger deal. They would go through a whole ceremony that had heavier consequences. So what God does when he says, essentially, let's shake on it, he tells Abram, go grab the animals. Now, this would have been very familiar territory to Abram. Abram would have known exactly what God was doing here. So Abram goes and grabs all the animals that God tells him to grab a bunch of different, a variety of different animals, and they take all these animals and they split them in half from like the head down. Very bizarre, kind of weird. If you're reading

the scriptures for the first time and you're new to the Bible, you're like, what the heck is

happening? Why are we killing all these animals? And why are we killing them in like such a weird

way, like cutting them in half? This was normal biblical covenant, make a promise, let's shake on it,

kind of language and ceremonies ceremonies what was happening here.

So they cut the animals in half and they essentially create a hallway of dead carcasses,

blood everywhere, half of animals kind of spread out.

Now the plan was in their day that each of them would walk through the hallway of bloody carcasses.

Each of them one at a time would walk through. And what they're saying

is the symbolism that's happening here is, if one of us does not fulfill our promise, may we be like

these animals, may we die and be killed like these animals. So when they say let's shake on it,

or in their culture, like, you can trust my word it had heavy heavy consequences my

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