We are tracing the biblical theme that we're calling the first horn.

It's a theme about messy family dynamics and power plays.

It's a theme about how God's virt's typical power structures by choosing the least expected

to have power.

If you've been following along, you've seen how this theme works out in the stories

of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah's three sons.

Today, we get to Abraham and his relationship with his nephew Lot.

Abraham has the first horn status with Lot, but he doesn't use his status as a means to gain

more power.

Instead, he lets Lot decide which portion of land to settle in first.

Which makes us wonder why is Abraham able to act with such generosity?

The deep assumption is that God said he's going to bless me.

I don't own any land yet.

If you choose land, God said he'd bless me so I know there'll be some for me too.

From Abraham, we move on to the stories of the three generations that come after him.

And in these stories, the theme of sibling rivalry gets turned up.

God has a blessing for everybody, but he's going to bring it through one family.

That family is constantly in all these cycles of rivalry hurting each other to get the

thing God wants to give to all of them.

God will actually turn that rivalry into the vehicle through which he brings the unity

that will restore the blessing to everybody.

These stories are full of deceptions and deceptions within deceptions.

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