VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. Today on Anchored by Truth we are going to continue looking at some of the key scriptures in the Bible that help trace the grand story of creation, fall, and redemption as it proceeds from Genesis to Revelation. Sometimes we focus so much on the individual verses, commands, or observations within the Bible that have to do with family relations, money, or prayer or any other subject that we forget that the Bible is a book that does tell one continuous story. So, during this series we’re focusing on 15 key scriptures that show how that story is unfolding according to God’s perfect plan. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books and part time pastry planner. When the muffins are buy-one-get-one in the grocery store he picks the second kind we get. It’s not a good idea to let him pick both kinds. Anyway, RD, would you remind us of where we are in our progress as we continue watching the overall saga of creation and redemption unfold?

RD: Sure. Naturally, the first scripture of the 15 we’re focusing on was Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Since, then we’ve looked at scriptures that took us to the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and we looked at Genesis 3:15, which is sometimes termed the protoevangelium - the start of the overall redemptive process. Also, last time we looked at the part of scripture that described God’s initiation of the Noahic covenant. The Noahic covenant is the first of the four covenants which bear the names of the specific men to whom the covenant was delivered. Today we’re going to look at two more of those “named” covenants: the Abrahamic covenant named for the patriarch Abraham and the Mosaic covenant, obviously named for the prophet Moses. The establishment of these two covenants marks two more major milestones as the plan of redemption unfolds.

VK: So our first few scriptures described creation, the fall, and what might be called the promise of redemption. But once we moved on to the various covenants we are now seeing how God turned the promise of redemption into redemptive reality.

RD: Exactly. So, one note we can make immediately about the Abrahamic covenant is that, like the Noahic covenant, it marked a time in the history of redemption where God looked across the world and selected one particular person through whom He decided He would continue the redemptive process. As we covered last time, in Noah’s day God saw that just about all of the people had become so wicked that Genesis 6:5 says “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” 

VK: And the next verses go on to say that God was “sorry” that he had made man and that he was going to “blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land.” And that would have been the end of the redemptive process, but fortunately Genesis 6:8 says, “Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.”

RD: Yes. So, with Noah we have the first example of seeing God make the selection of one person from all the people on earth through whom He is continue performing His work of redemption. With Abraham we have the second example of God doing that. The Bible tells us that originally Abraham was called “Abram” and he lived in “Ur of the Chaldeans,” modern day Iraq. As we heard in our opening scripture, God told Abram to leave Ur and go to Canaan, modern day Israel. God also told Abram that through him “all the families of the earth will be blessed.” So, this was the first announcement that God was going to start a new ancestral line which ultimately would produce a blessing for all the families on earth.

This is episode 281.

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