we now get to the central Toledo or this is the account of in Genesis the story of Abraham I'm sorry we've had to bypass some wonderful stories of Noah and his 40 day storm in the ark by the way there's another good number the number 40 in the Bible it's all was a number of testing 40 days of rain there'll be 40 years that Israel wanders in the desert there will be 40 days that Jesus is tempted so we can add that to our list of numbers if you want six imperfect seven perfect ten completion of things 12 completion of people and now 40 the number of testing but we get to about Genesis 12 and the needle kind of drops onto a man way north in the region of khaldiya for all my Chaldeans students this is where you come from to the modern-day land of Iraq Persia near the Tigris and Euphrates a man named of we're told that AAB was a very wealthy man implicitly because he has a father and a brother and many herds and flocks those are all descriptors of a very rich man in the Old Testament the only issue is his wife who's named Sarah SAR a I which means barren so though he's a very wealthy man he has no sons or children and God comes to him remember in the Bible God always initiates it's one of the messages of Christianity it says I need you to up and move and go to the new land I'm showing you and I'll out of faith follow some believes gets to this new land with his father and brother and herds and flocks and his wife named Sarai and God says here in this region of Canaan I give you a new name your name is Abram which means father of a nation because I have chosen you to be the father of my people you Abram and Sarah you're gonna have more descendants than the stars of the heavens and the sands on the seashore well Abram and Sarah are left alone in a new country new language they believed the promise of God but really nothing is happening and so one day Sarah remember this is her idea as you'll read comes to Abram and says well maybe what this God meant for us to have children is that I can give you our housekeeper our maidservant her name is Hagar I'll let you sleep with her and maybe you have a son to her maybe that's what God meant and so Abram was a very old man about 75 to 80 years old Sarah only about ten years long younger they finally have a son through his handmaid Hagar and they named him Ishmael and all's happy but then you'll read that one day some visitants came three of them from a foreign land who were later identified as angels and they say to Abram hey Abram when God said that he was gonna bless you and Sarah he met you and Sarah are gonna have a son in fact by the time we come back in a year she would have given birth and Sarah hears this and she laughs an eighty ninety year old woman and they said and by the way we're gonna change her name a third time it's no longer off it's not Abram but it's a bro hum which in Hebrew that harm is an intensifier you're gonna be the father of a mob a riot and Sarah is no longer Sarai because she won't be barren anymore her name now is Sarah which means princess she's going to be the princess of this new nation and as you'll read sure enough God blessed them with a son and they named him we laughed or I saw Isaac now we get the story of Hagar and Ishmael remember them and now Sarah comes with her own son and remember whose idea it was Sarah is you gotta laugh at this now she comes back to Abraham and says hey this dumb idea of yours to have a son through Hagar I don't like it anymore I want him out of here so Hagar and Ishmael are banished that unde up in the Arabian Peninsula and their descendants will come back in the story just hang on but meanwhile now we're left as the story goes on with Abraham Sarah and Isaac now we get to the most pivotal story Isaac is about eighteen years old and God comes back to Abraham and says hey Abraham I need you to sacrifice the son Isaac for me and as you read the story if any of you have any cursory knowledge of the Christian story even then you'll see some great foreshadowing here the father is asked to sacrifice his son they take a three-day journey the Sun climbs up a mountain the Sun carries the wood on his back you'll read that and the son is to be the sacrifice even with any sort of knowledge of Christianity you all know who that sounds like right Jesus and that's exactly how the story is told Abraham and Isaac get up there it's very detailed which is away the rider telling us this is something really important he didn't skip any detail we're told of the knife the Flint the wood the journey where the servants were the whole thing they get to the top of this mountain build an altar only then and only then apparently that's Isaac say hey dad we remembered the wood for Flint the rope the knife we got here the map seems like we forgot the sacrifice and apparently at that time Abraham a very old man hundred 110 asked his son to get up on the altar and I find this very fascinating the text said he does how easy would it have been for Isaac outrun 110 old year old man after a three days hike up a mountain but apparently according to the text Isaac was obedient and then when God sees I think both the obedience of Isaac and Abraham he says okay I see your faith so now I will allow a substitution to be made for he who should have been sacrificed look there in the thicket you'll find a ram you can sacrifice him instead and for those of you that know the Christian story of course that to a Christian would say is a foreshadow of the Jesus story that we who should have been sacrificed for our sin remember Genesis 3 yet God allows a substitution to be made and place that on Jesus instead well Isaac goes home by another way you think and the story then will go on that sure enough through Isaac the descendants of Abraham will be blessed it becomes the nation of Israel which now will be the center family of the Old Testament story as we go forward but there's wonderful toll of death of Abraham because you see from this that place where Isaac was almost sacrificed and the Lord provided was named Mariah Mariah is a Hebrew word the Lord will provide because on that mountain the Lord provided a sack a substitutionary sacrifice the RAM for he who should have been sacrificed why do I mention Mount Moriah because later when that family of Abraham became a nation and they wanted a capital city like all other cities well what would be their most holy spot that they would want to centralize more Mount Moriah and they built walls around it they called it Jerusalem and later when one of those descendants wanted to build a temple for God what would be the most holy spot within those walls the top of Mount Moriah and that's where Solomon built the temple so it becomes a very holy spot for the Jews of the Old Testament this is the spot where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac well if you fast forward the story and go to the New Testament the birth of Jesus who Christians believe is the Old Testament fulfillment of the Messiah Jesus then when he went to be sacrificed now but did not get crucified on top of Mount Moriah because then it was inside the city walls of Jerusalem when the Romans didn't do any executions inside the walls but instead Jesus went to a hill right outside of Jerusalem very near Mount Moriah and was sacrificed after a three-day journey tearing the wood on his back and the father would sacrifice the son but a Christian believes that after Jesus died and was resurrected he ascended into heaven and then the scripture is clear that he ascended from the top of Mount Moriah so now Mount Moriah becomes a holy place for Christians now remember when I said Hagar and Ishmael went to the Arabian Peninsula and their descendants would come back into the story well here we go about five hundred and seventy-one years after the birth of Jesus we have the birth of Abdullah Mohammed from that line of had garnished meal we know that today as the modern religion of Islam Islam believes and we'll get to this later in more specificity but well for today we can just say that Islam believes that the Prophet received his greatest revelation from the top of Mount Moriah the five pillars or tenants or foundation of Islam and so now the top of Mount Moriah becomes a holy spot for Islam today that holy spot is belongs to Muslims it's a mosque the Dome of the rock in 1952 after World War two Prince Abdullah of Jordan gave enough money that the whole dome could be gilded in gold you can't miss it when you go to Jerusalem in the Palestinian Sun this huge cult don't it's the top of Mount Moriah and the modern-day compromise for the three faiths who claim that as a holy site all from Abraham you see the father of three monotheistic faiths in order Judaism Christianity Islam today if you go to Jerusalem the top belongs to the Islamic faith only males with head cover may go into it from a north entrance Jews go through a South Side walk to get to what few remaining stones remain of Solomon's Temple it's called the Wailing Wall in Christians they got the spot not on Mount Moriah but just a couple blocks away the Church of the Holy Sepulchre a church built over the supposed site of Jesus's tomb and this is how the League of Nations then the United Nations tried to solve this problem after World War two of how three monotheistic faiths all from Abraham all wanting the same spot we're supposed to live in peace with this compromise and I'll let you be the judge of how well that has worked but that's modern-day Mount Moriah is the temple of the dome the dome of the rock in Jerusalem it's incredible you can still go there the place that the Lord provided dad has been my brief explanation of this central Tola dose of the story of Genesis I hope it helped you unpack it and that you'll be very excited to read it it's an important story because Abraham for the third time is the father of three monotheistic faiths in order to D ISM Christianity Islam we learned new vocabulary words like Abram father of a nation Sarai Baron sara princess isaac we laughed and all of this illustrates again that God initiates a relationship with humanity and will not let go the Lord provides and all of this continues to foreshadow the story even as it tells it of God's rescue plan following the fall of Genesis 3 unfortunately we have to leave Genesis all the stories are equally as rich I so wish I could tell you the story of Jacob and Joseph we just can't and I'm so sorry but I hope I peaked your interest that you could read it on your own the next video then we'll leave this and talk about the second book of the Bible in just one lecture the book of Exodus I'll see you then