Hello again everyone, and welcome back for the last podcast episode for the week.  This morning in Genesis 21 it looks like Abraham’s life is turning into a soap opera.  The mothers of his two children turn on each other, and one of the kids has to go!  Oh no!  How will God work things out?  You’ll just have to listen and see, or else read your Bible.  Abraham also makes an agreement to the kind go the land he’s living in that they will live peaceable and honestly with each other in this chapter, and that’s not a bad example.  Even among people who believe differently from us, we should live in such a way that people will say that Christians make good neighbors and friends.

Again in this chapter, like in many of the ones we’ve covered so far, we read of people having to learn to trust God.  I think the reason that this theme appears so many times in the Bible (we’re just in the first book!) is that it is something that people have to learn by iteration and repetition.  We have to go through difficulty with God’s help enough times that we learn to trust Him, and that’s not something we can just pick up by reading about it.

That’s all for me this week.  Have a good weekend and check back next week for another episode.

Happy Wednesday!  This morning we’re in Genesis chapter 20.  This chapter records an event that was a lot like the time Abraham went to Egypt and told everyone there that Sarah was his sister.  So, Abraham is up to his old tricks and naturally it goes badly because it’s always a bad idea to lie and to not trust God for provision.

The great thing about God though, is that when He promises something, He’s going to see it done no matter what, and He is happy to forgive mistakes when we repent.  There’s no one faithful like God, and so Abraham finds forgiveness even though the circumstance he was in was the result of his own foolishness.

That’s all for today.  Check back tomorrow for the next episode.

Whoa! Genesis 19 is a crazy chapter.  All kinds of strange things happen in this part of the Bible.  There’s angels, crazy mobs, fire raining from heaven, and even incest!  It’s a really wacky story that illustrates how crazy things can get when we choose to live for ourselves instead of living for God.  Make no mistake, even well raised people, like Lot in this chapter, are capable of really poor decisions if they allow their moral compass to drift.

But there are some really great high points to this chapter as well.  God doesn’t give up on Lot, even though Lot has more or less forgotten God.  God is faithful enough to save Lot, even though he doesn’t seem to want to be saved at times.  That’s a great lesson to remember.  Even when we aren’t faithful, God, the definer of faithfulness, will always be faithful.  I don’t know about you, but that’s good news to me.

Check back in tomorrow for another chapter.  Also, this podcast is now available through the iTunes store here:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mikeblog-blog-morning-bible/id1052517888

Hello again, and happy Day Before Friday Day!  In this chapter we have a repeat of God’s promise that Abraham will have a son, and we have some foreshadowing of what’s going to happen in Sodom and Gomorrah.  Yes, there is sort of a cliffhanger ending at the end of the chapter, but we all know what’s coming for those two cities.  There’s a point in there though, and it’s this: God is very merciful.  God is more merciful than we give Him credit for, but ultimately there must be justice, so that mercy can’t go on forever.

So when does God’s mercy end?  Well, we know God wants all people to be with Him, and we know God goes to extraordinary efforts to reach people no matter what their circumstances are, so I think God’s mercy goes as far as it possibly can until God knows that more mercy will do no good.  That’s my theory anyway.

See you all next week for the next episode!  Have a great weekend, and leave me lots of comments.

Hump Daaaaaay.  Yes, it’s Wednesday.  It’s that sad day when we all realize that we have half a week left before we hit the weekend, and we all mourn collectively on the way to work.  But look on the bright side!  There’s another podcast episode available!  Wooo!

Anyway, in this chapter God doubles down on His promise to Abraham (name change!) and Sarah (also name change!) to make their descendants into a nation, and He also restates His promise to give Ishmael a similar blessing as well.  So blessings are doled out all around.  Also, that circumcision thing is introduced into the Bible in this chapter.  I’m sure Abraham and Ishmael would have preferred that God choose funny hats instead of circumcision, but they go along with it anyway, because that’s what God had chosen to be the physical sign of being part of His covenant with Abraham.

Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for the next episode!  There’s some interesting stuff in the next chapter, and I’m not giving anything away here, so you’d just have to listen to tomorrow’s recording to find out what happens.  You could also just read your Bible.  In any case, see you tomorrow.

Hello again, people of the Internet.  Welcome back to another episode of the Bible Reading Podcast.  Today we’re looking at one of the soap-opera chapters in Abram’s life.  It’s got jealousy and betrayal and hubris, but it’s also got mercy and grace and forgiveness too!  In this chapter we meet someone named Ishmael as well, who eventually becomes the father of the Arab nations, so there’s a historical element going on here as well.

One of my favorite parts about this chapter is that God doesn’t hold it against Ishmael that his parents were foolish.  Ishmael has nothing to do with the promise God made to Abram, and he’s not part of the story that God is trying to tell with Israel, yet God decides to bless him anyway.  Why?  Because God is good!

Tomorrow we’ll be getting into God’s reset for what Abram and Sarai have done.  God’s going to reaffirm His plan to Abram and make it abundantly clear that he doesn’t need Abram trying to do it himself.   It ought to be pretty interesting, so check back here tomorrow for the next episode.

Hello again, and welcome back.  Today in Genesis 15 there is some really great stuff to read.  This chapter has Abram asking God some honest questions while dealing with a crisis of faith, and God is perfectly happy to answer them!  In this passage we also get to read the iconic verse about God accounting Abram as a righteous man on account of his faith, which becomes the basis of salvation by grace through faith in the sacrificial death of Christ on our behalf.  Cool stuff, no?

What I like most about this passage though is the way God decides that it’s all oh Him to fulfill the promise to Abram.  God doesn’t put any conditions on Abram at all.  He wants to bless Abram, so He’s going to do it no matter what, even though it should be impossible.  That’s the kind of God we worship.

Check back tomorrow for the last recording of this week.  See you then!

Hello internet people.  Welcome back for another episode of the Mikeblog Bible Reading podcast.  Today we’re reading and talking about Genesis 14, or rather I’m talking about it.  You can talk about it too, but you have to leave comments because no one can hear you talking to your computer unless they have hacked into your webcam, which I have not.  Promise.

Anyway, Abram battles five kings with the help of his friends and neighbors in this chapter, saves his nephew from slavery, and makes the first tithe recorded in the Bible.  There are also a lot of hard-to-pronounce names of people and places, so it’s a fun chapter all around!  It’s one of the high points in Abram’s story, and there’s a good lesson in this chapter for us to remember that our victories need to be at the hand of God, rather than at the hand of those who might exploit us.

That’s it for me for today!  Leave comments and questions that we can talk about, and check in tomorrow for the next podcast episode.

Welcome back!  This time we’re in Genesis chapter 13 and reading about the split between Lot and Abram due to their huge herds of animals.  Lot looks like he gets the better deal, but it’s important to remember sometimes that when we choose income over all other things, there can be unintended consequences!  We’ll read more about those later of course.

I get the sense that Abram needs reassuring at the end of the chapter, and that appears to be what the Lord does.  To my reckoning, that’s kind of a big deal.  It shows that blind obedience isn’t what the Lord wants and that He is really concerned with the emotional state of His people, and is happy to act on their behalf.

This is it for me this week.  Check back next Tuesday for the next installment in Abram’s story!

Happy Wednesday!  Welcome back for another episode of the Bible Reading Podcast.  This morning I’m reading Genesis 12, which is the first episode dealing with the life of Abram after he’s called by God to move to Canaan.  Very early in Abram’s life we see that he’s not perfect and that he’s prone to the same kinds of mistakes we are, so to me Abram is easy to relate to and I can put myself in his place and think about what it must have been like to be in his position.  Abram is also used by later Bible writers as a demonstration of what faith is supposed to look like, and he really is a good example for that.  The great thing about Abram is that he demonstrates throughout his life that you can still be faithful in God even though you’re not perfect and even though you make mistakes because God is ultimately faithful Himself and never abandons us.  Good stuff!

Again, let me know what you think of today’s recording about Abram.  Did I miss anything that you think is important?  Did I bring up anything you hadn’t heard before?  I want to hear from you!