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For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.Eph 2:9 |
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| Archived Manna: | |
Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :The Story of Abraham [50] - Keturah Bible Verse:Genesis 25:1-6 (ESV) "Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah. She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Jokshan fathered Sheba and Dedan. The sons of Dedan were Asshurim, Letushim, and Leummim. The sons of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, and Eldaah. All these were the children of Keturah. Abraham gave all he had to Isaac. But to the sons of his concubines Abraham gave gifts, and while he was still living he sent them away from his son Isaac, eastward to the east country. " Message:
We get six rather bizarre verses here at the start of Genesis 25. The passage is mostly ignored, for it is entirely tangential to both Christianity and Judaism.
It is full of weird names. But consider, for a second, why all of these names seem so odd, and yet, the names of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca seem so normal. It is because we are the descendants of Abraham, in faith if not seed, and our forebears have been using their names for their children for 3500 years. If, say, the sons of Abraham had been named in opposite order, we would have studied the physics of “Sir Ishmael Newton” in school, and “President Asshurim Lincoln” might have freed the American slaves.
Faith to walk in the footsteps of Christ
We are tied, by the names we have given our children, to a continuous civilization that is 3500 years old! We bear the names of people blessed by God. We follow in their footsteps.
Abraham’s relationship with Keturah, and his many offspring, is the source of great mystery and much speculation and debate among Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scholars. She is referred to here as his wife, and that gives us no problem, because our current culture treats a second monogamous marriage, after the death of a spouse, just like a first marriage. By this accident, we do not blink at the news.
But things are not actually so clear. We might assume that Sarah had died when Abraham wed Keturah, but the passage doesn’t say this. In reading the first books of the Bible, we see enough bigamy to infer that the culture of Canaan at the time was bigamous. Men frequently had two wives (or a wife and a concubine) simultaneously. Moreover, Keturah is called Abraham’s “concubine” elsewhere, and even in this passage, the reference to “concubines” might imply that Keturah is a concubine, thus making the words “wife” and “concubine” practically synonymous.
An even more intriguing question arises: What became of the sons? It is unthinkable that they were not circumcised; Abraham circumcised even his adult male servants. But yet, they were not men who transmitted the old covenant, for God is to renew His covenant with Isaac.
It seems correct, however, to say that Isaac was Abraham’s heir, both of his fortune and of his covenant with God, for it is through Isaac that the Jews (including Christ) trace their genealogy. And it is possible that the offspring of all Isaac’s many half-brothers, who were given gifts and sent to live in the east, were eventually assimilated among the many tribes of the vast world to the east of the Jordan River. Or, perhaps, they returned to live with Joseph into Egypt, and their heirs appear in Exodus. Nobody knows.
We need to remember, however, that Abraham’s true permanent “heir” was Jesus Christ, something we do not encounter positively until Galatians.
Meditation : Prayer : Now, to God the Father, who first loved us, and made us accepted in the Beloved; to God the Son, who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood; to God the Holy Ghost, who sheds the love of God abroad in our hearts, be all love and all glory in time and to all eternity........Amen |
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