Esau's Ungrand Finale
Genesis 36 · Vern Peterman · Nov 30, 2008
Genesis, No. 46
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492611804400

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We are most certainly going to be stepping into this passage that Courtney so graciously introduced for us. However, we're going to be looking at a few things first. One of the things we're going to want to do is to introduce the electives that will begin in January. I think December's tomorrow. So anyway, this will be just a little more than a month out. And those electives are one that will be a trio of classes and series, You and Christ and Christ and You, Law and Grace Contrasted, and Position and Condition. And the next one is the Book of Ephesians and the Book of Revelation. Certainly the Book of Revelation is going to be a year long. The others, nine months to a year, we'll see.

We would ask that you sign up in the lobby, if you would, so that we can plan. It helps us with where things will be, where we have room, and it's also helpful for getting materials lined up. So sign-up sheets are in the lobby, and the sooner and more we can get done early on that, the better.

Also, we've got another thing to talk about here. It isn't too often that we call somebody on the carpet here at Holly Hills, but sometimes we have to do that, and so I'm going to ask Randy to get up here because we have to call him on the carpet. Randy, we've asked you to come up here, and it's not by accident. But we'd like to ask you, you were here just a few weeks ago doing something, and well, we have to bring it up. Now, instead of me bringing it up, it might be a little more comfortable. This can be awkward. It might be a little more comfortable if you bring it up. Actually, it was more than a couple weeks ago, unfortunately. We had coffee. which is okay to have in moderation. We had coffee a couple mornings ago before Thanksgiving, and I was telling my dad how edifying it was in myself, or in my life, and my wife's life. Wives, that's plural. My wife's life.

I only have one, I can barely manage that. Now you see why we have to call him on the carpet. To clean here in the church, I don't know if you've considered cleaning before. If you have not cleaned, please consider it. 1 Thessalonians 5.17 is one of the shorter Bible verses and it says pray without ceasing.

And as I was cleaning throughout the church building, the Lord brought various people to mind and I could pray. And not to make any connections, but you know when you're cleaning the toilet and you're praying for somebody, it's special. But as you're vacuuming, and the Lord just brought, I had different recollections of conversations and edifying moments in my walk with the Lord based on different ones of you that are watching me now saying embarrassing things in front of you. But it's really edifying to clean. So if you haven't considered cleaning, please do so, because actually as you're vacuuming or scrubbing or doing various things that you probably don't think about people doing, but there's a list, it's really edifying.

And it's neat, as the Lord brings people to mind, that you can be praying for them. You're serving the body as well, but it was really cool, and I just wanted to share that with you to consider that opportunity Okay, well, we'll perhaps call you up on the carpet again.

We'll see Okay one way Okay Something else about this trip to Uganda that is is planned for just a couple months, actually less than two months from now. Bruce Beatty, who is away this Sunday, will be going. He actually has been there before, I have not, and will be going January 21st through February 3rd. And just to give you an idea here of some of the pictures there, this downtown Mbale, that's where we'll be staying most of the time.

We'll be going out to a place called Shishinyo Village, which is Mango Village. There's Shishinyo Village Bible Church there. And that's one of the churches we'll be working with. It's composed almost entirely of new believers who have been believers since about June. And then they'll be in contact with some other believers in Mbali, who also have been the only believers just this year.

You see a picture there with a woman with this container on her head. The women typically will carry 80 pounds of water up to three miles, going back and forth several times a day. It's just kind of amazing. This picture of the little kids, those little kids, most of them couldn't be convinced that that picture was a picture of them because they'd never seen themselves before.

One of the things that we talked about several weeks ago is a need for mp3 players. Well, guess what? We now have all the mp3 players that we can handle. But they will be loaded up with the entire New Testament in Lugandan, the language of the people in that area. There are about 3 million people that speak Lugandan, and English. English is taught in the schools and is the official language of Uganda, so people can listen to whatever is most comfortable for them. Forty percent of the population in this district cannot read, and so having these is a phenomenal improvement over waiting until some time when someone can read it to them because they will be able to listen.

One more thing, in our culture we are often reluctant to memorize things. For them in their culture where you don't have a lot of books and you don't have hard drives, memorizing the entire New Testament is no problem at all. One fellow who is a Muslim background says, I memorized the Koran. It makes perfectly good sense for me to memorize the entire Bible. So anyway, a whole different mindset and these will be a tremendous asset. We're going to be working on other ways for people in the body here to share in that in the coming weeks here.

One other thing is when we introduced this topic a few weeks ago, we prayed for a man by the name of Khalid. There was a difficult situation that came up because Bruce had asked Khalid to measure a church building. Well, The pastor was extremely upset that he did so and would actually press Trespassing charges against them. So here was a crazy situation And that's been resolved that charges have been dropped and the Lord's answered prayer there. So how about that here? We are, you know thousands of miles away from this guy, but the Lord answered prayer.

That's neat. That's neat to see Anyway, we'll have more information to update you as this proceeds now into the chapter, chapter 36, that Courtney so wondrously introduced for us here. Now, this whole chapter is of a character, if it wasn't for Esau, there would not be a chapter 36. And so we're going to be moving into this chapter that's all about Esau. Now you may be wondering, what's this little contraption up here? That's an Esau. Okay, there we go. Okay. Now, Genesis chapter 36 is all about Esau's family tree. from verse 1 down to verse 43. That's all it's about. It's his entire family tree.

Some details are tucked here and there between, and we'll take a look at those, such as the reason why he relocated there in the last part of what Courtney read for us, and a few other little details here and there. We have earlier talked about Esau, he's not a new name, and we have seen some of his history. Some of it goes quite a ways back.

For example, back in Genesis 25 where we first see where Jacob and Esau are born, brothers, and the history of the three wives. Two of them are Canaanite wives and Canaan, as you recall, is out of Genesis chapter 9. So here's going many chapters back into the history of this guy Esau. Some weeks back we showed you this family tree that goes all the way from the father of Abraham by the name of Terah and Abraham's brothers and others who are descended from him. Particularly from Abraham we have Isaac and Jacob and the 12 sons who are now the Israelites, the people that we otherwise called Jews. Esau, being Jacob's brother, is the father of another line. That's the line that's addressed in detail here in chapter 36. So you might be thinking, why are we studying Esau's family tree? A whole chapter on Esau's family tree.

Well, at first glance, when you look at all these obscure names, and I'm sure that Courtney had fun pronouncing them, it might seem like a good reason to lean back in your pews and saw some lumber. Maybe a lot of lumber. However, I would suggest that there are reasons not to let that entirely engulf our meeting here this morning because we're going to find as we go through it that there are some surprises perhaps and as we step through some of the details of this genealogy of this family tree and the interesting connection from Esau to the birth of Christ.

How about that? So, appropriate to the season. There's also some valuable lessons to be learned. What? From a genealogy? Yes, exactly that. Valuable lessons to be learned from this genealogy. Now, first thing I have to tell you is I looked and dug high and low. I really looked hard for a complete genealogy for this guy Esau. I mean really complete from Esau on down.

And the closest thing I'd come up with was a chart from a book that was printed in 1817. That's the closest I could get, and that's been a while. So the chart's not quite of the quality I would like, but nonetheless, that's available as a supplement on your way out here to the right. And feel free, you just have to have a brain and eyes that can think almost 200 years back.

All right, if that works, great. We're going to just in this one slide go through an outline, a quick outline of Genesis 36. Just a few points here just to kind of get the big picture of this genealogy or family tree. It lists Esau's three wives and five sons along with their move to Seir, which is a, there's a mountain there called Seir and that's kind of that region that's surrounding the mountain. in the first eight verses that Courtney read for us here. One of the things you'll notice is that a couple of the wives have names that are different from the earlier names that are given in the Bible, and you say, well, why is that? One of the reasons is sometimes there were dual names, and so they would pick one name and the other. And the other is because sometimes, somewhat similar to what we do now, when a woman would get married, the name would be changed.

Okay? So those are possibilities here. Nonetheless, it is the same number of wives as we saw earlier. Here is Sear, which is just at the southeast area of the Dead Sea. The finger there pointing to the Dead Sea area. So southeast of the Dead Sea. This is now the southern part of what is Jordan in our modern geography. And the city of Petra is included in that section. Did Mark go there? Yeah. So Mark has been in the area inside that circle. Mark Henderson. Okay.

Esau's five sons then and ten grandsons there in verses 9 through 14 as you proceed through it. then chiefs were descended from Esau. These are tribal chiefs in verses 15 through 19. Okay, now as we step to the other part there, chiefs of the Horites, and these are Esau's descendants intermarrying with these other local people. And it's interesting, Esau intermarried with them and then ousted them. Hey, let's get married, your family and my family, now leave. That's basically the philosophy he took.

So another interesting thing that's not in your handout, and that's this, what is transliterated hor, H-O-R, in English, that's the Hebrew for cave. So one thought here, not confirmed, but one thought is the possibility that these Horites were actually cave dwellers. When you think of a cave, you might be thinking of somebody that's sort of, you know, woof, woof, woof, right?

Okay? That's not what we're talking about here. Here is Petra, which is more of a Roman-era thing, but it is an example of the kind of structures that people often lived in, some of them fairly sophisticated looking. The one on the lower right, for example, showed up in one of the Indiana Jones movies, not the last one. Okay.

As we step through here, there's also the kings of Edom. The kings that are listed there is at least a partial fulfillment of what the Lord said to Abraham, kings shall be descended from you. And certainly not with the grandeur and importance of those kings that came through the line of, for example, David, and will end up being Christ, who will be king of kings. And a final list there of chiefs, an additional set of chiefs there ending the chapter. Now, one thing that we notice, Esau chose wise from the wrong groups. He didn't pick so good.

He had two wives who were from the people of Canaan, and one thing that's very clear, it says twice, two different passages, these two wives of Esau drove Isaac and Rebekah nuts. Drove them crazy. Rebekah said, oh, my life is not worth living because of these two. She just went bonkers. And then additionally, there's the one that Courtney read for us, Besamash, Ishmael's daughter.

So Hera was not one of the Canaanites, but this is Ishmael's daughter, and Ishmael had been a rejected part of the family, not a part of the intended line that God had brought. So it didn't matter. Whatever Esau did in the way of trying to fix the problem only aggravated it and underscored it. Isaac and Jacob each deliberately took wives that were not from Canaan. If you're going to be the one who is going to have this land, you can't just get all mixed up with these people and end up diluting the promise that this will be your land. Because if you mix up with the Canaanites, it's already their land, right?

Now, one of the points of comparison, as believers, we are to be choosy as well when it comes to picking a spouse. Marrying only another believer, one of the passages, 2 Corinthians 6, is a frequent one that's pointed to. I'd like to point to another one, however. A few years back, we studied the book of Ephesians. As a matter of fact, touched on it again earlier this year. Ephesians 5 has sections that are addressed to the wife and to the husband, but what's very clear in reading the passage is the example for husband and wife is the relationship between Christ and the church.

If I take that and kind of fog out the part that doesn't talk about Christ and the church, the point is an unbeliever will have a difficult time using this example to learn anything from. They aren't a part of the church. They don't understand who Christ is. They don't know Him. They can't learn from the example. So believers marrying other believers is God's intent and something important to take into powerful consideration here.

There's something else that's very clear as you read through this genealogy. and that's that Isaac and Rebekah did not pass spiritual truths to Jacob, and particularly in this case, to Esau. There's very little indication, as we've studied through the chapters, that Isaac and Rebekah placed any emphasis on passing spiritual truth to Jacob and Esau. We find some, but relatively little, mention of God in the communications between Isaac and Rebekah and their sons. Nothing in Esau's history, as you go through this chapter, reveals any spiritual substance.

Oh, tucked behind a couple of the names, there's mention of God. But you almost wonder, that's right in the generation right after Esau, you'll wonder if that isn't just to kind of keep the parents happy. Because there's nothing else that shows up on the surface that reveals any spiritual substance or depth.

Now, of course, as we've gone through studying Genesis and recent chapters, oh yeah, we've pointed out that Jacob has a number of shortcomings, sometimes some fairly serious ones. But the spiritual substance we see in his life, what we do see, is because God had spoken to him and communicated with him, Jacob listened and responded to what the Lord said. There was some spiritual substance in his life, noticeably, even in spite of his shortcomings.

One of the other things that comes out of this chapter, looking through it, lots of names get dropped here. The names are names of individuals. What's interesting is there's not a lot of group names, some, but not much. Lots of names of people, individuals.

And one of the things that comes out very clearly in Scripture, Christ died for the sins of every individual on the planet. He died to pay for the sins of every person on the planet. Individuals matter. People matter. Every single name that we see, even the names, though they don't show up often, of groups, every single one, Christ died for them all. Individuals do matter.

Beyond that, each one of us, as with Jacob and Esau, leaves a legacy. That's right. Every single one. And legacy is a gift passed on to the next generation. So the only question is what's in the box, okay? Every one of us leaves a legacy impacting others in various ways.

It is easy for us to discount, and I'm not talking about encouraging arrogance, but it is easy for us to discount the impact that we have on other people. Esau just probably thought, well, I'm a guy with a few wives, and I like to hunt, and I'd like to move over here. But what he did and said and didn't do impacted that whole family of people for generations to come.

Here is Jacob, who at one point in time was alone in Bethel, and the Lord spoke to him. Imagine the impact that that guy has had. That one guy, descended from him, is the person of Jesus Christ. As we'll see a little bit here, 14 million descendants of Jacob right now on the earth. And that's in spite of centuries of severe persecution. So the only question is, what's the character of the legacy? Is the box empty? Or is the box full? Or somewhere in between?

I'm not talking about laying a law on somebody. No. We've said here before, and I'll say it again. We have motive, means, and opportunity. This isn't a murder case. We have motive of grace and mercy. We have the means, the Holy Spirit, and we have every opportunity every day that the Lord has laid in front of us. He has prepared good works. Motive, means, and opportunity. Every one of us has it.

And it's grace and mercy, not law. The pivotal word here is significance. Things matter in this life. People matter in this life. That's key. And that comes out in this passage. It would be easy to look at all the names that Courtney did pretty well at pronouncing here, but they're tough. And to say, oh boy, I don't know who those guys are. You know, the Lord does.

Christ died for the sins of every person that's in that list. Now, one of the names we'll come across in this is Amalek. Now, Amalek, if you think about it, it almost sounds like that could be a high-tech company, right? Hey, you got shares in Amalek? Well, okay. It's not that. Amalek was the father of the Amalekites. That's a group that continues to show up.

They fought with the people of Israel as the people of Israel were coming out of Egypt and up towards the Promised Land. This was the instance, perhaps you recall the account in Exodus 17, where Moses is there overlooking this battle scene and Aaron and Hur lift up his arms, and as his arms are uplifted, they win, and if they go down, he loses, so they hold him up. And so that's fighting with the Amalekites was a big conflict there. Both King Saul and King David fought with the Amalekites. And here's an archaeological site built after the time of Saul and David, but it was Arad, which is an Israelite fortress against the Amalekites and the Edomites. Those are two groups descended from Esau.

Esau's descendants cheered, it's amazing, cheered, as is recorded in Psalm 137-7, when the Babylonians were attacking Jerusalem. And the cry that is recorded there in Psalms is, raise it, raise it, and that's spelled R-A-Z-E, not raise it, raise it, like and lift it. It's raise it, raise it, like and knock it down. In the short Old Testament book of Obadiah, just a chapter long, the prophet Obadiah scolds the descendants of Esau for gloating over Israel's problems and tragedies.

Ah ha ha ha! Look at those people! They're having a tough time! Whoopee! And he scolds them and he predicts their own demise. He tells them, because you're doing this, this is what's going to happen to you. And we have the first couple of verses there that are quoted to indicate how it starts off.

Haman in the book of Esther is descended from Esau. Haman in the book of Esther sought to have all the Jews killed. This was under the Persian rule and the Jews had in great part been moved into the area that was the Persian Empire. So Haman was a descendant of Esau who sought to have all the Jews killed under the Persian control. And in the end, Haman failed in his plot because Esther was courageous and with the assistance of her uncle Mordecai. And Haman and his sons ended up being all hanged. And what's interesting, that is the last record of any kind of the people of Amalek. That's the end. this account that you see in Esther, the book of Esther in the Old Testament.

Now as you see these names, you may be thinking of Dog and somebody yelling, Hey Dad! That's not what it is. It's Dog and Hadad. But nonetheless, Dog was a descendant of Esau and under the order from King Saul. Why him? Because none of the Jews would kill their own priests. But this descendant of Esau, under order of King Saul, and by the way, that's why he was a one-man dynasty. It ended with him. This descendant of Esau killed 85 priests of the Lord because they had shown favor to David.

They had given him provisions of food and actually given him a sword as well. And so that was one example. Hadad was another one. Hadad. who was a descendant of Esau, he was actually brought up in opposition to Solomon during a time when Solomon was being spiritually half-hearted. He was in opposition to Solomon and the Jews, but it was actually an instrument of the Lord to bring Solomon to a place of repenting.

Now the next descendant that we see that comes up is Herod the Great, and I have to tell you he was not so great. So Herod the Not-So-Great is just fine. Herod the Not-So-Great was one who was descended from Esau, believe it or not. And so Herod the Great was the king that the wise men, the Magi, came to when they were seeking Christ. They said, where is he who was born king of the Jews? And Herod says, I've got to hear about this. And so they come and speak to Herod, and Herod says, hey, go and find him and tell me where he is, because I want to worship him too. Right?

By God's guidance, the wise men didn't cooperate with Herod's scheme. And the scheme was actually to kill Christ. That's what he had in mind. So he had all the babies, the two and under, in Bethlehem killed. And by just some sort of estimates, it might have been as many as a few hundred. Possibly as many as a few hundred. Joseph and Mary and the infant Jesus, because of the Lord's warning, escaped.

Now, the descendants of Herod who are identified in the New Testament. So these are descendants of Herod the Great, who wasn't so great. include Herod the Tetrarch, otherwise known as Herod Antipas, who had John the Baptist beheaded. His stepdaughter had done some sort of a seductive dance, and he was so pleased he went and promised up to half his kingdom. And her response after consulting with her mother was, I want to see the head of John the Baptist on a platter. So that's the honor of another descendant of Esau. Herod Agrippa I, who had the Apostle James killed with the sword. It also says in that same chapter in Acts 12 that he was eaten with worms. So that wasn't so good. Anyway, here is this great fellow, Herod.

And then when the Romans captured Jerusalem in 70 AD, it was the last of any identifiable person of Esau's line. The last one. What happened is this. A number of the descendants of Esau were allowed into Jerusalem before the Romans came. And they pretended to be allies. Once inside, they turned against the Jews and so the Jews had to end up fighting with them inside the walls.

And between that and the Romans coming in soon thereafter, every last one of them was wiped out by any record that we have. No identifiable descendants of Esau. Now no doubt there are some that are still around, but not identifiable as any descendant of Esau.

That's been almost 2,000 years. Isn't that amazing? Now as we look at this, we have this one 1817 chart that you're welcome to, and also there's a little more readable and updated chart on the Herod family tree on the flip side there of that same handout, so feel free to avail yourself of that on the cabinet on the right as you exit. So what do you think about this? Whatever became of Esau's descendants? Well, we have a little bit of a clue on Esau already here, right? Almost 2,000 years ago, the line died out. No identifiable descendant.

So here's Jacob. Certainly there were difficulties. Interestingly, as we've read, there are difficulties even to the point of requiring a miracle for Abraham and Sarah to have any children. Finally, Isaac is born when Abraham is a hundred years old. So difficulties having children. Isaac and Rebekah also had difficulties having children. And Jacob and Rachel for a time also had difficulties having children there.

Now, however, the Jews number about 14 million worldwide, and that's after the Holocaust that has taken place here a little over 60 years ago, and now that is also considering centuries of severe persecution of the Jews. Even the slaughter that we made reference to there when the Romans attacked. The Romans brought in something around 12 legions with soldiers as far away as Britain. and just great many deaths. Even with all that, even with all that, 14 million descendants of Jacob walk on the planet. Of Nobel Prizes, one in every five has gone to somebody descended from Jacob. Isn't that amazing?

Something else, we have this term Jews that we use. Oh boy. Okay. The term comes from the name Judah, and it started around the time of the Babylonian attack and captivity. The name began then. Judah was shortened to Jews as a kind of a nickname. And why was that?

Because Reuben, as we saw last chapter, Reuben lay with his father's concubine, and Simeon and Levi slaughtered all the males in Shechem. So the fourth one, Judah, was given the rights and honors of the firstborn, and that is the one from whom Christ was descended, and also the name was given to the people that we call the Jews.

Though there's never mention, as we look in this genealogy or family tree here in Genesis 36, there's never a mention of any difficulties having children. not even a delay or anything of the sort, not one mention of it. And yet, though we started off strong, it's been almost 2,000 years since we've had the last evidence of any of the descendants of Esau that we could identify.

So why the difference between these two? Here, the Jacobs line had a tough time getting started. They've been pushed in and out of their land, and now here, even within the last, remember, this year, it's 60 years, that the Jews now have a nation of their own. They went for about 19 centuries without a nation of their own. And yet, here they are. Amazing. Esau's line seemed to start out strong but dwindled to nearly nothing 2,000 years ago. Why? Isn't this amazing? Isn't this astounding? A strong start. Impressive. No difficulties getting started.

Picked his own place. None of them left. Of the Jews, about 14 million, okay? Over 5 million living in the land of Israel, 5 million living in this country, most of them around where Nancy and I are. I'm kidding. Okay. God made promises, and here's the difference. God made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That's the big difference. God made promises to Jacob. and to Isaac, and to Abraham, that He's fulfilled and fulfilling promises yet to be fulfilled, which is why we're still here. God hasn't wrapped it all up because He's still fulfilling promises to these guys. And He's faithful to them.

There's another reason. Esau continued to make decisions that took him away from the promised land. He would marry those who would not be qualified and it would take him out. Sell his birthright. He would say, I'm going to move out of the land and stay there. He made decisions that took him out as well.

Back when we studied Genesis 12, there are a few key lines here that stand out. And one of the key lines there where it starts off with God's promises to Abraham in verse 1, God told him about the land that I will show you. This is the land of Israel that was promised to him. But even more, and this is kind of amazing, what Scripture describes, this is a map of what Israel will consist of during the coming millennium, which may start as soon as seven years from today. This is the land that goes all the way to the Euphrates. And guess what? It includes just about all the land that Esau claimed. That, basically the entire country of Jordan on into Iraq will be included in the land that the Lord has promised to Abraham.

The next one down here is in verse 3, "...and the one who curses you I will curse." Well guess what? It's interesting, those two words for curse are not the same. The first one means to disdain or revile. If you disdain or revile these Jews, guess what's going to happen? The next one, I will curse, means to bring God's judgment. A different word. This is if you disdain or revile these Jews, I, God, will bring judgment against those people.

Did it happen? Yup. There aren't any descendants of Esau. Why? Because systematically they disdained and reviled the descendants of Jacob. The approved line. They systematically thumbed their nose, and worse, against these people. God carried out judgment and that line has not existed for about 1900 years. Exactly what God promised came about. Anyone, how anyone treats Abraham and all of his descendants matters. And by the way, I think that includes us here in this country. How do we treat his descendants? Nancy and I have had a Jewish lady who's 98 living across the hall from us.

And she says when she came to America, she came on the last boat that was let free with Jews. to come to the United States. She says, we left, pardon? From Germany, yes. Thank you. And so she came in the last boat where it was allowed that Jews leave, you know, without having to sneak out. And when she got to the United States, she says that the Christians treated her wonderfully. And I think that has something to do with how this country does and has done. and is a pivotal consideration.

The last one, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. In you, Abraham, and your descendants, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Through Abraham would come Christ. You can see that lineage in the first chapter of Matthew. Christ who would pay for the sins of the whole world. As we said earlier, every single one, every single sin, every single person. from all the families, that is in Genesis 18-18, all the nations of the earth.

Those who believe would be spiritually blessed. Every single one. Those who believe are spiritually blessed. We've often brought up what Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. That's us. All who believe.

Most of the approximately 40 authors of scripture were descendants of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. And they have blessed us with revelation. They have blessed us with this book that we study as we get together here on Sunday mornings and at other times.

There is a stark contrast as we look at Esau's family line. All kinds of names are given. But one of the things that it excludes is Christ is not in the lineage. Christ is not in the lineage. And that's one of the things it reveals by examination of the absence. Christ. Christ is the one who saves. Christ, the one who died for our sins. Christ, the one with whom we who believe have been identified. Christ, our Word and Savior. He's not on the list. He's not in the line. But because we believe, we are. Isn't that neat? Because we believe, we are. Grafted in with Abraham. Adopted. Let's pray.

Lord, as we look at this chapter, at first glance, certainly much to wonder about and even wonder why is it there. And yet as we begin to look more closely at what's there and what's not there, at what follows and what precedes it, things become more clear and become quite evident. And we thank You, Lord, that when we look at it all, Your love and care for us is shown. And even that you loved and cared for, every single name on that list and those associated with them. Thank you for your love and care for us. In Jesus' name, Amen.