The Sabbath Chronicles - The Abrahamic Covenant/The Two State Solution/The Middle East Updates

The Sabbath Chronicles — The Abrahamic Covenant, The Two-State Solution & The Middle East

The Cross to the Crown Series

October 28, 2023 — Cheshvan 13, 5784

Shalom, friends. My name is Chadwick Harvey. You are with Faithful Performance. Tonight we gather for the Sabbath Chronicles — our weekly Sabbath gathering to study the Torah portion, to set apart the day as commanded, and to look at the world we are watching through the lens of Scripture.

We continue to offer our prayers and our hearts to the people of Israel, to the IDF, to all who have lost family in the October 7 attacks, and to the hostages still held in Gaza. We pray for their protection, for their release, and for the innocent Palestinian people as well — that they would be delivered from the indoctrination of hatred and receive the truth of Yeshua as their Messiah. We cover them all with the blood of the Lamb.

Tonight's Torah portion is extraordinary for the moment we are in. We have just begun the new cycle of Torah readings following Shemini Atzeret, and this week's portion — the story of Abraham — is precisely the covenant at the center of everything happening in the Middle East today.

---

THE SABBATH FOUNDATION

Before we enter the portion, we establish the foundation. The Sabbath was set apart before the Fall, before any nation, before any covenant. It is a creation ordinance.

Genesis 2:2-3: And on the seventh day Elohim ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work. Then Elohim blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which Elohim had created and made.

Exodus 20:8-11: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

Isaiah 56:1-8 extends the Sabbath invitation to every person from every background who joins himself to Yahweh: Keep Justice and do righteousness, for my salvation is about to come and my righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this — everyone who keeps from profaning the Sabbath and holds fast My covenant. Even to them I will give in My house and within My walls a place and a name better than sons and daughters. Also the foreigners who join themselves to Yahweh, to serve Him, and to love the name of Yahweh, to be His servants — everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath and holds fast My covenant — even them I will bring to My holy mountain and make them joyful in My house of prayer.

He is not addressing Israel alone. He is speaking to every person from every background who loves Yahweh and holds to His covenant. The Sabbath is not a burden for those who love Him. It is the day He designated to meet with His people — a weekly appointment with the Bridegroom.

Mark 2:27-28: The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.

Hebrews 4:1-9 closes the witness: There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.

The seventh-day Sabbath was not abolished. It was not transferred to Sunday by the authority of Yeshua or His apostles. That transfer occurred by the authority of Constantine at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, as part of the same replacement theology that severed Christianity from its Hebraic roots. We honor the day that Elohim sanctified.

---

THE AMIDAH — THE STANDING PRAYER

Acts 3:1 tells us that Peter and John went to the temple at the hour of the Minchah prayers — which, in the original Hebrew, refers to the Amidah, the standing prayer. This is after the Holy Spirit was poured out in Acts 2. The disciples still went to the temple at the hour of the standing prayer. The Amidah is in the Bible — we simply have to read the original Hebrew to see it.

The Amidah — Blessed are You, Lord our God and God of our ancestors, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob — the Great, Mighty, and Revered God, Most High God, who graciously bestows loving kindness. You remember the pious deeds of the Patriarchs and will bring a Redeemer to their children's children for the sake of Your name, O King who helps, saves, and shields. Blessed are You, Lord, Shield of Abraham.

You are forever mighty, Lord. You revive the dead and are mighty to save. You sustain the living with lovingkindness, revive the dead with great mercy, support the falling, heal the sick, release the imprisoned, and uphold Your faithfulness to those who sleep in the dust. Who is like You, Master of mighty acts? Who resembles You? O King who brings death and restores life, who causes salvation to spring forth. Blessed are You, Lord, who revives the dead.

Holy and awesome is Your name. The holy ones praise You every day. Blessed are You, Lord, the holy God. You graciously endow man with knowledge. Grant us knowledge, understanding, and wisdom from You. Blessed are You, Lord, who graciously grants knowledge.

Return us, our Father, to Your Torah. Draw us near, our King, to Your service. Bring us back in complete repentance before You. Blessed are You, Lord, who delights in repentance.

Forgive us, our Father, for we have sinned. Pardon us, our King, for we have transgressed. Blessed are You, Lord, who forgives abundantly.

Look upon our affliction and fight our cause. Redeem us speedily for Your name's sake. Blessed are You, Lord, the Redeemer of Israel.

Heal us, Lord, and we will be healed. Save us and we will be saved, for You are our praise. Provide a complete healing for all our ailments. Blessed are You, Lord, who heals the sick of His people Israel.

Bless this year for us, Lord our God. May Your blessing rest upon the land. Blessed are You, Lord, who blesses the years.

Sound the great shofar for our freedom. Raise the banner to gather our exiles and bring us together from the four corners of the earth. Blessed are You, Lord, who gathers the dispersed of His people Israel.

Restore our judges as at first and our counselors as at the beginning. Reign over us, You alone, in lovingkindness and mercy. Blessed are You, Lord, who loves righteousness and justice.

Let there be no hope for slanderers, and may all wickedness perish in an instant. May You speedily uproot, break, and overthrow the dominion of arrogance. Blessed are You, Lord, who breaks enemies and humbles the arrogant.

Show compassion to the righteous, the pious, the elders of Your people Israel, to the remnant of their scholars, toward the true leaders, and toward us. Grant good reward to all who sincerely trust in Your name. Blessed are You, Lord, the support and assurance of the righteous.

Return in mercy to Jerusalem Your city. Dwell in it as You have promised. Rebuild it soon, as an eternal structure. Speedily establish in it the throne of David. Blessed are You, Lord, who rebuilds Jerusalem.

Speedily cause the offspring of Your servant David to flourish. Exalt his pride through Your salvation. Blessed are You, Lord, who causes the strength of salvation to flourish.

Hear our voice, Lord our God. Have mercy and pity on us. Accept our prayer in compassion and favor. Blessed are You, Lord, who hears prayer.

Be pleased, Lord our God, with Your people Israel and with their prayer. Restore worship to the inner sanctuary of Your house. May the worship of Your people Israel always be acceptable to You. May our eyes behold Your return in mercy to Zion. Blessed are You, Lord, who restores His presence to Zion.

We thankfully acknowledge that You are the Lord our God and God of our ancestors forever and ever. You are the rock of our lives, the shield of our salvation. Blessed are You, Lord, who is worthy of thanks.

Grant peace, goodness, blessing, graciousness, lovingkindness, and mercy to us and to all of Israel Your people. Bless us, our Father, all as one, with the light of Your face. Blessed are You, Lord, who blesses His people Israel with peace. Amen.

---

TORAH PORTION: ABRAHAM — THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT

The Torah is divided into fifty-four weekly reading portions, designed so that the entire five books of Moses is read aloud in community over the course of a single year. The cycle restarts immediately following Shemini Atzeret. Last week we read Noach; this week we open to the portion of Abraham — Genesis 12 through Genesis 17.

It is not a coincidence that this Torah portion falls in this week, in this season, while the eyes of the world are on Israel and Gaza. The conflict we are watching is the same conflict this covenant describes. It began four thousand years ago and it has not ended.

GENESIS 9 — NOAH'S PROPHETIC CURSE

To understand the Abrahamic Covenant, we must go back one step further to Noah. Genesis 9:25: Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants he shall be to his brothers. Noah spoke this prophetic curse after seeing what Ham had done — and specifically what Ham's son Canaan had done — in violating the boundaries Noah had established. Canaan's character was revealed early: disobedient, disrespectful of covenant, unwilling to keep his word.

The Book of Jubilees gives additional context. After the flood, Noah divided the biblical world into three regions among his three sons — Shem, Ham, and Japheth — and bound all three with an oath: no son would seize the portion that had not been assigned to him. Japheth received the northern region, around the area of ancient Turkey. Shem received the center — the land of Canaan, the land of Israel, the heart of the biblical world — as the pure royal lineage through which Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and ultimately Yeshua would come. Ham received the southern regions.

Canaan — a son of Ham — violated that oath. He moved into Shem's territory and refused to leave. His descendants became the Canaanite tribes of the land of Israel. That violation of covenant is why Noah's curse rested specifically on Canaan, not on all of Ham's descendants. It was a prophetic declaration of consequence tied to a specific act of disregard for the boundaries of Elohim.

THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT — GENESIS 12, 13, AND 15

Genesis 12:1-3: Now the Lord said to Abram: Get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

This is the beginning of the Abrahamic Covenant. The final clause — in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed — points unmistakably to Yeshua. The Messiah was to come through the seed of Abraham, and through Him, blessing would extend to every nation and people. Genesis 12 is not a narrow ethnic covenant. It is the first promise of the gospel.

After Lot separated from Abraham in Genesis 13, Yahweh confirmed the covenant again: Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are — northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I shall give to you and your seed forever.

Genesis 15 is the covenant confirmed in the most dramatic and definitive way. Abraham fell into a deep sleep, and God put him into a vision. He was shown a smoking oven and a flaming torch that passed between the pieces of the split animals. Elohim alone walked through the pieces. Abraham did not walk through. That is the entire point.

The covenant between the parts — the Brit Ben HaBetarim in Hebrew — is unilateral. Only one party walked through the pieces. When both parties walk through the covenant sacrifice, it means both are bound by its terms. When only God walked, it means this covenant does not depend on Abraham's faithfulness or his descendants' faithfulness. It depends entirely on the faithfulness and righteousness of Elohim. The Abrahamic Covenant is therefore unconditional, irrevocable, and everlasting.

EW Bullinger, in his work Numbers in Scripture, identifies the divine stamp on this covenant through the numbers embedded in it. Five animals were brought: a heifer, a female goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon. Five is the number of grace. The covenant is marked numerically as a perfect act of free grace on the part of a sovereign God. Additionally, when God changed Abram's name to Abraham, He inserted the fifth letter of the Hebrew aleph-bet into the middle of the name — the Hey, which represents the number five, which represents grace. The Almighty stamped His grace upon the Abrahamic Covenant through the very name He gave to its recipient.

Also in Genesis 15, the land boundaries are specified with precision: from the river of Egypt as far as the Great River — the Euphrates. And God names all the tribes and peoples currently occupying that land — the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. Every one of these peoples falls within the land of Canaan, the same land that Noah's prophetic curse covered. God's covenant with Abraham and Noah's prophetic judgment converge on the same geography.

God adds an important word of grace to this: He would give Abraham's descendants four more generations before bringing them into the land, because the iniquity of the Amorite was not yet complete. He extended time to those peoples to repent. They did not. This is the pattern of a patient, gracious, and righteous God who judges in perfect order.

GENESIS 16 AND 17 — ISHMAEL AND ISAAC

Genesis 16 records the mistake. Abraham and Sarah, not patient with Elohim's timing, took matters into their own hands. Sarah gave her Egyptian handmaid Hagar to Abraham as a wife. Hagar bore Ishmael. This was, as Paul writes in Galatians 4, a decision of the flesh — not of the Spirit, not according to the promise.

Thirteen years later, in Genesis 17, God confirmed the covenant once more — and made the distinction unmistakably clear. The promised seed, the heir of the covenant, would come through Sarah, not through Hagar. Ishmael would be blessed — God heard Abraham's prayer for him, and promised that Ishmael would become the father of twelve princes, a great nation. But the covenant — the unconditional, unilateral, irrevocable covenant of the land and the seed — would pass through Isaac.

This distinction is why the conflict in the Middle East is a family war and not merely a geopolitical one. Islam holds that the covenant passed through Ishmael as the firstborn. Scripture holds, plainly and repeatedly, that it passed through Isaac. Not because Ishmael was unloved or unblessed — he was both — but because God chose Isaac as the vessel of the covenant seed that would ultimately bring Yeshua into the world.

The land conflict we are watching in our generation — Israel and Gaza, the broader regional war being prepared — is the continuation of a four-thousand-year family dispute over a deed. The deed is the Abrahamic Covenant. The matter will not be settled by diplomacy or by military superiority alone. It will be settled when Yeshua returns and establishes His kingdom. Only then will the covenant reach its ultimate fulfillment.

JOHN 8 — BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, I AM

The New Testament portion that accompanies this Torah reading is John 8. In the chapter's closing verses, the religious leaders challenged Yeshua: You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham? Yeshua answered: Most assuredly I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM. John 8:58.

This declaration is not a grammatical irregularity. It is the name. When Moses stood before the burning bush and asked Elohim to identify Himself, the answer was: I AM WHO I AM. Tell them I AM has sent you. Exodus 3:14. Yeshua is not saying He is older than Abraham. He is saying that He is the I AM of Exodus 3 — the same Elohim who made the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15, who walked through the pieces alone, who stamped grace upon the covenant and swore by Himself because there was no one greater by whom to swear. He is the Aleph and the Tav. He was there in the beginning, and He is the conclusion of all things.

---

THE CALL OF THE HOUR

The Torah portion of Abraham, arriving in this week when the world is watching Israel and Gaza with confusion and alarm, is not a coincidence. Elohim has ordered the calendar of Scripture reading so that His people receive the right word in the right season.

The Abrahamic Covenant is not in dispute in the courts of heaven. The deed was written, the terms were set, the Sovereign walked through the covenant alone. Nothing in four thousand years of human history — not Ishmael, not the Canaanites, not the Philistines, not Rome, not Islam, not any political arrangement — has altered that covenant. And nothing will.

Yeshua will return. He will stand on the Mount of Olives as Zechariah 14 describes. He will settle the family war over the deed. He will establish His kingdom from Jerusalem, and all the nations will come up year by year to worship the King and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. That is not a metaphor. That is the covenant reaching its completion.

Be found among those who bless Israel. Be found among those who understand the covenant. Be found among those who know Yeshua — the I AM, the seed of Abraham through whom all the families of the earth are blessed.

May YHWH bless you and keep you. May He make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May He lift up His countenance upon you and give you His everlasting shalom. My name is Chadwick Harvey. You are with Faithful Performance.