Episode 160: Is This the Most Overlooked Chapter in Genesis? (Genesis 11:10-31 Study)

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Today Counts Show Episode 160

Preview

I wonder if World War I would have been in there, World War II, or what if 9-11 would have been there? I mean, the world seems to be postured right now for an intervention. It just seems that way. I wonder if God were still writing the Bible, from that point to today, what stories would make it in the Bible? And I know what they are.

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Winston Harris: Hey everybody, before we jump into today’s episode, we’d like to recognize all those who make this podcast possible. The Lead Today Show is supported by all the generous donors of the Lead Today Community. Thank you so much for investing in shaping leaders through this podcast. Be sure to like and subscribe on whatever platform you are watching or listening to today. Alright, let’s jump into the podcast.

Introduction

Jim Piper: Welcome back everybody to the Today Counts show. I’m your host, Jim Piper. Today, as usual, on this particular lane in our podcast, it’s always about leadership, even if we’re talking about the Bible, or if we’re straight up interviewing somebody who we perceive as a leader and gleaming, you know, thoughts from them. So it’s always about leadership, whether we frame it well or not. So I just want to, I want to say that.

As usual, I have with me today in partnership with this discussion through the book of Genesis, the Genesis Project, Gary, and Winston and Matt may come on board here in a little bit and we’re kind of dropping the formal titles as we go on because if you do listen to this, I don’t think you need those anymore. I think you know we’re just guys gathering around the campfire or the coffee shop and reading scripture, talking about them, trying to build our faith and understand it better as we go, and then apply it to our lives as leaders. And if nothing else, self-awareness, leading self, and then leading others.

Genesis 11

We’re in Genesis chapter 11, and if you were with us last time, that was about the Tower of Babel, and we wanted to kind of just focus on that, and we did not finish Genesis 11. So now we’re going to pick up in verse 10, and we’re going to be looking at the balance of this chapter, chapter 11. Now, if you’re listening and you think, “Gosh, it seems like he skipped over a lot,” I’m going to. I’m going to skip over a lot. Not because every word isn’t important, just because I think I will lose you if I read every word and every name, because this is a genealogy of sorts.

So it begins this way in verse 10. Now remember, we’re talking about the sons of Noah, but for some reason at this place, we’re really only talking about one, only one, and the other two tend to drop off for some reason, which maybe we’ll discuss today. So verse 10 says, “This is the account of Shem’s family.” It says, two years after the great flood when Shem was a hundred years old, he became the father of Arphaxad, I guess is how I would pronounce that.

And then this genealogy continues through his family for quite a while and you get to verse 26 where another name to note comes up. It says, after Terah, was 70 years old, so Teru coming from the lineage of Shem. When he was 70 years old, he became the father of, and this is where the Bible really begins to turn and focus on a new relationship, he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And you might remember Abram because his name we become more known as Abraham.

So then we get into verse 27 where it talks about Abram, Nahor, and Haran’s father, Terah. In verse 27 it says, “This is the account of Terah’s family. Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran was the father of Lot.” That name will come into play. here down the road. But Haran died in Ur. Now that would be Lot’s father, but Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, the land of his birth, while his father, Terah, was still living. Meanwhile, Abram and Terah both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milka. Milka and her sister Iska were daughters of Nahor’s brother Haran.

So if you can follow that, which I couldn’t, you know, right away, what we have is we have an uncle marrying a niece. I had to actually stop and kind of pencil that out. Because apparently my brain cells don’t work as fast as they once did. And then it says, “One day Tara took his son Abram, his daughter-in-law, Sarai, that would be Abram’s wife, and his grandson Lot, his son Haran’s child,” in other words Lot’s father had died, “and moved away from Ur of the Chaldeans. He was headed for the land of Canaan, but they stopped at Haran and settled there. Tara lived for 205 years and died while still in Haran.”

Six Topics and God’s Sovereignty

All right, so that is the balance of chapter 11. And guys, in my reading through and trying to capture the big ideas in this chapter, for those that are interested, I came up with six topics, six ideas. I want to read them off real quick. And then we’ll jump right to the top and see what thoughts that you guys have regarding some of this.

So here’s the six real quick. I’m seeing God’s sovereignty over history. Number two, the continuity of God’s promise continues in spite of, I’ll now leave it at that. Three, the importance of legacy. Four, God’s focus on individuals. That’s kind of new. Five, human mortality and lifespan changes begin to happen. And six, preparation for God’s covenant. There’s a new covenant about to come through.

So, I’ve talked enough. When you think about God’s sovereignty over history, in this text, does anything come to mind or the continuity of God’s promise?

Gary: You know, one thing that occurs to me is this sort of dual picture we have of our lives are of a time span and there’s a thread that sort of connects one generation to the next. Then there’s, there’s God who transcends all that. And so the Bible is this dual story of this transcendent God who’s doing something huge. And then the little pieces we have that seem, you know, our whole life seems like all there is. I mean, that’s all we know. In a hundred years in the Bible, it doesn’t seem like much, or 200 years. To us, it’s everything. And yet, we’re just a piece.

And somehow, that gives you, it gives me a frame of reference that keeps from being overwhelming of what’s happening in my little piece. You know, it’s not the whole story. Some generations are in the middle of war and it looks awful and other generations are in periods of prosperity and it looks great. But God’s in both of them. So it’s not a very coherent thought, but the duality, like you say, God’s sovereignty over the whole thing brings some kind of peace to the chaos of individual lives.

Winston Harris: Yeah, I think coming off of the heels of the Tower of Babel and even in Genesis 10 when we talked about just this, the dispersion and Noah’s sons going their different directions and all of that, God is still achieving his purpose. God is still achieving his desire. I think we can even just pull an encouragement from that in our own lives. Sometimes things seem chaotic. Sometimes things seem, you can’t quite track, what is God doing here? But time and time again, specifically here, you’re seeing that God continues to lead humanity, lead people in a direction.

To your point, Gary, this transcendent God, you know, this is what makes this God different than all the other gods, right? He doesn’t just stay transcendent, but he’s willing to get immersed into his creation and give them opportunities to continue to follow his direction. Right? Like he doesn’t force us to do his will, but he continually gives us opportunities like, you know, GPS course correcting somebody. And we get these redirections, right? Tower of Babel was a redirection. “Okay. You know, they’re coming off track again. Let’s get them back into my desire.” I think it’s just an encouraging thing.

I also think about jumping ahead to the New Testament when you get into these kind of global political shifts and I think about the Roman Empire and how God used the Roman Empire to disperse the gospel, right? And so what seemed not beneficial to the Christian faith and the persecution and all of this, God still was able to literally use the practical stuff that the Roman Empire did, which was create systems and roads. All of that went to the benefit of God’s will in the Christian faith. So no matter where we find ourselves, in the micro tensions or the macro tensions, God is still so sovereign to achieve his will.

Jim Piper: Yeah, thank you for that, guys. The way I would synthesize what you both said is, because I think both are true. On one hand, I think this is where you were going, Gary, in the beginning. On one hand, we’re very small. Each of us are very small. On the other hand, the idea that God would think of us and create us and our lives have the ability to literally be in partnership in changing the course of history, we’re all so big.

Gary: Yeah, I agree.

Continuity of God’s Promise

Jim Piper: Yeah, that’s good. That’s really good. So, it kind of goes hand in hand, but not completely. The continuity of God’s promise, specifically is the family tree, right? Watching this develop. And it’s kind of a shame really that I skipped all the names. I must have skipped, I don’t know if I skipped 10 names or 20 names, because all of those names are important. We just don’t recognize them because there isn’t a story built around them.

They’re part of the story. But we don’t really know of any story with most of them. And then of course, it drops to Abram. We go, “Oh, we recognize that name.” I guess my point is, every name that I didn’t mention, God wanted that name mentioned. And I am certain that those aren’t all the names part of that family family tree.

Gary: I often think about the analogies of the physics, the world of physics, to spiritual truth, because God invented both, right? But there’s a concept in science called entropy, which is that systems sort of, if you don’t put energy in them, decay. And an example would be you take an ice cube out of the freezer and it loses its shape and becomes water if you put it back in the fridge, you know. So that’s the idea.

And there’s a very sort of hidden message in this. I think there’s, I counted, eight generations where there’s what you said, there’s a– It says, a father was this age when their child was born. And you think on an individual basis, what a big thing that is. You know, and I was trying to organize my office a little bit and I came across a little book somebody gave me years ago as a young father. It was called The Dance.

Basically, it’s a picture book that shows the cycle of life where a young father has a child holding them and then walking with them, helping them play ball, first date. And eventually the cycle comes back that the child is caring for the father. You see this cycle. And so here we see this repeated eight times. There’s so much richness in this because history has shown the coming back to the entropy part, history has shown that, it was what 10 generations from Adam until the flood, that that progression through generations somehow usually does not lead to being closer to God. It leads to a dilution and an entropy.

And so, here we have another, what, eight or nine generations going on from Noah to Tower Babel, which is another form of God’s intervention. And so, you have this entropy that, on an individual basis, is overwhelming. You can’t do anything about it. And yet, God, back to the ice cube in the refrigerator, God is the energy. God is the force that can offset all of this entropy of human degradation.

It just gives you hope. Because otherwise you’d say, “Well, what do I do? This is way bigger than I am.” And that’s right, it is way bigger than we are. There’s a bigger picture in here. Eight generations go by. We go from a peak of God rescuing Noah to a peak of depravity building a tower onto heavens. That’s happening right in Abraham’s time. Abraham.

Jim Piper: I like how you frame that Gary because you know, God so far has intervened globally two different times, one in the flood and one in the Tower of Babel.

Gary: Yeah, you think about his interventions over history, rescuing Israel out of Egypt, Jesus himself, I mean, the ultimate. These pivotal, I think it was Andy Grove and Intel calls them inflection points.

Jim Piper: I believe in that. I believe there are times where for whatever reason, I guess, going back to God’s sovereignty, that his activity is more obvious than times where it’s not so obvious, not that he isn’t involved. Another thought that you gave me by stating that the intervention is, well, if he’s done that globally X amount of times through history, how many times has he done that individually in people’s lives?

Gary: Yeah, really, our life is a microcosm of all of this because we’re depraved, we can’t fix it, and then there’s this intervention in our life which is called rebirth.

God as a Disruptor & Individual Focus

Winston Harris: Yeah, I love that idea that God’s intervention is an invitation and that what seems to be disruptive or what seems to be inconvenient is usually the beginning of the path that God is trying to course correct. Basically what we’re talking about, the frustration that we can feel when it’s like, this isn’t how it was supposed to look but this is exactly what God wants it to look like. He’s trying to shake things up.

I don’t think we often see God as a disruptor, but I think we see these themes in Genesis and early Genesis right now where though God laid out a design and an intention, man keeps deviating from it. And so in God’s love, he disrupts man’s agenda, man’s plans, right? And embracing God as a disruptor, I think, is a great place to really start to understand his character, his intention, his sovereignty. That God uses disruption in his design. God uses his disruption to keep us inside of his intentions for us.

And that’s really encouraging for me. Now I can look at disruptions in my life and instead of getting frustrated about them and trying to push them away or mislabeling them as this is the enemy or being attacked, I can actually kind of take a different perspective and say, “Oh, is this an invitation for me to actually follow God in it? Whatever this is, is God leading me a different way?”

Jim Piper: I had a thought too the other day that’s in line with what you guys are thinking, but this is kind of a spacey thought and you guys will probably laugh at me. When you think about the epistles, by the epistles I mean these letters in the New Testament that are going to be written AD, 60 AD, 100 AD, whatever. I wonder if God were still writing the Bible, the Bible as we know it from that point to today, what stories would make it in the Bible?

And I know what they are. They would be the ones that connect just the way this is, where it’s connecting so and so to so and so to so and so, event to event to event. I’m sure all that happens is under God’s sovereignty and His artistry and His redemptive work. But I just, out of curiosity, was kind of thinking, “I wonder if World War I would have been in there, World War II, or what if 9-11 would have been there?” I mean, the world seems to be postured right now for an intervention. It just seems that way.

Mundane Carriers and Practical Faith

But I often wonder who would have been included in that continual Bible. The book of Revelation says he’s closed the canon, so to speak. So I don’t think that’s going to happen. It was a daydream thought I had the other day. Would Billy Graham be in there? Who would be in that? Would the Holocaust be in there? I mean, just all the atrocities that have occurred over time. What would be in there?

But one thing we know that regardless of what would be in there, things that we’ve already talked about would still be true. God is sovereign. The continuity of His promise will continue. The other thing I thought of too was, you know, when you look at—Gary mentioned he counted eight generations—and I thought, you know, one generation influences the next. Though I think what Gary said is absolutely true, unfortunately, where it just seems to be a downward projectory, away from God, there also seems to be a generation somewhere here that rallies-

Gary: Absolutely. Revival.

Jim Piper: Right? And gets the next generation moving, right? So I think that’s something else that I saw in here because it’s like you’re reading all these names, never heard of them, never heard of them, never heard of them, never heard of them, Bible doesn’t say anything about it. Whoa, wait a second. Abram, I know that guy.  Somewhere down the line, right? There’s faithfulness somewhere down the line.

His intervention then sometimes, going back to what we said earlier, is not just these big events, but he often has a key person that he’s working through in these key events, such as Noah, as an example. And as we’ll see next time we get together, chapter 12, as the The Bible seems to laser focus on this relationship between God and Abraham. Pretty crazy.

Winston Harris: I often think, because so much of our lives is mundane, right? There’s not like these constant celebratory over the top moments where you’re like exhausted because just amazing things are happening or catastrophic things are happening. Much of our existence is just the simple day by day. I heard this recently and it’s that successful people do boring better.

Successful people just do boring better. They don’t get frustrated with boring. You relax into it. You don’t resist it, you just get better at boring. And so I think then the continuity of God’s promise and this layer of legacy is that there are generations that do boring better. There are generations that they didn’t have a mountaintop moment. They didn’t have this incredible story, they just carried the promise faithfully.

They just did what they were supposed to do until it got to the generation where it was the mountaintop. This is the harvest. This is the explosive story that is gonna carry the momentum to the next generation. But I don’t think oftentimes we want to be the people that are the mundane carriers. We all wanna be the hero of the story. We all want to be the guy. But what if our assignment is just to be the faithful carrier to get it to the next generation. I recently talked about David and he said, you served his purpose in his generation. He went to sleep. What was, what if that was our story? I did what I was supposed to do and I went to sleep.

Leadership and Messiness

Jim Piper: Wow, so it’s very possible these eight generations that Gary counted were people like that. I mean, it’s possible.

Gary: I think also what I really like what you’re saying, Winston, is I think the evil one tries to discourage us. And a lot of times, my partner and I were talking this morning about what does it mean to build a kingdom impact business. And we talked about this duality of, you know, treating people right and looking for their needs and helping them. But there’s another side of putting nuts on the bolts. Who wants to work for an organization that’s in chaos? And they don’t know whether they’re gonna be employed six months from now and the products don’t work.

There’s a nuts on bolts side of God’s kingdom. And a lot of it looks boring. Just do your job and do it well. And you create an environment where people can make a living, have peace when they go home. Satan tries to get us to compartmentalize, okay, I’m holy on Sunday and I’m– You’re doing some of your most holy work when you mop the floors and do it right. It’s a lie.

Jim Piper: No, that’s good. You made me think about instead of boring, not instead of because I think what you said was right on the money. Here’s another lane. When I was a young leader, it was amazing how little of things would throw me off. In other words, my shoulders were not very broad. It didn’t take much for me to drop to my knees or to freak out. And as Igot older and as I led through more things, I realized that more and more things that why once thought too heavy, I now saw as normal.

When I saw people in conflict. It’s normal when I saw unfaithfulness. Unfortunately, it’s normal. And once you start realizing that that leadership, why do you need leadership if it isn’t about fixing things, making things better.

Gary Harpst: Dealing with the abnormal.

Jim Piper: Right. The abnormal. So if you’re a leader, you’re going, “Gosh, what is this all about? I thought being a leader would mean I’d get this, I get that, I get this privilege, that privilege.” No, it’s, it’s really not about that.

Gary: Where I first saw what you just described was as an elder in the church, I began to realize, “Wait a minute, there’s not something wrong here.”

Jim Piper: You just nailed it.

Gar: That’s what shepherding is. Yeah, it’s shepherding. What’s that proverb, something that says where the manger is empty, there are no oxen. And there’s a more plain way of saying that. If you don’t have any crap in the stall, you don’t have an oxen. And it changed my attitude as an elder because I quit looking at this, “Okay. Are we doing something wrong?” And no, people just have problems and we help them through.

Jim Piper: I think I coined the phrase, but I might have picked it up from somebody else. You know how that goes. And I do know that there’s nothing new under the sun. So however it came to me, and I used to say it from the pulpit. And now I say it in other venues. I just changed the word from ministry to business. But I used to say all the time, ministry is messy. And I would pause and I’d say, and we love it. Meaning that we accept that it’s messy, we don’t get all freaked out.

And now when I’m working with leaders who are whether they’re working in nonprofits or for profits or startups or corporate America dealing with the– In corporate America, you’re dealing with so many stakeholders that your head spinning, right? You don’t know who you’re supposed to be pleasing. You’re supposed to have a mission and serve the mission. But that’s an easier said than done platitude than the reality of what a lot of folks have to deal with. Business is messy and you gotta like it.

It’s kind of like choosing your spouse. When you’re at that altar and you say, “I do,” the birds are chirping, the butterflies are there, love is great. But if you’re not saying, I do every day 15 years after that, you’re gonna get in trouble. So you can also say, “You know, marriage isn’t always great, but I love it.” Yeah, marriage is messy, but I love it. And that’s definitely a message here.

God is saying that, is He not? He’s saying, My creation is messy, humanity is messy, but I love it. I’m redeeming it, I’m in it. And man, that sure helps us. Because like you said, Gary, the enemy does everything he can to discourage us, individually and corporately.

Gary: Amen.

Ministry of Presence & Friendship with God

Jim Piper: Right? Both. He comes at all angles in that way. Well, what about this idea? We’ve actually talked about it a little bit already, but we see Adam and Eve. We see Cain and Abel. We see Noah. A lot of these people tend to kind of fade in the background as we see this bigger picture in Scripture, but now we see this person Abram who we will see will come on the stage in chapter 12, in our next chapter, and this will be very, very intimate between God and Abram. And so I think we see this and happening now. God works with nations, with people groups, but he also works in and through individuals. That’s encouraging.

Now, we don’t have to have our name in headlines for God to be working in our life. Sometimes He works in our life to make a difference in a family member or a neighbor, a stranger. And what would happen if we recognized the importance of that, of being available? Though it might be a small act on my part, it could be a life changing event for the person that I was helping.

I don’t know if this story is true or not. Maybe you know, Gary, I don’t know. Winston, you’re reading, maybe you’ve heard this or not. It was shared from the pulpit that there was this country preacher, I’d forget where Billy Graham came from. But there was this country preacher that had this little country church and it just seemed to go nowhere. But there was one little boy who grew up in that church and was highly influenced by that pastor, and his name was Billy Graham.

I don’t know if that is a true story or if I got the name messed up and it wasn’t Billy Graham, but somebody like him. And that’s kind of what I mean. Sometimes we don’t realize the importance of the work at hand. We have no idea of how it can play out as years and decades go by. And what if we treat it each opportunity as one of these big things that Winston was talking about, you know, we went to war and we won and we’re coming back battered and bruised but we won.

I call it the ministry of presence, right? It’s not just presence with the person, it also works with your workload. Do one thing at a time, meet with one person at a time. The ministry of presence.

Gary: Go through the day with that attitude is, need more Holy Spirit to do that. But I’m reminded of a saint who passed in our church, died a couple, maybe a few years ago. Once he retired, he was in the mission field in France for years and planted a lot of churches over there. When he came back to Ohio, where his roots were, he took every call, sales call on the phone that he could get. And he always started with, “Well, I want to hear what you have to tell me, but you’ve got to agree to listen to what I’ve got to tell you at the end.”

Every week he’d come in with two or three calls he had and the interesting conversations. And then he’d follow up with a Bible or a tract and send it to him. And that’s the last thing I’m thinking when I pick up a– He was such an encouragement.

Winston Harris: Yeah, I think that especially as a younger ministry leader, continually learning that I don’t have to have the answer or present as though I have the answer. But if I’m just willing to be present to your point, Jim, and be there with that person and, you know, affirm that I hear them and that I’m willing to walk with them and, you know, let’s do this together versus, you know, trying to be something that I’m not, or trying to just solve the problem, but I’m missing the person, right?

And I think getting back to the text, this ministry of presence is another revelation of who God is, right? Though he’s a corporate God and a God who works through nations, he’s also a intimate God who’s willing to meet one-on-one with a person. And Abram, who’s gonna be Abraham, was considered a friend of God. Like just that concept alone is just mind blowing that I could be friends with Yahweh. I can be friends with God. Especially in the context of, you know, the audience who’s reading this and the nations around and all these other gods, you have to do all these other things and jump through all these hoops to be accepted by God.

We have a Yahweh God who’s willing to call his creation friend. That is a powerful concept that should empower us to be that much more present with people on behalf of God.

Faith and Time

Jim Piper: I got to jump on your bicycle here, Winston, because not only do I agree with that violently, Gary taught us something several episodes ago that has changed me in how I view faith. Now that’s a big statement. And here’s what I– I may butcher exactly how he said it, but I’m going to say it in my gym language and I’ll let Gary correct me if I’m wrong.

The problem with God’s creation of time is that it doesn’t always provide me the feedback that I might need to prove that He was right after all. So therefore, what faith is, is believing what the Bible says, walking in that belief without the affirmation of a feedback loop that proves to me that this or that is the right way to go. So if I hear nothing in the feedback loop for a decade, faith is doing what the Bible says, believing that God is right.

Now reason why you spurred that on is you were describing this ministry of presence, you’re describing this idea of faith. But I remember why Abraham was called a friend of God, because he believed God. Now that’s something I don’t always do.

Gary: Me, neither.

Jim Piper: Because he hasn’t proven it to me with this, through this creation of time that Gary pointed out several episodes ago, which again has knocked me on the side of the head for weeks now, and has really been helpful for me. I remember I was reading about King Hezekiah, and what Scripture said about him. And it said, you know, he always tried to seek the Lord and do what was right in God’s eyes. And I remember right in my journal, that’s the kind of guy that I want to be. I want to be that guy who is always conscientious trying to be aware and do what scripture would tell me to do. Even if the initial feedback seems contrary.  So Gary, thank you for that. Really.

Gary: Amen. Well, it was not me, but it was anyway the high– I sort of have this theory that that’s part of the reason God put time in the universe was if you didn’t have the time gap, you wouldn’t need faith. Because the definition of faith is something that is hoped for, but you have not yet realized. And if there was no time and everything always happened concurrently, and that’s my theory, is God created time to force us to choose between believing what He said and what we see. It’s just a theory.

But I’m with you. I’ve been really reading carefully Matthew and Jesus talking about building the kingdom. And how many times does he say to somebody, “Be it to you as you believe,” over and over and over. You know, they’ll come to him and ask for something and he says, “Let it be as you have believed.” And I think, okay, what do I believe? This morning when I get up and I’m feeling like I’m up to here? What do I believe about God today? Anyway.

 Lifespan Changes & Covenant Preparation

Jim Piper: Yeah, I think faith is also a team sport as well. I think that, you know, when I hear a business person that has some foundation of faith in them, and we agree to try something in a relationship that seems good and righteous. And then they’ll come back after a couple of weeks and say it’s not working. So therefore it’s wrong. And, you know, we’ll have to really dissect that because just because it’s not working doesn’t make it wrong. It does take that other person to participate. God wants to do a lot of things in our lives. But we need to participate in those things.

I had a couple other things here before we wrap up. It seems pretty obvious that people aren’t living 900 years anymore, and here towards the end of chapter 11, what do you make of that? And what do you make of this big preface? That this sidewalk that leads us up to the front porch that God and Abraham are going to enter into a covenant, which in the world of Christianity is a big, big deal. But why the life span decrease?

Gary: Take it, pastor.

Winston Harris: We need Pastor Matt to jump on right about now, because–

Jim Piper: Yeah, looks like he’s looks like he’s gonna leave us in the lurks.

Gary: Was it after Noah? Where did he pronounce that the lifespan was going to be shorter? Was it right after Noah? I forget.

Jim Piper: I think it was in preparation of that, if I recall, because we were trying to decide whether that was the timeframe of 80 years of what it would be before the flood would happen, or 80 years, you know, would be where this thing ends up dropping out at. It doesn’t say how. I assume the climate changed from the flood, but I’m not a scientist. I don’t know. You know, I don’t know what the I don’t know what vehicle God used is what I’m trying to say to bring that that about.

Gary: Let me toss something out. It just occurred to me while we were talking, and never occurred to me until now, that I’ve noticed, I’m now in my 70s, and there’s a proverb, or not a proverb, but I think it’s Psalm 90, says, teach me to number my days. And somehow in the realization that our time is growing shorter, and that becomes more real to us, there is a kind of wisdom that emerges that doesn’t seem to be able to come any other way.

Now I’m older than you guys, so I don’t know how much I’m experiencing that that you haven’t, but at 40 I didn’t think the way I do now at 75. And you know, if you live a thousand years, the percentage of your life that is in that wisdom period is pretty small. Because you get down to the last five years of a thousand years, then it’s half a percent. For me, five years might be 7 percent. You see what I’m getting at?

So there’s a larger percentage of my life that’s closer to the end than in Methuselah. That’s just really a wild thought, but it occurred to me. I wish I could have had the wisdom I have now and still had a 15 year old body. You know, I wish.

Jim Piper: Yeah, well, I think you’re talking about compression, right? If you think about what it took to live on a daily basis, back in those days, which a lot of that’s just our imagination. And Winston referred to this earlier, he didn’t say this, but you know, we have to sleep, we to brush our teeth, we have to use the restroom, we should exercise, we got to clean the house, someone’s got to clean the toilets, know, got to mow the lawn. You know, you got all that. We have all the conveniences today, but what did they have? I mean, how much time did they have to spend in the field or hunting just to survive? I wonder what their work life balance was.

Gary: Well, what do you think about when you’re 100 and people around you are living to a thousand? It seems like you’re 10% into your life. There’s no sense of end of life. I assume, I don’t know. But anyway, we don’t know the answer. We can speculate up there with the best of them.

Jim Piper: Well, next time we’re in chapter 12 and we’re going to be really investing in it– It should be a very exciting conversation because as we mentioned, think in the last episode, Abraham is claimed to be the father of three of the world’s largest religions, if we call Christianity a religion — Christianity, Judaism and Islam. And so of course there’s all kinds of division that is alive and well today. Lots of history that we can probably pull from and probably should pull from extra biblical insight that we can add to a lot of the things that we’ll read. I’m really excited about this next section as it unfolds into a lot of the ramifications that we’re experiencing even to this day.

Gary: Amen.

Jim Piper: Alright guys, thank you. Great discussion, and we will see you in Genesis chapter 12.

Outro

Winston Harris: Thank you for joining us here at The Today Count Show. Be sure to like and subscribe on whatever platform you listen to or watch, so you don’t miss any content. Stay tuned for more coming soon.
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