LEKH L’KHA STUDY NOTES
PARASHAH LEKH L’LKHA WEEK 3:
Genesis 12:1-17:27
LEKH L’KHA: “Get yourself out”. This was an emphatic command from EL ELYON to Avram. (Abraham)
EL ELYON: Exalted One, Most High God
HEBREW: From the other side, having ‘crossed over’ to be set apart (Abraham was the first Hebrew!)
TZEDEK: Righteous (Abraham’s faith was counted as Righteous by God)
BIET EL: House of God
MIZBEAH: Altar meaning “Place of slaughter”, might be of a ‘rise’ in the earth, or a gathered stone pedestal, (no steps)
MELCHIZEDEK: Righteous King, he was a mysterious King of Salem; priest to the ‘Most High God’
BERITH: Covenant
L’ZER’AKHL: To Your Seed (or to Your descendants)
BRIT MILAH: Circumcision (The SEAL of the Abrahamic Covenant for the Nation of Israel)
KOHEN GADHOL: High Priest (Yeshua is our Kohen Gadhol forever!)
AVRAM: Exalted Father…AVRAHAM: Father of Many (A Gentile who Fathered the Jewish Nation)
SARAI: Princess…SARAH: Noble Woman (The Egyptian Matriarch of the Jewish Nation)
HAGAR: Egyptian Princess serving Sarah, KNEW Adonai and called Him “El Roi, God who sees”
ISHMAEL: God Will Hear, Hagar’s son by Abraham, who fathered the Arab Nation.
Ishmael was born of the flesh (Nefesh) out of human plans…lacking faith in God to accomplish this promise.
ISAAC: Laughter, Isaac born out of the Spirit through the power and plan of God, by Faith!
THE COVENANT LAND: Eternal boundaries from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates!
SODOM: To Burn, with lust!
AMORA: To be submerged, drowning in sin!
Facts About Abraham:
Abram was the 10th generation after Noah.
Abraham was the first man to be called “HEBREW” in the Bible! (Meaning One who has Crossed Over)
Abram fathered the Nation of Israel, and is the Father of the Christian faith.
Abram was married to his half-sister, Sarai (This practice was customary in ancient times, but not condoned by God).
Abram was the legal guardian of his orphaned nephew Lot, son of deceased brother, Haran. It was his father Terach who first said he would leave UR and go to Canaan. However, Avram was CALLED to leave UR by ADONAI. Could Terach also have been called by the Lord, but instead of settling in Canaan, stopped short, and settled in Haran, from where Avram, Sarah and Lot would have continued on, into Canaan? There is much speculation about Terach, considered the Man who missed the mark!
Abram was from Ur, then Haran, but left both obediently, and was led by Adonai toward Canaan.
Abram took Sarai, Lot, and the people of his household and their possessions when he ‘got out’.
Abraham traveled to Egypt because of a famine in the land of Negev.
Abram was fearful in Egypt and persuaded Sarai to say she was his sister, not his wife.
Sarai was taken by the Egyptian rule as part of the royal harem.
Abram returned to Canaan to settle. He and Lot went separate ways due to their abundance. (They had accumulated too much to dwell together)
Lot chose to live close to Sodom, where the men were extremely evil! He drew NEAR to SIN.
God blessed Abram in the fight to free Lot from captivity against 5 cities that exist today!
Abram knew God sent “Divine Intervention” in these conflicts! (He knew that he knew)
Abram was given a vision due to his request of God, “How will I know”?
God Himself IS the “Covenant Maker, and Covenant Keeper!”
The inheritance boundaries in Israel for the Jewish Nation have not, and will never change but will be fully restored and fulfilled!
Sarai had a lapse in faith in the 10th years of WAITING on the LORD to bring their promised child!
WHERE WAS SARAI’S FOCUS WHEN SHE LAPSED?
She jumped ahead of Adonai’s promise, with by her own designs to ensure the long awaited child for she and Avram.
The command of circumcision was instituted AFTER Abram was declared righteous. Tzedek!
Our faith is built IN obedience to God’s word and instructions. God draws near to us when we draw near to Him! Faith does not hinge on “SEEING” but on “BELIEVING” and focusing on all the great things the Lord has done! It is AFTER we are declared righteous in God’s eyes, that the “Crossing Over into our inheritance” happens!
The Great Crossing Over… becoming HEBREW…having crossed over from darkness into His glorious light!
Our great high priest, Yeshua is Kohen Gadol and has made us righteous in the Father’s eyes.
Nothing we can accomplish to draw near to God makes us righteousness.
It is only by the mantle of righteousness of the Messiah, laid upon us by His sacrifice, that we are made ‘Tzedek’!
THIS heart knowledge builds our faith…stone by stone…on our own personal journey when God commands us to “GO FORTH!”
Each intimate contact with Adonai is a precious white stone to build our testimony and legacy!
It is AFTER obedience that God changes our name and appoints us to new territory, which grows us UP in Him!
This is the lesson of Abraham and Sarah. Hide this lesson in your heart. Go forth obediently, when you hear the command!
Obedience…testing = blessing! Obedience…testing = blessing! Obedience…testing = blessing!
Circumcision was the SEAL of the Covenant with Abraham and his descendants!
Abraham’s Covenant with God came by way of FAITH, not by LAW, but by Adonai’s GRACE!
(The Law brings wrath, but where there is NO Law, there is no transgression!) Ponder this truth of ADONAI.
We must overcome the legalistic view of God’s law and see it as God sees it…as CHOKMAH ~ WISDOM!
Haftarah Reading ~ Old Covenant Reading Is. 40:27-41:16
“Why do you complain, Jacob; why do you say ‘Israel, my way is hidden from Adonai, my rights ignored by my God?’ Haven’t you known, haven’t you heard that the everlasting God, Adonai, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not grow tired or weary? His understanding cannot be fathomed. He invigorates the exhausted, he gives strength to the powerless. Young men may grow tired and weary, even the fittest may stumble and fall; but those who hope in Adonai will renew their strength; they will soar aloft as with eagles’ wings. When they are running they won’t grow weary, when they are walking they won’t get tired.”
Read on! The power and pre-eminence of The Most-High God, Adonai, will uphold those whom He chooses, and they will inherit all that their God has promised! A validation of the new life from Abraham and Sarah, the child of their old age, Isaac! The worm-like qualities ascribed to Jacob / Israel, point to the amazing damage a tiny, soft worm can do to a great, solid oak tree! Like this, the Nation of Israel will be victorious over their enemies, by God’s grace!
Brit Chadashah Reading ~ New Covenant Reading Rom: 4:1-25; Gal. 4;21-5;1; Heb. 7
Romans: “Abraham put his trust in God and it was credited to his account as righteousness. Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered over; Blessed is the man whose sin Adonai will not reckon against his account.
Abraham received circumcision as the seal of the righteousness he had been credited with on the ground of the trust he had while he was still uncircumcised. This happened so that he could be the father of every uncircumcised person who trusts, and thus has righteousness credited to him…and at the same time to become the father of every circumcised person who not only has had the b’rit-milah, but also follows in the footsteps of the trust which Abraham had, when he was still uncircumcised!”
The reason the promise is based on trusting is so that it may come as God’s free gift, a promise that can be relied on by all the seed, not only those who live within the framework of the Torah, but also those with the kind of trust Abraham had. Righteousness comes from trusting God and is available equally to both Jew and Gentile.
Galatians: “Tell me, you who want to be in subjection to the system that results from perverting the Torah into legalism, don’t you hear what the Torah itself says? It says that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. The one by the slave woman was born according to the limited capabilities of human beings but the one by the free woman was born through the miracle-working power of God fulfilling his promise.
Now to make an application on these things, the two women are the two Covenants. One is from Mount Sinai and bears children for slavery, this is Hagar. Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Yerushalyim; she serves as a slave along with her children. But the Yerushalayim above is free, and she is our mother for the Tanakh says: Rejoice, you barren woman who does not bear children! Break forth and shout, you who are not in labor!
For the deserted wife will have more children than the ones whose husband is with her!
What the Messiah has freed us for is freedom! Therefore stand firm, and don’t let yourselves be tied up again to a yoke of slavery! Galatians 5:1
Hebrews 7: “This Malki-Tzedek, King of Shalem, a Cohen of God, Ha’Elyon, met Abraham on his way back from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him!
Abraham gave him a tenth of everything as a gift of honor.
Now first of all by translation of this name, he is “King of righteousness”; and then he is also king of Shalem, which means King of Peace.
There is no record of this mysterious King’s ancestry: father, mother, birth, death, but rather like the Son of God, he continues as a Cohen for all time.”
“Also, he blessed Abraham, the man who received God’s promises; and it is beyond all dispute that the one who blesses has higher status than the one who receives the blessing. “
Malki-Tzedek is the foreshadow of Messiah Yeshua, our Great High Priest … Kohen Gadhol!