Wow! Abram listened to God, believed His promises to bless him—almost—and left his home for the land of the dreaded Canaanites. But why did he disobey and bring his nephew Lot? And how does all this relate to the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness?
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
(Parents, all Scripture comes from the Miss Tyler Version (MTV) which is the Christian Standard Bible revised and expanded to make it easier to understand the context of the verses).
4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. 5 He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the site of Shechem, at the oak of Moreh. (At that time the Canaanites were in the land) (Gen 12:4-6)
Last week, we talked about the seven or eight promises (it depends how you read them) that God made to Abram (remember, he isn’t called Abraham yet, not until chapter 17): (1) if you leave your family and the place where you are living, I will lead you to a new place, (2) I will make you into a great nation, (3) I will bless you (and we talked about what it means to be blessed last week), (4) I will make your name great, (5) I will make you a blessing to others, (6) I will bless anyone who treats you well, (7) I will be an enemy to your enemies, and (8) everyone in the world will be blessed through you. That’s one big promise. And so what does Abram do because this sounds like a terrific deal but it also had to be super scary to just pick up and leave. So what did Abram decide to do?
The Bible says that Abram just up and left home as God said BUT he took his nephew Lot with him. Wait, what? Uh oh, this doesn’t sound like what God asked. God told Abram to leave his family behind but he decided to take his dead brother’s son with him too. Was Lot just a kid? No, he was an adult with a wife and kids and lots of critters of his own so it wasn’t like Abram needed to take care of him or anything. So we kinda have a mystery here because the Bible never tells us why Abram brought Lot but maybe we can figure it out if we put on our thinking caps. Do you remember Abram and Sarai’s problem from last week? Yeah, that’s right, they had no children because Sarai was barren—which means that she couldn’t have a baby. And God promised to make Abram a great nation but He never told Abram how and you are going to notice that, throughout your life, God may make you promises but He doesn’t tell you how they are going to happen and you just have to wait it out. When we don’t we make a terrible mess!
It wasn’t strange in the ancient world, for people without children to adopt another grownup to take care of them and, in exchange, their adopted son gets all of their stuff when they die. Did you know that pretty much all of the Roman Emperors were adopted as sons by the last emperor? Not like when we adopted our twins when they were born—they adopted grown ups so that they could make sure that they could choose who the next emperor would be and especially if they only had daughters or their sons died—which happened a lot, actually. So, adopting adults was pretty normal in a world where they didn’t think women were capable of doing much of anything and women weren’t even able to have jobs or to get educated. We look back and it’s funny. They didn’t think women could do anything and so they kept them mostly at home and didn’t let them go to school or get jobs—but unless you get your education and leave home and get a job no one knows what the heck you are capable of doing! I am so glad we know better now, right? But they weren’t us, living in the modern world and they needed a son, really badly, or they were in danger. And so, I think that Abram and Sarai took Lot so that he could be their son. Next week, I will show you why I think that’s what happened.
Now, if that is the case, and even if it isn’t, we see Abram doing something really awesome here and something really not so awesome. I mean, let’s give him credit for actually leaving to go to who the heck knows where! That’s really impressive and shows us that Abram really believed God. For some things. But he also disobeyed God by bringing Lot when He was told to leave his whole family behind. And so he didn’t obey God too. He obeyed, and he didn’t obey. But people are really complicated and we can do these amazing things and in the next moment we just blow it and do something bad. Abram trusted God enough to just pick up and leave but not enough to leave Lot behind. He trusted God to lead him to a brand new place but not enough for children. And we are like that too—sometimes we will do a huge thing for God but won’t do a smaller thing. We will actually see a lot of that in the Bible from a lot of people.
So, what did God do? Did He speak in a big booming voice to Abram and say, “Because thou didst not trust me in all I said I would do for you, and because thou bringest thine nephew Lot when I toldst you to leave his butt at home, I will smiteth thy rear end with lightning and thou willst die until thou art dead.”? Nope. God really knows that we are what you call a “work in progress” which means that we aren’t perfect yet. God takes us however he finds us—some people who come to Jesus are drug addicts, gang members, liars, thieves, maybe they have even killed people—and when we decide to trust Him and be loyal to Him, He begins to change us right then. But that doesn’t mean we become people who trust Him totally right away, or obey Him all the time, or will always be loyal. He works on us a little bit at a time until we can be the people whom He wants us to be. That’s going to take Abram like seventy years. Right now, He is seventy-five years old. And he is a seventy-five year old who is willing to go on a trip but doesn’t really believe that God will give him the kids he needs to become a great nation. We’re all kinda funny that way. Whenever we look at Abram, we should see ourselves in his story—not just when he does something great but also when he messes up and sometimes he really messes up really, really bad. One of the great things we learn in all the stories of Abram is how patient and understanding God is. If He was mean, Abram would have died right here and the Bible would be only 11 chapters long.
And so, Abram took Sarai, his wife (God didn’t tell him to abandon her, just his relatives), and Lot, and all their stuff and the “people they had acquired in Haran.” Let’s stop right there—what does it mean to acquire people? Well, this is sad but it means that when he was in Haran he bought people as slaves. In the ancient world, slavery was normal. People who were poor might sell themselves as slaves or maybe someone who couldn’t pay their bills got sold as a slave. Parents would sometimes sell their kids if they couldn’t feed them. Whenever there was a war, the people who were captured, if they were young enough, were forced to be slaves. The world was very different before Jesus came, and people wrongly thought that some people were not as good as others—either because they were poor or had been captured or kidnapped. But, in the ancient world that Abram lived as a part of, people weren’t forced to be slaves because of the color of their skin. No one thought that way back then. They just figured that the strongest and the richest had a right to own the weakest and the poorest. It made perfect sense to them even though today, because Jesus showed us what God is really like, we don’t believe that anymore.
We know that in Jesus, there is no difference between men and women, Jewish people and Gentiles, or slaves and free people. Someone might force another person to be their slave but it doesn’t mean that God thinks that’s an okay way to treat someone who is made in His image. Jesus taught us that whatever we to do people who are having tough times is what we are doing to Him and so I don’t want for Jesus to be my slave and to be telling Him what to do! But, they weren’t there yet and it was going to take God a long time to make them see that there won’t be any slaves in the Kingdom of Heaven so there really shouldn’t be any now either. We will get to all that more later. As for right now, on of the context things we need to learn to do in Scripture is to recognize the difference between what are called hired men and fieldsmen and slaves. They are not the same thing, at all.
So, they all set out and I am sure there were a lot of them. Slaves who were men, women, and children plus Abram, Sarai, and Lot plus all their critters. They had critters, Lot had critters, and the critters kept having critters too for that matter. This would have been quite the group and they were people who were used to being settled in Haran so this very long hike to wherever probably had them all a bit worried. Try to imagine the conversation, “I have been told by God to take all of you and the critters somewhere!” And someone brave might have said, “Which god and where are we going?” And then Abram responds, “Not exactly sure but we’re going and that’s that.” And because he was the patriarch, the oldest man and the owner of most of them, they all had to go. Lot could have chosen to stay behind and I am not sure why he didn’t. I should imagine that inheriting Abram’s stuff made for a pretty tempting offer and if it didn’t work out, I figure he knew he was welcome back in Haran with the rest of the family. Really, it was a win-win situation. Until it wasn’t, but that’s another story.
And so, they went and ended up in the Land of Canaan and I have always wondered how Abram knew where to go. In Exodus, the children of Israel knew to leave and where to go because the cloud over the Tabernacle would pick up and leave one day and they would break down their tents and just follow until it stopped and then they would set everything up again somewhere else and maybe it took a day to get there or longer. Some places they stayed for a long time and some places they left right away. Because they had a lot of critters that needed to find food, I imagine the trip took a lot longer than if it was just all people heading south. But maybe, once Abram made the decision and they packed everything up, God told him where to go next. God does that sort of thing—He waits for us to commit, to make a decision, to obey Him and then He gives us the details but more often He just guides us day by day until we get where we are going. And on the way there, He prepares us by changing and teaching us so that we can handle what comes next. Of course, this wasn’t their first long journey because they had all come from Ur of the Chaldeans before this and it was a much longer trip.
It can be really scary to just trust like that. Just think of right after Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River by his cousin John. It was this amazing thing—John baptized Jesus and all of a sudden a voice came down from Heaven and said, “This is my beloved son, and I am so happy with Him.” What do you think that voice sounded like? I bet it took anyone who heard it by surprise, right? But what happened next? The Bible says that the Spirit of God then led Jesus out into the wilderness. Now, I don’t want you to think about a forest or anything. Wilderness is just the word that we use to translate places that aren’t developed—where there are no towns or cities or farmer’s fields or anything like that. The wilderness was unused land—either because no one was using it for anything or because it was too rocky or hilly to be used for anything. Did Jesus know where He was heading? If He did then I think the Holy Spirit wouldn’t have had to lead Him anywhere. But Jesus trusted His Father and the Spirit and so He ended up in the wilderness of Judea where He had nothing to eat for forty days and forty nights. He had no home to stay in when it was hot during the day or cold at night. There were wild animals there. I don’t even know if he had anything around to drink.
And while He was out there, very weak and hungry, the Devil came and tempted Him. He was hungry and so the Devil tempted Jesus to turn the rocks into bread but Jesus wasn’t going to start eating just because the Devil dared Him to make bread. The Devil said that if Jesus was really the Son of God, like the voice from Heaven said He was, that He would do it. Oh my goodness, have you ever had anyone do that to do? It’s a bad feeling, when someone tries to make you prove something in a way that would be bad. The Devil wanted Jesus to stop obeying and trusting God His Father—does that sound familiar? That’s just what happened to Adam and Eve. The Serpent pretty much dared them to eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and they did. Jesus said no way! Then the Devil took Jesus to the very top of the Temple building, which was like 150’ tall! How big is that? It’s as tall as a 14-story building! And the Devil said that if Jesus was really the Son of God that He could totally jump off that building and not die because the angels would catch Him. But Jesus didn’t fall for that trick. He probably remembered what happened when the Serpent told Adam and Eve that they wouldn’t really die if they ate the fruit—and that went very badly for them. Then the Devil offered to make Jesus the King of the whole world if He would just worship him instead of God and again, Jesus said no! The Serpent had told Adam and Eve that if they ate the fruit they would be just like God, and they believed it and thought that it was totally worth it. But Jesus knew that there was nothing that the Devil could offer Him to make it worth it to abandon God.
Jesus is perfect, but we aren’t and neither was Abram. Because He has left home now, he will be put into situations that would have never happened while he was safe with his whole family at home. God promised Abram many things but it is hard to remember those things when we are scared, angry, confused, or just worried. Already, Abram has said no when he was tempted to stay safe at home but he also said yes to the temptation to bring Lot along with him on the trip. I bet you are like that too, right? Sometimes you do the right thing and other times you do the wrong thing. I do that too. Everyone in the Bible except for Jesus did that. The whole story of Abram is filled with these kinds of examples. He’s going to do some incredible things that required a ton of trust, and he will also do some terrible things that will get himself and others in trouble. And yet, we don’t see God yelling at him or giving up on him or killing him. Abram will suffer bad consequences when he does bad things but we shouldn’t confuse that with being punished by God. If you throw a rubber ball against a window and instead of breaking it, it bounces back into your face and breaks your glasses, that isn’t a punishment from God but the consequence for what you did. It’s really not a smart thing to do but at least it wasn’t a rock or a baseball slamming back onto your face, that would be so much worse.
God doesn’t want us dead. He didn’t want Abram dead either. He also didn’t want Abram’s enemies to be dead—what He wanted was for everyone to be friends with Abram so He could bless them. He knows that He has to have a relationship with us so that we can learn from Him what is right and what is wrong and that we can trust Him and that doesn’t happen overnight. Not even with Abram!
At the end of these verses, we see Abram arriving at a place called Shechem, near the Oak of Moreh, and we also find out that the dreaded Canaanites are in the Land. So, let’s talk quick about Shechem, the Oak of Moreh, and the Canaanites before next week when we get to God’s next big promise to Abram! If you look at a map (and I will link one in the transcript), you will see that by the time Abram stopped the first time (he will stop two more times), he was already very far south into what would one day be called the Land of Israel. He had passed through Galilee in the north, where Jesus lived as an adult, and the Sea of Galilee where Peter, Andrew, James and John were all fishermen with their families. They had passed Mt Tabor to their left side, where the prophet Samuel would send Saul before he was crowned as king, Mt Carmel on the left where someday Elijah would battle against the prophets of Ba’al, They would have had to go around Mt Gilboa, where the Philistines would kill the wicked king Saul. Finally, He would have ended up between Mt Gerazim and Mt Ebal, where the children of Israel would write the blessings and curses of the law when they finally arrived in the Land God promised them after the death of Moses. But none of that had happened yet and it wouldn’t have if Abram had stayed home. Maybe God would have just chosen someone else—or maybe God would have kept pestering Abram. That’s what He does with me sometimes when I don’t want to do something He wants me to do.
Finally, they were at Shechem, where his grandson Jacob would later buy some land and camp outside of the city there. But right now, they didn’t even have an inch of land to call their own. They were what the Bible calls strangers and foreigners living in the Land of Canaan, where the Canaanite tribes lived at that time. So who were the Canaanites? They were a bunch of small tribes scattered all over the land that would someday be Israel– Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites,Hethites, Perizzites, Amorites, Girgashites, and Jebusites. That’s a lot of “ites” eh? We will hear a lot about them throughout the rest of Genesis but also in the books of Joshua and Judges. When we look at Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, we see commandments against the horrifying things they were doing. From archaeology, we know a lot about their gods and how they lived and that their language was very similar to Hebrew. And that’s a good thing because when they found all those cuneiform tablets, it made it a lot easier to translate them. So, for almost a hundred years now, we have been learning more and more about the Canaanites from the stories they left behind in a place called Ugarit. And the more we understand the Canaanites, the better we understand the Bible. It was very cool when they found those tablets. They had information about the myths of Baal Hadad, the storm god, El, the king of the gods, Asherah, his wife, Astarte, the goddess of War, and Mot, the god of death. Before the archaeologists discovered these tablets and the linguists translated them, there was so much we didn’t know. Baal shows up in the Bible a lot, a lot a lot, actually. So does Asherah, but what we didn’t know is what kinds of gods and goddesses they were supposed to be, at least not for sure.
A lot of the stories people tell now go back to before we knew for sure. So now we know that a lot of things people used to believe are wrong about a lot of different cultures and the gods they worshiped. At one time, people believed that Dagon of the Philistines was a fish god because in Hebrew dag means fish, but now we know that Dagon was an agricultural god who was responsible for a good harvest of grain. Some people thought Tammuz was a sun god but now we know he was a Babylonian shepherd god who had nothing to do with the sun at all. And Ishtar was never a mother goddess who would help women have babies—she was the goddess of war and the Queen of Heaven. Lemme tell ya, I have read all the mythology they have discovered about her and she was one nasty, mean-spirited scary goddess. Boy howdy. But the stories you hear about her today are almost totally untrue. Remember how we have talked about the fact that when something in the Bible isn’t mentioned very often and isn’t explained, that people end up telling stories that usually end up being wrong later? Well, when it comes to the ancient world and how they worshiped and who they worshiped, that’s even more true. But it all helps us to understand the Bible! We just need to get rid of all the old legends that ended up not being at all true.
If you remember, from the story of Noah, the Canaanites were descended from Ham’s son Canaan—not from all the sons of Ham. Just that one. In Genesis 9:1, God blessed Noah and his three sons and so even though Noah was angry at Ham for what he did, Noah couldn’t curse anyone that God had blessed. So, he cursed Canaan instead, and I imagine that means that Canaan probably left the family and couldn’t learn about God anymore and so his descendants ended up doing incredibly horrible things. Be careful what you say about people and what you do with your anger and never ever blame anyone for something someone else did.
Next week, we will talk about God’s new promise to Abram and how it would have made him realize that he had made an enormous mistake by bringing along his nephew Lot. I love you. I am praying for you. And I want you to remember that God doesn’t demand that we be perfect now, but He does want us to become more and more perfect as we get to know Him better. Abram is going to mess up, a lot, and so will you and so will I. And it’s okay, as long as we get back up and try again to do better.