Episode 87: Seven Special Babies in the Bible

Everyone is talking about Baby Jesus now, all over the world, but what you may not know is that God just loves to do things through “impossible” babies who couldn’t have even been born without God working incredible miracles. So, this week we are going to look at Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist to see how God makes impossible things possible and especially through the greatest miracle baby of all—Jesus!

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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 rephrased so that it is easier for kids to understand).

This time of year, people all over the world are talking about baby Jesus, right? And, of course, Jesus was a miracle baby but even though He is absolutely the greatest miracle ever born in the history of—well, everything. He isn’t the first miracle baby but every single miracle baby in the Bible points us closer and closer to Jesus in one way or another. According to the Bible, Isaac was a miracle, and so was his son Jacob, and Jacob’s son Joseph, and Samson the strong man, Samuel the Prophet, John the Baptist, and Jesus—for a grand total of seven miracle babies who all went on to do great things for God and for all of us. Of course, every baby is a miracle, but some babies are miracles because their births are just flat out and downright impossible but happened anyway. They happened because nothing is impossible for God, and He loves to do things to just get our attention when he’s about to do something wonderful.

We will be getting back to the story of Abram and Sarai next week but this week we are going to take a sneak peek at the story of their son Isaac when Abraham was one hundred years old and Sarah was ninety! Dude, just no! When we adopted our twins, I was almost thirty-two and my husband was thirty-four and we thought we were gonna die from being so tired. If I was ninety, I definitely would have. Now, we have already seen that Abram and Sarai have a terrible problem—Sarah can’t have babies and they are super old, even older than me. Without a son they will be in big trouble as they get really older, and so they are kinda depending on their nephew Lot to take care of them but that’s not going to work out, and then they try to adopt Eliezer of Damascus, one of the slaves born into their household, but then God puts the stop to that and says, “Nope, Abram, you are going to have a kid so stop trying to make all of this work out by yourself. Seriously man, I do not need your help because you will just mess it up.” And then Abram and Sarai messed it up, but we will talk about that some other time. One day, three angels came to visit them and as Abram was feeding them meat and curds and bread, one of them told Abraham that when they would come back again next year, Sarah would have a baby. God had given them both new names at this point because it was part of His promise to make them parents.

Well, imagine if you will, a ninety-year-old lady in her tent making food for visitors and hearing that she was finally going to have a baby. She was laughing to herself and thinking, like, “Oh yeah sure, I couldn’t even have a baby when I was young enough to have a baby and it’s going to happen this year? Sure, whatever there, guys.” Imagine her shock when God, who was speaking through the Angel of the Lord, responded to what she was thinking in secret and asked why she was laughing and why she didn’t think God could make something like that happen! And she panicked and denied it but God was like, “Oh yeah, you were totally laughing.” And what’s even more amazing is that God had appeared to Abraham a few days before and told him that their son would be named Isaac, which actually means laughter. Isaac was the very first “son of promise” in the Bible and he was born so that God would be able to say that He made Israel out of absolutely nothing because Isaac shouldn’t have even been born in real life but with God all things are possible!

But Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, couldn’t have babies either. Not for twenty whole years! Isaac prayed and God finally remembered Rebekah and she became pregnant not with one miracle baby but with two! And like two other twin boys that I could mention, they were fighting like cats and dogs inside her and she was like, “What the heck is even going on here?” Because she was a prophetess, she asked God what was happening with these kids, and He told her that she didn’t just have two babies inside her but two babies who were so different that they would become entirely different nations! And that wouldn’t really have been positive news, plus the younger one would be greater than the older one, which is not how things used to work in the ancient world. Nope, oldest brother gets to be the boss of everyone but we’re going to begin to see that even though humans cared about who the oldest son was, God pretty much didn’t. He would choose the youngest or middle son all the time just because He chooses who He wants to choose. Esau was born first, before Jacob, but that didn’t mean God had to choose him for the special job of being the father of the Twelve tribes.

And when Jacob grew up, he married a woman named Rachel, and she couldn’t have any babies either and things got pretty desperate. When she finally did have a baby, things got messy because they treated Joseph better than all of Jacob’s other sons put together from his other wife, who were all a heck of a lot older. But even though his parents played favorites and made the other kids jealous and angry enough to want to kill him (for real), Joseph really was very special, and God helped him no matter what terrible things happened to him. His brothers threw him into a pit and were going to either kill him or leave him for dead, and some Ishmaelite traders just happened to pass by in the middle of nowhere and they sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt, and then Joseph ended up in jail when someone lied about him, but then one day he ended up as the second in command of all of Egypt, the mightiest empire of all in those days! Joseph was the second most powerful man in the world and God used him to save not only his own family when there was a terrible famine, but all of Egypt as well.

Many hundreds of years later, there was a boy born to a childless couple in Israel and his name was Samson and although God used Samson to help the people of Israel against their enemies, that boy was a mess and he was always doing the worst sorts of things. Samson was not a great example but when we look at his story it can surprise us when God uses even people who are super messed up and disobedient if He wants to. And Samson was incredibly strong, and God used him to get back at the Philistines for being so cruel to His people. Just think of what Samson could have accomplished if he hadn’t been such a gooberhead, right? Samson is proof that God doesn’t necessarily approve of people just because they are doing stuff for Him.

One of my favorite miracle babies is the prophet Samuel. Mostly because I just love his mom Hannah, but he also totally rocks. Samuel’s mom was married to a guy who had two wives and the other wife had a ton of kids and she was really mean to Hannah, who had been married for a long time but had no kids at all. So not only was Hannah really sad, but the woman who had what she wanted more than anything else in the world was constantly bullying her about it and saying awful things. But that woman didn’t know that God was responsible for Hannah not having any babies and not because He hated her! Hannah went to Shiloh during a festival and was praying so hard and so quietly that the High Priest thought that she wasn’t quite in her right mind at the time and yelled at her. But she had been praying very quietly for a baby and she had promised God that if He would give her a son that she would dedicate him to God’s service for his entire life—and that he would never cut his hair! When she told him that she was just praying, Eli asked God to give her what it was she was asking for.

When Hannah had a baby, she sang a song to the Lord about how happy she was and I bet her husband’s other wife didn’t really enjoy any of it or start dancing. Hannah kept her promise and when Samuel was just a small boy he lived in Shiloh, even sleeping in the Holy Place where the Lamp of God was. God called out to him one night and Samuel thought it was the High Priest Eli calling him, because he was old and blind. After Eli had told him to go back to bed a couple of times, he realized that God was calling Samuel and told him to answer, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ Samuel did as he was told and, that very night, God made him a prophet and told him things about the future of Israel. The Bible tells us that everything Samuel said in the Name of the Lord happened just as he said it would, and that God kept appearing at Shiloh to Samuel and that everyone knew Samuel was a prophet who spoke faithfully everything that God told him to say. Samuel was the first person whom God told about Saul becoming king, and David too. He was the very last of the judges that God sent to Israel and he served God all his life. Not only that but unlike the other miracle babies, he has two books of the Bible named after him! Pretty impressive! But after Samuel, God didn’t give the nation of Israel a miracle baby for a very long time. Israel had a lot of kings, some good and some bad, and a lot of priests, some good and some bad, and a lot of prophets—but no more miracle babies given as a sign from God. Not for about a thousand years, actually, and that’s a super long time to go without that kind of a special sign from God!

But that all changed when the wicked Herod the Great was the King over all of Israel, set over the Jews by the Romans to keep them in line. Herod was kinda Jewish. His grandfather had been forced to become a Jew along with all of the other people who lived in Edom, but he also killed three of his own kids and his favorite wife. Dang, if that’s how you treat your favorite wife then what is going to happen to all the other ones? He had ten wives in all and so they probably went to sleep with one eye open hoping that he wouldn’t kill them or their kids! The Emperor of Rome was a man named Caesar Augustus, who was called “the son of god”—oh yeah, they went there and they did that and people said that he brought peace to the entire world (by killing people who got in his way), and that he was the savior and that he was “good news” to the world! If you have read Luke chapter 2 where it talks about what the angel told the shepherds about Jesus? Yeah, that’s what the Romans said about their Emperor, their king. Of course, God couldn’t just let them do something like that, right? Nope.

So, He made not one, but two miracle babies in one year! Wow, God really meant business and wanted to prove that He, and not Rome, was in charge of peace and good news for the world. So first, He sent His angel Gabriel to an old priest named Zechariah who was serving at the Temple and had been chosen for the very special job of placing incense (which is like perfume, only it isn’t a liquid) on the Golden Altar inside the Temple. It was such a special job that you were only allowed to do it once in your life and they chose the people through a kind of a lottery—which I explained on my radio show for grownups this week. But while he was in there, all of a sudden, a man in white appears beside the altar and Zechariah just freaks out, like anyone would, and the man says, “Don’t be afraid, Zechariah, God has been listening and he has heard your prayers so your wife Elizabeth is finally going to have a baby and you will name him John. He’s going to be a prophet even before he is born, and he will be like Elijah because he’s going to make people ready for the Lord!” Instead of saying, “YES! Finally!” or “Thank You God!” He asked for a sign to prove it—which is what, “How can I know this?” means. And Gabriel was not amused and replied (and parents, just FYI, I am taking a lot of artistic liberties with the conversation), “Maybe you missed it but I am Gabriel, the Gabriel from the book of Daniel, that Gabriel. I actually stand in the presence of God and He sent me to tell you all of this—that’s how you know and why this should have just been good news. So, listen, because you asked for a sign, you won’t be able to talk about this to anyone until it’s all a done deal, and you won’t be able to even hear anyone asking you about it.”

And so that was the last thing Zechariah heard until the day his son got named when he was eight days old. Gave him a long time to think about it, right? So, he couldn’t tell anyone what had happened even though they figured that he must have had a vision from God while he was in the Temple, but he went home and a miracle happened! Elizabeth, who was also very old, found out that she was going to have a baby! And she hid herself away in her house for five whole months, not wanting anyone to know yet. And around that same time, God decided it was the perfect time to make His last and greatest miracle baby. So, again He sent Gabriel with the news to a young teenage girl who was engaged to be married. Would she ask for a sign? Or would she just be happy? Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Hello! God is really happy with you and wants to do something amazing in your life! Don’t be afraid of me, God sent me to tell you that you are going to have a son and you will name him Jesus! He will be the greatest man to ever live and will be called the Son of God and He will a king just like your ancestor David, except He will be King forever!”

What would Mary say? “I don’t understand how this is going to happen because I am not married yet.” Mary didn’t ask for a sign, she was just curious! She was probably just fourteen or fifteen years old but she gave a much better answer than Zechariah, who had been serving God forever and was a very righteous man. Gabriel must have liked her question because he answered it and angels don’t always answer questions in the Bible. He said that God was going to send His Holy Spirit and that she would have a baby who wasn’t like any other baby ever born, because that baby would come from the power of God. “Your relative Elizabeth, right now she is six months pregnant, but she hasn’t told anyone yet! See? God can do anything!”

Mary was excited and happy and said, “I will do whatever God wants me to do, let this happen just as you have promised.” Gabriel left her and Mary traveled to see her relative Elizabeth in Judea, it was a long trip from Galilee, but she was very excited and since Elizabeth was old and having a baby (she was probably about the same age as me), she would need all the help she could get until the baby was born. It wouldn’t have been hard to convince her parents to send her, after all, Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous people, and they would take good care of her while she was there. When Mary arrived at their home, she shouted a happy hello to Elizabeth and the baby inside Elizabeth started jumping around. All of a sudden, the Holy Spirit of God gave Elizabeth so many things to say to young Mary, who wasn’t going to look like she was having a baby for quite a few more months. “You are the most blessed woman who has ever lived, and your child is the most blessed! I can’t believe that the mother of my Lord has come to visit me! When I heard you say hello, this baby jumped inside me! You are so blessed that you believed everything God said He would do for you!”

And Mary, she started singing about how generous and merciful and wonderful God is to remember His people and to use her even though she was just a nobody in the eyes of all the world, just a poor girl from a tiny village in the Galilee. Mary stayed and helped Elizabeth until after she had her baby, which Elizabeth was probably thrilled about because Zechariah wasn’t all that good for conversation anymore, but he was a good listener these days and never argued with her. When John was eight days old, and another priest was performing his circumcision ceremony, all their friends and relatives tried to name the child Zechariah, after his father, but Elizabeth said, “Nope, his name is John!” So, they said to her, “Um, no, none of our relatives have John for a name, so you can’t do that!” And so, they tried to get Zechariah to change her mind by motioning to him and playing something like charades, I suppose, but Zechariah got a wax writing tablet and carved the words, “No. His Name is John.” And as he showed them the tablet, all of a sudden, he could hear again and his mouth opened and he started speaking amazing words about his son John and all the things that God had planned for him—everything he had been wanting to say for nine long months, I suppose! He had a lot on his mind, for sure! He said things not only about his son but also about Jesus, that the Messiah would come at last and save all of Israel! And that John would be God’s prophet who would teach the people about how to get right with God, how to repent for their sins, so that when the Messiah came to them, the long-awaited King (they had been waiting almost six hundred years actually!), that they would be ready for Him. And everyone all over Israel heard of it and they were all asking one another, “What kind of man will this child become??”

When Mary went home, it became obvious to her fiancé Joseph that she was pregnant, and he wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t understand what had happened and after praying about it a long time, he decided not to be married to her but didn’t want to make trouble for her either. He was a very good man. And an angel of the Lord came to him and told him not to be worried about it because Mary’s baby was direct from God and that Joseph was supposed to name Him Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew, which means “God saves”). Joseph was a righteous and wonderful man and married Mary right away and brought her home, but then a call came out from the government for everyone to travel to where their family-owned land so that they could be counted. They did this so that the Romans would know how much tax money they thought they deserved to get out of them. Mary was very pregnant, but the Romans didn’t care, and she and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem, the city of David, near Jerusalem. No relatives would take them in and so they were forced to spend the night where the animals were kept and when Jesus was born, Mary wrapped him in cloths like all newborns had always been wrapped in—whether they were born in a palace or in a tent.

As that was happening, there were shepherds out in the fields with their flocks and it was nighttime. Suddenly, an angel appeared to them and told them about the birth of Jesus! And they were about blinded by God’s glory shining all around them, which just made them so afraid. The very happy angel comforted them and said, “Don’t be afraid! Listen to me! I have come to tell you good news of great joy for all the people on earth:Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you. He is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be the sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a feeding trough.” And the angels all gathered and began to sing in celebration, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to the people He is showing His love and mercy to!” They shepherds might have even said, “Did you hear that? The angel of God said all those things about this baby that the Romans say about Caesar, but we know that there is no good news for us with Caesar as our king! Let’s go straight to Bethlehem and find this child who was born around the animals and not in a palace in Jerusalem!”

And so they went and found Mary and Joseph and Jesus just as the angel said. And they told them everything that happened. The Bible tells us that Mary stored everything they said in her heart and thought about it a lot, while the shepherds went back to their jobs, celebrating all the way back and praising God that the Messiah had finally arrived! I hope you enjoyed hearing about all the miracle babies. I love you. I am praying for you. And I hope you learned a lot today about our God and how He just loves to make impossible things possible.