Maybe during COVID you found out how difficult it can be for a bunch of people to be in a small space for a long time, and that’s what happened with Abram and Lot, who had so much stuff and so many slaves and hired men that there was a lot of arguing over who should be able to feed their animals in what places. What is Abram going to do to solve this terrible problem? And how does it show us how much he trusts God?
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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 this week comes from the MTV, the Miss Tyler Version, which is the Christian Standard Bible modified a bit to make it easier for kids to understand the content and the context).
If you remember, before they even went down to Egypt to escape the famine so that they wouldn’t all starve to death, Abram found out that they had made a huge mistake in bringing along their nephew Lot when God surprised Abram by promising him a son. Although Abram was supposed to leave his family back in Haran, Abram did bring someone much younger who could be like a son to them, and inherit all their stuff, and take care of them when they got older. I mean, yeah, they are already pretty old—Abram is around 75 and Sarai is ten years younger, so like 65 years old—but both of them are going to get a lot older than that. Abram will live to be 180 years old and Sarai will live to be 127 years old. They aren’t even halfway through their lives yet! But they have no kids and what’s more, they can’t have any kids because Sarai is barren—which means she can’t have a baby. God told Abram that He would make him into a great nation, but for that you need kids and so Abram probably brought Lot along as an insurance policy, you know, just in case God needed help making Abram into a great nation. We like to try and help God but the way we go about doing that is usually wrong. Instead of just waiting and cooperating and becoming better people, we try to find a shortcut and so this week, we are going to see how that is going to blow up in everyone’s faces—but especially Lot’s.
We are in chapter 13 right now of Genesis, so let’s look at today’s verses: Now Lot, who was traveling with Abram, also had flocks (sheep and goats), herds (cows), and tents (which they all lived in). But the land where they were staying wasn’t enough to support them as long as they stayed together (all those critters needed a lot to eat and the tents would have been pretty crowded together), because they had so much stuff that they couldn’t stay in the same place together, and there were terrible arguments between Abram’s shepherds and Lot’s shepherds. (This was when the Canaanites and the Perizzites were living in the same place.) So, Abram said to Lot, “Please, we shouldn’t be fighting, and our shepherds and herdsmen shouldn’t be fighting either, since we are family. Have you looked at all the land that is around us? We need to split up and go in different directions so we won’t be so crowded: if you go to the left, I will go to the right; if you go to the right, I will go to the left.” (Gen 13:5-9)
Now, can you just imagine all those tents and all those people and all those critters? Way more than before Abram went down to Egypt (and we don’t know if Lot went or not because the Bible never tells us anything about that) because Abram lied to Pharaoh, the king, about his wife Sarai and Pharaoh gave Abram sheep and goats and donkeys and camels and slaves so that she could be his wife because he thought she was just Abram’s sister. Lot had his animals and slaves and tents too. And because of everything Abram returned from Egypt with, they now have a huge problem. Although they have been able to live together peacefully and happily since they left their home in Haran, now they can’t anymore. Abraham got very rich from lying to Pharaoh when he didn’t trust God, and now the problems are really going to start avalanching all over all of them. Life is sure complicated. Abram was scared of dying and he believed that if he lied that he would stay alive and might get rich too, but now that it happened, he has to say goodbye to his nephew. You will find out in your life that money can cause a lot of fights, and so can the stuff we have. Some people end up with everything they ever wanted but they lose their friends and family. Abram and Lot are going to have to deal with that—because they have been fighting and the people who take care of their animals have been fighting too. That sure isn’t how anyone should want to have to say goodbye to family, right?
There is a really serious word in this week’s lesson. That word is rib (rrreeve) and it kinda shows up twice but in ways that mean different things. The first time we see it is when the shepherds of Abram and Lot are fighting, and this means that they aren’t just squabbling and complaining about not having enough room. Using rib means that maybe Lot’s men were saying things like, “This field is OURS so you can’t be here! We were here first, you need to go somewhere else!” And maybe Abram’s shepherds were saying, “Hey, we work for the head honcho, Abram, and he has way more stuff than your master and that means that we are better than you guys are. Scram!” Rib is the kind of word that the prophets used when God was telling the people of Israel that they were going to be in big trouble if they kept worshiping other gods and if they kept hurting the people who were weak, and poor, and vulnerable. He was warning them that they were breaking the Covenant He made with them at Mt Sinai after He set them free from slavery in Egypt. Rib is what grownups would call a “lawsuit” word, because one person (or group) is making a claim that another person (or group) is guilty of doing something that is wrong and hurtful and they are going to a judge to find out who is right and who is wrong and from the looks of things—they went to Abram and Lot so the two of them could fight it out. After all, Abram was the patriarch of the entire group, which means he was the big man in charge, but Lot was pretty much his second in command. It was actually the job of Abram to come up with a solution.
Before we get to Abram’s really wise and trusting solution, I want you to notice something important that happens in the middle of this story. After talking about how the shepherds were having such terrible fights, Moses tells us that the dreaded Canaanites and the Perizzites were living in the same area too. But wait! I thought they were the bad guys–but they are totally leaving Abram and Lot and all their people and stuff alone! God is showing us something very important—that when things get crowded, we are usually meaner to the people we love and depend on than we are to strangers. Now, if you are old enough to remember being cooped up in the house when all the COVID stuff was going on then maybe you remember being really bored and feeling like you would do anything to have more room or see someone other than your family. And maybe the grownups in your house really needed some kind of break because whenever people are together too much, kids tend to tease and yell and be mean to each other. I was very blessed because my kids were grownups and they worked at the same food plant as my husband so my life didn’t really change at all since I only leave the house when I have to go shopping. I just sat around reading my books and making up new teachings, like I always do, because people just kinda freak me out. But if you felt all cooped up and like you were gonna scream, then maybe you can understand better than I can what was going on with Abram and Lot. Family can be wonderful to have around but when there is nonstop fighting, it can feel even better to be all alone! But none of them could be alone because they were all crowded into the same place. They were getting along fine with all the idol worshipers in the Land of Canaan, but they couldn’t get along with each other.
All sorts of groups of people who should love each other make the mistake of getting pushy and angry instead of learning to be humble and kind. It’s easy to be mean, right? It’s harder to be kind and to be humble. Humble is a word that means a person doesn’t always try to get their own way, or the best of everything, and they don’t brag and boast about themselves. I am sure you have met people who do that—bullies always do that stuff. I used to have a terrible problem with bragging all the time. I wanted people to think I was awesome so that they wouldn’t mess with me. I didn’t really think I was so great but I wanted them to think I was. I wanted them to look up to me and be impressed with me and to respect me. But then God really let me know that it wasn’t okay for me to do that—and if people didn’t feel all those ways about me because of the things they saw me do, then they shouldn’t feel that way just because I was bragging about myself. The truth is that when we talk about ourselves and how great we want people to think we are, what we are really doing is saying that everyone else is a lot less special than we are. I wasn’t thinking about that. I just wanted people to like me, but what I was really doing was making everyone else seem like they weren’t very important at all. Now when I talk about myself, I usually share about the stuff I do wrong because we all do stuff wrong and no one wants to be the worst so we can all laugh at ourselves when we see how alike we all are.
Up to this point, Abram has a hit and miss track record for trusting God. He believed God when he was told to leave his family behind and travel to a strange place. That was a lot of trust. But he didn’t trust God enough to leave his nephew Lot behind. He did turn around and trust God that he would have children and grandchildren when God promised him “offspring” (which is a fancy word for kids and grandkids) before Abram built the altar at Shechem. But then he didn’t trust God to protect him in Egypt, so he told a really dangerous lie that got Sarai, his wife, into deep doo doo. But what Abram does this time is really amazing and shows that when it comes to the Land, Abram totally trusts God. He trusted God enough to go there, and to travel around it making altars, but what he does next would have been really risky if He didn’t believe God’s promise to give the Land to his children. First, Abram shows his wisdom and patience and how humble he can be:
So, Abram said to Lot, “Please, we shouldn’t be fighting, and our shepherds and herdsmen shouldn’t be fighting either, since we are family.”
This may not seem like a super big deal but it actually is. Abram is older than Lot. Abram has way more stuff than Lot. Abram has more people than Lot does. That means that Abram has the most important thing in the world to the men of the ancient world—Abram has a ton of honor and Lot has a lot less. What is honor? I was just reading a new book yesterday and it gave a much less complicated explanation than the one I usually use. He said that honor is about how much respect people had to give you. And no, they didn’t have a choice. I mean, not unless they were at the same level. And no one had as much honor as Abram. Everyone had to respect him—including Lot but especially all of the slaves working for the both of them. It was just how things were back then. No one would even think of mouthing off to Abram, disrespecting him, insulting him, laughing at him, or any of that. He was the big head honcho over the entire group. No one would say, “Abram, you aren’t the boss of me” because, yeah, actually he was—for a lot of reasons. Abram had the power and the right to just tell Lot to go far away and never come back and Lot would have had to go. Their servants and slaves could argue with each other, but Lot had to respect and obey Abram or no one would respect Lot! It’s actually a lot like High School. Not something I particularly enjoyed because I had like no honor in that place and the popular kids could be mean to me and no one would do anything about it. Because they had a higher status than me. They were popular and I was not, at all.
Right here, Abram is treating Lot like an equal even though Lot knew that no one else in the world would see him as being at the same level as Abram. Instead of saying, “Tell your herdsmen to leave mine alone, right now. Who do they think they are to tell my herdsmen what to do?” But instead, Abram was humble and generous with his nephew. He didn’t brag or make Lot feel small and unimportant. Abram treated Lot with incredible kindness even though no one else back then would think he should. Abram tells Lot that they are family, all of them, and that it was wrong for them to be fighting and causing a fuss. Instead of telling Lot to cut it out and stop, Abram says “please.” People who were big leaders like Abram didn’t have to say “please” very often—only when they were around someone a lot more powerful than they were. So, when he was around Pharaoh? Yeah, he was saying please and thank you and sir and all that. We will talk more about the importance of being polite and Abram’s good example a bit later. Right now, we need to look at Abram’s wise solution because he is really having a good week, right? With being a great example for us? Abram says to Lot:
“Have you looked at all the land that is around us? We need to split up and go in different directions so we won’t be so crowded: if you go to the left, I will go to the right; if you go to the right, I will go to the left.”
Wow, not only isn’t Abram kicking Lot to the curb but he is making sure that Lot knows they are still family and not only that—Abram is letting Lot decide for himself which land he wants! What? But isn’t the land all for Abram’s offspring? Can he give away the land God promised? What if Lot decides to take the entire land of Canaan? It could have happened, right? Abram totally gave Lot the choice. And that might seem like it isn’t very smart, but Abram is showing God that he trusts Him to make sure that Abram’s offspring do get all the Land of Canaan, just like He promised. Abram is like, solid on trusting God about that Land, dang. He can be a bit wonky about other stuff, but this is where Abram’s trust in God absolutely shines and is a great example to all of us! Do you have something like that in your life? Where you have no trouble trusting God for this but when it comes to something else, maybe you don’t trust God at all? I think we all do.
To Lot, this must have seemed like the opportunity of his dreams. His uncle just seriously said, “Whatever land you want, you can have and I will take the leftovers.” When you have a lot of critters to feed, it’s very important to make sure that they will have a place where there is a lot of food and water. Lot knows that choosing wisely can make him a very rich man and choosing poorly could really ruin things for him. What is Lot going to do? Will he give Abram the best of the land, or the worst? What do you think? Will Lot be generous or greedy? We haven’t had anything to do with Lot so far. He hasn’t said anything or done anything. All he has done is follow Abram around and he wasn’t even mentioned when Abram went down to Egypt. Maybe Lot saw the Negev desert with all the rocks and deep canyons and said, “Um, yeah, no. Gonna stay right here where there is food and water. You know where to find me when you come back.” We just don’t know. And we are going to leave off at this cliffhanger! You will either have to read ahead or wait until our next Genesis lesson to find out.
Although Abram was being very kind and generous with Lot, Lot wasn’t even supposed to be there in the Land of Canaan and so that was a problem. Lot is being offered an amazing choice, but every choice is also something we call a temptation. A temptation is when someone gives you a chance to do something you really, really want to do but probably shouldn’t—or definitely shouldn’t. In our story of Abram, so far, when he was tempted to bring Lot along on their journey, he gave in and did it and was sorry later. When Abram was scared to die, he was tempted to lie and to make his wife lie too, and a whole lot of people were sorry later. But, when he was tempted to just take the best land for himself because he was oldest, most respected, and honored, Abram didn’t give in. When his family in Haran probably tempted him not to leave them, Abram didn’t give in. Just like us, sometimes Abram gives in to temptation and does what he wants to instead of what he should do, and sometimes he does what he should instead. Let me just tell you right now that I haven’t ever been tempted like Abram was. Who even knows what I would have done if I was him! Probably some good and definitely some bad. God must really love us a lot because we are really irritating.
You know, Jesus was tempted with a lot more than just some good land. Jesus was actually tempted a lot, by a lot of people and even His own disciples! And not just small temptations either, like “Do not take a chocolate chip cookie, Humperdinck,” and you can’t stand smelling the smell without biting a bite so you give in and take the cookie. Jesus faced huge temptations. Not about cookies. I don’t think they had cookies back then. Actually, I am pretty sure of it. No, when Jesus was tempted it was over some really serious stuff. After His Baptism in the Jordan River, the Holy Spirit led Jesus out into the wilderness so that he could be tested and prepared for his ministry work. He ate nothing for forty days and forty nights. And at the end of that time, Satan came to Him because Satan knew darned well that there was no way that he could trick Jesus unless He was already very weak and very hungry. The first thing he tried was to get Jesus to prove that He was God’s son by making the rocks around Him into bread. And you have to know that bread sounded like a seven-course meal at the finest restaurant at the world right at that moment. Have you ever smelled a loaf of bread right out of the oven? It’s one of the best smells in the whole world. Now think of how it would smell if you hadn’t eaten anything for over a month! But Jesus said no, and He quoted a verse from Scripture saying that it was more important to have the words of God than food. But Satan wasn’t done. He tried again. He is God’s enemy and he wasn’t going to lose without a fight.
The next time, Satan took Jesus to the great city of Jerusalem and placed Jesus up on the highest place in the Temple, which is about 150 feet tall. I am super afraid of heights, gotta tell you, and I would be crying and whimpering and wanting to die. And then Satan dared Jesus again. “If you a reeeaaally the Son of God then jump down because the Bible says that the angels will lift you up so you can’t fall.” But Jesus said, “No, I am not going to tempt God just because you want me to prove something.” Now that’s twice that Satan tried to tempt Jesus and both times he failed miserably. Both times, Jesus was being tempted into being prideful and pride is a very dangerous thing. Pride is the reason that we need to know who we are so that we don’t have to prove anything to anyone. And many times, in your life, people will say, “Oh yeah? Well, if you are such a big deal then show me!” or “I dare you to do this or that.” That usually only happens when people are making big claims about being able to do stuff, but not always. This is a good reason to just be honest about ourselves. Jesus is the Son of God. He didn’t have to prove it to Satan and why on earth would He even want to? Total waste of time.
The third temptation was more difficult because of what was going to happen to Jesus. Satan told Jesus that if He would just worship him instead of God, that he would make Jesus the King of the world. Jesus knew that if He did what He had come to do, to save us from our sins by dying for us, that it would be a horrible experience and here Satan was offering Him a shortcut. But there were two things wrong with it. Jesus would have to turn His back on God and worship Satan, which was not even remotely a tempting tradeoff, plus, we wouldn’t be saved from sin and death. That was enough for Jesus and He told Satan to get lost.
But Jesus was also tempted by the Pharisees and the scribes who came from Jerusalem. I mean like, right after He fed the four thousand people from just a few loaves of bread and some small fishes. They told Him that they wanted to see a sign to prove that they should believe Him. And Jesus said no. If all the miracles He had been doing, right in front of them, weren’t enough for them then a sign in the skies from Heaven wouldn’t be enough either. And then Peter, what he did was probably the worst because after Jesus told them for the first time that He was going to die—Peter took Jesus aside and rebuked Him. That means that Peter didn’t want it to happen and was trying to talk Him out of it. But Jesus knew how important it was, even if He really didn’t want to go through with that. Still, to have His friend try to stop Him must have been hard to deal with.
Next week, we’re going to see how Lot responds to his own temptation. I love you. I am praying for you. And I want you to think about how Lot will handle his big choice. And about the big choices you have to make in your own life.