In Genesis 15, Abram asks God for a sign, and God tells Him to do something so utterly bizarre that it will require quite an explanation! We’ll also be talking about the prophet Jeremiah and the time when the citizens of Jerusalem made a huge mistake.
If you want to watch me recording a slightly longer version of this live on YouTube, check this out! If you can’t see the podcast player, click here.
Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to this week’s 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, where I now post slightly longer video versions. (Parents, all Scripture this week comes from the MTV, the Miss Tyler Version, which is the Christian Standard Bible tweaked a bit to make it easier for kids to understand the content and the context without having to read an entire chapter every week!)
God also said to Abram, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you the land of Canaan to you.” But Abram said, “Lord God, how can I know that it will belong to me?” God said to Abram, “Bring me a three-year-old cow, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old male sheep, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” So Abram brought all of these animals to God, cut them in half, and laid the pieces opposite each other, but Abram did not cut the birds in half. Birds of prey came down on the dead bodies of the birds and animals, but Abram kept chasing them away. (Gen 15:7-11)
If you are scratching your head, you aren’t alone. I mean, what the heck did Abram do that for in the middle of the night? Is he just trying to attract every wild animal, bird, beast, and insect within twenty miles? Now, you know the answer if you read my Covenants curriculum book but if you haven’t then you aren’t really that much more confused than a lot of Bible scholars were just a hundred and fifty years ago. I talk about all those cuneiform tablets a lot. Those are the baked clay tablets that saved important writings from the time of Abram and Sarai. Well, something amazing was discovered in one of them that forever changed the way Bible Scholars read Genesis 15! In them, they found proof of a special kind of covenant where two people or two countries made a very important commitment to each other. And they would take farm animals, kill them quickly and then they would actually cut them in half and place the halves apart from each other so that there was a path down the middle. No doubt there was a lot of blood involved. And after they had done this, they made their agreement and walked together between the rows of critters. Of course, I am getting ahead of myself about why they did that—that’s for next week, and that’s also why next week is going to be a huge lesson about what Jesus did for us and why this was the very moment that God decided to promise it to Abram. That’s the ‘why’ behind God telling Abram to get those animals and the why about Abram knowing what to do without being specifically told. This wasn’t strange to Abram. This was how people during his time made the most important promises of all. And no one did it unless they were very, very serious. But I want you to remember that Abram is still having a vision where he can see the Word of the Lord. The vision isn’t over. No one else can see what is going on—I mean, people would have totally noticed him cutting and hauling around critters in the middle of the night.
Now let’s go back to last week’s lesson really quick. The Word of the Lord had come to Abram in a vision inside his tent at night and then took Abram outside to look at the stars. But why? Because God was promising Abram that he would actually be the father of a baby, at last, and that he wouldn’t have to worry about adopting an adult to take care of himself and Sarai when they got older. And not only that, but someday Abram’s descendants would be too many to count. And Abram believed God and that changed everything in their relationship. In fact, God makes a strange announcement, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you the land of Canaan to you.” First time I read that, I was like, “Is this supposed to be news or something? Of course, this is the same god, but why is He saying it?” There are actually a few important reasons. Do you remember Abram and the king of Sodom? Abram wouldn’t take any of the loot from the battle because he didn’t want it to look like he had gotten anything from anyone except God. It was an important step up in his relationship with God, trusting God to give him everything he needs and wants. And now that Abram also trusts God to give him a baby, God is making an important statement about who He is, and it isn’t something that Abram would have just assumed or taken for granted.
In the ancient world, people believed in a great many gods. Not only did a single person have many gods that they worshiped, but they also believed that different countries had entirely different gods in charge of them. The Egyptian sun god Ra was not the same as the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash or the Hittite sun goddess Arinna. They did the same job but they each did it differently and were more like people doing the same job in big factories for entirely different companies. Let’s say that Arinna is putting ice cream in cartons for Ben and Jerry’s in Boise, while Shamash is also putting ice cream in cartons for but he is doing it in Pittsburgh for Haagen-Das, and Ra is doing the same thing in Orlando for Breyer’s. Same job. Different people. Different places. Like different kings and queens of different countries. That’s how the whole god and goddess thing worked in their brains in the ancient world. It wasn’t until the Greeks came along over a thousand years later that they would convince people that everyone had been just worshiping their gods all along.
And so, when God called Abram, He never told Abram that He was the only god around. That would have made no sense at all to Abram or anyone else. Gods and goddesses were how they explained everything that happened in the world. God also didn’t tell the children of Israel that He was the only god either. What He said to Abram and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and the others was that they needed to follow Him and only Him and not to get in His face with any other gods. Now, we know nowadays that there aren’t any other gods at all but we also understand that God created the world so perfectly that it runs without needing to be taken care of by little gods in charge of every little thing. The Sun doesn’t need help doing what it needs to do, and no one needs to open windows in the sky to make it rain. God is a master designer and builder, and it all just works. He doesn’t need any help at all. By the time of Jesus, they understood this, and even a lot of pagans were beginning to figure it out but there are still many people today who believe that there are many thousands of gods—not because they are silly or aren’t smart but because that is what they were raised to believe.
So when God tells Abram, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you the land of Canaan to you.” He is telling Abram that he has only been dealing with one god this entire time and not many, which might have surprised Abram. In Abram’s world, the same god who would give people land wouldn’t be the god who blessed their livestock or gave them children. But the god who did all those things for Abram and protected him while he traveled was just one god. We think that’s normal, but Abram didn’t. That’s one thing. God is telling Abram that He is Abram’s one and only source for absolutely everything Abram needs. If you have ever read about the giving of the ten commandments, what God tells Abram sounds a lot like that, too, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, away from the place where you lived as slaves.” And that’s very important because when God said that to the children of Israel in the wilderness, He was making a covenant with them—a forever promise and agreement to be their God no matter what. In fact, whenever God says, “I did such and such for you,” then He is calling them back to remember that He is their God and they are His people, and they had better listen carefully and obey Him. Just like with Moses and the children of Israel at Sinai, God is going to make a covenant with Abram and this is His introduction to it. Abram understands this because it was an important part of his world. Even though he has been trusting and obeying God since Genesis 12 when he left his family, God is finally going to bless Abram with a forever promise that can’t ever be taken back.
And so when Abram asks God, “Lord God, how can I know that it will belong to me?” it might seem as though he isn’t trusting God, but the truth of the matter is that Abram is asking for a permanent promise and forever agreement between the two of them. Abram isn’t just asking God to swear a pinky promise that He isn’t lying; Abram is telling God that he is willing to follow, trust, and obey God for the rest of his life and to teach his children to do the same. Abram is promising that everyone in his household will obey God too, and that everything Abram has and does will always be totally devoted to God. And this is a big promise! This means that Abram belongs to God completely and not to any other gods. It means that when there is a famine and no food, God is the only one Abram will ask for help. That was a really big decision to make in those times, even though it seems obvious to us now. And this is why God wasn’t the slightest bit angry when Abram asked—instead, God told Abram exactly what to do so that there could be a covenant promise between the two of them forever. And remember, even though Abram is still having a vision doesn’t mean that this isn’t absolutely real.
Abram would have been very excited to do this. After all, gods in his world didn’t do anything like this with humans. They did what they wanted when they wanted, and they lied and broke promises, and who was to stop them or hold them responsible or punish them for it? The gods they believed in were just as bad as humans and even worse. They couldn’t be trusted. So, when Abram believed God and trusted Him, that was a really big deal. Only a completely foolish person in the ancient world would trust one of the gods of the nations—they were messed up, selfish, cruel, and not always the most intelligent beings in the universe. God credited this belief to Abram as righteousness because it meant that Abram was believing that our God is entirely different than the other gods worshiped by the nations. That was a huge compliment, by the way. God doesn’t force us to believe Him, but He does spend a lot of effort to prove to us how wonderful and trustworthy He is. And now Abram trusts God so much that He wants to be with Him forever instead of just trying to keep Him happy while avoiding Him—which is how the other gods were worshiped.
And so, God told Abram to get all those critters and to cut them in half and make a pathway between them, and Abram waited for God—because the whole point of this kind of thing was for the two of them to walk through the pieces of the animals together. So, Abram was waiting for God to make the first move. And he waited and waited, and the birds showed up to try and eat the critters. Abram kept shooing them away, and still, he waited and never gave up. What’s going to happen next? Will God show up as a person and walk through the animals with Abram? Will they tell each other, “If either one of us breaks the promise between us that the Land of Canaan will belong to Abram, may what happened to these animals happen to whoever breaks the promise”? Abram certainly didn’t want to be cut in half, and so if he wasn’t very serious about being faithful to God, then he wouldn’t have gotten those animals and cut them in half. That was Abram’s half of the forever promise. But as to what happens—we’ll have to talk about that next week!
The prophet Jeremiah talked about another time when God’s people made this kind of promise to Him and how seriously God takes promises like this. It happened during the days when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was attacking the city of Jerusalem. You see, the rich and powerful people in Jerusalem were holding their own people as slaves when they were forbidden to do that. God allowed the very poor people to sell themselves as slaves for only six years so that they could survive when they were going through difficult times, but they had to be set free on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. They weren’t really slaves but more like hired workers, and they couldn’t be treated badly because they were God’s people. God had freed them from slavery to the Egyptians, and no one was allowed to ever make them slaves again. But the people had become terribly wicked, and they had filled God’s temple with idols and were worshiping the gods of all the other nations along with the sun, moon, and stars. They no longer cared about God or about His covenant with them, and they were even worse than the nations all around them, so God was going to kick them out of the land of Israel to teach them a lesson—so that they would come back and obey Him like Abram did. God had spent many hundreds of years warning them and pleading with them to do what was right and to love Him and one another, but the more He blessed them, the worse they got.
But when the people became terrified of the Babylonian army, they decided to make God a promise that they would release all of their Jewish slaves. All of the leaders, rulers, government officials, and everyone with Jewish slaves took animals and cut them in half just as Moses did in his vision, and they walked through them and swore to God that they would set all Jewish slaves free. They did this at the Temple of God. And they would have said, “If we go back on our promise, may what happened to these animals happen to us!” And they set their slaves free, and God heard them and made Nebuchadnezzar and his army go away because He was very happy that they were finally doing what was right. But when they felt safe again, they went to where their former slaves lived and forced them to come back and serve them again! And this is what God told the prophet Jeremiah to say to them:
“I made a solemn covenant, a forever agreement/promise, to your ancestors at Mount Sinai after I saved them from slavery in Egypt. I said, ‘If anyone is poor and has to sell himself to you as a slave, you have to set him free after six years.’ But they didn’t obey me, and in fact, they ignored me! Today, you turned away from being evil, and you actually did what I wanted you to do, and it made me very happy. You set your brothers and sisters free from having to serve you as slaves, and you even did it in my Temple. But now you have insulted me and changed your minds, and you have enslaved them all over again instead of allowing them to go home. And so, because you didn’t do what I told you to do for my people, I am going to set you free—and you won’t have my protection from Nebuchadnezzar and his armies anymore. People will be shocked by what is going to happen to you when I let you get treated like all the other places he has conquered. And for the people who were the ones who cut those animals in half in my Temple and swore to obey me, they will be treated just like those animals by the Babylonians, and I won’t do anything to stop it. The Babylonians will kill some, and they will make slaves of others. I am calling the Babylonians back from where I sent them, and they will destroy everything.” (Jer 34:13-22)
Wow, God doesn’t like slavery or any other way that people hurt each other. He hates it when the rich and powerful take advantage of the people who aren’t. And everything happened just like He said it would—but God took care of the poor and those who had been used and abused as slaves. In fact, when the Babylonians finally took over the city, burned it to the ground, captured all the leaders, and took them away to Babylon, they left the poor on their land to farm and care for it! So, the rich lost everything, and the poor got to keep it! The leaders never saw their homes again, while the people they had forced into slavery never had to leave at all. When God did that, He was sending them and also all of us a strong message that even when we don’t keep our promises to do what is right—He will. The rich and powerful didn’t set those people free, but God sure did! It was promised in His very own Temple that they would be released, so God Himself had to make sure that it happened. Pretty cool, eh?
Of course, Abram would have been deeply ashamed if he knew how wicked his descendants would become, how cruel, and how completely they became like everyone around them. Abram originally came from Babylon himself, before it was even called Babylon. He knew what those people were like, and now Abram was living among the Canaanites. When we get to the book of Leviticus, and even later on in Genesis, we are going to find out what these people did to each other and how differently God’s people were commanded and expected to live. God wasn’t asking them to do anything particularly hard except to trust Him and to only be good to one another. It is when people stop loving God and each other that all the problems happen. And it is wrong to hate people who don’t know any better, but we have to make sure that we don’t start thinking that the selfish and cruel things people do to each other are okay just because they are normal. God is incredibly forgiving, and we see that in how He treated the Israelites even when they were becoming more and more wicked. He still loved them. He still tried to get through to them with His prophets. He sent them signs and wonders to get their attention. Sometimes He let their enemies defeat them so that they would remember how much better things were when they were obeying God. It’s not much different than what good parents do when their kids are in trouble. Sometimes we have to punish and give consequences; sometimes, we just have to step back and let bad things happen so that our kids will learn from experience not to do certain things.
The hardest times in my life have been when my kids haven’t been behaving like they should and sometimes they have gotten into huge trouble. And when that happened, I didn’t try to get them out of trouble. I had to help them learn how to live with the trouble they had caused or to fix it and try to make it right again. But I never hid what they had done because I knew that if they didn’t learn their lesson, they would do even worse. God has to do that too. We need God to guide us and not protect us all the time. Of course, He does protect us a lot, but when we do things that are really wrong, He does let us pay the price for it, not only so that we learn not to do it again but also so that the people around us can learn too. Abram got kicked out of Egypt during a famine because he lied. Lot lost everything when Sodom was destroyed, even though God saved his life. Jacob and his mother, Rebekah, suffered because of the lie they told Isaac and they were separated for over twenty years from each other. Jacob suffered because he had a favorite child, and Joseph suffered as a slave and prisoner because he wasn’t kind to the sons of his father’s lowest-ranking wives. Moses suffered because he made himself look like a magician in the desert, bringing water out of a rock without God’s help. Nadab and Abihu, the priests, died because they treated God badly in His own Tabernacle. Joshua and Caleb suffered because they made an agreement with the Gibeonites, who had lied to them. David suffered a lot and lost many of his sons because of his terrible sins. And we know about all of this because God gave them to us in the Bible to read about and so that we would understand that God doesn’t let His favorites get away with sinning just because He has used them to do great things.
Not everyone in the Bible who suffers has done something to deserve it. Most people suffer because someone else did something awful. But God sees everything even when it seems like He is ignoring it. Just like with those people who were forced back into being slaves and who were given the whole land of Israel to farm whatever part they wanted, God has a way of turning things around. And if it doesn’t happen in the here and now, then He promises that it will happen in the world to come when Jesus comes back and is King over us. People who had it good here and hurt others will not even be allowed into God’s holy city. The people who had very little but were faithful and good with it will be put in charge of a lot more. Everything will be fair and good, and we won’t have to worry about evil people being in charge. Kids will be able to play outside all day and all night, and no one will worry if they don’t make it home for dinner because they are absolutely safe. It will be perfect, just like God wanted in the beginning.
I love you. I am praying for you. And when times are difficult, and life is unfair, I want you to remember that what happens here isn’t the end of the story. It’s just the beginning. And everything that is wrong will be made right.