This week we are beginning Torah portion Vayera, which covers the time from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to the Akeida in chapter 22. Today we start out with a very mysterious appearance of three strangers soon after Abraham circumcised all the men in his household. From the very first line, we know that one of the strangers is God but why is He there and how will Abraham react?
If you want to view this on YouTube, check this out! If you can’t see the podcast player, click here.
Hi! I’m Miss Tyler! 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 usually post slightly longer versions. All Scripture this week comes from the MTV, the Miss Tyler Version, which is the CSB (Christian Standard Bible) tweaked a little or a lot to make the context and the content more understandable for kids.
Well, things are about to get really exciting really fast. Some of what we will read about today will be a review of last week because we are going to see a lot of the hospitality rules. In fact, I am not even going to do an intro today because I want to see how much you remember from our last lesson. How many of the rules will you recognize? Let’s find out as we read the first eight verses of Genesis 18:
The Lord appeared to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre while Abraham was sitting at the entrance of his tent during the hottest part of the day.
Hold it right there—the Lord did what?? You know, we’ve heard over and over again about all the visitations that Abraham has had but we don’t really have a lot of details. The Lord spoke to Abraham in Genesis 12:1, appeared and spoke to him in Genesis 12:6, spoke to him in 13:14, the word of the Lord came to him in a vision in 15:1 and then appeared to him as smoke and fire in 15:17, and the Lord appeared to him in 17:1. Up to now we have had absolutely no clue as to what that has looked like or even if it looked like anything we could understand. After all, the word “appeared” could mean “appeared” as just about anything. God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, but that doesn’t mean that is what God really looks like, right? God could appear as anything He wants to appear as. It seems to be the speaking which is the important thing and the appearance is more like a sign that “yes, this is really an out of this world” experience. But there isn’t anything ‘out of this world’ about the appearance in today’s story. In fact, it’s pretty darned ordinary compared to the burning bush. In fact, as we will see next week, Sarah certainly wasn’t alarmed and neither was anyone else who was in the camp.
I want to talk about a Greek word before we go to the rest of the story, and that word is theophany. It’s a fancy word that means an appearance of God. The ancient Greeks used it when they were talking about the times during the year when they would take a city idol out into the streets and parade it around. The people would look at it and, believing that the idol had their god’s presence in it, see that as an actual appearance of that god among them. They knew the statue wasn’t actually their god, but it was the closest thing possible. They didn’t actually want their gods and goddesses walking down the street because that likely would mean they were in huge trouble. Gods with time on their hands to walk down the street were gods who could be easily offended and cause big-time trouble.
But what that word meant to them was very useful to us because God isn’t a burning bush just like the Holy Spirit isn’t a dove even though the Spirit looked like a dove when it came down on Jesus after he was baptized. But God was in the bush speaking to Moses through the Angel of the Lord—don’t ask me how that works because my brain is too small and I am not gonna pretend to have it all figured out. I understand it happened but I don’t understand how it works. No one knows exactly how any of this works, and that’s okay. God can appear in and speak through a bush that is burning but that doesn’t make Him the bush. And today we are going to see that the Lord is visiting Abraham as one of three men—men who look like men. Does God look like this man? Of course not, God told Moses that no one has ever seen Him. God isn’t like us, with an actual body that He is stuck in. The Bible says that He is invisible and doesn’t have a body, and since you have to have chromosomes and DNA to be a human or a human who happens to be a man, and He had to create those things to make us and all the animals, He isn’t a human or a man. Jesus became a man so that He could live among us, save us, and become our King, but He didn’t start out as a human being. So, when we call this a theophany it means kinda the same thing that the Greeks meant when they saw an idol. Moses knew all about idols too, when he told these stories to the children of Israel in the wilderness, and so it made perfect sense to him and to all of them that God could become whatever He wanted to be so that He could appear to us sometimes. Except, when God takes on a form, it’s alive and not dead like the Greek and Canaanite gods. The Egyptians believed that some animals could be gods, but not people. Let’s get back to this week’s Bible reading.
Abraham looked up, and he suddenly saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of his tent to meet them. He respectfully bowed to the ground, and said, “My lord, if I have found favor with you, please do not keep on traveling past your servant. Let some water be brought, so you can wash your feet and rest under the tree. I will bring a bit of bread so that you can have enough energy to get where you are going. This is why you have come so close to my camp. Later, you can get up and keep traveling.” “Yes,” they replied, “do everything just as you said.” So, Abraham hurried into the tent and said to Sarah, “Quick! Prepare three measures of our finest flour and make bread.” Abraham ran to the herd and got a tender, choice calf that they had been fattening up for a special occasion. He gave it to a young man, who hurried to prepare it. Then Abraham took curds and milk, as well as the calf that he had prepared, and set them before the three men. He even served them as they ate in the shade under the tree.
Now, that we have all that exciting stuff taken care of, it’s time to get to the hospitality part of the story. If you were confused at all the details last week, I hope they are making more sense now. First of all, I am not sure that Abraham has a clue that this is God appearing to him. Otherwise, Abraham would have washed His feet personally instead of offering to have water brought so they could do it themselves. Would Abraham let God of his two mysterious companions wash their own feet? I mean, wouldn’t you want to wash God’s feet? I absolutely would! Sometimes, it’s confusing because in English, our Bibles say, “The Lord appeared to Abraham,” and later it says, “My lord, if I have found favor with you…” but those are two very different words. The first word is God’s actual name, Yahweh, which is why it always appears in all caps in the Bible. That’s what the narrator (the storyteller), probably Moses, is telling us—he knows all of what Abraham doesn’t know yet because God and two angels just up and appeared at Abraham’s camp. It’s kinda nice to just be reading about it because we get all the inside information that everyone is still clueless about. Although, there is another possibility—maybe Abraham did know exactly who it was and he was simply terrified to touch the feet of the Lord. I would be, even though I would also want to wash His feet anyway. At least I think so. You know, it’s impossible to know what we would or wouldn’t do or would and wouldn’t want to do in any situation until we are in that situation. I hope that I would want to and I would hope that I would get to.
You guys know me by now and I study a lot and so I read a lot of different opinions from very smart people who love God very much. Some are alive now and some have been dead for a long time, but they loved the Bible and had some very interesting thoughts. Way in the future, when Moses asks to see God near the end of Exodus—I mean, what He really looks like—God said that no one could really see Him and live. When the Angel of the Lord appeared to Samson’s parents in Judges 13, and they figured out whom they had actually been talking to, Samson’s father thought they were going to die but then his Samson’s mom said that if God was going to kill them then how could she have the baby God promised her! If Sarah had reminded Abraham of such things then he wouldn’t have been scared enough to give her away as a wife to other kings—twice! But now we have a gray area because if they believed those things then Abraham probably believed them too. Having the Angel of the Lord appearing to him and hearing God were probably scary and stressful enough but what do you do when God shows up on your doorstep? Do you even dare touch Him? So, this story could go either way. Either Abraham knew or he didn’t know—either way, he didn’t want to touch their feet, good host or not!
The second “lord” is in all small letters because it’s just a title of respect—adonai in Hebrew. That’s the title Abraham uses when he talks to the three men and invites them to lunch. And there were a lot of these titles that could mean entirely different things depending on how they were used in a sentence. Adonai can be God, absolutely, but in normal life it was more like saying, “sir” or “master.” The Greeks had a word just like it—kyrios. We translate it as lord today because that made sense when the Bible was first translated into English, where lords were rich landowners who had to be treated with respect, or else. But no one uses lord anymore, except over in England and rarely even there. When we hear the word lord in America, we immediately think of God but Adonai was a much more common word that could mean all sorts of things depending on who it was said to. Abraham is using “lord” not necessarily because he knows this really is THE Lord God but because he is speaking respectfully to the visitors and wants to offer them hospitality. Lots of people could be called lord, and not just God. There are actually quite a few Bible words like that—not just adonai but also elohim (which we translate into English as god) and ba’al (which means master or can even mean husband sometimes). All of those words could be and were used to describe our God as well as false gods and even powerful people. It all depends on the context, and as you hopefully remember, context is all the stuff we just know and don’t have to explain. If I say, for example, “I wound the bandage around the wound,” even though wound and wound are spelled exactly the same, when you read the sentence, you know exactly how to read it. If you try to say it the opposite way, it makes no sense at all. Or if you are an American, “Roasting dogs on the Fourth” means barbecuing hotdogs on the Fourth of July. If you don’t know our culture, you might think that we’re cooking up Dobermans and Cocker Spaniels. Just like that, when ancient Israelites used the words adonai, elohim, and ba’al, they knew from how the words were used in the sentence exactly what was meant. But God’s real name, Yahweh, always meant the same thing. We don’t use that word for anything or anyone else. God’s name is the most unique and special word there will ever be.
So anyway, God and two angels just appeared in the camp and Abraham immediately jumps up, even though he is 99 years old, and runs over to them. That’s our first clue that this is a hospitality situation. He was the only person in the camp who could invite people in—not even his thirteen-year-old son Ishmael could do that. Abraham knew that when strangers came close, they were not trying to be secretive or sneaky or trying to avoid dealing with people. They weren’t trying to avoid Abraham but wanted to meet him. So, Abraham behaved like a good host and ran out to them and invited them into his camp, placing them under his protection for as long as they stayed. Of course, out of everyone who ever visited Abraham his whole life, these were the ones who didn’t need to be protected, right? He offered them water to wash their own feet, a place to relax in the shade because it was hot, and some bread to give them energy for the rest of their trip. Because it is the middle of the day, he doesn’t offer them a place to stay for the night. No one was traveling in the middle of the day unless they needed to get somewhere before nightfall. Abraham even knew they probably wouldn’t say no because they had come close to his tent on purpose. They wanted to be noticed and they wanted to relax.
And so, they didn’t even pretend that they were not interested in staying like many travelers would have. Think about it—if they had said “No, we’ve got to get going,” they would be lying because meeting up with Abraham is exactly why they came. So, of course, they agreed right away.
They told Abraham to do everything he had offered to do. Abraham hurried back to his tent and told Sarah to get some of their finest wheat flour and make bread for their guests. Sarah was eighty-nine years old and so we don’t really know if she did it or maybe had Hagar or another slave make it for her. Already, we see that Abraham isn’t just bringing them “a bit” of bread but is making them the best bread they can offer. Compared to the bread they normally ate, this would be very soft and fancier—the kind of bread a king would eat. Abraham is already treating these three visitors with great kindness. And not only is he giving them the best bread possible, he told Sarah to make enough to last them for a very long time. In fact—if you go and look at a gallon sized milk jug, he was telling her to use six gallon jugs worth of flour, thirty-six pounds, which would make a ton of bread. Abraham isn’t just feeding them one meal but giving them enough bread to get them to wherever they are going. I love to make homemade bread because it is probably the yummiest thing on the planet and one gallon of flour makes about eight nice loaves of bread and she is making six times that much—so, like forty-eight loaves of bread which would be I don’t know how many flatbreads. I could probably eat all that in a day if, you know, I absolutely had to and I had a pound of butter—but that’s just me. Forget the fatted calf and just leave me alone with all that bread. And even more work because she isn’t making loaves but more like large, thick tortillas cooked directly over a hot fire—in the middle of the day!
But let’s back up a bit. How on earth did these visitors get all the way to Abraham’s tent without anyone noticing? We can look at the word “appeared” and decide that “poof” they were just there all of a sudden. I figure that’s probably what happened. Even if people were resting from the heat, it shouldn’t have been possible for someone to get that close without anyone noticing them and running to Abraham—but Abraham doesn’t seem alarmed or angry that no one told him. I can think of two answers to that question, maybe you can think of more. One, of course, was that he knew who it was. But on the other hand, we have to remember what happened at the end of chapter seventeen. All the men had been circumcised, which is pretty danged unpleasant when you are an adult and it takes a lot of time to heal up afterward. All the men might be in their tents except for the ones that absolutely had to be with all the critters. If Abraham knew that they were all in their tents recovering, then he wouldn’t be surprised that these men had gotten into camp unseen. That’s my guess, even though I think they just popped in.
Later in Genesis, we will see that a whole city full of men got attacked three days after being circumcised and they couldn’t even get up to defend themselves and they were all killed. If they couldn’t even get up and defend themselves, I guess it would be easy to walk through the camp and especially in the middle of the day when there were almost never any travelers. I need to tell you about something in the Book of Hebrews—Always love each other as brothers and sisters should. Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, because by doing this some people have welcomed angels as guests without even knowing it (Heb 13:2). Obviously, the author of Hebrews (and we have no clue who it is) is talking about Abraham and Lot.
I am going to tell you a story about something that happened when my twins were babies, and they will be 23 next month. I was driving through the tiny town I was living in, down in southern Idaho, and I saw a man who looked homeless. He was dressed in dirty clothes and had very long scraggly hair and was carrying a stick with a hook on the end of it—I didn’t know it at the time but those are for picking up cans to recycle. Back then, you could still get money for turning them in. And all of a sudden, I heard God speak to me, saying, “Go get him something to eat.” But then I started to argue. I knew it was God but I am generally scared to death of people as it is and this was just asking way too much. “No, Lord, you don’t understand. I have my babies in the car and this guy is twice my size (everyone is twice my size as I am very short and was very thin back then). And if you would care to look, he is carrying a STICK with a HOOK on the end.” And I argued and argued and God never replied, He just let me stew in it for a few minutes before saying, “Okay, I’ll do it.” And boy was I grumbling as I said it. God knows exactly how to get me to do stuff, you know. He says something once and then just is there and I can feel Him because He isn’t letting me forget what He asked me to do until I give in and do it. I drove over to the store and I went in and got a big deli sandwich and a soda. I almost got him a ham sandwich but then I thought to myself, “Hey, maybe he is Jewish, I had better get roast beef instead.” So, I bought him that and a cold soda. I drove back to where he had been and the dude was gone. Oh no. I had to drive and drive around our tiny town before I found him again and when I did, I pulled over and ran up to him with the bag and said “God loves you and He told me He wants you to have this.” He took the bag, looked me square in the eyes and said, “I love you too.”
I’d like to say we talked but I am going to be honest. When He looked at me and said that, I was terrified and just ran back to my car and drove away. I have never felt that way in my life no matter who looked at me and whatever they said. I have thought about it for many years and I believe that God was testing me and that it was an angel even though I can’t prove it. Some of my friends think it was Jesus but I just don’t know. All I know is that the sound of his voice just about knocked me out. I felt like how the Bible describes it when people hear angels talking to them and drop down to the ground and try to worship them but I wasn’t even that calm. I just bolted out of there. I still don’t know for sure but I am pretty sure about one thing—whether that was an angel or Jesus or simply a homeless man, that was God telling me He loves me.
So, you just never know. All you do know is that if God ever tells you to do something for someone, just do it. And when do we know it’s God and not our own imagination. Well, that’s hard. There are all sorts of people out there who say they hear from God but the things they hear are vicious and cruel and do a lot of damage to hurting people. I know that sometimes I think I should do something and then I just obsess over whether it is God or not but I can tell you one thing for sure. When it really is God, I don’t wonder. It’s like getting hit with a 2×4. It doesn’t hurt but you can feel the words hit you. When God really wants to be heard, He isn’t shy about it. As we get more and more used to hearing His voice, He speaks quieter and in many different ways but when it is really important, He makes sure we know it. It wasn’t until after that, that I first read Hebrews 13. Over the years, I have had strange things happen and when they did, I have always offered food and drink just in case. You guys have to be careful because you are kids and I don’t want you being too friendly with strangers, but you can always go to your mom and dad when you think that someone needs hospitality. Make sure you listen to them when you do and don’t go inviting people into your house without their permission. I want you guys to be safe while you are learning to hear what God has to say to you.
I want you to also know that if God tells you to do something and you get it wrong because you are confused or scared, it’s okay and God won’t stop loving you. He will give you other chances to get things right. We are just humans. He created us with the ability to mess up and He seems to expect us to mess up, a lot. But even when you get it wrong, He will help you get it right or at least more right in the future.
I love you. I am praying for you. And maybe you can talk with the people who love you about what it would be like if three strangers showed up on your front lawn and you gave them lunch and it was God!