Bibleosophy Greg Wallace

Many people read Genesis 18 as an example of God changing his mind. I think He might actually do that, but this story doesn’t make that point. To do Better Bible we must ask the questions the story is actually asking. This story is asking, Abraham, what do you think we should do?Why?Because good teachers make their students apply what they are learning!

God shows up 13 years after the Hagar stuff and clarifies His agreement with Abram. God changes Abram and Sarai’s names, He also tells Abram to break out a knife for an odd act of obedience. In the end, Abraham trusts God implicitly and obeys!

What to do with a story that seems totally out of place? Embrace the uncomfortable. Dive into the context. Reevaluate from the point of new information. Figure out why the random story is there!This episode is about God embracing a disregarded woman and giving hope where only hopelessness had been. Suddenly the out of place story seems really interesting!

Let's talk about God and Abram some more!God meets up with Abram after the big temptation to compromise and they have a life-changing interaction! At the end of this conversation, the Bible says, "Abram believed God and he was credited with righteousness." What happened here? Real genuine relationship.

While the Bible is definitely awesome, sometimes it can be a challenge to read. Often we need to back out of the details a bit, remember this is the story of God and then look for the storyline. We then can go back into the details and see what themes exist. Genesis 13-14 are exactly this. What seems to be just weird stories actually turn out to be a unified story that shows how Abram refused to compromise in the face of temptation.

There a lot of stories in the Bible that require the reader to look deeper for the purpose of the story. One of these is definitely when Abram took his family to Egypt and lied saying Sarai was his sister. Without entering into the context we are left with a weird story and what could seem like the Bible suggesting a careless view toward women. This story and many others require some effort on our part to move into the context of the story. From that vantage point, we can see this story is ac...