As Numerous as the Stars

Previous: Cleansing the Earth

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This is Day 6 of my 40 day Lenten Blog.

Many generations after the nations had been scattered from Babel, a man named Abram settled in the land of Haran with his father, and his kinsmen. One day God called on Abram to leave his father and his kin and go to a land that the Lord would give Abram's decedents. Abram was not a perfect man, far from it, but he demonstrated his faith in the Lord by picking up and leaving his father's house and his kinsmen and traveling to the land of Canaan. Abram's wife Sarai, and his nephew Lot went with him. Lot settled in the city of Sodom.

God told Abram that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. And Abram believed Him, and the Lord counted Abram's faith as righteousness. So God made a covenant with Abram. The tradition at that time was that when people made a covenant with each other they would cut an animal in half and walk between the two halves. The implication being that if one broke the covenant he would be killed like the animal.

After Abram cut two animals in half for the covenant, God put Abram to sleep and while he was sleeping, God Himself walked between the two halves of the animals in the form of a flaming torch and a firepot. In so doing, God made a covenant with Abram but promised that the Lord Himself would take the punishment if Abram or his descendants failed to uphold their end. As we shall see, they will fail, and God Himself will take the punishment for their failure.

God changed Abram's name to Abraham and Sarai's name to Sarah. And God promised that He would make Abram's descendants into a great nation, and those descendants would be obligated to keep the covenant as well. As a sign of the covenant, Abraham and all of his male descendants would be circumcised.

One day, Abraham peeked out of his tent and saw the Lord and two other men, who were angels in disguise, walking down the road toward him. Abraham rushed to them, bowed down on his face and begged them not to pass him by without Abraham feeding them and washing their feet. The Lord agreed, and while they ate the Lord told Abraham that He would return in the spring and when He did Sarah would be with child. Sarah, who was listening, laughed at this, for she and her husband were very old.

"Why does your wife laugh?" the Lord asked Abraham. "Is anything impossible for the Lord?" So the Lord told Abraham that he would name the child Isaac, which means "one who laughs."

When they had finished eating the two angels left and walked down the hill to the city of Sodom where Abraham's nephew Lot lived. Even though the Lord had cleansed the Earth of the spawn of the fallen angels during the flood, the devil and his demons still had considerable influence over humans. Evil reigned in the valley, in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the inhabitants of those cities were demonically wicked. So wicked in fact that the Lord could not find anyone good there.

The Lord told Abraham that he was going to destroy the city for its wickedness, to purify the valley with fire as He had once cleansed the entire Earth with water. Abraham interceded on the Sodom's behalf and begged the Lord not to destroy the city if just ten good people could be found there. God agreed. But He found no one in Sodom who was not horribly wicked.

Abraham's nephew Lot had moved to Sodom and the two angels who had gone down to the city warned Lot to flee as they were about to destroy the city. They told him to take his family and hurry from the city as quickly as they could. They also warned them not to return, nor to even turn and look at the city. So Lot and his family fled, but Lot's wife disobeyed the angels and turned to look at the city as it was being destroyed with fire and brimstone from the heavens. When she did so she turned into a pillar of salt.

Abraham left the area, and just as the Lord had promised he and Sarah conceived a son, whom they called Isaac.

Next: God Will Provide Himself the Lamb

R.C. VanLandingham is a Catholic homeschool dad just trying to make it through this life and into the next! He has written a Christian children's fantasy series about a boy named Peter Puckett!