Context for Kids

If you have read my curriculum book The Ten Commandments and the Covenants of Promise, then some of this will be a review for you. Otherwise, this week you will be learning about why these kings were fighting and how understanding their relationship with King Chedorlaomer also helps us to understand God’s relationship with the children of Israel and with us too!

Today we are going to talk about the most exciting fifty days in the history of all the world! And also about why the strangest day on the entire Biblical calendar turned out to be the most important of all. If you have never heard of the counting of the omer, hold on to your hats because that’s what we will be learning about today.

There are terrible times in our lives when everything seems to have gone so wrong that nothing will ever be right again. When Jesus died, the disciples must have felt like their whole world ended. They had given up their jobs, their families, and everything to follow Him. They had hoped to be rich, famous, and powerful when Jesus became King and suddenly, they probably wished that none of it had ever happened. But God always has other plans, even when things seem darkest and most terrible.

Do Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob show up in archaeological records? Why or why not? Chapters 14 and 15 of Genesis are going to need a lot more archaeology to explain than what has gone before and so I thought it would be a good idea to talk about how we know what we know about the Biblical world, who figured it out, and how and most importantly, where I get my information from so you guys can find it too. There will be a ton of links in the transcript this week for those of you who really want to "dig in" to the world of the Bible.

Abram wisely solved the problem of the family squabbles by allowing Lot to choose whatever land he wanted—which could have gone terribly wrong, but Abram trusted God that no matter what, his children would still inherit the Land of Canaan. Lot chose the very best of the Land for itself, but that is going to come with a high price tag.

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?

Transcript: https://contextforkids.com/2023/03/08/episode-93-a-whole-lot-of-trouble/

This weekend, Jewish people from all over the world will be celebrating Purim, a holiday which honors God for saving His people from the wicked Haman during the time of the Medo-Persian Empire. We can learn a lot about courage and bravery from this story about two Queens who stood up for what was right.

Every once in a while, something is going on with Christians or the world and I think it is important to explore it with the kids so that they understand better what everyone is talking about. This week we’re going to learn about revivals and outpourings of the Holy Spirit and what we can learn about them from looking at Ezekiel, Acts, and the ministry of Jesus.

Abram, Sarai, and Lot all return to the land of Canaan and when Abram returns to his home base in Bethel, he calls on the Name of the Lord again. But what if he had done that before he went to Egypt? How might that have changed the story for the better and saved a whole lot of people a whole world of hurt—and especially Sarai and her maidservant Hagar.

Sarai got into big trouble by agreeing to lie about who she was, and now she is a captive of the Pharaoh but God has special plans for her life so He does something pretty amazing to save her. We will also be talking about the importance of ethics in the Bible and in our real lives.