This was an interesting evening. Kyle and Anna, who have now been on four dates as well as meeting several times for coffee, went to Bible study together. I think I have said before that he is not a Christian, but he is interested in the faith, and he was especially intrigued when Anna described the easygoing nature of her study. So he “tagged along”, and I went with them to keep an eye out.
This month, the group is looking at the life of Abraham, and this week’s leader was a friend of Scott’s, a youth minister at a nearby college named Katie. Kyle and Anna were running a bit late, so they slipped into the room as Katie was making her opening remarks about promises.
“So God makes Abraham a lot of promises,” she was saying. “He promises land, he promises prosperity, and he promises a legacy. Now in these days, anyone who promises all that kind of stuff would get a lot of suspicious looks, right? We live in such a skeptical world, and you’re supposed to go and get everything you want for yourself. If someone promises you the world, you have to start looking for the catch. But the great thing is, God delivers on every single one of his promises. Let’s dig in and see what we can find.”
Anna had been surprised when Kyle arrived with his own Bible—he explained that he had a friend who gave it to him years back, and admitted that he hadn’t cracked it open once since then. It does look pristine, while Anna’s is well-worn and filled with her notes in the margins.
“One of the cool things about promises is if they’re kept, they’re just the same as prophecy,” Katie went on. “In Genesis 15.5, God promises that Abraham’s descendants will be as the stars in the sky. In chapter 22, he tells Abraham that they will be as the sand on the seashore. From this we get a good picture of the people who will become the Hebrews—they are glorified and honored, but they are also pounded into pieces, scattered and trod underfoot. God tells their history in just a few words.”
Kyle flipped back and forth between these two passages, fascinated. He didn’t notice Anna watching him with a smile on her face.
“Take a minute to look through Genesis and all the promises that Abraham receives from God,” Katie said. “I’m going to grab a cup of coffee, and when I get back, we’ll talk about which one is the most important.”
In the little whispering silence that followed, Kyle turned to Anna. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t know, what do you think?”
“Come on, you know the answer already,” he said, grinning.
She poked him in the ribs. “No cheating. Do your own work.”
He groaned to cover up a laugh and went back to his Bible.
When Katie came back with her coffee and opened discussion, there were several different answers. One person said that the first call of Abraham was the most important, as the one that started it all. Another suggested that God’s promise to give land to Abraham became the driving force behind Jewish history. Katie discussed and affirmed both of these choices, but neither seemed to be the answer she was looking for.
Finally, Kyle raised his hand. “I think it’s the one in chapter 15,” he said, “the one that they call a covenant?”
Katie smiled. “What makes you think that?”
“Because there’s all this dramatic stuff happening with it—a deep and terrifying darkness, and the big prophecy about Abraham’s descendants, and then the smoking fire pot and the flaming torch doing whatever they’re doing with the dead animals.”
Kyle’s summary got a chuckle from the room, but Katie was nodding. “You’re exactly right,” she said, “and I’ll tell you why all that dramatic stuff was happening in a minute. But yes, this is the moment that the agreement between Abraham and God is really sealed. This is what settles it all.
“See, what’s happening in all these dramatics is a pact being sealed. In those times, to take halved animals in this way and walk between them was to say, ‘if I break this agreement, let the same be done to me as was done to those animals.’ Which is a pretty powerful image, right? This is the equivalent of the signing of a document before witnesses—it’s binding. And that’s heady stuff, right? Abraham is sealing a contract with God.
“But here’s the most amazing thing. This contract is one-sided. Abraham falls asleep and doesn’t actually walk through the animals—he doesn’t sign. Only God does. God is the only one who binds himself. This means that if the covenant is broken—and trust me, it will be—Abraham and his people are not liable. God is the only one who can be punished for breaking this agreement.”
Katie smiled at the group. “So this is the most important promise God makes to Abraham, because it points all the way forward to the coming of Jesus. Jesus takes on the sin of the broken covenant, so that we don’t have to.”
I could see the impact that this had on Kyle. The moment that Katie had finished her talk and released the group to chat, he turned to Anna. “Does Jesus really show up in the Old Testament?”
“Well, not physically, no,” Anna said, “but everything that is written there can be traced forward to him.” She flipped through her pages, showing him the number of times she had written “Jesus” in the margins of the Old Testament. “These prophecies and references are all over the place. And yeah, they could be explained as referring to someone else, but it takes some logic-bending, and when there are so many of them…” She trailed off and shrugged.
“Huh.” Kyle only took a moment to absorb this before he came up with another question. “And I always thought that the Old Testament God was different from the God in the New Testament—like he goes from being wrathful to being loving. But he’s pretty loving here.”
He had more questions, and Anna did not always have the answers, but she did her best to help him. They stayed quite late, until Scott had to shoo them out the door so he could lock up. Before he did, though, he gave Kyle his information and urged him to email or call if he had more questions. Kyle means to do so. He intends to come to Bible study again next week, and I think by that time his Bible will be a little bit less pristine and untouched.
I cannot say how much it warms my heart to see someone searching like this. The world is so rich and full of amazing love and power, and so few people go looking for it. This will be good for Kyle, whether or not it makes his relationship with Anna stronger—though, of course, I think that it will. She was almost as happy as I was to share in Kyle’s search.
It’s a great beginning! I hope that while he is exploring, he will find how the promises of our Father extend to him.