Does God love some Christians more than others?

That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of Core Christianity.

Well, hi, I'm Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program

where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day.

You can call us with your question at 833 The Core. We'll be taking calls for the next 25 minutes or so, so jump on your phone right now, 833, 843-243-2673.

You can also post your question on one of our social media sites, and you can always email

us your question at Questions at Core Christianity.com.

First up today, let's go to Tyler, who's calling in from Iowa.

Tyler, what's your question for Adriel?

Hi, thanks for taking my call.

In Genesis 15, God asked Abram to cut animals in half as a symbol

of the covenant he's making with Abram. And then it says in verse 11, when birds of prey came down

on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. Does that have any significance to the covenant itself?

That's a great question. I mean, just off the top of my head, Tyler, I think that this is just sort of a circumstantial comment that's being made. You know, these animals have been killed. They're cut in half. He's preparing this ceremony and the Lord is going to pass through the parts. And so, right, it makes sense that you'd have these vultures,

these birds of prey coming down and Abram is driving them away.

I've heard some pastors make, you know,

just sort of try to make pastoral take away points

when they preach through this text and say something like,

you know, God does all the work, we just need keep uh the doubts at bay the the vultures so on and so forth but

i i don't know that we want to read too much into that what this is is a covenant ceremony and in

particular it's what's sometimes referred to as a self-maledictory oath uh the text says, this is God speaking to Abram, I am the Lord who brought you out from Er of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But he said, oh, Lord, how am I to know that I shall possess it? And he said, bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove, three years old, a ram, three years old, a turtle

dove, and a young pigeon, and he brought him all of these, cut them in half, and laid each half

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