Sermon Notes + Quotes:
Transcript:
We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel, and it is my great joy and delight to be returning to our study of the Book of Genesis this time, Chapter 13, if you want to turn there in your Bibles or swipe there on your devices. Hey, do you ever read a passage of the Bible and then find yourself all of a sudden wishing maybe you had not? I mean, you read through it, you find yourself wincing, ouching a little bit as the text presents some awkward part of the human experience, or perhaps it asks some huge philosophical or theological questions that you don’t have the capacity to deal with right now. Or worse of all, you keep seeing your own sinful self in one of the characters that you’re reading about and how their life, his or her life might be just blowing up all over the place because they’re being so disobedient to God and unbelieving in every way.
Well, such an uncomfortable type of feeling I get sometimes when I read the story that we’re about to read today, and a few of the ones that follow immediately in the Book of Genesis, they center around a person, Abram and Lot. And Lot is the nephew of Abram, some of you will be familiar with that already. And Abram, as giant and as monumental a figure as he is in the Old Testament, was still as human as the rest of us. He showed moments of courageous faith, but he also showed some moments of cowardice, some floundering and faltering just like I do, just like you do if we’re all honest. And in the last chapter we read Chapter 12, he showed himself like that a kind of floundering, faltering and cowardly guy as he flees from the Negev, the southern portion of the promised land that God had called him to that God had said, “This is going to be your place. I’m going to be your God. You’re going to be my people. This is going to be your land and I’m going to take care of you.”
And there’s a famine that hits and sometimes that kind of pressure causes all of us to look for ways that we can fix the thing ourselves. And I think that’s what happened with Abram. He basically took the wheel and the reigns away from God and fled to Egypt. And there he found what he thought would be greener pastures. But there he also became quite fearful and presented his wife as if she were his sister so that they wouldn’t kill him, Abram, and then take his wife and give her to the harem of Pharaoh. So this is what happens to us when we try to take charge of the outcomes. I can summarize it in this little statement here.
Anxiety is what happens when we trust an outcome to anything or anyone that is not God. And so that is where Abram found himself. As we read in Chapter 12, the Lord graciously somehow or another reveals to Pharaoh what’s going on and tells the Pharaoh that he better not harm Abram. And so Pharaoh goes the extra mile. He loads Abram up with all kinds of resources and food and money and gives him back Sarah, his wife who whom Pharaoh had not touched and literally just sends him off. And so we kind of pick up there and it’s a great reminder to all of us, isn’t it? That whenever God chooses to use any of us to accomplish His purposes, God is using sinners. And it’s then that we see the Gospel, the good news in motion, that God loves and cares for sinners such as we are.
We see the Gospel in motion and all of the glory ascending up to God where it belongs. So let me remind you of just a little bit about where we’re at geographically. Most of you have probably some concept for the geography over in that part of the land, but here’s my map for the day and for our study. The little area at the bottom there that’s kind of highlighted for you is where we think, the best guess, anyway, for where Zoar is and that region which contains those cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, which we’ll hear about a little bit more as we go through the next couple of chapters. But on the map there you can see Jerusalem, that gives you a little idea of sort of… Where’s one of those key cities in Israel there and Jericho and Bethlehem is there. Hebron is there, that’ll be mentioned here, the Oaks of Mamre, which are very much near Hebron.
So all of that will be mentioned here in Chapter 13. And here’s what we’re going to see folks, that God remained faithful to Abram even when Abram had been faithless to God, even when Abram had tried to take the reins, to take the wheel and be in charge and exercise some kind of self salvation. And that really is the story throughout the Bible, isn’t it? That we cannot save ourselves. We need outside help and Hallelujah, praise the Lord, He has provided the outside help that we need. So our question today as we study Chapter 13 will be, can we trust and rest in the promises of God? Can we trust and rest in the promises of God? Let’s read Genesis Chapter 13 together. Set your eyes on the page or swipe there on your device. And we’re going to see here the return of Abram back into the land that God had promised him.
“So Abram went up from Egypt and to the Negev.” Again, that’s the more southernly portions of the Promised Land that the Israelites will eventually move into. The Negev is this southern region. “He and his wife,” that’s Sarah, “and all that belonged to them, and Lot with him.” And that’s kind of one of the ways that Lot is going to be described. Often it’s Lot along with him, Abram. Now Abram was very rich. Verse two tells us, “In livestock and silver and in gold.” A lot of that was given to him actually by Pharaoh. And so the Lord gracious beyond, even beyond any kind of level of amazing. Here’s a guy who goes to Egypt because he doesn’t trust God. He just goes off there trying to do it all himself. And not only does God rescue him and bring him back out of Egypt, but He brings him out of all of that with a lot of goodies, with a lot of stuff.
And so he comes back up and he’s overloaded. He’s very rich. And so if you’ll just look at this way, it’s not just a migration of somebody geographically, but this is a return to pilgrimage. This is a return to the presence of the Lord. Watch what happens. “He went on his journeys from the Negev as far as Bethel,” remember Bethel means house of God, “to the place where his tent had been at the beginning between Bethel and Ai.” Again, this is where the Lord had originally brought Abram to and so, “To the place of the altar which he had made there formally.” So again, this is a return. This isn’t just traveling to another place. This isn’t just moving away from the sort of, “I dodged a bullet in Egypt”. But this is returning for Abram, returning to the place where he had called upon the name of the Lord.
And that’s what verse four actually ends up with, right? “To the place of the altar, which he had made there formally. That’s an altar that Abram had set up where he worshiped the Lord and called upon the name. And there it tells us the last part of verse four, “Abram called on the name of the Lord.” So he’s now back home with God and he’s back home calling upon the name of the
Lord. What a beautiful image this is of the return. In the New Testament, we would think immediately of course of the return of the Prodigal Son coming home where he belonged, coming home to his father where he belonged. And his father eager for him to return, runs out to meet the Prodigal Son, puts a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet, kills the fatted calf, throws a party of rejoicing and just an amazing extravagant display of God’s love for returning sinners. I don’t know if that’s you today. It has been me many times.
One of the reasons I love the Good News or the Gospel that we see foreshadowed in Old Testament passages like this. Now verse five, there’s a little bit of a shift there and emphasis is going to become about Lot, the nephew of Abraham and some of the choices that he makes. “Now Lot who went with Abram,” again the idea is he’s kind of tagging along right? “Lot who went with Abram also had flocks and herds and tents.” And so he kind of had a bit of an increase in his own wealth because he was riding on the coattails of Abram and he had a taste for Egypt there. “And the land could not sustain them while dwelling together.” So this is a development in the storyline as they’ve come back now to Bethel and the land can’t sustain them. They got too many flocks and herds for the land.
All right? So their possessions were so great. Verse six says that, “They were not able to remain together and there was strife between the herdsman of Abram’s livestock and the herdsman of Lot’s livestock.” And then there’s this interesting little piece of information. The narrator, which we think is Moses, also adds, “Now the Canaanite and the Parasite were dwelling then in the land.” And so that tells us that as they return to Bethel, as they returned to this area that God had promised Abram, that God had promised He would give to Abram and his descendants, it’s still got some occupants in it that are worshiping pagan deities, that are sacrificing their children, their very children. Sacrificing their very children to their false gods and teaching their progeny they don’t sacrifice, teaching, handing down, if you will, that same worldview, that same cheapening dismissal of the value of human life to please false gods and false deities of their own making.
And we’re doing similar kinds of things in our own day and time, sacrificing so much of what is valuable and should be valuable in our own lives, in our own day and time to false gods, to those things which are not God at all. And so this is what’s happening. The Canaanite, the Parasite, were dwelling in the land. The Abram says to Lot, “Please let there be no strife between you and me, nor between my herdsman and your herdsman for we are brothers.” And the image here is that this family is beginning to feel internal tension because of the expansion and growth of their wealth and their livestock and all of that. And it’s just too much for the existing land. As well, there’s this outside tension of the Canaanites and the Parasites, the pagan people, the culture in which they’re living if you will, that is so anti God and so against believing and trusting in the one true and loving God.
And so there’s outside pressure, there’s inside pressure and now there’s kind of a family feud going on between the herdsman of Abram and the herdsman of Lot. And so Abram says, we’re family. We can’t let this happen to us. “It’s not the whole land,” verse nine, “before you, please separate from me. If to the left then I’ll go to the right or if to the right then I’ll go to the left.” And
so many of our family feuds end up being about stuff or turf. And here’s Abram in a pretty selfless move going to Lot and saying you choose, we can’t keep on living like this. You choose which would be important for you, which would be better for you. And if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left, and if you go the left, I’ll go to the right.
“And Lot lifted up his eyes,” verse 10, “and saw all the valley of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere.” And that Jordan River was what we saw on our map there. The Negev is the Dead Sea area. Bethel is just north of that. And Lot looks at the entire valley, Jordan Valley, and at the time, very rich soil, great place to grow crops, graze cattle, all that sort of thing. He saw all of that. And this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses, the narrator is telling us. “And it was like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt as you go to Zoar. So Lot chose for himself, all the valley of the Jordan and Lot journeyed eastward. Thus, they separated from each other.” Probably crossing over the Jordan there, and probably roaming a little bit as they would have before he settles.
Because what we’ll see is that first he sees it and he’s really drawn to it because of the way it looks, the potential it has for him for not only maintaining his wealth but increasing his wealth. And then he’ll move a little closer to Sodom and Gomorrah down at the southern portion of the Dead Sea and then he’ll eventually move into Sodom. And what happens to… And it’s just an amazing illustration of what happens to us, spiritually speaking. We move away from those that strengthen our faith. We move away from the place where we meet with God and we move into a distant land, into the way another worldview is dominant and then that begins to take over. We don’t influence it, it begins to influence us. We don’t transform it, it begins to transform us if we aren’t careful.
And certainly the lesson of Lot and his life is a sad and a difficult one, but yet God continues to prove Himself gracious in the life of Lot. So, “Lot chose for himself,” verse 11, “all the valley of the Jordan and Lot’s journeyed eastward. Thus they separated from each other. And so Abram settled in the land of Canaan while Lot settled in the cities of the valley and moved then his tents as far as Sodom and the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the Lord.” A lot of folks like that today too. There are some folks in the world in which we live, believe it or not, not only do they not believe in God, but they will fight against God and against anyone who believes in God. That might in its mildest form just be simply forms of marginalization or dismissal or ridicule or mockery.
In more severe forms, it becomes persecution. And we have that going on in our own day and time in the world in which we live. But Lot is fascinated and enchanted by the potential from a materialistic standpoint. And then he becomes increasingly more comfortable there, having less and less influence as a person of God. And he’s going to actually become really uncomfortable as we see the storyline develop. Verse 14 through 18, and then just want to make a few points. “And the Lord said to Abram after Lot had separated from him. ‘Now lift up your eyes, Abram, and look from the place where you are north, southward, eastward and westward for all the land which you see,'” and remember, Abram’s back at Bethel, “‘all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever.'”
Here’s God reiterating His promise, restating it very clearly to Abram in spite of the fact that the Canaanite and the Parasite are in the land, in spite of the fact that Abram has had this wandering time in Egypt and where he didn’t pray about it, didn’t seek the Lord on it, didn’t call upon the Lord. But he went there, tried to control things himself and it failed miserably and floundered in his faith and almost destroyed his family there. And yet God was so gracious and protected him and brought him back up. And now He’s reiterating His promise to him that, “all the land which you see,” verse 15, “I’ll give it to you in your descendants. I’ll make your descendants as the dust of the earth.” And that doesn’t mean that they’re just going to be a bunch of dry dust. It means they’re going to be… It’s as if you could number the individual grains of sand or the individual grains of dust. That’s how many descendants you’re going to have.
And remember who’s God talking to right now? A man who is not a father. We’ve already been told that his wife, Sarah, was barren, she couldn’t have children. And that’s who God is making promises to, somebody that in the normal course of the way the world thinks, you would think it would be impossible.
And that’s what God’s pretty good at and that’s how when God does those kinds of things, there’s just no explanation. Typically in our day and time, we’d say, “Oh, it’s a God thing. Oh that was a God moment.” Hey listen, they’re all God moments. They’re all God things. We just don’t have our eyes open to see them all. We just aren’t always aware of what He’s doing. But He says to Abraham at the time, “I’ll make your descendants as the dust of the earth,” verse 16, “so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can be numbered as well.” And then he says, God says, “Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth for I will give it to you.” In other words, let’s do a home inspection. Let’s do a land inspection here. Let’s take a cruise through the land that I’m going to give you.
Let’s walk about that. “And then Abram moved his tent and came and dwelt by the Oaks of Mamre,” which are in Hegran, which we saw that on the map there, and the Oaks of Mamre, this will be a place again that will show up over and over again in the Old Testament. And down in this area is where Abram will buy or purchase really the only bit of land that he ever owns, which will be this field where there’s a cave where he can bury his family members that die, a cave at [inaudible 00:20:35] and so this is so amazing that God says I’m going to give you all of this. And he ends up walking through a bunch of it, inspecting it all and just his eyes are being, I’m sure just he’s sort of eye popping, heart thumping, the whole thing as God shows him around the land that He promises to him.
And then it says, which is so beautiful the way verse 18 in this, what we call Chapter 13 ends. “And there, he Abram, built an altar to the Lord.” Once again, here is this man of tents and altars, a pilgrim and a worshiper. Not just a wanderer, not just a drifter, but a pilgrim and a worshiper. This is a really powerful and beautiful passage. So what do we learn here? There’s some great lessons here. Some of the most obvious lessons really come from a comparison I think of the two lives, Abram and Lot and the way that they respond to God throughout their lives. Neither man is perfect, neither man is the ultimate hero of the story, but we can learn
something from their lives. Abram indeed will go on to be known as the Friend of God, as he’s called in James, in the New Testament, James Chapter two, verse 23. Lot will have a rather tragic life story and we’ll find that out pretty soon here.
But even with Lot, we learn that God is gracious in his life, that God rescues him, and all the way into the New Testament, in Second Peter Chapter two, we read that he’s even called righteous. So see what God can do with both kinds of lives and see how God moves in the lives of all kinds of sinners. People who are just inconsistent and people who are attracted and enchanted away from the Lord. I don’t know where you’re at right now in your spiritual journey, but the Hound of Heaven is after you. He’s after me. He’s searching for people he can call His own. And even with Lot as big a fool as he is portrayed here, enchanted by all the materialism and the sort of wild lifestyle of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all of that sort of thing. As Pastor John Courson says,
“No man’s life is completely worthless. Even the worst person can always serve as a bad example.”
–Pastor John Courson
And so Lot is kind of a bad example here in this section.
And as Abram was in the last chapter when he drifted away and down into Egypt, trying to take control for himself and save himself. But Lot, an example here of how you can become slothful about your spiritual life. How you can wreck and ruin your own family life. And we’ll read about
that in the coming weeks. And how to ultimately live what is really a very lonely and nervous life, isolating ourselves as we sort of run deeper and deeper into a distant land and into a culture that has set itself against God and it need not be that way. Abram and Lot are a study in contrast when it comes to at least a few things. Let me just point out some of them. Abram returned to the Lord and Lot tagged along. So the contrast between the two is pretty revealing I think. Verses one through four sort of emphasizes that, doesn’t it?
As we read about Abram returning to the Lord and to the place where he worshiped the Lord and to the calling upon the Lord, as we saw at the end of verse four, Abram knew he needed to get back with the Lord. And so as they left Egypt, he makes a target, a beeline for the place where he had last experienced God’s presence in a real vital way. He returned to Bethel, which means House of the Lord. And as you go east from Bethel there, we made that point I think in the previous study, that there was Ai, which means ruin or basically the dump, the city dump. And you often, if you’re going to drift away from Bethel, the House of the Lord, you’re going to find yourself heading for the ruin of your faith. And we saw that and talked about that last time.
Don’t want to make too much out of it, but it’s not insignificant at all. So nothing, though, is ever mentioned in our passage about Lot’s devotional life or Lot worshiping the Lord. Did you notice that? And you’ll see that as we go on. It’s just fascinating how Abram seems to have this sense of God’s calling in his life, and this sense of wanting to be in connection with God. And so he
builds altars and he worships the Lord. We don’t see that at all with Lot. Matter of fact, we just don’t see much or read much at all about Lot and his devotional life. Now before God judges Sodom and Gomorrah, Abram will make an appeal to God on behalf of his nephew Lot, who has gone living in that distant land who’s gone deeper and deeper into it. And so many of us in our own day and time have had a similar experience with some loved one who has done that.
And I just want you to know the God of Heaven will hear our cries for mercy. Don’t give up praying, don’t give up appealing to God, don’t give up falling on your knees, lifting up the empty hands of faith and mentioning your loved ones to the Lord. Whether they’re sort of tag along people who seem to like the presence and being among Christians and all that sort of thing, and they don’t really seem to… It’s not really taking root in their heart and you can sense that or whether they’ve strayed like Lot has just gone off the deep end at this point in time headed for Sodom and Gomorrah, and for living in a culture that is just riddled with all kinds of perversion and all kinds of reckless and ruinous living and indifference to the poor. We’ll read about all of that. There’s just this great sense of culture that is just decaying from within in Sodom and Gomorrah.
But let me say this very, very clearly. The God of the Bible is eager to save. And so we don’t quit praying to this covenant God who makes promises and keeps promises. He goes in pursuit of lost sheep all the time just like Jesus, the good shepherd. I love this book by Henry now called The Return of the Prodigal Son, and I love the parallels. And this quote,
“God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, longing to bring me home… When I look through God’s eyes at my lost self and discover God’s joy at my coming home, then my life may become less anguished and more trusting.”
–Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son
And so if again, this entire chapter is about not just Lot’s drifting away from God, but Abram who had drifted away from God as he went to Egypt on a self salvation mission and an attempt.
But all of us, when we start to see how extravagant God is toward us in His grace and in His mercy and the lengths to which He will go to rescue us and to redeem us, it’s such a beautiful thing. Yeah. Secondly, I also want to highlight here as we look at the contrast between Abram and Lot, that Abram was selfless and Lot in this particular chapter is just, man, he’s totally selfish. And look at the contrast here. When there are too many sheep, too much livestock, the land couldn’t support him. And Abram comes, he selflessly offers Lot the choice of which way… We’re going to need to spread out a little here if we’re going to be able to maintain our flocks and our herds and all that sort of thing. We’re going to need to spread out a little bit here, Abram says.
And it’s just interesting to me that you see the selflessness in Abram and then that contrasting selfishness in Lot. It happens in our lives as well in our own day and time, doesn’t it? Especially with family members, when resources are on the line. We fight over all kinds of things. We fight over who sets the thermostat. When we go to bed at night, we fight over who gets to run the remote control. We fight over whether we leave the toilet seat up or down. We fight over who uses the cars or the car, how we manage our spending and or saving. I mean the list goes on and on, food, everything. It just goes on and on. How complicated it gets between relationships when selflessness goes out the window and selfishness takes over. Abram was clearly the more mature man at this particular moment, trusting in God, trusting God’s promises, resting in God’s promises, where Lot has still got that sort of, hey, that’s pretty shiny object over there. I think I’m going to go for that and take that for myself.
And it’s interesting to me that it even says it that way. So Lot, verse 11, “So Lot chose for himself.” I need to think about that more myself. I need to ask myself the question, “Am I choosing for myself in this issue that has gotten between me and someone else? Is it really all about me getting what I want in this particular relationship?” Is it about you getting what you think you deserve? And Lot has this same kind of entitlement mentality. He has this same type of self-centered, self-obsessed thing that our culture is forming in us every single day in multiple ways. They’re all incredibly subtle, some of them rather. Some of them are incredibly… Some of them are not very subtle at all, are they?
But we are just being programmed all the time to think about me, myself and I. Whether that’s on what we think we deserve or whether that’s about what we think we can demand or whether that’s about how we should be the ones to have the final word in what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s true, what’s false. That’s happening to us and we are slowly being eroded that way. How about you? Can you think through that a little bit in your own life? There are a wide variety of views, for instance, on how we should navigate events in this world that are events that are beyond our control. The pandemic, politics, social tension, the culture wars, all of that. But when we trust and rest in the promise of God, whether there’s Canaanites and Parasites in the land, whether it’s the best looking land or not, really didn’t matter to Abram. He was at this moment trusting and resting in the promises of God.
And look how gracious it made him. How about you? How about us as a church? When we are trusting and resting in God’s promises, it’s easier to be gracious toward others. Of course, it becomes critical to know just what the promises of God are and are not in scripture. And we see from Genesis 12, verses one through three, I’ll throw them up on this screen for you. But here’s what the Lord said to Abraham, “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; I will make you a great nation. I’ll bless you, I’ll make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; I’ll bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Now those are some huge redemption history promises and some of those apply to Abram and Abram’s line only. Not to me. Not to you. And we can’t just lift a phrase out of there. Your name will be great, and think that means that God’s going to make me famous or you famous. It’s pretty amazing how paradoxical the Kingdom of Heaven is. As Jesus would say, “The greatest among you will be the least among you. And the first shall be last and the last shall be first.” And if you don’t like paradox, you are not going to like the Christian faith at all. But if you love paradox, if you love to watch in Chapter 13 here, a guy named Abram say, you know what, you go first. Let me be gracious in this moment and put this here before you and you choose first. And how wonderful and freeing that is for the human soul to just not hold things so tightly, to let go and to prefer another person.
And we’ve got to get back to that. And I think the secret isn’t just telling ourselves to be nice or telling ourselves to be southerners or telling ourselves to be good Christians or good Village Chapel people. No, I think the secret is like Abram, it’s getting back to the place where we’re in close proximity to God and we’re trusting God, calling upon the name of the Lord and resting in
His promises that He has made. Yeah, here’s what’s true, there’s always more than enough for the selfless. There’s never enough for the selfish. Read that aloud with me from wherever you are ready. There’s always more than enough for the selfless. There’s never enough for the selfish. And then this part, the selfless know peace, contentment, gratitude and joy. The selfish are chronically unsatisfied, ungrateful and bitter. So true, so true.
I love the way John Stott, one of my heroes of the faith and just such a great Bible teacher and Bible commentator over the years. I think it’s been exactly, or close to about a hundred years since he was born.
He’s home with the Lord now. But he said things so beautifully and summarized biblical principles so well. He says,
“True freedom is not freedom from all responsibility to God and man in order to live for myself, but the exact opposite. True freedom is freedom from myself and from the cramping tyranny of my own self-centeredness, in order to live in love for God and others. Only in such self-giving love is an authentically free and human existence to be found.”
– John Stott
So can we trust and rest in the promises of God? Well, from Genesis 13, we learned that Abram returned to the Lord and Lot just tagged along. So don’t be a coattail Christian, don’t just tag along. Wherever you’re at in your spiritual journey right now, return to the Lord. And that might require some turning away or repentance is what it’s called.
Repent is to turn away from. It’s a twofold turn. You turn away from your sin and selfishness, you turn toward the Lord Himself. So return to the Lord like Abram did. Secondly, Abram was selfless. Lot was selfish. We start to see that kind of fruit growing in our lives when we’ve returned to the Lord, when we’re trusting and resting in His promises. And thirdly, we see that Abram trusted and rested in the promises of God. He returned to that place where he was a worshiper and a pilgrim. He returned to the House of the Lord, to the House of God, to Bethel in that particular case, very literally a place for Him. And for you and for me, the Lord has come and the Lord is dwelling among His people and He is as close or no… He is closer than your next breath, your next heartbeat. Wherever you are right now, the Lord is with you.
The question is, are you with the Lord? Return to the Lord. We see the difference, the fruit in their lives, don’t we? With Abram, there’s this selflessness. Lot, this selfishness. With Abram, there is this, “I trust God your promises, I trust you”, though the land is riddled with some difficulties. “I’ll walk this out with you, Lord, I’ll trust you.” And again, he’s going to undulate just like we do. It’s not the end of his wavering. It’s not the end of my wavering, but it’s always the right time to refresh and renew our commitment to Christ. Unlike Lot to be all bedazzled and enchanted by what we can see with sort of the temporal values and the cultural accommodation that we might want to cave into.
You could tell when you’re on the road to spiritual ruin like Lot. When we become increasingly more comfortable with those who live their lives, as if God does not matter. At the same time, we become increasingly uncomfortable around the people who remind us of God and His ways.
See, we prefer the company of those who either endorse our rebellious lifestyle, our drifting lifestyle, or at least are willing to overlook it. And so we find ourselves increasingly more comfortable with what we would’ve considered the wrong people in our life. And we might have a few voices that are saying, “Hey, something’s happening.” And yet we stop listening to their wise warnings, their loving rebukes and reprieves. We don’t see it that way anymore. They’re cramping our style. They’re inhibiting our freedom. Who are they to tell us what’s right? When all of that stuff over there is so enchanting and you want to go back to Egypt like lot did and back to owning the reigns, having control yourself of what might fascinate you.
And he drifts further and further until he finally ends up living in Sodom still wrestling with his conscience. And we’ll read about that. Joni Eareckson Tada once said,
“And gradually, though no one remembers exactly how it happened, the unthinkable becomes tolerable. And then acceptable. And then legal. And then applaudable.”
–Joni Eareckson Tada
Hmm. That would describe what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. That would describe what is happening in our own day and time. That describes what happens no matter what era you’re talking about, when we live our lives as if God does not matter.
God already knew about the weaknesses of Abraham and Lot, and yet God still chose to rescue and redeem both of these fellas. It’s pretty amazing. How amazing is that? It’s so amazing, it gives me hope for me and it gives me hope for you. I don’t know where you’re at. I haven’t got a clue who might be watching this or studying along with us, but I know this because I’ve experienced it. This God of the Bible is gracious and He’s calling my name. He’s calling your name for us to return to Him, to trust His promises and to rest in His love for us and His promises that He has made to us.
Can we trust His promises? I believe Genesis Chapter 13 is a great reminder, a timeless reminder that we indeed can trust the Lord. And,
“We don’t live on explanations. We live on promises, and the promises of God are based on the character of God.”
–Warren Wiersbe, Be Amazed
Listen, now that we have the lens of the New Testament to look back through and read and see the fulfillment of all of God’s promises in the person and work of Christ, we can see with greater clarity than Abram could, with what great lengths God is willing to go to, to redeem a people that He can call his own. And so we see what Abram just could dream and hope for, and what the seed of faith that God planted in Abram’s heart for redemption looked like. And here’s what it looks like folks.
One of Abram’s descendants will be the seed of Abraham through which all nations will be blessed. And that is Jesus Christ, His finished work on the cross for you and for me. And I, again, I don’t know where you stand in your relationship with God, but let me appeal to you as Bible teacher and pastor. If there’s some distance between you and the Lord, there doesn’t have to be. Would you turn to Him now? Would you just recognize your need for Him right now? He is eager with open arms. The symbol of the Christian faith is not balancing out the moral scales. The symbol is not the scales at all. It’s a cross. He’s not looking at you and just rolling His eyes or wagging His finger at you. No, He has got His arms open wide to receive you once again, to
welcome you home to Him. Just recognize your need and turn to Him. Confess your sins to Him. And He’s promised to be faithful to you and to forgive you and cleanse you from all of your sin right now.
(Edited for Reading)
