Clough Genesis Lesson 44

Election; faith; Abraham and Lot separate– Genesis 13:1-18

Turn to Genesis 13. Abraham’s career is a checkered one; it has its dark spots and it has its light spots. The light spots we’ve seen is Abraham has responded to the call of God. God’s given him at least three promises, the land, the seed, and being a worldwide blessing and Abraham, in Genesis 12:3-9 has shown a heart response to that. He’s gone down the main highway which I showed you on slides. He stopped off at Bethel and he erected there an altar. He went down further north to Shechem and erected public monuments to Jehovah’s claim to own the land. Last week as we finished chapter 12 you saw Abraham out of the geographical will of God. The stories of Genesis are made this way. The stories of Genesis are made so that you can see spiritual principles in a very, very simple, very physical, very concrete way. And so we have the situation where in Genesis 12 at the end Abraham has come out of the land. The land represents for Abraham the will of God. And so Abraham has left and he has gone down to Egypt because of pressure.

Now something correlates here with what we saw in the manhood series and that is that the man, the male believer, will get hit mostly by Satan in the areas of his business. This is why the curse, when it’s brought on, this curse on the ground, Adam had to cultivate the ground and Abram is the same thing; what is his business? The ranching business. What is the trial? Famine. So Abram has a test as to whether he is going to respond to that trial, faith-resting it, relaxing that this is God’s will for me to be here in this land, and I don’t know how I’m going to solve the problem of famine with my flocks and my ranching business but somehow God is going to provide me with a solution. That’s what he should have done. Instead he panicked and he decided no, God is not going to take care of me in the land, I have got to add my little gimmick to the solution and so he went down to Egypt and we found out later the long and the short of it was that he went down there and instead of having a testimony as the pioneer of the divine viewpoint counterculture in history he was deported as an undesirable alien. So strike one.

Now we come in Genesis 13:1 to the next episode. And it says, “And Abram went u out of Egypt,” now that may strike some of you as odd that anybody can go up out of Egypt. So we’re going to look at some of the geography of the land, get an idea and feel for some of it so that as you read the text it’ll become a little bit more comfortable for you. This map has a lot of lines all over it; those lines are ancient trade roots that have been found by archeologists and have been noticed in ancient literature. The thing I want you to notice is that this dark line along the coast, but then there’s a trade route that runs north/south into the area, a main trade route in the highlands, that’s the trade route that you see Abraham traveling on in Genesis 12 and 13. Learn to connect the text with the reality of a commercial trade route. Abraham is a business man; Genesis 12 and 13 is primarily written to men and men can understand some of the pressures that Abram faced because of the pressures they face in business. Abraham left the land of Israel and went down into the Sinai Peninsula and over here into Egypt. When he went into Egypt, this whole Nile delta area is a very low altitude.

On the way back Abraham went up because this is all mountainous area here, even though we don’t think of the Sinai, I know until I went to the Sinai I often thought of the Sinai as just of a flat desert, but it isn’t, there are mountains in it, it’s a very rugged terrain. The only flat area is along the beach, along the Mediterranean shore line and Abraham certainly didn’t drive his flocks across that because this area is utterly sandy, very soft, it looks like this, here it’s blowing across the road and off to the left of the road, this road is heading toward Egypt, it’s along the Mediterranean coast, on the left are some of the first low lying mountains of the Sinai Peninsula. Notice the soft sand as it drifts across the road; nobody is going to move large herds across that stuff. This is to the left of the road, again the rising, rolling hills begin in the northern part of Sinai. Here, to the right of the road, looking out toward the Mediterranean, is the soft, very, very soft sand, this is why no wars are fought here, men can’t march across it, tanks can’t drive across it, it’s basically useless land. So that’s the land along the Mediterranean area.

Abram, in Genesis 13:1 now, is moving up out of Egypt, up into those low lying hills and into Sinai proper. It says that he has with him himself, “his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into” not the south, but “into the Negev.” The word “south,” the word “Negev” means a proper land, like we would say the southern states of the United States, or we will often say the South and we capitalize the word “South” with a capital “S”, but we know the South is a name that refers to a geographical area. So with the Negev in Israel; Negev, or south, means a geographical area.

Now there are two doctrines that we want to study in association with Abram so we can observe what’s happening here in the text, and then use these as devices for applying what we see in the text. Abram has been elected, so we have the doctrine of election. We’ve gone through this doctrine but repetition never hurts. Abram has been called and in this passage we want to pinpoint something. When I give the doctrine of election here we are applying it soteriologically, we’re applying it to the plan of salvation; that is, those who are believers are elect in Christ. But in the course of this particular section of history Abram is elect in another sense; he’s elect physically, he’s elect nationally to be the founding father of the Jewish nation and it’s that election that we’re looking at, even though this doctrine is the general principle. Don’t confuse the two because when we get down to the middle of the text we’re going to see Lot was a believer but he wasn’t elect, and you’re going to wonder what’s going on. Well, he wasn’t elect in the sense Abram was elect. So there are two elections: Abram’s election at this point in history, the election the text is talking about is his election is the fact that God called him to be the founder of the Jewish nation, physical, national election. I am taking that principle, enlarging it to stand for all election in general when we articulate this doctrine.

The first principle of the doctrine of election is that it presupposes creation and the fall. No one can understand the doctrine of election apart from the creation and the fall. Isaiah 55:8 says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are your ways My ways, saith the LORD.” I can’t hope to comprehend totally the doctrine of election, all I can do is try to state it in a noncontradictory way and let it go at that.

The second position, the second statement is that it’s God’s basic promise; no matter what promise you claim, the basic promise behind them all is a promise that God gives you eternal life. That’s why in Luke 10:20 Jesus said stop rejoicing that you cast out demons, stop rejoicing that you’ve done this and you’ve done that, that’s not what you’re rejoice in; what you’re rejoice in is that your names are written in the book of life, rejoice in that says Jesus. So our attention is focused on election as a basic promise of God. We will see later that because Abraham did this he was able then to master a lot of the details of his life.

The third principle in the doctrine of election is that it’s 100% certain promise of God; that means that God will surely bring to pass what He has said He is going to bring to pass. Election cannot be viewed as a sort of forecast, as a sort of weatherman of the universe. God doesn’t forecast what the universe is going to do; God tells us his intentions of what He is doing with the universe.

The fourth point is that election is a totally free choice of God, God did not consult you, God did not consult me, God consulted no man and therefore He has come up with a perfect plan, Romans 9.

And finally, the fifth thing is that election will always be revealed in some sort of a loyal believing relationship with God. You will never find some elect instrument that shows no empirical evidences that God’s working with it; and conversely wherever you see evidence that God is working you can be sure there is His elect power demonstrated. That’s the doctrine of election; that undergirds the text. That’s all in the background of this text.

But there’s one more doctrine we want to review this morning, the doctrine of faith. Abraham is the model of faith. So we want to learn a few things about how faith operates and since we’re here at Genesis 13 use this as an occasion to review the very, very elementary basics of Christian living. That’s one of the benefits we’ll derive from Genesis is that we can use this as an opportunity to go over some basic doctrines and no doctrine could be more basic than the doctrine of faith because you can’t exist, I can’t exist in the Christian life without trusting, and trusting on a moment by moment basis. So let’s go back and look at what we need, some of our equipment.

In order to believe we have to start out with the divine viewpoint of creation and the fall; just like the doctrine of election, if I don’t believe that I am the created and God is the Creator, then hey, I’m not going to trust in Him, I’m not going to trust in His Word. The only reason I’m going to trust in God’s Word is because He has data I don’t, He has the levers I don’t have, He has the steering wheel I don’t have, so when I see myself as the created one and He is the Creator, that puts me in a mode where I can trust Him. It also requires verbal revelation, I can’t trust Him if He does not reveal to me His Word. I need that, in other words, to start going in faith. This means if I have doubts in my mind that God is who He claims to be, that Genesis is an unreliable text, then therefore I cannot trust at all.

The second point in the doctrine of faith is that faith is shown by behavior modification. No faith ever shows up in history unless we have some sort of behavior modification going on. In other words, faith is not some quantity I can measure in grams and cubic centimeters. Faith is something that has to show up in behavior and I can only find out where faith is showing up in behavior by taking this, the standard of measurement, the Scripture, and examining behavior in light of Scripture. Then I can determine where faith is functioning. So faith, then, is shown by behavior modification; faith without works is dead.

Now the last two points in the doctrine of faith are interesting and necessary because these two come up again and again and again in this text, in the next chapter, in the chapter after that. And that is, when a man walks by faith he has two things; he either rest and he does, resting and doing. Somebody can faith-rest or somebody can faith-do. Abraham, in Genesis 12:3-9 faith-did. Remember what he did; he built an altar, he built an altar in Shechem; went down the road, built another altar in Bethel. Those were the activities and the actions that Abraham did by faith, faith that God was knowing what he was doing, faith that the land would be his, etc. Now the other thing is when Abraham went into Egypt, he did when he should have rested, and this is tough because in all of our lives we’re trying to figure out, should we rest and leave it in the Lord’s hands at this point or does God want me to get actively involved. And it’s a hard decision, and this is where a lot of the sweat comes in living the Christian life and I don’t have a crystal ball, all I have are principles of Scripture that tell me there is a time to rest and there is a time to do, and we have to just have the discernment to see this. So then we have Abraham resting and doing and we’ll watch how he operates that way.

Now the final point is Abraham is oriented to grace. When using the faith technique you must… I repeat, you must have a grasp of God’s grace. Now I find people who’ve been in Bible circles for years unable to exercise any kind of trust, any kind of appreciation in God’s grace. It’s amazing. Now let me show you some areas where this comes out. Abraham, if he is oriented to God’s grace, knows his own sin nature. If he knows his own sin nature is he going to be shocked at some things that he may do, or may not do? No, because he knows what kind of a man he’s made of. And if I have orientation to grace and I know the sin nature, then I refuse to be shocked by what anybody does, including myself. It doesn’t mean we condone it; it means we ahhh, like this, and if you’re a Christian worker and you get involved in activities and so on.

I don’t think two or three weeks go by that somebody doesn’t get on the phone and say do you know what so and so did? Now my standard reply now is no I don’t and I don’t give a damn, their life is their business and I am not going to sit here and be shocked over what somebody did. Why are you shocked; you say you’ve studied the Word of God for so many years, you’ve been in this church, that church and some other church, and you claim to have listened to the Word of God, and yet you’re shocked by what so and so… well, they shouldn’t have done it. Well sure, they shouldn’t have done it, what are you going to do about it now, sit here and gossip about it, malign them, just stir it up and make it a lot worse than it is, that kind of thing? Now when you meet somebody that does that, somebody that has to get on the horn and call 55 people over what somebody else did, the reporter, volunteers a news story, this sort of thing, that person is a person that is not oriented to God’s grace.

A person who is oriented to God’s grace knows that okay, somebody has a problem, I’m not going to solve their problem by telling 55 people about it. So if I’m oriented to grace I keep my big fat mouth shut when it comes to someone else’s mess, and I let them clean it up and the Lord take care of it and we confine it to that area. Now that’s being oriented to God’s grace but we have hundreds and thousands of people in fundamental Christian circles that have never become oriented to grace; it’s amazing to watch. Oh, I believe the Bible; well, why aren’t you listening to what the Bible says and you’d understand what grace is all about.

So grace, then, is one of the great features of Abraham and we’re going to watch it happen because we’re going to see one man who knows grace and one man who doesn’t, and we’ll see how they operate in their business. So Genesis 13:1 they go up out of Egypt and the whole paraphernalia is examined, in verse 1, [“And Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negev”] and a comment is made in verse 2. Verse 2 is a parenthetic expression, and expression that indicates Abraham has great wealth and is the whole reason for the episode of chapter 13. The whole episode in Genesis 13 surrounds a man’s wealth. So obviously the narrator of the story wants us… and he puts a parenthetical expression in the original languages, look, hold it, stop it, the narrative isn’t going on, we’ve got a parenthetical expression, I want to tell you something to give you background on what’s about to take place.

Now one of the things that’s encouraging, or ought to be, to us in Genesis 13:1-2, is that you have right here a man who has failed and so you see him sitting around crying; do you hear him responding to all the hundred critics he probably has…oh Abraham, you blew it, God called you to show your testimony to the world and ha-ha-ha, you went down before Pharaoh, you ruined your testimony before the greatest leader of the world, you’ve blown it Abram and you’ll never recover. Now listen, Abram is such a believer in God’s election that he has the faith to believe that election starts right now; right here I am, here I was in Genesis 12:9, I was coasting along doing great and I failed, I got out of the will of God, I got disciplined, I got [can’t understand words] and reached my low point in Egypt, but now I’m coming back and when I come back I’m going to be at a higher place than I was before. That’s Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good, to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose.” It doesn’t matter that he’s failed in Egypt; so what!

So Abram, because he trusts in God’s election that is present, in force, right now, here at this moment, he says I can pick up from where I left off, I can go back and I can disregard who said anything about me, I can disregard the people that don’t like me, I can disregard the people who have tried to oppose me, I can disregard my past sin, I can disregard my past failures and I’m not going to sit here and crybaby about what went on down in Egypt. Now this is a lesson that’s very hard for some people. There are people and I presume there are some here this morning who continue this attitude that once I have failed, once I have blown it I’ve got to kind of crawl around like this, for all time, until there’s genuine repentance, being defined not as a desire to change but being defined in emotional terms, that I’ve got to go through this catharsis before I can pull myself up out of the cesspool. No; the time is any time God’s promise comes to you afresh, and right here Abram realizes it and he says hey, I’m not going to sit down here and cry for the rest of my life, just because I made a mistake. My life isn’t through, I’m alive. All right, if I’m alive and breathing then God must have something for me to do so I’m going to start all over, mess or no mess, critics or no critics, I start new today. And he begins to make some changes.

And he goes back up and notice what happened; he’s wealthy. One of the neat things that happened to him, incidentally, was that he acquired wealth in Egypt; he blew it, but that was a fringe benefit. Now I can just hear some Christians say you mean God blessed Abram, why Abram was out of fellowship, God isn’t righteous to bless Abram out of fellowship. Listen, are you oriented to grace? What’s the basis of grace? God isn’t blessing on the basis of righteousness in the first place; God is blessing on the basis of grace. Abram doesn’t deserve anything, God knows that, he knows that now, and so therefore God goes ahead and blesses him even when he’s out of fellowship so he comes out of a trial, he’s got his reputation ruined in Egypt for a while, but so, go somewhere else, try again. And he’s got wealth to back it up.

In Genesis 13:3 in the original language it shows it even more; it says: “And he went on his journeys” the King James says but the Hebrew has a particular expression for this in the form of the verb and it means he went in stages, he’d start, he’d set up a camp here, he’d go like this, go like this, go like this. You say well, every traveler goes in stages. Yes, but coming as this verse does after verse 2 there’s a point the author is making. The point he’s making is that he is so encumbered with this wealth and the many herds that he stay awhile until he reconnoiters the advanced area. Now let’s think about the management and logistics behind this operation. As large as his ranching operation is he’s moving it, just literally moving the whole ranch. So every time he camps he has to send out recon units to find out what’s going on up ahead so he knows that he’s not going to be going through somebody’s cultivated field. He also has to send out units to know where there’s going to be water, where there’s going to be pasture, and until those units come back he can’t start because maybe they’re in that direction or maybe they’re in this direction. So he has to stop and sit until the whole area is mapped out ahead of time. He didn’t have all that baggage coming down the other way. Another thing he has to do, because there’s no highway patrol in those days, he’s got to have his own police force and he has to have perimeter and flank defense. You’ll see what he does, he develops such a fine perimeter defense that by chapter 14 when the terrorists take over he goes and clobbers them with his own private army. So he’s been training his employees to act as soldiers and police.

And then, of course, he probably must have some sort of salesman on his staff and so on to conduct the business deals that have to be dealt with on food and so on. I mention this only so that when you read Genesis 13 you don’t think of some little guy with his box lunch humpety dumpety-ing on a camel down the road. This is a large operation that’s going on here. Thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars worth of stock are involved in this whole thing. This is large business by this point; that’s the background for it.

Now look what he does in Genesis 13:3-4. “And he went on his journeys from the Negev to Bethel,” so we go to our map of Israel and we look at it and we notice something very interesting. Here comes up Abraham, up from the Negev, the south, the Wilderness of Zin here on the map, all the way back up to just north of Jerusalem to Bethel. Now doesn’t that look familiar? Of course it does; that’s where he got off the track to begin with. When was the last place the guy was in fellowship? Bethel! What do you find him doing in verse 3? Tracing his steps back to where he got out of it. Isn’t that kind of interesting to watch; he goes on his journeys from “the Negev to Bethel, unto the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Hai.” He goes back to the last place he knew he was in the will of God. Now this is why Genesis gives you great spiritual principles but in such a simple way a child can see them. He literally traces his steps back. We’ve been reading Pilgrim’s Progress and you remember when the Pilgrim came back from the castle of giant despair he got off the straight path and what did he do? Bunyan had him coming right back to the path, retracing his steps, right to the fork where he got off the track. What do you find here? Same thing.

This teaches us something. Yes, when we get out of fellowship, we blow it, we’re forgiven, we confess our sins, “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” and so on, and we move on, but we do take evaluation, okay, I got off here, I did this wrong, this wrong, do let me go back here and see if I can re-plug in. So he does this, he traces his steps back to the place where he went wrong. Verse 4, “Unto the place of the altar, where he was last worshipping God, where he had his last testimony, “which he had made there at the first.” See the emphasis; in verse 3, “at the beginning,” verse 4, “at the first,” the author wants to show you something. Abraham’s retracing, starting all over again, and what does he do? At the end of verse 4 he is calling, once again, on the name of the Lord [“and there Abram called on the name of the LORD”]. So he’s actively giving a public testimony where he left off before he got in a jam over his business.

Now Genesis 13:5 begins a section of his business partner. Up to this point we’ve seen Abram use the faith technique in his business. He’s probably had the usual problems with nincompoop employees; he’s had the problem of pressure in his business, competition in his business, he’s had problems with the famine, bad times economically, can’t get his supplies and so on. Now he’s got another problem in his business, one that probably several here know what we’re talking about, and that is what do you do when you’re in partnership with somebody in a business and the partnership goes sour? All right, here it is.

Genesis 13:5, “And Lot also, who went with Abram, had flocks, and herds, and tents.” Now we’re going to learn something about human nature here; let’s call this business the A & L Ranch. Now that’s their business and they have joint holdings; Abram is the senior partner, he has 60% of the holdings and Lot 40%. Let’s just divide it this way, Lot’s the junior partner; Abram senior partner. And they go into the situation and now Lot just gets a little feisty. Now the text doesn’t say this explicitly; I’m inferring this from the text but I think I’m right in inferring it for reasons I’ve said before, you’ve got to be a little subtle about Genesis because the author doesn’t come right out and say that is a sin. The author of Genesis, it’s part of his style, is to kind of say yeah, look at this, and then you kind of draw your inference. Now if Lot is getting a little feisty about this relationship, in other words by feisty I mean he’s starting to tell Abram what to do; in fact, he’s starting to have a disrespect for Abram that shows up here in a few verses.

Now where did this guy, who’s basically been the beneficiary of Abram’s calling, where does he get his gall to come in here and start as the junior partner in this business, tell the old man what he’s going to do and what he’s not going to do, and this guy’s a clod. I think we learn something about human nature here and it’s the nature of a person not being oriented to grace. Let’s watch Lot; Lot is like a lot of people, men in business and women, children, what happens here is that he sees this man… first of all, he could have had his trust in God. Now we know Lot was a believer but just basically as a modus vivendi, Lot did not orient himself to God and His promises. Lot basically had substituted for his orientation to God orientation toward another man, if we can reconstruct this scene. Lot was the kind of guy that said hey, I trust Abram, this guy is fantastic, he’s got this, he’s got that, he’s got this asset and that asset and so on so I’m going to look to man and he’s going to be my guiding star. What happened in Egypt? His guiding star got eclipsed; his guiding star fell. His guiding star has a sin nature. His guiding star is fallible.

So now watch, and this often happens to people that are in this position. Here is a man who is not oriented to grace and so he suddenly discovers Abram too has a sin nature. Oh, do you know what Abram did? If there’d been telephones in the Sinai he would have been calling all over telling everybody what Abram did. But he didn’t; instead, Lot began to resent his senior partner; he began to say hey, this guy isn’t everything. What’s wrong in that kind of a relationship? It was idolatrous in the beginning. He hung too much on that personal relationship. You can’t hang that kind of stuff on a personal relationship because nobody’s at the end of the relationship strong enough to bear the weight. Don’t load personal relationship with stuff that belongs only on your relationship with God. You cannot trust people, I don’t care who they are, your wife, your husband, your boss, your minister, whoever it is, you can’t trust anybody with the kind of things you ought to be trusting God with. And if you do then someday along the line you’re going to get dosed good and you’re going to walk away sour grapes.

Whenever you see somebody soured from this kind of a thing that tells you more about the person that got soured than it tells you about a man like Abram. This tells you gobs about Lot; it doesn’t tell you a thing about Abram. We know Abram’s got a sin nature; he knows it, no problem. What this text tells us is that Lot evidently loaded that relationship so heavily that when finally it crumbled he lost everything; put all his eggs in one basket and a lot of people do that. Some of you are doing that. You look up to some individual or something and you’re loading that relationship and some day you’re going to be very disappointed and if you don’t get straightened out and get oriented to God’s grace, then there’s going to come a time when you’re going to be a very bitter person, a very resentful person. And it’s your fault; don’t blame the person that’s failed, the person that failed has a sin nature like you do and you have just wrongly designed your relationship, and you expect, out of other people, what only God can give you. And to that degree you are idolatrous. So Lot is that kind of a person and now he begins to get a little feisty and a dispute breaks out.

Genesis 13:6, “And the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together; for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together. [7] And there was a strife,” now the word “strife” in the original language is the Hebrew word rib, and rib is a word that means more than just a fistfight, it may have been a fistfight or may not have been; the word “strife” carries a legal connotation to it, that is, the dispute had gotten so bad in the partnership of this business that there was a lawsuit impending.

Now this explains something, why verse 7 says what it says. If you don’t see this you wonder what’s going on at the end of verse 7, this just doesn’t look right. Let’s read the first part of verse 7, skip the last half of 7 and go on to verse 8 and see if you don’t think that that fits together without that extra phrase in there. “There was a lawsuit threatening between the herdsmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdsmen of Lot’s cattle [and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelt then in the land]. [8] And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no lawsuit, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen; for we are brethren.” Now what is that circumstantial clause doing there, “and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelt then in the land.” It’s an odd time for the author to plug something like that in there; oh no it isn’t, because the author’s point is what’s on Abram’s mind is his testimony. What has he just got done ruining in Egypt? His testimony, he blew it down there, so now he’s come back in the land with his ranching business and what’s the first thing that happens now? He’s got a threatened lawsuit. Where’s the lawsuit going to be tried? Do the Jews have courts in the land? No. It’s going to be tried in the Canaanite and Perizzite court; the courtroom of that day was the gate of the town. So now he’s going to be before pagans in a legal situation and he says now that’s going to look really cute, the two believers, first ones in the land, and what do they do? Have a fallout and start suing one another; brilliant testimony.

And that’s what’s on his mind because you notice what he says at the end of verse 8, “for we be brothers.” He’s very sensitive to this, look guys, God’s called us to be a testimony here and the first thing we’re doing is suing one another in their court. So he proposes in Genesis 13:9 a very biblical solution to the problem, dissolve the partnership, split the assets, you go your way and I’ll go my way.

Now that’s done several times in the Scripture and there’s nothing unbiblical about it. There come times when these sorts of relationships can be dissolved. Think, for example of Acts 15:36-40, Paul and Barnabas do the same thing; they had a joint missionary task force established. Paul wanted to do it one way, Barnabas wanted to do it another way, they couldn’t agree after extended negotiations so they split. There’s nothing essentially wrong with this because it gives Satan two targets instead of one after it’s done. Barnabas goes down to Cypress and does his thing very well; Paul goes up in Asia Minor and does his thing very well. In this case Lot can do his business, Abram can do his business and then they double their witness, they’ve expanded and so on. So don’t think that kind of a solution is a failure; it often isn’t. We’ve had people over the years drift into Lubbock Bible Church and drift out because they’ve tried to say that Lubbock Bible Church ought to have this agenda or this program and I’ve said no, it’s going to have this one, and they couldn’t wear me out, I wore them out instead, and so they’ve just taken off. Fine, they’re believers, they have the call of God to do something and God can bless their ministry. It’s a biblical way of solving a problem. It’s the same thing here; Lot takes off and Abram stays.

But now what the author wants us really to see is that Abram at this point is faith-resting. He’s learned his lesson. You know last time he was at this spot he goofed because when the pressure hit and when the troubles went into his business, Abraham surrounded on all sides, with all these pressures, and Abram started looking at these pressures and the details of life started piling up to him and he said golly, I’m going to have to do something, God’s not going to bless me here, I’m going to have to… and he panicked and takes off on a gimmick solution.

Well, in chapter 13 Abram’s a little stronger, and here’s what happens. Instead of looking at the details of life as some big gigantic forest of California redwoods or something he says hey wait a minute, just a minute here, let’s look at what the details of life are all about anyway. If I’m going to drop dead today are the details of life going to matter? No. You walk out of here and you check out are the details of life going to mean much to you at that point? No. Well now if death ends the details of life isn’t it a logical conclusion that they don’t ultimately count that much, that what counts more is whether I’m going to be an eternal failure than whether I’m going to be a temporal failure here and there with the details? Yeah. The New Testament expresses that when it says Abram was looking to a “city that has foundations, whose [builder and] maker is God.”

Now Abraham looks down to the details of life and he cuts them down to size; he says hey, yeah there are problems, I’m not denying they’re problems, but they don’t count that much when compared with eternity… when compared with eternity. So he uses the doctrine of election, God has called him to a presence, to a city that is eternal, he uses that powerful doctrine in meeting the pressures of everyday living by saying just a minute, that cuts my problem down to size. And when a problem hits and you’re so frustrated and you’re running around and everything looks like it’s falling apart, this kind of situation, one of the first things, first-aid, first-aid crisis counseling type of thing to hit is shift gears and disengage and say hold it, what counts two billion years from today? Just ask yourself the question. What’s going to count wherever you are two billion years from today? Start asking yourself that question about 20 times and start gearing back and say hey, these details really aren’t that bad after all. All right, Abram’s got a detail; one of his details is Lot cuts out, there goes 40% of his capital and his ranching business; the partnership dissolves. Well my company is going to be ruined if we split; it’s going to be ruined if you stay together.

So Lot is going to split and he says in Genesis 13:9-10, Abram sits back and he trusts; he’s going to trust that God will take care of his needs. And so he says, “Is not the whole land before thee? Separate yourself, I pray thee, from me: if you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you go to the right hand, then I will go to the left.” This is an amicable ending of the business relationship. [10] “And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, it was as well watered as the garden of Jehovah, like the land of Egypt, as you come to Zoar.” Lot takes the area which is now called Transjordan, and he apparently takes an area which we’ll examine further in a later chapter. This area in the south end of the Dead Sea, just south of that little indentation. The Dead Sea is really two seas that have run together. All the water level north of that indentation is hundreds of feet deep. The water south of that indentation is only 15-20 feet deep, not any deeper. So obviously that is some sort of lake, the land flowed over, there’s a Roman road, you can still see it today, that cuts across there. So as late as Roman times this area was only a marsh in between this land area. So this area has flooded over sometime in the ancient past and began a complete geographical transformation there and that traditionally where they believe the five cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are, underneath that water of the south end of the Dead Sea when God blew them up. So that’s the place where Lot is.

Remember Abram is up here, Lot’s gone done, he’s canvassed the area; they must have maps of the forage and the pasture land, and he says hey, that’s good water, see these brooks coming in, there’s the Zared River, the Arnon River, and we don’t know what it looked like before but all these rivers are flowing in, fresh water off the mountains, great for pasturing. If I can get in there I’ve got a pasture that’s not going to be that dependent upon local rainfall because I’m getting my water from miles and miles away; I don’t have to move my herds for various seasons, that means I can decrease the number of employees per head of cattle; it means I can become far more efficient in my business. So I take that spot. Well, okay, Abram lets him take it. It’s a loss; Abram’s lost 40% of his assets and this guy could be a strong competitor. Think of the competition; you know as businessmen what goes on. Oh boy, this guy is going to come around, he’s going to start another company, he’s going to wipe me clean because he’s got built-in irrigation and I’ve got to take my herds all over the place. So understand the pressures that were on Abram as a businessman. This is a passage written for men.

Genesis 13:10, “And Lot lifted up his eyes… [11] Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other.” He chose all the plain of Jordan. [12] Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom.” Now before we continue with Abram let’s look at Lot for a parting shot. There a lot of people in the world that are similar to this man. There are many Lots in evangelical Christianity. You see, instead of being a true radical, as all of us Christians ought to be, there’s always this temptation, the quiet seducing voice we hear, to say you can have the best of both worlds; you can have all those spiritual blessings in Christ, and you can have all these material blessings of this world system if you’d just follow me; don’t get too wild-eyed about the promises of the Word, just settle down and just relax. And so we have Lot saying to himself hmm, those cities, that’s protection. If I go there I don’t need expenses for herds to migrate from pasture to pasture because I’ve got built-in irrigation; I’ve got cities around about, police, soldiers, perimeter/flank defense. Hey, there are lots of advantages to this and I can still be a believer. Fine.

So now much like evangelicals who would prefer being employed, say in situations where they can’t really produce because the business world is well-watered at that point, financially speaking, rather than trusting what Abraham is doing, God called Abram to be a pioneer and say hey, I want you to start from the foundation, all over again. I want you to be totally rebuilding Abram, never mind messing around in what the Sodomites have down there, or what the other people do. Now you don’t need that; yes, it looks tempting right now but you trust me and you’re going to rebuild your own city; Mount Zion, you’re going to have a city built on the Word of God; don’t mess with those kind of people.

Well Lot went down and let’s just trace what happened to him. In Genesis 13:12 it says literally, “Lot dwelled within the cities of the plain,” that means around them, it doesn’t mean literally in them. He “pitched his tent toward Sodom,” he’s not in Sodom, he’s just kind of hanging around the perimeters. But turn to Genesis 14:12 and see where Lot is now. “And they took Lot, Abram’s brother’s son, who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed.” Where? Where is Lot dwelling? Around Sodom? No, now he’s living in Sodom; now he’s moved further into the city. Who’s conquering who? Did we hear a word from Lot saying I can go down there and I can infiltrate and be a testimony, I can change them. Did we hear those words from Lot’s lips?

Genesis 19:1, just before Sodom is destroyed, the two angels come to visit Lot, and where in Sodom do they find him; lo and behold, they find him sitting in the gate of Sodom. Do you know what the gate was? The government, the central market and the central government of the city was at the gate. That’s why in Handel’s Messiah, O ye gates open up that the Messiah may come in; it’s talking about the leadership of the city. And so the leadership, Lot’s in the leadership of Sodom, that’s where we meet him. What a vast success of living in both worlds. Here is a believer who spiritually became an invertebrate, because of his choice to try the best of both worlds.

Back to Genesis 13:14 and see how Abram was rewarded for his situation. Abram is reward because after sitting there and waiting and saying gee, you know I really wonder whether I did make the right decision, let this guy walk off with 40% of my business, he’s going to start up competition, he’s going to ruin me, he’s got all the business advantages. And God says to Abram, and here’s the comfort, God rewards men who stick with His Word. “And the LORD said to Abram, after Lot was separated,” notice the crack the author makes, God said “after Lot was separated, Lift up now your eyes, and look from the place where you are northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward, [15] For all the land which you see, to thee will I give it.” What was on Abram’s mind? The land. What did he need for his ranching business? The land. What was going to give him under the Abrahamic Covenant? The land.

And he says right now, verse 17, you “Arise, walk through the land, walk through the length of it, walk through the breadth of it, I’m going to give it to you,” enjoy it. True, Abram didn’t actually own it all, but Abram had use of it. Abram ran his business unhindered in this land. Abram’s business wasn’t wrecked by an invading army, like somebody else’s we know was. Abram had security; his growth in his business might only have been 3% and Lot’s 15% but what good is growth to have your business grow 15% and have it all taken way by an international terrorist band? So Abram got the better of the deal because Abram was the man who used the faith technique in his business decisions.

The last verse has him located at Hebron, Genesis 13:18, “Then Abram removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plains of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the LORD.” Here’s the location and I’ll show you some pictures of the area of you can familiarize yourself and appreciate what’s happening. Here’s a little note that you won’t see on the map but the highway that he’s been witnessing on, up here, beginning in Shechem, around Mount Ebal and Gerizim, coming south to Bethel, coming to Jerusalem, to Bethlehem, is the same road that goes to Hebron. See, it’s the same highland area, he’s continuing his call, God told him to be a witness; he says all right Lord, I’ll be a witness, I’ll risk all the other stuff and slack, and let Lot go to his place but I will be faithful to what you have called me to do.

So he stays at Hebron and Hebron is still there today so let’s look at it. [He shows slides] Remember, this is a long way from the sands of the desert. Once again the chart, Hebron is located here, just west; Lot’s over here, this area, they’re separated by the Judean wilderness. Here is the town of Hebron today; it’s a Jewish city, in which is a lot of turmoil and a lot of PLO activity. But notice the rolling terrain. Of course in Abram’s day there was none of these buildings here. And that gives you the idea of where he finally was left, not a bad land, one which, by the way, has enough water to sustain vegetation for crops very well. And here’s the place of Mamre, the oaks and the site located by tradition, right behind this wall; that’s the place, the center of Abram’s work. He located his herds there for a very interesting reason; the areas round about were cultivated and so therefore, since they were cultivated areas you can’t run big herds over cultivated fields and so he maintained them in the forest areas. That’s why if you look at verse 18 it says… it says “plain of Mamre” but those of you with a new ASV, if you have a new translation you notice the translators have shifted, because modern research in the Hebrew language indicates that that word “plain” ought never to have been translated “plain,” it should have been translated “oak tree.” This is in the forest, there’s a semi-forest on those mountains. As the rain comes up off the Mediterranean and sweeps inland and it deposits water along the area, there are forests that grew up and it’s in those forested areas that Abraham maintained his business.

Let’s look at this in conclusion. You’ve got a man, a believer, and like all men, his central area of his life is trying to produce, trying to do something significant in the world. God had Abram as a model; now wouldn’t it be foolish to be Abram to be counted our model if as a man he didn’t face the kinds of pressure all men face? And so to qualify as God’s model Abram must be, in the text, facing the same kind of pressures that every believing male faces. We’ve watched Abram handle his pressures badly, such as the famine hit his ranching business, he panicked, tried a human viewpoint solution, almost wrecked his marriage, almost wrecked God’s destiny for him. But we see him here succeeding. Here’s a guy, faced again with a horrible threat, but sensitive enough to know, to take himself back and say hey, God has a purpose for me; God has a purpose for me with my talents, with my skills, on my job. This job is not meaningless and before God there is a purpose for this thing and I’m going to carry this purpose out to the best that I know how. Therefore is somebody comes up, like a Lot, you’re going to let the Lot go their Sodom’s, but you will remain in the will of God.

Now I said Genesis gives us great spiritual lessons from elementary physical facts. Did you notice something here? I started off by warning you about election; I warned you that Lot was not elect in the sense that he was not going to be the father of the Jewish nation. Isn’t it interesting, back in that verse where they separated, in Genesis 13:8-10, Lot was given free choice to choose, and what did Lot choose? He did not choose, at this critical point, he could have, theoretically chosen some of this land and then you’d have a non-elect person choosing some of the real estate God was going to give to Abraham. Isn’t it interesting to behold that by his own choice Lot chose land outside of the boundaries of the Promised Land? He chose land east of the boundary; that land, which becomes the land of Moab from which Ruth returns, the book of Ruth, that land isn’t part of the Promised Land. By his own choice Lot chose his Sodom, a place that was damned of God. And that’s a picture of all those who reject Christ; they freely choose to reject and choose their own place, but ultimately receive the damnation of God.

This is a very powerful and big picture of God acting in history; men need a big God; we don’t need effeminate Jesuses that are being taught to us in religious circles. Men respond to a masculine majestic God and that’s the kind of God Abraham wanted to start with and since then, unfortunately the Bible has been turned into an effeminate document, but in this day it was not so. A majestic God demands a majestic allegiance; that’s why we’re going to sing hymn….