Clough Manhood Series Lesson 9

Abraham: Faith- resting and Faith-doing – Genesis 12-16

…in the area of doctrine of the Christian man. So far we’ve answered basically three parts, or three feedback cards particularly, one feedback that a man asking to discuss the problem of the wife versus the job, how does this get together. What do we do about the tension between the wife and the job that every man really does feel. We showed how in the Scriptural framework the wife and the job are not inherently in competition, that they should fit together in one unit because they are part of the same thing which is subduing the earth. Subduing the earth is not just the secular out of the home job. The term subduing the earth in Scripture includes in the home as well as outside the home. It does not just refer to the outside job. Maybe a way of phrasing this to bring it home, to apply it easier, is this question we could ask ourselves. The man who is the head of the home ought to ask himself, meditatively at times, am I running my family and my job close enough to scriptural norms, so that if the human race were to terminate tonight, apart from my family, we could begin a new human race from this family as Noah did from his? Is that a possibility? Could God utilize my family unit as the connective between the past of the human race and the future of the human race. And this is just one of many questions you might think of to try to stimulate why family units are important.

Then we dealt with the question that had been handed in earlier, in response to [can’t understand word] request, I should like to suggest [can’t understand word] interest in the manhood series godly compassion and masculinity. And we showed how, in the Scriptures, the great men are both tender but tough. And how they can be both is because of sovereign grace. And apart from sovereign grace they can’t be; apart from sovereign grace no man can be tough. He can put on an outer veneer of physical strength; that’s easy, you can lift weights and walk around and strut around, that impresses a few people. But that is not what we’re talking about when we’re talking about toughness. What we’re talking about is the ability over a sustained period of taking adversity heaped upon adversity heaped upon adversity and sticking to the goal; that’s the toughness, and that cannot occur apart from a fundamental confidence in the sovereign elective purpose of God. That alone is sufficient to act as a basis of toughness. Tenderness, we saw also, is an attribute that cannot be created in any person apart from the concept of grace, that the person that we would love to step all over is also a person created in God’s image, regardless of what they have done or haven’t done, be that as it may, they are still a person with a sin nature, a sin nature that we have, that all men have and but by the grace of God we’d be doing the same thing, and that produces a simultaneous along with the toughness. Why? Because of the two qualities, grace and sovereignty, back to the character of God.

And then last time when we dealt with the on-again off-again application of the faith technique by Abraham we studied how every time Abraham trusted the Lord in the area of one of the three promises, which was the seed, his wife followed. But then when he failed to trust, not only did his wife not follow, but she had to take over because he was so irresponsible. In fact, it got to the point where he actually literally endangered his wife and God’s plan for his family by failing to trust and operate on the basis of the faith technique. We said then, conversely, how when Abraham trusted the Lord and he constantly loved Sarah there was harmony. But then, when he refused to trust again, he fell victim to her deceit and her human viewpoint. And so we found the use of the faith technique or non use of the faith technique vital in Abraham’s success and failure as a man.

To show you a very interesting statement that was dropped in the plate, this was dropped in by a woman, obviously, and this question shows that from the woman’s perspective how they look at men in this kind of situation. I think it’s a good question, we haven’t entirely answered it yet but we’re starting to. What does a wife do when the husband does not take the responsibility to work as head of the house? Was what Sarah did in Genesis 12 a good example? We covered that example last week in Genesis 12. And there Sarah could to nothing except in the situation of her time go along with the situation her husband had put her into. But I have seen case after case of men who refuse to take the spiritual leadership and their wives pay a very severe price for it, wind up having to do everything that their husbands should do and wind up doing it in a less effective way, frankly, than their husband could have done it if he had done it.

Now let’s summarize some of the principles that we’ve seen about male problem areas in Scripture. This series by it’s very nature, as I warned you at the beginning, is not as systematic as I would usually do in a doctrinal study; it’s more inductive, and we kind of sweep through a passage, pick up a few principles, look at them, go through another passage, pull out some more principles and look at them. There’s no attempt here to come up with a final systematic treatment, as I’m leaning this myself as I go through the Scripture. So at this stage we’re just simply inducing truth from the text of Scripture, the portrait of men that the Holy Spirit paints.

There are several problem areas that we have noticed and I think four of these are quite important. One of them is that all men, this would go for women too but since this is the manhood series that’s our emphasis. They must sense their creative productivity, and they’re not going to be happy unless this is true. I don’t care how much money they have, it doesn’t make any difference what kind of job they have, or what kind of job they don’t have. It doesn’t make any difference what kind of a family situation they have or they don’t have, but unless they can sense there is creative production in their life, they are not going to be happy. No man is going to be happy; he’s not made that way. We’re made in God’s image to subdue the earth and when we don’t sense that we’re doing that we are unhappy men, and that’s just the way it is. It’s because we are made that way; God’s Word tells us we are made that way, and if we believe God’s Word we’ll act as though He means what He says.

This we said, in the earlier part of the series, has implications as far as job design. If one is an employer over various employees that means that there may be some things that you as an employer can do to your employees, treating them as men made in God’s image, that will make them a lot happier employees for you and result in a lot better business for you if you would make a few minor adjustments here and there to let them see the productivity of their hands. This connects… you remember we brought up the case of the Swedish automobile factory that had a great problem with the problem of mass producing, just turning the same bolts day after day after day. And so they decided that this wasn’t doing anybody any good, no man who worked on that assembly line had any sense of any production of anything. And so they decided they’d assemble the men in crews of ten and they would follow one car down the assembly line doing their thing on that car, then they’d follow another car down the assembly line, it didn’t change the rate of production but it reorganized the way the men approached their work. All of a sudden, a phenomenal change in employee attitude. Now they weren’t Christians, they just observed that this worked pragmatically. But we as Christians know why, in fact, it does work pragmatically: because it’s catering to the imagehood of God. Some men will never be able to do this on the job because they’re just constrained by higher circumstances. And so these men who lack that outlet on the job are going to have to have a creative hobby or a creative avocation of some sort where the impulse to creativity can assert itself.

A second area of male problem besides the problem of needing true creative production is in the fact that evil, the impact of evil on the man is of two forms. The first form, the curse form, will hit him heaviest in his job, and by this we mean the frustrations that God has built into the creation. In other words, from our perspective, X amount of work before the fall required Y amount of effort. After the fall, X amount of production requires Y plus some factor amount of effort. And this amount of extra effort required to produce the same amount of work after the fall is the frustration factor. That’s the curse operating. And this is where evil or adversity will most clobber the male. We know this by the design of the curse in Genesis 3. Where the woman will most frequently be clobbered, conversely, is in the area of childbearing and childrearing. So there are two different roles where the curse hits.

We saw in Genesis 12 a good illustration of this in Abraham’s life. Abraham got out of it, wound up in Egypt, all fouled up, just completely off the track spiritually. But did you ever notice why he got off the track? He first got off the track in the area of his ranching business. There was famine in the land, and it hit him, not in his home life, not in his child, they didn’t have any children; where it hit him was in his business. And so men are most liable to frustration of this sort from their jobs.

The other place that evil impacts the man isn’t the adversity of the curse but it’s deception. It’s getting misled, and you guess where that comes from. And in Genesis 3 is the key model of that. And we saw it confirmed in Abraham’s life in Genesis 16 where Sarah had this brilliant plan for producing an heir, and Abraham fell for it. Now this is not a mandate or a warning in Scripture not to listen to what a woman says. Weak men, of course, will take that option, of always considering everything a woman says to be ridiculous. But we won’t talk about weak men, we’ll talk about men who have guts enough to listen to what the woman says with an open mind, but always testing it by the standard of the Word and conscience, that the woman can often, like Abigail, show that, in fact, the man has overlooked a vast area of truth and she acts at that point as his ‘ezer. That’s the second area of male problems, the impacting of evil upon him, how evil particularly hits the male.

We also found another interesting thing about men, the principle of Genesis 4, in that their psychological problems are caused by their bad performance; their bad performance is not caused by their psychological problems. This is exactly reverse to what you learn in psychology courses; I am fully aware of this. I have had my dose of psychology courses, but when I have to teach the Word of God we forget the theories of human viewpoint and we move to the data of the Word of God. And God says to Cain, “if you do well,” that is, if you perform, then there’ll be encouragement for you; “but if you do not well,” that is if you do not perform, there’s going to be depression. And so it couldn’t be any clearer that psychological difficulties are a result, not causes, of performance problems. And next time you deal with problems on the job, performance on the job, that’s the case… oh, I’m feeling so depressed I can’t do the job. No, you haven’t done the job and so you’re depressed, that’s the key sequence in Scripture.

The fourth area that we found, particularly of male problems, in Genesis 4, in that first civilization that developed, when the male carnality reached a maximum it manifested itself in two key areas: physical violence and domineering sex. That early showed it self, in the first civilization, and has shown itself ever since.

Let’s go to the key that we’ve been studying in Abraham’s life, the ups and the downs, and it all surrounds this business of the faith technique. What is this? It’s good for review, go back through and not just kiss it off but just think through it a moment. This is the basic modus operandi of the Christian life; it’s the basic modus operandi, in fact, of all Scripture. This is why, when you go back down in through history of Scripture you will see that God emphasized faith in the days of the call of Abraham, before He gave the details of the Law at Mount Sinai. In other words, there were a lot of things Abraham didn’t know about God’s will. There were a lot of things Abraham didn’t do that were perfectly legitimate and even commanded later on in history. For example, there’s no record of Abraham keeping the Sabbath, is there? None! There’s not record of Abraham having a monogamous relationship; it was a polygamy. These are details. The issue of the Word of God first is that Abraham was a man of faith, and once that is established we will talk about details. It’s wrong to lock one’s self down to details of the Scripture apart from the use of the faith technique. When the faith technique is functioning and becomes habitual, at least in some areas of our life, then we can go on and discuss more about details.

So let’s look at the faith technique and some of its principles, just to review and think a little bit about now, these four principles that we’ve gone over and over, but now in terms of what that does for the man. We said, as we taught the faith technique time and time and time again, that the faith technique is grounded on something; it presumes something. You can’t operate it as self-hypnosis, I’m going to believe, I’m going to believe, I’m going to believe, I’m going to believe, that kind of stuff. It can’t be worked up by singing a hymn; it can’t be worked up by meeting with forty different Christians holding hands in a prayer meeting. It can’t be stimulated that way. The faith technique is a result of something and it’s a result of a conscious dependence upon the whole biblical framework of the universe. That is creation and revelation, that God has created and He’s spoken into His creation after He finished it.

Now that basically has to be there and if you don’t buy that, forget this business about faith, you’re not ready to believe yet, you can’t believe. And somebody can give you a tear jerking story and give you 84 emotional reasons why you (quote) “ought to decide for Christ,” or something else. That’s all a bunch of baloney; you are not ready to believe until, with full conscience, you accept the biblical view of the universe and that God speaks into it, audibly, so men can hear Him and has throughout past history. In other words, the Bible is the authority. In Hebrews 11:3 we say: By faith we understand that the ages of history have been framed out of the things that do not appear. That means there’s external input into the historical process, into your life, into your personal history at point after point. If you don’t buy that you’re not ready to believe. Romans 10:17 it says, “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God,” it doesn’t say faith comes by working yourself up to frothing at the mouth; faith comes by a quiet appreciation for the Word of God.

Now this first point in the faith technique, the use of it, this foundation, the divine viewpoint foundation and revelation, [can’t understand word] to produce something in one’s soul. That is where toughness is produced; we’ll see that in Abraham as we go on. His toughness comes out of this tremendous foundation. This is the same thing we said before in connection with toughness; this basic confidence in the elective purpose of God.

The second thing that we’ve said over and over in connection with the faith technique as we’ve taught it is that faith is an invisible commodity; it can’t be seen in an X-ray machine, it doesn’t appear on any litmus chemical test. Faith can only be observed indirectly by behavior modification toward the standards in Scripture. That’s the only test we’ve got to check whether faith, in fact, is happening. If someone comes down an aisle it doesn’t mean anything; what means something is if their lifestyle is this way and the Word of God is this way and they slowly begin to turn and start making selections toward the biblical position. Now we’ve got something operating here. So faith is mapped out, or looked at, or analyzed, by whether the Word of God is having some effect. If the Word of God isn’t having any effect there may be faith there but we can’t say that. And that principle is in James 2:24 about man being justified by works and not by faith alone. That’s not talking about justification on the basis of your moral work; it’s just talking about the fact that you are justified in the sense that you are declared righteous before men; your righteous becomes evident by works.

And we could say that that, this behavior modification towards the standards of the Word of God, that that produces something in the character; that produces a certain genuineness. And it’s an individual genuineness, it’s a relaxed genuineness. Sometimes faith in one person will show itself in one way and faith in another person will show itself in another area. This person is moving toward the Word of God over in this area; this person is moving toward the Word of God over in another area of life, but there’s still movement toward the Word of God. And that’s genuineness; it’s just not faith, it’s a genuineness that happens.

The third thing that we’ve said over and over again in teaching the faith technique is the fact that the faith technique shows up in every day experience in two ways: resting and doing. It doesn’t always show up resting; acts are sometimes a sign of faith. When Noah built the ark, wasn’t that a sign of faith, that the flood indeed was coming? When Abraham took Isaac to sacrifice him, wasn’t that an act that in fact showed he ought to obey what God told him to do? So doing as well as resting can oftentimes be associated with faith. We find that in that classic passage we’ve studied in Romans 4:17-22, which is talking about Abraham having children. This aspect gives something to a person’s character, particularly a man, and that is a sense of alertness. And that’s hard; there’s a certain skill of knowing when to do and when to rest. And it’s hard and it doesn’t come naturally; that comes by a developed sense, a kind of common sense, a spiritual common sense.

And then finally, the fourth thing that we’ve said that the faith technique can be described from, the fourth proposition, is that it’s orientation to grace. Hebrews 12:28 says that “wherefore receiving a kingdom that cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear.” This is where the man picks up that fourth character of his soul and that is tenderness, his grace orientation.

So here are at least four qualities of a man, four qualities utterly dependent upon his use or misuse of the faith technique. And you can go through and see, well, what’s the problem here? Okay, here’s somebody that’s tough, but here’s somebody maybe who just rolls all over people. What’s the problem? All right, the problem is immediately you know, hey, wait a minute, there’s something wrong in his perception of grace. That’s the problem, there’s something wrong there, so let’s look at that. Or, somebody who’s very involved with people and very tender but doesn’t have any persistence, what’s his problem in the area of perceiving the overall picture and the sovereign plan and elective purpose of God? So these are kind of a semi-diagnostic tool for each man in his own spiritual life. The faith technique, in other words, is the tool by which we subdue the earth this side of the fall.

Now let’s continue our study of Abraham’s life, watching his use of the faith technique. This time we’re going to approach him on a little different note. Last Sunday night we picked out one of the promises of the covenant, we tracked that through four episodes in his life and by tracking that one promise through four episodes in his life we saw him use it, misuse it, use it, misuse it. And we began to draw some conclusions from that. It showed how Abraham functioned or didn’t, depending on his use or misuse of the Word of God. Now we’re going to look back at the faith technique for this third item, resting and doing. It’s so hard to get this together in practice. I don’t know of one Christian that hasn’t had vast problems in sensing when you are to open your mouth, when you shut it, when you do something, when you rest. Now Abraham had the same thing, so we’re going to study a portion of Abraham’s life tonight from this standpoint, his resting and his doing.

Let’s turn to Genesis 17, in Genesis 17:15 God has, in the first part of Genesis 17 gone through the covenants, again, with Abraham, to encourage him. And then in verses 15-22 God addresses one of Abraham’s most vexing problems, and that was this problem of resting about having a child through Sarah. And we read between the lines this couple had a lot of problems in this area. They had been given a promise, again, review, they had been given a promise that they were going to have a physical child, it wasn’t going to be one of these inheritance gimmicks, but they were going to have their own child, born out of Sarah’s womb. Now, if that’s the case, apparently what happened here, if we read between the lines and infer that for 25 years it was kind of… it was tough, basically Abraham was all right, but you can tell he’s frustrated here. The King James just doesn’t translate… I notice the Living Bible, I was reading it just before the service, the Living Bible has a good translation of this; it really fits the spirit of the text, it comes alive.

“God said unto Abraham, As for Sari, they wife, thou shalt not call he name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.” This is the word “princess.” [16] “And I will bless her, and I will give you a son of her,” so God clarifies it once again that it’s not any Eliezer of Damascus deal; “I will bless her, and she shall be mother of nations; kings of people shall be of” or “from her. [17] Then Abraham fell upon his face and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? And shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear? [18] And Abraham said unto God, Oh, that Ishmael might live before thee! [19] And God said, Sarah, thy wife, shall bear thee a son indeed; and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. [20] As for Ishmael, I have head you; I have blessed him, and I will make him fruitful….” Verse 21, “But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, [whom Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year.]”

Now you can tell by his frustration and that exclamation of verse 18 that he has just about had it with this deal. Now you can imagine probably why? Abraham is a doer; we’re going to see this pattern in his life later on tonight, in an area of particular interest to men, his business life, and he is a shrewd businessman. He operates by tremendous principles of the allocation of his economic resources and his investments. But at this point he can’t do anything; he can’t decide to move this herd over here, he can’t buy this plot of land and sell that plot of land, it’s just not that simple; he’s got a woman on his hands, not a plot of land and this complicates things. And so he’s frustrated; as good a businessman as he may be he’s having problems with Sarah here. That’s the point of the text. It’s not easy, and you don’t operate with Sarah like you do with the cattle, he’s discovered, after these 100 years; he’s learned that somehow they don’t respond the way a mule responds, or a steer responds. So what do I do with her?

Now it’s not that Sarah was giving him that hard a time; it was apparently much more of just a quiet frustration with this couple. Every time they’d have a sex act I’m sure this must have gone on in their minds, is it going to be this time. And so at the most intimate point of their personal relationship they experienced frustration, because precisely at the most intimate point of their marital relationship this promise kept hitting away, hitting away, hitting away; of all places in their marriage that had to be the place where this, the Word of God, impacted and frustrated them the most. And so that is just an exclamation of frustration in verse 18; I just wish we could just get on with Ishmael and bag this whole thing about Isaac or whatever it is that you’ve got in your mind God, forget it, because it’s driving us both crazy. That’s the kind of frustration had; I’m just saying this and underscoring it so you’ll kind of empathize with Abraham, these guys in the Scripture aren’t strangers to your experience; they’ve experienced the same thing.

So he felt totally frustrated; a lot of his frustration must have been conveyed to him by his wife because I’m sure Sarah in her part felt totally like the fifth wheel because here the woman’s role in the family is to produce a seed; her role is to be the family-raiser and what has she done for 90 years of her life? What’s she got to show for it. Well, she’s cooked a lot of meals for her husband, she’s cleaned the tent up, she’s sewed clothes, she’s washed what dishes they’ve had, but what else has she really got to show for her life. And she must have been on frustrated woman, and no man living with a frustrated woman is going to be anything but frustrated either. So that’s what Abraham’s problem is; he’s just got a bucket of problems here and he’s just dumping it on the Lord at this point.

But the Lord comes back, and notice the technical language, or the specific-ness of verse 21; He says, “My covenant I will establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear at this time next year.” Obviously, then, the conception has not occurred. Now if you want a clear indication of how sovereignty and human responsibility can go together, think of what the implications of verse 21. I’m not going to give you a course in physiology but you can guess what’s happening here. God dogmatically and sovereignly says that Sarah will deliver a child next year at this time. Now suppose Abraham took a trip for the next three months? You see, the point here is that here you have responsibility and what’s God saying to Abraham? Hold in there buddy, it’s going to happen. Okay.

Now why this emphasis on the family? You might say this is almost an obsession in the Old Testament. In our society we don’t feel it that way, the family isn’t that important to us as a general culture. Now the Bible approaches it in a totally different way and here’s why and here’s what we’re missing out. The family is important to these men because they understood that you subdue, not in your own generation only, but in the future. Bible men are future oriented men. They’re not looking to the past like the pagans used to with their cyclic views of history. The men of the Scriptures always viewed history as linear, that is, it was progressing toward a future goal and so they would look forward to the future subduing and they had an obligation into the future, and the obligation into the future could only be done by the family, propagating my generation into that future society. And so because they were future oriented men they were family oriented men. Men who are against the family are present-centered men. They have no concept of the future whatsoever.

Another reason why the family is to be honored in the Old Testament, and in the New; a simple matter of property. The children are the heirs of his property, and therefore it’s very important that he has wise heirs. And there’s why in the book of Proverbs there’s such despair on the part of the father toward his foolish son, because he knows that every piece of material assets that he accumulates in this life that is going to be transmitted, thank God they didn’t have the inheritance taxes we do, they could do this, when they inherited their father’s property they’d dissipate it, and that’s why there was this concern that before I give my property to my son he is going to learn how to use it, or I’m just not going to give it to him, period. So there were these reasons and this is, why even in such passages as Deuteronomy 25:5 and following you have the concept of Levirite marriage, why, when the woman’s husband died and she had no son a relative would come, they would marry so that she could get pregnant by this other man in that family to carry on the seed; they were that fanatical that the family will survive and will go. They were future oriented people. They believed in massive population growth; not zero population growth. Zero population growth is the product of socialism; socialism has destroyed productive agriculture, it has dissipated resources and because it has they wring their hands with crocodile tears worrying about over population and suggest we should all have no children. Baloney? Have all the children you can support. That’s the biblical position; zero population growth is an apostasy, it’s a heresy of our time, brought about by lazy people who can’t use resources properly.

You see this, very interestingly in the last two weeks, in connection with the energy of the northeastern states during the last cold crisis. Here we have a massive area of arctic air that moves in suddenly, people have been saying this was going to happen—no, never will happen. And sure enough, it did two weeks ago. New York sits there with millions of people at four degrees below zero; Chicago with twenty-four degrees below zero, and all of a sudden they discover, hey, you know, we don’t have much natural gas around here, where’d it all go. Ah, and then the media begin to trot out the villain, the big oil companies, they’re to blame, those Texas gas companies, those bad people in Texas, they’re hording all that gas down in Texas, it’s Texas’s fault. It’s not Texas’s fault, it’s the idiot socialist that put prices on the pipeline so the guy can’t sell his gas at a profit. Why should he sell his gas if he’s not going to get a profit for it? How is he going to get capital to drill the next well? It’s a little simple economics but simple economics apparently are beyond the comprehension of CBS. So therefore we have this campaign to vilify those big evil oil companies; they’re in a big plot, you can just see Exxon and Standard Oil sitting down incarnated as these cigar smoking villains in a smoke filled room, can’t you, and they just sit there and plot how to screw the country. Now look, the big corporations are making your life possible. You and I would not have the great society we have, materially speaking, apart from big business. Big business is the lifeline, so don’t knock it. It’s solidly founded on good economic principles.

So we have the concept of material wealth; it’s not bad, sound economics in Scripture. Abraham, then, in Genesis 17:15-22 has this matter of family raising to subdue the earth, and in this section of the text God is meeting his resting problem. It’s here where Abraham rests; it’s here where Abraham has his frustration. He can’t go in and solve the problem, it’s just sitting there staring him in the face all the time. And so he has to rest and he’s frustrated and his wife is frustrated, and she passes her frustration on to him and he passes his back to her, and that’s the problem. And so at this point God is saying now hold it, if you guys can just hack it for twelve more months it will all be over. God comes in, in other words, at this point with an answer to his resting problem.

Now in Genesis 17:23-27 we have the other problem that he has and that’s doing, faith doing. “And Abraham took Ishmael, his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the very same day, as God had said unto him.” And it goes on to describe immediate activity, no hesitation. Here’s his decisiveness; here’s something at least he can do and he does it. Those are the two sides of Abraham’s faith.

Now having developed the resting side and the doing side, we’re going to take two instances; one on the resting side and one on the doing side and watch what he did with it. First, Genesis 18:1-15. We won’t spend too much time because we’ve already spent time showing how he grappled with this problem of resting; it was harder for Abraham to rest than it was to do in faith. And I think you’ll find generally that most Christians, if they’re going to have trouble with one or the other will usually have trouble with the resting one. It’s much harder to sit and do nothing and wait on the Lord than it is to actually say okay, I’ve got fifteen things I can do; okay, I’ll do two today, two tomorrow, and so on, and will do them. That seems to be easier for most people than resting. But in Genesis 18:1-15 we have this issue of resting.

“And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; [2] And he lifted up his eyes, and he looked, and, lo three men stood by him; and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, [3] And said, My Lord, if now I have found favor in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant. [4] Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your fee, and rest yourselves under the tree. [5] and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to know your servant. And they said, So do, as you have said. [6] And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth. [7] And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetched a calf tender and good, and gave it unto a young man; and he hastened to dress it. [8] And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed,” this is not peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he’s preparing, notice.

And it goes on, the first 8 verses, that Abraham is showing the gift of hospitality; this is the Old Testament passage that’s behind that strange thing you read in the New Testament in Hebrews 13:2, where it says “some have entertained angels unawares,” this is one of the passages it’s talking about. So Abraham sees these three people; he doesn’t know they are angels. By the way, these angels are going to eat, which shows you they have corporal bodies, just in case you come across that little comment sometimes that Genesis 6, where the angels went in to copulate with female humans, they couldn’t do that if they didn’t have material bodies… well, they apparently had material bodies here because they’re eating. Apparently they enjoyed the meal too. So these first 8 verses are an introduction to verses 9-15.

Genesis 18:9-15 seem, at first glance, to be redundant to that passage we’ve just got through studying in Genesis 17. Remember we said in Genesis 17 God came to Abraham and said okay, okay, you’re going to have a child, don’t sweat it. All right, now it appears to be doing the same thing here because the angels come and they say you’re going to have a child, don’t worry about it. But there’s a difference. In the first case, in Genesis 17 the angels talk to Abraham only. In this case they’re going to talk deliberately around Sarah, because knowing a woman they know that she’s going to be listening, so they deliberately get close so that she will hear from behind the thin curtain.

“And they said, Where is Sarah, thy wife?” Of course, this is the Lord and He’s omniscient, He knows very well where Sarah, the wife is. “And he said, Behold, in the tent. [10] And he said I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life; and, lo, Sarah, thy wife, shall have a son. And Sarah heard it behind the door. [11] Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. [12] Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I have become old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also? [13] And the LORD aid unto Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, who am old? [14] Is anything too hard for the LORD? [At the appointed time I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.” In verse 15 Sarah says oh-oh; see, she heard the angels but they also heard her. And she lied, “[Then Sarah denied, saying,] I didn’t laugh,” and of course this is Isaac’s name, “laughter.” That’s why he’s named Yitzhak, that’s the Hebrew verb to laugh, and that’s why he got his name, just to remind both Abraham and Sarah that they both laughed at God, so God laughs back at them; sense of humor you know.

Now what is the cause of the relationship between verses 1-8, this first part, this hospitality, and verses 9-15? Is there some interplay between the two? There must be some interplay; the Genesis editor doesn’t put this together without having some interplay, and we’ve got to ask ourselves a question. Why is that hospitality passage there first? Why does the angel come to Sarah? Isn’t it sufficient to just simply pass the announcement on to Abraham? No, because in this family unit, for this particular promise, the woman is honored; she is the one who’s going to bear the child, and God wants to make sure that the woman is going to bear the child in faith. And so this whole scene here is arranged at least for the purpose of encouraging Sarah to believe. Now if for no other reason, he probably did it to make Abraham’s life a lot easier. What the angel… is relieving Sarah’s frustration so that Abraham can be relieved of his frustration, so by the time verse 15 rolls around, God has dealt with both Abraham and Sarah.

But there’s more than just that. Genesis 18:1-8 and Abraham’s hospitality shows there’s been a transformation in Abraham’s heart by this point. Here’s why. I said earlier that one of the reasons for a family was that the children carry your inheritance. Now in verses 1-8 what do we see about Abraham’s attitude toward his material possessions? He’s relaxed about them, and there’s a signal that he’s basically trusting the Lord to take care of it. He’s relaxed enough to be hospitable and gracious with that which he owns, with the understanding that the Lord gave it to them, and the Lord is going to take care of it and He’s not going to dissipate it, and He’s not going to blow it because God is going to take care of it and he’s going to have an heir that’s going to inherit it and so on. So verses 1-8 are there to show the growth in Abraham’s soul that by this point he’s been able to handle his wealth and handle it as unto the Lord; he doesn’t fear not having children, in other words.

Genesis 18:1-15 show God finally dealing with the passive, resting side of Abraham’s faith technique. Abraham has rested, he has rested, we’ve seen he gets frustrated at times but he’s basically rested, and the Lord’s rewarded the faith-rest of Abraham; he and his wife will bear a child.

But now let’s look at Abraham in his active side, in his doing side. And this shows something about a man and this doesn’t directly answer to the Sarah situation, this is another area of business. We want to look at how Abraham ran his business, some principles that he appeared to use, principles that we’ll see again operate in the Mosaic Torah. Abraham, to summarize what we’re going to say, Abraham is the shield and defender of his family. Turn back to Genesis 12, watch how he functions. In Genesis 12 God tells him to get out of Ur. He moves up to Haran and comes down here, a journey of thousands of miles. He has to transport his entire ranch stock, for thousands of miles over vast and hostile terrain. Abraham, therefore, had a logistics problem that you can’t believe. He was a planner and a manager; that alone, just Genesis 12 ought to show you something about his manhood. He could plan and deploy his assets. He accomplished a goal and it was harrowing, and it was frustrating; he literally moved his entire business over a thousand miles for only one reason: the Lord said do it. And this shows one important aspect about this man and his business life. His business life was totally subordinate to the Word of God. When God said move, in spite of the fact, ah, Abraham, you’re nuts, ranchers don’t move thousands of miles; Abraham says I do. When God says I do, I do! So this principle alone shows that, that God’s goal took precedence over his business.

Now let’s look at Genesis 13 and watch what happens; in Genesis 13:7 the strife that breaks out between Abraham and Lot. And so, verse 9, he proposes a deal with Lot. “Is not the whole land before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if you will take the left, I will go to the right; or if you go to the right, I will go to the left.” They’re coming down the highland road of central Palestine, right about here; they’re coming down this road and they get close to what is now Jerusalem, and he makes a deal; if you go left, that means turn into the Jordan Valley, I will go right, we’ll take the hills and the Shephelah. If you take the Shephelah and the hills, I’ll go left and I’ll take the Jordan Valley. So he makes a deal.

Genesis 13:10, “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, even as the Garden of God, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. [11] Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other.” But [12] “Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan,” and the text adds a little note to this business deal in verse 13, “But the men of Sodom were wicked [and sinners] before God exceedingly.”

Now let’s see if we can draw some investment principles from this passage. Abraham has a problem; this is in [can’t understand word] material way, this is a situation of how he’s going to use his assets. He has the various factors; he chooses certain things. Lot chooses certain things. By the way these men use their business investments we can tell a lot about their character. Lot, it’s very obvious from verse 11, placed as part of his business dealings, the most promising material aspects; for Lot the primary decider on a business deal, whether to go this way or that way, was the immaterial or the impersonal material wealth. It’s not bad in itself; for example, in verse 11, think of it from an agricultural standpoint. What is verse 10 telling us? There’s irrigation sources there, there’s soil resources there. Verses 10-11 are justifying Lot’s choice. From that point of view Lot made an excellent business decision. He had a lot more potential in his business than Abraham had from his… it would seem! But that last gnawing note, “but the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before God.”

Abraham chose on the top of his business dealings character; then underneath that the material aspects. Abraham took a financial loss, temporarily, in this deal. Lot got an immediate quantum jump in his material holdings; his stock went up overnight when he moved into the Jordan Valley. And from the short term range it was a shrewder deal that Lot made. But the Word of God doesn’t look at short-term business deals; it looks at long-term business deals. So let’s follow through this. Particularly if you’ve not read the story in early Genesis, let’s look at Genesis 14 and find out what happened.

In Genesis 14:1, “And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel, king of Shinar,” and it lists a whole bunch of kings, and they [3] “were joined together for battle,” and they subdued the area around Sodom and Gomorrah. In verse 10 “And the vale of Siddim was full of slime pits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain. [11] And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their food supplies, and went their way. [12] And they took Lot, Abram’s brother’s son, who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed. [13] And there came one that escaped, and told Abram, the Hebrew; for he dwelt in the plain of Mamre…. [14] And Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants … three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan. [15] And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night, and smote them, and pursued tem unto Hobah…. [16] And he brought back all the goods, and also brought back his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people.”

Now Abraham gained goods at this point. He gained material wealth through the circumstances of history, and we have to say it’s the hand of God. We also notice that the man who made the good apparent short-ranged business deal wound up almost losing his life. And there was one reason for it and the Word of God keeps saying over and over and over and over again, in his business deal he forgot one little factor in his portfolio. What about the character of those with whom you do business? Abraham said I’ll temporarily take a financial loss rather than set my business up in an area where people do not have character. I’ll wait until there is character, then I’ll do my business. So for a while Abraham had to have patience.

And then let’s turn to Genesis 18 to see the tragic end of Lot and his short-term business deals. After the angels get through discussing the matter of Isaac, they go on in Genesis 18:16, “And the men rose up from thence and looked toward Sodom; and Abraham went with them to bring them on the way. [17] And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I am doing.” And so verse 20, “And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; [21] I will go down now, and see what they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which has come to me; and if not, I will know. [22] And the men turned their faces from there, and they went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the Jehovah.” And Abraham begins to intercede for his worthless relative. [23] “And Abraham drew near, and said, Are You going to destroy the righteous with the wicked? [24] “If there are fifty righteous within the city,” this is the first bargaining Jew; see where they got their training? “If there be fifty” will You save the city? Verse 26, “And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty” I will spare them. Verse 27, “And Abraham said, Now look, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which I am but dust and ashes; [28] But suppose there are only forty-five” there in the city. The Lord says “If I find there forty-five, I will not destroy it.”

[28] “And then he spoke unto Him yet again, and said, Suppose there shall be forty, … and He said I’ll not do it for forty’s sake. [30] And then he said unto Him, Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Perhaps there shall be thirty found there.” And the Lord says “I will not do it I find thirty. [31] “And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord; Perhaps there shall be twenty found there. And He said, I will not destroy it for twenty’s sake. [32] And he said, Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once; perhaps ten will be found there. And He said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake. [33] And the Lord went His way….”

Now there Abraham is desperately pleading for his worthless brother who he could have harbored bitterness against for making the bad deal on his part, but he didn’t. And you know the story, what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, and who leaves. Let’s look, Genesis 19:15, “And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, get your wife, and your two daughters, which are here; lest you be consumed in the iniquity of the city. [16] But he lingered, so the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters, the LORD being merciful; and they brought them forth,” this is the angel, he just grabs them, you’re going out Lot, move! And they clear the area. Notice what Lot doesn’t take? All of his business holdings.

Lot escapes with just his life. That’s the windup of the deal on Lot. He made a good short-term business arrangement, unfortunately he neglected something about his portfolio of factors and one thing he neglected was what Abraham said, you don’t do business in a lousy spiritual environment. I mean, obviously you’re always in a fallen world but you don’t go to Sodom and Gomorrah to set up business. And Abraham refused to go to Sodom and Gomorrah to set up business. He took a cut in his pay to do business in the Canaanite highlands but at least he didn’t wind up where Lot wound up. And what did Abraham wind up with? Many possessions; Lot wound up nothing. So who made the wiser deal? See, Abraham was a smart businessman; not only was he a planner, he was a good businessman, and that’s one of the Christians for spiritual investment.

That’s why, by the way, you can look at the modern state of Israel. Who would you rather have stock in? The Israelis with their rocky ground or the Arabs with all their oil. You think in terms of millions of dollars in material assets you’d pick the Arabs, wouldn’t you. The Arabs aren’t going to be worth a dime when the oil runs out because they’ve never done anything with it and they can’t, they’re too degenerate. The Israelites, why are they progressing in spite of all their socialism which they should truck after a while, because they are future oriented people and they are going to farm that land, and they are going to make something of it, and they have character and the Arabs don’t. So where do you put your money? You put your money where the character is, not where the wealth is. So this is wisdom, Scripturally, and Abraham was a wise man.

Now back in Genesis 14 we notice something else about his faith doing. Not only was he a planner, not only was he a good investor of funds, but in Genesis 14 he was a man who thought nothing of killing those who had harmed his family. What you’ve got in Genesis 14 is the first case of international terrorism, and you will see the biblical precedent for dealing with terrorism. In Genesis 14:14 Abraham takes 318, every employee of his ranching business, and he trains them and he arms them and the annihilate the enemy, because it’s the law of the jungle, nobody else is going to take care of it so Abraham is going to take care of it. He physically defends his family. That’s another thing that a man does.

Now to show you a little bit, this sounds like… you know, it’s a small chapter in Genesis, and you get the idea well, that’s a nice little campaign, he probably ran a hundred yards and got through it. Let’s just look at a map, we have some slides and you’ll see the extent of this little campaign. Abraham’s over here in the highland area, Lot is down here, the Dead Sea ended right there, this last part of the Dead Sea is the spill over from this blowout in Genesis 18. In fact, in Josephus’ day you could take a boat across here and look at the bottom here and look at Sodom and Gomorrah, the buildings were under the water. So this wasn’t like this, this was a long valley at the time, it was very fertile. And these kings came down from the Mesopotamian Plain, and they wiped this area out and began to move them north; they went up the Jordan Valley to a place called Dan. Abraham, by the time he heard it they apparently were already on their way, by the time he assembled his 318 men he began to pursue, and he pursued them all the way up this valley and he finally got them at a camp in Dan.

So let’s look and see what the terrain was, what the terrain is right now and get an idea of the effort Abraham went to in dealing with his relatives. This shows you the concern this man had for his home, for his family, even though he had people in his home who were semi-clods, he went after then and defended them. This is the south end and the place called the Arabah, the Dead Sea is here and there’s a green area here, it’s not green because there’s so much grass, it’s green on this chart because of its low altitude. The Dead Sea, you remember, is the only place an airplane can fly above sea level but under the ocean sea level; above water and under the ocean sea level. In this area is this Arabah and it’s all in this area where Sodom and Gomorrah was. There’s the place where we believe the city of Sodom and Gomorrah is buried, even to this day, and somewhere in this area Lot had his little deal. This is what it looks like today, a nice hospitable area. It was a nice fertile plain; that’s the place described as the next thing to Eden in Genesis 13, so it shows you that when the Lord got through with Sodom He wasn’t planning on having any Sodom II’s. This is the area just south of the Dead Sea, and there’s the salt, it just evaporates, thousands of gallons of water spew out and then it just evaporates and that’s where we get fertilizer from.

Here is the place the Israelis today facetiously refer to Lot’s wife, but it isn’t. But it does show you what a salt pillar looks like. It’s not Lot’s wife; if you cut into it you won’t find her skeleton, but that’s generally the place where they fled. Abraham pursued the armies up through the Jordan Valley, there’s the Jordan River, it looks more like a creek but that’s it, and he pursued them on up through here, from that horrible place you saw, up north, up the valley, around the Sea of Galilee, up into a place of the north side of this little valley just north of the Sea of Galilee, a place called Dan. Here’s what it looks like; it’s a national park in Israel now and obviously a very fertile area.

Well, somewhere in this area, in one of these cave areas they had their camp, and it was where Abraham took care of the little terrorist problem. Notice that Abraham did not negotiate; Abraham did not send out emissaries from the United Nations to see whether or not they had violated international law. He simply took care of the problem right away.

Let’s summarize and pull together what we’ve done. Abraham, in his use of the resting and the doing side of his faith, on the resting side by definition he couldn’t do anything. And he had a hard time resting, but he rested until finally the Lord took care of it. When the Lord took care of his resting problem, you’ll notice the Lord took care of it completely. The Lord engineered so that it would both comfort him and his wife. See, the Lord’s sensitive to the things that are so frustrating. And we think oh, the God of the universe He doesn’t see me and all my frustrations—really now! Do you really think the Lord doesn’t? The Lord’s not omniscient? Look at the way the Lord answered Abraham’s resting problem. Look at the finesse, even the humor of the angel just parking himself about three feet beyond the tent flap, when he knew that Sarah was three feet on the other side of the tent flap. Doesn’t that call for a personal solution? Doesn’t that show the Lord’s genuine interest?

And then we come to the doing side and we watch how the Lord blessed Abraham in his business deal. True, He didn’t show up in a Theophany but it is interesting that when Abraham invested his funds by character wise first he wound up the long-term gainer. Lot, the poor man, wound up with his two degenerate daughters in the cave with no possessions from the start that he got at Sodom and Gomorrah.

Summarizing it we could say that Abraham, therefore, in his doing, was the shield and defender of his family under God, a great role, a great model for the Christian man.