Welcome everybody to Hosanna.
I am Pastor Nathan and this morning we're going to be continuing our look at the life of this man Abram.
I love his story because he is like all of us, a very paradoxical mixture of trusting in ourself
and trusting in God and trying to figure out that dynamic every single day of our life.
Moses, who is the author of these writings, he makes no attempt to gloss over any of this.
He just gives it to us as it is.
And so the story of Abram's failure in Egypt, which is what we looked at last time in the end of Genesis 12,
and today's story of his success in Canaan with his nephew Lot,
they just dig into the contradictions that we have as people of faith.
They dig into the contradictions within him as a man of faith,
and they highlight the same exact contradictions that exist in our own hearts.
You know, we talked about it last week that Abrams, man I'm going to mix that up until he changes it,
Abram's name, Abram's life has been one of just trying to follow the Lord.
And his debacle in Egypt was not a story of a man who had abandoned his faith, walked away from his faith.
It was a story of faith, and we can't forget that.
That even though his self-serving representation of his wife as his sister seemed to be the act of a faithless man,
it didn't mean that Abram had lost all his faith.
It was the act of a faithful man who had temporarily given in to doubt and fear and worry.
His trust had momentarily become distrust.
But despite all of this, the Bible is very clear that Abram was a man of faith.
And so his faith is something that wasn't fake.
His faith was something that wasn't insincere.
His faith wasn't the type of faith where he would only call out to God as a get out of jail free card when he was in trouble.
But instead his faith was real, and it was genuine.
But his failure in Egypt was simply a picture of that faith being buried under his fear and worry for the moment.
Has anybody ever experienced their faith being buried under fear and worry for a moment?
Every single one of us in this room.
And so we can all relate to the story of Abram.
Now, as we've been looking at his life, we looked at the time when he left Ur, and the day he left Ur, which was his hometown,
he was leaving simply on the bare word of God.
God had spoken and said, go, and I'll tell you when you're there.
And he said, okay.
And so he went out on faith.
We know that he believed God's promises, that God said great blessing will come from you and through you, and he believed it.
When he finally got to the promised land in Canaan, and God said to your offspring I'm going to give all this land, he believed it.
But in Egypt, it was distrust that was not at all reflective of his faith that characterized him.
Abram's just like us.
And today, as we see the opposite side of the Egypt story, his success, his spiritual success in Canaan,
we're going to see the positive outworking of his faith in response to the lessons he learned in Egypt.
And we're going to be encouraged with a number of things, namely that if you were God's child,
failing and falling doesn't mean he disowns you.
It's quite the opposite.
It means that you could run back to him anytime because he is waiting for you with arms wide to help you,
to help you heal, to help you grow.
And that's a beautiful thing.
Amen.
Let's pray.
Father, we love you so much.
We're so grateful, God, to be your kids.
Lord, we know you saved us when we were still sinners.
We know, Lord, you choose to dwell within us, knowing everything we think and do.
And Lord, it's just amazing that you are so faithful when we are faithless.
And God, we do need the encouragement, Lord, that when we stumble, when we fall,
Lord, it doesn't mean we're no longer your children.
Quite the opposite.
The fact that we can run back to you, that you still accept us, that you still love us, Lord,
proves that we are your children.
And Lord, it is you that we find the strength to be who you're calling us to be.
It is in you that we find all we need to live the life you're calling us to live.
And Lord, so as we look at the life of Abram and continue to study his life, Lord,
may we be encouraged of how he responds after his failure in Egypt,
how he responds to you, how he deals with his own issues, Lord,
in struggling with the fact that he fell.
Lord, may we all be encouraged today because we are all the same people,
struggling with trust and distrust, struggling with hearing you and wanting to obey
everything you tell us, and then at the same time wrestling with our own flesh
that wants us to do whatever it wants us to do.
God, we do love you and we ask that you would increase our faith,
that you increase our trust, that your spirit would grow big and bright in our life, Lord,
that it would be you shining out through our life to the world and not ourselves.
God speak to us today. We thank you for everything.
It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
We are going to be in Genesis 13, looking at the first 18 verses of this chapter.
And so as we've been following Abram's story, we looked at last week how he went down to Egypt
and really put a lot of faith in himself, trusting in his own plans, his own ideas,
and really was selfishly motivated, looking to protect himself and, you know,
by extension, possibly looking to protect God's promise because if he would be killed
or if he was to be killed or whatnot, you know, that would obviously mess up a lot in his mind.
But he ended up leaving Egypt without a word.
Pharaoh rebuked him for bringing the plague upon him and his household.
And it doesn't record for us that Abraham said, Abram said a single word to Pharaoh.
He just left.
And that's often where we find ourselves as believers when we misrepresent the Lord
and the world that we're supposed to be a witness to calls us out for doing the wrong thing.
It's a very humiliating experience when that happens.
And so Abram leaves, likely shamed, likely humiliated, likely bummed out
because he didn't represent God rightly, and that's where we pick it up here in Genesis 13, verse 1.
It says Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, he, his wife, and all he had and lot with him.
Abram was very rich in livestock, silver and gold.
He went by stages from the Negev to Bethel, to the place between Bethel and Ai
where his tent had formerly been, to the site where he had built the altar.
Abram called on the name of the Lord there.
So as Abram left Egypt, chastened, without a word, we see that he's journeying back to the place
where his relationship with God was strongest, where it was at its peak.
The place where he had arrived in the promised land and God said, here we are.
This is the place. Your descendants are going to get this.
Just an amazing time of him just being with the Lord.
Now it says he returned to the place where he first called on the name of the Lord
because right there between Bethel and Ai when he built that altar,
it was the first time we have recorded in the promised land where he was calling on or proclaiming God's name.
Not just thanking God in praise and worship, but then proclaiming who God was to the people that were there.
Now it's interesting, his journey is like a reverse description of his initial trip down inland through Egypt.
So he's actually just playing it and rewind back up to Bethel.
And I find that an interesting detail because the Bible tells us repentance is the idea of a 180 degree turn
where we face back to Jesus after facing away from him.
And so it's like Abram is doing that repentant turn.
The reason I believe he's going back to Bethel and this place where he called on the name of the Lord
because he was taking a humble pilgrimage, right?
We often like to return to those places where our relationship with God was the strongest,
where we had the experiences that kind of define our walk.
And this is what Abraham's doing here because this was that place for him.
Now this account in Genesis 13, it is meant to be an intentional contrast to Abram's failure in Egypt.
And I say that because both the story of his failure in Egypt and the story here of him returning to Canaan,
they both open with the same Hebrew word describing the condition, if you will, of the moment.
The Hebrew word is kabed.
And kabed means heavy or weighty or burdensome.
Like if you've ever said or heard somebody say, I have a heavy heart, right?
That's what this word kabed means.
But it can also be used to describe circumstances and situations.
For example, the Egyptian narrative started in Genesis 12, 10, and it opened this way.
There was a famine in the land, and it was severe, kabed.
It was heavy, it was burdensome, and so they end up leaving to Egypt.
Here in this story, as he's returning into the land, it says Abraham was very rich, kabed.
He was heavy with riches, right?
And so we're seeing this contrast of what led to this and what is leading to the story we're looking at today.
And really all that tells us is that when we read this story in Genesis 13,
we're meant to read it with Genesis 12 in context.
We're meant to have that in mind as we look at this story because they're meant to be contrasted against one another.
So yeah, Abraham was very wealthy now.
We looked at in Genesis 12 where it said he had female donkeys and what that meant, right?
Those were the transportation of the rich in the day.
He had many camels, which are the prestige symbols of the rich in his day, and he had silver and gold on top of that.
Now, this type of wealth was a very unusual or extraordinary place to be in for Abraham because he was a wandering shepherd.
That was the culture he was a part of.
That's how they lived.
They were nomads, and so to be so laden down with wealth was very unusual, and yet that's what Abraham or Abram found himself doing here.
Now, if you remember, he was given all these riches because he had made his wife lie and say that she was his sister,
and then Pharaoh took her and then said, hey, here's all the money in compensation for your sister that I brought into my harem.
Now, this whole situation is a foreshadowing of what later on happens with Israel in Egypt
because if you remember in Exodus chapter 12, it says that when God brought the plagues upon Egypt,
the people eventually said, please go, get out of here, and here's all our gold and here's all our stuff,
and it tells us that in that sense Israel plundered Egypt.
This story here with Abram is a foreshadowing to all of that,
and I believe it was a great encouragement to the wandering Israelites when this was written.
I believe that Moses wrote this book Genesis and the first five books of the Bible while they were wandering in the wilderness time,
and so as he wrote that down and the Israelites who were wandering in the wilderness for 40 years wondering what's going on,
when are we going to get to the promised land, where is God leading us, that as they read this story and they said,
oh, how encouraging is it to know that our great forebearer, our forefather, also found himself in Egypt
and also found himself leaving Egypt with great, great wealth,
just like the Israelites had found themselves in the wilderness after having left Egypt themselves.
And so it traces his journey back up through the Negev Desert, back to Bethel, where the altar that he built was still there.
It was the second altar that he had built in the promised land, but it was the first place where he called on the name of the Lord,
where he was standing proclaiming the glory of God and who he was and telling everybody around,
worshiping and praising him without concern in the midst of a Canaanite land with all their pagan gods around him.
And so he's returning to this place, kind of in a sense renewing his spiritual connection with God and the land.
And it's very important that we see again he calls on the name of the Lord.
Often when we fail, when we mess up, one of the hardest things to do is to come back and worship God.
Because we feel guilty, the devil is saying, how dare you sing songs to God, how dare you worship him,
how dare you fail, you terrible Christian, you this, you that. And sometimes we'll come to church after stumbling greatly
and we'll sit there and cross our arms and be like, I can't sing to God, I can't possibly do that after what I did.
But we have to understand that God is God no matter what we do.
And if you truly know him as your Savior, you are his child no matter what you do.
He's your dad now and forever.
The first thing you could do when you've stumbled is to come back to him and say, God, I'm so sorry.
I messed up, I sinned, please forgive me.
And then when you experience that forgiveness again, like you have so many times,
you can't help but to worship him and to praise him and to thank him.
And so we see this with Abram here, worshiping God again.
Now, his calling on the name of the Lord, as I said, involves worship, it involves proclamation.
And really what this is, is Abram refocusing his gaze on the one who gives him all his strength.
You see, when he went down to Egypt, he took his eyes off of God and put him on himself.
He was like, I've got a plan to make sure my wife doesn't get taken.
I've got a plan to protect me. I've got a plan to make sure that I don't get killed.
And so it was his own ideas, his own understanding.
And in that, he was taking his eyes off of God.
And here, he comes back to that place of returning his gaze to the Lord, saying,
God, my way didn't work. I just want to focus on you.
I want to know you. I want to listen to you. I want to do things your way.
And so really what this is, is he's putting his failure behind him.
That failure in Egypt is behind him now, and he's really entering into a fresh start.
And that's one of the most encouraging things I think every believer needs to know.
Lamentations chapter 3, verse 22 and 23 says this,
Because of the Lord's faithful love, we do not perish.
For his mercies never end.
When is never? It's never. Okay?
His mercies never end. They are new every morning.
Great is God's faithfulness.
We all need to understand that.
Because we're all going to stumble and fall repeatedly over and over.
Now as God's children, we want to honor him.
We have an intention to obey him.
And yet, there are times where we give in to our flesh.
Where instead of trusting in what God has said, we trust in ourselves and we fall on our face.
And in those moments, the devil, man, he doesn't waste any time condemning us, does he?
To tell us how terrible we are, how horrible we are, how we don't deserve heaven, we don't deserve salvation.
And you know when the devil does that to me, I've learned over many, many years of falling on my face,
That when the devil says, you don't deserve salvation, I'm like, you're right.
You're a terrible Christian. You know, I can be.
You don't deserve God's love. You're right, I don't.
I have it. He loves me. I am his child.
And so, knowing verses like this, when it says, because of his love, we do not perish.
Even though we deserve judgment, even though we deserve to be wiped out because we are sinful people,
It's because of his love that we won't perish. His mercies never end.
Never. Put that in your brain, put that in your heart, internalize that.
Because the next time you fall, and there will be a next time,
You need to be able to find yourself like Paul going, okay, I'm doing the things I don't want to do,
And I'm not doing the things I want to do. And man, this is a Nathan translation.
What does that mean? Praise Jesus. I'm so glad I'm saved.
I'm so glad it's he who loves me, not based upon me loving him.
Because in that is where we find our salvation, and internalizing these ideas is where we find peace.
His mercies are new every single morning. Don't let the enemy rob you when you fail.
Now, this doesn't mean go out and fail, right?
Paul said that in Romans 2, should we sin that grace would abound? Certainly not.
But we're not going to be perfect people here on this planet.
We're not going to be without sin here on this planet.
That's what we look forward to in heaven. Hallelujah, I can't wait.
But here, while we wrestle with our born-again spirit that is alive and made alive and connected to God,
Still dwelling with our sinful flesh that wants to pursue its own means,
And the fight goes back and forth all the time, and sometimes we fall.
God says, I still love you. You're still my child.
Get up. Come back to me. Let me help you. Let me hold you.
Get into my word. Just be close to me.
This is what we see Abram doing here in Canaan.
So the story advances in verse 5. It says,
Now Lot, who was traveling with Abram, also had flocks, herds, and tents.
But the land was unable to support them as long as they stayed together,
For they had so many possessions that they could not stay together.
And there was quarreling between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock.
At that time, the Canaanites and the Perizzites were living in the land.
So Lot is the antagonist of this story, if you will.
When Abram was in Egypt, there was no mention of Lot.
Now, we know that they went together as a family, so Lot was with him.
Lot was there observing what his adopted father was doing, how he handled the situation.
Lot was there as a part of it, and it tells us that Lot also benefited from the riches
that God dropped into Abram's lap through that situation.
But no mention of Lot in that story because that was the focus on Abram.
But here, Lot comes back in and we're reintroduced to him.
Now, like I said, being part of the family, he became wealthy as well, piggybacking on Abram's blessing.
And so now you have Abram as the patriarch of the family who has flocks and flocks and flocks,
and Lot, his nephew, who also has flocks and flocks and flocks.
And then it gives us this little parenthetical that the Canaanites and the Parasites were living in the land at that time.
What that's inferring is that they had flocks and flocks and flocks,
and so there was flocks all over the place and not enough room for all of these animals that were grazing and all of that stuff.
And so what happened was a good old range war.
You guys remember those range wars in westerns, right?
Your cows are on my land. Pew, pew, pew, right?
No, it's my land.
You know, this is what is taking place here.
And the irony of this whole situation is that the material blessing that they gained in Egypt is now the source of their problems.
See, always be careful what you pray for, and always be very, very careful with how you use what God's given you.
If God gives you wealth, praise God, use it to glorify him and his kingdom.
But wealth isn't the solution to all the problems that we have, which so many people think that, you know, if I just had more money.
And yeah, there's some truth to that, right?
But if you have God, you have something greater than wealth and finances.
And so they have this wealth.
God gave it to them, and it should have been something to draw the family together.
It should have been something that they were using altogether to glorify the Lord, and yet it's driving them apart instead.
And that's what prosperity can do to us.
It can drive us apart.
We can come to trust in the prosperity instead of trusting in God, right?
We see parables of that in the New Testament, where Jesus says it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.
Why?
Because when you have everything met, all your needs are met, you have riches.
How often do you need to say, God, we can't pay this, please help?
You don't, because you're like, I got it.
I don't need to pray.
I don't need to depend on God for lack.
I don't need to pray that God would put the next meal on the table, because I could afford meals for the rest of eternity, right?
Riches can cause us to trust in ourselves.
Riches can also lead us to a place where we hoard it.
That God gives prosperity, and then you're like, oh man, I can't spend a penny of this.
I can't help anybody.
I don't care if that person needs food and that person needs clothing.
No, no, no, no, I need to hold on to it, because I'm afraid of losing it.
And then it can also cause us to mistrust everybody around us, thinking that they're going to take it from us.
And really it causes us to believe that all this prosperity, this material, this financial wealth, it's actually ours instead of God's.
And you have to be careful if God blesses and when God blesses that you don't fall into that type of thinking.
And if God blesses you with a lot, it's still all God's.
If God's blessing you with a little, it's still all God's.
And the biblical teachings that talk about how we handle what God's given us, we dealt with that earlier this year in our generosity series.
There is an expectation of God for us to be generous the way He's generous, even when it's scary and it doesn't make sense.
And God says, look, you be that way, I'm going to take care of you.
But as we're going to see here that Abram has learned the lesson of trust from Egypt.
He learned the lesson from going to Egypt, trusting in himself, everything falls apart.
And now he's going to apply those lessons and demonstrate a godliness with his possessions that is pleasing to God.
We're going to get into that in verse eight, but this whole scenario brings up an important truth to consider for every single one of us.
Trials, one, God allows trials in our lives, but trials prepare you for the next trial.
Right? I've talked to believers and sometimes it's just like, man, when's it going to let up?
And I'm like, when you're dead. Right?
I mean, really, we live in a fallen world, right?
Now, God is working in us and molding us and shaping us, and He does that through trial.
We looked at James last week where it says, look, count it all joy when you fall into various trials.
Why? Because they produce character.
They refine who you are.
The Bible talks about the refining fire just as gold is refined in the fire, so are we when God puts us through the fire of difficulty.
And Abram is learning here that one trial prepares you for the next trial.
You see, the first time he got to Bethel and the first time he called upon the name of the Lord, what happened?
There was a famine in the land trial.
And he went to Egypt and we talked about that.
Now he returns in shame and humiliation, really.
Comes back to that place where he should have stayed to begin with, calls on the name of the Lord again.
And what happens?
Another trial, dissension among the family.
And so verse 8 says, so Abram said to Lot, please, let's not have quarreling between you and me or between your herdsmen and my herdsmen since we are relatives.
Isn't the whole land before you?
Separate from me.
If you go left, I will go to the right.
If you go to the right, I will go to the left.
There's a word that's not used a whole lot in our modern parlance, but the word is altruism.
Altruism is simply an unselfish regard for or a devotion to the welfare of others.
When you hear that somebody is being altruistic, what it means is they're putting the needs of others above their own.
They're saying, I'm devoted to doing what's best for you, what's good for you, and we're seeing an altruistic faith here in Abram.
See, the first time he was tested, there was a famine in the land.
It was severe.
He ended up thinking of his own well-being first.
You remember he said, wife, lie so that it goes well with me.
Lie so they won't kill me for your sake.
He was in self-preservation mode.
He was in really selfish mode, but now it's a different story.
This trial comes up.
His nephew and his herdsmen, they're complaining.
The herdsmen are complaining with Abram's herdsmen.
Some people will suggest that the reason Lot's herdsmen were complaining or arguing with Abram's herdsmen is because Lot had been grumbling against Abram.
This is all conjecture, but I was talking with a brother earlier this morning about the reality of Lot being in Egypt, watching his adopted father do what he did in Egypt, and then they leave.
They leave the place of fertility.
They leave the place of the lush Nile and all the riches they got there, and they're leaving.
Why are we leaving?
Abram, of course, is going, we're going back to the promised land.
We're going back to where we should have stayed to begin with.
Perhaps Lot has been wrestling with this.
Perhaps Lot was grumbling about his dad Abram, and the herdsmen were picking up on it.
Now, Lot's herdsmen were arguing with Abram's herdsmen.
We deserve the land.
No, we deserve the land.
That's speculative, but it's a possibility.
Now, Abram is going to respond in a very different way.
Instead of Abram going, well, I'm most important.
I'm the patriarch of the family.
I'm the one God gave promises to.
I've got to protect me so that I can protect God.
He says, please, let's not fight.
Now, I find it interesting here.
Sometimes there's things in the Hebrew that just kind of make me chuckle.
In modern parlance, and maybe this isn't the youngest of the young, but in my world,
there's this phrase that when somebody brings up an issue that you disagree with, you go,
nah, nah, I don't think so.
The word for please in the Hebrew is nah, N-A.
So the herdsmen are arguing, and Abram goes, nah, let's not fight.
Let's not quarrel.
Now, this word nah in the Hebrew usually refers to an inferior person addressing a superior person, right?
So like the employee maybe addressing their boss or a subject addressing their king.
It's a weird word to use here because Abram is the patriarch of the family.
He is the superior in the cultural context of their family unit.
He is the head.
He is the father.
He is the one over everybody else, and specifically Lot is his adopted nephew, adopted into the family.
And so he's going, look, let's not fight.
Let's not have quarreling between us or our herdsmen.
Why? Since we are relatives.
You know, one of the biggest things that affects the witness of the church is when the outside world watches the children of God
quarrel among themselves.
It just really wrecks things.
We're supposed to be family, and yet sometimes the world will look in and they're like, man, they're tearing themselves apart.
Why do I want to be a part of that?
My family's already messed up.
Why do I want to join another one?
And so Abram, though, is taking the high ground, really.
He's putting himself in a place of inferiority to Lot in this and saying, please, I beg of you, let's not quarrel.
Let's not fight.
And so he tells them this really amazing thing.
Abram, who likely has bigger flocks than Lot, likely who has more possessions, again, the one to whom God made the promises, he says,
Lot, you choose.
You pick what place in the land you want to go to.
If you go right, I'll go left.
If you go left, I'll go right.
He's submitting and yielding, in a sense, his authority, his power, what he deserves, what he owns, what he's doing, he's yielding it
to really someone that is inferior in the place of position among the family.
That's exactly what he says.
We're relatives.
Why are we going to fight over space?
Why are we going to fight over land?
Why are we going to fight in the midst of the Canaanites and the Parasites and all these pagans around us?
Why are we going to do that?
What we see here is Abram now being a selfless person, a generous person, not the calculating, self-serving schemer that he was in Egypt,
but instead demonstrating something that Jesus Christ himself taught us in Matthew chapter 6, verse 25.
This is what Jesus said.
Therefore, I tell you, don't worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.
Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing?
Consider the birds of the sky.
They don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Aren't you worth more than they?
Can any of you add one moment to his lifespan by worrying?
And why do you worry about clothes?
Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow.
They don't labor or spin thread, yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these.
If that's how God closed the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow,
won't he do much more for you, you of little faith?
So don't worry, saying, what are we going to eat?
What are we going to drink?
What are we going to wear?
For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all of these things will be provided for you.
Therefore, don't worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own.
That is an amazing teaching for us.
And right in line with what we're seeing here in Abram.
Now, this isn't teaching us, incidentally, to not plan, right?
Stick your head in the sand and just, oh, God will take care of it.
No, we're told otherwise throughout Scripture to exercise wisdom.
But what it is telling us is don't be so worried about your life.
Don't be so worried about your material possessions.
Don't be so worried about your money and your clothes and your food.
Don't be so worried about that, that you take your eyes off of God to protect those things.
Or don't make God a lesser priority than yourself in life when it comes to your life and what you need.
The applications for this are broad.
Don't be stingy with your money.
Be generous, as Jesus is generous.
He says, don't worry about your real needs.
Don't be so worried about your financial position that you're not going to be generous.
He says, look at the grass.
Look how beautiful it is, the lilies of the field.
God did that.
You don't think he's going to take care of your needs?
The birds, right, they don't have to build, you know, chick-fil-a's and stuff.
God just provides.
Meaning that God is taking care of his creation.
How much more value are you than the birds and the lilies of the field?
You who are made after his own image.
And so what that means is we have situations where we have lack.
We have lack, and God is saying, trust me.
Now that doesn't mean, again, don't do what he's calling you to do, right?
It's like the person, you know, and you guys have all heard this story, the floods come in, God save me.
Car drives by, hey, the floods come in, get in.
No, I'm counting on God.
Then the water level rises and the guy gets on his roof.
God, I know you're going to save me.
The boat comes by, hey, man, jump in the boat.
That's all right, I'm praying, God's going to take care of me.
Flood water rises.
Now he's at the tip of his house, the helicopter comes by, drops a ladder.
Get on the ladder.
I don't need that, I'm trusting God, he will save me.
Then the guy drowns in the flood.
And God goes, welcome to heaven.
And the guy goes, I'm kind of disappointed, Lord.
I mean, I was trusting in you.
I was trusting in you to take care of me.
Look, I sent a car and a boat and a helicopter.
What more do you want me to do?
So when you're sick, it's okay to go to the hospital, right?
Sometimes when you have a headache, it's okay to take an aspirin.
When you have situations where it's like, okay, we're lacking here,
it's okay to do things, side hustles or whatever.
But in the process of all that, it's like, God, do you want me to go here?
Do you want me to do this?
Do you want me to take care of this this way?
So the idea of saying, I'm gonna do what I need to do to be a part of what
God's doing in my needs, but I'm not gonna worry because I'm God's child.
He's gonna take care of me.
Don't be so focused on material things that you forget that God is the one who
gives and God is the one who takes away.
Don't be so worried that you're gonna lose everything, that you're hanging
onto it with this desperate hope that this is what's gonna keep my life good.
This is what's gonna protect my life because it could be gone in a second.
God wants us to lean on him and trust him for everything and with everything
because everything is his anyways.
We're so afraid to, at times, and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there aren't
times where we're really worried about things, but we get worried about giving
and our tithing and stuff because, yeah, I can't pay the light bill.
I get that.
But biblically, I see God going, you don't think I could keep the light on?
Now, again, this is all between you and the Lord.
I'm not here to beat that drum, but the idea is trust.
The idea is faith.
God, I can't give my Saturday to go help at this event because then I won't have
time to do ABC, and God's like, you don't think I could take care of ABC?
He wants us to be like him.
That is why he came and lived, that we would have this example.
And so the contrast between the Abrams in these two stories could not be more
defined and more clear, right?
Abram in Egypt, Abram in Canaan.
In Egypt, Abram was consumed with self.
He was focused on his own survival, his own future.
Here, now he's back in Canaan, back to that place where he's like, no, no, no,
I'm just going to go back to that place where it's all about God.
His attitude is, look, Lot, I don't care where you go.
I'm not worried about which part of the land you take, where you go with your
flocks because I know that God's going to take care of both of us.
I trust that fully.
I'm not going to operate out of fear.
I'm not going to operate out of selfishness like I did in Egypt.
And the thing that changed in Abram's life was his faith, right?
Again, as I said earlier, it's not that he left his faith when he went to Egypt.
He just kind of forgot about it.
He just kind of put that on the back shelf as he focused on himself.
But he learned that when he forgot about God in Egypt and tried to trust in his
own ideas, everything fell apart.
He's learning here again that believing in God's bare word, regardless of how
crazy it might seem, was the right and only way to live.
Paul said this in 2 Corinthians 5-7, we walk by faith, not by sight.
How hard is that, right?
How hard is it to hear God say, go and I'll let you know we're there when we
get there?
But he did.
He wasn't a perfect guy along the way by any means, but he believed God.
When he got there, God said, we're here, this is the land I'm going to give to
your descendants.
Abraham believed it.
Okay.
It's ours.
I don't care that there's Canaanites and false gods here.
I believe it.
But when he went down to Egypt, he forgot.
I think he learned that lesson very well because now that he's back in Canaan,
essentially what he's displaying here is the attitude is, look, I could give
away this land a thousand times and it doesn't matter.
It would still go to my descendants.
Why?
Because God said so.
Think about that kind of faith.
I don't have to hang on to the land.
I could give it away.
Why?
Because God said it's going to my descendants, so it's going to my
descendants.
God's promises aren't thwarted by our stupidity.
God's promises aren't thwarted by our disobedience.
We do experience the chastisement when we do the wrong things.
We experience the disobedience.
But if God has said he's going to do something, he's going to do something.
And Abraham's walking in this faith.
He's not looking around and by sight going, well, let me see.
He's just like, look, God said so.
That's all I need.
And that is a life that God wants to develop in all of us.
Remember Jesus, he said, look, a mustard seed of faith and you can move
mountains.
Myself included, had any of us moved a mountain by believing it yet.
So we've got some room to grow our faith, don't we?
Abraham was experiencing just this beautiful, wonderful lifting of his
soul.
I mean, right in the middle of this conflict with Lot, his total trust in
God's promise, his total, like, I don't have to hang on.
Look, go where you want.
Take what you want.
All of that just kind of lifted him up as an example.
Very much like Jesus Christ was the example to us when he lived a life here
on this earth and he didn't look out for his own interests, but he looked out
for the interests of others.
That really is the whole mission that Jesus came to do.
God in the flesh said, I'm going to come live a perfect life.
I'm going to go die on the cross.
Why?
Because I love you and it's good for you to do that.
I have to live a perfect life.
Why?
Because your life is messed up.
So I'm going to suffer the penalty for all the bad stuff you did and then
I'm going to attribute to you the life without sin that I lived.
And it was very altruistic.
It was very about the welfare of others.
Abraham, or Abraham here, was foreshadowing Christ himself.
And all of us that believe today, all of us that today we are the spiritual
offspring of Abraham, when we truly believe that the promises that are ours
in Christ, when we believe them, when we truly understand and believe that we
are seated right now in heavenly places with Christ Jesus, when we truly
understand that all things are ours in Christ, when we get that, we're going to
cease trying to hold on to what we have.
We're going to cease striving to make sure we make our own decisions without
God's input to ensure our future.
We cease walking by sight.
We cease our partial obedience to God.
We then learn to call on God and live and give and serve in the world the way
he wants us to, with wisdom, with planning, yes, but with him as number one
in the priority chain.
Him as number one in the driver's seat guiding our life.
Now, Lot, as a contrast to Abraham here, we're going to see that he was a man
living by sight rather than faith.
He was doing what Abraham did in Egypt.
Look at verse 10.
Lot looked out and saw that the entire plain of the Jordan, as far as Zohar,
was well watered everywhere like the Lord's Garden in the land of Egypt.
This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.
So Lot chose the entire plain of the Jordan for himself.
Then Lot journeyed eastward and they separated from each other.
Abram lived in the land of Canaan, but Lot lived in the cities on the plain and
set up his tent near Sodom.
Now, the men of Sodom were evil, sinning immensely against the Lord.
I had a really cool picture I was going to show you guys, but I can't do that.
So I'm going to try and describe it as best I can.
If you look at Israel, the land of Israel, there's a lot of hills and mountains.
But on the eastern side of Israel, there's a mountain range that's here and a
mountain range that's here.
In the middle of that is this valley called the Jordan Valley.
It's where the Dead Sea is.
Now, if you visited it in modern days, it's a pretty desolate-looking place.
But as this valley that had this water flowing through it at the time, it was a
very verdant and green plain that was dotted with cities.
As this place called the Plain of Jordan, there was also cities there that were
known as the cities on the plain.
You see, Abram and Lot are standing in this hilly area by Bethel.
There's a hill that's just a few miles north of Bethel called, what is it?
I wrote it down somewhere.
I can't find it.
It's a hill, okay?
But it's the highest peak in central Israel.
And really from that peak, you can see all the way to the borders in every
You can see out to the sea, the Mediterranean.
You can see to the northern mountain range.
You can see the whole place.
And Abram is standing there and going, Lot, where do you want to go?
So Lot looks down and sees the greenest part of the area, the most lush part of
the area down there in the Jordan Valley and says, that's where I want to go.
Now, this was the place where cities like Sodom and Gomorrah existed, a city
named Adma, a city named Zeboim, and a city named Zohar, which was way down at
the south past what we know today as the Dead Sea.
Now, again, Moses is writing this in the wilderness.
Israel is reading this, and Israel is going the Jordan Valley because at their
time it was a wasteland.
And so Moses includes the parenthetical, this was before the Lord destroyed
Sodom and Gomorrah, right?
And so they're reading this.
They're telling the story about what Lot saw was the physical place of
blessing.
It's really interesting because it says when Lot looked down there and saw it,
it said it looked like the Lord's garden to him, referring to the Garden of
Eden, which was a place of abundance, right?
He also says it reminded him of Egypt, which is that Nile area that they had
just come back from that was all full of life and full of everything that they
think they needed or thought they needed in the midst of the famine in Canaan.
And so Lot, having been in Egypt, watched Abram do what he did, boom, they were
blessed abundantly with riches, very possibly coming back and going, why are we
leaving this place?
Like that promised land thing, it's hills.
It's hills and dirt.
And then they finally get back and their flocks are so huge and now they're
fighting.
Abram's like, hey, wherever you want to go.
I'm going to go down to that place that reminds me of the Garden of the Lord.
I'm going to go to that place that reminds me of Egypt.
But the problem was, is he was walking by sight.
He was looking at what appealed to his vision, what he thought would be the best
physical blessing for him.
Now, it's very ominous that it refers to Eden in Egypt because in both of those
places, judgment happens.
And then it also tells us that he went eastward.
We've talked about that earlier in Genesis, that every time you see somebody
or group going eastward or to the east or from the east, every time that's
involved, what it represents is a people that are drifting away from God.
And this is what Lot represents for us.
Now, the decision was easy for him.
The tragedy is that Lot had a share in the land of Canaan, in the promised land,
being a part of the family of Abram.
But he chose to move to the very edge, as close to the edge as he could, to be
as close to the outside of the land without really ever leaving the promised
land.
Does that sound familiar to anybody?
How close to the world can I be and still be a Christian?
How close to the line can I get?
Because where did it say he pitched his tent?
Sodom.
What does Moses tell us here?
The men of Sodom were evil, sinning immensely against the Lord, and yet
that's where this man, Lot, wanted to go live.
Why?
Well, it's going to benefit me personally, physically.
So he went eastward.
And then it tells us that the men of Sodom were evil, sinning immensely.
It's an interesting phrase in the Hebrew, sinning immensely, because what it
suggests is that they were a step worse than what would be your normal
run-of-the-mill sinner.
This phrase in Hebrew, it's rare to refer to, but it says, like, they're
sinners, and then there were the men in Sodom.
Right?
Like, the men in Sodom made the sinners look like righteous people.
Those types of phrases that we've said sometimes in our own lives.
And we're going to see how bad they are when we get to chapter 19.
But the physical material prosperity of the valley, of these five cities that
were down there that were doing very well, it wowed Lot.
He was like, oh, my gosh, that's amazing.
But just like Abram, we can't look at Lot and go, you're a terrible person,
and you're a horrible person.
Because 2 Peter chapter 2 verse 7 refers to him as righteous Lot.
So as far as Scripture is concerned, Lot was still a righteous man.
What that means is we can deduce from that that he was likely a man who would
definitely choose heaven over hell, right?
When it comes to the spiritual things, of course I want heaven over hell.
Who would want hell?
But when it came to heaven over the earth and what the earth could give,
that's where he started to have a little problem in his decision making.
Because wow, look at this valley, look at all this place has to give to me.
Lot's an example of believers, saved people who choose hoarding over
generosity, who choose selfishness over selflessness, people who choose
anything that's going to elevate them or their family name or whatever at the
expense of being sacrificial.
And Lot is the picture of the man walking by sight, not by faith, and it was
the biggest mistake of his life.
And so after Abram had this awesome display of altruistic faith, knowing
that he could give the land away a thousand times and it would still come
back to his people, watching Lot choose what visibly looked the best, even
though it was almost outside of the promised land, God again speaks to Abram
in verse 14.
After Lot had separated from him, the Lord said to Abram, look from the
place where you are, look north and south and east and west, for I will give
you and your offspring forever all the land that you see.
I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth so that if anyone could
count the dust of the earth, well then they could count your offspring as
well.
Get up and walk around the land through its length, through its width, for I
will give it to you.
So this is from that area in Bethel and this is where I wrote down the name
of that hill, right?
It's Ramath Hazor, okay?
The highest point in central Israel and so a lot of people think that's
exactly where he was standing just north of Bethel looking at the four
compass points all around him.
Now it's very interesting that it's the same language here.
The look of intensity that is used of Lot looking down into the valley and
seeing, oh, it's so great, right?
It's like looking with, man, this is, I'm focusing.
I'm not just taking a quick glance, but I'm really taking it in.
But this time instead of Abram looking around, it's God saying, look here, look
here, look here, look.
Lot went and chose what he thought was the best.
And then God says, but look what I'm giving you.
Look what I'm giving you.
You're not seeking any of this out, but I'm going to give this to you.
And so God's reaffirming and further defining his promise to Abram of a land
and a people.
Now again, from that point, if you looked north from Ramath Hazor, you could
see Mount Hermon in the north, which was the farthest northern limit of the
land conquered by Joshua.
You look to the east, you'd be able to see the Dead Sea and Hebron to the
south.
Hebron was actually the place where Abram purchased a burial place for his
family.
He could see, oh, that was to the south.
He could see Jordan to the east, and then if you look west, he could see the
Mediterranean Sea.
And God said, that's all yours.
I'm giving it to you.
Again, verbally promising the land.
What does it mean when God promises something?
It means it's unbreakable.
It means it's sure.
This particular promise was unconditional.
He didn't say, Abram, if I will give this to you.
He just said, Abram, look around.
It's all yours.
We have to be people who depend on God's promises like that.
That is the kind of faith God wants to build within us.
When God says something that is so insanely impossible in our mind, we don't
start with, well, I don't understand.
Let's debate.
We just start with God said so.
It's going to happen.
Now, yeah, we have to do the exercise of discerning God's will, and we study
his word to learn his will.
We get counsel from godly people to learn his will.
But when you know what God said, you rest on that.
God said, okay, I don't have to doubt.
I don't have to question.
And there's so much more peace in your life when you're just like, okay, God
said so.
You start going, what about this?
What about this?
Don't mess with me with all that stuff.
God said so.
I'm good.
I'm at peace.
Can you imagine the faith it took Abram?
Hey, God, I'm God.
I'm speaking to you.
Go.
I'm not going to tell you where we are.
Okay.
He eventually got there.
Hey, this is the place that I'm giving to your descendants.
Awesome.
Praise God.
He worshiped.
See, through that whole place where Abram walked through the land, he
believed God's promises.
Now, yeah, we have this detour into Egypt where he failed.
And now he's coming back and returning to that place.
Now, God mentions offspring three times here, and he says your offspring is
going to be like the dust of the earth, right?
Like if somebody could count all the grains of dust, then they could count
your offspring.
It's really neat because later in Genesis 15, 5, he tells Abram, look up.
Your offspring are going to be as numerous as the stars in the sky.
And it's just this beautiful thing that he's telling Abram, look, as you're
going to walk through the land, right, and you know, sometimes when you walk,
you're looking down at where you're going.
Here's all that dust you're going to see.
And then later on, he says, you know, when you're camping at night and you're
looking up into the sky, whether Abram looked up or down, he was continually
reminded that him and his barren wife were going to become a great nation in
this land.
Now, the whole idea of walking around the land, some early Jewish commentaries
point out that it was a practice of the early days that you took legal
possession of something if you kind of walked around the borders.
And so the altars that Abraham was doing as he traveled from the north to the
south before he went to Egypt was a symbolic possession, like I'm taking
possession, but this is kind of like the legal, like I'm finalizing the
contract here.
And so what it is a picture of, though, is Abram seeing what was previously
unseen.
The land that I will show you was unseen.
Abraham walked by faith.
He got to the land.
He said, hey, this is the place, but Abraham hadn't seen every corner of it
yet, but Abraham believed God's promise.
Faith in the promise was now enough for him, and so God goes, okay, now that
you have the faith that I've been trying to build in you, let me show you
everything I have for you.
Hebrews 11 tells us faith is the reality of what is hoped for and the proof of
what is not seen.
You see, I don't think God can tell us everything he has in store for us
because we either won't believe it or will deny it or will argue with him
about it, but when we as his children get to the place where we say, God, you
promised this.
I believe you.
I don't need evidence.
I don't need to, well, can you show me what it's going to look like?
I don't need any of that, God.
I just believe you because you're God and you said it.
When we get to that point, I think that's when God starts to reveal more of
what he has for us in our life because as our faith grows to that point, we're
not going to argue with God when he shows us this is what I have for you.
When we get to that point where we say, cool, you said it, I'm there.
Okay, let me show you what's next.
Cool, God, I don't need that, but hey, thanks for showing it to me.
I'm going to go no matter what.
What if God showed you that, hey, I want you to believe in me because the next
thing I have for you is martyrdom?
How many of us would say, okay, God, you said go, I'm going?
Now, every single one of us, right, I'd do it, of course, but when the rubber
meets the road, we'd be like, ah, right?
Very important things, wife, family, kids, job, other things like, well, I
wanted to accomplish it, right?
So he doesn't say you're going to be martyred there.
What he says is go to a place I'm going to show you because he's going to do a
thing in your life.
Now, I'm not saying we're all going to get martyred when we follow God now, but
if it was that, would you follow?
And I think the reason that God doesn't always tell us those things is because
he's building our faith.
He's building our faith through where we become those people who just say, God,
you said it, I'm going to go.
And so now that Abram is in that place and now he's like, hey, look, I could
give this away a thousand times, God goes, okay, cool.
Well, a lot left.
We'll deal with that later.
But now look at everything.
I'm going to show you the borders of what I'm giving you and I want you to walk
the whole thing.
And so with his faith walk completed, the story concludes in verse 18.
So Abram moved his tent and went to live near the Oaks of Mamre in Hebron where
he built an altar to the Lord.
So now it's a third altar that he's built.
You know, this whole thing from him getting to the land, falling, coming back
to the land, really it's bookended with worship, with beautiful, peaceful, sweet,
contented Abram worshiping God.
When he was trusting God, it was altars and worship.
When he trusted himself, it was failure, no altars, no worship.
When he came back to trusting God again, it was now again altars and worship.
As the story opened with Abram, he's here in chapter 13 humbled by his
experience in Egypt.
And it ends here with him building a third altar at Hebron covering this whole
thing in his praise to God.
Now I think what would be best is if we had the front end and the back end and
just skip the middle part, right?
But that's not the reality of our life.
As much as we want it to be, it's not the reality of our life because our sin
nature still dwells with us.
And so we have stories like this to remind us and to encourage us that we're
going to go from Abram entering the land to Abram in Egypt to Abram entering
the land again to the next fall, to the next success, the next fall, the next
success, over and over and over.
And God allows all those things to happen in our life because he's molding
our character.
He's teaching us to trust him.
He's teaching us to return to him when we've stumbled.
He's teaching us how to believe that when he says you're saved, you're saved.
How many people do you know or maybe this is you that every time you stumble
into sin, you start questioning it, am I even saved?
Does God love me?
How could he love me?
You go back to the Word.
You go, yeah, I see the promises where God says I love you.
I saved you.
You're mine.
But I'm not sure.
Well, you know what?
God needs to work that out in your life before he takes you to the next thing he
has for you.
And it's going to be this constant up and down.
The goal is to have more ups than downs.
And we do that as we draw closer to the Lord.
And so looking at Abram and Lot's story side by side, yeah, it teaches us a
whole lot.
Lot chose the things that were seen and he ended up being corrupted by those
things.
Still saved.
Still righteous Lot, but we don't see God using Lot to do a whole lot in the
Bible, do we?
He kind of got set aside, if you will, because of his own choices.
Abram saw through the eyes of faith.
And because he believed God's promises at this point, he said, okay, I'm not
going to rely on myself anymore.
I believe your promises.
He ended up then seeing what was unseen.
But it didn't matter.
It didn't change his faith.
He already possessed that which was unseen because it was as visible to him as
if he had it already.
Abraham found assurance in that.
He found peace in that.
Such assurance, such peace that he could give the land away knowing it's going
to be his anyways because God said so.
And because of that, he was able to live this altruistic faith where Abraham
could be devoted and committed to the needs of others, not his own.
God's taking care of me, so let me worry about you.
That was where we find Abraham getting to here.
It was a faith that expressed itself in unselfish regard for the welfare of
others.
Why?
Because he didn't have a doubt in his mind that God was going to take care of
him.
So he didn't have to worry about those things.
And because Abraham walked in faith, God revealed more and made those promises
clearer to him.
Look north, south, east, west.
It's the same for us when we come to that place where we say, God, I don't
need to see the outcome to believe you.
I don't even need you to explain it to me.
You just said it.
I believe it.
When we're in that place, we find that God is going to reveal more and more to
us of what he has in store for us because he knows it's not going to affect our
faith.
Lastly, we have Abraham here compared with Abraham in Egypt.
That really just represents all that we are, right?
People of faith who live in doubt, a strange mixture of trust and distrust,
this paradox of God, you're my God.
Oh, I don't believe you can get me out of this over and over and over again.
Abraham in Egypt was a shriveled, sad, worried, fearful, selfish man with a
selfish heart.
Abraham in Canaan now, large.
He's a man that's at peace.
He's a man that has an altruistic heart, and so the closing application for us
is which heart do you want to have?
As a believer, as a child of God here today in this world, which heart do you
want to have?
Do you want to have the Abraham in Egypt heart or do you want to have the
Abraham back in Canaan heart?
Do you want to have the heart that says, God, I believe you're God, but let me
take care of it and watch it all fall apart?
Or, God, I believe you're God, just because you said so, I believe it.
I don't need an explanation.
I'm just going to follow you.
One of those comes by trusting in God's promises and then living that out.
The other one comes by distrusting God's promises and trying to figure it out on
your own.
The distrust leads to a constricted life, an ineffective walk of faith because
you're walking by sight.
You're only believing based upon what you could see, and unfortunately, you
end up very little used to God in that because he can't get past you limiting
yourself by your sight.
He can do whatever he wants, but he's trying to get you to choose.
But trusting, when we trust God, when we say, God, you said it, I believe,
that's it.
A faithfulness will rise in you that is going to allow you to live this life
here without worry, without fear.
That faithfulness where you say, God, I trust you no matter what, is going to
allow you to live this life with boldness, with confidence.
I don't have to grasp for and try to hold on things because, hey, God knows
what I need.
Living that type of life is living after the example of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who trusted in God.
Jesus trusted in the Father for everything.
He gave of himself to the point of death for the welfare of others.
And he was raised up to the right hand of God for it.
Through our trust in him, we are coheirs with Jesus Christ.
We are sitting today in heavenly places with him.
Every decision is just working that out in our lives.
And so I pray that we would all be people of faith, that God would increase our
faith, that God would keep growing it beyond bounds, that we would be people
who believe the impossible without question.
Why?
Because God is God.
That as we live our lives trusting him in everything and saying, okay, God,
you told me to work, and if I don't work, I don't eat.
Okay, I'm going to go to work.
But God, I trust you with how that works out.
God, you told me to do the work of an evangelist even if I'm not an
evangelist.
So I'm going to trust you and do that even though I'm scared.
God, I'm going to believe your promises that you say you're going to bless me
when this happens.
I'm going to live based on those things that we would truly have a blessed life,
a content life, a peaceful life, and a real powerful life in the power of the
Holy Spirit.
Amen?
Let's pray.
Father, I do pray, God, that you increase our faith.
We're so thankful, God, that you came to this earth, that you clothed yourself in
the frailty that is our human frame, that you lived a life tempted in every way
we are, challenged in every way we are, yet you got through it without ever
stumbling, ever sinning, and that, God, then you went to the cross to die for
our sins, to pay the price for our salvation, that, Lord, through faith we
would be able to take each step of faith in our lives moving forward, stumbling,
getting back up, stumbling, and getting back up, Lord, yet not having to worry
about does God still love me?
Am I still saved?
Because that work is done.
So, Lord, we ask that you would increase our faith that we would be people who
would believe more than we ever have, to believe the impossible, to believe,
Lord, that we could reach not just hundreds but thousands and millions with
the gospel, even in our little church, Lord, that we would believe that in the
impossibility of our finances and our work that, God, you're going to take care
of us because you take care of the birds and the grass, that, Lord, when you call
us to step out in faith in things we don't understand, we don't wait until we
understand it, but we step out anyways, trusting that if you want to reveal it
to us so we can understand that you'll do that, but not ever thinking that we
need that before we'll obey God.
Lord, help us to be like Abraham and Canaan, not Abraham in Egypt.
Lord, we're going to learn so much from this man's life, and I just pray, God,
that we would learn from his mistakes, we would learn from his successes, God,
because you gave us this word that we would grow closer to you through it.
Use us, Lord, bless us.
We love you so much.
It's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
Let's worship church.