Month: February 2018

Did you ever take a short cut that ended in a mess? We all love shortcuts, because they make us feel like we are clever. The problem is the fastest way to do something isn’t always the best way to do it. Ask anyone who works at a barbecue stand and they will tell you that grilling hamburgers on the hottest setting won’t get burgers on the table more quickly; the practice will simply burn the meat into inedible hockey pucks. And while taking the shortcut under the rail overpass might work in your car, you shouldn’t try it with your tractor trailer (show picture of trailer stuck under bridge overpass).

Abraham lacked information about something going wrong in his life. We know he was anxious about it, because the record we read in the last lesson reminds us:

Genesis 15:3 And Abram said, “Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.” 4 Then behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, “This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.” 5 And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” 6 Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.

He believed God’s promise, but didn’t see God’s results. What to do? He decided to take the PART of the promise he understood and fill in the other part. What should he have done?

Key Principle: To avoid painful results, seek more information from God about your problem.

The apparent problem: God hadn’t delivered…yet.

Genesis 16:1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife had borne him no [children]…

The apparent problem was a lack of child – the real problem was a lack of patience with God. Be aware that many of our problems are actually nothing more than masked impatience. We want comfort, peace and security NOW. If we don’t get it now, we assume God isn’t on duty doing what He has promised.

The truth is God didn’t promise comfort and He didn’t offer a time table for many things in our life. He offered Himself – and no one in the story seems to be seeking Him!

The apparent solution: Use the law.

Genesis 16:1b …and she had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar.

The apparent solution is to enact the legal mechanism of allowing conception through one in the household under the wife’s command – the real solution was to seek the Lord about the barrenness of the womb.

In the absence of seeking the Lord, there is always looking to other people. That is why prayer meetings often devolve into discussion groups with a few minutes of complimentary prayer. It is hard to seek the Lord, but easy to seek the counsel of others. Learning to seek Him is a necessary part of the maturing process for any believer.

The apparent understanding: God left the plan to us.

Genesis 16:2 So Sarai said to Abram, “Now behold, the LORD has prevented me from bearing [children]. Please go in to my maid; perhaps I will obtain children through her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 After Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Abram’s wife Sarai took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife. 4 He went in to Hagar, and she conceived…

The apparent understanding of God’s delay was that He wanted them to figure out another way to get His promise fulfilled – the real understanding should have been as simple as God sending an invitation to ask Him.

Look at the steps:

First, Sarai concluded (without asking God) their lack of conception was an intentional work of God designed to force them to step in to fix the situation.

God’s delay may have had many purposes, but she projected an understanding of God’s plan she didn’t have. Without any idea as to what God was doing, she figured out something that WOULD WORK that didn’t really require God to do anything extraordinary. In her practicality, she delayed the miracle she would experience. Often, when we get really good at finding answers, we get really bad at seeking God.

What Sarah proposed was the custom of the day even if it seems strange to us now. Remember, they had short life-spans (comparatively) and high infant mortality and natal mortality rates. Many women died giving birth just as many infants died. Customs were created to compensate. God didn’t cancel them until much later, in 1 Corinthians 7, where polygamy and multiple sexual partners were all forbidden.

Some of you may object to me sounding hard on Sarai. After all, perhaps she thought she was just being practical. A long time passed with no child and neither she nor her husband was getting younger. Why was the short cut a bad idea? Maybe it wasn’t. Without asking God why He was delaying the baby, they would never know.

Second, Abraham decided Sarai’s idea made sense, so he also sought nothing from the Lord.

God engaged Abe with promises. He wasn’t silent. Abe knew how to talk to God, but he leaned on the words of Sarai for the method of fulfillment of the words of his God. That is unwise. Sometimes it seems the more we learn to depend on people, the less we really seem to need God. Your pursuit of God needs to be personal. It doesn’t mean you cannot learn from others, it means you cannot substitute what others say for seeking God Himself.

As much as we desire to teach you to use the Scriptures well, it will take practice.

Did any of you ever have a coach show you how to throw a basketball into the hoop? The positioning of the elbow, the flexing of the wrist, and the gentle release off the finger tips are all part of the proper form. Yet, all the form instruction in the world cannot make up for practicing techniques that will show when the game gets tough.

To be clear, when we speak of “allowing God to work through us” we do not speak of something passive. It is a practiced proficiency. It is a communication skill initiated intentionally and developed over time and with careful repetition. It is the work of one who would spend much time asking God to direct steps and less time figuring out a way to make broken people behave and broken situations find immediate resolution.

One of the greatest lies Christians believe is that prayer is what you do when you can’t figure out what else to do.

That isn’t true at all. Prayer is what you do to allow God to put answers in place when you need them!

If we retreat to a counselor when we really need to pray, we get the best wisdom of a man or woman – but not necessarily the counsel of the All Knowing One. It doesn’t mean the counselor was deficient. It means God placed the problem in front of us in order that we would seek Him, and we are running from His desire. We have nothing to give God but ourselves – but that is what He seeks. Sometimes intractable problems are nothing less than an invitation of the Almighty to sit and chat for a while.

If you are honestly encountering this truth and you know that you really want God to just leave you alone and let you do what you want to do – at least be honest with yourself. There is nothing wrong with the teaching – the issues are within you. No amount of Bible reading, Bible instruction or preaching will change that reality. You are wasting your time if you won’t bring your heart to God. You can learn volumes from the Bible and perform a moral service with your daily behavior, but Jesus will still say of you: “This people honors me with their lips, but there heart is far from Me.” Worship beckons us to bow, but only we can choose to hear the call and do it.

The apparent result: God’s blessed Abraham!?!

It seemed obvious that God offered a wonderful blessing to Abraham, and certainly any of us would consider a baby a blessing of the Lord no matter HOW it was conceived.

Genesis 16:4b …and when she saw that she had conceived,

Every child is God’s blessing, not only the ones a settled, stable, married couple conceives. Every child opens a new world of possibilities. Every great invention of mankind began with a baby’s birth. Some of those inventions came from children born into nearly impossible situations.

At the same time, we need to recognize that God put up fences for a reason. He delayed the baby, not because He forgot about His promise, nor because He lost the formula to create them in the womb – He did it for His own purpose. When we crash through the fences of God, we encounter unintended beasts that live behind those fences.

Abe welcomed Hagar into his bed and some of the results were predictable. The baby was the blessing part of that. At the same time, when Hagar realized she was pregnant, more than just her belly puffed up, so did her head. What Sarai tried to accomplish for a long time took her a mere evening. It may seem funny, but to Hagar, even fertility was a contest. The text went on:

Genesis 16:4b …her mistress was despised in her sight. 5 And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done me be upon you. I gave my maid into your arms, but when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her sight. May the LORD judge between you and me.

Try as I may, I cannot understand how Sarai turned this into an argument with Abraham! At the risk of sounding obvious, though, I must confess to having a critical flaw – that of being a man.

Instead of pure blessing, what Abe got was a migraine. One gal was pregnant and the other was mad at him. This wasn’t going well at all! Keep reading the story, because it only gets worse.

Genesis 16:6 But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your maid is in your power; do to her what is good in your sight.” So Sarai treated her harshly, and she fled from her presence.

Can you believe what Abraham did? To make his wife happy, Abe became passive rather than seeking a solution that honored the promised offspring. Don’t forget that! God promised him a child from his loins, and now he had one. If this was the long awaited child that God promised, he had no business treating a gift of God as something less than sacred.

That is part of the problem with fixing things ourselves.

When we don’t seek God about a problem, but rather ingeniously fix it ourselves, we aren’t as certain the “answer” isn’t just something we concocted.

We can end up missing the greatest part of God’s work because we think we “goofed” and went the wrong way. We won’t be sure. How can we?

The text followed Hagar into the desert:

Genesis 16:7 Now the angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. 8 He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from and where are you going?” And she said, “I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.” 9 Then the angel of the LORD said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority.” 10 Moreover, the angel of the LORD said to her, “I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count.” 11 The angel of the LORD said to her further, “Behold, you are with child, and you will bear a son; and you shall call his name Ishmael, because the LORD has given heed to your affliction. 12 He will be a wild donkey of a man, his hand [will be] against everyone, and everyone’s hand [will be] against him; and he will live to the east of all his brothers.”

God interrupted the regularly scheduled program to bring an emergency message to Hagar in order that she treat the baby with special care, and keep the baby with Abraham for his infancy and young life. Without taking every aspect of these verses into consideration, think about the promises.

First, she was commanded to return home, no matter the condition of her treatment. She was also told to respect the authority of Sarai in the home. God didn’t just send her back; He commanded change in her.

Second, she was encouraged with the message that she would bear a son, and from that boy would come a great company of people. She was told to name him “God has heard” to remind the family that God knew what happened in the whole story.

Third, she was promised the boy would be like the desert onacker, a wild donkey of great worth, but difficult to domesticate. Despite the translation of verse twelve, the Hebrew made clear, “His hand would be in everyone’s hand, and everyone’s hand would be in his.” This appears to have been a promise the boy would be deeply tied to the economy of all the other people in the region.

Finally, the end of the story offered the ONLY PERSON in the account who took what God promised back to the feet of the Lord Himself. Hagar was the one person in the story who did the right thing! The text reads:

Genesis 16:13 Then she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, “You are a God who sees”; for she said, “Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?” 14 Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered. 15 So Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him.

What a scene! Hagar dropped in worship and did what God instructed. What a difference in how the story unfolded if Abraham and Sarah had done so back in verse 2!!! The whole situation came about because of impatience with God’s time table and the feeling that someone needed to “right the wrong” they felt.

Hagar knew life would be bearable with the knowledge the Angel of the Lord was watching over her. She called God El Roi, which means: “the God who sees me.” Even a sassy servant who ran away was in His grasp learned God didn’t miss things or mess up things.

When we turn to Him and trust Him, the outcome is left in His hands – where it belongs.

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt God may have taken a vacation? Have you wondered why things happened that pummeled your life when (remarkably) it wasn’t your fault? May I remind you that God sees you too! He sees how overwhelmed you are caring for loved ones. He recognizes the challenges you have on your job. He understands how you feel when people treat you badly at school. He feels your pain when loneliness eats away at you. He sees, and He cares. He doesn’t want you to fix the world – He wants you to find Him in the situation.

James has a reminder for us when we are in this situation:

James 1:2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have [its] perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 6 But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, 8 [being] a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

Did you notice what James revealed?

• He told us that we WOULD encounter various trials – it wasn’t an IF, but a WHEN. It shouldn’t be a surprise to us that God hasn’t exempted His children from the pains of a fallen world.

• He cautioned us to consider or reckon such times with JOY – the resolute assurance that God has neither lost interest, nor the power to deal with my problems. He doesn’t call you to feign “happiness” but rather to exude JOY. The latter is a confidence in God and His abilities.

• He made clear that trials can “dot the landscape” of our lives. The term “polka dot” comes from the word used of the number of trials. Life can and will occasionally get “bombed” by trials.

• He explained that trials have a purpose – the tempering of the metal of our faith. They are necessary to complete our maturity and readiness of God’s use. To push against the trials is to push against His shaping work.

What can we do when we are in the midst of a spattering of troubles?

We can trust God’s generosity is answering our painful cries. We can call on Him. We can, with confidence in His engagement and His goodness, reach out to Him for clarity in the storm. If we doubt His goodness, we will not recognize His voice. If we disbelieve His power, we won’t grab His hand for rescue.

In short, to avoid painful results, seek more information from God about your problem.

Look at the situation as an invitation to sit with God. When you do, may I offer three little insights you may want to consider:

First, don’t try to figure out God – work at following Him. Your problem isn’t as big as your God. The real issue is you don’t know why He has you where He does. As long as you resist God’s direction, you may get deeper into the problem because you won’t go where He commands. Instead of conditionally following (i.e. “I will do this if you show me what it all means and where it all goes”) – decide that it is HIS WORK to get you safely into His arms. Concentrate on knowing His character as it is revealed in His Word, and work at your attitude of willingness to respond to His command.

Second, don’t try to work for God – learn to let Him work through you. Again, this isn’t passive. Look closely at the models both in Scripture and in life of people who have learned how to let God work without giving Him advice and trying to push Him around.

Third, don’t try to find the solution to your problem – try to discern His leading in the problem. In the end, since the problem is smaller than God, the real issue isn’t how to solve the situation, it is to understand what God wants you to do or be in that place. Many believers don’t learn what God wanted them to do in troubles, because they are focused on the troubles and not on God’s lesson.

We live in a great time, we really do. I can walk into a store and purchase a tool to help me complete almost any task. That was true a generation ago. What wasn’t true was the fact that I can now order something I cannot get access to locally and it will be shipped to my door in a few days – in some places it will be flown out on a little drone.

Though we live in a small town, we can have Chinese, Thai, Mexican or Italian food any day of the week. Our supermarkets contain items grown and shipped from around the world, sent fresh to our supermarket chain. We can go a little over an hour away and get on an airplane that is made of four million distinct parts derived from shops in 13 nations and use that assembled aircraft to travel to another continent within the same day. We can get in our car and drive over to the east coast of Florida and watch a satellite get launched into space. Our lives are remarkable!

One of the things travel can do is allow you to compare how different cultures accomplish tasks and build great edifices. Traveling to Europe, I find the buildings inspiring, but I have to admit that on occasion they have left me feeling a little empty when I compare the works I have seen to the “quick and easy” lifestyle we have developed here. I admit it; the old buildings (like the great cathedrals) make me yearn sometimes for a bit more craftsmanship here at home. All our “instantly ready” microwaved meals and instant fixes to our building project needs leaves me recognizing there really is little emphasis on skilled craftsman and the quality products they crafted for longevity. Our way has advantages, but it also has some real limitations…

I guess as long as I can visit those carefully hand crafted master works it really isn’t that big a deal, but the sense of the instant does take its toll on us. One of the ways is in our theology. In our day, I don’t believe we are set up to understand how God does things – because our lives are focused far more on immediate satisfaction than long term craftsmanship.

If we want to understand how things are put together, we need to recognize something: God is a Master Craftsman. He operates on a different schedule than we do. His level of exacting detail may appear to be a slow way to respond to things, but He works for eternity and does it “over the long haul.” God, like any skilled craftsman that takes after Him, simply refuses to RUSH. At the same time, what He builds lasts for as many generations as He chooses. In our lesson today from Genesis 15, we will clearly see an encouraging truth…

Key Principle: God may take His time keeping His promises, but we should have confidence in the fact that He always keeps them in every detail.

If you have been following our lessons through the life of Abraham, you know that chapter 15 unfolded after what happened when he got back from the fight to rescue his nephew Lot. He led a victory charge and brought the people and spoils of war back to Canaan from the raiders that had taken them away to Syria. A victory parade ensued, as did some conversations that seemed as much like high level negotiations as they did a celebration of victory. If you read chapter 14 carefully, there appeared to be some undercurrent tensions with the King of Sodom named Bera but there was welcome praise and encouragement from a priestly leader named Melchizedek. Abraham returned to his tent, cleaned the dust of travel and the blood of the fight from his sandals and got some rest.

After some time God showed up again to the Patriarch…

Genesis 15:1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; your reward shall be very great.”

Perhaps he was still pondering in his heart the words of King Bera and King Melchizedek from the celebration part of his recent victory, where each spoke to Abraham of reward. Maybe those words got him thinking about God’s blessings and promises. Neither king knew Abe was struggling in his heart with the very issue of reward, because God made a promise, but was slow on delivery.

Over the years, God had appeared to him a number of times. You can trace them in Genesis. I label each of them in my own study to remind me of their major features. Beginning in Genesis 12, trace them with me for a moment. God gave Abraham…

• An “Emptying” Promise: The first meeting was in Genesis 12:1-3, when God told Abram to move out to a country God would show him, and that God would make Abram a blessing to all nations. This set up Abraham’s great “trust exchange” where he was to give up what he knew for what God promised based solely on the Word of God. It was an “emptying promise” because he had to empty his life of his own stuff in order to gain what God wanted him to have.

Later, God appeared again. The next time it was:

• A “Defined” Promise: The second meeting (recorded in 12:7) revealed to Abram that he would receive all the land he could see for his descendants. He wasn’t only going to have a city; he would have a nation. It wouldn’t only be a piece of land for him; it was an inheritance for his many children yet to be born.

God appeared yet again. This time in another meeting recorded in 13:14, he received…

• An “Extended” Promise: After Abraham separated from Lot and showed incredible generosity, God promised Abraham the land allotment would be forever his for his family. That promise implied that his family would never be wiped out in war, and made plain the perpetual land ownership of that specific inheritance on the ground as God revealed to him earlier.

Afterward, God appeared again for a fourth meeting. In it, He offered Abraham what I call…

• A “Specified” Promise: God offered an additional promise to Abe: Your household will have great reward. Abram asked “How?” God replied, “Your seed will be many, and come from YOU!”

Go back to Genesis 15:2. Listen to Abe’s heart, as he pleads a case before a “Master Craftsman God.” Nothing appears to be happening in the baby department. Time is passing and he isn’t getting any younger, and neither is his wife. The fact remained that he had a promise of God, but no delivery on that promise yet. The “Master Craftsman of Heaven” was at work, meticulously designing the fulfillment to His promise. Abraham had to learn that God is an artist that doesn’t over promise. In His time, what He delivers is beyond anything we could imagine.

I suspect after the rush of the victory and the thrill of the homecoming parade were over, Abe found himself wondering about God’s earlier promises. The public affirmation brought to the surface a deep gnawing inside: He wanted God to make good on His powerful promises.

In many ways, his feeling matched the record of Zacharias in Luke 1, who had a similar and familiar story. Decades passed and Zach and Liz didn’t have the baby they longed for, just like Abe and Sarah many generations before.

The factor that was most bothersome to both of those Biblical families is this: God took His time delivering the answer to their deepest longings. Let that sink in… God isn’t in a hurry in your circumstance, but He will keep every promise He has made.

Look at Genesis 15 again as Abe openly revealed his angst:

Genesis 15:2 Abram said, “O Lord God, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.”

There it is! Abe placed the pain of his impatience out in the open before God. He believed that God would keep His Word, but Abe wasn’t sure he understood how. Even more, I think there is reason to believe Abe wasn’t certain God understood how he felt about the slowly fulfilled promise. Remember, Abe didn’t have the benefit of a complete Bible to really understand God as He later revealed Himself.

The Patriarch’s words were few. He made clear that God had given him a great household, but no offspring from his loins. He made clear that he was preparing a servant to be his heir. God patiently listened and replied. “Nice plan, Abe. Wrong answer, but nice plan…”

The conversation is one of the most intimate displays of a caring God in the whole Bible. God reached deeply into Abe’s heart and gave him the promises he needed to pick up the shield of God and walk through life with it.

Genesis recorded:

Genesis 15:4 Then behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.” 5 And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”

• God told him Eliezer of Damascus would not and should not be his heir, but he would rather come from his own loins (Genesis 15:4). It is worth mentioning this wasn’t the only time Abe would take the promises of God, see a gap in them, and make his own plan to fill in the blank spaces. It was a reasonable thing to do, but it wasn’t the way the Master Craftsman wanted the thing built. Craftsmen often don’t work for efficiency as much as eloquence in the build. Long after the “need” was met, we see that God’s way of meeting it took care of issues we never anticipated at the time. We are anxious, but God is incredibly thorough!

• God offered an object lesson in the stars and told him clearly his house would be great in number (Genesis 15:5). The stars weren’t only many in numbers, but diverse in appearance and beautiful to behold. Abe didn’t miss the lesson.

Presented with the knowledge that God had a plan to build a huge household for and from Abe, the Patriarch bowed before God in recognition that he truly believed what he heard.

The text revealed:

Genesis 15:6 Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.

The term “believed” (awman) was a form of the word that came from the building trade. It appears to have originally meant “to build upon” or “to set to give stability.” It is a foundational term sometimes used of doorposts. Abraham’s belief in what God said showed when he built his life upon it. That single act was counted as righteousness, and the record of it echoes throughout Scripture…

As we have studied together, it is clear God had his hand on Abraham’s life for a long time before this event, but something dramatic happened at this point in the narrative. This wasn’t the first encounter with God, but something was different this time. God saw something in Abraham’s heart, and Abraham saw something in God’s heart. Hebrew writers of old recalled Abraham’s choice in places like Nehemiah 9:8 and Psalm 106:31.

In the New Testament, the event was seen as pivotal and gained much attention. We can see this in Romans 4, where Paul built his argument on that act. Paul’s argument with those in Rome was essentially this:

The temple authorities are claiming you need to enlist in the Atonement Law of Sacrifice even if you have a walk with Jesus. They claim the actions of the Law are what make God satisfied concerning your sin. Yet, Abraham’s story runs contrary to their assertion:

• He is our fleshly father; we are his heirs (4:1).
• He wasn’t made complete in his walk with God by things he did, but by his personal belief in what God said (4:2-5).

Paul remarked:

Romans 4:3 For what does the Scripture say? “ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.” 4 Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. 5 But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness…

Paul pressed the idea that circumcision (as entry eligibility for participation in the atonement sacrificial system) wasn’t a part of the satisfaction of God in Abraham – only his belief was required.

He asked:

Romans 4:9 Is this blessing then on the circumcised, or on the uncircumcised also? For we say, “FAITH WAS CREDITED TO ABRAHAM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.” 10 How then was it credited? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised; 11and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be credited to them, 12 and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also follow in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham which he had while uncircumcised.

We see another version of that argument again in Galatians 3:6, where Paul again pressed the importance of Abraham’s belief as the point God accepted him.

Galatians 3:6 Even so Abraham BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. 7 Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. 8 The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, [saying], “ALL THE NATIONS WILL BE BLESSED IN YOU.” 9 So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.

Be careful not to misread that. Paul wasn’t saying that people who believe replace Israel as the sons of Abraham. In chapter 10 and 11 he will make the point there is a future for the physical children of Abraham. Here he adds people who have faith in Jesus to the blessed children of Abraham, in the sense that we have one heritage found in God. What is crystal clear is the notion that a man or woman can be made right with God by faith alone. The atonement once required has been fully replaced in Messiah by justification.

The key point from Paul’s teaching of the Gospel concerning Abraham was this: Though the atonement system (the offering of sacrifices in the tabernacle and later the temple made accessible to the circumcised) was necessary for a time, it wasn’t the ONLY way God ever worked. In fact, it wasn’t the basis of God’s acceptance. It was built UPON something more basic: belief. Lots of good animals died in the temple without effect if the person offering them didn’t believe.

The eternal formula for acquiring a right standing with God is and always was this: Lost men and women are saved by grace through faith. The grace is unmerited favor – every person given access to an intimate and eternal walk with God is given it without deserving it. The Fall in the Garden of Eden was a total mutiny. All salvation is by grace.

At the same time, God’s unmerited favor is accessed only by faith. The term means, “seeing it the way God says it is and not as my eye would see it without His revealed truth.”

For Abraham, belief that God would do exactly what He promised was the signal fire of belief in him. For people after the Atonement Law was in place, belief that God would abate His wrath and turn back toward them because they offered their heart to Him and an offering on the altar as a symbol of that brought intimacy with God. It was temporary, but effective.

In Jesus, belief that God sent His sinless and eternal Son to die in our place in payment for our mutiny is required to bring us into a forever relationship with God. Jesus’ death paid for my sin. Jesus’ resurrection proved the payment was accepted. My belief activates the transaction in my life. If I accept God’s testimony that what Jesus did is all that is required, I will be justified – not by my works, but by belief alone. Abraham proved that was possible without any work of any kind. Salvation happens in the heart and is based on belief in God’s truths as they are presented.

From another direction, the Apostle James made another truth clear from the record of that act in James 2:23. The problem was that first century preaching of salvation apart from atonement law gave people excuses to simply SAY they believed in Jesus, but live as they chose.

James responded:

James 2:14 What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for [their] body, what use is that? 17 Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, [being] by itself.

Referring to Abraham taking Isaac to the altar to be slain at the word of God he wrote:

James 2:22 You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “AND ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS,” and he was called the friend of God. 24 You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.

The argument isn’t contradictory, but complementary.

James didn’t argue that belief wasn’t the underlying factor (which was Paul’s point) but rather that it was clearly evidenced in behavior. Belief without heart response is dead theory. The appearance of works in response to God without belief is dead work.

To end the passage, God told Abraham to bring sacrificial animals, kill them and lay them out (Genesis 15:9-10). In order to keep the place suitable for God to work, Abraham drove away any vultures that were attracted to the carcasses. Working until nightfall, Abraham became tired and fell asleep. God added a depth to that rest and spoke to Abraham (Genesis 15:11-12). When God spoke, He explained that He would keep His promises.

Don’t skip the detail before God spoke. Abraham spent the afternoon waiting for God’s answer, and it didn’t come. He wanted to hear from God, but ended up chasing nasty birds. Why is that detail there? Because it is part of the POINT of the whole lesson. God wasn’t in a hurry. He was working behind the scenes. He already had selected the time and place He would reveal the fulfillment of His plan to Abe. Remember the truth we are studying?

God may take His time keeping His promises, but we should have confidence in the fact that He always keeps them in every detail.

While God was holding off on giving Abraham a son, He was preparing to give him whole nations. He was building the history book of mankind in advance. The story of Abraham isn’t yesterday’s news – it is the story of the Middle East TODAY. It will continue to dominate the news until the last moment of human history when time surrenders to eternity.

In other words, Abe saw his immediate inner desires while God saw the whole human program. Abe’s needs were much more modest than God’s answers! God’s view was bigger. It always is.

She loved God and she loved her husband. Though there was once passion in their marriage, she couldn’t honestly say that her husband loved her anymore. She couldn’t say he had any love for God. She saw his heart move away from her and she sobbed before God. He left. Her life collapsed. She sorted through the wreckage of past joys and even the pictures of old happiness served only to break her heart, again and again. She couldn’t go on. Quietly, she laid out her case to God. She was a good wife. She sought Jesus daily. Why wouldn’t He help her? She pleaded, but the words seemed to sink into the ceiling and go no further. She honestly felt abandoned by God… but she was wrong.

He left her and committed awful deeds. Swallowed in selfishness and greed, he broke the law and was caught. Now he sat in jail. Each letter he received from her convinced him that no one else in the world cared what happened to him. As he read the words of her tear-stained letters, he saw, for the very first time, who he really was – and what he gave up when he walked out on her. God used her brokenness to touch something inside him. God used his defeat to break his pride. The combination was powerful. Her testimony reached him, and her Jesus changed him.

It wasn’t instant. It wasn’t painless. It wasn’t fast. It DID produce a believing home that is now filled with joy. It produced two children that have godly parents. They don’t yet know the story of how their parents were constructed by a Master Craftsman to be a beautiful cathedral to Jesus. Someday they will hear the whole story!

One of the most frustrating parts of life is that we encounter people who seem somewhat clueless as to taking responsibility for their own choices, and facing the risks of their own behavior. In our day, we can easily be surrounded by people who want adult choices, but don’t feel responsible to make adult decisions. Let me offer some examples that may hit close to people you know or perhaps work with in our community…

Joe lives life fast and loose. He doesn’t have insurance on his property, because he thinks it is a “colossal waste of money.” He eats what he wants when he wants it. He buys what he likes and thinks a savings account is only for rich people. He isn’t interested in a retirement account because he would rather spend his money as he earns it. After all, how does he know he’ll be around long enough to spend what he puts aside? If he isn’t, the whole idea of saving it was just a waste. Joe fell one day from a little ladder outside his house. It wasn’t a big fall, but it was enough for Joe to have to get a bone set, and a surgery on some ligament damage. Out of work for a short time, Joe was incensed with his mortgage company for insisting he pay the bill. His electric got shut off. He steamed over the fact these “greedy companies don’t have any conscience about his pain.” He doesn’t connect the life he has lived for decades with his recent encounter of pain and loss. He thinks companies are the problem – not his choices.

Charlotte grew up in a Christian home, but some of her choices show she didn’t really follow what she was taught. She made critical compromises in moral areas that ended up costing her a great deal. On the street for a time, her family came to “bail her out” multiple times – but those stories didn’t end in change of her behavior. She kept expressing that she “needed help” because she wouldn’t take the steps necessary to solve her issues. She kept concluding that she was a victim, rather than recognizing her choices were pushing her in the opposite direction that she wanted to go.

Irresponsible people like these aren’t new to society. In our last lesson, we slowed down our march through Genesis and took a little time to contemplate the CAUSE of the battle of Lot and Abraham, and observe how wrong choices led to real problems. In this lesson, I want to look more closely at the people who are highlighted in the story of the “Battle of the Jordan River plain” and its aftermath in Genesis 14. As we do, note the people and their various attitudes. You will find Joe and Charlotte tucked into the story. You will also find a wonderful new friend for Abraham named Melchizedek. You will also learn an enduring truth:

Key Principle: Maturity is about recognizing stewardship and taking responsibility.

In fact, Abraham had three kinds of people in his life that are carefully highlighted in the story. Bear in mind he wasn’t always reflected as a good guy without flaws in this mini-series, but in this episode of his life he shined in a tale of faithfulness surrounded by three different kinds of people. Let me introduce the players in the story:

• First, there was a man we will refer to as the “Godless Entitled Chief.” Bera, the king of Sodom, who knew his choices led his life to failure, still felt he should get “his piece of the pie” from the hard-fought victory of Abraham. He even attempted to make himself look somewhat generous when he requested what was earned by someone else’s labors.

• Second, there was the believer who made bad choices, only to become a “Clueless Taker.” Lot was raised as a God-follower, but repeatedly refused a circumspect life and dwelt among the world’s worst characters. That brought him a solid stream of troubles. As a result, he became the “Bail-out Believer” who sapped time, resources, and energy from Abraham. That would have been fine, but he never seemed to stand on his own in maturity. You may know believing friends who thinks the Christians around them should take care of the bill created by their choices.

• Thankfully, there is a third man in the story. He is a God-follower, and he is a mature believer. We will call him our “Godly Encourager,” Melchizedek, a God-follower and encourager of Abraham.

Let’s get into the text and look carefully at the story.

The Crisis

First, let’s read about the crisis that introduced the men into the narrative. Drop your eyes into the story of a war…

Genesis 14:5 In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings that were with him, came and defeated the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim and the Zuzim in Ham and the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim, 6 and the Horites in their Mount Seir, as far as El-paran, which is by the wilderness. 7 Then they turned back and came to En-mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and conquered all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, who lived in Hazazon-tamar.

The text drew the lines around the adversaries. Chedorlaomer raided the deserts of wilderness tribes in what is today Israel, Jordan and eastern Egypt (the Sinai). Because the areas may be unfamiliar to you, let me share that he subdued the “tribes of Rephaim” in what will later be the “hill country of Judah” west of Jerusalem, along with the “Zuzim,” the “Ham,” the “Emim,” the “Horites,” and the “Amalekite tribes” in several different deserts, or what the Bible calls “the wilderness” areas. These tribes were used to a nomadic life, and even their “cities” were often massive tent encampments.

That background was supplied so that Moses could record the staging of the “Battle of the Jordan Plain” in Genesis 14:8-9.

Genesis 14:8 And the king of Sodom and the king of Gomorrah and the king of Admah and the king of Zeboiim and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) came out; and they arrayed for battle against them in the valley of Siddim, 9 against Chedorlaomer king of Elam and Tidal king of Goiim and Amraphel king of Shinar and Arioch king of Ellasar—four kings against five.

Essentially, five tribal chieftains including Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Bela (or Zoar) joined forces against the raiders from the Mesopotamian plains far east of them. The four raiding tribes were clear invaders: Chedarlaomer of Elam, Tidal of Goiim, Amraphel of Shinar and Arioch of Ellasar. They were muscling in on an expanded set of trade routes and gaining the allegiance of many tribesmen to build a desert network of caravan routes. Cities in league near the Dead Sea were a problem for the Mesopotamians. Some of the cities of that region were among the oldest in the world, like Jericho. Sodom and Gomorrah appear to be the largest of those cities.

From an archaeological standpoint, there is a debate about where the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were (since they were destroyed). Some archaeologists look for remains of a city – but that presupposes the ruins survived after the destruction of the places.

East of the Dead Sea is a site from the “Early Bronze Age” (Patriarchal Period) called Bab edh-Dhra. There was a small city of about 1,000 individuals that lived in an area that has been partially excavated. The remarkable feature of Bab edh-Dhra is the number of graves found near the site. While the city was apparently small, an estimated 20,000 tombs are located beside the site. These family tombs would have held approximately half a million people and over 3 million pottery vessels. Some of us think that represented cities that were eliminated in Genesis.

What Went Wrong in the Fight?

Genesis takes us back to the scene and describes what the home team army failed to do.

Genesis 14:10 Now the valley of Siddim was full of tar pits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and they fell into them. But those who survived fled to the hill country.

Though the defenders of the plain were on “home turf,” it seems that Chedarlaomer and his allies routed the local tribal warriors of the plain, because they seemed unable to maneuver well in the sinkholes and tar pits of the Jordan Valley near their own cities. I suspect they got trapped in pockets and split up by the superior force.

It is a bit ironic that the men of Sodom ended up trapped in a slime pit on home turf.

The plains tribes were demoralized and shaken, so they broke off their defense and fled into what would later be known as the “wilderness of Judah” leaving their home encampments, wives and children undefended. The battle won, Chedarlaomer and his raiders snatched all that they could and started to journey north toward Galilee, Golan, Syria, and eventually home. Genesis told the story this way:

Genesis 14:11 Then they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food supply, and departed. 12 They also took Lot, Abram’s nephew, and his possessions and departed, for he was living in Sodom. 13 Then a fugitive came and told Abram the Hebrew. Now he was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and brother of Aner, and these were allies with Abram.

Sodom and Gomorrah were abandoned, their people captured by Chedarlaomer and their army probably returning slowly in shambles as people trickled back to the region. Among the captive from the cities of the plain being carted north was Lot, nephew of Abram. Uncle Abe got word at his plight when a man who evaded capture visited the encampment of Abe, near Hebron.

The Counterattack

Moses continued the record of the story:

Genesis 14:14 When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he led out his trained men, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. 15 He divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them, and pursued them as far as Hobah, which is north of Damascus. 16 He brought back all the goods, and also brought back his relative Lot with his possessions, and also the women, and the people.

There are a number of insightful comments offered in these verses.

First, we can clearly see that Abe grew considerably after his encounter in Egypt years before. In chapter 12, Abram acted like a coward when he came into Egypt and didn’t protect his wife. He thought of himself in earlier times. In this account, it appears things had changed. Abe grew. He stood up because he possessed something the world around him did not have: He grasped the promises of God and walked in God’s plan for his life.

Second, it is important to note that Abraham used the prosperity God gave him to grow his sense of responsibility. Things seemed progressively less important with each story after Egypt, and people seemed more important.

At the same time, I think it is the END of the text of Genesis 14 that reveals its true importance. As Genesis 14 closed, contrasting world views are highlighted in the people Abraham met.

The Homecoming

In verses 17 through 24, we see a record of two different leaders talking to Abram. First, Melchizedek, the king of Salem (likely Jerusalem) came out to meet Abram. Next, Bera, the king of Sodom made a request of Abe. All the while, quietly standing by was Abe’s nephew Lot.

Listen to their contrasting voices. For reasons that will become obvious, I want to take them out of order…

First, look at the meeting with the King of Sodom:

Genesis 14:21 The king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give the people to me and take the goods for yourself.” 22 Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have sworn to the Lord God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, 23 that I will not take a thread or a sandal thong or anything that is yours, for fear you would say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’ 24 I will take nothing except what the young men have eaten, and the share of the men who went with me, Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre; let them take their share.”

Sodom’s king commanded a wicked people in the wake of a failed war. The city would be a mere memory had it not been for Abraham. Clearly the king’s strategies hadn’t been working, and this was a time when he should have shown humility. I ask you honestly, “Do his words sound humble?” He said two things:

First, he said: “Give the people to me.”

Second, he said: “Take the goods for yourself.”

Sodom’s failed chief, in essence, offered to “share” the spoils from the battle with Abraham, but offered no praise or blessing to Abram. It is clear by Abe’s response that on the scene and in the time, Abe thought anything he “shared” would significantly compromise the way the story was recalled later. Lest we come to believe Bera somehow was humbled, remember by Genesis 19 God will completely destroy his city. John Calvin perceptively remarked that Abram knew others would falsely accuse him of using the “rescue of Lot” as a pretense to get personal gain. Abe understood that is what Bera would have done if the situation were reversed.

Next, listen to the record of his meeting with Melchizedek, king of Salem:

Genesis 14:17 Then after his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). 18 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; now he was a priest of God Most High. 19 He blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; 20 and blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your enemies into your hand.” He gave him a tenth of all.

What a different tone to this king over Bera of Sodom! As he brought out bread and wine of celebration, he acted the part of a priest. It was clear that he responded to the situation of Abraham’s victory with praise to God. Melchizedek’s words of praise were directed at God for Abraham. He was the kind of encourager every believer needs in life – the kind that points us back to God while celebrating our progress with us!

The king of Salem pressed Abe to see that God was at work on his behalf. He didn’t try to rob him of the victory, but rather pointed out the source of his blessing. In the parade, it is good to get the gentle reminder that we accomplish by the Lord’s hand.

While the response to the king of Sodom would have felt like paying a tax, the response to the king of Salem felt like celebrating God’s goodness.

Don’t forget that Lot was also there.

His poor choices led him to be a part of the problem. Abe could have been hurt or killed because of the life choices of Lot. At the very least, he was diverted from his life tasks because of them.

Do you see the three people Abraham encountered?

• One was a believer who made choices that were irresponsible and ungodly – and needed Abe and his men to come to the rescue and use God’s resources to bail them out.

• One was a non-believer who projected his value system on Abe, and acted entitled to share in the good result when his life strategies caused the problems to begin with.

• One was a fellow worshiper who led Abe to conclude that victory came because God was active at work on his behalf.

Let’s say it another way:

In his life, he had an immature “taker,” who sapped his energy without any sense that is what he was doing. He made choices and didn’t pay the end by himself. He didn’t seem to connect the dots between his choices and the number of people he drew into harm’s way.

In his life, he had an entitled voice from the fallen world around him. This man didn’t connect his failed strategies and terrible life choices to his losses, but rather expected Abe to include him in the victory celebration and charged a tax to absorb some of the victory. There was no praise in his voice. There was no real desire to bless Abe. There was a demand for part of the pie and a concession that Abe could keep the secured possessions. Ironically, Bera didn’t give Abe anything Abe didn’t already have – he was artfully acting as those he should get benefit from Abe’s victory.

Finally, there was an encouraging voice of a fellow follower of God. He didn’t direct his thinking to Abe, but to the God over all of them. He drew Abe into a celebration of praise. From that, Abe gave a tithe. It wasn’t forced upon him, and no “deals” were made with Melchizedek. It was a response to being led into praise.

The point is simple: Mature believers aren’t trying to find ways in relationships to get things. They aren’t “clueless” about grabbing the fruit of another’s labor, and they don’t walk around entitled. In fact, their focus isn’t primarily on the events – but on the God Who is in control.

Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself – it is thinking of yourself LESS. Mature believers DO praise progress, but they understand it is in the context of God’s goodness and God’s provision. We win when He opens that door. We gain because He allows it to be so. They do not sing the song of pride, but of gratitude.

Here is my simple question: Who are you most like in the story?

Are you trying to follow the Lord, but you keep finding yourself unable to make it without the constant bail out of others? Let me challenge you: Your life choices must change for you to change your outcomes. If you don’t like what you’re reaping, you have to change what you are sowing. Open your heart and your ears to those who are helping you. What can you change about your life to remove the constant sense of drain you put on others?

Are you living life without recognizing how God provides all you possess? Do you feel entitled to a good life, even when your choices are largely self-serving? Have you considered how good God has been to you in providing by the work of others what you have? Do you think of yourself and how you deserve what you have or do you focus more on how God provides undeserved blessing to you? Let me challenge you: If you don’t see God at work, it may be because you don’t truly know Him at all.

Are you the encouraging voice of a friend that helps focus others on God at work in their lives? Does your counsel lift? Does your countenance show one who lives in praise of a good God? Let me challenge you: If God has been good, shouldn’t you declare Him so?

Did you ever hook a trailer to the back of your automobile and then need to back up? As you are trying to decide which way the trailer will go when you turn in a certain direction, you move slowly and keep doubling back on yourself. You pull forward again and turn the opposite way. Eventually, you see the trailer begin to go as you need it to go. What if you decided that no matter what you did, the trailer was being feisty and causing your trouble? What if you thought, “This is a bad trailer. I am stuck with a trailer that has no sense. What can I do?” If you kept pressing the gas while it was turned in the wrong direction, it would go to the wrong place, and likely harm other people or property.

Some people live that way. They feel the trailer is defective – it isn’t about their turns. They don’t re-work their method, because it is the “situation” that dominates their life and they are a victim of it. They don’t get better because they don’t own the problem. They aren’t the driver of the life God entrusted to them.

If you don’t become a steward, you will frame life as a victim of circumstance – but that isn’t what God told us to do. We are told to drive our own life toward Him. Drive! Make the turns and change what you are doing based on where the trailer goes.

You can be a help or a hindrance to others. You can bring praise or problem to them. In most situations, it comes down to taking responsibility for our life choices and where they lead. Maturity is about recognizing stewardship and taking responsibility.

Whether you are ready or not, at some point, a crisis will lunge its way into your life like an undetected snake hiding in your boot. It will hit you in a way you could never imagine beforehand and either hurt you deeply, or (at the very least) it will rock your stability. It can be a health crisis, a financial crisis, an emotional crisis, or even a spiritual crisis. If I have learned anything in life it is this: crises will come.

Another thing I have learned is that it is never possible to be fully ready for a crisis. You can prepare yourself (and you should), but when you are stricken, it will invariably be in an area you didn’t foresee with a strength you couldn’t imagine. I am not trying to scare you, but anyone who has lived a little will tell you what I am saying is true.

In recent months, my family has been reeling from changes that can best be explained as aging issues with my dear mom and dad. It isn’t that we didn’t know they were getting older; it is that we didn’t know what that would look like, and how it would affect both them and us. I admit to being taken entirely by surprise at the range of feeling in the sweeping changes… and my situation is by no means as bad as it could be.

On the other hand, one of our students was sitting in church last Sunday, not knowing that by this week he would have left school and be back in Ohio with his family. This week his mom was diagnosed with a brain cancer that is aggressive, and given a number of months to live. Kevin walked blindly into a crisis. His family is in a crisis. There is simply no way at his age he could have fully prepared for this. There was no way for him to see it coming. Yet, our lesson today suggests there are things he and his family can do that will make the crisis bearable – but don’t take it that following God would have insulated him from the experience. Job, Moses, Paul – any of them would tell you that following God is no guarantee for crisis free living.

Our passage for this lesson unfolds an unexpected crisis. There are two players who directly faced it: Abraham and Lot. I want to break the lesson in two, and talk today about Lot’s experience MORE than about Abraham’s, following up in the next lesson with Abe’s perspective. The basic storyline of Genesis 14 is a simple one. If I were writing about this episode in the mini-series that is the life of Abraham for an ancient version of TV GUIDE, I might say it this way:

“Lot’s choice for a place to live dropped him into the heart of a long-standing conflict that erupted into war. Caught and led captive by an enemy of his region, he is rescued by Abraham and Abe’s tribal warriors. As Lot is repatriated back to Canaan, Abraham meets face to face with two Canaan chieftains – the King of Salem and the King of Sodom.”

In essence, the story demonstrated how a bad choice led to a bad situation that required a rescue. In the wake of the rescue, there are two short, but “telling” engagements, that highlight two ways of thinking – one from a believing prince, another from a lost and wicked one.

Step back for a moment and consider the old saying: “The Christian life is not a playground; it is a battlefield.” If that is true, we should expect a level of crisis. War is about surprising the opposition. To be clear, then, the believer isn’t supposed to fit comfortably into this life without any struggle if we were born again into a war. Neither are we supposed to capitulate to those driven by fallen values. In the end, we can’t fully be ready, but the Lord has offered us a model of how to navigate the troubles in the stories of those long ago. In this story there is a secret Abraham modeled and Lot missed:

Key Principle: The secrets to effectively confronting evil are circumspect living and a carefully maintained walk with God.

The secret is NOT perfection, because that is unattainable. The secrets modeled by Abraham were un-extraordinary and un-profound preparation. Abraham placed himself in a position where evil was not saturating his life, but conversely he learned to seek, hear, and learn from God. When the struggle came, he was ready to face it on the terms of his daily walk. He didn’t seek crisis, but he was ready to answer the needs. That is our next lesson. For this one, I want to look at Lot who modeled NEITHER secret. He jumped into the soup of evil, and found himself in captivity.

Let me offer a snapshot that explains his mistake, because it is an easy one to make. In Genesis 14:1-4 the text unfolds a league of cities that rebelled against a stronger chieftain that was not on the scene in verse four. The cities paid a tribute to the chief, and after many years decided to rebel. The chief came to prove to the cities that was a mistake in Genesis 14:5-13. Chedorlaomer cleaned up the rebel cities and took people hostage. In the wake of the rebellion, there was carnage, burned camps and an escaping army. The last part of that section made clear the crisis that dropped into Lot and Abraham’s life:

Genesis 14:12 They also took Lot, Abram’s nephew, and his possessions and departed, for he was living in Sodom. 13 Then a fugitive came and told Abram the Hebrew. Now he was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and brother of Aner, and these were allies with Abram.

It is worth noting that this is the Bible’s earliest record of a specific regional war. Abraham went to save his nephew in response, but don’t neglect that he had a treaty with the defeated tribes to defend them. How did he get that? I suspect there is MORE to Lot’s involvement than is written at the end of 14:13, where it simply explains that Abram was an “ally.” I have no doubt there were many other wars in that time, but this is the first mention in the text of Genesis of such an event.

In the text, both Lot and Abraham faced trouble – but Lot’s troubles clearly came because of earlier choices. Isn’t that true of many of our problems?

People come in for financial assistance and tell us how they got hurt on the job, and they are now financially unable to care for their mortgage. What they don’t say (because they don’t see it) is they made MANY choices before the situation they feel victimized by now. They were overspending while they were working and have no savings. They didn’t take the optional insurances that would help in this situation. They simply didn’t look around and spot where trouble COULD come from. They lived life without a prepared circumspect view. This is not unusual.

In fact, the problem is that some believers live as if they shouldn’t prepare for anything. They believe that way of living somehow lacks faith. They maintain the view that it is possible to live successfully in the world system without the need to stick out or get ready – and I think neither will work. I honestly encounter people who believe that at their heart, most people will be reasonable when it comes to moral choices. They believe the world has few snares and many pleasures that are simply free benefits. They live life with no sense that danger may be ahead. They honestly seem unaware of the power of the enemy until they are caught.

That is the story of Lot.

To understand the setting of Genesis 14, you have to recall his blind but incredibly optimistic choice that set up his eventual captivity. Remember the story? In a time when the shepherds of Lot’s flocks were in conflict with the shepherds of Abraham’s flock (ostensibly because of limited turf) Abraham let Lot choose where he wanted to live and agreed to subdivide the land God had promised him. Lot’s choice was recorded in Genesis 13:10:

“Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the valley of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere—this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah—like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt as you go to Zoar.”

The choice of a place to live was a big one. As for all of us, such a choice isn’t only about the landscape, but about the moral and political environment.

The travel channel doesn’t seem to capture that idea. The other day I saw in a hotel room a show that was all about the virtues of a family from the US getting an unbelievable deal on a home in Libya. The next show followed some British ex-pats who lived in Marrakesh, Morocco. Both shows touted what a great place these families had chosen to “beat the rat race” of western society and live more simply. Both celebrated the beauty of a home that could be purchased at a fraction of the price. Both made the point that “family” was so important to them, so they made the bold move to leave their home and build a new life in a new place. Neither of them addressed how it would affect their children to be raised in an environment like the one they were promoting. Neither show referenced how living in a Muslim village would affect their daughters. Neither show seemed to acknowledge that such a “bold move” would inevitably cause them to confront other issues about their lives.

Because I raised my children in a different culture and lived long enough to see the results of that, perhaps I was more sensitive to that danger. In the end, Lot made his choice apparently without connecting any future dots.

Look at the phrase in the beginning of Genesis 13:10 and it becomes clear that Lot chose his future based on what looked like it would fulfill his desires and meet his needs – like many of us did. The problem is, as a believer, the choice wasn’t to be made that way at all. He never sought the Lord in the text, but apparently thought the Lord would just endorse his plans for the future. Have you ever done that? Have you ever asked God for His direction only after the contract was signed?

The short back story here is that poor choices by Lot led his family into a dangerous conflict he didn’t recognize. His choice set the stage about him that was physically perilous, morally hazardous and unhealthy in the extreme.

Let me lay something out in front of you for a moment. Would you drop your eyes to the middle of the text of Genesis 14? Listen as I read verse twelve:

Genesis 14:12 They also took Lot, Abram’s nephew, and his possessions and departed, for he was living in Sodom.

I couldn’t help but notice at the end of the verse how there was a slight difference between where Lot ended up and where he first located. It caught my eye. I had to flip back and look, and there it was in the middle of Genesis 13:

Genesis 13:12 Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled in the cities of the valley, and moved his tents as far as Sodom.

Did you see those words? The EDGE of Lot’s initial choice was the city of Sodom. In time, his home was parked right in the middle of town. What began as bordering Sodom ended up as living in Sodom. Can you sympathize with Lot? If you have any experience with Sodom, you know how that happened…

Have you or someone you know well ever been “sucked into Sodom?”

Maybe we should ask, “What is the problem with living in SODOM? Perhaps it doesn’t sound so bad. In the Bible, Sodom is a shorthand script for a morally degenerate environment.

• Sodom presents the values of WORLDLINESS.
• Sodom offers the enticement of a fallen world.
• Sodom is the best men can do when they apply WORLDLY wisdom.
• Sodom was touted as a HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT of freedom from rules that dragged men down.
• Sodom was SELF-WILL on open display.

Today, it looks like a parade in Key West, or a walk on the Vegas strip. The colors and energy of enticement distract you from thinking about where choices lead. Sodom is about NOW, not later. Sodom is about FEELING A RUSH, not paying the freight.

It has been centuries, and still we must ask the question to the long gone nephew Lot… “What are you doing living in Sodom?”

Perhaps you think me too harsh. Maybe you have found the enlightened ability to rationalize Sodom. Spend time counseling people paying for their past Sodom and I suspect you would change your tune.

But rationalizing Sodom doesn’t let us really think about the bill we will owe.

It is caught by a vision of the lights and the sounds of freedom. Let me see if any of these arguments hit close to where you are thinking, or have thought.

Most people didn’t get kidnapped into Sodom (Lot included), they walk in. As a warning to you, here is a thought we should consider when we see the “Welcome to the Good Life of Sodom” sign:

You and I are not as strong as we think we are. Many a “Lot” or “Lottess” have made the intentional decision to encounter Sodom thinking: “I know better. I was raised better! I will not be sucked into the temptations that Sodom offers. May I say aloud? “This was (and is) a foolish mistake!” Perhaps the simple application of 1 Corinthians 10:11-13 is in order:

1 Corinthians 10:11 Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. 12 Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall. 13 No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.

Listen to the words Paul wrote carefully. He doesn’t say that you can BEAR the temptation. He makes the point that God provides an escape before you hit the breaking point. If you don’t use the door to exit, you will be defeated. Hear me: hang in there in your strength and you will be sucked downward! In the Word, the constant call to the believer amid temptation is the same – FLEE. Get out of there.

For some, it isn’t that they believe they will be strong. It is the simple matter that they haven’t concluded that Sodom was really “all that bad” after all. I mean, “Every place has an issue!”

The problem is that Sodom is MORE CORRUPT than you may have ever imagined! Its costs are “all in” and it leaves nothing in its wake.

Unless he was comatose shortly after his move, Lot had to know of the openly recognized dangers in Sodom, but he seemed blind to how pervasive the evil had become and how powerful its attraction would be in his life and that of his family members. Remember, as you keep reading Genesis, God’s vote was that Sodom was suited to destruction. This takeover in war was likely the “last call” for the city to repent. Not long after, God said their “turnaround time” was over. Sodom was so immersed in a fallen world view the inhabitants erased all memory of true morality. They “made up their own rules” and then taxed away to pay for the social programs that tried unsuccessfully to address the unintentional consequences of their policies. Imagine a place like that! (I know you can’t!).

Paul described in Romans 1 what God called a “reprobate” mind. The willful divorce from God in the thinking of man, the pulling down of the very Creator from His rightful place of worship, marks the senseless descent from truth into the abyss of immoral ungodliness. In the end, they defiled their bedrooms in the celebration of the god of boundary-less pleasures.

Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps Lot didn’t think he was strong enough to resist. Maybe Lot believed the old adage: “I know how far I can go.” I am convinced that many a believer has no clue of the true object of temptation. You aren’t tempted as a way for the enemy to find a way to ultimately PLEASE YOU. You are tempted, both in your flesh, and by the dangling of the world’s fallen thinking backed by the enemy’s encouragement, for the singular purpose to TRAP you.

Temptation CAPTURES the tempted. It SNARES. It ENTICES. That is its nature.

A few months ago I had a cat coming by to eat the food in my chicken pen. She didn’t harm the chickens and I didn’t like the idea of harming the cat, so I let it go on and tossed balls at her to scare her if I thought she took too much. A few weeks later, word got out. I believe her kittens came out of the bushes and they joined in. On any given morning I had more cats I was feeding than chickens. I got a “safe trap” from the animal control. I put an open can of cat food in the trap. In an hour, the trap had its first kitten. I took the trap to let the kitten go into the wilderness away from houses. I came back. In another hour, I had kitten two to relocate. In another hour, kitten three was in the trap. The remarkable thing is that each of the kittens saw the other taken away. Entering the trap was never a successful way to be fulfilled because it was designed to be a TRAP.

Think of what the Bible warned about sinful enticement:

Proverbs 1:10 My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. 11 If they say, “Come with us …13 We will find all kinds of precious wealth, we will fill our houses with spoil; 14 throw in your lot with us, we shall all have one purse…” 15 My son, do not walk in the way with them. Keep your feet from their path.

Did not James 1:14-15 warn us:

James 1:14 But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. 15 Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.

When will we stop the rationalizing that ensnares us? When will we stop saying, “I’ll just be there a short time, I won’t stay long!” Does anyone ever thoughtfully plan to shipwreck their life and testimony? Isn’t it always because we chose to “nibble” before we got trapped? Still another rationalizer from the School of Lot will cry, “I’ll never know if I’m a strong enough unless I try.” What a dumb strategy. That’s like trying to decide how far you can fall by jumping from a variety of cliff heights!

Here is the truth: If you come to believe there is a better alternative to facing temptation than the one instructed by God, your arrogance is showing.

Fleeing, as God clearly instructs, is HIS way to win. If you have another plan, your knowledge (which you must believe is greater than God’s knowledge) will fail you. It just will. How about the great rationalization from the Lot school of outreach: “Wait! I’m going to be a missionary!” Some think: “I will place myself in that situation to reach people.” The “courses” at the “Lot School of Outreach” include such classes as:

• Missionary dating: I will date them and show them what a Christian really is…
• Clubbing for outreach: My testimony will shine louder than the lights and they will all notice Jesus in me as they down their drinks and look for a hookup.
• Or perhaps the ever-popular course: “Entangling your business with unbelievers as an effective evangelism strategy.”

Then there is my personal favorite: The course called “Missionary Marriage” where you marry a mate so you can reach them for Jesus!

Let’s be absolutely clear: When you assemble life apart from the Creator’s instructions, you will have two results. You will have leftover parts and things won’t work as you plan them.

When your motive is really to find fulfillment in a plan that God doesn’t endorse, you will find that you never influence Sodom as much as Sodom influences you!

That is why God instructed:

2 Corinthians 6: 14 Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?

That is why God commanded:

2 Timothy 2:22 Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

That is why God warned:

1 Peter 2:11 Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.

Did you notice that Peter couldn’t have been more clear. Don’t buy the bullets for the weapons the enemy uses to shoot at you. Making decisions to find fulfillment in this life apart from God’s path is a surefire way to pummel the part of you that truly desires to walk in obedience to God into silence and captivity. The two sides of you, the old man and the spiritually alive are tangled in a vicious war.

Quickly go back to Genesis 14:4. Consider the background to the story as a simple cautionary tale:

Genesis 14:4 Twelve years they had served Chedorlaomer, but the thirteenth year they rebelled.

Consider this: Lot moved into the place when a war was slowly coming to a boil. Should we not see there are dangers in Sodom that we may not perceive when we decide to become comfortable living there? It appears that Lot was unaware of the coming conflict. That is why circumspect living is commanded by God – it helps you assess danger before you wake up in a battle you cannot win.

It is probably worth remembering here that reality will NEVER match Satan’s advertising about your compromised choices!

I have to believe from later stories that Lot wasn’t completely oblivious to the dangers of Sodom. To live there, it seems to me he had to suppress his conscience.

When rationalization takes hold, the conscience is pushed to the back of your heart.

The most remarkable part of the story to me was that AFTER Abraham rescued his family, Lot RETURNED to Sodom! After Abraham exposed the evil of the thinking of the ruler of Sodom, Lot STILL took his family and went back to settle in for a stay.

In the next lesson, I want to look more closely at the battle and its aftermath. For now, it is enough to contemplate the CAUSE of the battle, and observe which man was ready when it came.

The secrets to effectively confronting evil are circumspect living and a carefully maintained walk with God.

Dave Jackson in Leadership Magazine:

Our train rolled into Kansas City at 1 a.m. Dim lights came on to help the new passengers find seats. Many of us who had been riding home through the night had spread out to occupy two seats apiece. An attractive woman made her way down the aisle with her bags. She was looking from side to side, hoping for someone to move. I turned toward the window and watched her in the reflection. “May I sit here?” she asked. “Sure.” I looked up and smiled as I moved over. She threw her things into the rack above and sat down. Near the back of the car, only one of my colleagues had managed to keep his extra space. Lucky guy. “My name’s Kathy. What’s yours?” I told her, and we talked quietly for a while. She was on her way to visit her mother after some rough spats with her husband. I was eager to get home and see my wife and family after an exhausting church leadership conference. Soon we had both slipped off to sleep. At some later stop, I awoke to find Kathy cuddled next to me. “You don’t mind if I lean my head on your shoulder, do you?” she said sleepily. “Uh, no. I guess not.” She was just tired … wasn’t she? And besides, I had a wonderful wife and a great marriage and would be home before noon. I looked around to see if anyone was noticing. She cuddled closer. I wondered what she really wanted–or would allow. At first I couldn’t believe what I was thinking. But then it was her fault. She knew exactly what she was doing. I might as well enjoy it. After all, what could happen on a train full of people? Nothing, nothing really … except what Jesus warned about happening in the heart. Finally, I excused myself so I could go back and talk with my friend–the “lucky” one with the empty seat beside him. Or maybe I was the lucky one since that extra space was still available. I only knew I didn’t need to stay where I had been. Perhaps it wasn’t luck at all.

Maybe that was the “way of escape” that 1 Corinthians 10:13 talks about, which God had provided from the beginning.

One of the great secrets to effectively confronting evil are circumspect living and a carefully maintained walk with God.

Every coin has two sides: the obverse (we call it “heads”) and the reverse (we call it “tails”). In a football game, just after everyone is scandalized by the positions of players on the sidelines while the National Anthem is played, a “coin toss” is sometimes made to determine the favored position for one team over another. Because of its method, it is generally considered a fair and random selection. One team will get to choose to “kick off” and the other “receives” the ball in the opening drive, determined by the toss. In all the coin tosses I have ever seen, the coin lands on either the obverse of the reverse, and never on the wafer thin side. As fans, we want to believe the ball has not been deflated and the coin toss was completed in a fair way. Perhaps it is.

Yet, life is not a coin toss of random events. Most of what we face is the inevitable, even if unintended, consequences of earlier choices. That isn’t always true, but if you take your day apart, you will find it is MOSTLY true. If there is a true “coin toss” we face, it isn’t a random selection, but the choice of one of two directions when faced with uncertainty.

Let’s say it this way: you can respond to the unknown in faith, or in fear – it is like tossing up the coin (in that it is a choice and brings specific results). Whichever side of the coin you choose, the other side is still present, but has been hidden by your favored choice. In the opening story of the Patriarch Abraham in Genesis 12, we see this simple principle at work in two successive moments in Abe’s life, each moment defined by which side of the coin he followed. The key truth becomes obvious when you really take the time to look through the chapter…

Key Principle: When I trust God, I walk in faith. When I am driven by the fear of circumstances, I walk in failure.

This is one of the simplest “basic truths” of our faith, and we mention it as part of our “boot camp” series.

To set the stage, let’s think through three ideas we have been following in our walk through Genesis.

• We know the opening chapters of the first book of our modern Bible collection offers some basic “story lines” for the whole collection.

• We know some basic ideas of how the book came together and is blended from story to story.

• We know what we have learned from the major figures we have encountered.

Look at these three ideas for a moment:

First, there are five major “story lines” of the Bible. (This is a paraphrase of something I was introduced to by Doug Greenwold at Preserving Bible Times years ago).

• Genesis opened with the Creator. His existence and His character is referenced in tandem with His work. Genesis offers some basics on Who He is, and what He cares about can be seen in Genesis 1.

• The story continues with the introduction of the Adversary of God. His character can also be seen woven into the details of the story. Who he is and how he works can be seen in Genesis 2 and 3.

• The Mutiny of man is made clear in the story of the “Fall of Man” as mankind sides with the enemy against the Creator God.

• The Human Condition is highlighted in the stories after the “Fall of Man” in Genesis. These stories explain why things are broken, why relationships fall apart, why children are born with maladies, etc. This is even used as a primer on why men killed each other.

• The final storyline is made plain in Genesis 12, where the Plan of Redemption is highlighted. God shows a way out of the mess that He alone can provide.

Second, in our short study of each major character of Genesis, we find out something important that can advance our walk with God. For instance:

• In Adam and Eve we saw God’s prime ethic was love, and with that came the essential inclusion of choice. That explained for us the way a perfect man and woman in a perfect garden could be pulled from following a Perfect God.

• In Cain and Abel we saw the infection of jealousy, the pain of betrayal, and how those led men further from God.

• In Noah we saw that even one who followed God could get ‘burned out” and end up building things that (though they offered lasting results) were not in keeping with the height of his great call.

Third, we understand the Book of Genesis was originally divided into ten sections plus a prologue.

Each section began with the words “These are the generations of…” It is essentially a series of dramas. The sections that lead us to our story are as follows:

Gen. 1:1-2:3 Prologue: “Seven Days of Creation”

Gen. 2:4-4:26 Generations of Heaven and Earth: What went wrong.

Gen 5:1-6:8 Generations of Adam (or man): The hidden prophecy of God’s coming judgment.

Gen 6:9-9:29 Generations of Noah: The story of a man who followed God, but suffered the pain of his world falling apart.

Gen 10:1-11:9 Generations of Noah’s sons: The powerful story of how some of the generations Shem, Ham, and Japheth simply let the message of God go and framed lives in paganism and humanism.

Now our story moves into the:

Gen 11:10-26 Generations of Shem – Ten selected generations to establish the line of blessing to Terah

Gen 11:27-25:11 The Generations of Terah – Life and Times of Abraham

The backdrop of the family is further given in Genesis 11:27. Scripture establishes four details concerning Abraham’s background that we must understand to understand the story about him:

1) The players of the story (11:27-29).

Genesis 11: 27 Now these are the records of the generations of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran; and Haran became the father of Lot. 28 Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans. 29 Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and Iscah.

2) Sarah’s barrenness (11:30)

Genesis 11:30 Sarai was barren; she had no child.

3) Abraham’s family loyalty and obedience (11:31-32)

Genesis 11:31 Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan; and they went as far as Haran, and settled there. 32 The days of Terah were two hundred and five years; and Terah died in Haran.

4) Abraham received a call and the move of his father helped move him to obedience (Acts 7:2). Acts 7 tells the story with additional details:

Acts 7:2 And he said, “Hear me, brethren and fathers! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in [a]Haran, 3 and said to him, ‘Leave your country and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you.’ 4 Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him move to this country in which you are now living. 5 But He gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground, and yet, even when he had no child, He promised that He would give it to him as a possession and to his descendants after him.

There it is: We have the storyline of redemption introduced powerfully to a loyal family man with a barren wife. We have a God Who makes promises, but expects something in exchange – our trust.

Let’s see if we can pick out the idea from Genesis 12:1-8 that helps us understand the “Beginning the Faith Walk.”

Look at the simplicity of trusting God and walking in His promises. Don’t lose track in the detail of the simple truth: When I trust God, I walk in faith. When I am driven by the fear of circumstances, I walk in failure.

The beginning of chapter 12 offers five steps toward a “faith walk” with God:

Step One: “Get forth from your country.” Recognize the “trust exchange.” God’s promises always come at the same price – Trade what you see for what you cannot, based solely on His Word! (12:1).

Genesis 12:1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you;

Step Two: “I will.” Understand clearly the source of the blessing. All God’s promises are rooted in His Word to us – it is what we have to follow Him by! (12:2). It is not because of some intrinsic goodness in you that blessing comes. It comes by choosing to believe Him.

Genesis 12:2 And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing…

Step Three: “I will bless those who bless you.” Acknowledge the nature of His plan. God isn’t just trying to “get” you – He has a plan to use the life He lent you to reach into the lives of others. Both our following and our failure to follow have broader consequences than the immediate! (12:3).

Genesis 12:3 And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Step Four: “As the Lord had spoken to him” – Wear the mark of obedience. It is not mental ascent nor theological acuity that becomes key marks of a faith walk – it is obedience! (12:4-5).

Genesis 12:4 So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan; thus they came to the land of Canaan.

Step Five: “There he built an altar.” Respond to the call in gratitude. Note that God was blessed when Abraham gave Him worship in the form of giving back to God his own things! Worship includes offering God a visual sign of your trust for the future, and a desire to follow His call.

Genesis 12:6 Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. Now the Canaanite was then in the land. 7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. 8 Then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.

While the first half of chapter 12 makes clear the trust exchange and the walk of faith, there is another story that is hooked to that record in the last part of the chapter. It offers the other side of the coin…

The Beginning of the Failure Walk
(Genesis 12:9-13:4)

God gave land to a landless man. He offered a future. Yet, something stirred in Abe to keep walking and look for something more familiar. The hill country of Judah and Benjamin didn’t look like the flat expanse of Haran and Mesopotamia. The rocks, the soil, the landscape – it didn’t look like what Abe dreamed. That wrestling of heart led him to failure – the other side of the coin. This time, he chose to exchange what God promised for what he thought he needed… This is an exercise of “sliding downward into failure” in five easy steps!

Step One: Make moves based on inner feelings. The story begins with discontent. The discontentment with the “place” God put Abram in sent him packing to a “better” place. It also led him into the heart of a series of perils (12:9-10).

Genesis 12:9 Abram journeyed on, continuing toward the Negev. 10 Now there was a famine in the land; so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.

We must understand that where God places us is the best place for us to be. When we kick against His revealed will, we may feel we are getting more of our own way, but we are heading for long-term disaster.

Step Two: Create unintended consequences of walking apart from our call. In Abraham’s case, the move he chose to make put him in a sense of peril, and his reaction was fear. The problems brought on by Abram’s choice to walk away from God’s revealed place led him into new problems.

Genesis 12:11 It came about when he came near to Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, “See now, I know that you are a beautiful woman; 12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife’; and they will kill me, but they will let you live.”

In the midst of the peril, fear set in. He found himself frustrated and vulnerable (12:11-12). The problem is that without the assurance that we are in the center of God’s place for us, we are vulnerable to sweeping fear and frustration!

Step Three: Create the need for solutions to problems we weren’t meant to face. In Abe’s case, he found deception might save him. The fear and vulnerability led to Abram trying his best to “cover himself.” He did not turn to God for aid; he solved the problems in the realm of the flesh. After all, he created the issues in his own choice, didn’t he?

Genesis 12:13 “Please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may live on account of you.”

Abe found it easier to lie, and let the poison of deception thwart his testimony to both his wife and his world. His misplaced trust is a notable tip-off to the problem (i.e. “that it may go well with me” in 12:13). The “father of lies” will do his work in us when we have left our “place” and offers the enticing apparent protection of deception. We will be deceived into believing WE can solve our problems, and then DECEIVE others as the lies spread. We cannot be an uncompromising testimony to truths we don’t believe enough to consistently live!

Step Four: Face the world faking a daily faith walk. The encounter Abram had with the world was met amid deception and a total departure from his walk with God. He killed his testimony by reaching out in deception rather than in a genuine walk of integrity (12:14-16).

Genesis 12:14 It came about when Abram came into Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. 15 Pharaoh’s officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh; and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. 16 Therefore he treated Abram well for her sake; and gave him sheep and oxen and donkeys and male and female servants and female donkeys and camels.

The simple fact is that we cannot effectively “give out” what we don’t truly possess. We cannot urge others to trust a God we do not!

Step Five: Live with unmasked hypocrisy and embarrassment. The encounter with Abram left Pharaoh in worse shape than he was before this “man of God” came to him! In the end, instead of bringing the blessing that should come when a believer enters the scene, Abram brought pain! Pharaoh loathed the God of Abraham!

Genesis 12:17 But the Lord struck Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. 18 Then Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her and go.” 20 Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him; and they escorted him away, with his wife and all that belonged to him.

It is a truth worth recalling: A believer walking in defiance will bring pain and heartache to the people he should bring blessing to!

What could Abraham do when he destroyed his testimony?

Abraham left the scene (13:1-4) and returned back to the place God put Him. When he came back to his “place” he turned his heart back to God and bowed before Him!

Genesis 13:1 So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, he and his wife and all that belonged to him, and Lot with him. 2 Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver and in gold. 3 He went on his journeys from the Negev as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, 4 to the place of the altar which he had made there formerly; and there Abram called on the name of the Lord.

When I trust God, I walk in faith. When I am driven by the fear of circumstances, I walk in failure.

When that happens, come back. Go back to the altar and make clear to God you know you were wrong. Leave holding His hand.

“His Eye is on the Sparrow” was written by Civilla Martin, the wife of a Baptist pastor. She described in her own words how she came to write the song. “In the spring of 1905, my husband and I were sojourning in Elmira, New York. We contracted a deep friendship with a couple by the name of Mr. and Mrs. Doolittle—true saints of God. Mrs. Doolittle had been bedridden for over twenty years. Her husband was an incurable cripple who had to propel himself to and from his business in a wheel chair. Despite their afflictions, they lived happy Christian lives, bringing inspiration and comfort to all who knew them. One day while we were visiting with the Doolittles, my husband commented on their bright hopefulness and asked them the secret of their joy in the midst of pain. Mrs. Doolittle’s reply was simple: ‘If His eye is on the sparrow, then I know He watches me.’ The beauty of this expression of simple faith gripped my heart and that same evening I wrote the words for the song.”

The rest, as they say, is history. If you’re discouraged, afraid of the future, or struggling with the problems of today, listen again to the words of this beautiful song: “Why should I feel discouraged? Why should the shadows come? Why should my heart feel lonely, and long for heaven and home? When Jesus is my portion, a constant friend is He. His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches over me. His eye is on the sparrow; and I know He watches me. I sing because I’m happy. I sing because I’m free! His eye is on the sparrow; and I know He watches me. His eye is on the sparrow; and I know He watches me.” I’M NOT AFRAID, BECAUSE THE WORST THING THAT CAN HAPPEN IN THIS LIFE IS THE DEATH OF MY BODY— AND I AM AN ETERNAL SOUL!

We don’t have to fear death because the worst thing that can ever happen in this life is the death of our body, and we are more than just a body: We are a soul. C.S. Lewis wrote: “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” Our soul lives inside our body. It’s who we really are, our personality. And physical death cannot destroy our soul, because our soul will live on long after the stars have burned out and the universe has faded away.

(1) I’M NOT AFRAID, BECAUSE IF GOD CARES ENOUGH TO NUMBER MY HAIRS, HE CARES ABOUT THE OTHER DETAILS OF MY LIFE!

I read recently that most humans can only see a maximum of seven items without counting. In other words, if I’m taking care of three children, I can look at the group and know there are three without counting. I can look at six or seven and know they are there without counting. But if I have 12 or 20 children to watch over I have to stop and count, or put them in four groups of five in order to keep up with them.

If you are blonde (a real blonde) you have around 145,000 hairs; if you have black or brown hair you have about 120,000 hairs and if you’re a redhead you only have 90,000.

(2) I’M NOT AFRAID, BECAUSE IF GOD CARES ABOUT A SPARROW WHO FALLS, HE WON’T STOP LOVING ME WHEN I FAIL!

Sparrows are some of the most plentiful, common birds in the world. Where you find people, you’ll find sparrows. They only live in populated areas because they are scavengers of leftovers. Sparrows hop up to you at the outdoor restaurant and wait for crumbs. They aren’t known for their beautiful colors or for their sweet songs. They were cheap and common. Naturalists tell us that there are approximately 35,000 bald eagles in the U.S. and Canada. But who cares enough to count the sparrows? Only God.

I once read a story about a tribe of Native Americans with a unique practice for training young braves. On the night of a boy’s thirteenth birthday, he was placed in a dense forest to spend the entire night alone. Before that night, he had never been away from the security of his family and tribe. One particular young man was blindfolded and led many miles into the wilderness. He was instructed not to remove the blindfold for an hour. On this particular night, dark clouds obscured the moon and stars, and when he removed the blindfold all he could see was utter darkness. Every time a twig snapped, he visualized a wild animal ready to pounce. Every time an animal howled, he imagined a wolf leaping out of the darkness. He spent a terrifying night on the edge of panic, but he didn’t leave. After what seemed like an eternity, the first rays of sunlight began to lighten the eastern sky. Looking around, the boy saw flowers, trees, and the outline of the path. Then, to his utter astonishment, he beheld the figure of a man standing just a few feet away, armed with a longbow and arrow. It was the boy’s father. He had been there all night long.

When I was in High School I developed an interest in photography. I set up a dark room, shot and developed my pictures for a number of years. I carried that hobby to Israel when I went, and shot some 16,000 slides, only to later give them away to Friends of Israel in New Jersey. What can you do with thousands of slides of Israel?

I found particular enjoyment in shooting “black and white” pictures, because they could more easily lend themselves to a dramatic look. One of the best places to pull off drama with black and white film is, believe it or not, an old graveyard. Have you ever wandered in a grave yard and looked at the stones? Some of them are funny.

• Gloria Russell’s gravestone said: “Don’t worry, I am just resting my eyes!”
• Robert Clay Allison’s said: “Never killed a man who didn’t need killing!”
• Computer geek Peter Andersen had on his: “Final log out.”
• One business man had on his stone: “I made some good deals and I made some bad ones, but I really went in the hole with this one.”
• One old curmudgeon had, “You’ve seen it, now go home!” on his stone.
• B.P. Roberts famously had: “I told you I was sick!”
• Merv Griffin had: “I will NOT be right back after this message!”
• The man famous for the voices in the Bugs Bunny cartoons, Mel Blanc, had “That’s all folks!” on his.

Have you ever wandered through a cemetery and wondered about the people who had their names etched on the stones. What were their lives like? Who loved them? I have.

At some funerals I read the words of the “Dash between the dates.” The reading reminds me that our lives are more than names and dates. Let me remind you of that writing by Lucille Britt:

Memorial Day was over now,
All had left and I was alone.
I began to read the names and dates
Chiseled there on every stone.
The dates which showed whether it
was Mom or Dad or daughter or baby son.
The dates were different but the amount the same,
There were two on every one.
It was then I noticed something,
It was but a simple line;
It was the dash between the dates
Placed there it stood for time.
All at once it dawned on me
How important that little line.
The dates placed there belonged to God
But that line is yours and mine.
It’s God who gives this precious life
And God who takes away;
But that line He gives to us
To do with what we may.
We know God’s written the first date down
Of each and every one,
And we know those hands will write again,
For the last date has to come.
We know He’ll write the last date down,
And soon, we know, for some,
But upon the line between my dates
I hope He’ll write “Well done!”.

The truth the writer wanted us to recall is this: All of us are building something with our lives. Some are accumulating debts. Some are adding love and joy to others.

Today’s lesson is about what happened to people when they decided to build something as a memorial to themselves as they ignored the God that made them. God crushed their project and scattered the people.

It wasn’t so much WHAT they built that God was concerned with, but WHY. The truth is, the same thing can be said of your life. You can build good things, but not GOD THINGS. You can build for your glory and not for the glory of your Creator. Every such work will be destroyed. A self-purpose nullifies the work. The accomplishment will perish in this life. It will end with this world. Only that which is done for His glory will be remembered long after.

Let’s think of it this way: We have a choice what we build. We are not victims of life, we are participants…Here is the critical truth from the Tower of Babel story we want to explore…

Key Principle: Our lives were given to us so that we can build a monument of what we hold most dear.

As a believer, I want that monument to be about the Savior, not self.

Go back in your mind’s eye to the time after the Flood. This was a time when every man and woman who left the Ark did so with a keen knowledge of God. The only living people on the earth stood at a worship service and honored God for all that happened. Collectively, the family of Noah offered a sacrifice. We can read about it in Genesis 8:

Genesis 8:20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

God responded to their worship with a pleased sense of satisfaction (meaning their hearts were tuned to what they did) and He offered a grand promise:

Genesis 8:21 The Lord smelled the soothing aroma; and the Lord said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done. 22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

The Bible is clear; there was NO OTHER GROUP of people on the Earth from which the populace of the nations was drawn:

Genesis 9:18 Now the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth; and Ham was the father of Canaan. 19 These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated.

Think of it! That was the only day in the historical record after the Fall of man where everyone pleased God, believed God, knew God and surrendered to His purposes. The sad truth, though, is that it simply didn’t last. The sin nature within us is too strong to remain trapped within. Evil overcame men and popped out yet again.

In short order, the whole tribe of the Earth fell from a worshipful place to a selfish and pagan one. It only took a few generations to lose that sense of God’s presence. How did that happen?

It began, as in most every time since, with followers of God who focused life on themselves (their comforts and desires) and not on the glory of the God they worshipped.

I suspect a cooling of heart, and starving of fervency preceded an open rejection of God’s standards. I suspect when people like Noah didn’t take the pain of his life to God, he tried to “cope” with it by other means. That led to real problems. Look in Genesis 9 at what followed:

Genesis 9:20 Then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard. 21 He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent.

Here in a world that knew God, a follower focused on building for SELF. That pattern appears in Scripture as the beginning of a group that FALLS AWAY from following. It isn’t unique to Noah…

Consider the pilgrim and Puritan heritage of our own nation. About one hundred people who were seeking religious freedom in the New World, left England on the Mayflower in September of the year 1620. In the cold of November, the ship reached land by the shore of Cape Cod, in present-day Massachusetts. By December, the group began to form the first permanent settlement of Europeans in New England. The settlers of Plymouth Colony are known as the Pilgrims.

That journey and safe arrival to the “New World” gave them a place to live out their faith free of persecution. In all of recorded human history, nobody offers such a story of the freedom to form a society directly from the Bible in a wilderness without a king pressing them. They came, in part, to the New World to implement religious freedom and to walk with Him according to the dictates of one’s own personal conscience. William Bradford and others kept record of why they did what they did.

Turning from the idea of the “Divine right of Kings” they turned to the Bible to set the structure of their society and governing principles. They studied scripture for what God’s opinion was on governmental structure, both in the state and the church and they found that God didn’t always confer power to just one individual but, at times, gave it to representatives who were elected. They enshrined that in the “Mayflower Compact,” and began to form a free society also built around free markets and rugged individualism. They expected their leaders not to be lords over the people, but to be their servants.

Go to that area of Massachusetts today. See if you can find more than a handful of people who have such a heart for God!

My point is that when people who know God refuse to live for God, the next generations openly live for self. Reverence fades and eventually shame of selfishness does as well.

In Noah’s day it took some time, but the story that followed in the successive generations made clear how the operation of paganization took solid hold in mankind. The story that followed Genesis 6-9 (Noah’s story) is NOT in Genesis 10, but rather in Genesis 11. God offered the table of the Nations in Genesis 10 to set up the story of how the nations came to be scattered and divided by Him in Genesis 11. The order of the events is actually reversed. We would probably tell the story with the cause (found in Genesis 11) followed by the effect (found in Genesis 10). A more typical Hebrew way of telling the story is in a “flashback mode” offering the EFFECT before the CAUSE. Jump to Genesis 11…

The Setting (Genesis 11:1-4)

After the profound move of God in the flood, the actions of the men of a few generations removed from the event devastated the world in a NEW WAY. They left the world cut off from truth. Every time you read of the Tower of Babel story, don’t rush through and dump the details. This story is the answer to every missionaries heart cry when they have entered a land where the God of the Bible IS NOT KNOWN.

How often have they faced the pain of knowing that literally millions are lost and hell-bound because of what happened in the generations after the Flood! The simple truth is that at one time everyone came off the Ark following God, and someone didn’t pass truth to their children.

Babel was about a people dedicating a monument to themselves, without any regard for God.

In the wake of that decision, the scattering of the people by God without the truth left them to devise their own cultures, their own religions, their own ways of understanding the origin of man, his purpose and his destiny. The hunger of man to elevate himself ended with man in confusion. They attempted to fulfill their needs in collective dedication to SELF, not in SERVICE to the Lord Who made them. The Bible is clear: We were made to know, love and serve our Creator. Look at how the account unfolded:

The story started with common communication.

Genesis 11:1 Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. 2 It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

LANGUAGE and COMMUNICATION was at the heart of what built the unity of the early society. The settling of lands and building of civil society worked far more easily than we have ever known it, simply because they could effectively communicate with one another. There is power in shared communication. Without the barriers of language and culture, shared beliefs and core values can be universally communicated. The singular language and homogenous culture was the beginning point of unity. It wasn’t the color of their skin; it was the ability to share common values and common experiences. Common values drive a unified society.

Contrary to what you have been told by many in our time, diversity of views is not always a strength. I am not speaking of race, I am speaking of core values. When a society can no longer share a common “right” or “wrong” it imperils the whole society from growing together. It becomes a litany of causes and a scary collection of special interests. What pulls it together? A society thrives on an agreed standard of right and wrong! For our founding fathers it was Biblical truth, assumed to be both TRUE and GOOD.

Let’s be absolutely clear here: If half of the University is teaching that absolutes exist – as in math and some science departments – and the other half of the university is teaching that “there are no absolutes” and “all truth is relative” – the house of education will not hold together. The truth is that I don’t want to live in a home built by an architect’s plan that did not believe in absolute and consistent physical principles. I don’t even want to sit in a chair made by someone who doesn’t believe in consistent physical principles. Weight loads of physics need to be absolute, unbending and consistent. How the architect feels about the physical laws isn’t relevant to me. Let’s move on…

The story grew around common technology.

Genesis 11:3 They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.

The story centered on a common goal: a celebration of man.

Genesis 11:4 They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name…

It was expressed in terms of UNITY.

Genesis 11:4b “…otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

The people saw the need to produce something. That wasn’t a bad thing in and of itself. Community projects are good. The advance of technology to the benefit of the community is valuable. It sounds wonderful to read that communication led to community, and community led to advancement.

We must understand that for a society to move forward, there must be implanted a constant desire to accomplish something that presses others to get ahead. This is the tragedy of a type of compassion that hands out reward without work. I am not against the growing welfare society because they take money from ME – I am against it because it demeans THE PEOPLE IT WAS MEANT TO HELP.

I believe in productivity. God started man off in the garden with duties. We need to DO something – not just get benefits from those who have done something. People of every race, color and creed need to accomplish something – it is inherent in our human nature. Too much given too easily produces unhappy, yes, ANGRY children. Work is GOOD. Work is GODLY. 1 Thessalonians 4 and 5 reminds us that three things characterize a godly man or woman – sexual purity, a real work ethic, and a distinct view of life and death that shows the time outside of this body as the more “real” experience.

The verse says not only that they wanted to accomplish something, but that they wanted to benefit each other. Companies in our modern society must see more than profits. They have to be able to see that there is a benefit to giving help back to the society upon whom their profits were built. Employees need to be thankful to have jobs, and companies need to be deliberate in helping their workers have good lives – not just using them as machines for the profits of the investors. We have to SEE each other, and be deliberate about a society. When we cheat to “get over on the man,” we take from our brothers, our sisters, our communities, our nation. We are America, and we cannot afford to cheat our neighbor without cheating our own children.

The primary issue of the passage was that men wanted to elevate themselves. There was no thought to reverence. There was no wisdom, because the fear of the Lord was not present. It was because of that God interrupted their vision and work.

The Interruption: At the point where the goal was clear, God stepped in (11:5-9).

Genesis 11 offers a rare look at how God felt about what they were doing. The record offers:

Genesis 11:5 The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 The Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.

In order to understand how God dealt with the people of the plain and their tower, it is necessary to ask some questions that set the story in context.

First, where did the Babel project have its origins?

The Bible says the community was started by a powerful central leader.

Genesis 10:8 Now Cush became the father of Nimrod; he became a mighty one on the earth.

The community became attractive because of its reputation for security.

Genesis 10:9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.”10 The beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went forth into Assyria, and built Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah, 12 and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.

Beyond its origins, what does the Bible say was the OUTCOME of a world built to celebrate men without reverence of the Creator?

Genesis 11 reminded us:

Genesis 11:8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.

• The project was STOPPED. God knew that men who had no barrier to communication were effectively erasing reverence from man’s collective record. This isn’t the only time such a thing has been tried, but it was easily spread in a homogenous culture.

• The people were SCATTERED. When communication was disrupted, people couldn’t stay together.

• The very “ground zero” of the place to build a UNITED HUMANITY without God because the very place of the CENTRAL CONFUSION, and the beginning of diversity. Unity at the expense of truth isn’t healthy, it is tragic.

Let’s say it clearly: In all the efforts of humanity to use UNITY to EXALT HUMANITY, God will stand opposed. He will thwart man’s torquing of truth. The “fear of the Lord” is the beginning of knowledge. You can’t get to truth without the God Who established the truth.

Unity at the expense of truth isn’t healthy, it is tragic.

Our lives were given to us so that we can build a monument of what we hold most dear. For the believer, that sobering truth helps us make daily choices.

After the profound move of God in the flood, the actions of these men left the world cut off from truth. The scattering without the truth left them to devise their own culture, their own religion, their own way of understanding origins, purpose and destiny. The hunger of man left man with confusion, because they attempted to fulfill the need in SELF, not in SERVICE to the Lord Who made them.

For most of us, we know what it means to work hard to build something. Much of what we build helps us feel significant, and that is one of the dangers in our building projects. In this story, the people all wanted to accomplish something that would show how significant they were. They wanted to mark their time on this earth with a symbol of power. They wanted THEIR STORY to be the story of history.

Herein is the problem: People who are desperate for SIGNIFICANCE become obsessed with it.

Joe Stowell said it right: “We were built for significance. Our problem is not that we search for it, but that we search for it in all the wrong places. We think it is what WE DO. What we LEAVE BEHIND. It isn’t… it is in what we allow God to do IN and THROUGH us. It is in how we walk with Him in the quiet places, after the lights are off… after no one is watching and the accolades are all given out.

God wasn’t going to be second in the story of history at the plain of Shinar, and He won’t be second in YOUR STORY EITHER.

He is the highest and He is always truthful. Any other god is a false hope. Any other pursuit is a DEAD END.

So He confounded them, broke up their union and sent them packing… It was the best thing He could do to stop them from all perishing together on the FOOL’S ERRAND OF BUILDING A MONUMENT TO THEMSELVES WITHOUT HIM.

Many people are afraid of death, but far fewer appear to be afraid of wasting life. They build nothing for others. They serve God only when it fits into a convenient place and time.

We must remember we never “find time” for things; we “make time” by allocating it. If we delay using time well, we show we don’t understand its true value. If we fail to serve Christ well, we show we don’t understand HIS true value.