The Church in the Days of Abram (2), Genesis 13:14-18
The last time we looked at this part of the Bible we considered God’s work in the life of Abraham, calling him, encouraging him, testing him, and accompanying him. We thought a little bit about the heritage that Abraham was to leave to his children in the form of wells and altars. We have skipped over a couple of events in Abraham’s life and now we come to this short passage where the Lord meets with Abraham after the departure of Lot.
A reminder of God’s promise
Hard providences
In our previous study, we looked at Genesis 12:2–3, “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” In the meantime, Abram has encountered some painful acts of providence, beginning with a famine, which caused Abram to go into Egypt. This was followed by a moral failure on the part of Abram, in allowing his wife to be taken into the house of Pharaoh. Following this, there was a division in the fledgling church, with Lot going to the Jordan valley, and then, as the account goes, “pitching his tent toward Sodom.”
Before Lot’s saga ends, of course, he is living right in with the Sodomites, and marrying some of his daughters to them (Gen 19:12-14). I’m not sure that Abram envisioned this eventuality when he suggested that he and Lot separate to solve the economic and agricultural problem they were having, and the personal strife between the herdsmen. Lot chooses what appears to be the best land—that much was probably alright with Abram. Afterall, he had proposed that Lot choose what he wanted. But that Lot would come into a closer relationship with the people of Sodom than he had with Abram was probably not on Abram’s radar.
We can imagine that it was a sorrowful occasion as Abram observed this declension among the people of God. He had seen this before when his family were in Ur of the Chaldees. We talked about this when we discussed the church in the days of Terah. Abram probably had hoped that one day his children would marry Lot’s children, but it is not to Moab and Ammon that Abram ends up sending for a wife for Isaac when the time comes. Instead, he finds it necessary to send his servant all the way back to Haran to find a wife for Isaac.
Consider also the discouragement it must have been to Abram and Sarah that God gave Lot and his wife several children, while they had none. By the time Isaac was born, Lot had at least four daughters. They were being married and living in comparative luxury in a place described as being nearly as beautiful as the Garden of Eden (Gen 13:10). Here was Lot, compromised in his faith and practice, dwelling with the Sodomites, and he had the apparent blessing of God, while Abram did not.
The constancy of God
It is just here, after the separation of Lot and Abram, that God speaks again to Abram. He says much the same thing to him as he said at the beginning of Abram’s journey out of Haran:
"And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee," (Gen 13:14-17).
We recall from chapter 12 that as Abram began to sojourn in the land, and he saw the Canaanites surrounding him, God appeared to him and told him explicitly that the very land itself would belong to Abram’s children:
"And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land. And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him," (Gen 12:6–7).
It seemed improbable. These Canaanites, as we get to know them later, are formidable people. Nonetheless, Abram obeys and sojourns, doubtless with a wary eye toward the Canaanites. But now it has happened that Abram finds himself at odds, not just with the Canaanites, but with someone from whom he expected friendship and co-belligerency among enemies, someone with whom he shared a common faith. On top of all this, God appeared even to have blessed the man for being less than faithful in his spirituality. Abram must have begun to feel abandoned and alone.
In encouraging Abram not to lose heart, notice the words God uses. He tells Abram to “lift up now thine eyes” and look at the land. This is much the same way Lot’s choosing to live in Sodom had been described: Genesis 13:10, “And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere.” But there is a difference. In this case it is not Lot, searching out for himself the most wealth and luxury, but it is Abram searching out the length and breadth of God’s promise. This is what we need to keep our eyes on. The faithful word of God, filled with promises. If others begin to be less than true to the Lord, we need to redouble our own faith.
Glorifying God on Earth
Keep in mind that both of these men, Lot and Abram, belonged to God. Peter describes Lot, contrasting him with the Sodomites, as “Just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked,” (2 Pet 2:7). We are not saying that Lot was lost, although he seems to have come very near it. His wife was lost, some of his daughters were destroyed in Sodom, his other daughters enticed him into heinous and disgusting sin. Despite the apparent prosperity he enjoyed for a while, the end of Lot’s life was one of shame and loneliness, even if he was not ultimately cut off from God’s presence.
That’s not how we want to enter the kingdom of God, by the skin of our teeth. For some people, that’s good enough. I was reminded this week of something I read several years ago about Donald Cargill, the Covenanter. In Cargill’s day there was a minster named William Vilant, who had written a defense of ministers who had accepted the indulgence of James II rather than suffering with their brethren in the fields of Scotland. Vilant was present on one occasion when someone referred to Donald Cargill’s faithfulness, and he burst out impatiently, “What needs all this ado? We will get heaven, and they will get no more.” Cargill was later told of Vilant’s remark and he said, “Yes, we will get more: we will get God glorified on earth, which is more than heaven.”
This needs to be our goal, to see God glorified on earth. Our comforts, even our enjoyment of God’s promises, must take second place to God’s glory. But we can be sure that God will not forget us in the process. It is Abraham who is remembered as the father of the faithful; it is his children from whom Christ came; and it will be his spiritual seed who eventually inherit all of God’s promises. Let’s not lose heart along the way. God did not forget Abraham, and he will not forget us.