The Godward Life

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The Excellency of a Christian Life

So, Genesis chapter 13. As we begin our study today, I want to share a quote with you from one Puritan, a man named Thomas Watson. Probably many of you have heard that name. He once wrote these words in a commentary on the Lord's Prayer.

And he said this, The excellency of a Christian is to answer the end of his creation. Now, what is that? He said, which is to hallow God's name and to live to that God by whom he lives. To hallow God's name and to live to that God.

Meaning, the best way that we can spend our lives as Christians, as Christian men and women, is to give ourselves fully and unreservedly to the task of showing that God's name is holy, and we do this by living fully to that God.

That there is truly nothing greater that we can do than to spend our lives to this end, that God's name would be known as holy. And such a life spent in that direction might rightly be called a Godward life.

A life in the direction of God. It is to spend a life with our eyes off of the world. It's a life spent with our minds set upon that which cannot be seen. It's a life where our affections are tethered to something other than the stuff of this world.

It is a life spent where our treasures are not here, but where our faith is in God and where our eyes, our ears, our minds, our hearts, our affections are spent in pursuit of the one true God. And as many of you know, if you've never been with us, you know we have some visitors.

I've been spending the last few weeks trying to demonstrate how it is that the book of Genesis teaches us how to do this. We've looked in recent weeks at ancient heresies like the Marcionites, who taught that because of their Gnostic views, we don't need the Old Testament, we just need the New Testament.

And so I've been seeking to make this case that we are not Marcionites. We don't look at the Old Testament and say, functionally it's unhelpful, it's not all that useful. We're just going to focus on the New Testament.

We can't be soft Marcionites and unhitch ourselves from our Old Testaments to focus only on New Testament revelation. But we must be content to look into God's perfect law, to delight in what it says, and then to do it.

And what we will see is that to live a Godward life, certainly we find instruction for that in the New Testament, but we also find it in the Old Testament. And we find it here in the book of Genesis. And as we're looking in Genesis chapter 13, we're going to return to the story of Abraham.

We've been there for the last few weeks now, right? And we're going to look at the early days of his pilgrimage in the Promised Land, and we're going to find exactly what Thomas Watson is speaking about as it relates to this Godward life.

God's name, because my life is fully lived to that God. And so in this section, I'll dive into it in a little bit. We're going to look at the first part of a trilogy of stories that tell the story of Abraham and Lot.

I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but maybe if we just glance at it very quickly, Genesis 13 deals with Abraham and Lot as they parse out the land, or as they separate from each other and choose the land of their dwelling.

In Genesis chapter 14, we're going to see the rescue that is necessitated by Lot's choosing the land that he does, and Abraham's coming to his help. And then in chapters 18 and 19, we're going to find, again, the story of Lot.

In or near Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction of that area, his wife is turned into a pillar of salt. And what happens with Lot? He ends up in an incestuous relationship with his own daughters, creating enemy nations of the nation of Israel.

So today we're going to look at the first part of the trilogy in chapter 13. And as this trilogy unfolds, as this text before us unfolds, what it highlights, on one hand, is the short-sighted, the unwise, the ungodly actions of Lot, in contrast to the faith-filled, we might say, the discerning, the Godward actions of Abraham.

And so Abraham, in chapter 13, shows us what it means to live a Godward life. What it means to live a life of wisdom, a life well spent, a life rightly ordered around our eternal hope. In short, he shows us a life spent in pursuit of God.

And so today we're going to separate, we're going to look at all of chapter 13. I'm going to separate it into four different sections. So under this theme of the Godward life, we'll look at some of the marks of a Godward life.

And we see a repentant life, an embattled life, an expectant life, and then finally a worshiping life. So as we look at verses 1 through 4, we'll begin with this theme, the repentant or a repentant life.

A Repentant Life

This is what we read. So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negev. Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver and in gold. And he journeyed on from the Negev, as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first.

And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord. So as we land here in chapter 13, whenever we go to camp, Guy, this is what happens, right? We end up at camp and we have microphone issues. I should have just kept running to the meadow.

So as we land in chapter 13, there we are, we're arriving back at the scene where we left off last time. And what you'll recall is that last time we heard how God effectually called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees, right in chapter 12.

And he brought about this radical transformation in Abram's life. So though Abram was a worshipper of foreign gods on the other side of the Euphrates River, when God called him, Abram laid down his idols.

He came into the land and there he called upon the name of God and set up to the Lord altars to worship him. And at the end of chapter 12, you'll remember this from last time, what ends up happening is that there is a famine in the land.

Abram goes to, does anyone remember where he went? He goes to Egypt and there he puts his wife in a rather unenviable situation. He says, she's not my wife, she's my sister. And then Sarai ends up in the Pharaoh's harem in Egypt.

But because God was gracious, because God was gracious, he not only protects Abraham and Sarai, but he leads them back out of the nation in a manner, and we looked at this last time, in a manner that would foreshadow the Exodus that would come nearly 600 years later under Moses.

So they end up in Egypt because of a famine. God sends his plagues upon the people. They end up getting sent back out. And we're going to see, just like the Israelites, they leave wealthier than when they arrived.

And so here as we land in Genesis 13, 1, we're told that Abram was sent out of Egypt. He returned back to the land of Canaan via a place called the Negev, which was an arid region located south of the Judean hills.

And as he arrives, there is a dramatic change of circumstance. As he arrives, there's something now different about his life and what he's carrying along with him. And we read it in verse 2, and we read, Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver and in gold.

Now at first glance, that doesn't appear very significant at all. But if we begin to look into the original language, we get some insight into what is actually happening here. This word for rich in verse 2 is the Hebrew word kaved.

And kaved is interesting because it not only speaks to being rich, it's actually a word that means either a weightiness or a severity. So Abram comes back in verse 2, and he was weighty in livestock. He was severe in livestock, in silver and in gold.

And the reason that's significant is because if we go to Genesis 12 and verse 10, if you look there with me, we read there, Now there was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe, kaved, in the land.

So Abram leaves Canaan the first time because of the weightiness of the famine. And now as he comes back, what does he come with? But he comes with a weightiness of riches. God took him there in his own sovereign providence for his own goods in fulfillment of passages like Romans 8 .28.

And so he comes back heavy, and once more we see again this picture of God's undeserved kindness. And a pattern begins to emerge in verses 3 and 4 that we would do well to pay attention to. Now he journeyed on from the Negev as far as Bethel to the place, hear this, where his tent had been in the beginning, between Bethel and Ai.

And then in verse 4, to the place where he had made an altar at the first. Now what I want us to see here is that there is actually a chiasm within Abram's life. Now if you don't know what a chiasm is, I explain it probably once a year.

It comes from the Greek letter chi. We sometimes pronounce it chi. And it looks like an English X, right? It looks something like this. And a chiasm, what it does is it tells a story in sequence. So you can picture one half of an X.

It gets to the pinnacle of the story, and then it retells the story in reverse. And so you have a perfect mirror of the stories. And I think for us to begin to understand the purpose that God is giving us these details, we need to understand that he's actually built a chiasm into the story of Abram's life.

So let's look together at it. We're going to geek out a little bit more. You know I've been doing this in Genesis. But in Genesis chapter 12 and verse 8. So we read there that he went from Bethel, from between Bethel and Ai.

In 12 .9, he travels through the Negev. In 12 .10, there was a severe famine, a Kivad famine in the land. In verses 11 through 20, there's what I'm calling the Egyptian intermission. This time in Egypt in Abram's life.

And let's see this again. Back in 13 .2, what do we see? But again, there is a severe wealth, a Kivad of wealth. In 13 .3, Abram travels back through the Negev. And in 3 and 4, he ends up back between Bethel and Ai, calling upon the name of the Lord, just like he did in chapter 12 and verse 8.

So what we see is this perfect reversal of Abram's life. And the question becomes, why would God do this? Some have looked at it and said, well, it's because God loves poetry. He loves these poetic devices within his word.

And so he's simply adding some poetry as he goes. I don't think that's fully it. I think that's part of it. I think that God plants beauty in his word because he loves beauty. But I don't think that's the only reason.

Some have said, well, Abram must have made a vow in Egypt. And so now he's coming back to that place between Bethel and Ai, where the altar is. And he's going to call upon the name of the Lord in fulfillment of that vow.

I don't think we have any reason to believe that, only to speculate that maybe something like that happened. So the question is, why do we find this perfect chiasm at the end of chapter 12 and the beginning of chapter 13?

I think it's because here we see a perfect reversal in Abram's life, something consistent to what we would call repentance. That what we have is a perfect picture, not a picture of perfect repentance, but a perfect picture of repentance.

And a few of the words give us some of these hints. We read that in verse 3, he went back to the tent that had been at the beginning. In verse 4, that he went where he had made the altar at first. And this is language that we see regularly in our Bibles that speaks to repentance.

For instance, in Isaiah chapter 1 in verse 16, you don't have to turn there, but we read this instruction given to the nation, to Judah. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes, cease to do evil.

And then in chapter 1 in verse 26, and I will restore your judges at the first and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward, you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city. We see a similar pattern in the life of Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 33 and verses 7 and 8.

Or perhaps most famously, this idea of doing something that you did at the first as an act of repentance is captured in passages like Revelation chapter 2 and verses 4 and 5. You'll remember the Lord Jesus is speaking to one of the seven churches, particularly the church in Ephesus, and he says this,.

But I have this against you, you have abandoned the love that you had at first. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the works that you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

One of the things that we see in Abram's life, what we see in a Godward life, is not just the defining feature of Abram's existence, his faith in God, the faith through which he received the very righteousness of God, but we see a faithfulness, a faith and a repentance.

Now, we hear the word repentance all the time, but what does the word repentance mean? I think it could be helpful to look at how these words are defined in our Old and New Testament. In the New Testament, it is the word metanoia, and it means a change of mind.

Now, oftentimes when we think about repentance, we just assume that, well, okay, I'm sorry for that sin. I've changed my mind about that sin, and that is repentance. But in Abram's life, we actually see that there is more to repentance than just a simple mental assent that, yes, that was sinful, and I don't desire to do it anymore.

We actually see that begin to come out in the Hebrew word for repentance, which means to turn back or to return again. It's just like what we see in Revelation 2 .5. It is to repent and to do the works that you did at first or the works that you've never done yet.

And, brothers and sisters, what I want to tell you is if you want to live a Godward life, one of the normative experiences of a Godward life is this. It is a life of repentance. It's a life of having our minds conformed to who God is, to what he says is good and true and right, to bring our minds under the submission of God's wise word, and then to have our lives follow that.

Sometimes I think we think of repentance as a one-time event in our lives, right? We tell our testimony and our conversion story, and we say, well, when the Lord saved me, I repented of my sins. And, you know, our Greek students, we're going to be getting back into Greek, but we say it in the aorist tense, right?

I did that once. It was once in the past. I did it. But the way the Bible depicts repentance, here even in the life of Abram, it's not just when he left Ur of the Chaldees. It's when he leaves Ur of the Chaldees.

It's when he ends up in Egypt, where he ought not to have been. He comes back, and what does he do? He repents again. Now, I trust that most of you probably don't see the silly spats that happen on the Internet between apologists and theologians and, you know, frankly, guys that sometimes shouldn't have a platform at all.

And one of the things I see is that they will often, as they engage in these spats, they'll say, you need to repent, right? And other guys will say, I don't need to repent. You need to repent. And the thought that I think as I see this, and if we look at the life of Abram, if we look at the nature of true repentance is this, someone should just come along and say, brothers, we all need to repent.

We all need to have our minds conformed to the scriptures. We all need to have a change of direction. This is one of the things that we see, even as the Reformation began to take shape, that the man Martin Luther, who God used to bring about the Protestant Reformation, as he nailed his 95 theses to the castle church door in Wittenberg, Germany, one of the prominent protestations that he wanted to bring forward had to do with repentance.

And does anyone know what the first thesis was in the 95 theses? He wrote this. This is what went on that door, on that document that started, or at least really formally kick-started the Reformation.

He said, when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, repent, in Matthew 4 .17, he willed the entire life of the believer to be one of repentance. And what this means then, dear friends, is we need to cultivate a sensitive conscience.

We need to be open to frequent course corrections. We need to keep short accounts with God. Sometimes one of our greatest enemies is the mindset that when we sin, well, now it is. Here, we've done it.

We have to put ourselves in the penalty box. We have to see this sin through. Whatever it is, these temptations that come into mind, and I want to tell you here from the example of the life of Abraham, on the authority of God's word, keep short accounts with God, so that when you find yourself in error, what do you do?

You repent. You turn to God. You confess your sin, and you bring it back to him. What a joy it would be if God made us, you know, for all the things that we pray for, we pray that God would make us a growing church, a holy church, that God would make us a church that has a space to meet in, that would be our own, you know, all of these things.

But perhaps we should add to our prayer list that God would make us a repenting church, a church that is often, that is always turning back to see what God says, conforming our minds to that very thing, and then returning to the thing that we did at first, or the thing that we ought to have done at the first.

The Puritans used to say that a sheep, when it falls into a ditch and defiles itself, hastens out as soon as it can. But a swine chooses a dirty place and wallows all the day long in the mud. And if we are sheep, we don't wallow in the mud.

We get out of the mud. We turn around. We do what Charles Spurgeon said, that we can never go to Jesus too often. And so, a Godward life is a repentant life. But chapter 13 goes on, and we see a second mark of a Godward life, and that is this unembattled life.

An Embattled Life

In verse 5 we read,. And Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support both of them dwelling together. For their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together.

And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock. At that time, the Canaanites and the Perizzites were dwelling in the land. So, as this sojourning continues in chapter 13, we see that there's a new problem that arrives on the scene.

And verse 6 outlines that for us, that their possessions were so great that the land could not support them. It's a remarkable turn of events. They had to leave the land previously because they didn't have enough resources.

Now they can't stay in the land because they don't have enough resources. And the simple fact was that the amount of land and the amount of water and vegetation that was needed to support the livestock was simply insufficient.

And so, this results in a conflict. And it's something that we'll soon see, was if you understand the storyline of Scripture, it was an inevitable conflict. It was something that was bound to happen. It's a foregone conclusion.

That even though these men are kinsmen, they were doomed to begin fighting. And so, we see their herdsmen. They're now bickering. They're fighting between each other because of the lack of resources that they have available to them.

And then verse 7 adds insult to injury. That not only do we have these two warring parties, kinsmen together, but then the mention of Canaanites and Perizzites dwelling together. I like what John Calvin says as he's commenting on this verse.

He says, Moses adds this detail for the sake of aggravating the evil of the situation. So, here we've got these warring parties. And then on top of that, so we've got the fighting from within. And then we have the threat that is from without.

And we've already heard about the Canaanites. The Canaanites were those who dwelled in the land of Canaan. I think there's good reason linguistically to understand them more as city dwellers in the land of Canaan.

And the reason for that is because there's also now mention of the Perizzites. And we've not heard of the Perizzites yet at all in our study of Genesis. So, why do they now appear here? Well, the Perizzites, if we again understand the Hebrew word, it comes from the Hebrew word perazi, which means unwalled village.

And so the Perizzites, they might have been their own ethnic group, but they were those who dwelt in unwalled villages, in rural communities, in the small towns, in the waste places of Canaan. And so what you end up having is not only the pressure of the Canaanites, but then these people who would have dwelt in the land that Abram and Lot are competing for in the middle of Canaan.

So, enemies from within, and then enemies from without. And there's a redemptive historical dimension to this conflict that I think we need to look at to understand what's happening here in light of the whole picture.

I said a moment ago that the fight that these two parties were having was bound to be an inevitable conflict, that it was a foregone conclusion. And that is because this very conflict between Abram and Lot actually helps us to look backward at problems that happened in the past, conflicts that occurred in the past, and then forward to conflicts that will happen in the future.

On one hand, this conflict that we see between Abram and Lot is simply a continuation of the conflict that started at the fall. You might remember that as we were looking at Genesis 1 -11, we were tracing two people groups.

You're looking at the offspring or the seed of the serpent, and the offspring and the seed of the woman, right? These two parties. And what begins to happen immediately after the fall? But we have Cain and Abel in conflict, and Cain kills his righteous brother Abel.

Then we have this picture of the seed of the woman being afflicted by the seed of the serpent as the sons of Seth and the sons of Canaan continue their lineage. There becomes this mixture of the lineage or this attempt to mix the lineage at the beginning of chapter 6.

Now what we have here is Abram and Lot again warring parties, and this is going to lead us to now a future conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. As we see, who's going to come next?

We're going to see Isaac and Ishmael, and then Jacob and Esau, and then Israel and Egypt, and then Israel and the surrounding enemies, and then we get to Christ. And again, we still see that seed of the serpent that is sneaking in.

And I like what Jim Hamilton says about these passages. He says that what we're seeing is the continuation of this great conflict that was foretold at that proto-Ewangelion that we received in Genesis 3 and verse 15, that the serpent was always going to be biting at the heel, but the offspring was going to crush the serpent's head.

One observer says it is this age-long conflict between the selected and the non-selected lineages that existed throughout the history of the world. And if you don't believe me, all you have to do is look at what Lot's lineage is about to become.

What happens to Lot's family? Well, we know that Lot is going to settle in the luscious part of the land. We'll hear about this in a moment. But there, there are great sinners. God is going to destroy that land, and when He does, Lot and his family are going to be forced to flee.

We know that his wife will see it in a few weeks. His wife will be turned to salt, and then we end up with Lot again having been driven out of another land. He ends up, in a way that in some strange ways mirrors the life of Noah, he becomes intoxicated again.

And what does he do? His daughters intoxicate him so that they might prolong their lineage through their father. So we end up in this strange situation where now Lot is in an incestuous relationship with his daughters.

And out of these two daughters come two nations. Does anyone know who those two nations are? Moab and then Ammon, the Ammonites, right? So we have the Moabites and the Ammonites. And if you see anything or if you know anything about these two nations, they become one of the fiercest thorns in Israel's side all the way as they return again from Egypt.

They come through Egypt. Moab and the Ammonites do not share their bread. They do not share their water, so they don't supply them with food. We know that the king of Moab eventually hires a seer named Balaam to curse the nation.

As they enter into the promised land, we read in 1 Samuel 11, and this is important. It's helpful to trace these nations as we go, that when Saul was appointed king, you'll remember there was a place called Jabesh-Gilead.

And while Jabesh-Gilead was there, they were told that there was an invading force that had besieged Jabesh-Gilead. And they said, we'll make peace with you on these terms that you pluck out your right eyes.

And the news comes back, and Saul, as his first major act of king, leads the people in a battle against this force. Who were those people? They were the Ammonites, the descendants of Lot. The prophets tell us that the nations taunted Israel in their trials, Moab and Ammon, and that they even ripped Israel's pregnant women open in order to enlarge their territories.

So what we see here is not just a petty squabble between Abram and Lot, a man and his nephew, but it's a larger picture of God's people and of the serpent's people in conflict. And it's a story, I don't know if I want to take us there yet, I might take us there in about two minutes, but it's a story that we find ourselves in, between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.

And we know that Jesus had this kind of biblical theological view. He had this lens, we're not just being creative here, because we see it in Matthew chapter 23. In verses 34 and 35, Jesus is speaking to the religious leaders of the day, and he says this, Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

And what Jesus is doing is he's taking the first martyr and the last martyr, the bookend martyrs of the Old Testament, he's saying all of them, this lineage, all of these righteous people that you killed, their blood will be on your head.

So that he treats this lineage as one package. And so what we need to recognize, brothers and sisters, is that we as Christians, we as people, if you seek to live a Godward life, we'll always live an embattled life.

When we think about persecution, when we think about opposition, when we think about governments that want to snuff us out, that want to oppress us, that just want to make life difficult for us, it's not as if we are engaged in some kind of unique conflict that only happens at this time and place.

But when we find that we are living an embattled life, we're going to think about this the next time the government or a co-worker or a boss or something like this makes your life difficult because you're a Christian or because people begin to actively persecute you.

It's simply because you are a participant in one of these lines. If you're a participant in the seed of the woman, if you're a participant in the people of God, there will always be difficulty heaped on by those who are part of the other lineage, the offspring of the serpent.

That's why Peter talks about, he says, speaking to the persecuted church in his first epistle, he says, do not think that something strange has come upon you. This is not strange. This is, as it relates to the story of the people of God, this is par for the course.

That God has this very thing for you. Now, as far as it concerns us, we want to be at peace with all people. Matthew Henry commenting on this passage, he says, whatever others are for, the people of God must be for peace.

So I'm not saying pick up your pitchforks. But at the same time, though we are for peace, Jesus also speaks into it in Matthew 10 in verse 34 and says, do not think that I've come to bring peace to the earth.

I've not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I've come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a person's enemies will be those in his own household.

What this means is that if we're to live a Godward life, we cannot be friends with the world. If we are friends with the world, friendship with the world amounts to being an enemy, an adversary of God.

Jesus said, remember, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. We're here in this beautiful setting at camp, and I'm here to tell you that indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

That if you're not experiencing difficulty now, you can count on it, you will at some time. And as Christians, we need to realize that this battle that we are engaged in, though we are finite beings, we tend to focus on the here and now, it's not a battle that's just in the here and now.

It's an age-long battle, but it's a Godward battle. Now we're going to look at a third mark of the Godward life in verse 8, and that is an expectant life. We read,. Then Abram said to Lot, Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, for we are kinsmen.

An Expectant Life

Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. And if you take the left hand, then I will go to the right. Or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left. And Lot lifted up his eyes, and saw that the Jordan valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zor, which was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.