Genesis 13:1-18 Parting Ways For Peace

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community and service. This is a message from the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filsack.

If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

Abram Returns to Genesis 13 and the Bigger Story of God's Promise

This morning, we're going to be back in the book of Genesis, and we're going to be in Genesis chapter 13. The storyline of Genesis advances at face value. If you just read Genesis 13 like we're about to, without any significant study or dissecting it, it could just come across like connective material.

It just moves along from Abram to one point to another. Last week, Abram left Egypt after a super weird scenario with Pharaoh and Abram's wife, Sarai. Those of you who are here know exactly what I'm talking about.

There's just that weird scenario where Abram ultimately kind of stopped expressing faith in God and told a lie to Pharaoh, saying that his wife was his sister. Pharaoh takes his wife, Sarai, to be his wife, and it was all kind of convoluted.

You can go back and listen to those. Our former messages are on our website and are also podcast through iTunes, so if you want to go back and listen to that if you weren't here, it would kind of make sense of what I'm talking about.

We know that Abram left last week blessed significantly with material wealth. He was actually paid a dowry for his own wife, and that's how convoluted that situation got. He was deported from Egypt, and now we know so far throughout the book of Genesis some things that I think it's beneficial for us to wrap our mind around as we move forward.

God has created it all. The text has established that. This is all his world. He loves it all, but humanity rebelled against him and basically broke the world. We went through now in the text the dark history leading up to the flood where sin was multiplied and the world became a very wicked place.

There was the Tower of Babel, and God spread out people across the planet, spread out the languages and stuff like that, and it's in that context of sinful, rebellious, wicked humanity that God is going to call out a specific man to be his chosen man through whom he would work his plan of restoration.

So we've broken the world, and God is putting together a plan to restore the world into a correct relationship with him, and we know that this plan will involve a couple of different.

Things.

First, it will involve the creation of a great nation, and that was a promise that God gave to Abram, and that great nation is Israel, the giving of a great land, the land of Canaan given to the people of Israel, and eventually the giving of a great blessing, and who is that great blessing?

Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is that great blessing, and so it really was Jesus Christ coming through the nation of Israel, protected by the land that they were granted, ultimately yielding the final fulfillment of all of the promises in Jesus Christ, and all that started with God having a sit-down with a man named Abram.

So that's why he's significant. The book of Genesis is going to give a large section of scripture dedicated to the life of Abram, and have any of you ever kind of wondered why so much of Genesis is taken up with Abram's life?

Maybe if you've read Genesis from beginning to end, you'd go, okay, there's a pretty big chunk, and we're going to be in it. We're going to be talking about Abram quite a bit week in and week out, but it's because of the significance of this promise that God is doing something new through Abram.

It's something significant on the global scale, and so he's going to let us get to know Abram. This guy who is basically the forefather of our faith. And in our text this morning, we see God refreshing his promise to make Abram a great nation, and also the promise to give him a great land, but we also see here in the text a refreshing of the character of Abram.

Abram had this little aside from faith in Egypt, and now he returns to the place of God's blessing, and he takes some dramatic steps of faith once again. We see Abram's life kind of like a yo-yo. I think it's great that Scripture shares stories like this with us, because I think it's very much where we live.

How many of you would recognize that there's ups and downs in your relationship with God? And I mentioned last week how some of those changes and those shifts can turn on a dime, how one day you can just be thoroughly at like the mountaintop experience with God.

It's like I'm there, and he's there, and we're talking, it's just like there's interaction and there's relationship that's going, and it's I'm on fire for God, and the next minute things can just tank.

And then the next minute I'm on fire, and I'm confessing my sin, and I'm repenting, and I'm, and this is kind of one of those up, so last week was a, would you acknowledge if you were here, that that was a little bit of a downtick in Abram's life, a little bit of a valley last week, him going down to Egypt and lying to Pharaoh and all that happened, but now this week he re-encounters God, and he's reinvigorated in his relationship, refreshed and restored, because he comes back to the place of the worship of God, and he's changed enough that he's going to give up any hope in his nephew Lot as the heir.

We're going to see ultimately in our text a parting of ways of Abram and Lot, Lot being the logical heir of his line, and that parting is going to be significant in demonstrating the faith of Abram. Abram believes ultimately by the end of this text that he will have an heir, even though the odds look pretty slim, and we're going to talk about that.

So as we come to the reading of this text, and then to worship as the band comes to lead us, listen for God's gentle reminders of promise, and remember that these promises eventually lead to the birth of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

So open your Bibles please to Genesis chapter 13, you can find that on page 8, if you take that paperback Bible out, you can find it there, easy to find it. If you don't own a copy of the Bible, please take that one with you.

We want everybody to have a copy of the Bible, and if you don't have an English Standard version of the Bible, you can take that one as well. It's not a magical version, it's not the only one that God uses, it just happens to be my favorite, and I think it's easy to read, and it's also easy to study, and so that's why I chose that version, but I would love for everybody to have a copy of the Word of God.

Follow along as I read Genesis chapter 13, the very words of God to us this morning. 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.

And Lot who went with him 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 Perizzites were dwelling in the land. 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.

Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go right, and if you take the right hand, then.

I will go 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 Zoar. This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, spoiler alerts there.

So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and Lot journeyed east, thus they separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom.

Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord. The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward, eastward and westward.

For all the land that you see, I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.

Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you. So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord.

Let's pray.

Father, as we come to this text, we see a man whose life is held up as an example for.

Us.

We see his downfalls and his problems, and we also see his acts of faith and his stepping out to make peace with his nephew. And Father, some awesome things that are nuggets of benefit, nuggets of good things that we ought to have in our lives, but equally, more importantly, we see that it's not just the model, not just the example of Abram in the text, but ultimately it is you working your plan and your promise.

Father, I ask that you would open our eyes to the promise that you have given us through Jesus Christ, and that as we have an opportunity to sing songs to you and worship you and rejoice in you, Father, that you would move in our hearts and in our midst to bring honor and glory to your name.

I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks a lot to the band for leading us. I always appreciate the work that they put in every week to lead us in worship. Make sure you have your Bibles open in front of you to Genesis chapter 13.

Again, that's page 8 if you lost your place in that Bible. And remember that you can get up at any time, get coffee, donuts, juice, men's bathroom back there, women's restroom up here if you need those at any point during the message.

Why the Famine Is Missing and Why Lot Was There All Along

Last week, those of you who were here last week, there's something that's a little bit different and something that seems to be missing from this text that if you were here and you're kind of following the logical flow and you're realizing that these are real events and a real person's life and you were with us last week, then you know the reason why Abram went to Egypt last week.

What was the reason that he went to Egypt? Does anybody remember? A famine.

Okay.

He went there for water.

Yeah.

He went there for food and water because there was a famine in the land. So you'd see right away in verse 13 an explanation of what happened to the famine, right? No, it's not there. There's no mention of the famine.

And how many of you think that you might kind of wonder what's going on here? Like he went down to Egypt because there was a famine, has this whole fiasco with Pharaoh and his wife, and then all of a sudden he's back in the land and no mention of a famine.

And I mean, that could cause problems for us unless we understand a couple of things. It's quite possible by some of the terminology that we're going to see here, that it's quite possible that Abram has now become wealthy enough to be famine proof, okay?

That he actually can pay, he has means to pay for food in a time of scarcity. Now, you know what happens to the price of food in a time of famine or drought? Well, the price goes up, but it's as if Abram could probably pay double or triple price for a loaf of bread at this point and be fine.

He's well to do at this point. So that might be part of it. Another option is that there's the possibility that what we had last week was a very abbreviated account of what could have been over the course of a period of time in Egypt.

There was no time indicators in the text last week. We don't know how long Sarai and Abram were wandering around in Egypt. We don't know how long that took and it's possible that the famine has expired and now things are getting better in that land.

And we'll see some indications that at least a portion of the land is doing well by the time that we get there here in this text. So it's probably quite likely that things have improved. But either way, we find out in verse 1 that Abram's nephew Lot has been with them all along.

Now, was Lot mentioned at all last week? No, he wasn't even mentioned in the text, but now we find out he was there. He was present with them. He wasn't a significant part of the story, so the text didn't mention him in last week's drama, but he was there with them in Egypt.

This shows that Abram has been caring for his brother's son. Remember that Abram's brother died. This is all the way going back to Genesis chapter 11. At the very end of that chapter, we found out that Haran, the father of Lot, died way back in Babylon.

So they've been caring for their nephew all of this time, taking care of him. And I mentioned before that Lot was the logical heir of the extended family of Abram. He's the only living male descendant in the family tree on the branch below Abram and his brothers.

And so if Abram were to die at the start of Genesis chapter 13, who would be the logical heir of Abram? Lot. He would get all of his stuff and it would be his duty to carry on the family line. He is the one who, at this point in the text, he's the one who all the hope for the future generations is on in this family line.

Does that make sense to you guys? Because I think that kind of plays in here a little bit in the notion of what's going on in this scenario and the situation in this text between Abram and Lot. I can't help but wonder if Abram kept him along to some degree as plan B for an heir.

So he's got, what's plan A? Well, God promised that he would have an heir. But in his flesh, in his human understanding, he's kind of like, well, I've got Lot just to fall back on in case something happens to me and God hasn't provided an heir.

Are you getting that kind of notion? He's caring for his nephew. Certainly there might be some family obligation in there and just doing what is right by his nephew, but I can't help but see some of the notion in Abram and the way that he rolls down through the pages of Genesis that he's kind of hedging himself here a little bit as he has a tendency to do.

Now from the terminology of what God promised to Abram as an heir, it was very clear that Abram and Sarai, throughout the rest of Scripture, understood the promise of God as a biological heir. It's very clear throughout the remainder of Scripture that they had some notion that what God was saying when he said, I'm going to make you a great nation and I'm going to bless all the people through your offspring, that they were indeed going to have offspring.

Are you getting that promise? It's inherent in there. And so I would suggest to you that any trust that they placed in Lot was ultimately distrust in God. Are you getting that connection? If they're trusting in him as the heir and God has promised them a biological heir, then they're kind of going, well, we're kind of hedging our bets and hoping, you know, and maybe this will work, maybe this will be, and we're going to see Abram do all kinds of silly things in trying to make the promise transpire, all kinds of things that he's going to do on his part.

But I believe that all of that figures in pretty significantly in what we see throughout this passage in this parting of ways between Abram and Lot, and that's the main point of the text, is the way that they part ways.

There's going to be a conflict involved in this, and verse 2 sets up the conflict in a strange way. We find out that Abram has become severely wealthy. I'm going to translate that directly. Verse 2, go ahead and look at it in your text.

Now, Abram was very rich in livestock and silver and in gold. The word very there, we've seen that word in Hebrew not too far back. If you look back at chapter 12, verse 10, we're going to see the exact same Hebrew word translated differently into English, but it says, now there was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was, what?

Severe in the land. That word is the same exact Hebrew word that's translated very, very in our text today. Can you see how severely and very can be related in English? Severe or very wealthy? It's an ironic word.

How many of you think in terms of severe wealth? This is devastating, devastatingly wealthy. We don't tend to think of it in those terms, but that's kind of the terminology that's used here, severely wealthy, intensely wealthy.

That same Hebrew word that was emphasizing how bad the famine was, is now demonstrating how much wealth, how much blessing he's received. Is there any doubt that God has blessed Abram when you come to this text?

That he's got what he has from the hand of God, and even though it's a pretty strange way to do it. He's very rich in livestock, and now we see even in our text the first mention of silver and gold. Nothing has indicated how Abram got silver and gold.

As a matter of fact, it wasn't even mentioned. He did not get his silver and gold from Pharaoh. There was a fairly exhaustive list of what Pharaoh gave to Abram, and silver and gold was not in the list.

Maybe he sold a couple of those camels that he received last week and got some silver and gold for it. I don't know, but he's an extremely wealthy individual, and this seems like a good place for a word about wealth to us this morning.

Abram is severely wealthy, and I would dare say that the same could be said for many of.

Us.

You can look at me and say, severely wealthy, Don? Come on. Like, really?

Me?

Like, you're out there? Really severely wealthy? I mean, that's lottery winners, right? Those are people who have their multi-million dollar houses and stuff like that, right? That's severely wealthy.

Well, raise your hand if you have everything that you need. I mean, just think about what a human needs. Let's walk through that list. You have clothes, you have a shelter to protect you from the cold weather, the storm, and you have food to eat.

Now, raise your hand if you have what you need. Now, keep your hand up if you have most of the things that you want. Most of the things that you want. Raise your hand if you have some of the things that you want.

If some of the things on your want list actually make, and then, you can put your hands down, but some of us even have everything that we want, we have everything we need, we have everything that we want, and then we come up with lists of things that we, to add to our want list, because we're running out of things to want.

Our culture is designed to produce want in us, commercials and advertisements and all that stuff. Apple is right now developing something that you want. You just don't know you want it yet, but they're going to come out with it in the next few years and everybody in the room is going to want it.

All of these, all the technology and all this stuff, it is based on wants. When I say that we're severely wealthy, if we just stopped at the point where I asked you, do you have what you need? That already propels you up into the higher levels of the entire planet as far as wealth.

Do you understand? Just so you have what you need, and then most of us raise our hand and say, yeah, we've got a few things that we want as well. Depending on your contentment, some of you might even confess to saying, I have everything that I want as well, and that's where we ought to be.

But that's another issue altogether, and we're going to get there as we kind of walk through this text and eventually get to the applications, but God has blessed Abram with wealth, but wealth is about to cause some conflict for him.

How many of you know that wealth doesn't solve all of your problems? Did you know that?

Are you aware of that?

As a matter of fact, I would dare say that wealth has the opportunity to accentuate the problems that we already have in our heart. We're able to express our sin in greater capacity by wealth. Would you agree with me on that?

And that it ultimately, as we're going to talk later, it actually breeds the desire for more wealth in it, and it's kind of contagious in it, and it can eat us from the inside out. Rather than worshiping God from the inside out, it actually gets in us and we begin to worship it, the wealth.

So we'll return to that at the end, but Abram, Sarai, Lot, and all their wealth returned to their previous encampment between Bethel and Ai, and there's a map here. I don't know how helpful this is, hopefully a little bit, but you can see Haran up there in the north at the top of the black line there, and then coming down, they've traveled down to Bethel a couple chapters ago, and then down into Egypt, and then, well, down into the Negev, down to Egypt, and then back to the Negev, and back up to Bethel.

And what the picture is here is that there's been an out and back kind of journey, a trip, a side note, a step out of the way for that famine. But it's as if, in these travels, there has been, in a sense, for Abram and his family, a little bit of a vacation from God.

Have any of you ever experienced that, like the vacation away from God for just a little period of time, and that's where we get these rollercoaster rides, right? A little dip in the pathway, you're running and you're chugging along with the relationship with God, and it's like, God, I'm just gonna sit out, if you could sit out this weekend, I'm gonna do my own thing, and then we'll get back together at the end of the weekend, and we'll reconnect and get this together.

You know what I'm talking about? The potential for us to take vacations away from God, of course, we don't formalize that, but you know exactly what I'm talking about. And it's as if what's happened in Abram's life has been, to some degree, that putting his trust in himself, not his trust in God's promises to preserve him.

And so here in our text, we find that he returns to the first altar he made to the Lord. Look at verses three and four with me, look at some of the terminology. He journeyed on from the Negev, as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning.

The beginning of what? The beginning of his relationship with God. The beginning of the promises of God. He's gone back to a place of beginnings for himself. In a sense, going back to the root of his relationship with God, going back to the geographical setting where he first encountered God, where God met with him and promised him the land.

A place of significant meeting with God. Are you getting what I'm saying? And that's where he goes back to. To the place, in verse four, to the place where he had made an altar at the first. The first of what?

The first altar that he's made? The first place where he has ultimately worshipped God? And there, it says at the end of verse four, and there Abram called upon the name of the.

Lord.

Now, we don't know that he did that prior to this point, and now he returns to that place of calling upon the name of the Lord. He returns to a place of worship. Are you getting that? He's taking this time away, but where is he going for guidance?

Has his wealth guided him? Has that told him what to do and where to go? No, he's going back to God to figure out, what do I do next? Where am I? And he's calling upon the name of the Lord. And that's where he goes back to.

Abram has once again found himself in a place of need, and he turns to God. And I'm curious, how many of you have a location? And I mean, I'm talking about geographical, a physical place on this planet that reminds you of meeting with God.

Do any of you have a place like that? Where God has met with you, and you've met with him, and there's been a place of interaction.

Between the two of you?

Some of you maybe have a routine place, and so I'm asking in a way that you're thinking, oh, I've got to have some special, you know, God appeared to me, or a voice. I'm not talking like that. But there, how many of you maybe have, there's a chair in your house where you routinely meet with God, and there's a Bible on the table beside it, and you sit there, and you read your Bible, and you pray, and you talk to God about things?

You should have a place like that. I'd encourage you to have a place like that in your home. There's a end of one of the couches in my living room where I meet with God on a regular.

Basis.

There's a nice place there for coffee to sit, and a Bible there, and my Bible study material.

And stuff.

And I sit there, and I pray. I talk to God about you guys. I talk to God about my family. I talk to God about myself. And I talk to him about his glory, and I read his word, and I study to know him better, and I seek to do that every day.

I don't succeed in doing that every day, but I seek to do that every day. But you need places like that. But then there's a step beyond that where I would say, here's another illustration. There's a place at a facility up in Green Lake, Wisconsin.

It's called Green Lake Conference Center, and there's a workout room in that facility. It's kind of like a camp area with a lake and all that stuff. And there's a workout room where something very significant happened in my life.

I was on a treadmill early one morning before the seminar. Lynn and I had been sent out there to basically decide whether we had the right stuff to plan a church, and it was an assessment, and it felt like we were going to get voted off the island every night.

And there were all kinds of secret council meetings and stuff, and aligning yourself with other people. And come to find out, they had actually... This is a little bit of a side note, it's not in my notes, but they had actually...

They did all of our personality profiles. We had to do about five different personality profiles before we went out there. So they would do tricky things, like take all the lions, all the type A personalities, put them in a table, and have them hash something out just to observe us, kind of like throwing all the lions into the arena, and having them fight to the death.

That kind of stuff. Or all the weaker people who weren't really go-getters, put them at a table, or watch them kind of, oh, I don't know, what do you think, I don't know, what do you think? So I mean, they were doing that kind of stuff.

They were manipulating us. So early one morning, I got up, and it's crazy, because I remember this morning just like it was yesterday. My van had a thermometer in it, and it was 14 below on the thermometer, I've never seen that before on a digital readout, and drove over, got out, and on a treadmill there, God met with me.

And it was at that place, that morning, that I said, God, if you want to plant a church through me, I'm willing. And that was when Recast started. It was there that I decided, yes, God, I believe that you're calling me to this work.

And I said yes. No voice from heaven, no promises that it was going to succeed, no assurances, God didn't come down in a white robe and interact with me, not an audible voice from heaven, but I genuinely believe that God met with me there.

You have places like that where you can point back to, or there's a bridge on the north end of Shear Lake. Do any of you know where Shear Lake is? Camp Barrichel, up north. Some of you have been there, we've been there for men's retreat.

There's a bridge at the north end of that lake where I got down on one knee and asked my wife to marry me. And I know God must have been present, because I can't think of any other reason why she said yes.

But there are places, all this to say, that there are places in your life where, I hope that there are places, where you have interacted with God in a unique and a special way, and there's benefit and there's value.

And there might come a point in your marriage, there might come a point in your relationship where it's worth a road trip back. Are you getting what I'm saying? Where you might need a refresher on your love and your relationship with your spouse.

And the same goes for your relationship with God, where there might be a place, a time. Maybe it's just as simple as going back, closing your eyes and going back to the place where your faith was new and fresh and alive and exciting, because you've gone through one of these dips where you're recognizing that your faith has grown cold.

There might be some benefit to an actual geographical get-in-the-car-for-a-road-trip and go back to one of these places. I'm not talking about living in the past, by the way. I'm not talking about nostalgia, and some of you in the room struggle with that already.

Your mind is constantly in the past, in the good old days when God did this or did that.

Or whatever.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about sometimes we need a refresher in order to make those new relationship strides with God, right? There's all different kinds of texts in the Bible that talk about looking back, a backwards glance, a remembering of what God has done.

More often than not, throughout the book of Genesis and Exodus and on into Numbers when they're going towards the land and then Joshua when they take the land, when God does something significant in their life, what does he ask them to do regularly?

It's a weird thing. We don't do it anymore. He tells them to set up a rock. He says, set up a stone. Set up a monument. That when you're walking in the field with your kids, holding hands, and you look out and they see that rock and they're like, dad, that rock looks like it's set there intentionally.

What's going on? You might tell them about the glory of what God has done for you. That there's room and there's places of remembrance for us. Another illustration of this is very significant. In Romans chapter 6, Paul talks about your baptism being that for you as a believer.

To go back to the time of your baptism and recognize that when you were put under the water, you died with Christ and you were raised again to new life, raised out of those waters as a symbol of what has transpired in your heart.

And Paul says that that ought to reform the way that we live. That living in light of the past and that there was a point in your life when you stood up and you declared, I am with Jesus. I'm his and I belong to him and he belongs to me and we are together.

And that there was a point when I publicly stated that and there's some value to going back to that for the way that we live. Are you getting what I'm saying? There's room for remembrance that's valuable to us.

Abram returns to the place where God appeared to him. He returns to the altar and there he calls upon the name of the Lord, remembering his God who has called him, his God who has promised to him. But while he's in the area, he's there, it's probably routinely calling upon the name of the Lord.

This wasn't a one-time event, but he's there and he's worshiping God. And there in that area, the severity of his wealth causes some problems. His nephew Lot apparently has also been blessed with flocks and herds and tents there in that.

Area.

And the land in the area of Bethel cannot sustain their flocks. There are quarrels and disputes that begin to form between Abram, between Abram's shepherds and Lot's shepherds. And they are not the only ones in the land, but also the Canaanites, that's a generic term for a whole host of peoples, but even in particular, the Perizzites, not the Paris, not the Parasites, the Perizzites.

And they are there as well. And they lived in that particular area near Bethel, a specific people group or clan that were in that area. And so the impression that we should have is that the land was crowded because of the blessings of God.

God has blessed both Lot, God has blessed Abram, and there is a lot going on here.

A lot going on here?

I didn't even, I did not mean that, but that worked. It worked. Admit it. It was okay. So it can't sustain them. So Abram sits down with Lot and they work this out. And it's interesting, I want to really highlight the way that he works this out.

Abram proves himself to be a peacemaker. Now, how many of you, the first thing that you say when you're at war with somebody, you're fighting with somebody, you're having a disagreement with somebody, the first thing that you do is you come in right away and you say, I just really want to be at peace.

With you.

I just really want peace. Can we just be at peace?