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2BC BIBLE STUDY NOTES

Wednesday in the Word

Second Baptist Church

August 26, 2015

Genesis 13:1-18

  1. Verses 1-4. Abram headed back to Bethel (= “The House of God”), "to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, to the place of the altar, which he had made there formerly; and there Abram called on the name of the Lord” (13:3, 4). The tent and the altar are things that marked Abram's life of obedient faith. The tent showed Abram to be a pilgrim, one just passing through on the way to another destination. The altar showed Abram to be a worshiper of the living God. The altar also bore witness to the godless Canaanites of the true God and of their own idolatrous ways. Abram left Egypt and came back to the tent and the altar. To call on the name of the Lord means to worship and trust God for who He is, the righteous and yet merciful Sovereign, who faithfully keeps His promises even when we are faithless. What Abram did, we need to do when we have disobeyed God and strayed from His paths. We need to return to our beginning place with God, the cross. We bow there and remember the great price the Lord paid for our forgiveness. We call on His name, His attributes: His love, His holiness, His grace, His faithfulness. And we reestablish the communion we formerly enjoyed with Him. What the altar was to Abram, the Lord's Table is to be to us. We are invited there frequently, to confess our sins and appropriate God's forgiveness. If you are straying from the Lord, right now He invites you to come back to the cross and be restored to fellowship with Him.

  2. Verses 5-7. There is a clear progression in this story. First, both Lot and Abram have increased wealth (13:2, 5-6). Their increased wealth leads to increased strife because there simply wasn't enough land for each of them, plus the Canaanites and the Perizzites (13:7). The herdsmen of Lot and of Abram were quarreling because there wasn't adequate land to support all their flocks. So Abram gave Lot his choice of where to settle. Lot surveyed the land and decided to move down into the lush Jordan valley. That choice was the beginning of Lot's gradual but steady spiritual decline. They didn't have that problem before. Where did we ever get the notion that wealth will solve our problems? Some of the most unhappy families in the world are those with the most money, where one member is set against the other, trying to make sure he gets his portion of the inheritance.

  3. Verses 8-9. Abram was not willing to break up his relationship with Lot so Abram basically said Lot take whatever you want and l will take the rest. Abram had a right to choose whatever land he wanted and let Lot take the leftovers. He was the older, the chief of the clan. God had promised the land to Abram, not to Lot. But Abram graciously yielded his rights and trusted God to give him his portion. What mattered to Abram was, "We are brothers.” He valued his relationship with Lot over his right to choose the best land. So much strife could be avoided in the family and in the church if we would put a premium on our relationships, set aside our rights, and let the Lord take care of us. The next time you are about to quarrel with someone (and quarrelling is a choice we make!), stop and think about whether the quarrel is rooted in godly principle or in selfishness. Sometimes we need to confront sin or take a stand for the truth, even though it causes conflict. But be careful! It's easy to justify selfishness by calling it righteous anger. The general rule is, "Let us pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another” (Rom. 14:19).

  4. Verses 10-13. By faith, Abram had already renounced everything visible and opted for the unseen promises of God. So he had no need, as Lot did, to choose by sight. There is a deliberate contrast between verses 10 and 14. In verse 10, Lot lifted up his eyes and chose the land which looked the best to him. He took off for the good life and left Abram literally in the dust, in dusty Canaan, where there had just been a severe famine.

  5. Verses 14-17. As Abram is standing there wondering if he did the right thing (and perhaps Sarah was asking him the same question), God tells him to lift up his eyes and look in every direction. All the land he can see will be his. Perhaps as Abram was looking around, his eyes fell down to the dusty soil on which he was standing. So the Lord says, "Do you see all that dust? I'll make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered." Lot chose by sight and ended up spiritually and financially bankrupt. He escaped Sodom with the clothes on his back and fades out living in a cave. The things he saw and got didn't bring him the lasting happiness he expected. Abram chose by faith, not by sight, and ended up spiritually and financially blessed, seeing and possessing by faith the whole land of Canaan, although he died owning only a burial plot. Lot lived for greed and came up empty. Abram lived for God and came up full.

  6. Verse 18. We see again the two things that marked Abram's life of obedient faith, the tent and the altar: Abram the pilgrim, just passing through; and, Abram the worshiper, bearing witness to a pagan world. You don't ever find Lot building an altar in Sodom, and he traded in his tent for a townhouse. He settled in Sodom and blended in with their corruption. He was popular, sitting on their city council, but he was not prophetic. Abram lived in fellowship with God and became known as the friend of God.

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