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Genesis 13
Over the last two weeks we’ve been in Genesis
12. There we saw a man, a mission
and a land
[SLIDE – man, mission, land]
The man is there in v1 – Abram.
The
LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your
father's household and go to the land I will show you.
Then V4:
So
Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him.
There’s a man (and a hanger-on called
Lot, Abram’s nephew – more about him in a bit).
Then there’s a mission, v2-3:
"I
will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will
make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I
will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I
will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through
you."
The LORD is saying “Abram I will build from
you a nation that will bless the world.”
That’s the mission. And
then there’s a land. Verse
7:
7 The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will
give this land."
The land of Canaan.
There’s the man, the mission
and the land.
But as we’ve seen, Genesis is a book of good
beginnings but also of terrible falls.
[SLIDE – beginnings and falls]
Things are set on a certain trajectory,
promises are made. But when
things get into the hands of humanity, it goes very very badly.
Everything that’s hopeful in the first half
of the chapter, fails in ‘this-worldly’, human terms. So in v10, the land that was
promised just 3 verses earlier, falls into famine. Then, as we saw last week, the man
Abram fails to trust the LORD but instead goes down to Egypt and hatches
a very fallen plan indeed. In
verses 10-20 we see him lie about Sarai so that she is taken to be the
king’s wife. Abram had
effectively traded his wife for wealth.
Here is a fallen man.
And through all this mess and deception, Abram manages to reverse
God’s mission from verses 2 and 3. He was supposed to bless the nations. But instead Abram doesn’t bless them,
the Egyptians bless Abram but through Abram’s deceit, they receive only
curse.
Genesis 12 began with hope and promise and
ended with a terrible fall.
[SLIDE – man, mission, land]
The man Abram is a failure. The mission (in the hands of this man)
is a failure. The land – this
physical land of Canaan – cannot be trusted, it also fails.
So what is the hope? Well throughout the Bible, our hope is
not in human heroes. We are so
flawed and fallen. Our hope is in
the LORD. And what we see in Genesis
13 is the LORD righting our wrongs.
He is the LORD who brings His people out of Egypt, not because
they deserve it, but because His heart is for rescue.
In verses 1-4, show the LORD bringing them up
out of Egypt:
So
Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, with his wife and everything he
had, and Lot went with him. 2 Abram had become very wealthy in
livestock and in silver and gold. 3 From the Negev he went
from place to place until he came to Bethel, to the place between Bethel
and Ai where his tent had been earlier 4 and where he had
first built an altar. There Abram called on the name of the LORD.
Abram, Sarai, nephew Lot and all their people
come out of Egypt and worship on the mountain. It’s a clear fore-shadowing of the exodus, where all Israel
would come up from Egypt, plagues would come on Pharaoh’s house, the
Israelites would get rich off the Egyptians and they’d go and worship on
the mountain. Abram has
experienced, in advance, a kind of exodus. And now at the altar he experiences, in
advance, the ultimate exodus – the redemption of the LORD Jesus. We saw this last week. This altar points forwards to the sacrifice
of Christ. And what a powerful
portrait of the cross it is.
Abram would have approached this altar,
knowing that he deserved death – ‘the soul that sins must die’,
says the Bible. Abram’s blown it,
he deserves death. The animal is
innocent. But that’s the swap at
the heart of the sacrificial system.
The sacrifice gets what you deserve – it swaps places.
Now Abram’s altar here doesn’t pay for
anyone’s sins. But it is a
picture of what Christ would do – dying a sacrificial death as our innocent
substitute. It was given to Abram to foster his faith in the coming
Christ. And I’m sure it worked a
treat.
Can you imagine if, when you sinned, you
literally had to go and shed the blood of an innocent lamb. Imagine if literally you had to stand
before the LORD and say ‘I come to this altar because my sins deserve
death. It’s my blood that ought
to be spilt on this altar. But
thank You for providing this lamb.
This lamb represents Jesus.
Thank You that you have allowed the Lamb to die in my place.’ And then you slit its throat and the
blood flows.
Surely then you would know that sin is
costly. Surely then you
would feel both sorry and grateful. Sorry at the seriousness of sin. Grateful that it’s not your blood
that’s flowing.
Last week I heard a psychologist say: real
spiritual change happens when your badness is exposed in the presence of
love. I think that’s right. You change when your badness is
exposed in the presence of love.
Because what would happen if you could bring your sin and darkness
and depravity out into the light and what would happen if, instead of
being rejected and condemned, you were met by a strong and tender love
that says, “That stuff is ugly, horrific, damnable. And you cannot make amends, you cannot
remove that stain. But I
have. I have loved you IN your
sin. I’ve paid FOR your sin. And I’ve removed your sin from you as
far as the east is from the west.”
That’s what changes a person and that’s what the cross has
achieved.
Abram has a taste of it here. The cross is modelled at this little
altar and it begins to change him.
The first thing it makes Him do is (v4) he prays with gospel
confidence. That’s what calling
on the Name of the LORD is (v4).
Your name in the Bible is your reputation, your character. So what’s the character of the
LORD? Well the Bible answers that
question many times: this is the Name of the LORD:
"The
LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger,
abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands,
and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” (Ex 34:6)
That’s the name – the character – of the
LORD. Here is a God you can call
on when you’ve sinned.
"compassionate… gracious… slow to anger, abounding in love
and faithfulness,… forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.”
Trouble is, when you’ve sinned, you don’t
tend to see God like that. But
when you, like Abram, see the blood of the sacrifice spilt for you – your
sins paid for, the slate wiped clean – then you can confidently call on
this God.
And that’s what Abram does, he calls on the
name of the LORD – which is a basic definition of being a Christian in
the Bible. You become a Christian
by calling on the Name of the LORD. (In Joel, in Acts, in Romans the
Bible keeps saying: Whoever calls on the Name of the LORD will be
saved.) So you call on the Name
of the LORD to get saved, But you also continue calling on the Name of
the LORD as a Christian. In 1
Corinthians 1 (which we are looking at in the mornings here) Paul
addresses the Corinthians as those who “call on the name of our Lord,
Jesus Christ”. A Christian is
someone who knows Jesus is the LORD and, because of His sacrifice, has
confidence to call on His gracious character.
Praying with gospel confidence is the
beginning of the change that’s being worked in Abram. And it will be the beginning of any
spiritual change you make in life.
But verses 5-13 show us that Abram is
changing in other ways too. He
starts making plans that are still a bit foolish but they are not nearly
so selfish. Let’s read v5-9:
5 Now Lot, who was moving about with Abram, also had flocks and herds
and tents. 6 But the land could not support them while they
stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they were not
able to stay together. 7 And quarrelling arose between Abram's
herdsmen and the herdsmen of Lot. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also
living in the land at that time. 8 So Abram said to Lot,
"Let's not have any quarrelling between you and me, or between your
herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers. 9 Is not the whole
land before you? Let's part company. If you go to the left, I'll go to
the right; if you go to the right, I'll go to the left."
This land ain’t big enough for the both of
them so Abram makes a suggestion.
We’ve already seen that Abram is a schemer – he came up with an
audacious scheme in the second half of chapter 12. Here his scheme is much better. Where his Egyptian scheme was born out
of famine, this scheme is born out of plenty. Where his Egyptian scheme was designed to go well for him,
here he wants the best for Lot.
He tells Lot to take his pick of the land.
Now at that point, I’m thinking ‘That’s a
wonderful gesture, but Abram, this land was given to you, not to
Lot. It’s well-meaning but it’s a
little unthinking.’ If I’ve given
Emma a gift I’ve specially picked out for her and then a week later I
find out she’s given it to her sister, I’d have to conclude, Emma doesn’t
think the gift was that special.
Abram’s just been promised the land and he says to Lot, ‘Look if
it’s going to be hassle, why don’t you take it.’ It’s sweet but it’s stupid.
I take great heart from that though. As we’ll see God is not thwarted by
our stupidity. He still gets His
job done. Not our sinfulness
as in Genesis 12, nor our stupidity, Genesis 13, can stop God, He
can work even in and through our sinfullness and stupidity. That’s heartening because 95% of
everything I do is either sinful or stupid. That’s a conservative estimate too.
But God works things out. In this event, Lot chooses to go out
of the promised land. V10:
10 Lot looked up and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well
watered, like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, towards
Zoar.
The Jordan river marks the eastern boundary
of the promised land and Zoar is beyond that. So Lot chooses to leave the promised land.
To his eyes, God’s promised land is not the
most desirable. Simply going by
sight, Sodom looks a better prospect than the promised land. But verses 10 and 13 give a bit of
divine perspective. It might look
a lush and fertile land but it is full of notorious sin. Nonetheless, v12, Lot goes and pitches
his tents near Sodom. And
this begins a kind of slow-motion fall for Lot. It begins with his looking up and seeing, v10. It continues
when, v11, he chooses for himself, and then v12 he goes to pitch
his tents near Sodom. By
the time we get to Genesis chapter 19 we see that Lot is living in a house
IN Sodom. And from there things
unravel completely. It’s Lot’s
slow-motion fall. But isn’t that
the pattern of every slow-motion fall: you see, you judge by your
immediate senses, you choose for yourself, you go and just dabble
to begin with – you pitch you tent on the outskirts – but before you know
it, you’ve bought a house in Sodom.
What’s gone wrong? Up to this point, Lot has been a hanger-on in Genesis. He has tagged along with uncle Abram
in all his adventures. But it’s
always Abram who builds the altars, it’s always Abram who calls on the
Name of the LORD. Lot – he’s just
around when it happens. And when
the moment of decision comes, Lot starts to drift away.
You can’t just tag along in the Christian
life. You can’t just survive on
the faith of family members. You
can’t just be around when church happens, and expect that on Monday
morning, or on Friday night you’re going to make godly choices. If you are Lot you might even be a
Christian, the Bible might even describe you as righteous, but if you’re
not active in owning the truth of the gospel for yourself, you’ll end up
in Sodom.
On the other hand: Abram makes so many
mistakes in Genesis, but he keeps returning to the altar – he keeps
reminding himself of the cross – and slowly, slowly he changes and more
and more he becomes a man who makes godly choices. That’s why he’s our father in the
faith. Abram doesn’t model to us
perfect living, but unlike Lot he shows us what it looks like for
continual sinners to continually return to the cross of Christ. That’s the difference between he and
Lot.
Well, v14-18, the LORD confirms His promise
to Abram. Just as Lot lifted his
eyes to see Sodom, the LORD lifts Abram’s eyes to see the promised land.
14 "Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south,
east and west. 15 All the land that you see I will give to you
and your offspring for ever. 16 I will make your offspring
like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then
your offspring could be counted. 17 Go, walk through the
length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you."
Hebrew – the language Genesis is written in –
is a fascinating language. There
are two words in these verses that have double meanings. And they deliberately have double meanings
because when you think about one meaning, you’re meant to think of the
other. The two words are land
and offspring. And they’re
very significant in these verses.
First, land.
The word ‘land’ can just mean a territory. It could just refer to the promised
land, the land of Canaan, the strip of real estate at the end of the
Mediterranean. But the word can
also mean the whole earth. There
is a deliberate double-meaning.
And Abram as he heard this promise was being asked to imagine not
just this territory, but the whole earth.
That’s why Paul in Romans 4 says that the
promise to Abram was that he’d be heir of the world. Not just Palestine – the world. This is why Abram lived in tents. He could have settled down and built
houses. There were cities all
around him. But he lived like a
traveller in this particular land of Canaan. He knew it was just a representation of the whole world
which had been promised to him and his offspring.
That’s the second word that has a double
meaning. This word for Offspring
could mean one offspring singular or it could mean many offspings
plural. It’s a bit like our
English word ‘sheep’ – if I just say sheep, you don’t know whether I mean
many sheep or one sheep. It’s the
same with offspring. There’s an
ambiguity that’s meant to be heard.
When you hear the word you’re meant to think of the One
offspring that stands for the many or of the many offspring
summed up in the One. This
word for offspring is absolutely crucial to Genesis and the whole
Bible. It occurs 65 times in
Genesis alone – and nowhere more importantly than in Genesis 3:15
[SLIDE – Gen 3:15]
Stick with me on this, it’s
worth the effort.
Here Adam and Eve had trusted the serpent who
is Satan rather than trust the LORD.
It was the fall of all falls.
And the LORD comes and He says to the serpent:
I
will put enmity (hostility, hatred) between you [serpent] and the woman,
and between your offspring and her [offspring]; he [the offspring of the
woman] will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."
What’s going on there? Well the LORD is separating humanity
from Satan. They’d tried to make
an alliance with Satan but the LORD is saying, ‘No I will separate you
two. And in fact I will defeat
the Serpent by joining you. The
Seed of the woman will come and He will crush Satan’s head, though Satan
will strike His heel.’ There
would be deliverance from the tyranny of the Serpent. The Offspring of a woman will defeat
Satan, though at great cost to Himself – His heel would be struck.
Here is the gospel preached – even in the
midst of the fall. The Old Testament
saints had to wait until that first Christmas morning for the Offspring
to finally come and they had to wait until that first Good Friday for Him
to crush Satan and for His heel to be struck. But from this moment onwards, the hope of God’s people has been
in the Offspring.
Here in Genesis 3, the word Offspring clearly
refers to one Person: He will strike your head. Not they, He. There’s only One but in
this one Offspring, the many descendents of Eve would gain victory over
Satan. We’re meant to hold both
ideas together.
It’s similar here in Genesis 13 – there are
double meanings to both words here.
Here the land is promised to Abram and his Seed. (Now here’s the pay off to that
whole discussion). Does this promise just refer to
lots of kids and some real estate??
No, there’s something much deeper going on. Here the man of faith is being
promised that in the True Offspring, Christ, the whole world is our
inheritance. The whole world
belongs to the Offspring, and we have the world in Him.
Now how did Abram take these words? Just as the promise of kids and real
estate? No, v18, he didn’t build
a house, he didn’t get onto the property ladder, he didn’t set up home in
the land of Canaan. In the words
of Hebrews 11, he lived “in the promised land like a stranger in a
foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were
heirs with him of the same promise.
For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose
architect and builder is God.”
[SLIDE – man, mission, land]
The saints of old did not simply trust in
earthly prosperity but had Christian faith. That’s why Abram and others are the heroes of faith – they
show us the way. The Old Testament
itself warns us away from earthly prosperity. Genesis 12 and 13 have continually pointed away from this
man Abram, from this land Canaan and from any human ability to fulfil
God’s mission. When the man Abram
is in charge of the mission and when the land of Canaan is trusted in,
things go haywire. But there is
another Man – the Offspring, He will uphold God’s mission and He will not
only bless but inherit the whole earth.
Turn with me to Psalm 72 as I close. Here is how another Old Testament
saint viewed these same things.
Endow
the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness.
Here is a descendent who will rule.
2 He will judge your people in righteousness, your afflicted ones with
justice. 3 The mountains will bring prosperity to the people,
the hills the fruit of righteousness. 4 He will defend the
afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will
crush the oppressor. 5 He will endure as long as
the sun, as long as the moon, through all generations. 6 He
will be like rain falling on a mown field, like showers watering the
earth. 7 In his days the righteous will flourish; prosperity
will abound till the moon is no more. 8 He will rule from sea
to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.
Again
we see that ambiguity. Sea to sea could just mean the Mediteranean to the
Dead Sea. It could just mean the
ends of the land, but actually, a world-wide reign is in view here. Verse
11:
11 All kings will bow down to him and all nations will serve him.
Look down to verse 15…
15 Long may he live! May gold from Sheba be given to him. May people
ever pray for him and bless him all day long.
Verse 17….
17 May his name endure for ever; may it continue as long
as the sun. All nations will be blessed through Him,
and they will call Him blessed.
The true Man is the Offspring, the
royal Son of God, the Christ. The
true mission is the blessing He brings to the world. The true land is planet earth
and one day He will rule it all without rivals. Abram looked forward to that day, the Psalmist looked
forward to that day. We too look
forward to that day.
We too can walk do what Abram did and walk
through the land imagining our promised future. We can move up and down the length and breadth of our land,
shunning the pleasures of Egypt and of Sodom and anticipating that great
Day when Christ will fulfill all His Genesis promises, ruling from
Sea to Sea and to the ends of the earth.
18 Praise be to the LORD God, the God of Israel, who alone does
marvellous deeds. 19 Praise be to his glorious name for ever;
may the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and Amen.
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