Genesis 13

Important Choices

The Bible record of Abram's life continues in Genesis 13 with Abram leaving Egypt and travelling northwards towards Bethel, where God had met him and spoken to him before. With him was his nephew, Lot, another rich herdsman, who was prosperous and wealthy.

That, in fact, became part of the problem, because there was evidently not enough room in the land for both the households of Abram and of Lot. There was strife (13:7). How many households and families are there today of whom that is true! We long for harmony, for peace, for tranquility. We long to be able to reconcile estranged members of our families and households, even of our churches. Yet all we have, and all we find, is strife. We are for peace, while others are for war (Psalm 120:7).

Social problems stem often from domestic strife. Where there is instability in marriages, homes and families, it will disturb God's plan for social wellbeing. There is no greater place where the seeds of social disturbance are sown than in the domestic quarrels and strifes within our families and our homes. How we ought to strive to build homes and families for our children that are free from quarrel, from fighting, from strife.

Yet the glorious thing is that God overruled the quarrel, as he overrules much in his Providence and in his sovereign control in order to provide an opportunity for the re-affirmation of the covenant and the renewal of covenant promises. The story unfolds and in it we see God taking beauty out of ashes, and pouring joy into the strife. He is able to do that by his grace.

We see three things here:

(1) The choice of Abram

The voice of experience talks, and Abram takes the initiative, going to Lot and saying "Let there be no strife....". Here is wisdom, and self-control, and self-denial, and grace: the wisdom that seeks to remove the cause of strife and enmity. How he seeks the good of Lot, offering him the first choice of the land.

Christ warned us against attempting to worship God while maintaining a strife with our brother. His advice to us was to be reconciled to our brother, and then to offer our sacrifice and our gift. How can we offer an acceptable worship to God tainted with the blood of our estrangement and our lack of genuine brotherly concern? Such things ought not to be. There is a clear example for us to follow, esteeming as the Bible requires us to esteem, others better than ourselves. If our lives were characterised by grace as Abram's is, the world, not to say the church, would be a much better place.

(2) The choice of Lot

Lot surveyed the land. All the plain of Jordan stretched before him - how beautiful it looked, as good as the Paradise God made at the beginning. Sodom and Gomorrah were like the garden of the Lord. So Lot chose for himself the whole land, and they separated.

Then we have one of these ominous 'buts' of Scripture: "But the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked, and sinful against the Lord" (3:14). The beauty of Sodom concealed the ugliness of Sodom's sin. Appearances are deceptive. What wisdom we need to make good choices in life, to be kept from the sin that can present itself to our eyes in the most attractive and in the most pleasant of manners. God looks below the surface; it was a pity that Lot hadn't.

Lot pitched his tent in the direction of Sodom. Soon he was a citizen. The lure and the attractive were too great. Resistance was impossible. Large sins, the Puritans used to say, are small ones at first. They have a habit of growing, of increasing, of gaining more hold upon us. How much we need to see the serpent for what he is, and to dig in our heels. The allurements of the world and the attractiveness of sin does not make it any less ugly in the sight of the holy Lord God.

(3) The choice of God

What a difference in the experience of Abram! God, we are told, 'came to him' (3:14). Lot had gone, but God had come. He is able to make good every loss, and to give his grace when appears to be gone. God's choice had fallen on Abram, to whose descendants the whole land would be given.

So while Lot pitched his tent (v12), Abram built his altar (v18). What will it be for us? A tent of wickedness or an altar of worship? Will we put our tent pegs down, or will we lift our hearts and our heads up? Will we seek Sodom or seek the Lord?

The grace of God shines through here, and shows itself in all its wonder and glory. There is nothing more majestic than that God should be the covenant God of his people. May that be our portion now and for ever.