Verses. The title of my message
tonight is Same Difference. Genesis 13. And Abram went up
out of Egypt and his wife and all that he had and a lot with
him unto the south. And Abram was very rich in cattle
and silver and in gold. And he went on his journeys from
the south even to Bethel. under the place where his tent
had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Haihai, under the
place of the altar which he had made there at the first, and
there Abraham called on the name of the Lord. And Lot also, which
went with Abram, had flocks and herds and tents, and the land
was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together, for
their substance was so great, so that they could not dwell
together. There was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's cattle
and the herdsmen of Lot's cattle, and the Canaanite and Pezrite
dwelt then in the land. And Abram said to Lot, let there
be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, between my herdsmen
and thy herdsmen. For we are brethren. Is not the
whole land before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee,
from me. If thou wilt take to the left
hand, then I will go to the right. If thou depart to the right hand,
then I will go to the left. And Lot lifted up his eyes and
beheld all the plain of Jordan. It was well watered everywhere
before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden
of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. Then Lot chose him all the plain
of Jordan, and Lot journeyed east, and they separated themselves
one from another. And Abraham dwelt in the land
of Canaan, and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain, and pitched
his tent toward Sodom. But the men of Sodom were wicked
and sinners before the Lord exceedingly. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven,
we bless you and thank you for your great mercy for ruined and
helpless sinners. We are thankful that we have
this record that you have given us, this wondrous Bible that
teaches us what you would have us know about you and about ourselves. We thank you that we can come
into your presence because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ
and speak to you from our hearts concerning our desires and our
needs and what we want. We know that you know what we
need before we ask it. We are thankful that you are
our God and you care for us. Cause us in our hearts to cast
our cares upon you. Pray for those who are sick and
those who are going through trials. Remember especially those of
our company who are unable to be here because of sickness.
Ask Lord your help for them, especially for Wayne and Beth
and Peggy Lambert. Pray also for Sharon as she's
contracted this strep throat again. We ask Lord you'd be with
her and heal her quickly. Pray for Brother Sam as he prepares
for the possibility of this operation coming down the line. Continue
to pray for Sarah and for Debbie and for Chris and the boys. Also
my son Josh as he prepares to go out there. We ask Lord you'll
help for them. Strengthen them in Jesus Christ.
Father help us all to look to thee and to trust You. How hard it is for this old flesh,
impossible for the flesh to trust You. Cause us in our hearts by
Your Spirit, with our spirit, to lean wholly upon You and not
upon our own understanding. We ask tonight, Father, that
You'd be with us in this message. Enable me to declare the Gospel
of Jesus Christ Enable those who are here to hear, and it's
time afterwards that we might fellowship and rejoice in thee.
Thou art our God, and there is none beside thee. There is none
like unto thee. You declare the end from the
beginning. You speak, and it shall come to pass. You purpose
it, and it shall stand. Your very thoughts shall come
to pass. Lord, we know that. We bow in
great thanksgiving that you are our sovereign. Help us now to
worship You, we pray in Christ's name, Amen. Now this is the account
of the separation of Abram from Lot. And it does not occur because
of some animosity between these two men. They are brothers, as
our father Abraham has said, we are brethren. Abraham and
Lot loved one another. And this is borne out in the
Word of God. in the histories that God gives
us of these two men. And both men, according to this
passage of Scripture, were very wealthy. They had an abundance
of good and gold and silver and livestock. And according to this
account, a problem had arisen between the cattle herdsmen of
these two overgrazing area. Their herds had so increased
that the land that they were sharing could not bear them.
And to add insult to injury, there were Canaanites and Pezarites
in the land, sons of Ham. They were also occupying the
grazing land where the cattle were grazing. And seeing the
strike between the herdsmen was about to go south, Abraham calls
Lot that the two might reach some kind of agreement so a solution
could be arrived at that would end the strike before it got
worse. Abraham's solution was very magnanimous. an indicative
of a heart touched by grace. He gave Lot the choice. He didn't
make a choice. Well, he did, but not of where
to stay. He gave Lot the choice. He said,
if I go left, if you go left, I'll go right. And if you go
right, I'll go left. So He gave Lot the choice, and
that's an indication of the gracious heart. Over in Philippians chapter
2, Paul talked about the love of the brethren, and love for
the brethren, and how it's realized in the life of the children of
God. Philippians chapter 2 and verse
1 says, If there be any consolation, that is comfort and peace in
Christ, if there be any comfort of love, if any fellowship of
the spirit, if any bowels of mercies and compassion. Fulfill
you my joy, that you be like-minded, having the same love, being of
one accord and one mind. Let nothing be done through strife
or vain glory, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem other
better than themselves. Look not every man on his own
things, but every man also on the things of others, which according
to the rest of the passage was the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, let this mind be also
in you, which was in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is Abraham's
mind. He doesn't say, I'm Abraham. The Lord called me. He didn't
call you. You're just tagging along. I'm going to take what
I want. You take the rest. He said, Lot, whatever you want,
you take. I'll take what's left. Now some
might fault Lot and assume that he was taking advantage of the
situation, choosing the well-watered plains of Jordan, plains that
mimic the Garden of Eden and the Gardens of Egypt. But there
is no indication that the lands Abraham were left with, after
Lot's choice, were any less inhabitable or desirable for the herds of
Abraham. Wherever he went, he prospered
also. In fact, the language of the
latter part of the chapter indicates that Abraham was promised great
things from God. This incident in itself is plain.
It's understandable. It's easy to read. It's easy
to perceive in its presentation. It is a matter of fact. This
happened. But the beauty of Scripture is
its depth. Its depth. Before the printing
press was invented, Books were rare and expensive things because
they were handwritten with quills and ink, often taking many years
to complete and rarely copied into another copy. When they
published the book that I'd written in Galatians, they did it in
a matter of hours. Hundreds of copies went out in
just a matter of hours. Once they had the thing, they
put it in a computer. and set it up, and it set up,
it's in print, and it started running off the pages, and then
it ran into a machine, it bounded, and all of a sudden, here's all
these books. That wasn't the case back then.
The authors were brilliant. They were brilliant men who knew
that for a book to be worth its price because of one book was
of a lot of money and usually only rich people owned one, that
book must stand the test of time. reading and rereading for the
life of the owner and passed on to next generations. The text
in the context of the script must upon reading be able to
challenge and inspire and intrigue the mind to do deeper, to dig
deeper and define metaphor and parable and syntax and things
like that. Thus, long ago a book was a lifetime
companion. ever old and ever new and read
all the time. The Bible is the best book. It
has intrigued minds and changed minds and hearts and revealed
new worlds for over 3,500 years and continues to do so. I've
been given to reading it for many years. I've been preaching
from it for better than 42 years. and I'll find something new every
day. I've read it from cover to cover, not in sequence, because
I tried that a few times and that has put me to sleep. I'd
read a book and study it, read a passage and study it, and over
the years I've read it through. But I'm still, as I read it,
I'm totally intrigued and amazed and full of wonder at the depth
and the magnitude of the words of God. It must be read at face value
because it is full of history and the things that happen in
it have taken place and they're fact-based. But it also must
be read and re-read because a plain and simple and easily understood
passage of Scripture will prove upon re-reading to have metaphor
and allegory, parable, and teach things that you can imagine over
and over again. It is a two-edged sword, sharp,
piercing, even to the dividing of the joints in the marrow,
and it does discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. When
God gives you grace to read this book and reveals it to you, you
will feel as if somebody's been reading your mail. Because somebody
has. The Lord has. There's always
much deeper meaning than the simple stated facts that are
set before us in this book. It's always about something else.
It's always about someone else. The story is greater. Take for
instance the fact or the account of Abraham and Sarah and her choosing Hagar to fulfill
God's promise. Now God had promised Abraham
a son, and Sarah was just kind of anxious to get that job done.
So she said, take my handmaiden and make me a son, and he did.
He took Hagar and they produced Ishmael, which means God hears,
and that's what they named him. God heard us. God heard us. We have Ishmael. And Abraham
thought Ishmael was the promised son. In fact, when the Lord said
he's not, Abraham said, oh, let him be. Let him be. My son, let
him be the heir. The Lord said, no, he's not the
heir. The heir is the heir of promise, not the heir born of the power
of your flesh, but by the power of my spirit. It's a wonderful
story. You read it, it's full of angst
and pathos. Abraham having to send his 14-year-old
boy out into the desert with his mother with just a bottle
of water and saying, you can't live here anymore. God has said
you can't live here anymore. You can't live with a child of
promise, a child of flesh. Well, that means something else
altogether, doesn't it? Read the book of Galatians, you'll
find it. And that whole thing actually took place, and here's
how Paul describes it in Galatians chapter four. He says, for it
is written that Abraham had two sons, the one with the bondmaid,
the other with the free woman, the bondmaid being Hagar, the
free woman being Sarah. But he who was of the bond woman
was born after the flesh. This is Galatians chapter 4 verse
23 if you're looking. But he of the free woman was
by promise. Well that's what happened. And
Paul says, which things, this whole incident, was an allegory,
a story that taught something else. an allegory, for these
are the two covenants, the one from Mount Sinai, which
gendereth bondage, which is Hagar. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai
and Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem, which now is and is
in bondage. But Jerusalem, which is above,
which is the mother of us all, that's So you see, that was a
true story. And here we have a true story
that we're reading tonight, that we've seen tonight. The facts
of the story that are before us in Genesis chapter 13 are
plain, are indicative of the character of the child of God
revealed in both Abraham and Lot. Both of these men were,
according to scriptures, righteous before God. This is what God
called them. When Abraham believed God, it was accounted to him
for righteousness. He's called Righteous Abraham. And in First
Peter, Lot is called Righteous Lot. Both of these men were righteous
before God. They were not righteous in and
of themselves, for such righteousness does not exist and cannot exist
in the realm of men, save for one man who was God incarnate.
If they are righteous, as God has said they are, if they are
righteous before God, it is because God has made them so by making
Jesus Christ to be sin for them. He has made Him to be sin for
us, and you know sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. Is this how you are righteous? And this is your righteousness.
The name by which He shall be called is the Lord, our righteousness. It is this way and this way only
that one is righteous before God. Indeed, Lot is righteous. Indeed, Abraham is righteous.
Why? Because Christ, according to Scripture, has been made to
them to be so. But of him are you in Jesus Christ, who of God
is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,
according to 1 Corinthians 1.30. These men were righteous men,
both of them. These men were faced with choices.
We know that the steps of the good man are ordered of the Lord,
and though a man divides his way, it is the Lord that directs
his steps. We also know that there is a
way that seemeth right unto men, but the end thereof are the ways
of death. All these things are true. So
a man's choices fall soundly within the realm of God's sovereignty. Don't try to explain that. You're
wasting your time if you do. As in the case of Joseph and
his brothers. What they did to Joseph, they
meant for evil. They thought they were getting
him killed and getting him put out of the way. But scripture
said God meant it for good to save much people alive. They
said, we're getting rid of you. We're going to sell you to Egypt.
We're going to sell you to one of these caravans. Lied to his
daddy. Killed a beast and put blood
on Joseph's coat of many colors and said, your son's dead. He wasn't dead. He was down in
Egypt, promoted to the rank next to the Pharaoh. And when famine
came to Canaan, Jacob and his boys went down to Egypt. Who'd
they find? Joseph. They meant to kill him. God meant
to save them by him. Sound familiar? Sound like the
gospel? It is. In this account, Abraham
chose, if you will, to leave the choice to Lot, knowing full
well that the outcome was according to God's will. Lot chose what
any of us would choose, given such a scenario. He chose the
best place. Wouldn't you? I mean, there's
nothing to compel you otherwise. Somebody said, choose what you
want. You take what you want, I'll take the rest. What would
we take? Well, I'll take the worst. No, I'm going to take
the best, and so would you. So would you. What we do not
know and cannot know is in every choice we make is the outcome
of our choices. Say that ultimately for the believer
it will be for good because the Bible says so. However, what
takes place between the choice and the final outcome may be
fraught with many trials. Abraham left the outcome to God
but he had many trials in his life. Lot chose his way, but
the Lord directed his steps into many pitfalls. Lot's choices
reveal much about the humanity and the frailty of the believer.
Because remember, these are righteous men. He chose what was best for
him as anyone would. There's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with that. However, in His choice, we see
the direction that the Lord is teaching His children about the
end of all things that we choose that are temporal. We make choices
every day. We like the choices we make.
I like my old truck. I like the way it runs. I like
the way it drives. And I like the fact that when I park it
somewhere, somebody comes up and tries to buy it. I like that.
I like my car. I enjoy my car. I chose that
car because it was pretty. It had nice wheels and I've never
had a car that pretty in my life. I like that car. I like that
car. That car has got a hundred thousand
miles on it now. One of these days it's going
to quit running and I'm going to junk it. It's just a temporal
thing. But I chose it because I liked
it and that's what I wanted. We do it all the time. But they
don't last. They don't last. In His choice
we see the direction of the Lord to teach His children about all
things temporal. Over in 1 John chapter 2. 1 John
chapter 2. Our Lord said this in verse 15,
love not the world, neither the things that are in
the world. If any man love the world, that means to set his
affection on, set his roots down in, lay hold of to keep. If any
man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, falls into these three categories.
What your eyes see and want, the lust of the eyes. What your
flesh sees and wants, the lust of the flesh. And what will make
you feel better about yourself, the pride of life. Everything
falls into those categories. And listen, these are not of
the Father, they are of the world. And the world passes away and
the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth
forever. all this shall pass away." Lot saw some fine stuff. Saw some fine stuff. And in his
choices, the Lord showed that things were going to pass away.
You see, righteous Lot planted his roots in that which would
pass away. That which would be cursed by God. Back in our text,
in verse 10, it says, And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld
all the plain of Jordan. And it was well watered everywhere.
before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden
of the Lord, even as the land of Egypt, as it comes to Zohar,
which is a little city that he desired to flee to. Then Lot
chose him all the plain of Jordan, and Lot journeyed east, and they
separated themselves one from another, and Abel dwelt in the
land of Canaan, and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain, and
he pitched his tents toward Sodom. And you know what happened, don't
you? You know what happened. The safety and convenience of
cities, the walls and towers that afford protection is the
most reasonable choice that people can make. None of us are nomads
living in tents that Sodom has made to destroy in the direction
that Lot pitched. His tents would prove kindling
for fire and brimstone. We used this illustration before.
It happened in 1979. I remember it. I was busting
wood back when I could handle a six-pound go-devil fairly easily.
Not as easy as it used to be. I'd get out of breath a lot quicker.
And I was busting locusts. Cold winter day, which is the
best way, best I'd bust wood when it's cold. It was about
15 degrees and I was out there busting I busted this big old
piece of locust and inside was this whole nest of big old black
ants. I mean a whole nest of them.
I mean they were just handfuls of black ants and they're big
ones, big black ants. And I busted that and I looked
at them ants and they started stirring in that cold air. And I knew they was going to
die. They couldn't take that cold air. They got stowed up
in that wood for safety. And I thought, man, they put
all their hopes in something that's going in my firebox. They're
putting all their hopes in that which will be destroyed by fire. That's us. If we love this world, that's
us. If we put our hooks in this place
too deep, that's what's going to happen to us. The safety and
the convenience of cities, the walls and towers afforded protection.
But God's going to destroy them. The men of Sodom were wicked
sinners before the Lord exceedingly. These two things that the Lord
said about here are hints of what is about to happen to the
choice that Lot has made. Not a bad choice. Nothing wrong
with choosing what he wanted. He just wanted the safety of
the cities and the finest range for his cattle to graze
on. Old Barnard used to say, don't
hold on to this world so tight that the Lord will have to break
your fingers to make you let it go. Lot's choices were his,
and the Lord directed his steps as he did Abraham's. Here are
two men, saints, righteous before God, and two of all the things
that work for good to them that love God, to them are called
unto His purpose. This blessed book, this tome
we have, is indeed a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our
path. Father, bless us to understand
that we pray in Christ's name. Amen.