Speaker 1: Today, we are in the book of Genesis. We are all this fall, and we are looking at the story of Abraham. And if you have missed any of the conversations in this series, then by all means jump on the Internets and you can catch up on YouTube or iTunes. Just search for Commons Church and you'll find the conversations there. But so far, we've seen God call to Abraham and then we've seen him respond in faith.
And then last week, we kind of watched as he messed things up. Today, we're actually going to start to see some growth and maturity and maybe some movement towards God in our boy, Abram, and that's encouraging. So look forward to that. But let me recap where we've been just really quickly here. In week one, we saw God call to Abram to leave his place, his father's household, his country, and to go somewhere new.
And that was a message that really seemed to resonate with a lot of us. And I think it's because at some level, we all recognize this tension of wanting to move forward in our lives, and yet at the same time struggling with what it means to let go of where we've been in life. That's something that we all wrestle with at times. But then last week, we saw Abram get up and actually go. And that's great.
It's exciting. We see him do the thing that sometimes we wish we had the courage to do. But then we realized pretty quickly that even though God had called Abram forward, there was still a lot of the story that was left up to Abram. And so we talked about the difference between having a direction in your life and having directions, all of the steps laid out for you in life. Because oftentimes, God seems to deal in the first category and not the latter.
Abram is called to go to Canaan. But very quickly, he gets there and he realizes he's still gonna have to make a lot of his own decisions here. What exactly this story is going to entail? And so first, a famine hits the land and Abram decides to leave Canaan and go to Egypt. He gets to Egypt and he gets afraid of the king, the pharaoh, and so he convinces his wife Sarah to go along with this crazy plan to save himself.
And so he passes his wife off as his sister hoping that her beauty will help gain him some favor with pharaoh. What he may not have counted on though is that Pharaoh thinks she's so beautiful, he decides to take Sarah as his wife. Now this is not a good thing because Sarah is already married to Abram, and so God inflicts disease on Pharaoh's household until Pharaoh somehow realizes what's happening. And we're not told how he finds this out. Does he just ask Sarah one day?
Does he have advisors that tell him spies that figure it out? Does he just figure it out on his own? We don't know. But eventually, does. He goes back to Abram.
He says, dude, this is not cool. You can't do stuff like this. Get out of here. Take your wife, everything that you've acquired, and go back to where you came from. Now a few people talked to me after the message last week or they emailed me this week and they said, this is an awful story.
I mean, Abraham is the hero of our faith and he does this to his wife? Now how do we metabolize that? And that is a very good question. And so here's what I would say quickly. There have been a number of different approaches to the Bible.
One is to say, yes, it is full of patriarchy, and that's just the way God set things up. Men have a unique role in society. We shouldn't fight that. We can't. That is not the approach that we subscribe to here.
Our larger denomination was one of the first in North America to fully ordain women, and we embrace that egalitarian perspective completely. Another approach has been to try to find ways to explain the patriarchy in the Bible away. So here, you might find an argument that says something like this. Well perhaps Sarah was in on this choice from the start. It was a cooperative decision that she and Abram made together after a long and respectful discussion.
Somehow I find that highly unlikely from the text that's going on in Genesis 12. And so the approach that I generally take with situations like this is sort of a both and. To acknowledge that there is indeed, of course, unhelpful patriarchy in the bible. It was just there in these cultures, and so it appears in our stories that come out from these cultures. And so we can't ignore that.
But we also need to understand that in the larger narrative scope, the full picture of the Bible in the ongoing experience of Christian community in what we see in Jesus, who is the full expression of God and how he demonstrates this radically inclusive posture. We understand that God is calling us to continually slowly move forward, to leave certain unhelpful cultural practices behind as we go. And so yes, we are seeing patriarchy in the story of Abraham. It is there and it will come up again. But rather than being endorsed, what we actually saw last week was that patriarchy, this way of thinking is what leads Abraham to do something foolish and dishonoring to God.
He treats his wife like property, and it leads him to make bad decisions. One of the things that I think is interesting in this story is that I'm not sure that Abram thought this was how things would play out. He may have thought he could deceive Pharaoh and get away with it. I'm not sure that he actually thought Pharaoh would want to marry his sister slash wife. And I find that interesting because I think sometimes we get in these places where we make one bad decision, and we think it'll be okay.
So we put someone else at risk to protect ourselves a bit. And we lie in some seemingly smaller, less significant way. And then oftentimes, all of a sudden, we find ourselves in situations where things have just snowballed out of control. This wasn't what we expected. This is important to remember this, that whenever you think of someone as less than you, and then you let yourself continue to think that, it will eventually lead to decisions that show that.
When you misrepresent yourself, when you misrepresent somebody else, it will eventually lead to situations where you are forced to either continue defend or intensify those misrepresentations. Because when we lie, it has a way of catching up to us. And that's what we're seeing here in Abraham. And so this story is not about endorsing Abraham's bad decisions. And even though he ends up not paying much of a price for his deception, this is a story about God saving Abraham in spite of himself, not because of himself.
And so that goes back to this idea of a difference between direction in life and directions. Because God says, this is out of bounds and that is out of bounds. And then you have all this room here in the middle. You have seventy five years and 360 degrees and the legal statutes of Canada within which to make your choices. And I will call you in a direction, But those day to day choices, the step by step directions, where to park, what shoes to wear, sometimes even the bigger choices.
What city will you move to? What career will you take? Sometimes God leave these up to you. Now God says, I will be with you and I will love you. I will continue to guide you and form you, but I will also trust you to make wise decisions as you learn to trust me.
And that's what we're seeing in Abraham so far. God calls, but then he lets Abram choose. Sometimes well and sometimes less than well. But that's the life of faith. You and God in concert with each other.
It's not where God takes over. Now today, we're going to start to see some growth in Abram and him moving towards something that's healthier. So we stay tuned for that. But first, let's pray. God of our father Abraham, would you continue to speak direction into our lives?
And if it is specific and clear that you would have for us, would we be ready to receive that and to trust? And if what you have for us is more general and open ended, would we be ready to move with courage and faith? And for those of us who have a sense that we have not heard from you in a very long time, would you remind us tonight of all the myriad of ways in which you speak? The experience of nature and sun and warmth even in the October. The opportunity to gather with trusted friends and family for conversation and input.
Now perhaps, the ways in which art and beauty and music speak to our souls of the profound rhythms of life. Would you open us up to the thousands of ways that you speak all the time? And in that, may we come to listen for the voice of your spirit in new ways. You have given us life and choice and opportunity. We want to use that gift well.
So help us to grow, help us to mature, help us to live a life of faith in concert with you. We pray this in the strong name of the risen Christ. Amen. Okay. We wanna pick up this week.
Right where we left off last week. We finished at the end of Genesis chapter 12. Tonight, it's chapter 13 verse one. It goes like this. So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev with his wife and everything he had, and Lot went with him.
Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and in gold. 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, where he had first built an altar to the Lord. There Abram called in the name of the Lord. Now before we go on here, interesting note, that after all that has happened last week, he ends up back where he originally started. He ends up back where God called him.
And sometimes when we mess things up and we make bad choices, we need to do some backtracking. And we've talked already in this series about how hard it can be to move forward. Sometimes when you mess things up, it's even harder to go back. But humility can be a really powerful thing in our lives. We say I've made mistakes.
I need to go back. I need to start again. Let's keep reading here. Now Lot, who was moving about with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents. 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.
And quarreling arose between Abram's herders and Lot's. The Canaanites and the Perizzites were also living in the land at that time. So Abram said to Lot, let's not have any quarreling between you and me or between your herders and mine for we are close relatives. 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. Lot looked around and he saw the whole plain of the Jordan towards Zoar was well watered, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt. This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. This is a story we'll hit in a couple and so if you've been wondering whether we will skip the hard stuff, we will not.
But Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out towards the East. The two men parted company. Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom. This is Genesis 13 verses one to 12. Now hopefully, without any real need for commentary or conversation, You can see here that this is a very different Abram we're dealing with.
Remember, in chapter 12, a famine hits the land, he gets spooked and he runs away to Egypt. He goes down to Egypt. He sees the pharaoh, he gets terrified and he asks his wife to lie to protect him. Here, there is low level arguing between the hired help. And yet Abram responds with what is quite honestly pretty unexpected grace and generosity.
Remember, the text doesn't even say that Abram and Lot are the ones fighting with each other. It's just the help. This is like if you went to your boss and you said, ma'am I don't know if people say ma'am anymore, but you said to her, ma'am, can I take off early Friday? I'd like to head out of town for the weekend. Hit the mountains.
Maybe go for a hike. She was like, that sounds like a great idea. In fact, why don't you take the rest of the week off? Actually, here's my keys. Why don't you take my car?
It's an SUV, and it's never been off road before, and I've always felt kind of strange about that. Take it to the mountains. Have a good time. And seriously, why do we all have these sport utility vehicles? It's kind of ridiculous.
This is the kind of oddness that's going on here in this story. We already know that Lot is Abram's nephew. That means Abram has the right of something called paterfamilias. Basically, that means that legally he always gets first choice. And so it's one thing for him to say, listen, let's spit up.
I will give you your own land. That's incredibly generous. But now he lets Lot decide the terms. Something profound has happened in Abraham here. In fact, he actually says to Lot, if you choose left, I'll go right.
If you choose right, I'll go left. And that probably doesn't mean a lot to us. Left and right are subjective directions depending on which way you're facing. One of the things that you learn if you stand on a stage a lot is the difference between left and stage left. And I still don't know what those are, but apparently they're important.
Here, we don't know where Abram is facing when he offers this. We do know that Lot chooses east. Verse 11. So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of Jordan and set out toward the East. Now east and west have this fascinating relationship in the Hebrew scriptures.
The tabernacle, even the temple later on in the story. The place of God on earth for the Jews is built facing the East. The Messiah when he comes for the Jews will come from the East. Specifically, from the Mount Of Olives on the East Of Jerusalem. The Garden Of Eden, when it gets closed off, when God sends Adam and Eve and their family out, he sends them out to the West and he puts angels to guard the Eastern entrance.
Now today, we have some understanding of the spherical nature of our planet. That if you go East enough, you end up West. But in the ancient mind, East was somehow a symbol of blessing and prosperity. Almost like a superstition. Because by no means does East always work out that way in the scriptures.
But there's a sense that it's good. So this is not a six of one half dozen of another choice that Abraham is giving here. Make no mistake, they both want East. In fact, the story tells us that the East is well watered like the Garden of Eden. That is pretty high praise.
In fact, we're told that it is like Egypt where they just came from, which they only left because the pharaoh booted them out. Now, the story also foreshadows why East may not be the best choice here. It hints at a connection with Sodom and Gomorrah, and so we get a glimpse of why greed may not be the best metric to make our choices on. But in giving Lot the choice, we're seeing something different in Abraham. And it's a fairly striking contrast.
In chapter 12, Abraham is so full of fear. That's that's his thing. Famine is scary. Pharaoh is scary. Even though God has told him he's gonna be blessed and his family will be a great nation, he just can't seem to get his head around this.
And I get that. If you went in to see your boss one day, and she was like, hey, how was that trip in my SUV? And you're like, oh, yeah. That's really nice. Appreciate that.
But then she proceeded to tell you how valued you are, how significant you are, how important you are to the company, and you will be getting a big raise to show that to you soon. But then a month goes by, and then a year goes by, you hear nothing and you start to wonder. In fact, then you hear that the person who works down the hall has gotten a raise. You might even start to get a little bit frustrated about it. You were promised this and now they're getting it.
I mean, there's only so much good to go around. Right? And if it's good over there, it can't be good here. That's essentially the mindset that drives Abraham in chapter 12. And now I'm supposed to be here in Canaan, but it's tough right now.
There's a famine and things are good down in Egypt. I should probably leave here and go there. No matter how can God bless me here if he's blessing Egypt there. You know that place sometimes where something good happens to a friend. They get a promotion.
You don't even work with them, and so you're happy for them. Of course, you are. But there's also that little bit, that part of you that's not just jealous. You're actually kinda sort of resenting them for it. It doesn't really make sense.
I mean, what they got doesn't take anything from you, but it kinda sorta feels like it, doesn't it? This is what an ideology of scarcity does to us. There is only so much out there and I need to get mine. And if you get something that I want, that means there's less chance for me to get it. This is totally absurd.
But a few years ago, when Rachel, my wife, and I had been trying to get pregnant for a couple years, and then had decided to adopt, and we were waiting for another couple years on an adoption list for a birth mother to choose us, it was really hard to be in a community where everybody was having babies. And I mean like, the dudes were getting pregnant, everybody was having babies. It was crazy. By the way, still happening in our church. So many babies.
Now, here's the question though. What does our friends being blessed with a child do have to do with us waiting on an adoption list? Absolutely, unequivocally, less than zero. And yet still, I had these moments where I was resentful. Because an ideology of scarcity teaches us there's only so much wealth, so much happiness, so much blessing out there.
And it puts us, whether we sense it consciously or not in a posture of being constantly at competition with each other. That's Abraham in chapter 12. Yet somehow, here in chapter 13, Abraham has shifted into this ideology of abundance. We're all a sudden giving stuff away to his nephew. That's not gonna hurt him.
He's got more than he needs. We're all of a sudden letting his nephew decide the terms of the split. That's not gonna put him at a disadvantage. God's blessing him. And it's interesting that as you get this story of Abraham and Lot as they split their squirrels, there's this interesting parallel in the New Testament.
In Luke chapter 12, a man comes to Jesus. And he says, Jesus, can you make my brother split our inheritance with me? Like he won't give me my share. Tell him to be fair. And first Jesus says, listen, I don't know who told you life is fair, but get over that.
Second, no, I'm not doing that. I'm not here to be your small claims court. You're thinking of judge Judy. That's not my thing. Channel twelve, 1PM, check her out.
Maybe she can help. What he does do though is tell a story. It's a very Jesus thing to do. He says, think about it this way. Imagine there's a rich man, and he's got more than he needs.
But he decides one night that the best thing for him to do with his money is to build himself, you know, bigger barns so that he can store even more grain and he can become even more wealthy. And he figures, if I can do that, if I can just get a little bit more, then one day I'll be able to lean back and enjoy myself, eat, drink, and be merry with all that I've got. At first, I just need a little bit more. Unfortunately, just when he gets done thinking this to himself, even before his new barns can be built, he dies. And he doesn't get to enjoy any of it.
And Jesus says, life is more than food and the body is more than clothes. Don't worry about this stuff so much. The implication from Jesus in the context here seems to be that the man who comes to him wanting his inheritance so badly already has more than he needs anyway. Jesus is saying, why do you need more? Like if you already have all your needs met, what does it matter if your brother got this?
If it doesn't hurt you and you don't need it, who cares? Somehow, Abraham seems to have come to understand this. But that's not the Abraham in chapter 12. And so I wonder about how this change has happened in him. And this is part of what is so fascinating to me about these early Torah stories.
Because we are told what happens, we are told what these characters do, but very very rarely are we ever told why they do it. We just don't read internal monologues in Genesis. And so we read and we watch and then we speculate. You watch the story unfold and then you imagine the internal processes that are going on. And you wonder about what's happening in Abraham's mind.
You think about the implications. You place yourself into these stories, and you ask yourself, why would he do that? Last week, we saw Abram make terrible choices that put someone at vulnerable, at risk, and he gets off scot free. And that was tough because we wanna say, why? Why doesn't God teach him a lesson?
Now, like, why doesn't why doesn't he have to pay for his mistakes? He's never gonna learn anything unless God punishes him for it. Right? And yet in the very next story, we see a radically different person. Can I suggest that perhaps the ways in which God works in us and on us and through us are not always the ways that we expect?
Have you ever found yourself in a situation like this? Where you have done something that you knew was at least a little bit shady. Like you misrepresented yourself in a deal. Maybe you presented the numbers in the best light possible, just almost right on the verge of plain outline, but not quite. And maybe you gave someone a resume, because let's be honest, we all fake that a little bit.
And maybe you went way over the line and you knew it, but in the end you didn't get caught. And you didn't get burned. It didn't cost you anything. In fact, it all worked out pretty well for you. But as time went by, you knew this wasn't the person you wanted to be.
It wasn't the direction that you wanted to head. And so without any outside incentive, without any pain, just that internal realization, you made changes. I have friends who have that story in their relationship, in their marriage. My friend had an affair. And he got away with it.
Like he never got caught, his wife never knew. It was during a tough time in their marriage, but eventually things went back to normal and things were good and it was all in the past. She never knew and life moved on. And yet five years later, after five years of living with this, he knew this just wasn't who he wanted to be anymore. That this thing in his past, this secret wasn't part of the person he wanted to be.
And so he felt like he had to come clean about it. Now I promise you, it doesn't matter how long ago it was to find out that your partner has done this is gonna hurt everybody. But it wasn't the punishment of God that transformed my friend. It wasn't even the fear of pain that changed him. Because he chose to face into the pain on his own.
It was the grace of God that allowed him the time to come to a place of repentance for himself. That's what made the difference. Now this couple, they've worked hard and they've rebuilt trust. And now they help other couples here in the city, work on their relationships, and it's amazing, incredible people. But I wonder about what has happened in Abram between the lines.
Between the verses, between chapter 12 and chapter 13. Did he somehow come out of Egypt with more money and more wealth and more prestige, but with a wife who struggled to look him in the eyes? Did he come out of chapter 12 with more of all of the things that he wanted from life? But somehow less of what he knew he needed in his life? Does he come all the way back to where he started?
Does he retrace his steps to Negev, back to Bethel, back to the tent that he pitched at the start of the story because he knows he needs to start over again. Listen. God is not interested in punishing you or hurting you or pushing your face down into the dirt until you plead for mercy. God is interested in transformation. And yes, sometimes that means he will need to take us through the dark and the difficult moments in our journey.
But sometimes, it means he needs to give us what we thought we wanted so that we can understand just how small and broken our imaginations really are. I promise you, God does not want to punish you for your sins. He wants to heal you from them. And that means that God is willing to work patiently, personally, as long as it takes in whatever way you need him to in your life. And I know that sometimes you look at people and you know that something is messed up in their life.
And yet they are wealthy and happy and life is light. Despite the fact that they mistreated you in some way and you want God to punish them. And I know you feel that way because I feel that way and I refuse to believe I'm the only terrible person in the room. But I am learning slowly to trust that even when I don't see it from the outside, and even when I can't explain it, even when I can't put my finger on it, I'm learning to trust that God is somehow present and active in every moment, in every life, the way that he needs to be. Is it possible that God has been at work in the life of someone close to you.
But it hasn't been in the way that you expected it, or the way you wanted it, or a way that you could see from the outside. And so you become bitter or angry or frustrated with God. Why don't you do something? Maybe someone who's on a self destructive pattern and and you wanna help them. Maybe it's somebody who's walked away from faith and you want to be part of welcoming them back.
Maybe somebody who's hurt you in some way, and it hurts. Would you be willing to consider in this moment that God is just as deeply concerned as you are? And that he is present and active and invested in that story even when you don't see it. Is it possible that God has been work at work in your life in some way? But that just hasn't been in the ways that you've been taught to expect him to look for him.
And so it doesn't look like a bigger bank account. It doesn't look like really close to you. It doesn't look like the moment of spiritual ecstasy we've all been taught to search out. Would you be willing to consider in this moment that God is always present to each of us? Speaking in a thousand ways about his love and grace and abundance and blessing in your life.
And maybe it's not in the ways that you wanted it. Maybe it's not in the ways that you expected it, but sometimes it is simply the deep presence of hope and light in our lives. It calls to us from somewhere down in our spirits to continue giving ourselves away even when it's really hard to do that Or to continue trusting in others even when we've been hurt before. That voice in your spirit that calls you to somehow continue to believe that love really does change the world even in the face of hate and fear and all around us. Because that is the presence of the spirit of God in that long slow transformation between the lines from scarcity to abundance, from fear to joy.
And sometimes it is this simple presence of hope that is the presence of God in our lives. And I don't know exactly what happens between the lines. I don't know what precisely transpired in Abraham between chapter 12 and chapter 13. But I am learning to acknowledge God where I see him. Let's pray.
God, help us to acknowledge your presence in the world around us. Perhaps in the people near us, where we don't see what we wanna see, and we don't see change as quickly as we wanna see change. And perhaps we become disillusioned, frustrated. We've assumed that you don't care anymore. Would you remind us in our spirits that you are always as deeply invested in every story as we could possibly be?
Perhaps it's the experience of someone who has hurt us, and we still carry that that scar and that pain. But we want you to intervene. We want you to punish somebody. We want you to make things right. Now, would you remind our spirit that your blessing and your generosity is far bigger and more gracious than we could ever imagine?
And that there are ways that you are working, drawing, inviting all people back to yourself, even when we don't see it. Now perhaps it's in our lives. And we have been taught to look for you in very specific ways. And so even though you've been speaking a thousand ways about how you love us and how you bless us and how you want us to know you, we haven't been able to recognize it. Because it hasn't been obvious to us.
Would you help us by your spirit to recognize the ways that you're working between the lines? That you are shaping us, that you're inviting us, that you are transforming us into the people you imagine we could become. Helping us to be more gracious, more loving, more caring, more kind the way that you are. And so by your spirit, would you help us to recognize your voice wherever it speaks and to celebrate that wherever we see it. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Amen.