Genesis 13:1-

Lot's Choice

According to my count we only have 81 shopping days left until Christmas. So I brought some gifts with me to Church today. Here's one of them. Looks rather attractive. Expensive paper. Glittery. Nice bow. Here's another. Small. Doesn't look like much.

Now given the choice, which would you choose?

Why?

The fact is, you have no good basis for choosing one over the other. You have absolutely no idea what is inside these packages. This might hold a diamond -- or it might hold a dirty sock. This might be a priceless work of art, or it might be stuffed with old newspapers.

Our choices in life are alot like these packages. We are constantly faced with decisions and choices and we have no idea what we'll find after we open the package. We can look at the outide, we can shake the package, we can try to guess, but all of it is just guesswork. We have no idea what the outcome will be.

Take marriage for example. None of us really have any idea how our marriages are going to turn out. Every beaming married couple hopes to live happily together through to old age. But who knows. Some people are married two days and find themselves widowed. Others are betrayed or abandoned or caring for an invalid for most of their life. That's why "for better or for worse" is a rather important part of marriage vows. We just don't know if it will be for better or for worse.

Or take money as another example. You have a little money. Where should you invest it? Will the stock market go up or down. Should you buy a house? What if real estate values plummet?

So we're constantly faced with these choices, and it can really be quite agonizing. Where should I go to College? Where should I live? Should I get married? If so, to whom? What career should I choose? We have all of these choices and it seems like so much or our happiness rests on making the right choice.

These dilemmas should give you some sympathy for Abraham's nephew Lot. Lot is the main character in our scripture passage today, and he finds himself faced with what seems to be a critical life choice:

Turn to Genesis 13 -- read verses 1 to 13.

In this passage Lot is faced with a crucial choice. The whole land is before him. He looks up and on one side is a lush fertile plain with the Jordan river winding through it. It's a beautiful sight, especially to a shepherd -- green, well-watered. And in the other direction, brown barren hills, stretching as far as he can see.

Two packages -- one nicely wrapped, glittering. The other in Brown paper.

Lot chooses the expensively wrapped package. He moves down into the fertile plain, and he settles near Sodom. The results are devastating. Lot ends up with a very unhappy life. In the next chapter -- chapter 14 -- he and his whole family are carried off as prisoners of war. Abraham has to come in a rescue him. Five chapters later, in chapter 19, he barely escapes from Sodom with his life before God destroys the city. Presumably he loses everything -- including his wife, who is transformed into a pillar of salt.

He's lost his possessions, his wife, his sons-in-law who stayed in Sodom. It gets worse. His daughters get him drunk, commit incest and he becomes the grandfather of Moab and Ammon who each found nations that are bitter enemies of the people of God.

This is not a happy life. It's a miserable, sordid story and it all begins with Lot's choice on the mountain.

So what's the moral?
What are we supposed to learn from Lot's example? Did he simply pick the wrong package. Is the lesson that good things come in ugly, small packages -- should he have picked the barren hills?

No! Lot's fundamental problem was not which package he chose. His fundamental problem was that he was focussed on the packages at all. His eyes were in the wrong place entirely. He was looking at the two packages, seeing his future and his happiness as connected with the contents of these packages.

Lot is a picture perfect example of what it means to walk by sight. Not because he chose the glittery package over the ugly one. No. That's not what it means to walk by sight. To walk by sight is to be preoccupied with the things of the world. To expect to find satisfaction in the things we see around us, and in the choices we make.

Lot was investing in the things of the world -- things he thought he could see and touch -- and the world let him down. He was asking of the world what it cannot give. I don't think he would have been any better off if he had chosen the barren hills. They could not have given him satisfaction any more than the elusive prosperity of Sodom.

Last week our family built a sandcastle on the beach. It was a work of art -- an engineering marvel. Beautiful to behold. But I had to warn our kids not to get their hearts attached to it. Not because it wasn't wonderful, but because it could not last.

Lot set his heart on a sandcastle. That's what it is to walk by sight.

So, what does it mean to walk by faith? If Lot shows us the peril of walking by sight, Abraham is our model of walking by faith. So Let's contrast Abraham with Lot. I'd like to point out a few simple contrasts:

1. Abraham released; Lot grasped.

Abraham is amazingly generous here. God has promised him the land. Lot is junior to him. Abraham has the right of seniority to make first choice and to put Lot in his place. Yet he releases control completely to Lot.

What allowed Abraham to release control?

Think of it like this: I invite two of you to come up here. I say to you, this package contains a check for $200,000 -- Tax free. Don't ask me how it's tax free, just believe me. It's enough to pay off all your College tuition and then some, or to pay off your mortgage, or buy a new house.

Now I'd like you to both of you to agree which one of you should get it -- and its and all or nothing deal. No hidden agreements to split it or anything like that. Now I'm sure that you would politely defer to one another because its good form.

But what would allow you to really sincerely give up the right to it altogether? What would free your heart to say, it really doesn't matter to me?

One thing would, for sure. If I knew that my father had far more money than this in the bank, all held in trust for me, then that 200,000 would have no hold on me at all. I would be glad to see it go to someone else. If you're rich -- if you know that all your needs are taken care of -- what need is there to grasp.

Walking by faith means knowing you are RICH because you have God and having God is all that really matters, all that can really satisfy. So there's no need to grasp at lesser things. Why would I rummage in the trash at MacDonalds for old bits of second-hand hamburger if I knew a gourmet meal was waiting for me at home.

2. Abraham waited for God's direction; Lot pursued his own desires.

Look at the contrast between verses 10 and 14.

10 -- Lot looked up
14 -- The Lord said to Abraham after Lot had parted from him "Life up your eyes . ."

What's the difference. Both lifted up their eyes. Both looked around and saw the same thing. But Lot lifted his eyes motivated by desire. Abram looked up only at God's command.

Lot is like a child who sneaks downstairs on Christmas Eve and unwraps all of his presents. He just can't wait. The desire is too great. And the result? He sleeps through Christmas morning and loses all of the joy of Christmas day and the much deeper satisfaction of experiencing the love of his family.

What God has for us is so much better than what we could gain on our own. If we really believed that we would have the patience to wait as Abraham did.

Abraham waited; Lot would not wait and pursued his own desires.

3. Abraham rested in the Promises of God; Lot placed his hope in what he could see -- he rested in his own judgement.

This gets at the heart of walking by faith and not by sight. The promises of God were more real to Abraham than what his eyes could see or his mind could comprehend.

Well before Carol and I met, she was asked to go to Pakistan for two years as a volunteer nurse at a small mission hospital. A very good friend of hers warned her: If you go, you will be cutting yourself off from the likelihood of getting married and having a family. These are your most marriageable years. Your chances of ever find a husband are much slimmer if you do this.

I'm rather glad she didn't listen. Carol and I met in Pakistan. But that misses the point. God never promised to give Carol a husband. But he did promise to care for her, to bless her, to meet her needs. She acted on those promises. To have stayed OR to have gone out of fear or hope of finding satisfaction in marriage would have been Lot's choice. In that decision, she walked by faith, trusting God to care for her. And the fact that we met there? That's not important -- marriage was not the reward for her faith. God alone is the reward for her faith. Her friend Joanna who went at the same time is there and remains single -- and is often lonely -- but she shares the same promises and will receive the same reward.

Abraham rested in the promises of God, and did not place his hope in what his eyes could see or his mind could comprehend.


Conclusions/ Application

Abraham and Lot are examples to us of what it means to walk by faith and not by sight:

Lot walked by sight. He grasped the things of the world and the things of the world let him down. As They always will.

Abraham walked by faith. He looked to God for his satisfaction and God did not let him down. God never does. Abraham's faith showed itself in his willingness to release control, to wait and to take God's promises as more real than what he could see.

How might this help us in our practical struggle to walk by faith? Well, consider how you respond to choices you have to make in life. Let me suggest two examples.

The first is a hotbutton issue for many families here. I offer it with some fear. What should you do about our children's education? Public school? Home school? Private school? We make very different choices, and many of us feel that our decision is the right one. What does it mean to walk by faith and not by sight through that decision?

It means, first of all, recognizing that your child's ultimate happiness and satisfaction and your own satisfaction does not rest on that decision. If you think that your choice of what kind of schooling your child has will have a determining effect on your child's happiness or on your own happiness or satisfaction, you are making Lot's choice. You are asking of the world what the world cannot give.

The second is a hotbutton issue for many singles. The issue of relationships that may or may not lead to marriage. Is this the right person? You have doubts and fears? Would you be happy with this person for the rest of your life? How do you walk by faith and not by sight?

First by recognizing that your ultimate satisfaction does not and cannot be invested in a relationship.


The critical element in most choices you make is not the choice itself, but the attitude you bring to that choice. Do you expect the result of that choice to bring you lasting happiness or satisfaction. Or can you hold lightly to the things of the world, wait on God and trust the promises of God.

Jesus said that whoever seek to gain this life, will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, Jesus said, will find it.

Oh that we as a congregation would be willing to throw our lives away -- like rubbish -- to gain something so much better, so much more lasting, so much more satisfying.