It's A High Price To Pay For Having Your Own Way

It’s a High Price to Pay for Having Your Own Way

Gen 13:1-13

Lot is a very interesting character. He was the son of Abraham’s Brother. Last week we look at the Faith of Abraham. One of those things was he obeyed the Word of God. But when we take a closer look – You will remember that God told Abraham to get out of Ur – and leave his family behind. Abraham went but he did not leave all his family behind. He took his Nephew and all of his Nephew’s family and servants along. That was a big mistake.

Lot was the classic example of a worldly Christian. He was what we would call a Backslidden Child of God.

WHAT BACKSLIDING IS NOT:

A. It is not losing you salvation.

B. It does not mean you lose the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

WHAT BACKSLIDING IS:

A. It means that you look like, act like, talk like a lost person. You would have a hard time proving to me that Lot was a saved man if it were not for the Apostle Peter.

2 Pet 2:6-8 And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly; And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked: (For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;)

The word vexed has the idea of a person having an open wound and every day just digging at it and not allowing it to heal. They vex the wound.

B. It means that a saved person tries to work out his life and his problem by his own best thinking.

Prov 14:14 KJV) The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways:

C. It means that they can go so far into sin that they forget they were once saved.

(2 Pet 1:9 KJV) But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.

T/S Backsliders take a downhill path that has 4 distinctive sign post along way. These sign post are there to let a person know how far down the road they have traveled. It is well illustrated in the Life of Lot.

THE FIRST SIGN: IT BEGAN IN THE HOUSE OF GOD.

Gen. 13:3-7 They camped in Bethel and he worshiped the LORD there. During this time Lot was traveling with Abram, and Lot also had flocks, herds, and tents. Abram and Lot had so many animals that the land could not support both of them together, so Abram’s herdsmen and Lot’s herdsmen began to argue. The Canaanites and the Perizzites were in the land.

Explain the text: Argue in the Church – The world is watching.

A. Most people thinks that a person doesn’t really Backslide until they go out and get drunk or do some bad sin. Just the opposite is true. By the time a Child of God get to the point of giving in to some horrible sin they have been backslidden for some time.

B. Most Backslider are on church pews today. There was strife between brethren and the Caaninite was in the Land ( They were watching). The first sign of Backsliding is to begin to find fault with your Brother and Sister. When you start pointing fingers. I tell you - if I can get a good handle on what’s wrong with me, I won’t have time to look at the faults of others.

C. If we could get the Backsliders who are on church pews this morning to repent there would be the greatest revival this country has ever known.

D. That is why in the last church the Lord put it on an individual basis. "If any Man will here my voice . . . . . ."

E. I know of what I speak. The most backslidden I have ever been was when I was being the most faithful to the church I was a member. (Now notice I said, "Faithful to the Church - Not faithful to the Lord". You see, you can be faithful to the church and be a dead spiritually.

F. You see Backsliding begins in the House of God.

2ND SIGN POST: IT GERMINATED IN THE PLAINS OF JORDAN. GEN. 13:10-11

And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the LORD . . . . Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other.