MESSAGE SERIES
“Look to the Stars”- Message II
The Life of Abraham
God keeps His promises; we must remain obedient to Him even when the future isn’t clear.”
INTRODUCTION OF SERIES
We are doing a series on Sunday mornings, titled, “LOOK TO THE STARS” The Life of Abraham.
The whole idea of the series that I want to get across is this, “God keeps His promises, but in order to enjoy those promises we must remain obedient to Him even when the future is not clear.”
LAST SUNDAY
We talked about the connection with obedience and blessing.
We spent more time talking about Abraham’s father, Terah, who left the land of Ur of the Chaldeans, a place in the Babylonian Empire to take his family to the land of Canaan. However, for some unknown reason, Terah never got to Canaan but he stopped at a place called Haran, lived there and died there. Terah died short of the blessing, died short of reaching the goal, died without ever getting to his destination which was Canaan.
We said that was a life, symbolic to many today, who know Jesus, who leave a lot of things in the world, but never go deep enough to enjoy the real blessings of God. We called that the TEMPTATION OF TERAH
We identified some possible reasons that hindered Terah that often hinders us in our Christian walk:
• Fear could have gripped his heart. He may have been afraid of the great nations that lived in Canaan.
• Complacency may have gripped his heart. He may have justified himself by saying, I am not living in Ur, where all the idolatry was, but I don’t think I want to go all the way to Canaan, I will just settle for Haran.
• Sorrow, Terah had lost a son named Haran before he left Ur, and maybe the town of Haran offered him some false comfort and kept him from moving forward for God.
TODAY WE ARE IN GENESIS 13
Today we are in Genesis 13, but in order to appreciate Genesis 13, we need to visit Genesis 12 for a moment.
The Lord speaks to Abraham after his father died, and gave him clear instructions
Genesis 12:1-3
“Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, from your family and from your Father’s house, to a land that I will show.
I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
There is something we need to stop and realize here, Genesis 12 is not the first time God called Abraham.
If you look in Acts 7, Stephen talked about Abraham to the High Priest and this is what Stephen said about Abraham.
“Brethren and fathers, listen: The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, and said to him, Get out of your country and from your relatives, and come to a land that I will show you. Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And from there, when his father was dead, He moved him to this land in which you now dwell” Acts 7:2-3
God keeps telling Abraham to leave his father and leave his family and that sounds cruel to us, but in fact Joshua 24:2 tells us why. Terah the father of Abraham served idols. Abraham was from a family of idol worshippers.
When Abraham left Ur, not knowing where he was going, it was only partial obedience because he took with him his family. Some of that family became a problem for him.
TWO THINGS I WANT YOU TO NOTE ABOUT ABRAHAM
Two things; I want you to notice about Abraham before we go on any further.
1) - It is important to note, that Abraham was a man of prayer.
You will constantly find during Abraham’s travels the phrase, “Abraham built an altar unto the Lord.”
There are four main altars Abraham is noted for building in scripture:
1. The altar of promise (Genesis 12:5-7)
2. The altar of intimacy (Genesis 12:8)
3. The altar of no return (Genesis 13:3-4)
4. The altar of possession (Genesis 13:17-18)
2) - God blessed Abraham.
By the time we get to Genesis 13.
We find That Abraham was very rich in livestock, silver and gold.
He and his nephew Lot went to a place called Bethel where Abram had built and altar to the Lord before and there Abram called on the name of the Lord.
Lot also had flocks, herds and tents and the land was not able to support both Abraham and Lot.
Besides that their employees could not get along.
Genesis 13:8-18
8 So Abram said to Lot, "Please let there be no strife between you and me, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen; for we are brethren.
9 Is not the whole land before you? Please separate from me. If you take the left, then I will go to the right; or, if you go to the right, then I will go to the left."
You see a couple of attributes that are developing in Abraham.
1- He was unselfish.
2- He was trusting in God to take care of him.
TEXT THIS MORNING
It is one of those sermons you really don’t get to the text and the heart of the message until you almost get to the end.
Genesis 13:10-13
10 And Lot lifted his eyes and saw all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere (before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah) like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt as you go toward Zoar.
11 Then Lot chose for himself all the plain of Jordan, and Lot journeyed east. And they separated from each other.
12 Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent even as far as Sodom.
You ought to write in your Bibles after verse 12,”UTO”.
Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom and the next verse tells us why that is such an issue.
13 But the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the LORD.
REMEMBER THE MAIN THEME OF TODAY’S SERMON
I want you to remember the big idea of today’s sermon. If you don’t remember anything else I say today I would want you to remember this one truth.
Big Idea of Sermon: Don’t sacrifice your walk with God for money or material possessions.
Be careful where you pitch your tent.
Lot is a prime example of improper priorities in his life; he made decisions based on the well watered plains of Jordan, and chose for himself all the plain of Jordan.
It was a decision strictly based on economics without considering the spiritual implications.
“A long look at the lives of Abraham and Lot gives men an understanding in the importance of "Pitching His Tents and Building His Altars."There have always been men who walked with God and there have always been men who walked with men.”
Lot was a man:
• Week in his devotions
• Worldly in his desires
• Wrong in his decisions
• Wrecked in his demise
God allows us to choose our own path…but He doesn’t allow us to choose what destination that path will lead to. God will allow us to choose anything we want, except for the consequences, we can’t choose those! As a matter of fact, we have to live with the consequences of our choices.
Every decision we make, to at least some degree, affects the direction of our future. For the most part, our decisions are determined by our desires.
We often make life changing decisions based on:
Possessions
Power
Popularity
Pleasure
Instead we need to seek God’s purity and purpose in our lives.
