“Isn’t the whole land before you? Separate from me: if you go to the left, I will go to the right; if you go to the right, I will go to the left.”

What do we fight over? Who do we trust? If you have heard from God, go. He is our hope, not what we see in front of us.

Now we must remember that Abram, Lot, et al… didn’t have all that we have in scripture and in testimony, but they did have word from God.

Abram had been following the Lord for some time now. Remember in Genesis 12:1, God said, “Go… to the land I will show you… I will make you into a great nations… I will bless… I will make your name great… all the people on earth will be blessed by you…”

v4 So Abram went… But remember in the instructions, Abram was supposed to leave… his …relatives from his father’s house… but it says Lot went with him. I don’t know if that was Lot’s idea, but Abram let him go.

So, the journey was to many places… but he went as the Lord led, through Canaan, eventually he went to Egypt during a famine, and then back through the Negev, and to Bethel where he had worshiped God in Genesis 12:7 and God again would tell him that God would give this land to he and his family.

God blessed them with money, people, herds, but where they were couldn’t support all of them together on the same land. Then 13:7 there was quarreling between the herdsmen.

So, Abram said, “Let’s not have quarreling…”

Now, Abram was the lead, he could have looked at the land and said, “I’ll take this, and you take that…” But he said, “Separate… if you go left… I’ll go right…” or visa versa.

Why? hmmm

Abram’s trust was in the Word of God, not in the things he saw…

So, here in Genesis 13, when Abram told Lot to make a decision…

Lot LOOKED out and saw… basically it looked like the Garden of the Lord… So lot chose the entire plain of Jordan and set up his tent near Sodom. v13 tells us something “parenthetically” (now the men of Sodom were evil, sinning immensely against the Lord) v12 says Abram lived in the land of Canaan, but Lot lived in the cities on the plain.

This doesn’t say there is anything wrong with cities… but what I was asking today is, How do we Make Decisions? What’s your process? Where do you look? What information shapes your decisions?

Lot Looked… Chose… Journeyed

Abram had already learned some important lessons…

• 12:1 The Lord spoke and Abram went.
• 12:7 the Lord Appeared and said… Abram build an altar
• Abram built an Altar and worshiped the name of the Lord
• There was a famine, so the left and went to Egypt… It’s interesting to me that it doesn’t say that God TOLD him to “go” to Egypt, but the bigger issue was then he started overthinking… He said to his wife, you are beautiful… they will kill me (for you)… say you are my sister. After that whole incident, Abram went back to Canaan again.

There was a constant learning curve for Abram… but here’s my entire point – when we make decisions, don’t go first with what you see / feel, but by what God Says.

• Abram wasn’t going to fight over land, because he was just “passing through”. What does the “Hall of Fame of Faith” say in Hebrews 11? vv8-10 by faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and set out… even though he didn’t know where he was going 9 … stayed as a foreigner… living in tents 10 he was looking forward to a city whose Architect and builder is God
• Abram put his Trust in God. Whichever way Lot chose, Abram was trusting God
• Abram heard from God – he was going wherever God led – his trust was in God, not in what he could see or decide on his own.
• v14 After Lot separated, the Lord said to Abram, Look from the place where you stand… north… south… east… west… I will give you and your offspring forever all the land you see… will make your offspring like dust… (countless)… walk around… I will give it to you. (we can see why this area has been something Israel has always fought for)
• So Abram moved his tents to live near the oaks of Mamre… where he built an altar to the Lord

In Decision-Making…

• Go to God First
• Trust God
• When you’ve heard God – settle there

This morning before I was looking at this verse, I was reading a poem written about the men who built the Panama Canal. That was an unbelievable, and multiple times attempted and failed by others. It was an awful endeavor. It was hard, dangerous, deadly… but they DID it. Berton Braley wrote a refrain from their words… this was their “song”

Don’t send us back to a life that is flat again

We have shattered a continent’s spine

Office work – Lord, we couldn’t do that again!

Haven’t you got something that’s more in OUR line?

Got any river they say isn’t crossable?

Got any mountains that can’t be cut through?

We specialize in the wholly impossible,

Doing things, nobody ever could do!

Doing the hard things, is not hard if we’ve heard from the Lord and go with him.