Are you walking after the likeness of Avraham or Lot in your faith walk? Let’s find out!
What is your relationship with the Almighty like? Could you say that you have a Face to face / Panim el Panim relationship with Him? Most believers in God will respond yes to this question for they swear to themselves that they have a face to Face relationship with God! But what does it mean to have a relationship with God? God is the Creator of all things and all beings and so He relatively has a relationship with all He’s created!
The only relationship that counts to God is a Covenantal relationship where two become one! How can two become “Echad”/ “One” or walk together except they be agreed or in Hebrew “Noadu” known intimately by one another!
Abraham and Lot are the perfect examples of the sort of believers we have even nowadays and have had throughout history!
God called Avraham alone and blessed and increased him, the Scripture says in Isaiah 51:2! But as you well know Lot tagged alone and Avraham let him; probably thinking to himself “well there’ll be safety in numbers and after all he is family, so sure let’s go” etc… There is nothing wrong in that in itself except that God who is omniscient and knows all things including Lot very well and his divided heart, had only called Avraham alone! Now a good argument would be “hey God called Moses and Joshua followed close to him and never left his side and Joshua was blessed and became a great leader” well yeah God who knows all things also knew Joshua’s loyal heart and that Joshua would eventually lead the people of Israel into the promised Land of Canaan! My point exactly that Lot following wasn’t so wrong in and of itself, but his motives, for sure, were wrong. I bet you all along he was thinking “prosperity,” how he can prosper under the tutelage of uncle Avraham and uncle Avraham was wealthy and seemingly God was with him, therefore this is a great opportunity to learn from him and prosper and become wealthy myself!
When the herdsmen began to quarrel (Genesis 13) and Avraham didn’t want any strife between the two camps and gave him a choice to go wherever Lot chose and he Avraham would go the opposite way! What was really in Lot’s heart began to show and to be revealed! He wasn’t after a relationship with God nor with his uncle but after the riches of this world. Again there is nothing wrong in particular with that except that if that’s your primary goal instead of knowing seeking and serving YHVH then you’ve missed the mark and you’ll end up very miserable like Lot did in the end! As we all know, Avraham was already wealthy but God increased his wealth throughout his life and multiplied him in many facets even though he wasn’t seeking wealth because he first sought YHVH and His Kingdom and His righteousness and it was accounted to him for righteousness because his pure faith! Avraham was not out to make himself rich but he was desperate to know God and he thirsted after the Living God as a deer pants for water and nothing else was going to quench that thirst except knowing HIM, HaKadosh Baruch Hu / the Holy One Blessed be He! So let it be with all of us!
Avraham pleased YHVH by believing in Him and walked blamelessly before Him! Did you noticed that soon as Lot, the opportunist, left the picture Avraham is promised the whole Land by God to him and to his descendants forever and seals it soon after as he enters into Covenant with YHVH which speaks of a higher level of intimacy and relationship! Many are satisfied with their salvation and their victories here and there and prosperity and will not go any further with God and enter into Covenant with HIM because they feel they have arrived! ABSURD! For although Abraham was called out of his father’s household, a place of idolatry and falsehood, and was hearing God’s Voice and following HIM wholeheartedly and was given countless victories and guidance from the Holy One, he was NOT satisfied with those things, he wanted the GIVER not just the gifts, he wanted more of God and felt that he needed to enter into Covenant with God to seal it for an eternity, and as he offered the sacrifices God called him to bring unto Him; God Himself went between the pieces and took it upon Himself to fulfill the Covenant with Avram and God gave him His name and called him AvraHam and once he entered Covenant with God, God was to forever be His Shield, His Provider, One who will fight for him, and be His Sustenance, His all and all; and that Covenant was to be passed on to Avraham’s countless descendants promised to him by God, and eventually the Covenant was sealed with Israel at Sinai and fulfilled by Yeshua by His shed Blood on Calvary and extended to not just Israel but all the called out ones from among the GENTILES who would answer the call of Covenant! Hallelu-YAH!
Lot, on the other hand, walked by sight, and he saw all the plain of Jordan and that it was well watered and that it LOOKED VERY promising like the Garden of the LORD, Gan Eden, but also like the land of Egypt/Mitzraim and Lot chose that “place” and journeyed East! A very appealing place, so it seemed, where you can have both worlds, yeah, where you can have both a piece of God (the Garden of the Lord) and a piece of the world (prosperity of Egypt) all at the same time! Folks that is that same place of “COMPROMISE” found amongst most believers nowadays and there is no true blessing in that, you are only deceiving yourselves if that’s where you are! Everything you build will go up in smoke just as Lot, unless you repent and turn to God and His Covenantal ways!
So, the men separated; Lot goes his own way and Avraham goes God’s WAY and God blessed him tremendously! You don’t hear much about Lot again, only that he’s in trouble, captured and placed in captivity not long after he went his own way, and Avraham comes to his rescue and God gives Avraham victory, and one would think that Lot would rethink his religion but no, Lot still didn’t get it, that was a warning to him and a call for him to return and repent of his misguided way but he went back and remained in Sodom and Gomarrah as a matter of fact he becomes an Official big shot there, a really important person, after all his uncle the great warrior Abraham, gave victory to the five kings and liberated their subjects who were held captive by the four kings, so Lot becomes a prime minister, a popular gatekeeper there, he’s finally made it man, he is the MAN in Sodom; he’s achieved all he ever dreamt of but little does he know judgment is around the corner, and soon coming to Sodom and Gomorrah and the angels are sent on a double mission, first to observe the situation and save Lot and his family out of there in the merit of Avraham Avinu! A little mercy for the compromiser! How gracious of God!
And the second mission was to destroy and annihilate Sodom and Gomorrah by brimstone and fire consuming everything else there, including even all that Lot had built and worked so hard for and compromised his neshama/soul to get there! You all know the story everything goes up in smoke he and his family made it out of there with their teeth, skin and the clothes on their back and all their works went up in smoke, but Lot’s wife who had become so attached to that place of compromise, disobeyed the commands of the angels not to look back and when she looked back she became a pillar of salt, the very thing that a righteous person is called to be “Salt of the earth,” but she became that at her death, not during her lifetime because she and her husband were building their own empire and not YHVH’s Kingdom! They chose to go to a place that God didn’t call them to, and built what God never called them to build! Abraham interceded for the righteous, they do get saved, but barely….yeah, and all of their works went up in smoke and you all know what happened after that! Compromise breeds rebellion and disobedience, which breeds offsprings that are birthed through incest, that even till this day, Moab and Ammon are enemies of Israel, the People of the Covenant made with Avraham!
When a people group, saved by grace, cut themselves off from the Covenant of Israel, and rebel against God’s ways and follow their own pagan ways, they too eventually birth offspring that end up becoming enemies of the People of Israel, and the enemies of her God, YHVH! Judgment is at the door!
Avraham who was in Covenantal Face to face with God knew the times and seasons of God, for G-d did not withhold anything from Abraham even what he was about to do for Avraham was His friend, which gave Avraham a chance to stand in the gap and intercede for the ‘righteous’ if any at all that may have be found there! But Lot, the compromising believer had NO CLUE of the impending judgments! God in His mercy and grace had pity on this numbskull and still he died a drunken nincompoop and an incestor! Can we learn from LOT how NOT to be!
A relationship with God always starts out by Grace through faith but it should never remain there; It should always lead to Covenant relationship having His Torah/Law/Statutes written on our hearts and on our minds making us His People and He our God! (See Jeremiah 31:31)! For if God were to simply liberate us and leave us to ourselves, our human tendency and nature is to then set out to build a Golden Calf, or create a god in our own likeness and call it “Behold our God who brought us out of Egypt!”
Therefore God liberates us first from our Pharaoh (HaSatan) then from ourselves (our flesh and human intellect) in order to then bring us into Covenant with Him and carve out His Law/Statutes/Precepts/Ways/Mind/Intellect into our hearts and our minds to then make us truly “Echad/One” with HIM in intimacy, in Marriage!
Repent and turn to YHVH and his Covenantal Ways before it is too late and you, like Lot, reach this place of no return, of incest, witchcraft and every evil, and wicked thing aligning yourself with the Beast/Anti-G-d and lose all, if not including even your soul!
Isa 51:4-8 “Listen to Me, My people; and give ear to Me, O My nation: For TORAH / LAW will proceed from Me, and I will make My Justice rest as a Light of the peoples. My Righteousness is near, My Yeshua/Salvation has gone forth, and My Arms will judge the peoples; the coastlands will wait/hope upon Me, and on My Arm they will trust. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my Salvation/Yeshua shall be for ever, and my Righteousness (Torah) shall not be abolished! Listen to Me, you who know Righteousness, you people in whose heart is My Torah: Do NOT fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their insults. For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool; but My Righteousness will be forever, and My Salvation/Yeshua from generation to generation!”
“But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.” Hebrews 10:39
But, B”H, may we all be like Avraham avinu who was “strong in faith, giving Glory to YHVH!”
Shalom Aleychem!
