Title: Self-chosen Destruction (Genesis 13:13)
Contents
Abraham and Lot are quarrelsome. However, in terms of faith, we can say that we are comrades of faith who departed from Ur of the Chaldeans together, hoping for the blessing God promised, following God's command, "Leave your homeland, your relatives, and your father's house.
He was a person who shared the hardships of famine as well as the hardships of Egypt and enjoyed the blessings of the material God gave them. However, in chapter 13 we read today, a dispute arises over wealth, and as a result, the two of them go on completely different paths. There is.
If we look at the results of Abraham and Lot, first, Abraham became a man of his own success who everyone respected and admired and wished to become like him. We became the ancestors of this kind of faith that we admire.
Also, he was successful. All who belonged to him were blessed and became saints and saints. His wife Sarah became a model of faith for all believing women, and Isaac was a man of gentleness and peace who boasted that God was his God, and even his servants were filled with the Holy Spirit. And whoever believes has become such a person who desires to belong to him, to belong to him, and to dwell under his shadow.
He also had success with worldly materials. He became a wealthy man with 318 guards protecting his property, and he was a man who enjoyed power, honor, and honor more than anyone else.
But Lot made his own failure to become a drunkard man who lost himself.
All who belonged to him became people of failure and perdition. His wife became a pillar of salt, his two sons-in-law were burned to death while ignoring the words of their father-in-law, and their two daughters became the ancestors of Ammon and Moab, who blasphemed God's work of salvation by doing shameful things and harassing God's chosen people from generation to generation. Even the servants perished together on the day of destruction.
No one who believes in God today wants to belong to Lot. Lot made human failures in this way, and he became a complete failure, both worldly and materially, and became a symbol of shame and shame.
Then why are the results of the two people so different? Why did God give Abraham such great blessings and the consequences of such unhappiness to Lot? We should look at what God requires of us through the results of these two people.
Abraham was a God-centered, theocratic man who put God above all things. He was a man who found and chose what God liked and pleased with.
Also, he was a man who did not live according to the opinions or rational thoughts of more people than people's will or will, nor according to people's features, but only sought God's will and lived by obedience to it.
Also, he was a man who chose to live with the heart that God should bless him rather than the circumstances or conditions that he saw.
However, Lot was a man who lived for himself rather than God, and chose the will of man rather than the will of God, that is, his own will, his family, his employees, and a reasonable and reasonable person who chose according to the features of others. Also, he was a person who chose the Jordans by considering the visible environment and conditions more than looking at God's blessings.
Therefore, God came to Abraham, comforted him, and took responsibility for him, and Lot became a poor man who did not receive God's grace.
But what we need to be aware of is that in verse 13 it says that the Sodomites were wicked and they were great sinners to the Lord, but the fact that they chose the best in the best conditions was a pit of destruction. He did his best and chose the best, but he himself went into the pit of destruction. We must discover that this is the perspective of man, that is the criticism and evaluation of man, and this is the wisdom of man.
In the eyes of Adam and Eve, who were tempted by evil spirits, the fruit of the forbidden fruit, which caused death, was pleasing to the eyes and delicious to eat and desirable enough to make one wise. You must discover that you are preparing yourself to be destroyed by brimstone fire.
At first glance, it seems like a path of failure towards wealth, and the narrow road is the long road of the cross, but we all find that it is truly a blessing to look for God's blessings, find God's will, and live according to God's pleasure. Let's be blessed like Abraham.