Word of Salvation – Vol. 13 No.40 – October 1967

 

The Narrow Way

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf on Genesis 13

Scripture reading: Matt.7:7-27

Psalter Hymnal: 428; 292:1,2,4; 95:1,2; 446:1,2; 64; 456

 

Brothers and sisters in Jesus,

I am sure that some of you – in old-fashioned church catechism rooms of the past – must have seen that well-known picture of THE WIDE AND THE NARROW WAY.

There is the wide one with that beautiful gate and the easy going, the pleasures all along, .but the flames of hell licking at the very end.  And there is the narrow road, with its small gate at the beginning and its steep rocky path, its hard going and its tough tracks, but at the end shines the Eternal City, the New Jerusalem.

In our day we sometimes smile a bit about such pictures and we wonder if it’s all as simple and straightforward as all that.  After all, is the road we travel so rough?  Reformed Christians all over the world are mostly well-to-do middle class people, and we are no longer fired from our job for sending our children to the Christian school – like our great-grandfathers were.  And are we so sure that he who does not believe goes to hell?  Reformed Christians too, are talking a lot less and a lot less surely about hell than their great-grandparents did.  Maybe that wide road isn’t all THAT wide!

And maybe that narrow road isn’t all THAT narrow!

Well, brothers and sisters, there is only one way to find out how matters stand here.  And that is by looking at the Word of God.  And our text today has something to say about it.  It shows that the narrow way Abram had to walk becomes narrower STILL as he now must farewell Lot, too.  God had said, “Get away from your father’s house…!”  But in Lot still a representative of that father’s house had travelled with him.  Now he loses him, too.  Our text also shows the wide road Lot thinks he’s going to choose: lush pastures near a thriving city… but the flames of destruction – because of sin – are already showing afar off, threatening that city.

Maybe that old-fashioned picture isn’t all that far off the truth!  And in the meantime we see God at work: isolating Abram as the only new beginning He is making.  Not even Lot can stay with him, for unto ABRAM ALONE He gives His promise, as from ABRAM ALONE He wants His chosen Saviour to come.  ABRAM ALONE, is God’s early Old Testament way of saying: JESUS ALONE.  Here is God’s choosing.

Yet it is also Lot’s choosing.  And when he chooses to live near that evil city, he could have CHOSEN OTHERWISE.  He was not FORCED at all.  God makes His salvation to come.  And even Lot’s sinful ways are a part of this plan.  But at the same time… God never wanted Lot to sin!  And Lot is to bear the consequences s of his sin!  For the call of the Lord is as it was later in Jesus’ day and as it is now in our day: Choose between the wide road or the narrow one.  Choose ye now, whom ye shall serve!

Let us now have a closer look at our chapter.  Then we see:
1.  a fresh start
2.  a considerate concern
3.  a revealing choice
4.  a repeated promise, and
5.  a renewed dedication.

A FRESH START.

“And Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb (that is the area of desert between Egypt and Palestine).  Now Abram was very rich in cattle, silver and gold.  And he journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first; and there Abram called on the Name of the Lord…!”

Last week we saw Abram in Egypt, where his faith had nearly collapsed and where he had made a big fool of himself.  Where he, by his actions had just about said, God is dead.  But God isn’t!

And Abraham was again delivered.  Now we see him travel straight back to the place where he had STARTED, where God had appeared to him, and where he had built that first ALTAR.  God had made a fresh start with Abram, way back in Egypt already, for that is what God does!  Oh, the wonder of it, that He does not tie us down forever to our sins, but that His mercies are NEW every morning.  WE have our ways of staying angry at one another.  We have that bitterness of not forgiving and not forgetting, but the Lord can say as no one can: “Behold I make everything new!”

And what do we do then?  Abraham knew!  Abraham went back to that place where he first built that altar.  When GOD started afresh with him… then he knew: I may – and I must – make that new beginning too.  And he went back to where he had said: “My Lord, I love Thee for Thou hast heard my voice and my supplications”.  What do you think, is this not as good a start as any, for you and me?  We know what it is to be fouled up by sin, but don’t we know, also, what it is to hear the voice of the Lord again, calling us, comforting us, reminding us that He LIVES, and that we STILL may trust His Word?  Oh, then to go back to where we learnt to say, “My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine!”

Isn’t that what we do when we come to the House of God, even though in our despair we thought we should never get there anymore?  Isn’t that what we do when we seek Jesus at His Table, where we once heard His voice: “You are clean now because of the word I spoke to you”?  Isn’t that what we do when we look on eagerly when a child is baptized, remembering how we ourselves received those wonderful promises from Him who died for us?

O, to make that fresh start, where we realize that God for Jesus’ sake has thrown all our past sins in the depths of the sea, and then from there on – from that very point where we saw the goodness of the Lord – to sacrifice again unto Him the offerings of our praise, and to CARRY ON AGAIN!  To face that battle again, knowing that God lives!  And that He shall not forsake the work of His hands, that He yet has use for us!  For then we shall see that after this fresh start God has also a fresh task, a fresh battle for us.

A CONSIDERATE CONCERN.

Our text goes on saying, in verses 5-8: “And Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents so that the land could not support them both dwelling together, for their possessions were too great… and there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdsmen of Lot’s cattle… And at that time the Canaanites and the Perizzites were dwelling in the land… Then Abram said to Lot, Let there be no strife between you and me and between our people, for we are brothers.”

This time the thing testing Abram’s faith is not hunger without, or a threat from Egypt’s king.  It is more subtle, more painful: a quarrel between brothers.  Abram had become well-to-do.  And so had Lot.  All these animals had to eat, to drink… yet the shepherds of Abram and Lot got into each other’s hair…!

Mind you, the Bible says that the land could not bear them both.  But why?  Later on it would bear all twelve of Jacob’s sons with their flocks, which were probably a lot bigger.  Any land can bear any number of people as long as they know how to live together.  When we shall all be renewed so that we shall look like the Lord Jesus in every respect, we shall live in the New Jerusalem!  But till that time we have this conflict: that we get in each other’s way…. for we both want the same things… We are in each other’s hair, for we are inclined by nature to HATE God and our neighbour.  The negroes and the whites find it hard to live together in the same country.  Then Roman Catholics and Protestants have trouble to share Northern Ireland.  And then -worst of all – even BROTHERS have sometimes the experience that the land or the church – they must share is too small!  Then churches can be split while both sides hold to the same Confession, and even in a LOCAL church we can quarrel bitterly about things so small, that later we wonder: what really got into us?

Psalm 133 sings, “O how lovely is it when brothers live in peace…!”, but sometimes we can sing that psalm with the nostalgia of singing, “Beautiful isle of somewhere…!”  We can get in each other’s hair and on each other’s nerves…!

Now this to Abram was a matter for CONCERN.  And I think that the big reason for that concern is written down in our text: “In that day the Canaanites and the Perizzites lived in the land.”  You know, when Abram and Lot quarrelled, there were onlookers.  These things did not happen in a corner.  When the shepherds of Lot and Abram forgot WHOM they served, and lashed out bitterly and uncontrolled at each other, they forgot that they had an audience: that HEATHEN PEOPLE serving false gods were laughing and saying, “Look at them; they are no better than we; look at their phoney religion in practice…!”

Abram realized that.  And he realized that THEN it was better to live a bit further away from each other than let this situation last any longer.  Brothers and sisters, do we realize how true and up-to-date this problem is?  We can, as the Lord’s people in the Lord’s churches, be so busy clobbering the other fellow on the head, that we completely forget there are others present before whose feet we place a STUMBLING BLOCK that way.  As with Abram and Lot often our quarrels are about things of THIS WORLD only.  About how to spend money or how to do organisational things.  Often they are the things we get red hot about, instead of the Gospel.  People who NEVER talk of Jesus and His love all of a sudden get very talkative when these things come up.  But what damage we can do this way!  And the stranger looks on!  The stranger who must be won for Jesus.  But who will only laugh and shrug and say: That church is not for me… I can’t possibly mean much to these people.

Mind you, it is alright, it is even our duty, to be unmoveable and clear where it concerns things that are important, where the very Gospel is at stake.  But where this is not so: let us learn from Abram’s concern.  Even when it means doing what he did, and getting out of each other’s hair… out of each other’s way a bit.  We know from the next chapter that Abram was still close enough to Lot to come to his rescue when he was in trouble!  And so in the verses 9-11 we see that Abram takes his nephew to a high spot and says: Let us DIVIDE the land, let’s define each one’s share, then we can live in peace, as each of us knows where his work is, where his area is.  For we read: “Is not the whole land before you?  Separate yourself from me.  If you take the left hand then I’ll go right, or the other way round…!”  And then we read of…

A REVEALING CHOICE.

For the text goes on: “Then Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan valley was well watered everywhere, lush like the garden of the Lord, but this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.  So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan valley and Lot journeyed east…!”

Brothers and sisters, they say that where two quarrel, two are to blame.  Yes, but sometimes the one is to blame more than the other.  For in these verses we see the ATTITUDE of these two men.

Abram, the older, who could CLAIM more rights, says: “Lot, you choose… you pick out what you like…!”  And then there are two little words in the following sentence: Then Lot chose FOR HIMSELF.  O, the bitterness of sin!  When we just choose, when I just choose for myself!  When I choose without thinking of others… without consideration and love… without esteeming the other better than myself.  Choosing the things of the world for MYSELF often goes hand in hand with NOT choosing Jesus for myself.  The people who can be quite RUTHLESS in choosing, in grabbing, in claiming whatever they can of the things of this earth, are often the same who, when you ask them if THEY belong to Jesus, and if THEY are sure of their salvation, fall into an embarrassed silence or change the subject.  This, too, is part of choosing… that wide road.

Lot chose, even though it was KNOWN to be dangerous, for verse 13 says clearly: Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.  Sure, Lot was a believer.  And sure, he would be saved, as through fire.  We know that because the Bible tells us in 2Peter 2:8 that Lot as a righteous man was vexing his soul day by day by what the sinners of Sodom did.  He ended up by losing everything when God’s judgment came, losing even his wife, and losing the honour of his two daughters as well.

O sure, my brother, if you choose to be on the narrow road, but not quite; if you choose to be SAVED by Jesus but refuse to bear the reproach of Jesus and just want to grab first for YOURSELF what’s pleasant in this world, only AFTERWARD to think of your God, then your God can still save you, but 1Cor.3 says that you shall be saved AS THROUGH FIRE.  And you shall once stand by when that fire burns up all that you have ever worked for… and all that you loved… all that you had.  That was the lot of Lot!  It showed what was in him!  And Abram must have grieved!  But the Lord did not leave Abram in that grief.  For when Lot had gone and also that LAST BIT of Abram’s father’s house had been taken from him, the Lord came back again.  And then we hear of…

À REPEATED PROMISE.

“Lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you are, to north, south, east and west; for all that you see, all this land, it shall be for you and your descendants for ever!  They shall be as numerous as the dust of the earth!  Go and walk through all this land for to your offspring it shall belong!”  From the rocky path of the narrow road Abram was allowed to lift up his face and see THE GOLDEN CITY.  But MORE THAN THAT: He was promised here that this golden city would come DOWN: Look, this VERY LAND shall belong to you and your descendants FOREVER!  Watch that ‘forever’.  For has that been fulfilled yet?  Israel has had that country but they lost it again.  And the Israel which now – as by a miracle – has come back to Palestine are not all Abraham’s children by faith.  Most of them do NOT believe in Abram’s great Son, and so are dead wood on the old tree.  And so what else must we conclude from this sure promise of the Lord than that the day is still to come that in CANAAN, in ISRAEL, there will live a NEW Israel, Abraham’s seed – believing in the Redeemer?  God’s promises are not some “pie in the sky when you die”.  They are practical, down to earth, for THIS WORLD God has come to redeem, and in the very country where Abram once walked, the manger would stand, and the cross.  The open grave as well as the hill from which the Saviour ascended…!  This land I will give to you and your seed forever!  And we have heard the echo of these words: Go ye into ALL the world and claim ALL the nations as My disciples and lo, I am WITH YOU.  This world is mine – ALL this land I have given you!  How much greater the promise than Abram could have understood at that time!  You walk the land, Abram… it shall belong to your seed.  And now Abram’s BODILY seed is returning to that land, but – what is more – Abram’s SPIRITUAL seed lives all over the world: the holy universal church of believers in Abram’s Son, in all five continents!  Knowing that unto her Lord is given all power, all authority in heaven and on earth: This is my Father’s world, this is MY world.  It belongs to my Lord and His promises one day will be seen fulfilled right HERE!  Is it any wonder then that Abram answered with…

A RENEWED DEDICATION.?

Again he built an altar to the Lord!  Again he gave the Lord EVIDENCE of his love, his faith, his hope.

For whenever we offer to the Lord, either money, time, work or talents, that is what we do, we say: Lord, I love You, for You have loved me first!  I believe that I am Yours and therefore I give You what otherwise I would have kept for myself.  I hope for Your future, Your city, and therefore I will not cling too much to the things Lot clung to, but rather than losing them by fire anyway, I lay them on Your altar and wait for what You will give me back!

Then the narrow road will prove to be the joyful road.  For we are never without Him, Who loves us and cares for us.

Amen.