Lech Lecha “Go out”

Genesis 12:1–17:27
Isaiah 40:27–41:16
Matthew 11-16

Saying Goodbye To Lot

Reading about the lives of people in scripture is always very enjoyable to me. One reason is that HaShem did not gloss over the places they messed up. This in itself gives me, and probably you, a great amount of hope. It tells us that He is not looking for perfect people to work through, but normal people like us, that have our good days of obedience and our, well, you know, days.

Even a mention of the word faith has to bring a thought of Abraham to mind. To leave everything he knew, everything he and Sarah had worked for and dreamed about to follow HaShem is in a way the definition of faith. Abraham had his good days when it came to faith, but read about his time with Pharaoh, the ordeal with Hagar and of course there is his nephew Lot along in tow. We see that maybe his faith did look a bit more like ours that we originally thought.

What was it about Lot that caused Abraham to invite him along for the trip to the promised land? There is no record that Abraham brought any of his other relatives along, only this one. Who was it that maybe pressured him to take Lot in tow for the trip? I don’t know who it was in the natural, but I can sure tell you who it was in the spiritual! The clue lies in the first lie ever told. It is a lie that worked six thousand years ago and has done quite well since then to trip up man into not walking the way he should. It is the lie, "Did HaShem really say?' It works out like this. "Abram, did Elohim really say you could not take 'any' of your family along?" "Lot looks up to you, he needs you, and he won't be any trouble at all!"

Consider this thought for a moment. The day that Abraham said yes to Lot is the same day he said yes to Ishmael. The day that Abraham allowed, "Did Elohim really say to leave all the family behind" to enter his mind and act upon those thoughts is the day he set himself up for a greater problem than he could have ever imagined Lot to be. His decision to take Lot along would later allow him to say yes to Sarah's plan with Hagar that produced a problem the world is still living with today.

In Matthew this week, Yeshua talks about faith as being like a mustard seed. It is one of the smallest of seeds, but yet has within itself the components of a great plant which can reproduce itself over and over again. Yeshua tells us that if we just have this “small” amount of faith, literally nothing will be impossible. The same principle can also be applied to a sand spur though. It can also reproduce itself and become quite a nuisance in our lives as well as a bit of a pain in the foot.

Many of us have embarked on a journey not unlike our Father Abraham. For some it has not been a physical journey, but for all it has been and continues to be a spiritual journey. Many have had to leave family, friends and the familiar world of the past behind to set out in a direction we do not know and to a place we do not fully understand. Each of us, like Abraham, will have our days of success on our journey and we will also have our days of failure. We will have days that we are riding high on the mountains and days when we are low in the valley. It is just a fact and pattern of lives lived for six thousand years. One of the ways we can make our valley times shorter and not so deep though is to not take our favorite nephew Lot with us from the start, or send him back home when we understand the mistake we have made in bringing him.

What are the “Lots” of our journey? Simply, a “Lot” is anything that causes us to ask the question, "Did HaShem really say." A “Lot” is whatever is holding us back from obedience to the "Yoke of Heaven" Yeshua offers us in our life of Torah. A Lot is anything that causes our focus to become blurred or distorted.

Take a look around your life this Shabbat. Who or what is the “Lot” that you have invited for your journey? How many “Lots” do you have hanging around? What is it going to take to send them back to where they came from? Are you and I serious enough about our journey and the One who has called us on it to say “No!” to Lot, no matter what the pressure is to keep him around?

We can all thank Abraham for giving us an example of the faith we each need to walk by. I am just as thankful that he allows us to see his failures, for in them we can also learn and maybe not make the same mistakes he did.

Thanks, Abraham!