Generosity of Faith
Texts: Genesis 13; 2 Corinthians 9:10-12
Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah
January 12, 2025
When God made a covenant with Abram to bless him and make many people’s come from him, it says Abram left just as the Lord commanded. Bruce Feiler, in his book “Abraham,” points out that Abram joins the covenant with his feet, not his words.
“[Abram] does what he does best, he walks. Only now he walks with God. And by doing so, Abraham leaves an indelible set of footprints: [Abram] doesn’t believe in God; he believes God. He doesn’t ask for proof; he provides the proof.”
Faith is a journey on the way God leads us. We don’t always see the way so we live trusting God as best as we can. Abram is the father of our faith so we are paying attention to him as we make sense of our own journeys of faith.
Between the time the Lord calls Abram in 12:1 and the climactic scene in chapter 22 when Abram will be asked to sacrifice Isaac, there are sixteen verbs for walking or journeying. Faith in God is a life-long journey, a journey directed by the God of Abraham.
Being children of Abraham means being a people of blessing. God’s promise was to bless all families of the earth through Abraham. Abram brings blessing to those with whom he comes into contact.
There is an episode between the time when Abram received the covenant of blessing from God and the one we just read. I am not skipping over it just because it is a blemish on Abram’s person. What happens is that Abram and Sarai travel to Egypt. Abram knows that his wife is beautiful and imagines that the Egyptians will kill him to keep her so he tells her to say she is his sister. This will mean Abram won’t be killed, although Sarai will still become an object for the Egyptians. In essence, Abram turns in his own wife to save his skin. Gallant and full of faith, huh?
Well, the Lord sends diseases on Pharaoh for taking another man’s wife. Remember, while the Lord blesses those who bless Abram, he also curses those who curse him. Pharaoh finds out Sarai is actually Abram’s wife. He returns her and tells Abram and all his clan to get out of town. He wants no more trouble.
There we see Abram not believing that God could provide and bless and work for him. He felt he had to lie and connive to get by.
But in Genesis 13 we see Abram regaining an outlook of faith. And in chapters 13 and 14 Abram exhibits the generosity of faith. When faith is alive and rooted in God it allows people of faith to be generous in multiple ways and be a blessing to others.
Abram is generous in four ways:
First, he is generous in graciousness.
Abram’s herdsmen and the herdsmen of his nephew Lot begin to quarrel because there is not enough room on the land for all of them. Abram says to Lot that he doesn’t want any quarreling because they are of the same family. He doesn’t insist on rights, or fight, or manipulate. He doesn’t get angry. He doesn’t become aggressive or competitive. Abram wants to find a way to work it out. He wants to be gracious and find a way for everyone in his family to be blessed.
The second way he is generous is in allowing Lot to have first choice. Abram lets his nephew choose which land he will take. Abram says, “Let’s go our separate ways and you get to choose which land you want first. If you go to the left, I will go to the right. If you go to the right, I will go to the left.”
I remember in my younger days on the playgrounds when we would play basketball, football or baseball, and we would choose teams. Most often whoever got first choice had an advantage because they would pick the best player. You wanted to have first pick. (Being the tall, muscular, athletic specimen that I am, people often got into fist-fights for the first pick just so they could pick me and surely be victorious.)
I don’t know if they still do this but one of the ways kids would determine in a fair way who gets first pick was to take a baseball bat. One captain would grab the bat from the middle, then the other one would put his hand above that hand, and they would go back and forth so that whosever hand ended up on the top got first pick. It had to be fair. First pick gets the best.
Well, Abram forfeits the first pick. Walter Brueggemann, the wonderful Old Testament scholar observed that, “… because (Abram) believes the promise, he does not doubt that he will finally receive the land God wants him to have. He risks everything by permitting Lot to choose.”
Lot sees the plain of the Jordan and how well watered it was. You know water is key for growth. It is really important in the dry Middle East. And Lot saw how it looked like “the garden of the Lord.” It was beautiful, fertile, and rich, like the garden of Eden. And he chooses that.
Well, of course he will. And Abram lets him have it. Abram doesn’t say “Hey, let’s talk about this.” He doesn’t resist. We hear of no anger, jealousy or rivalry from Abram. Abram goes the other direction, to Canaan. We’re going to come back to the significance of this so don’t go away.
The third way Abram is generous is found in something that happens after all of this in chapter 14 where he is generous with help. The place Lot goes to settle gets attacked by some kings and marauders. In this time if the stronger could attack the weaker and gain power that’s what they did.
Abram hears about the attack. He organizes the trained men in his household – and households then meant entire tribes – and Abram goes and rescues Lot and his family and possessions. In doing so, he rescues the kings of the Jordan region who lost their land and goods to these attacking kings. Abram must have had some tough men in his household.
Lot’s family, who got to choose and go to the better real estate, was in trouble and Abram bails him out. Abram invests his resources, again, risks himself and his men, for his nephew Lot. Abram is generous towards Lot, again.
The fourth way Abram is generous is with his wealth. A king and priest named Melchizedek, the king of Salem (sa-laam), comes to the victorious Abram and blesses him for his rescue efforts. Abram gives Melchizedek a tenth of everything he captured. Why not just keep it all for yourself? Because Abram doesn’t need to hoard.
Then when the king of Sodom comes who was one of the kings delivered by Abram’s rescue operation, he offers all the material goods he received in the rescue back to Abram. But Abram only accepts what originally belonged to his men. Nothing more. Abram is materially generous, sharing and not grasping all the spoils for himself.
Faith breeds generosity.
Let’s go back to Abram’s generosity in allowing Lot to choose and have the good, fertile land. The thing about the area of the Jordan is that it looks good. There is lots of water, trees, green grass for grazing. What’s not to like? But there’s more to this place than meets the eye. It’s morally bad. Lot chooses to pitch his tents near Sodom. And then we get this, “Now the people of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord.” (v.13) And of course, it turns out Sodom is also a danger zone since Lot and all his crew and possessions get plundered while there.
We also have this detail in v. 11, “Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east.” The east.
In the book of Genesis, every movement away from God to this point has been a move toward the east. After the fall of Adam, he and Eve are driven from the Garden and God places guards on the east side of the Garden implying that was the direction of fallen humanity being driven from God. (Gen. 3:24)
After Cain murders his brother Abel, he leaves the Lord’s presence and lives east of Eden. (Gen 4:16) This, of course, is where John Updike got the title for his famous novel. Before the Tower of Babel event, which was an event of confusion, full of problems, it says people were moving eastward.(11:2).
In Genesis, you move east and you are moving away from God. Lot takes the plain toward the east. Lot got the best deal in the short term, but Abram gets the best deal in the long run.
This is what I mean: Remember the Lord’s promise to Abram was to bless him. Although Abram went to Canaan it will be the richer, safer, more prosperous land in the long run. It doesn’t look like it at this time, but eventually it will be different. The fact that Lot chooses the other land opens this land for Abram’s future. Abram’s gracious generosity is blessed by God in that it opens the way for Abram to be blessed. Abram can’t see this but it is all part of God’s plan to bless him. But it will take some years.
Sometimes it takes time and patience and waiting and trust to see how God will work for us. Though we might not get what we think we want, in the longer run, God has a much better plan.
Right after Abram offers Lot first choice, and Lot takes the better place, the Lord takes Abram on a little walk and talk. The Lord tells Abram to lift his eyes and look all around because the Lord is going to give him all the land he can see. And he reminds him that it will belong to his offspring too. Remember Abram is childless and 75 years old. The Lord says that Abram’s offspring will be more than the dust.
Perhaps Abram knew he had been left a less fertile and harder land to live in. It certainly didn’t look like the Lord was blessing him. I sense these words from the Lord was the Lord’s reassurance for Abram, kind of a pep talk, that he was still working for him. He made a promise and Abram needed to wait for its fulfillment. But waiting sure is hard.
Before coming to Salt Lake City I was a pastor in rural Idaho. Roswell, Idaho is located in some of the richest, fertile farm land in all the state.
True story: when the area was being settled and farming was beginning in the 30’s as people were leaving dust bowl regions, a particular family with four brothers came to Roswell. I knew all four of these brothers. They were in our church. I buried three of them.
After the parents died the brothers decided to divide up their father’s land and each would do his own farming. The oldest brother let the other brothers pick first. Of course, they took the best land and left the oldest brother with the leftovers.
Well, fifty and sixty years later, if you looked at those brothers, the oldest brother – Howard – had the most prosperous crops. Not only that, but he was the most well-off, had a great family, many who walked with the Lord, and lived the longest and had the best health.
All four brothers were great guys. It is just interesting that the oldest brother seemed to trust that the Lord would take care of him, and that he didn’t have to grasp or insist on having the best. I saw it with my own eyes: God blessed him and he was a vessel of blessing to others.
Howard had a tremendous generosity of faith. I know he was a faithful giver and tither to the church. Like Abram giving a tenth to Melchizedek. His children said one of their great memories of their Dad was him sitting down on Sunday morning to write a check for his offering. It was a lifelong example to them. Howard would tell me how frustrated he would get in hearing people taking their vacations, and then giving what they may or may not have left over to the Lord. This oldest brother had a faith that allowed him to be generous.
When we have faith that God will take care of us we can be generous. We can let go. When we constantly live in fear that we won’t have enough we can become competitive and selfish.
Remember Jesus’ parable about the rich man whose crops were incredibly successful, and built bigger barns to store up everything he had so that he could just sit back, relax and enjoy life? In that parable, when the man’s life is required of him, he loses with God. And the punch line of the parable is “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”
Abram’s generosity toward Lot and others, showed he was rich toward God.
By sharing and being generous with his graciousness, with the land, with his resources, with his material goods, and by protecting others, Abram is trusting God’s promises.
When our three daughters were teenagers they tended to take each other’s clothes and wear them. It sometimes caused tension when one girl saw a sisters wearing something from her drawer and was not asked if it could be borrowed. Or there was tension if someone wanted to wear the same thing on the same day.
Because this communal-clothes-sharing or stealing or whatever you want to call it was causing problems, Nancy and I called a family council. Long story short, in my wisdom and spiritual maturity I suggested that maybe, just maybe, they each have enough clothes, that God has provided all they need, and they could just be generous and freely share with one another since they all had plenty to wear. Now I am kind of a minimalist. I am stretching the limits with two pairs of jeans, but, hey, I’m a Dad and, as you can tell, not a slave to fashion.
To my daughter’s credit they seemed to see the wisdom of their father. I am sure Nancy had wisdom but I can’t remember anything she said. She probably spoke to them separately after the fact and made the real impact. But my memory tells me that they understood their abundance and they began to share easily.
Jesus said do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or wear. Life is more than food and clothes. And he said that those who worry about these things are those of little faith. Jesus taught those who have faith in him to not worry because the Father knows what we need.
Can we journey by faith and learn that God will provide what we need? That we don’t have to grasp, hoard or live in greed or fear? When our security doesn’t come from wealth or money, but when our security comes from God, it changes our whole lives. We can treat others with the love our Lord asks of us. And we can be a blessing to others which is what it means to live as Abraham’s children.
We live in a day of the “me-first” attitude. Personally, locally and nationally. Selfishness has been on the rise. That’s not how the people of the Lord Jesus live.
Paul wrote, “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work…You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and…your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.”
Many hundred years before Paul wrote that, Abram learned to live it. He joined the covenant God made with him not just with words, but with his actions because he trusted his God.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, help us to live by faith. And let it show in how we live with others. Amen.