Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Eye of Flesh and the Eye of Faith: A Covenantal Critique of Pragmatism (Genesis 13:8–13)

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The Eye of Flesh and the Eye of Faith: A Covenantal Critique of Pragmatism (Genesis 13:8–13) · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to Reformed Thinking. This is the deep dive where we
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take sources you've sent in and really get into the weeds to
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understand them. Today we're looking at a
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listener submission focused entirely on Genesis chapter 13,
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specifically verses 8 through 13.
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It's the story of Abram and Lot separating.
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And, you know, on the surface, it can feel like a pretty dry,
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dusty old story about a fight over grazing land.
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But the sources we have argue it's actually one of the Old
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Testament's most crucial theological stories.
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It sets up to completely different ways of living.
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That's right. And you, you really have to get
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the context here. This doesn't happen in a vacuum.
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Abram is just coming back from Egypt.
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And that trip was, well, it was a spectacular failure of faith.
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He was driven by fear. He used this human strategy to
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protect himself, and he ended up deceiving Pharaoh.
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But here's the paradox. He doesn't come back broke and
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humbled. He comes back heavy.
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The Hebrew word is caved with livestock, silver and gold.
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So the worldly success, the stuff, actually becomes the
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test. It becomes a huge spiritual
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trial. This very wealth is now a
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burden, and it forces both Abram and Lot to make a choice.
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Are they going to live by the covenant promises God has
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already made, or are they going to live based on the assets they
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can see and count? OK, so that sets up our mission
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for this deep dive. We're not just recapping the
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story. We want to pull out that sharp
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contrast, the moral and theological line between a faith
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that rests in God's promise open handed, and a self-interest
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that's driven by what you can see, by what you can measure
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with your own eyes. This is really about two paths,
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your destinies. It is where you place your trust
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shapes everything that follows. All right, let's get into the
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first part of this text, then Abraham's response to the
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problem. It starts with the strife.
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Yes, the crisis it starts. This is a logistical problem in
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verse 7, You know too many animals for the land, but get
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serious very quickly. The tension is between the
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Hersman Abrams guys and lots guys.
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But as you often see that kind of friction among the staff, it
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usually points to some kind of unresolved tension at the top.
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Right, right. And then the word used for
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strife here is Meribah. I guess that's not just a minor
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disagreement. Not at all.
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It's a loaded term. It means contention, quarreling,
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even a kind of rivalry. They could end up in a legal
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fight. And Abraham sees this.
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He doesn't just write it off as, you know, the cost of doing
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business. He identifies it for what it is,
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a spiritual corrosion. And his response in verse 8 is
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so, so different from how we'd expect someone to handle a
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dispute over assets. He speaks up first.
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He's proactive. And the text says he uses this
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little word Nah, which is like saying please or I pray thee,
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it's gentle. It is.
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He's not passive. He names the problem right away
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before a confessor, and he says, let there be no strife, for we
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are brethren. He could have pulled rank,
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couldn't he? He's the elder, the patriarch,
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the one who actually got the covenant promise from God.
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He could have just laid down the law.
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Absolutely, he could have dictated the terms, but he
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refuses to weaponize that authority.
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He sees the fight and he takes ownership of it.
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He understands his job is to shepherd this whole situation
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toward peace. So this is more than just trying
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to avoid a fight. It's an active pursuit of peace,
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and it's grounded in his theology.
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It is that phrase for We're Brethren and Nashima Kom.
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That's the covenant foundation for his whole argument.
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He's saying they are men who are brothers.
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They share this identity that sets them apart from the culture
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around them. Before he even gets to the land
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or the livestock. He appeals to who they are, not
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what they own. So in the life of faith, your
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identity in God has to come before your claim on material
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things, yes. Strife is a practical denial of
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their brotherhood. It's acting like they don't
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share a father. But why is this so serious?
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I mean, beyond just their own family spat, is there a bigger
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issue at play here? There is, and it goes back to
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God's whole purpose for Abram in Genesis 12, God called him to be
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a blessing to all the nations. This wasn't just for him.
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It was for the sake of the world.
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And then verse 7 drops in this crucial detail.
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And the Canaanite and the perisite dwelled then in the
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land. So there's an audience, they're
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being watched. They're being watched.
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If the people who claim to represent the one true God or
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act like a bunch of pagans squabbling over grass, what kind
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of witness is that? Their internal conflict just
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completely undermines the mission God gave them.
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So peace inside the covenant family is a duty.
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It's a matter of God's reputation before the world.
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OK, so Abram doesn't just use words, he backs it up with a
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really costly action. He basically waves his rights.
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In verse 9. He tells Lot the whole land is
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before you. You choose.
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If you go left, I'll go right. If you go right, I'll go left.
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I mean, he's the elder. He has the title deed from God,
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so to speak, yet he just gives Lot the first pick.
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Why is that considered so sacrificial?
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Because he's giving up a visible, tangible advantage for
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the sake of an invisible certainty.
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He's literally paying for peace. If Lot picks the best land,
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Abram loses out on immediate productivity, on wealth, on
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security. But this action is completely
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rooted in the doctrine of God's Providence.
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Right from the Westminster Confession.
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God's governance over everything.
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Exactly. God's wise and holy governance
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extends to all creatures and all their actions.
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Abraham knows the land was already promised to him by God.
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His inheritance is secure because of a divine covenant,
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not because he's a shrewd negotiator who can grab the best
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real estate. I see.
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So because the ultimate outcome is already guaranteed by God,
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he's free from that panic of needing to control the immediate
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circumstances. He is.
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He's free from what some people call scarcity panic.
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If your success depends on you getting the best spot, well,
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then you have to fight for the best spot.
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But if your success depends on the unchangeable word of a God
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who keeps his promises, you're free to put relationships 1st
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and let go of your temporal rights.
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Abram is treating God's Word as more real, more solid than the
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green grass he can see in front of them.
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So his generosity is actually an act of worship.
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It's a statement about who he believes God is.
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It is, and that specific wording of his offer, that chaastic
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structure, left, right, right, left, that highlights his total
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surrender of control. He's saying I will take whatever
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is leftover. It doesn't matter which piece I
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get because I trust the giver. And this shows just how much
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he's grown, doesn't it, compared to his time in Egypt?
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A huge amount of growth in Egypt.
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He tried to control his own safety through a lie.
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Here, under the pressure of having too much, he secures
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peace by giving something up. He's trading self preservation
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for God. Trust.
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The question he's answering is, am I going to live by God's
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promise or by what I think I need right now?
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And he chooses promise. OK, that sets the stage
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perfectly for the contrast with Lot.
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We move from Abrams faith to Lots sight.
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Verse 10 kicks off Lots decision with this phrase, and Lot lifted
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up his eyes. The sources we're looking at all
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point to this as a really ominous literary signal in
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Genesis. Why is that phrase so loaded?
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Because. It symbolizes this kind of
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autonomous human judgment. It's the posture of assessing
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reality and making a choice based purely on what you can
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see, without any reference to God or covenant.
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You see with Eve, right? She saw that the tree was good
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for food and pleasant to the eyes.
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You see with the sons of God looking at the daughters of men.
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In Lot's case, he's looking at the land like an independent
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appraiser and. What does he see?
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He sees the Jordan Valley, the kicker, the circle, and he's
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just blown away by how good it looks for farming.
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The description is all about economics, isn't it?
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It's well watered everywhere. Precisely.
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In that world, water is everything.
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It's security. It's wealth.
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Lot is reading the landscape like a modern day land
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developer, not like a Pilgrim. And here's the spiritual
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delusion he falls into. He equates what looks prosperous
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with what is blessed. He just assumes the greenest
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pasture must be the best place to be.
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And. The text gives us these two
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comparisons he makes, which are incredibly revealing.
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He compares the valley to the garden of the Lord and the land
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of Egypt. Yes, and both should have set
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off alarm bells. The garden of the Lord.
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Eden sounds great. Paradise, life without struggle.
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But Eden was also the place where desire based on sight led
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to total ruin. And the comparison to Egypt is
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even worse. Egypt was the symbol of worldly
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security, of luxury, of not needing God.
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It's the place of shame that Abram just fled from so lot.
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'S criteria reveal what's in his heart he wants the stability and
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comfort of Egypt, but maybe with the, you know, the outward
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appearance of being a Pilgrim, his.
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Eyes tell him this is the best opportunity because his criteria
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are all horizontal. It's all about financial gain
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and physical comfort. Then in.
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Verse 11 Lot makes his choice, and the grammar itself seems to
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be a huge warning sign. It says So Lot chose for himself
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all the Jordan Valley, that little phrase for himself via.
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Charlo that reflects A pronoun below is the grammatical smoking
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gun. It puts self-interest right at
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the center of the decision. He didn't ask what honors Abram.
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He didn't ask where is the best place to pursue holiness.
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He asked what's in it for me. It's the total opposite of
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Abram, who yielded for the sake of his brother.
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Lot's choice is driven by the flesh and.
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What's so chilling is the narrator's little comment right
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after Lot's evaluation. We, the readers are told this
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was what the valley looked like before the Lord destroyed Sodom
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and Gomorrah. Lot sees paradise.
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We see a place that's already on death row.
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It's a. Devastating literary move.
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It tells you that Lot's entire assessment is fatally flawed
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because it's incomplete. He's checked the irrigation,
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he's checked the fertility of the soil, but he has completely
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failed to check the moral state of the place.
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And it's standing before God. He sees water.
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God sees wrath. And that is the Bible's great
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warning against a pragmatism that is governed only by sight.
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Can we? Just pause on that idea of
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pragmatism for a second, because in our world, making a smart
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financial choice is seen as good stewardship.
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Lot picked the best pasture. Why is he being condemned for
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what looks like a good business move?
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The condemnation isn't because the land was well watered, it's
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because only the water mattered to him.
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He put the technical wisdom of the marketplace ahead of the
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spiritual wisdom of holiness. His decision looks smart.
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It was practical. It was profitable, but it was
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made with 0 reference to God's moral reality.
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He confused convenience with blessing, and the text shows us
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that the very prosperity of that land, far from being a good
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thing, was actually what was funding the wickedness of the
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people who live there so. His sight, his supposedly smart
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choice, let him straight into the path of God's judgement.
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He getting the best land. But he cut himself off from
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Abram, who was his real source of spiritual security.
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That's. It he made a choice that was
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technically sound but spiritually foolish so.
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The separation happens and verse 12 draws this very sharp line
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between where they end up. Abram dwelled in the land of
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Canaan and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain.
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Canaan is the land of promise, pilgrimage, altars.
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The cities are the place of commerce, culture, worldliness,
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the. Locations really define them,
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don't they? Abram remains a Pilgrim.
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He accepts that his real home, his real inheritance, isn't
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something he can fence off and own right now.
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Lot, on the other hand, moves towards settlement.
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He's giving up that Pilgrim life, the life defined by God's
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future promise for the stability of a human system in the here
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and now. The city in Genesis is often the
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symbol of human pride and self-sufficiency, like Babel
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and. The direction of his travel is
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also mentioned lot journey E that direction macadam seems to
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carry a lot of negative weight in Genesis it.
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Consistently does. It's the direction of alienation
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from God's presence. Adam and Eve are cast out east
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of Eden, Cain flees E. The Babel builders come from the
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east. So Lot's journey E isn't just a
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geographical move, it's a spiritual 1.
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He is stepping out of the sphere of the covenant promise.
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He traded the rugged, difficult Hill Country of faith where
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Abram stayed for the easy, comfortable plane of sight.
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And then? Comes the really tragic detail.
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He pitched his tent towards Sodom.
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He's not in the city yet, so he's still keeping up
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appearances. He's in a tent like a sojourner,
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but his orientation has completely changed this just.
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Illustrates the subtle, creeping danger of spiritual compromise,
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doesn't it? Lot didn't just wake up one day
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and decide to be become a Pagan. He drifted.
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The physical act of turning his tent towards Sodom shows where
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his heart is going. He's getting ready to eventually
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assimilate. This is maybe the most
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devastating part of the story. You can keep the outward forms
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of religion, the tent, while you slowly reorient your desires and
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your ambitions toward a morally toxic environment.
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Sodom is no longer just a place on the map, it's become the
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focus of his gaze, the direction of his life.
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And why is that so dangerous? I mean, some might argue he
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should be engaging with the culture well.
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Engaging a culture is one thing. Orienting your entire life and
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your family's future around that culture's most wicked expression
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is something else entirely. The danger creeps up on you.
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The proximity seems harmless at first.
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Oh, we're just near the city for the business opportunities.
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But proximity has a way of normalizing things that should
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shock you, and orienting yourself toward temptation
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always leads to entanglement. Scripture is pretty consistent
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that holiness is preserved by putting distance between
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yourself and temptation, not by treat to live right on the edge
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of corruption. So.
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His practical decision guaranteed that his kids would
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grow up steeped in the culture of Sodom it.
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Did. And then the narrator slams the
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door on any doubt we might have about Lot's choice.
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Verse 13 is this final divine verdict.
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Now the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord
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exceedingly. It's like a theological bomb
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dropped right into the middle of this real estate transaction.
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It's. The ultimate reality check.
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It's designed to pull the reader out of lots horizontal
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materialistic way of seeing things.
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And the Hebrew is so strong it uses 2 words for evil, Ram and
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Chatham, and then adds Mewud exceedingly.
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This isn't just a few bad apples, it's a society that is
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rotten to the core, completely ripe for judgement and.
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The most critical phrase in that whole verse might be those 3
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words before the Lord. Why is that the theological
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pivot point? Because.
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It defines sin vertically. Lot was calculating things
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horizontally. Water, profit, ease of life.
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The narrator breaks in and insists that the single most
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defining fact about this location is its moral reality
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before God. Sodom's wickedness isn't just a
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social problem, it's a direct offense against the holiness and
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glory of God. The city's true status is
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theological. Lot evaluated the land.
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God was evaluating the people. This.
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Feels like a direct hit on the modern idea that if you just
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create a better environment, you'll get better.
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People lot chose what looked like a perfect environment, The
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Garden of the Lord. It's a.
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Devastating rebuttal to that philosophy.
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The lush environment did not make the people better, it
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actually just funded their depravity.
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This confirms a core principle of reformed thought.
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Sin isn't just a product of a bad environment, it's a
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corruption of human nature itself.
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Total depravity. The abundance that Lot saw and
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craved was only lubricating Sodom's slide into judgement and
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all. Of this just vindicates
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Abraham's choice, doesn't it? He accepted the rugged, less
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profitable land because he was operating based on God's Word,
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not based on visible conditions. Exactly.
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He chose the giver over the gifts.
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OK. So let's try to synthesize this
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What are the big theological doctrines that the story is
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teaching us through narrative? Well, the.
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First one is clearly God's Providence.
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Abram's decision to yield is a powerful confession that God's
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sovereign governance is real and can be trusted.
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And that belief, when you really hold to it, frees you.
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It frees you from that anxious, grasping, competitive spirit
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true quality, the kind Abram models here is acting as if God
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is going to provide for you and so you refuse to use your power
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or your position to grab what you want and.
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The second big doctrine has to be the deceitfulness of sin, how
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it cloaks itself, yes. And the reality of depravity
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lost pragmatism is a perfect picture of how the flesh can
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dress up covetousness and make it sound like prudence.
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He made a choice based on sight, and his air was one of
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orientation, what he trusted, what he moved toward.
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The story forces us to see that every choice, even about pasture
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land, is a vertical choice made before God.
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And what? About the ethics of it,
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Abraham's reason for We Are brethren, that seems to lay down
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a principle for how believers should interact.
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It does. It teaches a kind of covenant
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ethic. Peace among God's people isn't
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just a nice suggestion. It's a duty that flows from our
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shared identity in the covenant. When believers fight each other
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like rivals over material things, we are in practice
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denying the truth that God is our single sufficient giver.
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But. We can't just stop there and
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say, OK, the moral of the story is be like Abram.
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Our sources really push us to see how Abraham's action points
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forward to something much bigger that.
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Typological connection is key. Abram's self denial is a shadow,
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a silhouette of the gospel. Christ, as the true head of the
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covenant, made peace by giving up infinitely more than Abram
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ever did. Paul says in Philippians 2 that
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Christ, who was in the very form of God, made himself of no
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reputation. He took the form of a servant,
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so. Where Abram let's Lot choose the
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best land and takes the rugged remainder Christ.
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Does infinitely more. He became poor.
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He took the ultimate servant's portion, rejection, suffering,
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and death on a cross, all to secure peace between sinners and
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a holy God. So.
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Abram yields rights to land, but Christ yields his very life.
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The cross is the ultimate act of covenant peacemaking.
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Precisely. And in that light you see a lot,
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not just as a guy who made a bad choice, but as a kind of anti
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disciple. His choice by Charlo he chose
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for himself is driven by sight and self gratification.
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It's the very same impulse as the first Adam he saw, he
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desired, he took. And even the separation in the
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story points to the cross. A separation was needed to bring
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peace between the brothers on the cross.
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Christ was separated from the Father, forsaken so that we
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could be brought near and. Because we have received that
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peace with God through Christ, we are then freed from that
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frantic need to grab the best for ourselves.
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That's. It we're joined heirs with
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Christ, the pressure's off. We don't have to live like Lot.
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So let's bring this home. How does this critique of
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pragmatism apply to our lives today, in our work, our
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lifestyle choices? Well.
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Genesis 13 is a piercing critique of modern pragmatism,
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which is the default philosophy of our age.
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Pragmatism just defines good by what works but what produces
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visible success. Lot is the patron St. of that
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way of thinking. He wasn't asking is this holy?
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He was asking is this well watered and.
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That forces you to hold up a mirror to your own major life
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decisions, doesn't it? When we choose a career or
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decide where to live, how often is our decision making process
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basically identical to lots? It happens all the time.
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We choose the well watered plane, the job with the highest
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salary, the school district with the best test scores, the city
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with the most to do and we do it without a serious investigation
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of the spiritual landscape. We justify it by saying this is
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the best financial move for our family.
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It's lots logic. The self-interest gets disguised
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as responsibility. Can you?
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Give a concrete example of what that looks like for a Christian
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family today? Sure.
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Think about a family that gets a huge promotion of big pay raise,
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but it requires them to move to a city where there isn't a
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single healthy Bible believing church for miles.
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Or maybe the new job demands a 70 hour work week, which means
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the father or mother is basically cut off from the life
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of the church, from serving, from discipling their own kids.
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And they'll defend it by saying that this is for our financial
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security. They've chosen a high standard
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of living at the direct expense of a high standard of holiness
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that is pitching your tent towards Sodom that.
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Distinction is so critical standard of living versus
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standard of holiness, it really gets to the core question of
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what provides real security it. Does Lot put his trust in the
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visible security of the well watered plane?
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But that whole plane was under a divine death sentence.
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The story is a call to repent of our belief that money or
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location is a better fortress than God Himself.
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True wisdom starts with the fear of the Lord, not with a
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spreadsheet. Maximizing your retirement
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portfolio I. Wonder how many of our
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professional choices, especially those that push us toward high
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stress, high income paths, are really just driven by that lot?
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Like desire to feel self-sufficient, even if we call
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it stewardship and. That is the deceitfulness of the
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flesh right there. Stewardship can be a very pious
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sounding cover for covetousness. Real stewardship, based on
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Abrams example, has to prioritize peace, brotherhood,
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and spiritual health before it prioritizes maximizing the
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financial return. And this doesn't just apply to
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individuals, the sources suggest there's a huge warning here for
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the church as a whole. A.
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Massive warning lot. Subtle drift towards Sodom is a
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picture of what happens with the ecclesiastical pragmatism.
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What? Does it look like when a church
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starts making Lot's choice, it's the.
20:36
Temptation to define success by numbers, by cultural approval,
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by visible influence. It's when churches start
20:44
changing their methods or watering down their doctrine to
20:48
try and appeal to the culture. The logic is purely pragmatic.
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Well, it works. We're getting more people in the
20:54
doors that is pitching the church's tent towards Sodom.
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So instead of being distinctively Christian, they
21:01
try to make the faith easier for people to swallow by adopting
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the language or the look of the culture.
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Exactly. The Church goes looking for its
21:09
own well watered plane of cultural relevance.
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It tries to shrink the distance between the Christian worldview
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and the world's worldview. But Genesis 13 warns that
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getting closer to the world doesn't convert the world.
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It compromises the church. Look at what happened to Lot
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when judgment was about to fall. He tried to warn his family, but
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the text says he seemed to them as one that mocked.
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He had become so much like them that he had 0 prophetic
21:33
credibility left. That's a.
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Sobering thought His pursuit of the easy, successful plane cost
21:38
him the spiritual authority he needed to save his own family
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and. That is the warning for the
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church today. We have to reject the kind of
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pragmatism that says we need to flatten the rugged hills of hard
21:48
doctrines like sin and judgment and substitutionary atonement
21:52
because they make people uncomfortable.
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Abraham stayed in the rugged Hill Country of Hebron.
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It was harder physically, but it was spiritually secure.
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That's where he built his altars.
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The church has to embrace that necessary conflict, the
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antithesis between its worldview and the world's.
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So at. The end of the day, the call is
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to choose costly faithfulness over convenient success.
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It. Is we have to measure what is
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good not by profit or comfort, but by godliness and holiness as
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measured before the Lord. So Genesis 13 leaves us with
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this incredibly stark contrast. Abram, living by promise,
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pursued peace, move deeper into the land of promise, and built
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there an altar to the Lord. His life was marked by worship.
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Lot, living by sight, began that slow drift toward ruin.
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Lot. Left no altar, he lives a pillar
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of salt where his wife stood, and a legacy of corruption
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through his children. The question the narrative
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leaves you with is not what will this choice get me, but what
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will this choice make of me spiritually before the Lord?
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A story that causes to stop looking at the well watered
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plains of this world and instead to look to the one who gave up
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everything to secure an eternal inheritance for us.
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An inheritance that can't be measured by sight.
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Thank you so much for sending in the sources for this deep dive.
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Until next time, let's all be wary of those choices that begin
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with a subtle shift toward the wrong things.