Hello, here we are with another broadcast. We call it Plain and Simple. We're still in Genesis chapter 12. Have your Bible ready if that's possible. We're reading in Genesis chapter 12, it says, Now the Lord has said unto Abraham, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a great nation. I will bless thee, he said, I will bless them that bless you, he told them, and I will curse them that curse you. I'm going to bless you in a special way. Let's go, Abraham. Well, he went, but he went, as we saw in our last broadcast, with a partial obedience, and a partial obedience is simply disobedience. Well, he lost five years at her end, and so finally now we get to verse number four, and it says, So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken unto him. Finally. And so he's heading out, it says here, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran. And they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came." Now it says here in verse number six that the Canaanite was then in the land. Now who are these Canaanites? Well, we need to understand that you can look at the details in chapter 10, if you go through it, and it tells you about all the descendants of Noah's sons. Now, you remember he had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now, if you study through from the descendants of Ham, you'll find you'll have the Babylonians and the Assyrians and these Canaanites. And we need to keep in mind that it's been about 300 years since the flood, and these boys have been going out and replenishing the earth, as it is told to do, when they got off of the ark. Well, there were the Canaanites, and quite frankly, in short, what were they? They're always referred to in the Bible as the enemies of God's people. And so we have Shem, we have Ham, we have Japheth, and they have been populating the world with their descendants. And so we find out that their descendants are getting further and further and further away from God. They're becoming the enemies of God. Quite a change from when they got off the ark. Well, we read in verse number seven, Now the Lord appeared unto Abraham. And this is very important. He appeared when he was obedient. There was five years there where he lost the presence of God and he lost the purpose of God for his life. Now he's back on track. And we read in verse number seven, the Lord appeared unto him. Not only do we read that he appeared at that time, but right after it mentions that they were in amongst these Canaanites that the Lord appeared unto him. And this is what he said. He said, Under thy seed will I give this land. And there builded he an altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him. And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west side, and her and hey I rather on the East. And there he builded an altar unto the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. Now the first thing that God says to him as he's in the middle of all of these Canaanites who are the enemies of God, he refers to Abraham's seed. He is referring to his children, to his offsprings. Now he said, unto thy seed. Now the children, our children, their faith will separate them from the world, or the world will separate them from their faith. It's going to be one or the other. And so we read here that what Abraham did was first of all, two things, he pitched his tent, and second, he built an altar unto the Lord. He pitched his tent. Now, it's so important. Where are you pitching your tent? Where do you stand? We read here that Abraham, he pitched his tent at Bethel. You can go back and read that lot. He pitched his tent towards Sodom. Where are you pitching your tent? Because your children are watching very carefully. The second thing we read here is that he built an altar unto the Lord. It is so important. Now, if you study this through, you will see that Abraham spent the last 100 years of his life living in a tent. Well, they were living in the very prosperous place called Ur of the Chaldees. Now he's living in a tent. It is a symbol of his philosophy of life. We have here a concern for his seed, for his offsprings, and for his children. And that living in this tent was so much better for them than living amongst all the materialism and the idolatry and all of the things that Ur of the Chaldees had to offer. This wilderness was much better than the city of Ur of the Chaldees for these young people. Well, they're learning the difference between the temporal and the eternal, and this is extremely important. We seem to focus so much on everything that is temporary. But God says, no, you need to focus on what is eternal and you need to make sure that your children are focusing on what is eternal. What do your children see? Well, we see here, first of all, the reference to his tent over and over again. You'll find that he pitched his tent. But also we see the reference to his altar, which is a symbol of worship. Worship. I was saved when I was 12 years old, and thankfully my brother, my mother, and my dad were all saved during that same month. And as we became young Christians in our teenage years, we always had supper together, and we had what we called family worship. And we would sit down around the table, after the meal we would read some scriptures, And then we would pray together. Now, when we read the Bible, that's God talking to us. And when we pray, that's us talking to God. And we had a time of what we called family worship every night. Well, then, you know, what happens now is everybody's sitting around in the living room watching junk on television, and there's no time for this family worship thing. Well, Abraham knew that his family needed strength for their faith. They needed to be able to face the Sodomites and the Canaanites that lived in the land, and so do we. We read in Genesis 18, verse number 19, that God said, Yep, God said, I know, I know that Abraham is going to do what he can to raise his family in the area of spiritual things. What does God know about your family? Think about that for a minute. He knows everything what's going on. How much time do you have for to take care of the spiritual things concerning your family? If you're counting on the church doing it for a couple hours a week, you are going to find out it's not going to work. And ye fathers, Bring them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. That's the command of the Word of God. Wake up before it's too late. You're going to lose your family. And so we read in the Word of God concerning the things that happen in the Old Testament that these things happen and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come. Well, we're certainly there right now. Well, what happened? God records everything that happened here, and we find out in the next verse, it says in verse 8, Abraham, he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent." Now, be careful, Abraham. You know, he comes down here, and he's at Bethel, the house of God. But he moves just a little bit away from Bethel, and he's got Bethel on the west. and the Hai on the east, and there he builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord." Well, he got a little bit away from Bethel, and the next thing we read, verse number nine in Abraham's journey, going on still toward the south. Now, I'm sure you've heard the phrase, everything went south. Well, everything starts to go south for Abraham at this point, and he makes some real serious mistakes. His first mistake was just moving a little bit away from what he knew what was right. And so we read an Abraham journey going on still toward the south. He wasn't supposed to go to the south. He was supposed to stop right where he was. Well, what was the problem? Well, the problem was in verse number 10, it says, there was a famine in the land and Abram went down into Egypt. Well, we said in our last broadcast or one not long ago that He went down into Egypt. Egypt is always referred to as going down to sojourn there, for the famine was grievous in the land. Now, instead of just trusting the Lord, the Bible says, the psalmist said, I've been young and I've been old, but I've never seen the righteous, nor his seed begging bread. Should have just trusted the Lord here, but he didn't. He took things into his own hands, and as we said previously, every once in a while, God's men, they're sinners. We're all a bunch of sinners. That's all God has to use, a bunch of sinners. And Abraham was one of them. And so he makes a mistake here, and he goes down into Egypt. And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold, now I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon. Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife, and they'll kill me, but they will save thee alive." We saw in a previous broadcast how foolish Abraham was here. He just did not trust God, and it did not turn out very well for him. Well, finally, because of what happened here, we saw in a previous broadcast that in verse number 17, the Lord plagued Pharaoh because he was going to take Abraham's wife, and Pharaoh ends up kicking him out. Well, What a poor testimony for the cause of the Lord here, Abraham. You made a mistake. Well, thanks be to God, in chapter 13, we read Abraham went up out of Egypt, he and his wife, with all that he had and a lot with him, into the south, back where he was, and we read that Abraham was very rich in cattle and silver and gold, and they went on their journeys, and they went back even to Bethel, it says, unto the place where he had pitched his tent at the first, And there he was worshipping the Lord again. Well, that's good. Back on track. Thank God that he doesn't just throw us away, but he gives us another chance. Well, we see it's not very long before we have some strife between Abraham and Lot, and, oh, man, what are we going to do now? And Abraham, you know, he takes the high road. He says, well, you choose which way you want to go. We need to separate. And what happens is that Lot looks, oh, I like that section over there. It's just like Egypt. Now, if he hadn't have taken Lot down into Egypt in the first place, he would not have got a desire to have what Egypt had to offer. But that's what he did, but the bigger mistake was taking a lot with him in the first place. He was told to leave his family and get on. Well, he lost five years because he didn't do that, because he brought his father. Now he's got all kinds of problems here with his nephew, because he should have left him back where he was told to leave him in the first place. Very important to follow God's details and do what he says to do. Well, we know the story only too well that Lot begins his downhill spiral as he first of all looks towards the things of Egypt and then a little bit later on we find him right totally completely involved with Sodom, Sodomites in Sodom and Gomorrah. We read in verse number 13 of chapter 13, but the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly, and we read in the previous verse that Lot dwelled in the city of the plain and pitched his tent towards Sodom. Well, then he ends up right in Sodom, and what a disgusting story we have there. Well, after that, we read that God speaks to Abraham and says, now finally, finally you've separated completely like I told you to in the first place. And now he gets on with some things in the life of Abraham that are exciting. Some things in the life of Lot I just wish weren't in the Bible, but God did not leave it out. All these things happened, it says, and are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come. Well, if you read down through chapter 14, you'll find a bunch of kings are fighting with each other, and the next thing you know that they attack Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot is carried away with them. And Abraham gets his men together, and they go back, and they get Lot. And that seemed to kind of be a wasted thing, because he ends right back in the middle of Sodom and Gomorrah. He probably would have been better off to leave him where he was. In any event, it was his nephew, and he was trying to do the best thing he could do for him. And it didn't turn out very good. It didn't turn out good at all. Well, in chapter 15 it begins, After these things, after these things. Wow, what an interesting verse that is. We'll look at it next week. We're out of time. That music in the background tells us we're out of time again. So tune in again tomorrow. We'll carry it on from here. We will try to make it plain and we will try to make it simple. you.