Abram’s journey has seen many miles, many locations, and many altars. He he has gotten off track, circumstances in the family have caused him to wait when he wanted to go, he has been told “not yet” and been taken on detours, and now he is faced with probably his toughest decision. The land will not sustain both he and his nephew, Lot. They will have to split up.

Great is Abram’s faith that God is in control at this moment. He is the elder in the family, so it could be said that it would be his right to choose first. He knows that God has promised him Canaan which lies just to the west. However, he yields that honor to Lot. Lot chooses east, and Abram finally makes his home in the promised land of Canaan.

There are applications for us in this story. First, the more literal among us will realize that this mildly echoes a New Testament story where ministry partners Paul and Barnabas end up parting ways. The dispute was not doctrinal, but was handled maturely with an agreement to divide and conquer.

Of course, a more generic application is simply this: sometimes we have to make very tough decisions if we want to follow God. Sometimes we have to choose between our heart and our faith. These are never easy choices, but are always the choices that we look back on as the mileposts or better yet, the altars along our journey. They forever serve as a reminder of where we’ve been, where we’re going and who has brought us.

When I read the story of Abram finally settling into the land that God has promised him, and when I reflect on the broken path that God lead him on to get there, I can’t help but sing a few lines from “Canaan Bound” by Andrew Peterson. If you don’t know it, I’d really recommend that you give it a listen…

Sarah, take me by my arm
Tomorrow we are Canaan bound
Where westward sails the golden sun
And Hebron’s hills are amber crowned

Like the stars across the heavens flung
Like water in the desert sprung
Like the grains of sand, our many sons
Oh, Sarah, fair and barren one
Come to Canaan, come

Long after we are dead and gone
A thousand years our tale be sung
How faith compelled and bore us on
How barren Sarah bore a son
So come to Canaan, come

I can picture Abram himself singing this. Singing about a voice of “Love and Thunder” that compelled him through all circumstances to keep walking by faith. Abram’s faith was rewarded with treasure and promise, and yet it is only a glimpse of what we as believers, the descendants of Abraham are promised as a reward for our faith. I want to walk by that same faith and trust that the God of Abraham and Jacob will also hold my hand and bring me to the promised land.

It is so important that we see God in every step of our lives. Sometimes we start out on a path so convicted of the direction God has called us to that we miss the journey. Sometimes we the path that God calls us to has many detours and if we focus so much on the destination then we just get confused when we end up somewhere else or even worse, feel like there must be something we’ve done wrong because God has clearly abandoned us.

If that’s you today, I want to encourage you to take something in from the life of Abram today.

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (v. 1-3)

God makes a promise to Abram and he sets out sure of where God is leading him…

Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. (v. 5)

That seems to be the destination that God is leading them to. However, Abram doesn’t end up there. He arrives there, but does not stay. Once there, God lets him know in a manner of words that he has other plans for him. What does Abram do? He leaves, and we must assume this too was under God’s direction. But before he does, he builds an altar. He recognizes that this change in the game-plan doesn’t mean something went wrong. He recognizes that the significance of a journey with God is not where you’re going but rather who you’re traveling with.

Abram moves to the hill country. And builds another altar. Again he recognizes that while his path has changed, his God hasn’t. He moves again. And again. Why does he move? Perhaps God lead him some of the time. Sometimes he moved for practical reasons like famine. While he made some mistakes in his conduct in places like Egypt, we shouldn’t assume that Egypt was a mistake. After all if your argument is “things didn’t go well in Egypt so obviously Abram was out of God’s will” then the same logic could be used when he left Bethel – “why would God lead him to a place that had a famine?”

The problem in Egypt wasn’t that Abram went the wrong direction, it’s that on that part of the journey, at some point he let go of God’s hand. He started to fear man instead of God, and that’s the true lesson we should take from it.

My encouragement to you is to just enjoy walking with God today. Picture it like a walk in a beautiful park instead of a walk on a highway. A walk on a highway gives you only two choices and you would have to assume that one of them is wrong. However, when walking in a park, stopping to smell the roses all of a sudden becomes appropriate, even normal behavior. Grab hold of Jesus’ hand and try not to assume where you’re going. Just enjoy the journey with Him.

Here’s a truth that I have learned over years of following Jesus – He actually does have plans for us and while he sometimes appears to leave the details up to us, He will take action to get us back on the right track if we veer off of it.

In chapter 11 we find this happening twice, and the chapter is bookended by these stories. Working backwards, consider the story of Abram at the end of the chapter…

Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Harran, they settled there. (v. 31)

I’m no Bible scholar, but Harran was not where they were trying to get to. So why did they settle there? Did they give up? Did they find in Harran something better than what they thought they might find Canaan? Was someone hurt and sick and they had to rest them for an extended period? Did they run out of supplies or money?

A bunch of things could have happened to prevent their journey to Canaan and the best we can do is speculate about it. Speculation should not be overused when asking questions about what the Bible says, but I do believe it has its place. I would guess that whatever the circumstances were, the true reason that Abram’s family settled in Harran was that God did not want him in Canaan…yet. He would eventually deliver it to Abraham’s descendants, but wanted to teach them first. God’s work in our lives often happens on the journey to get to where we are going, not in the place itself.

Perhaps you have been waiting to arrive when you simply need to enjoy the process. God is working on you right now, and offers you the ability to be closer to Him during this time than you ever dreamed possible.

Unfortunately however, I have also experienced God’s methods from earlier in the chapter. I would contend that while it may be hard when God steps in and says “not yet”, the difficulty can be even greater when he allows us to have our way for a bit. There was a time when people had progressed so much that they just kept drifting further and further away from God. God permitted their progression to a point, but eventually had to step in. They were so far off the path that he had planned for them that if they took one step further they would destroy themselves.

I’ve been there. I’ve grabbed hold of the reins and said, “God why don’t you let me steer for awhile?” It wasn’t arrogance as much as impatience. I needed direction from God, and when I couldn’t hear it, I decided to take action. I justified it by telling myself, “I’ll just get moving and see if God is up ahead of me. I mean, that’s what taking a step of faith means, right?” In reality, what I really needed to do was wait. This mistake came at great cost to my family and me, but ultimately God intervened and lead me out of it.

Here’s the deal though, now that I’m this side of it – I don’t necessarily regret it. First of all, regret should be reserved for things we never try, not things we try and fail at. In fact, while I wish I didn’t have to fall on my face to learn, I learned things through that experience that I could not have learned any other way. I can still sit back and know that while I may have run top speed into a brick wall and even burned the whole thing to ground, God made beauty from the ashes.

The comfort I offer you today is not that life walked hand in hand with God is easier. Actually, God will sometimes drag us kicking and screaming through the valleys. The comfort comes in knowing that while we might let go of His hand from time to time, He never lets go of ours.

This is the second chapter in the Bible’s first 10 that functions simply as a family tree or ancestral document. It’s awfully difficult to get that for your daily reading and expect to walk away feeling filled. I admit, I struggled with it myself, and began searching everywhere for answers. I looked at specific words in the original languages, read commentaries, and then as a last resort, did what I always do when I don’t know what do with a passage. I tried asking questions.

It’s really important that we develop a habit of asking questions. It’s really the best way to learn. Let me give you an example. I know how to play guitar. In fact, I’ve taught several people now. I could walk up to person A and tell them “I’m going to teach you to play guitar” and as long as they’re willing, I’m sure we’ll achieve some measure of success. However, if person B walks up to me and says “I noticed that you play guitar, can you teach me?”, I have a pretty strong gut feeling about who is going to be more successful in the end.

My high school math and science teacher began every year with the same speech. It was about something he called “GANAS” which apparently means desire. He would write the word with big letters on the board and then proceeded to explain that too much is made of the ability to pick things up easily. “However”, he would say, “If you have GANAS, I can teach you.”

The same is true of God’s Word.  How much we get out of it depends on our desire, and our desire for it is shown by the questions we ask of it.

So I came up with a question. If Noah’s sons proceeded from the Ark to populate the world, then which one of his sons did the line of Jesus come from? After all, I figured much is made of Jesus’ lineage and these records seem to be important enough to Jewish history that I assumed that information was available. We can begin our search with the book of Matthew where the bloodline of Jesus is recorded all the way back to Abraham in chapter 1. So, we simply need to know which line Abraham came from and that’s pretty easy by simply reading Genesis 11:10-26.

Jesus, and all Hebrew people come from the line of Shem. That name became the root word for “semitic” as in “semitic languages”.

So what can we take from all of this? Perhaps there is something we’re missing, and perhaps years down the road I will stumble upon something that causes me to look deeper and a light bulb will go off for me. But for now, I will lean on my favorite quote from Oswald Chambers,

“What we call the process, God calls the end.” – Oswald Chambers

Plainly put, the exercise of opening a chapter like this and anticipating or expecting God’s Word to reveal truth to us and not return void is perhaps the very point of any study of the Bible. Often it’s not about how much we learn, it’s about how much more we come to expect of it each time we open it. The more we get, the more we want. God’s Word is perhaps the only thing on earth that we can’t consume in excess. There is no chance of getting too much of it. It is food for the spiritually starving and that desire only increases once it gets a taste. Let’s stay hungry, and passionately desire the Word of God.

Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! – Psalm 34:8

When we are purchased by God, our lives ransomed with the life of His Son, we are eternally set free from the penalty that we deserve as a result of our sin. Furthermore, God is forgiving and the things which we have ruined here on earth can also be restored. For example, if we hurt people in relationships as a result of our sin, God can heal those hurts and restore the relationship.

Having said that, I have noticed that many times things are never truly the same. God desires to make all things new, but if feels at times that when he does, some vestige of sin remains – a reminder that this world is still broken until God truly restores everything to Him.

Such is the story of Noah in Genesis 9, which starts out with God renewing a blessing that He made when He first created man. That man would be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. Everything that he made for the first generations of man would now be passed on to Noah’s family and be given for their enjoyment. In fact, perhaps for the first time it would appear that meat would be on the menu for dinner.

Yes everything seemed to be back in its place. Noah even took up gardening and planted a vineyard. Then, all of a sudden a moment of true humanity changes everything. Noah, enjoying the fruits of his labors has too much to drink. It was a moment of weakness and he was full of nothing but a desire for his own satisfaction. That’s really the root of all sin isn’t it? It’s about us and how to fulfill our own desires regardless of the consequences. The Bible is pretty clear that drinking to the point of drunkenness is sin but Noah indulges himself and does it anyway.

As a result, we have a scene that some of us may not fully understand. There are simply too many unanswered questions. Did Ham stumble mistakenly into his father’s tent and find him that way? Did he look on his father with disrespect or even lust? Did he do anything to him as some legends would suggest? We simply don’t know what the exact sinful action was here, so we can’t deem it to be important otherwise God would have told us. What we do know is what led to it and must assume that is important. Noah made a mistake, and as a result, a chain reaction was started which led to his family being torn apart. It would appear that this relationship was never restored, and the pleasure of a moment brought a lifetime of consequence.

I would summarize by saying this, that if we have been bought with a price, our eternity is secure in spite of any sin we may commit moving forward. I cannot stress this enough, You are forgiven. You are forgiven. You are forgiven. However, our motivation to abstain from sin should not come merely from a motivation to worship God and thank Him for what He has done. We must recognize that all sin, while being set free from eternal judgment is still subject to earthly consequence, and while this life is truly a vapor, it will only appear that way on the other side of eternity. Let’s not make the mistakes that cause us and the people we love so much pain.

Have you ever listened to someone’s story of faith and wondered “why doesn’t God work like that in my life?” More specifically, have you ever heard one of these faith giants recall a time when God “spoke” to them and wondered “why don’t I hear from God like that? If God speaks to people like that and I’m not hearing him, is my faith not deep enough or am I really a Christian?

If that’s you, I want to encourage you to take a page from Noah. After all, he was found to be the only righteous man on earth at one time. Surely he has the market cornered on what God is saying to him right? If he needed to know something, he’d just ask and God would open the heavens and in a booming voice deliver the message right?

True there was a time when God seemed to speak directly to Noah…

Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. (Gen. 7:1)

However, we aren’t told how this message was delivered. Was it a voice booming and loud or still and small. At the risk of challenging the specific words, I would ask was it a voice at all? What if God gave Noah this message not through audible words but simply the spirit confirming something to Noah in some intangible way?

The reason I ask is that we spend so much time focusing on Noah’s faithfulness before the flood that we might miss how he discerns things after.

The first question he has is, “when am I supposed to get off this boat? I was told when to get on, but when is it time to leave?” Apparently the one window in the ark could not see the land and this was going to be a big discernment issue. Open the door too early and he could sink the boat.

So what does he do? He sends out a bird and it comes back with nothing. He sends out a bird again. Again it comes back with nothing. All the while praying. All the while saying “God I’ll do what seems to make sense to me and when you give me a peace about moving in a certain direction, I’ll know that it’s you and move.”

He sends out a bird again, and it comes back with a olive branch. Notice this…that would seem to signify to me that the litmus test for dry land has passed with flying colors. But he waits. Noah has experience in the discernment department and knew before the prophet Isaiah wrote about it that “those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.”

A fourth time he sends out a bird. It does not return. Noah meditates on this and finds that peace welling up in his heart. He recognizes that peace…it’s the same Spirit that brought him this far.

Perhaps that is all a bit of speculation into the nuances of what happened but the larger facts remain. God speaks to us in different ways. For many of us, including myself, it has never been an audible voice but that has not lessened its impact. I have learned to recognize the voice of my shepherd through experience with Him.

I encourage you, if you are facing any decision, pray without ceasing, do what you have a peace about, don’t do what you are hesitant about, and wait for God to speak.

You would think that when you’re trying to stuff just enough animals on one boat to ensure their future procreation that God would appreciate a pragmatist. After all, this is no time to get our feathers ruffled if we forget a few traditions for a few months.

What we find instead is that God did not just include enough animals to allow for future offspring. He actually commanded that a larger number of “clean” animals be taken…

“Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals…” (v. 2)

This begs the question, “Why the special treatmeant?” Are clean animals really worth more or just “better” than their unclean counterparts? Perhaps more fragile and God was just hedging his bet?

No, in fact there was a divine purpose in the bringing of “clean animals”.

You see Noah and his family would need much more than just food and shelter to survive. They also needed their God. The way that man connected with God back then was through sacrifice. It was vital to a life lived in relationship to him.

It is, therefore, fitting that God would make a way to keep Noah’s family not only safe and well-fed but also connected to Him. Like the other animals, some of the clean ones were meant to carry on their species through procreation. Still, with 7 pairs of each, it would seem as though God had provided enough for Noah’s family to continue to offer sacrifice, which we find he did, in Genesis 8:20.

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

No matter what circumstances you find yourself in, make a habit of giving to God. Sacrifice is as vital to our development as it was to Noah, and needs to be a part of our lives as often as possible.

Sometimes I read a verse that just challenges me. Typically when this happens, I am forced to blind of the forest on account of all the trees, or rather I miss the larger point of a passage because of my inability to get over one line. Genesis 6 provides just such a verse.

And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. (v. 6)

See what I mean? I read that and just can’t get off it. Pity too, as the story of Noah is full of symbolism and great narrative. It speaks of the importance of marriage in God’s divine plan and contains the forerunner to Isaiah 53:6 in verse 12 with the line “all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.”

Yet anytime I read chapter 6, none of that matters. Why? Because I can’t get over the idea of a God who regrets. I don’t like the idea that God can have a change of heart, because deep down inside I wonder, “what happens if He changes His mind about me?”

I think the problem really comes down to the baggage that each of us have with the word regret. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that the word should be used to describe mistakes we’ve made or things that we’d do differently if given a second chance. However, the true meaning of the word is nothing like that.

Have you ever heard someone use an expression like “I regret to inform you that…” How can a person wish they had done something differently while simultaneously doing it in the first place? Once your brain recovers from that last sentence, you’ll realize that one who uses regret in that way is simply acknowledging the heavy heart with which he must deliver some piece of news.

The true definition of regret in our language is to feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over. This lines up with scripture as well as the word for regret here is the word nacham which means to console yourself or to grieve.

Here’s the truth: God doesn’t change (Malachi 3:6). The bible says He’s the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). James 1:17 says that with Him there isn’t even a shadow of turning. His love never ends and the same love he displayed for you on the cross 2,000 years ago he offers you today.

Hopefully you will be able to see as I do that the heart of God that is on display here is not one of judgment without mercy. Rather, this is a deeply hurtful and personal experience for God. Necessary, yes. But still hurtful. Nearly every person alive at the time, people He created in His image and loved unconditionally, would be wiped off the face of the earth. It had to be so, so that He could save them from themselves, but the act of it broke His heart.

My comfort through all of this, is that I serve a God who grieves about the evil found in this world even more than I do. It makes me realize that we are not alone, and more importantly, that we are not home yet. I hope that he finds me faithful as he did with Noah. However should I ever stumble I am reminded that while God grieves for me, because he came to give me an abundant life that can only be found in service to Him.

While this is the first chapter in the Bible devoted entirely to genealogy, it will not be the last. The question is, if we’re doing a chapter-per-day devotional, what can we really glean from this passage? At first glance, perhaps not much. However, if we reflect on both what happened before as well as after, we can arrive at least at one central theme: hope.

What we know from before is that a number of people were of Cain’s descent. We also know from our own experiences that most likely other generations from other lines also became so consumed with their own lives that they too forgot about their creator. It’s not hard to understand how society would experience a simultaneous progression in cultural discovery (via the tools, music and cities of Cain’s sons) and regression in morality by each one turning their hand to their own way (Isa. 53:6). If Tolkien said it best that “not all those who wander are lost” then certainly the reverse of that is true as well. We may appear to be on the right track and getting better outwardly, but we’re dying inside more every day.

You can be sure though, that some vestige of grace remained among a few of the people. Perhaps only as stories told to them as children, a small light of hope flickered in a few hearts of Adam’s line. And you can be sure of this as well, that just as Cain and Seth were very intentionally named, so was the eventual incarnation of this hope in the person of Noah. We don’t know exactly what hardship had befallen the people then, only that Noah’s father Lamech said this about his son’s birth…

Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands. (v. 29)

Notice that word ‘relief’. In fact, the word could be best expressed as comfort or rest. The idea is that life was oppressive, perhaps monotonous, and very difficult and Noah’s life would bring about a change to all of that.

I know it can be hard this side of the history to understand God’s choice in the flood. We just can’t possibly know the extent of the evil on the earth during that time. For all we know, it was as much God’s mercy as it was his judgment that lead him to destroy mankind. What we do know is this, that God began a pattern here of using those who still call upon His name as the catalyst to bring about great change. We understand this, that the challenge so eloquently issued by Mahatma Gandhi is subtly calling to us from the pages of God’s word from ancient days before. “Be the change you want to see in the world.”