Very early Lot is associated directly with what the scholars call the holy line. That holy line came through the flood in Shem. Remember from last week’s sermon that Adam's life overlapped Methuselah's by 243 years. So we start all the way at the beginning. Adam, we jump to Methuselah, and Adam still lived another 243 years. Now Methuselah lived right up to the flood. He died in the flood, but while he was alive that last 98 years Shem was alive. Shem, then, was a direct connection, along with his father Noah, from the beginning with Adam all the way through the flood.
Now Shem lived for another 500 years after the beginning of Arphaxad who came when Shem was 100 years old. Shem lived to the ripe old age of 600 years. The last 150 years Abraham was alive. Now we have a direct connection from Adam to Methuselah to Shem to Abraham, and 150 years that Shem could relate things directly to Abraham that took place even before the flood. All of that experience, all of that personal history could be passed on directly to Abraham who was the uncle of Lot.
Haran died and Abram became Lot's adopted father, I guess you might say his guardian. But do not think that Lot was young, because I have calculated that even if Lot was only 25 years younger than Abram (and he might have been very close to his age), when they left his own land and went to Canaan, Lot was already 50 years old, and for 100 of those years he had lived side by side with Shem. So the righteous Shem could pass on the history and the purpose of God right to Abraham and right to Lot directly.
Moses was a couple of generations removed and yet his faith was far greater than was Lot's who lived right during those times. We are not dealing with somebody who had no background and had no access to hearing these things directly.
The indication from verse 26, if one took it just the way it was said, it looks as though Abram, Nahor, and Haran were triplets, all born in the same year when Terah was seventy years. However that is not the case. Abram is listed first, although he was not the eldest of the three. Haran was the oldest and Nahor was the youngest, putting Abram in the middle.
Abram was 75 years old when he was called. If Terah died at the age of two-hundred and five years, and if he died just prior to (and that is what the context seems to imply), Abram’s leaving his land, then Terah was one hundred and thirty years old when Abram was born. We can deduce then that Haran was born when Terah was seventy and that Nahor was born at some unspecified time after Abraham.
Now subtract 75 from 1972 and you come up with 1897 BC. So now we have a date for Abram’s leaving.
When we left Abraham the last time, he had been called out of his area and he had proceeded from Ur to Haran, left Haran and had gone into the land of Canaan.
We are talking about a large portion of Terah’s family, Lot’s family, all of that group of people, all of their possessions, and the people whom they had acquired. These are not, I get the impression here, those born in his house, the three-hundred and eighteen, but the people he had acquired. Remember that I was on that verse the last week. These could have represented people that he hired to be carriers, scribes, whatever, mule drivers, donkey drivers, you name it, whatever they needed in the way of beasts of burden. They could have been people who were convinced by the teaching of Abraham and decided to attach themselves to him and made the pilgrimage with him down into Canaan and down into Egypt.
Now Lot was a good, I would not say overall, but a good carnal minded man. There was a difference between Abram and Lot. The Bible says (it is interesting one of the ways it shows the differences), is that Abram walked with God, but it does not say that Lot walked with God. It always says that Lot was with Abram. It’s an interesting little thing.
Now he was tagging along, Lot walked with Abraham. But spiritually, Lot just did not have it. But for a while, as long as he was walking with Abraham, it appears as though he might have had it. He was at one, but it could not last.
