Abraham and Lot represent two categories of people who answer God’s calling, and the two ways that they take with the two kinds of results. Those who answer God’s calling may take the way of faith by following God, or they may take the way of turning back to the world by themselves. Those who take the former way are under a blessing, and those who take the latter suffer loss and receive a curse.
After no more than ten generations and through a period of approximately three hundred years (Gen. 11:10-26), the descendants of Noah’s family, which was separated from the corrupted world by the judgment of the flood, departed from God’s way and fell into Babel, an evil realm that was filled with idols. As a result, they could no longer be used by God to carry out His economy on earth. Thus, in the land of idolatry God called Abraham out from the idolatrous people (Josh. 24:2), telling him to go out of the land of idolatry and out from his idolatrous kindred and his father’s house, and to come into the land that God would show him (Acts 7:2-3), the land of Canaan. This was God’s new beginning with fallen man, and it was also a new beginning for the one who was fallen and was called. God gave up the created Adamic race and called Abraham with his descendants that they might be a new race; thus, with the called race God was able to continue His eternal purpose. In this way, Abraham became the father of the new, called race.
Abraham was in a place and environment that were far from God, fallen, and idolatrous. However, because the God of glory appeared to him (Acts 7:2), he was able by faith to accept God’s calling and obey God to go out from his country, his kindred, and his father’s house. He went out from Chaldea without knowing where he was going (Heb. 11:8). Thus, he had to trust in God for His instant leading, taking God’s presence as the map by which he traveled. When he arrived at the place that God had promised to show him, he could not immediately possess the land. So, by faith he dwelt in tents as a foreigner in that land, as in a land not his own (Heb. 11:9), and believed God’s word of promise: that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. Because of such faith he was justified by God (Gen. 15:4-6; Rom. 4:3) and became the father of all who are justified by faith (Rom. 4:11-12).
Abraham, the father of faith, believed the God who gives life to the dead and calls the things not being as being (Rom. 4:17). Being about a hundred years of age, he considered himself and his wife old and unable to beget children; yet he was not weakened in faith, but was fully persuaded that God could give him a seed (Rom. 4:19, 21). Wherefore also there was born of him, as of one who had become dead, even as the stars of heaven in multitude, and as the sand by the seashore innumerable (Heb. 11:12). This was Abraham’s believing that God is able to call the things not being as being.
After Abraham received a son, Isaac, from the God who calls things not being as being, he was tested by God, who told Him to offer up his only begotten son to Him as a burnt offering (Gen. 22:2). He obeyed and offered up Isaac (Gen. 22:9-10), believing that God was able to raise him from among the dead, whence he also received him back in a figure (Heb. 11:19). This was Abraham’s believing that God is able to give life to the dead. Thus, he, as the father of faith, took the way of faith, and the life he lived was the life of faith. By faith he lived as a sojourner in the land, always pitching a tent and building an altar and calling on the name of Jehovah (Gen. 12:7-8; 13:3-4, 18). His building an altar meant that he offered everything to God that he might have fellowship with God, worship God, and serve God. His pitching a tent indicated that he did not belong to this world; rather, he testified to the people who had built a city and a tower to declare their own name that his living was for God and that he was only a stranger and a sojourner on the earth. He waited for the city which has the foundations (Heb. 11:10), that is, the New Jerusalem. Hence, his tent was a miniature of the New Jerusalem. As he lived in that tent, he was living in a miniature of the New Jerusalem. His tent became the place where he had fellowship with God (cf. Gen. 18). Thus, by faith he built an altar and pitched a tent, and walked and lived before God.