ABRAHAM, LOT, AND JOB

 In ancient cultures, human life didn’t mean anything outside of the family, tribe, city, or nation you belonged to.  Sometimes even family wasn’t enough to guarantee your safety. There were no human rights, no protections from those who held power, no worth outside of who you belonged to.  Those who were physically strong were often the rulers of tribes, and armies. There were only two classes of people at that time in our history, those who were free, and those who were slaves.  Sadly most people were slaves. Even Abraham owned slaves.  Sarah had a handmaid (a slave) who served her, and could even be instructed to sleep with her husband.  Do you think this kind of lifestyle could happen in America today?  There is no way to really calculate how many years lapsed between the flood and the birth of Abraham, but the common number is 350 years.  During that time the world didn’t improve much.  

By the time we have Abraham in the picture, we have a world that we can’t even fathom today.  To give it even more depth, let’s make it clear what the world was like at that time.  You had people like Abraham, Job, and Lot who were considered righteous men.  YET, they had handmaids and servants.  Abraham had so many servants, he could join them to a war with three other kings and win.  Maybe you aren’t seeing the power of the story, but the facts are, that people ‘owned’ other people and it was considered acceptable. Slavery isn’t acceptable to God.  Getting people to see the wickedness of slavery would take thousands of years. God’s textbook is often written over hundreds and thousands of years, and the lesson against enslaving others required a drastic course of action. You might wonder why I’m making a big deal about slavery, but I can tell you that even in its most basic expression, slavery is detestable to God.  Ancient peoples didn’t feel slavery was wrong, with many considering owning slaves to be a noble virtue.  God didn’t approve, but he wasn’t willing to start over again like He did with Noah.  He had a better plan. That plan to bring men to a higher level of understanding would require a greater sacrifice than anything men could offer.  

During the time of Abraham, Lot, and Job, we find entire cities given over to sexual debauchery. We find the rampant sexual desires so strong that the inhabitants demanded any new men to be given to them.  In other words these ancient peoples were raping each other regardless of whether they were men or women.  Mobs of sexual bullies roamed the streets at night without restraint.  Children were their main target.  They wanted ‘new’ men, which meant that they’d already molested and raped everything that was in the city.  To refuse to give in to the sexual depravity of the city was to risk your home, your family, and even your life.  Sexual liberty is just a mask for slavery, just ask any little girl in Asian street markets.  The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are an ancient example of what is beginning today. If we don’t stem the tide of this sexual liberation it will soon be a hate crime to deny someone’s sexual advances.  Crazy, you say!  Even now we are making it a hate crime to speak out against the LGBTQ agenda. Just ten years ago we were promised that legal recognition of gay marriage wouldn’t change anything in the church.  How’d that work out?

During the time of Abraham, children were also given to be used as temple prostitutes.  There was no sanctity of life!  Children were of no value to the culture of that day.  Babies were often abandoned at the doorsteps of shrines and these babies would be given up as sex slaves from infancy.  Human life held no worth.  Babies were often thrown alive over the walls of ancient cities into the smoldering trash heaps outside the city.  Is this too bleak of a picture?  Is it too dark for you?  Are you wondering why I’m even dwelling on this?  This isn’t even a hint of what was going on during this time in our history. When a culture loses the sanctity of life, when a child is nothing more than a sex toy, and we begin to allow our children to be played with in their sexual identity, we are not far away from the insanity of the ancient world.  

There is hope!  The influence of the church hasn’t been completely destroyed. There is an ancient wickedness that we haven’t seen yet, because of the Church’s influence in the world today.  Sadly, that influence is diminishing, and we are beginning to see mankind revert to the evil of the past. I am hopeful that God will intervene if we ask Him to. 

Slavery is more than one man owning another!  Slavery is the repression of free thinking, free speech, and freedom of movement. God’s plan to make slavery abhorrent would take thousands of years, and sadly turn families against each other.  Carnal nature is hard to break!  God has to first declare it wrong, then mankind has to experience firsthand why it is wrong, and then that memory becomes part of a desire to seek God’s way over the carnal nature. 

Slavery is the epitome of every evil we do to one another.  Rape, violent cruelty, torture, abuse, child abuse, and emotional abuse are all expressions of slavery.  The carnal nature finds its greatest expression in enslavement, and murder.  Wars throughout human history have all been the result of someone wishing to take what isn’t theirs through physical brutality. Power, whether physical, or mental, finds a way to express the worst of the carnal nature. 

A PERSONAL REVELATION:

As a young man in the Air Force, I was a military hawk.  I believed we had a right to enforce our form of government on other peoples and cultures. If another nation challenged us, I had a sad statement that was simply “Nuke them till they glow.”  Without even knowing it, I was exhibiting the most base aspects of the carnal nature, enforcing my will upon another.  

This carnal nature to enslave isn’t excused even if the desired result is good.  A matter of fact, I’ve found out that the carnal nature to enslave others is usually cloaked in the desire to ‘do good.’   As our current culture has shown, enslavement can be manifested as ‘political correctness,’ and  ‘controlling speech.’ These manifestations of enslavement are ancient in origin, and evidence of the fear of free societies. The mainstream media has taken the art of mental enslavement to a fine art, by declaring anyone who doesn’t agree with the progressive agenda as deplorable, uneducated, haters, and fascist. If freedom lovers don’t stand up against the move to enslave us to thought control, we will be enslaved once more to the elitist, totalitarian lifestyle of ancient cultures. Yes, free speech can be abhorrent at times, but it is still freedom. A truly free society is able to exist with dissent, different thought, and even rebellion.  How do I know this?  Because God has existed with us even in our worst expression of the carnal nature.  He could have simply spoken us out of existence and started over, but He didn’t. He could have made us automatons simply carrying out a set of programmed functions, but He allows us to be FREE.  Sadly, it was fearful Christians who began the cries for censorship in the media instead of offering up hope, and faith in God. The knife of censorship cuts both ways, and now it is cutting at religious liberty.  Christians will soon find themselves slaves to an overbearing, overreaching government intent on enslaving everyone.  

Enslavement is unique to the carnal nature.  Throughout this study you’re going to see many references to slavery because it is so endemic to the carnal nature.  God has never sought to enslave us, but to free us from the carnal nature. The carnal nature rebuffs God’s love, and despises grace.  The perfect law of love can’t be manifested outside of regenerate man.  That is why the Church was given the mandate of ‘preaching’ the gospel instead of ‘enforcing’ the gospel. There are many voices in the halls of Christianity that want to create another Christian ‘state.’  I hear them, and see their posts on social media.  This was never what Christ intended.  Yes, I believe we should prefer one another in business, in relations, and in invention. The regenerate mind is far superior to the mind controlled by the flesh, BUT that doesn’t give us the right to enslave others to our views. Abortion, sexual deviancy, and cruelty to others will always find a path to expression as long as mankind is free to think.  This is why God has never instituted a theocracy on earth. The book of Revelation shows us that when Christ returns to rule the earth, it will only take a thousand years for the carnal nature to rebel against the divine Kingdom. Please discover how Christ has to rule doing those thousand years.  History is replete with the horrors of the carnal nature. God knows that the carnal nature will pervert good into evil.  Enslavement is the definition of wickedness. Wickedness ruled mankind from Adam to Moses, until God became so frustrated with what he saw, he decided to finally declare His nature to a small group of insignificant people who’d been enslaved for hundreds of years. His hatred of slavery would finally be written in stone.