Separations

Text: Genesis 13:6-13

Series: Restoration Sermons

Date:

Speaker: Ed Rangel

Location: Waupaca Church of Christ

Bible Version: NASB 1995

Sermon Type: Expository

Learning Objectives

By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:

1. Explain the difference between "two" and a "pair" — what makes the difference between proximity and affinity.
2. Name at least four of the seven kinds of separation identified in this sermon and give one example of each.
3. Explain what "drifting apart" means in three distinct contexts: friendships, families, and the individual's relationship with God.
4. State from I Pet. 2:9 and Rom. 8:28 what it means that the church is "sanctified" and "called out," and explain why the Christian cannot finally be separated from Christ.
5. Explain what John the Baptist preached regarding eternal separation and what the two final destinies are at the judgment (Matt. 25:32-46).

Thesis

Separation is the governing experience of fallen human existence. It begins with the separation of man from God in the garden and ends at the judgment with the ultimate, eternal separation of the righteous and the wicked. Between those two poles, every form of separation — social, moral, intellectual, relational, final — is a variation on the first. The sermon's purpose is to make every separation the hearer has already experienced a teacher about the one separation that must at all costs be avoided.

Burden

There is a difference between "two" and a "pair." Two foxes in a box have proximity but not affinity — they are two, not a pair. David and Jonathan were a pair — there was an affinity between them that turned proximity into unity. The burden is to ask which the hearer is: are they and God merely two, or are they a pair? Proximity to God — attendance, familiarity with his word, life in a congregation — is not the same as the bond that makes separation impossible.

Introduction

"And the land could not sustain them while dwelling together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to remain together. And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock... So Abram said to Lot, 'Please let there be no strife between you and me, nor between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are brothers. Is not the whole land before you?... If to the left, then I will go to the right.' Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the valley of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere... So Lot chose for himself all the valley of the Jordan... Thus they separated from each other... Now the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the Lord" (Gen. 13:6-13).

Abram and Lot were together; then they were apart. The mechanism was practical — the land could not sustain them — but the direction of the separation was determined by Lot's choice: toward the well-watered plain, toward Sodom, toward what his eyes saw without his eyes examining what lay behind the surface of the choice. The physical separation of Genesis 13 presages every other separation in the story that follows.

I. Relations

The fundamental distinction is between "two" and a "pair."

Two foxes in a box are two — they share space but have no bond; their proximity is incidental. A fox and a goose in a box are not a pair either, but for a different reason: they are together, but one is going to eat the other. Proximity plus opposition is not relation.

David and Jonathan were a pair. "The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself" (I Sam. 18:1). The knitting of souls — the bond that makes separation impossible without tearing — is what distinguishes a pair from two.

The question the introduction raises is whether the person sitting in this room is merely near God or actually bonded to God. The person who is near God without the bond is vulnerable to every wind that blows — including the sight of a well-watered plain.

II. Kinds of Separation

Seven kinds of separation run through human experience.

Distance. The simplest kind: people who were near are now geographically far. Abram and Lot were together; now they are in different territories. The distance may be physical without being relational — letters, memory, the ongoing affection that survives miles — but the physical dimension of separation is real and not to be minimized. Distance makes the ongoing work of relationship harder.

Social separation. People who share the same space but no longer share the same world. The social circles have diverged; the connections are surface; the conversations are polite but not real. Two people who were once genuinely present to each other are now, though seated across the same table, worlds apart.

Intellectual separation. People who can no longer talk about what matters most. The intellectual gap has widened until the shared vocabulary no longer exists. The person who has grown intellectually in one direction and the person who has remained where they were, or grown in another direction, find that their minds no longer meet on the subjects that once brought them together. This is common between parents and children, between old friends whose lives have taken them through different formative experiences.

Moral separation. The gap produced when one person's standards have moved. The friend who found that the circle's habits were no longer possible for them and stepped back; the family member who could not continue in the direction the family was moving. Moral separation is often the most painful of all, because it is not attributed to circumstance but to choice — the choice to be different, to hold to something that the other person has abandoned or never held.

Separation from sins. The deliberate separation that is required by holiness: the leaving of places, habits, companions, and patterns that are incompatible with a life consecrated to God. This is not separation as loss — it is separation as liberation. The person who leaves what was destroying them has made the most important geographical move of their life. "Come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord" (II Cor. 6:17).

Separation by death. The separation that no human effort can close. The person who was present at every gathering, whose voice was part of every conversation, whose absence reshapes every room they once occupied. Death separates definitively. The ache of it is the ache of all separation — pushed to its absolute limit.

Separation from God. This is the seventh and most terrible kind: "having no hope and without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12). The verse describes the condition of the Gentiles before the gospel — without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise. The condition of being separated from God is not merely a theological category; it is the condition of being without the only resource that addresses every other separation, without hope in the world because the source of all hope has been excluded.

III. Drifting Apart

Separation rarely happens in a single decisive moment. More often it happens through the accumulation of small movements away from each other.

Friends drift apart. The friendship that was vital in one season thins as lives diverge. The distance begins small — a missed conversation, a changed schedule, a context that no longer provides the proximity that the friendship depended on. Each small gap is easy to close; together, over time, they become a distance too large to bridge. The Jacob-Esau story is the type: brothers who grew up together, whose lives diverged in small ways (one became a hunter, one a keeper of tents), until the small divergences became a chasm (Gen. 25:27-34; 27).

Families drift apart. The mechanism is the same as with friends, but the stakes are higher because the bond was presumed to be stronger. The family that attends the same events, sits at the same table, occupies the same house, while the actual relationship between the members thins to formality — proximity without affinity. The drift is possible inside the same household; physical nearness provides no protection against relational separation.

Drifting from God (Heb. 2:1-4). "For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it." The image is nautical: a boat not anchored, subject to the current, which carries it away from where it should be through no single decisive action but through the accumulated effect of inattention. The person who has drifted from God did not, in most cases, choose to leave; they chose, repeatedly, not to pay attention — and the current did the rest.

The church members who have drifted (Heb. 2:3): "how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" The neglect is not active rejection; it is the failure to attend, to hold, to anchor. The drift is the outcome of neglect rather than of decisive apostasy.

IV. The Church

The church is defined by its separation — it is the people called out.

Sanctified — set apart (I Pet. 2:9: "you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession"). The four descriptions are all descriptions of separation: chosen (selected out of the whole), royal priesthood (set apart for priestly function), holy nation (consecrated to a different standard than the surrounding nations), God's own possession (claimed by God for his own).

Called out — ekklēsia: the assembly of the called-out ones. The word itself is a word about separation. The church is not a voluntary association of people who share similar values; it is a body of people who have been called out of one existence and into another.

Holy nation — the citizenship that redefines all other citizenships. The person who belongs to the holy nation has a primary identity that supersedes national, ethnic, and cultural identity. They are, in Paul's terms, "citizens of heaven" (Phil. 3:20), for whom the earthly residence is temporary.

Cannot be separated from Christ (Rom. 8:28-39). Paul's great catalog of would-be separators — tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword — ends with the declaration that none of them separates the person in Christ from the love of God. Not angels, not principalities, not things present, not things to come, not powers, not height, not depth, not any other created thing. The person who has entered Christ through the new birth has entered the one relationship in all human experience that the forces of separation cannot finally break.

V. An Eternal Separation

The sermon's final movement is the most solemn.

John the Baptist preached it (Matt. 3:12). "His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." The separation John proclaimed was not the separation of nations or families or friends — it was the separation of the righteous and the wicked, the wheat and the chaff, the acceptable and the unacceptable. The instrument is the Lord himself; the sorting is total; the fire is unquenchable. The separation is final.

The judgment (Matt. 25:32). "All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats." The image of the shepherd is familiar and domestic, which is part of its force: the activity of sorting is ordinary for a shepherd. The Lord performs it at the end of history with the same matter-of-fact decisiveness. The gathering is universal; the separation is complete; no one remains in an undecided category.

Two destinies (Matt. 25:46). "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." The two destinies are described in parallel: both are eternal; both are introduced by the same "go away into"; both are permanent. The eternal life of the righteous and the eternal punishment of the wicked are grammatically and structurally parallel. If one is unending, so is the other. The text does not permit the annihilation of one category to soften the permanence of the other.

The eternal separation is the sermon's point of arrival — the place to which every other kind of separation has been pointing. The distance between Abram and Lot in Genesis 13, the drift of friends and families, the hardening of Esau, the estrangement of the Gentiles from the covenants of promise — all of these are rehearsals for the final separation, to which every person in the room is moving. The only relationship that cannot be separated — the relationship with Christ — is the only preparation for the day when every other separation becomes permanent.

Application

Ask the question honestly: are you a pair with God, or merely two?

The drift is the danger. The person who has drifted away from God did not make a decisive choice to leave; they made a series of small choices not to hold on. The antidote is the same: not a single decisive return but the accumulation of small choices to pay attention, to hold, to anchor.

Name the separation that most describes your condition. Not the social separation, not the intellectual separation, not the distance from friends — though all of these are real. The separation from God (Eph. 2:12) is the one that cannot wait.

And note what cannot separate the person who is in Christ (Rom. 8:39). The list is comprehensive. If it is not on the list, it cannot do it. The person inside that relationship is in the one place in all human experience where separation is ultimately impossible.

Conclusion

Abram and Lot looked at the same land and made different choices. Lot saw the well-watered plain and chose it. The text adds, with economy: "the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the Lord" (Gen. 13:13). Lot separated toward Sodom. The well-watered plain led there. The choice of a geographical direction was also a choice of a moral direction — and of a relational direction, away from Abram and toward the people of the valley.

Every separation is a choice of direction. The person who drifts from God is drifting toward something else. The question is not merely what they are drifting away from but what they are drifting toward.

Invitation

There is one separation that the gospel prevents and one that it promises. It prevents the eternal separation — the one announced by John the Baptist and executed at the judgment — for those who come to Christ. It promises the separation from sins — the "called out" existence of the ekklēsia — for those who obey.

Believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Repent. Confess his name. Be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). And be numbered among those who cannot be separated — not by tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, angels, principalities, height, depth, or any other created thing (Rom. 8:35-39).

Word Study

Scripture Interlock Table

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Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 144. Primary text: Gen. 13:6-13 (stated by Boles). OCR corrections: "sepa~ation" → "separation"; "I Sam, I8" → "I Sam. 18"; "Heb, 2:1" → "Heb. 2:1." Doctrinal audit: the eternal separation developed from Matt. 25:32, 46 without softening — both destinies treated as parallel and permanent, the same Greek grammatical structure applying to both "eternal punishment" and "eternal life"; the church as ekklēsia (called-out body) developed without reducing it to mere voluntarism; the unbreakable bond of Rom. 8:38-39 affirmed without Calvinist "once saved always saved" — the list is of external forces, not of the believer's own choices to drift or abandon; Heb. 2:1 used as the specific warning against drift, consistent with the text's implication that the Christian can neglect and lose what they have; invitation retains full obedient response (Acts 2:38).