Compromise with faith never pays
Genesis 12:6-7 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
When Abraham first entered Canaan,
he settled in the sparsely populated area around Shechem, among the hills that
later became the land
of Samaria . The
Canaanites were in this land, yet God was promising to give it to Abraham and
his descendents. (Which he didn’t have yet.) It seemed unlikely. But Isaiah 55:
10 -11 says that God’s word does not
fail; it accomplishes His full purpose.
God appeared to Abraham. Abraham
believed God’s promises and was rewarded with more of God. And then Abraham
built an altar to Him. It was in response to God’s new revelation of Himself to
him.
I read a little sign someone posted
online while I was working on this lesson. It said “Man says show me and I will trust you.
God says, trust me and I will show you.”
Genesis 12:8-9 From there he went on toward the hills east of
Abraham continued to move forward.
He builds another altar. Bethel
means house of God.
Genesis 12:10 Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt
to live there for a while because the famine was severe.
Abraham faced a test here. God allowed
a famine in the land. Abraham could have decided that God didn’t care about
him: wasn’t it enough he had moved his family away from home and now this? He
could have gone back to his old life in Harran
and given up on God’s promise. But he didn’t. He didn’t go back, he decided to
wait it out elsewhere.
Christians have tests all the
time. Often the very same ones non-Christians have. Hopefully the world sees a
difference in how we handle these. Not with self-pity, but with a joyous trust
that God is going to reveal Himself in a new way in this trial and that some
great undreamed of blessing will result from it.
Genesis 12: 11-12 As he was about to enter Egypt , he said to his wife Sarai,
“I know what a beautiful woman you are. 12 When the Egyptians see you,
they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you
live.
Here though we do see a failure in
faith on Abraham’s part. There’s no record that Abraham prayed to God about
this first. He may not even have prayed about going to Egypt when the
going got tough. As a result his move led to complications and unhappiness. Out
of God’s will he realized his insecurity. Sarah, his wife was beautiful. They
would kill him to get her. Therefore he told her to lie. To say she was his
sister. (Actually she WAS his half-sister. They had the same father, but not
the same mother.) But they were hiding the fact that they were husband and
wife. And they felt fear because they didn’t trust God to take care of them.
Genesis 12: 13-20 Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”
14 When Abram came to
17 But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. 18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” 20 Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.
This shows God’s grace and mercy.
Even when we fail Him, He is faithful. Sarah was to be the mother of God’s
miraculous promised seed, Isaac, which ultimately would result in the birth of
Christ. He got her out of there. But there were consequences. Abraham was
rebuked by the Pharoah. And the riches given to Abraham and Lot in Egypt became one cause of Lot ’s
separation later from Abraham. AND Abraham and Sarah took with them a slave
girl named Hagar – and we know what kind of trouble that causes later on!
Compromise with faith never pays.
Labels: Abraham, book of Genesis, Genesis
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