This is the great statement of faith about the patriarch
concerning God’s promise to him. The Lord had just told Abraham that he would
eventually have so many descendants that the number of them could be compared
with the quantity of stars in the sky.
Part of the reason that this represented such great faith on
the part of Abraham was that God made this promise when Abraham and his wife
Sarah were childless and already very old—long past the normal age of
child-bearing. Yet we read that despite these present realities, Abraham chose
to believe God. So impactful is this statement, it is quoted by both Paul and
James in the New Testament.
It is indeed a profound expression of faith, but as great as
it is, it is also important to see that it is not an unshakable statement. It
was not long after we read about Abraham’s great belief in God’s word that we
see that a resolute statement of faith does not ensure that it cannot falter.
In the following chapter of the account, in Genesis 16, we
read this: “After he had lived in Canaan for ten years, his wife Sarai took her
Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to Abram to be his wife. And he slept
with Hagar, and she conceived.” (1:1-4 BSB).
Notice that the text places this incident as occurring after
Abraham had lived in Canaan ten years. When the aforementioned statement of
faith was made about Abraham, he had already lived in Canaan a number of years,
so this stumbling in his faith could not have happened very many months or
years after his original expression of confidence in the promise of God.
How was it that the great faith that was expressed could so
soon afterward stumble?
Does God Fulfill His Promise Illicitly?
Abraham’s life is one of the finest examples of anyone’s
faith that we have in the Bible. In fact, Paul calls him “The father of all who
believe—all who have faith” (see Romans 4:11). Given this strong assessment of
his faith, we would not expect Abraham to resort to adultery in an attempt to
accomplish the promise of God with his own efforts. But this was not the first
time that he had hindered God in fulfilling his promise.
Some weeks ago I spoke of the time in the life of Abraham
when he took his wife to sojourn in Egypt. Before they arrived in that place,
Abraham told Sarah his wife that because of her great beauty, he was afraid
that he would be killed so that Sarah could be given to the Pharaoh. He
convinced her that in order to save his own life, she should tell everyone that
she was the sister of Abraham, and not his wife.
Because of this lie and because Sarah was indeed a very beautiful woman, she was given to Pharaoh. We are not told how long she was with the Pharaoh, but it certainly was long enough that should Sarah have born a child in the months to come, even after they had left Egypt, the baby would have been considered the child of the Pharaoh.
We are not told Abraham’s mind
in this entire affair, but I have wondered that since Sarah had been barren all
the years of her marriage with Abraham, if he thought that if a pregnancy were
to come from her time with Pharaoh, he would leave Egypt and begin building the
great nation of descendants beginning with that child.
I have wondered this, because after his time in Egypt and
after Abraham returned to the land where God had sent him, he was bemoaning the
fact that he and Sarah had remained childless. As Abraham made this complaint
to God, the patriarch said that as far as he could tell, it would not be any
son of his that would be his eventual heir, but servant of his household, one
Eliezer of Damascus.
God’s response to this was that Eliezer would not be
Abraham’s heir, but “one who comes from your own body.”
It seems an unusual way to put it, and it seems that God was
making very clear to Abraham, that despite any feelings of inability to
impregnate his wife that the patriarch may have been having, his heir would indeed
be his own child. His heir would not be Eliezer or any servant, or the child of
the Pharaoh, but one that was a direct descendant of Abraham himself.
It was to this statement of God that Abraham expressed
belief, and this belief was counted to him as righteousness. It should have
settled it for Abraham, should it have not?
As we saw, it did not. We now see that Sarah also begins to
have doubts about God’s ability to fulfill his promise. Perhaps she was the
reason that they had not able to bear children. Perhaps that was why, after
many years of marriage, they still had no child.
A Little Help from another Egyptian
Sarah had been given a number of gifts by Pharaoh when she
and Abraham were in Egypt, among them a female maidservant, a young lady by the
name of Hagar. It was now Sarah who decided that she must help God in
fulfilling his promise of a child.
One day she timidly approached her husband and said to him,
“The Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Please go to my maidservant;
perhaps I can build a family by her.”
There must have been some discussion about this between the
man and his wife, but we are told of none. We only read that “Abram listened to
the voice of Sarai, so his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave
her to Abram to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.”
When Hagar realized that she indeed was pregnant, she began
to despise her mistress Sarah. This response of haughtiness from her servant was
not one that Sarah expected, nor of course did she like it. “Hagar treats me
with contempt!” Sarah said to Abraham.
After that Sarah began to treat her maidservant so harshly
that finally Hagar could take no more and fled into the wilderness. It was
there sitting by a spring alongside the road that she was found by an angel of
the Lord. The angel convinced her to return to Sarah. The angel also told her
that she was to bear a son whom she was to name “Ishmael.” This son, the angel
told her would be “a wild donkey of a man, and his hand will be against
everyone, and everyone’s hand against him.
This child, despite the fact that he was the child of
Abraham and “came from his own body,” would not be the fulfillment of God’s
plan. This child Ishmael was merely the attempt of Sarah and Abraham to fulfill
God’s plan by their own efforts.
Abraham was still actually named “Abram.” The name means
“exalted father.” Abram may now have finally been a father, but not the father
of the child of promise. Abram was eighty-six years old at the time.
Thirteen Years of Silence and a New Name
Thirteen years passed by. Thirteen years in which, as far as the Biblical record is concerned, there was complete silence from God. There were no words of confirmation of the covenant from God, no instructions on where to go or to live. As far as we are told, God spoke nothing to Abram during these thirteen years. Then (and it seems quite suddenly), Abram receives word:
When Abram was
ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty.
Walk before Me and be blameless. I will establish My covenant between Me and
you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.”
Then Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, “As for Me, this is My covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram, but your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.
The name change is significant, because it actually does mean “father of many nations.” God gave him this name as a confirmation of the promise that he was now about to speak. He continues:
I will make you
exceedingly fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will descend from
you.
I will establish My
covenant as an everlasting covenant between Me and you and your descendants
after you, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
And to you and your descendants I will give the land where you are residing—all the land of Canaan—as an eternal possession; and I will be their God.” (Genesis 17:1-8 BSB)
The Promise Repeated
It was a confirmation of God’s original promise to Abraham,
all the way back to when he was still in Haran and when God first specifically
called him to go to a new land. It is at that time that God said to Abraham, “I
will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name
great, so that you will be a blessing…and all the families of the earth will be
blessed through you” (Genesis 12:1-3).
It was a confirmation of the promise that God again
mentioned to Abraham when he entered the land. At that time, God said to him, “I
will give this land to your offspring” (Genesis 12:7).
God again speaks of his promise to Abraham of descendants
after Abraham’s nephew Lot had separated from him. At that time God spoke to
Abraham, saying, “Now lift up your eyes from the place where you are, and look
to the north and south and east and west, for all the land that you see, I will
give to you and your offspring forever” (Genesis 13:14-15).
The again God confirms this promise after Abraham had
returned from rescuing his nephew in the battle of the kings and the visit by
Melchizedek. The Lord had Abraham look into the night sky, and then said to
him, “Now look to the heavens and count the stars, if you are able.” Then He
told him, “So shall your offspring be” (Genesis 15:5). It was at this
confirmation of the promise when the presence God appeared in a smoking and
flaming firepot as he passed alone in the midst of the halved bodies of the
sacrificed animals.
And now again, at Abraham’s age on ninety-nine, God again
speaks: “I will make you exceedingly fruitful; I will make nations of you, and
kings will descend from you.”
No Longer a “One Sided” Covenant
But this time, something had changed. The covenant no longer
was an oath that depended upon God’s actions only. For the first time in all of
these repetitions and confirmations of the promise, God now requires something
of Abraham to keep the covenant…and not only of Abraham, but of all his
promised descendants. This now was a “two party” agreement, with both sides
bound by an oath.
God tells Abraham, “This is My covenant with you and your
descendants after you, which you are to keep: Every male among you must be
circumcised. You are to circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and this will be
a sign of the covenant between Me and you” (Genesis 17:10-11 BSB).
The act of circumcision is a delicate subject and one that
is not easily discussed in our present-day culture. However, there are two
points that I think important to draw out by this act that God was requiring of
Abraham and all the males of his household. The first is that this was now a
condition that was placed upon Abraham. It was a requirement, and if he should
not follow these instructions, it would render the covenant null and void. God
would no longer be bound to the agreement.
The second point about the act of circumcision is that it
vividly illustrates the source of power in the fulfillment of the promise to
produce a great nation. It goes right to the matter of how this promise is to
be fulfilled. As we have seen, Abraham twice before had attempted to fulfill
this promise by his own efforts. Even the great faith of Abraham stumbled in
his confidence that the Lord could fulfill the promise of a son. Abraham and
Sarah had been married many years, and they still remained childless.
The circumcision of Abraham perhaps had more than one
meaning, but as much as any other significance, the act of putting a knife
right to child-producing aspect of the body of Abraham was a statement that the
promise of a child would not come through Abraham’s own viability, but through
a miraculous act by God.
God also gave Abraham’s wife a new name at this time. She
was previously known as Sarai, which means “my princess.” To mark the
significance of the covenant, God now says that she should be known by the name
“Sarah,” which has much the same meaning as Sarai, but in some ways has a
broader significance since, as God said, “she will be the mother of nations;
kings of peoples will descend from her.”
They Called Him “Laughter”
At these words of God about the couple having a child at
their very advanced ages, Abraham fell facedown, just as he had done when God
had given him the name of “Abraham.” However, this time as he was lying
facedown before the Lord, we are told that Abraham laughed to himself and
thought inwardly, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can
Sarah give birth at the age of ninety?”
Abraham, still stumbling in his faith, thought he would give
God a reasonable alternative. He said to God, “O that Ishmael might live under
Your blessing!”
God would not have it. “Your wife Sarah will indeed bear you
a son, and you are to name him Isaac…I will establish My covenant with Isaac,
whom Sarah will bear to you at this time next year” (Genesis 17:19, 21 BSB).
The name “Isaac” is also significant, since it means
“laughter,” making reference to the fact that Abraham laughed at the thought of
he and Sarah having a child at such an old age. Sarah herself, when she heard
the news some days later, also laughed at the idea (Genesis 18:9-15).
Say what we will about Abraham stumbling in his faith, in
the end, he obeyed. At ninety-nine years, he took a knife and was circumcised,
along with Ishmael, his son by Hagar, and all the male servants of his
household, which we know from the story of the war of the kings, was a
significant number.
Abraham Stumbles Again
Abraham, the man we know of one of great faith, had a
journey of faith that was far from perfect. In fact, in reading what next
happened in the life of the patriarch after all of the confirmations by God, we
might shake our heads in disbelief, and wonder why God continued with him. I
cannot think of a single reason except to say that God always fulfills his
covenant.
Abraham may have fulfilled his obligations of the covenant
that he had with God—all the males of his household had been circumcised.
Nevertheless, Abraham was still a long way from the completion of his journey
of faith.
It must have been mere days or a few weeks after he had
confirmed the covenant with God that Abraham leaves the area to again pitch his
nomadic tent in the Negev—the southern lands. There he was in the territory of
Abimelech, the king of Gerar.
As we read of Abraham’s actions in Gerar, they are almost
unfathomable to us now. Just as he had done in Egypt, he said of his wife Sarah,
“She is my sister.”
So again, just as the Pharaoh of Egypt had done, Abimelech
king of Gerar also had Sarah brought to him. This time, however, God came to
Abimelech in a dream and told him, “You are as good as dead because of the
woman you have taken, for she is a married woman.”
Abimelech had this dream very soon after Sarah arrived at
his home, before the king had relations with her. Certainly he would have had
it been any longer. But God would not have it. There could be no question that
the child that Sarah was to bear in the coming months would be that of Abraham,
and not of some foreign king—not the Pharaoh of Egypt, and not the King of Gerar.
In the dream, Abimelech replied to the Lord, “Would you
destroy a nation even though it is innocent? Did not Abraham tell me, ‘She is
my sister’? Even she told me, ‘He is my brother.’ I have done this in the
integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands.”
God acknowledged that Abimelech had done so with a clear
conscience, and it was for that reason that God did not allow the king to sin
in this way, and as we read in the text, not even allowing him to touch her.
But then God warned him, “Return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet; he will
pray for you and you will live. But if you do not restore her, be aware that
you will surely die—you and all who belong to you.”
Understandably, Abimelech was very upset with Abraham. “What
have you done to us?” he asked him. “How have I sinned against you, that you
have brought such tremendous guilt upon me and my kingdom? You have done things
to me that should not be done. What prompted you to do such a thing?”
Abraham’s response was…well, it was spineless. Abraham said to the king, “I thought to
myself, ‘Surely there is no fear of God in this place. They will kill me on
account of my wife.’”
A Faith that Grows
Earlier in Genesis, the writer made the statement that
“Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (15:6). So
impactful was this statement that it is thrice repeated in the New Testament
(Romans 4:3; Galatians 3:6; James 2:23). But as we can see, Abraham’s was not a
faith that was mature from the very beginning. It was a faith that would
repeatedly be tested and found deficient. It was a faith that had to grow.
Were the story of Abraham to end here, we would have to say
that the events of Abraham’s life did little to demonstrate his loyalty and
faithfulness. Instead, his story only demonstrated the dependability and
faithfulness of God. Abraham’s faith stumbled time and time again, but God nevertheless
continued with him. God had made Abraham a promise, and His faithfulness does
not fail.
But the Lord was not done with building Abraham’s faith
quite yet. Abraham greatest lesson of all was still to come.
Full Disclosure
You will notice that the Bible never attempts to ignore or
to whitewash the wrong doings of the people that we are meant to emulate. The
life stories of the people may be brief, but they are truthful and candid in
their descriptions.
Abraham is one of these individuals. In the end, he is
presented to us in the Scriptures as “the man of great faith,” but as we can
see, his life was far from stellar. He was involved with schemes that we
probably find unbelievably deceptive.
Nevertheless, it is in some ways refreshing for us to know
the failures of this man of faith, because we know that our own lives are also
far from stellar. It is helpful for us to know this because we can see that
despite Abraham’s stumbling in his faith, God remained perfectly faithful
through it all, lifting Abraham when he stumbled, then confirming and
re-confirming his promise.
King David was another man of the Bible who, although God
refers to him as “a man after my own heart,”[1]
also sinned greatly. Also in David’s life, it is the faithfulness of God that
carries him, and is active in bringing his faith to maturity. David's experiences
with God enabled him to pen these words:
The steps of a man are established by the LORD, and He
delights in his way.
When he falls, he will not be hurled down, because the LORD
is the One who holds his hand. (Psalm 37:23-24 NAS)
For Those Who Have Stumbled
Does this not encourage you? We all stumble at times, but if
God is the one who is holding our hand, we can be certain that God will
continue to lead us in growth.
Another man whose life is told to us in the Bible is Paul of
Tarsus—the Apostle Paul. Neither was his earlier life one that we should wish
to emulate, in fact, he called himself the worst of all sinners.
But he said it was for that reason God showed him mercy, so
that “Christ Jesus might display His perfect patience as an example to those
who would believe in Him for eternal life” (1 Timothy 1:16 BSB).
And here is what Paul wrote, speaking from his own
experience: “[God] will sustain you to the end, so that you will be blameless
on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship
with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.” (1 Corinthians 8-9 BSB)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.