Genesis 12:1-20

We face many ups and downs in life in general as well as in our spiritual walk.  There are times when things are going our way and times were it seems like all is going wrong.  There are times in our walk with God that we feel so close to Him and experience great blessing from Him.  However at times we feel like we are in a holding pattern just going through the motions of life without really seeing real progress.  Then there are times when we simply give in to the desires of our flesh and we walk in sin.  It is clear that Abraham experienced all of these stages in his life and walk with God.

ABRAHAM’S PROMISE: God called Abraham and set him apart from all the men of the earth.  We do not have any indication that Abraham was a particularly righteous man like Noah.  It simply appears that God decided to reveal Himself to Abraham and to give him promises that God determined to fulfill.  The promise included personal blessings, national blessing and universal blessings.  God promised that Abraham would be prosperous, a great man and the father of nations.  God promised to bless the nation that would descend from Abraham and to protect them by blessing the nations who blessed Israel and cursing the nations that cursed Israel.  Finally he promised to bless all the nations of the world through Abraham.  We see that God did make Abraham a great man.  We have also seen that Israel has experienced abundant blessing in its history and the nations who bless and protect Israel end up being blessed while the nations that rise up to hurt Israel have either been destroyed or suffered greatly.  However, the greatest blessing has been that Christ came to the world through Abraham and through Christ every nation of the world has been blessed with the opportunity for eternal salvation.  It is a wonderful thing to experience the blessings of the promises of God.

ABRAHAM’S PILGRIMAGE: It seems that God called Abraham in Ur, but that Abraham did not obey God fully and took his father with him.  God then made Abraham wait in Haran for Terah to die before God allowed Abraham to go into Canaan.  Once Abraham got into Canaan, God reaffirmed His promise of blessing and told him that the land in which he was traveling would one day belong to his descendants.  However, Abraham was a nomad who really did not have any land of his own he traveled from place to place with his family and numerous possessions.  It is interesting and important to note that the first thing Abraham did was build an altar in every new place that he went.  Abraham called on the name of the Lord.  Sometimes one of the hardest things to do in life is wait.  God had promised great blessings and a land to call his own, but… not yet.  We too have amazing promises from God about our future in this world.  However, we must be patient.  The return of Christ will bring all of God’s promises to pass but until then we must wait.  As we wait we must be faithful to call on the name of the Lord and worship should be our top priority.

ABRAHAM’S PERVERSION: There was a severe famine in the land of Canaan so Abraham left the land that was promised to him and went down to Egypt where he could find food.  When he arrived he feared that the Pharaoh in Egypt would kill him to be able to take his wife because she was very beautiful.  In order to protect himself, he asks Sarah to tell a half lie that she was his sister.  This is a half lie because she was his half sister.  However, the implications of this lie reveal a glaring weakness in the life of Abraham.  She was his wife and he was willing to give her to Pharaoh in order to protect his own life.  Abraham was a coward who had neglected to build an altar in Egypt and had forgotten to call on the name of the Lord.  It is very likely that God did not want Abraham to be in Egypt in the first place.  Abraham’s fear and lack of faith landed him in a situation where he had given his wife to another man and was now alone in a strange land far from the blessing God had promised him.  Despite Abraham’s lack of faith, God remained faithful and hit the house of Pharaoh with a plague and revealed that it was because of Sarah.  Abraham now finds himself being rebuked by a pagan king.  We can marvel at Abraham’s failures, but the reality is that we too are often controlled by our fears and fail to trust God in the midst of adverse circumstances.  It is easy to call on God and worship him when we can see His promises being worked out in our lives.  However, our true faith is really only revealed and strengthened in the midst of famine and difficult circumstances.  We must learn to face our fears and foes with faith.