Father Abraham

The Trouble with Children’s Stories

I remember when I was a child the many times I would go to Vacation Bible School. Now I have to admit that when I was younger I really didn’t like children’s Sunday School. I was an early reader and when I was seven or eight years old I simply did not enjoy going to those classes with the little crafts and the snack. Well, the snack part was OK, I guess, but the little story didn’t do it for me.

You see, I had already been reading my Bible that the church gave me. I knew that things were not always as they appeared in children’s stories, right? We tell our children the stories of our faith, we hope at least, to be a preparatory study to allow them to have the “hooks” to hang their Bible knowledge on when they get older. We tell them of Daniel and his three friends. We tell them of Noah and the Ark. David and Goliath becomes a hero story of epic proportions in the mind of a child.

But what happens later when that child goes to the Bible itself and sees that things aren’t quite so clear? What happens when the hero David is found to have committed murder to cover up the fact that he forcibly seduced the wife of one of his most powerful military men? What happens when the children discover the massive destruction and death that comes along with Noah and the Arky, Arky?

Some children can’t shake this feeling. Some feel that they have been betrayed a little. Still others feel like they don’t know the Bible at all. And part of the problem with much of our Bible knowledge is the way that we have been taught the Bible, myself included until I got to Bible College and Seminary.

What we often do is teach these isolated stories of the Bible. We teach about Adam and Eve, Jonah and the Big Fish, Elijah and the prophets of Baal as discrete stories. But we never try to connect the dots between this individual narratives. We take each story as it comes and never get to put it into the bigger picture which is the unified story of the Bible itself. That’s partly why I felt led to preach this sermon series.

But there is something else we do to the Bible as well, and specifically something we do to the characters in the Bible. Unfortunately, many of us have not move beyond the children’s Sunday School view of the characters in the Bible. We are surrounded by a culture in which people are either heroes or villains. And in Hollywood and in the pages of our books, it is clear who is who. Captain America is the good guy and Thanos is the bad guy. James Bond is the good guy and Goldfinger is the bad guy. You get the picture. And then we import this simplistic hero-villain dichotomy onto the Bible, right? Moses is the good guy and Pharaoh is the bad guy. David is the good guy and Goliath the bad guy.

But this view of the Bible fails to deal with one main fact: and that fact is that the Bible is not a litany of saints but rather the tale of the redemption of sinners from the effects of the Fall. All of the human characters of the Bible are just like you and me. They have their ups and downs. They want to do the right thing but sometimes circumstances or predilections leave them wanting in terms of character or behavior.

And what do we lose when we make out the characters of the Bible to be nothing but heroes? I believe that we lose a great deal. We lose the moral example of repentance and turning towards God that many of these characters demonstrate. Part of the beauty of David’s story is how flawed a character he really is. His story of the fall from grace and the turning back towards God again and again is a model of how God’s relentless love won’t let us go. But we lose that if we gloss over the hard parts of the story—those parts that aren’t safe for children or that just make us uncomfortable.

Because folks, the Bible is not a book that is always going to make us comfortable. In fact, sometimes the more uncomfortable a story of the Bible makes us, the better. It means that the Bible has our attention. And only when we are awoken out of our slumber with something that piques our interest or even prompts our disgust are we able to take note and learn. If we approach a story thinking we know what’s going to happen it’s so easy to go on autopilot and pass over the parts of the story that might have something to say to our particular time and place and unique situation.

Father Abraham

And I assert that one of the characters we would do well to pause and reread in the light of the discussion we just had is the founding patriarch of the nation of Israel, Father Abraham.

We all know the little ditty right? Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had Father Abraham?

But did Father Abraham actually have many sons? In a literal and spiritual sense we can say, “absolutely.” Abraham is the source of the family line for the nation that will become Israel. They trace their line of descent from Abraham to his son Isaac to his son Jacob whose name gets changed to Israel after wrestling with God in a dream. All well and good.

But Abraham has another son though too, right? Ishmael. And that story is not one we tell to children is it? Sure, we talk about Abraham’s faith and how God credited it to him as righteousness. And in the Protestant tradition this has become a key pillar in our doctrine of justification by faith alone apart from works.

But again, these Bible characters are complex. They have ups and downs. They don’t exist merely to be pillars to be emulated or isolated verses from which to draw our pet doctrines from.

Instead, when we take a look at Bible characters and their place in God’s great story of the Bible, we need to take a “warts and all” view of the characters. And right away we need to recognize that not even Father Abraham was perfect.

Where was Abraham From?

But before we get into the juicy details of Abraham’s life it would benefit us to understand where he comes from and how that fits into our story we’ve been telling thus far in the sermon series.

Remember that the Bible begins with the grand story of the Creation in which God builds a Temple called the Universe in which to dwell. He creates a form and then fills it with good things. Then he finally places his own image in the temple in the form of humanity.

Then in the second story of creation, God creates two unique individuals, Adam and Eve, and places them in the Holy of Holies of the Temple he created, the Garden of Eden. They were to guard and till that garden. But because they disobeyed God’s command and listened to the Serpent, they were placed in exile East of Eden.

And from Adam and Eve came Cain and Abel and Seth. Can kills Abel and is banished himself. He finds a wife and founds a city. And from there humanity enters a downward spiral as sin increases in the world. This reaches a head at the Tower of Babel where people seek to bring God back down to earth by building a tower to reach the heavens.

From here, God confuses the language and scatters the people to the four winds. And from these people at Babel come the nations known at the time of the writing of the Old Testament. And then, right after the Babel incident, still in chapter 11 of Genesis is this odd genealogy of a man called Terah.

Who was Terah? well, we really don’t know much about him except where he came from and who his children were. Terah had three sons including Nahor, Haran, and a man by the name of Abram. And intriguingly we know where they were born and raised, in Ur of the Chaldeans.

Where is this place? Well, it is not too far from the plains of Shinar, the place of the Tower of Babel. And it was a magnificent city. It was one of the main hubs of culture in the ancient world. Think of a city like London, Los Angeles, or New York today and you’d get the modern equivalent of just how influential Ur was in those days.

And so when we think of Abram we shouldn’t think of some country bumpkin, but rather a sophisticated city dweller who was exposed to the finer things in life and the many ideas and religious beliefs of that era. In short, Abram, before he met God was a pagan. He worshipped many gods and perhaps participated in religious rituals you and I might find detestable.

The Call of Abram

But that changes little by little. First, Terah, Abram’s father is called to leave Ur and head towards Canaan land. I thought it was Abram who received that call? Well, the Bible doesn’t tell us that Terah was called, but simply that he desired to go there. But along the way he found that the city of Haran was good enough and they stayed there.

But in Haran, Abram was doing what he always did, helping his father manage the family property. We should not think of Abram as some poor wanderer. We should think of his upbringing as pretty well-off financially and pretty sophisticated in terms of culture. But suddenly, out of the blue, Abram hears a voice.

We’re not quite sure how God speaks to Abram. Is it an audible voice? Is it a dream? Scripture doesn’t say other than this God figure calls out to Abram and asks him to go far away from his own comfort zone, to leave his family, his culture, and his land and to go to a place unknown to him.

And amazingly, Abram agrees. Abram goes away from all that he knew. He abandoned his culture, his family, and his homeland to go to a place unknown to him. A place where people lived differently, spoke differently, and believed differently.

And for this we should applaud Abram. This was a good thing. He believed God’s promises and took a step of faith. So far so good with Father Abram. He’s off to a great start, right? God speaks and Abram obeys

But if we stop at that point we miss something about Abram’s character. We miss the fact that he fears people in power. Look at what happens next. There was a famine in Canaan at some point during Abram and Sarai’s wanderings in the desert. And so Abram travels to Egypt to find food, which is a totally reasonable thing to do.

But then he meets Pharaoh. And he gives away his wife to Pharaoh basically lying to him that she is only his sister. And what’s more, he forces Sarai to lie to Pharaoh to protect him and all he had. You see, Abram was a rich man and he was worried about losing what he had to a man of power or being used as a threat. So he uses his own wife as a pawn to secure Pharaoh’s goodwill.

But God was not going to stand for this. God was not going to stand for Abram in essence pimping out his wife to protect himself and get wealthy. Instead, God strikes Pharaoh’s house with plagues so that the situation will be reversed before Sarai gets taken advantage of.

You may think I’m being harsh on Abram by in essence calling him a pimp. But what else do you call a man who basically sells a woman for financial gain? Because that’s precisely what Abram does.

Flawed But Faithful

You might think God would be done at this point and try again. But God is persistent and works even with our flaws. So God makes a sacred promise to Abram that he should have no worries about the fact that Sarai cannot have children. It will be that God will provide a son for Abram and Sarai miraculously.

But Abram and Sarai have other ideas. Sarai gives Hagar her slave woman to Abram so that together they might raise up a son for Sarai. And Ishmael is born. But Sarai treats her harshly, Hagar gets haughty, and family drama ensues to the point that Hagar and Ishmael are banished and it takes divine intervention for them to be saved.

But even after this attempted short-circuiting of God’s promises, God remains faithful. And through it all, Abram’s character develops. His faith and trust in God build as he sees God in the everyday of life. He begins to really trust the promise of a son to come.

And eventually that son comes. Three divine visitors come in Genesis 18 and tell Abram that this time next year Sarah will give birth to a child. She laughs but Abram trusts.

And right on cue, the next year a son is born to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, the child whose name means laughter enters the world.

But immediately, God puts Abraham to the test in one of the most uncomfortable passages of Scripture. God asks Abraham to place everything he holds dear on the altar—he asks him to put his son, his only son, on the altar. And Abraham does.

The Man of Faith and the People of Faith

And so Abraham proved himself to be a man of faith. Faith even to the point that he would trust God with that he wanted most in the world, an heir and a legacy.

But even then, we see that in the story of Abraham there is faith but also flaws. Sinner and Saint together. I think this is instructive for us.

First, God can use anyone, right? God chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. God uses flawed people to accomplish God’s purposes.

But secondly, God can use us, warts and all. Our faith may start out weak or even non-existent, but God is patient and can use us in amazing ways.

Pointing Forward

But most importantly, Abraham becomes a model for the faith of God’s people. Both in Romans and Galatians, Abraham is placed as the pillar of faith for Christians to emulate. And in Hebrews, both Abraham and Sarah are called out for mention. They both had to trust in God for this all to work.

And what’s more, look at the so-called sacrifice of Isaac. Doesn’t that look awfully familiar? A father called to give up his one and only son?

Yes, of course, it points forward to the amazing events of Jesus’ life culminating in the events at Calvary.

But now we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves. This week we’ve covered the founder of God’s special people. Like a new Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah are called to start over with the People of God in the Place God has chosen. Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac are in the promised land.

Next we’ll see how God works even through slavery to bring about God’s people as we look to the story of Joseph and the Exodus.