The Life of Abraham: God’s Faithfulness and to Abram

Genesis 12:10-13:18 God’s Faithfulness and to Abram Introduction: As we said last week the lives of the Patriarchs are great examples for christians not only in their successes and failures but in the picture of God’s faithfulness to them amidst their ups and downs. In this passage, the first readers (Israel following Moses) would have seen how God kept his promise to Abram, in spite of all threats, and in spite of the morally dubious actions even of Abram himself. The prime importance of these chapters has to do with the promise of land and people, with Abram's vision of the promise under constant challenge. Here at the first touch of hunger, fear and riches, "the vision" was lost and the whole enterprise hazarded: it would need plagues to restore Sarai to her destiny, and deportation to get Abram back to Canaan. This morning I would like to consider God’s grace, favor and faithfulness to Abram in a time of moral failure and the response (true worship) of Abram as he’s faced with new challenges/temptations of self made prosperity and Honor. 1. When we are faithless he remains faithful. a. An essential understanding to the Christian faith. b. Abram doesn't have a whole lot of direction from the Lord, all he knows so far is that God is going to make him a great nation and that he is going to give him the land of Canaan. God has told Abram nothing of having to stay in the land, and also has not forbidden going to the land of Egypt (God would later forbid his freed people from returning to that land). c. Abram had to feel his way forward without special revelation at every step, guided like us largely by circumstances. In a famine it might seem a providence that Egypt was near by, watered by the flooding of the Nile. d. Because of the circumstance (famine) Abram travels to Egypt. But when Abram gets to Egypt he devises a plan to protect himself not trusting God's promise to bless him and make him a great nation, and of blessing those who bless him and cursing those who curse him. i. Lets give Abram a little bit of credit here, he has faithfully followed the Lord to the land of Canaan but at this time he has a lapse in faith/trust, much like many of us, the initial steps of believing in the Lord for salvation have passed and now we begin to think it is up to us to fulfill God's promises of blessing, prosperity and protection. e. Abram lies to Pharaoh and the Egyptians about Sarai being his sister, thinking that if they know that Sarai is his wife they will simply kill him and take her. By them thinking that Abram is her brother, there would be a proper proposal, and a dowry, which would leave Abram and Sarai time to "get out of Dodge". f. Abram's selfish actions imply that he thinks God is unable to protect him. Yet when the plan backfires, it is the Lord who rescues him. The plan goes awry, and Pharaoh takes Sarai to be one of his wives, and gives Abram, sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels. g. Abram is: i. Not trusting in the promises of God, by selfishly seeking to protect himself with this little arrangement him and Sarai came up with. ii. Secondly, Abram is dishonoring God, and the Pharaoh by lying. 1. But look how God deals with Abram, he blesses him through the Pharaoh. Does God bless Abram because of his faithlessness and moral failure? No, God blesses him in spite of these things. 2. That is Grace; God's favor, faithfulness, and blessing in spite of faithlessness and moral failure. h. When the Pharaoh finds out about Abram's little lie, through God's afflicting him with plagues, Pharaoh rebukes Abram for his deception, and has him escorted out of the land of Egypt. i. Notice though, Abram leaves not empty handed, but “with his wife, and all that he had”. That means that Abram leaves with his gift from Pharaoh intact: sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels. i. In this passage, the first readers (Israel following Moses) would have seen how God kept his promise to Abram, in spite of all threats, and in spite of the morally dubious actions even of Abram himself. j. What does this speak to us? i. It means that God is more committed to you than you are to him. It means that even he we are faithless, God remains faithful to you because he cannot deny himself; It means that your relationship is based upon much greater ground than your fickle love that comes and goes. 1. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:10 2. Often times though we understand that our salvation is by grace alone we often treat it as though now after sometime or the initial work of God somehow it is now up to us to maintain and save ourselves through our works of righteousness and love for God. Abram becomes a great example to us of the faithfulness of God to his promise which is not contingent upon our actions or our faithlessness. 2. God’s continued faithfulness should produce greater faith/trust in our lives. a. God's favor, faithfulness and blessing in spite of our faithlessness and moral failure are not to be a license to abuse, but an opportunity to repent and grow in faithfulness and character. i. Remember Paul asked that question, “should we sin that grace may abound? Certainly not!!!! ii. "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" - Romans 2:4 iii. The continual grace of God in our lives is meant to change us, and make us more like christ, as we experience God being so very gracious with us, we in turn learn to be gracious with others. iv. This is exactly what we see in the life of Abram we see repentance, and growth in faithfulness and character towards God. v. Vs.3-4 “And he journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord. b. The lifelong test of Abram's faith/obedience to "the vision" takes a new turn in chapter 13 in the temptation to self-assertion against Lot, and in the lure of the cities of the plain. c. With the promised land failing him again, this time with what must have seemed a permanent inadequacy, the common sense course was to abandon it for something more fertile - the plain of Sodom, “which was well watered everywhere like the garden of God”. In this passage Abram's faith and character are once again put to the test. i. Will Abram trust God’s promise or will he rely on his own strength and wisdom to provide and bless, by choosing what looks like a better land than the land God has promised? Does this sound similar to another temptation in the Bible? 3. True faith produces Character/good works. a. True faith and trust in God will begin to produce that Character of God, the grace, faithfulness, and generosity that we’ve been speaking of, and this is what we see with Abram. b. Abram passes this test of faith. “Abram's handling of this situation is a model of insight, good sense, and generosity: his reminder, “we are brethren”, singled out the aspect that metered in face of an alien world, and his proposal, being selfless as well as practical, resolved the immediate tension without creating any future ones.” c. This wisdom, insight, and generosity sprang from his faith. By faith he had already renounced everything; he could afford to refresh the choice: and by faith he opted for the unseen; he had no need to judge, as Lot did, "by the sight of his eyes". d. Lot chooses the things that are seen and finds them to be corrupt and insecure (lot will eventually lose everything he has, because of his choice for the plain of Sodom). i. Abram becomes a picture to us of what generosity is to look like in the life of the believer. God has dealt very graciously with him, and Abram knows that in the face of success or failure God is gracious, faithful and generous. ii. Therefore Abram begins to treat others generously, and graciously. 1. This is how the grace of God is to work in our lives. It isn’t something that is to be abused and taken for granted; it is something that is to change the way we do everything. God has dealt graciously with us, how can we not deal graciously with others, God has been generous to us, how can we not be generous with others? 2. When Paul speaks of generosity in the life of the believer he roots this idea in the grace of God...and he say that generosity is the natural response to the grace of God. a. Paul is encouraging the Corinthian church to be generous givers and he says you should be generous “I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. 9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” i. God has richly blessed us and given us treasure that is beyond compare, which is salvation, and sonship through Jesus. He has shown us the glories of Christ and the eternal inheritance we presently possess, he has promised never to leave us or forsake us, he has promise to take care of our daily needs, he is preparing a place for us, and has promised to return to receive us. He has promised he will never leave us or forsake us, and finally he has promised that nothing can separate us from his love. 1. Therefore we can afford to be generous because we are very spiritually rich. 2. We can be generous with our time, money, resources and with our earthly things, we can hold lightly the things of this world because they are temporal and we are possessors of things that are eternal. a. “By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” - Hebrews 11:9-10 b. Remember what God said to Abram, I will bless you and make you a blessing. God doesn’t simply bless us for our own sakes, but that we might be a blessing to others. God has been gracious and generous with you, so that you will be gracious and generous with others. c. Abram found freedom from covetousness and self-protection through the faithfulness of God. e. Lot on the the other hand has failed to grasp this truth and is still hungry for prosperity through self-assertion or selfish gain. Lot greedily chooses the best land and leaves Abram the scraps. i. Lot becomes for us a picture of greed in the life of the believer (lot is called a righteous man by Peter in 2 Peter 2:7) - in the end Lot loses everything he ever had (though his life is spared) because of his failure to be generous and learn the purpose of God’s being generous with him. -in the end he makes one of the worst real estate choices in history. ii. Lot’s testimony sounds similar to the man who buried his talent in the ground, or the one who’s “good works” are burned up on the day of Christ at the judgment seat. 4. True faith is always rewarded. a. Both sight and action followed Abram’s believing: his blind choice was rewarded by God's: “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.”; and what the eyes took in as panorama his steps were to explore in detail. b. So also, God rewards true faith in our lives, because true faith glorifies him. Conclusion: 1. When we are faithless He remains faithful. 2. God’s continued faithfulness should produce greater faith/trust in our lives. 3. True faith produces character/good works. 4. True faith is always rewarded. What keeps you from trusting in the Lord’s faithfulness? Maybe some of you don’t believe the first point, maybe you don’t believe that God is faithful to his word or his people. Maybe this is because you believe that God was supposed to do something in your life and failed to do so, or maybe a certain situation isn’t happening in the timing that you thought or the way you believe that was revealed to you. We must remember that any work that God does in our lives is an act of Grace, which means we don’t deserve it. Also, we must be careful that we do not attribute God’s unfaithfulness to something we made up or our own interpretation of scripture. These two things I guarantee: God is faithful to his people, to everyone of them; and that God is faithful to his word. If you believe that God has truly promised something to you, then do this: “Faith lays hold upon the promise of pardon, and it does not delay, saying, “This is a precious promise, I wonder if it be true?” but it goes straight to the throne with it, and pleads, “Lord, here is the promise, ‘Do as thou hast said.’ ” Our Lord replies, “Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” When a Christian grasps a promise, if he does not take it to God, he dishonours him; but when he hastens to the throne of grace, and cries, “Lord, I have nothing to recommend me but this, ‘Thou hast said it;’ ” then his desire shall be granted. Our heavenly Banker delights to cash his own notes. Never let the promise rust. Draw the word of promise out of its scabbard, and use it with holy violence. Think not that God will be troubled by your importunately reminding him of his promises. He loves to hear the loud outcries of needy souls. It is his delight to bestow favours. He is more ready to hear than you are to ask. The sun is not weary of shining, nor the fountain of flowing. It is God’s nature to keep his promises; therefore go at once to the throne with “Do as thou hast said.”