The Follies of Abraham
Heroes of the Faith • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction
Introduction
Last week we ended our overview of Noah’s life- our first hero of the faith. We ended by taking a look at a seeming contradiction where God calls him righteous and perfect, yet we see where he stumbled and committed sin. Yet in the midst of his weakness we see the faithfulness of God.
We learned that complacency can lead to the corruption of a man and that while God takes sin seriously, it’s not the one-off sin like Noah’s that causes His anger to boil and His wrath to lash, rather it is the sinful heart like Canaan’s that would bring the cancer of sexual lasciviousness and a disdain for authority that brings about God’s curse.
We learned about the principles of sowing and reaping, and that God was not interested in sowing bad seed into the world- and so He cursed them rather than allow them to flourish. Neither should we allow bad seed to flourish in our lives. We usually do that when we fail to wait on the Lord.
This week I want to introduce the next Hero of faith to you – Abram, or as he would later be known Abraham.
If you recall from last week, when we were looking at the table of nations in Genesis, Abram was a descendant of Shem – that’s where we get the term Semite from – and is therefore in position to receive the blessing of God, but as we shall see today, God was pleased to not only make good on the blessing He made to Shem, but to expand the blessing upon Abram as well. So let’s look shall we?
This is the genealogy of Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran begot Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans. Then Abram and Nahor took wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and the father of Iscah. But Sarai was barren; she had no child. And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran and dwelt there. So the days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran.
So, true to Bible form, We start out the story of a man by learning who His father was. Why is this important? Well because as they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Just as Noah was the grandson of Enoch and had learned to walk with God, Abram is the son of Terah and this apparently says something about him. Other than the fact that Terah is a descendant of Shem, I have no clue what more there is to it. Except one minor detail that will be important later. Sarai was barren.
Who’s your daddy?
Who’s your daddy?
Your spiritual genealogy is important to you as well. First of all, you are your father’s child and there is a twofold meaning to that.
The first and rather unfortunate one:
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me. Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.”
So how is it that who your daddy is makes you who you are? Well Jesus says you do what your father wants. This is how this works. We tend to carry our parents around with us in our head. What they tell us is important and what they convey to us by means of the switch or the stern look, is what we tend to take with us into adulthood.
Is it any wonder then, why this nation is in the state it is in? Parents are too fearful or too lazy to step up and be parents. Teacher friends of mine have actually said that when they try to get the parents to cooperate with the upbringing of children are actually told by the parents, “well he’s your problem now, that’s why he’s in school.” Let me stand on my soap box for just a few minutes here. If you aren’t going to be a full time parent from cradle to grave, then do me a favor. Don’t procreate. Really! I’m serious! The government would like nothing more than to raise your kids for you. To what end? It is so that they can take care of them completely. They want us entirely dependent upon them for our every need. This runs contrary to the word of God that says we are to depend solely on Him for everything! That brings us to our first point then.
Abram is Blessed
Abram is Blessed
Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh. And the Canaanites were then in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. So Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South.
Abram Receives a Promise
Abram Receives a Promise
Wow! Can you believe that promise? Who wants that kind of blessing? I mean, if God were to tell you, “hey I want to blessing, choose any of the Bible blessings and it’s yours,” how many would choose this one? Here, two notice what happens. This blessing is the first time God blesses someone in response to faith. This blessing marks the giving of a completely new destiny.
But that’s not it, God is not satisfied with merely blessing Abram, He actually puts both an active and a defensive blessing upon Him. Active in that whoever blesses Abraham and his seed is blessed and defensive in that even when cursed, the blessing is strong enough to overcome the curse and in fact so strong as to inflict a curse on the original curser.
You know that you and I HAVE received such a blessing? I mean both figuratively and literally, we have received that blessing.
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
As believers in Christ we have become partakers of the blessing of Abraham through the grafting in of the church to the commonwealth of Israel. Secondly, we are given a new destiny and a new name when we are saved; we are endowed with both active and defensive blessings.
Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
So both literally and figuratively, we are recipients of the same blessing as Abram. But like him, we sometimes forget the promise and stray. In fact, the very first story we have about Abram speaks of this.
Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land. And it came to pass, when he was close to entering Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, “Indeed I know that you are a woman of beautiful countenance. Therefore it will happen, when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, ‘This is his wife’; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because of you.” So it was, when Abram came into Egypt, that the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful. The princes of Pharaoh also saw her and commended her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken to Pharaoh’s house. He treated Abram well for her sake. He had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female servants, female donkeys, and camels. But the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. And Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’? I might have taken her as my wife. Now therefore, here is your wife; take her and go your way.” So Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him; and they sent him away, with his wife and all that he had.
So right away, we have a trial in Abram’s life. I want you to notice some things.
Verse 10: Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land.
What land was he in?
What did God say about the land in which he was living?
So then here’s Father Abram, the man of faith; the man that packed everything up and moved because God told him to. He’s going to believe God like a solid rock right?
No! Abram is having a crisis of faith. His first crisis is not so obvious but it is this:
He is despising the very land that God gave him! There is a famine in the land! BUT God sent Him there! Did God have bad timing? Did God forget to find out what April Madison had to say on the morning weather report? No! God was well aware of what was going on when He sent Abram into the land!
How many of us find ourselves in God’s promise land only to find that it’s dry and barren?
It’s really hard because you’ve been so faithful and so obedient and suddenly you’re in the middle of something that you are told is God’s promise, but looks nothing like what you thought a blessing should look like.
The problem with us is that we don’t know how to recognize the blessing. We always think we know better than God, and in the end, we get upset when God have something to tell us or teach us in our circumstances.
How do you react when God has moved you somewhere you don’t understand? So many of us act like Abram. We run back to where it’s comfortable!
God is not about making us comfortable. He is about efficiently making us whole. But let’s look at what Abram does.
Abram runs to of all places Egypt. Egypt is a Biblical type of sin. And in fact, in doing so he commits more than one sin. First is the sin of unbelief, second is the sin of lying about who Sarai is. See, Sarai was from a mountainous region of the area so her complexion would have been much fairer than the women who had been working out in the desert. And she was his half-sister, so technically he wasn’t lying. But isn’t that just like us?
We take the blessings that God had given us and offer them up to the world on a technicality. We find ways of excusing our sin by finding half-truths in what we do. How shameful is that?
Our first mistake is in running to the world when things get rough. Why on earth would we ever want to go back there?!?
Abram actually sold Sarai out. While she was in danger of having her modesty violated by Pharaoh Abraham benefitted from her situation. Notice all that he received in order that he would consent to her being taken.
Abram was actually selling his wife out in order to become enriched. Here was this blessing from God and he was surrendering it and becoming wealthy from the World’s wealth. In contrast, look at what Jesus instructs:
“Sell your material possessions, and give the money to the poor. Make yourselves wallets that don’t wear out! Make a treasure for yourselves in heaven that never loses its value! In heaven thieves and moths can’t get close enough to destroy your treasure. Your heart will be where your treasure is.
Jesus Himself tells us that we should not sell out to the world, in fact we should sell the filthy lucre that the world offers us in order to gain spiritual treasure. Just what is this treasure?
Well, Jesus starts this passage out by telling them not to think about their lives.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “So I tell you to stop worrying about what you will eat or wear. Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothes. Consider the crows. They don’t plant or harvest. They don’t even have a storeroom or a barn. Yet, God feeds them. You are worth much more than birds.
How did this whole thing with Abram and Sarai start? Exactly! By worrying what they were going to eat! Remember, there was a famine in the promise land!
Notice Jesus says that HE is the one who will supply all of our needs. See, that’s what the world’s lie is and has always been. Jesus doesn’t really care about you. If you are going to get anything, you’ll have to come to me, not to God. And the end thereof is predictable. Look at what happens with Pharaoh and Sarai:
However, the Lord struck Pharaoh and his household with terrible plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.
Wait Pastor, if it was Abram’s idea to lie to Pharaoh, why is it that he was the one stricken? Well, God’s promises are irrefutable. The promise to Abram was that he would be protected by God. In this case, Abram didn’t go with the expectation to become enriched by Pharaoh, but to just be taken care of by Him. God wanted to demonstrate to Abram that HE was taking care of him, not Pharaoh.
So it is with us when we dabble in the world’s schemes. The first time, God will allow us to escape – just barely with a lesson learned. Ouch! That was close. Do it again however, and boy you’re in for some grief.
There is a couple that I have known for years that are a living example of this. Some years back there was a pyramid scheme that swept through Tucson, and for whatever reason these pyramids always sweep through the church. Anyhow, this particular scheme was about “gifting”. Where you recruit friends and acquaintances to get together and “gift someone” with $100 each. If I remember correctly, it worked out where you would get gifted with $5000 in return for the 100 you put in. You basically “bought” your way into the pyramid and waited. Well this couple could afford it. They were fairly well off, and in fact had a decent pension and retirement plan. They were taken care of so they sowed their $100 and went looking for some friends to also buy their way in. Well they went to church people and “invited” them into this scheme. Well the perpetrators of the scheme were slick operators and had even attached scripture verses to their endeavors to legitimize what they were doing in the eyes of the leery.
Well one of the couples that got into the scheme were a younger couple that had just gotten married – newly weds. She didn’t have a job and he worked at American Airlines as a Reservations agent. So they didn’t make a ton of money, so they bought in to the scheme. Well no sooner did they put their $100 in than police raided the scheme and arrested the cats responsible for putting it on. Needless to say, they did not get their $5k. In fact, they were lucky they didn’t get arrested. Instead the state considered them victims.
The other couple felt so bad afterward, they gave them and a few other people that they had recruited, their $100 back. End of story everyone live happily ever after right?
Wrong. I later saw this guy working as a janitor somewhere, when I inquired as to what he was doing working again (remember he was retired comfortably?) I was told that they got caught up in yet another pyramid scheme, and this time it did not go so well. They lost everything: their life savings, their home – and in fact even their retirement as he had to go back to work.
Make no mistake, God may bail us out of situations that are born out of our own ignorance, but He will not do it if we keep revisiting that sin. Consider what happens later in Abaram’s life:
After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.” But Abram said, “Lord God, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” Then Abram said, “Look, You have given me no offspring; indeed one born in my house is my heir!” And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.” Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.
Again God makes a promise to Abram, but this time Abram believes. But remember that whole sowing and reaping thing? Well there was someone who was around when Abram went through his first not so successful trial of faith, do you know who that was? Yup Sarai, and well she saw how Abram handled himself with Pharaoh and well she started thinking along those lines. See, In the end God bailed them out and while it was embarrassing, they did make quite a bit of wealth of of Pharaoh and the world’s system, why wait? She hatched a scheme, and we all know how that ends. Well no it hasn’t ended, we are still stuck with the consequences to this day, just as that couple has to pay and they have basically squandered any inheritance their children would have had from them.
The bottom line that we learn for this early life of Abram is this. When God makes us a promise, it is not up to us to help Him keep it. It is up to us to acknowledge that the promise maker has the will and the resources to keep His promises to us.
But as God is faithful, our word to you was not Yes and No. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me, Silvanus, and Timothy—was not Yes and No, but in Him was Yes. For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
God can be completely relied upon because He is faithful. His promises are yes and Amen! He establishes us, anoints us and seals us, then as if that weren’t enough gives us His Spirit as a guarantee.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Saints, the promises of God are true. Let us not look to the world for our sustenance. The world may supply an escape in the midst of a famine, but that is not the way that God wants to provide for our needs.
God has made us a promise that He will provide for us, that He will protect us and be there for us no matter what. We need to be confident of that promise. Don’t play around with the World’s system nor make excuses for returning to Egypt for God will surely curse a false income source in order to cause you to trust Him. God doesn’t need your help to make good on His promises, just relax and allow Him to show you the power of His mighty hand.
Let us pray.
Benediction
Benediction
“The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.” ’
Ye va ra khe kha YHWH vehyish me re kha
ya'er YHWH panav ehlekha vihu ne ka
yisa YHWH panavv ehlekha vey-a-sem lekha shalom
24 “The Lord bless you and keep you;
25 The Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
26 The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.” ’
