The Test of Faith
Utawala Baptist Church11-02-07
The Test of Faith
Scripture Genesis 12:1-9
REVIEW (12:1–4)
A. The covenant (vv. 1–3).
God had called Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees (Acts 7:2–4), but he had lingered at Haran until the death of his father (11:27–32). God demands total separation to Himself, even if death must accomplish it.
B. The compromise (vv. 4–6).
“Lot went with him”—this was mistake number two. Lot’s father, Haran, was dead (11:28), so Abraham took the young man under his protection, only to have him create serious problems. Later, God had to separate Lot from Abraham before He could advance His plan for the patriarch’s life.
C. The confession (vv. 7–9).
Obedience always leads to blessing. After Abraham arrived in Canaan, the Lord appeared to Abraham to further assure him. Abraham did not hesitate to confess his faith before the heathen in the land. Wherever he went, he pitched his tent and built his altar. (See 13:3–4, 18.)
I Abraham’s Journey of Faith (12:4-9)
The tie with the old flesh finally broken Abram moves on!
Abram has some significant experiences along the way!
Don’t as well as we move through life?
Genesis 12:6
We find Abram passes arrives in Sichem.
Sichem means shoulder.
Shoulder signifies strength or power.
In those times burdens were carried on the shoulder.
Obedience to God will always bring us power.
If our Christian walk is lacking in power or is fruitless we need to ask ourselves “What in my life is displeasing to God?”
The leave it behind like Abram.
From Sichem Abram arrives on the Plain of Moreh.
“Moreh” means even place or place of instruction.
After Abram’s victory at Haran God leads him to the place of instruction.
God realized Abram would need much instruction long journey and tests that still lied ahead.
The journey had only just begun!
Genesis 12:6
…. The Canaanites were in the land….
They were watching
They knew Abram professed faith in Jehovah
They were watching to see if there was a flaw in his faith.
Just as the world watches us today!
HOW BADLY WE NEED INSTRUCTION!
How do we get that instruction?
Green page!
WE LIKE ABRAM SHOULD WALK CAREFULLY BECAUSE THE CANAANITE IS STILL IN THE LAND!
Obedience brings joy and rewards!
The LORD comes to strengthen His servant.
He renews His Covenant
He encourages!
God knows there are severe tests ahead!
God knows how weak His children were and ARE!
God gives His servant a time of rest before the next test!
What beautiful communion in verse 8!
Abram’s face was toward BETHEL and his back towards HAI!
Bethel means house of God while HAI means defeat!
Hai Joshua 7
Abram communes with God sacrificing, praying and fellowshipping!
What a model for us today!
THE NEXT TEST!
How long Abram dwelt there we are not told.
II. Abraham’s Lapse of Faith (12:10–20)
A. The disappointment (v. 10).
A famine in the place of God’s leading!
How could this be?
Why would God allow this to happen?
What a great disappointment this must have been to the pilgrims.
God was testing their faith, to see if they were trusting the land or the Lord.
This was a great test of Abram’s faith and unfortunately he failed it miserably!
Instead of trusting God and God’s supply Abram chose to rely instead on man!
IF ABRAM HAD ONLY TRUSTED GOD!
GOD HAS PLACED ME HERE AND WE WILL STAY UNTIL HE TELLS ME WE SHOULD MOVE!
God was able to supply manna to the entire nation of Israel.
God was able to feed Elijah by the brook!
God was able to fill the disciples’ nets with fish!
Could God not supply Abram’s needs?
Abram turns his back on Bethel and goes to Egypt!
B. The deception (vv. 11–13).
One sin leads to another: first Abraham trusted Egypt; now he trusted his wife’s lie to protect him. Genesis 20:13 makes it clear that Sarah was equally guilty with Abraham, and 20:12 indicates that the “lie” was really a half-truth, for she was his half-sister. It seems that Abraham was more concerned for his own safety than the safety of his wife—or the safety of the promised seed.
The saintliest and holiest believer is not immune to the flesh and temptation, but is all too prone to yield and submit to it when it appears that obedience to God may cost him too great a price.
Behold Abram
Behold poor Abram!
He resorts to lying when he could have been trusting.
He succumbs to fear when he could have been confident.
He makes excuses when he could have been resting.
But worse than that, he was even willing to give his wife, Sarai, to become an adulteress to save his own skin.
C. The discipline (vv. 14–20).
What a shame that believing Abraham should be rebuked by an unbelieving king. Until he knew the truth about Sarah, Pharaoh “bestowed favors” upon Abraham, but once God stepped in and exposed the lie, Pharaoh had to ask them to leave. What a poor testimony the Christian is when he or she mingles with the world and compromises. Someone has said, “Faith is living without scheming.” Abraham and all his descendants have needed to learn that lesson! Lot lived with the world and lost his testimony (19:12–14); and Peter sat by the enemy fire and denied his Lord.
III. Abraham’s Return of Faith (13:1–4)
Christians enmeshed in the world cannot be happy with themselves. They must go back to the very place where they abandoned the Lord. This is repentance and confession, to feel sorry for sin and to make amends. Abraham could not have confessed his sin and remained in Egypt! No, he had to get back to the place of the tent and the altar, back to the place where he could call upon the Lord and receive blessing.
Back to Bethel
Genesis 13 opens with these words:
And Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the south.
Abram went up. He is now on the way back, thank God.
Ashamed, rebuked, beaten, repentant, he starts back to Bethel. But the damage has been done.
He has weakened his testimony and done irreparable damage to weak-kneed, worldly Lot, his nephew. For, mind you, he took Lot along into Egypt.
The believer never backslides alone, he always craves company. When a Christian becomes bitter and callous and backslidden, he will always try to make others dissatisfied and critical too
One damages not only his own soul when he gets out of fellowship, but he damages other weaker Christians about him.
But God brought Abram back, and he comes again to Bethel.
Here is the record:
(Genesis 13:3–4).
How blessed this wonderful record really is! God invites him back into fellowship.
Back to Bethel, the house of God.
A. Lost time.
The weeks that Abraham and his household were away from the Lord were lost and could not be regained. All believers must pray to avoid such losses, “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12, nkjv).
B. Lost testimony.
Could Abraham ever witness to Pharaoh of the true God, after deceiving him? Probably not. How sad it will be when we face God at the judgment seat of Christ and discover how many souls have gone to hell because of the poor testimony of carnal Christians!
C. Hagar’s place in the family.
Sarah’s maid, Hagar, came from Egypt (16:lff), and brought untold trouble to the family.
D. More wealth.
The increase in possessions helped to cause the later dispute between Abraham’s herdsmen and Lot’s herdsmen. Later, Abraham would refuse the world’s wealth (14:17–24).
E. Lot’s enjoyment of Egypt.
This young man developed a taste for Egypt (13:10), and though Abraham took Lot out of Egypt, he could not take Egypt out of Lot! It is always tragic when a mature believer leads a younger Christian astray. In 12:8, Lot shares Abraham’s tent and altar, but when Lot comes out of Egypt, he has only tents, no altar (13:5). No wonder Lot gravitated toward Sodom—and ended up a moral and spiritual wreck
Let us close by looking at God’s Purpose
GOD’s Purposes
and there was a famine in the land (Genesis 12:10).
When we are in the place where God wants us, we often expect that God is going to bless us for it. We expect that we are going to be free from all testings and trials. In the life of Abram God makes a great revelation. After a brief respite in the land of Canaan at Bethel, God comes and says, as it were, “Abram, this is only the beginning of your journey of faith. That test I gave you in the past was only to steel and to prepare you, and to make you able to bear even a greater test, and here it is: a famine in the land of plenty.
What does Abram do?
He goes down into Egypt.
Down, down, down “into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.”
Abram, the man of faith, failed God.
Now God knew that Abram was going to fail, and God could have kept him from failing.
God could even have prevented this temptation from coming, but the fact is that God did allow it to come and did permit Abram to fall.
We need to recognize this great fundamental truth!
That God permitted Abram to be tempted and to fall, knowing that he would make this grievous error and commit a great sin.
In order that God might use even this failure and this sin as a means of teaching Abram a still greater lesson which might prevent a still greater tragedy in his life later on.
God’s Permissive Will
Do we believe that? (above)
Whether we do or not it is still true.
God does allow things to come into our lives.
God even mistakes to be committed by us in order that He may use these things to prevent something more tragic later on.
A couple illustrations will convince you of the truth of this fact: Jacob had eleven sons, ten of whom were out herding the sheep; one of them, Jacob’s favorite, Joseph, was still at home. His father sent him to his brothers. When his brothers saw him coming, they put him to death—that at least was their intent. They put him in a pit, sold him for twenty pieces of silver, and thought that they had put him out of the way. As it turned out, he was sold into Egypt. But God in sovereign wisdom allowed these ten potential murderers to put Joseph to “death” in order that by that very sin this Joseph might, in the providence of God, become the savior of the very criminals who had tried to put him to death.
Joseph himself established this fact when he said later:
Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life (Genesis 45:5).
And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt (vs. 7, 8).
But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive (Genesis 50:20).
Surely here we stand face to face before the revelation of God that He is able to take the things which men mean for evil, and make them work out for the good of those whom He has chosen to love. We would not have you miss those words of Joseph himself when he says, “And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth,” and again in verse 5, “God did send me before you to preserve life.” Even more emphatic is the eighth verse: “So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God.”
A second illustration:
Come with me to another scene, even to Calvary, for the greatest example of the truth here discussed. See there, hanging upon the Cross of Calvary, the Creator of the universe, sinless, spotless, impeccable. There is pity upon His face and the love of God streaming from His whole being as He hangs there in agony and in blood. His hands and His feet are pierced with cruel nails, his brow with the crown of thorns. His eyes are bloodshot and red, full of agony and pain. His pale, thin lips are pinched with the awful pain of the Cross. Every muscle in His body is tense as the blood oozes from His broken skin. He cries out in His agony to Almighty God, while the angry mob of rebels and bloodthirsty criminals around are demanding His death and are gloating over the death of the sinless Son of God. How in the name of heaven, we ask, can God be up there and see a sight like that, and still keep silence. Why does He not send fire from heaven and plunge these murderers of His Son into an eternal hell forever? Why does He not damn them all? It would have been absolutely just; it would have been righteous for God to do so.
We stand there and cry out, “Oh, God, do something.” Instead of doing something, however, God permits these criminals to go right ahead, to crucify His precious Son, until He cries out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me?” Instead of helping Him, God turns His back, closes His eyes, blows out the sun, pulls down the curtains of heaven, and allows His Son to suffer innocently and alone, at the hands of these criminals. I hardly know what to say when I realize that God permitted these sinners to kill His Son, in order that by the very death and the murder of His Son He might provide the only way to save the ones who murdered Him. Now that is something to marvel at. He allowed His Son to be murdered because it was the only way that He could save the murderers of His Son.
If God felt that way with Joseph, and with Christ, I think we can understand why He permits things to come into our lives also. Man wants to understand and to reason; he does not want to believe; but when I go to Calvary and stand there and see the Son of God dying in agony and in blood to save me, a good-for-nothing, hell-deserving, rotten, filthy sinner, and to make me a child of God, I ask for no other argument; I ask for no other proof; that is enough for me.
Abraham Must Also Trust God!
We can also now understand why God permitted Abram to fail, why a famine came in the land of plenty.
It was to test Abram and to bring out of it something greater than could have been done in any other way.
God seems to test Abram to see whether he will trust God:
If he had said:
“Well, here is a famine and there is all kinds of food in Egypt, but I’m going to trust God alone, I’m going to stay right here, even if I have to starve to death, I’m not going to go, I’m going to stay where God placed me, I’m not going to go until God tells me to go”
If he had said that, God would have certainly supplied his needs.
But he listened to the flesh and said:
“There are all kinds of food in Egypt; here the land is all parched and dry. God wants me to use my head, doesn’t He? I’m going to Egypt.”
RIGHT THERE ABRAM MADE HIS MISTAKE!
Remember God is faithful!
Abram trusted God to save him, but he could not trust God to keep him.
Regarding his being kept, Abram felt that he had to do something himself. There are thousands of poor souls today who trust God to save their souls, and then think that they have to do the rest. They cannot trust God to keep them, even to the end.
SINS OF BELIEVERS
Abram “went down.” When we do not trust God, we also go down.
As a result of Abram’s failure to trust God, he does one of the lowest, most despicable, meanest things we find recorded anywhere in the Bible.
One sin always leads to another.
Genesis 12:11–13
Here we have an incident that is tremendous in its lesson.
A believer who is out of fellowship with God can do meaner and lower things than the sinner who has never been saved.
That happens to be the experience of many of us, and we know that it is absolutely true.
When we become saved we are new creatures.
God does not repair the “old man,” or do a thing to it.
He does not even try to repair it, because that which is “born of the flesh is flesh” and will never be any different.
We have the evidence here that Abram in a moment of doubt showed that the old nature and the old doubts were still present within him:
He went down into Egypt.
Other Biblical characters had similar experiences. We have but to recall the case of
Noah and his drunkenness,
David and his sin, Solomon and his wives,
Peter and his denial of our Lord.
“Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”
All these things were written for our admonition and for our instruction. The record of Abram is placed here in order that we may profit by his experience. May the Lord bless to our hearts the lessons from the life of this saint of God. May we profit by his experiences, grow in the grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and not make the same mistakes that Abram or the other saints of God have made.
Only trust Him.
