Learning to Trust God

Genesis 12:10-20

When an astronaut steps out of from a spaceship into the weightlessness of space, the familiar downward pull of gravity disappears, leaving him or her suspended in midair. Any movement they make, even the smallest of actions, becomes a slow, floating push that moves them in the direction of that motion. There is no "up" or "down" in space, only empty space in every direction.

When walking on the moon, for instance, when an astronaut steps forward, he doesn’t experience the usual thud of his foot upon the ground but a slow, floating motion forward, instead. When his boot hits the ground, he bounces gently upward, as though the ground is pushing him back up. Other normal human functions, too, happen differently in zero gravity. Your drink may float out of the cup in a blob and the crumbs from your bread may float outward in all directions.

Since life in space is so different from life on Earth, astronauts must participate in extensive training to prepare themselves for a new way of living. And there is a sense in which we must do the same as we follow God by faith.

Last week, we learned how God had called Abram to a life of faith, to follow him to Canaan and to rely upon the promises God had made to him. We learned how Abram demonstrated his faith in God by obeying what God had told him to do, even when God’s instructions seemed impossible.

Today, we’ll learn how Abram began to adjust to this new way of living. Sure, he had relocated his entire family in obedience to God, but this was only the beginning. He would now learn how to live by faith, facing new and difficult challenges in a new and God-dependent way.

Let’s be fair and recognize that Abram was just a guy trying to figure things out, much like an astronaut learning to live and move in zero gravity. Unlike us, he had no clear written guidance from God, only the promise God had given him and the truth which had been preached and passed down from Adam, to Enoch, to Noah. To follow God by faith was a new experience for him, one which he would need to grow and improve in over time.

If you are a follower of Christ, then you can sympathize with Abram and learn from his example. Though you believe on Christ as your God and Savior, you have more to learn about how your faith in Christ should influence and shape the way you make choices and work through the challenges and difficulties that come your way. Do you make choices in the usual, human, independent way, or do you make choices in an increasingly God-dependent way? Together, let’s see what Abram learned about living by faith through an early experience in his life of following God.

Obeying God brought new challenges into Abram’s life.

This passage describes two major challenges Abram experienced early on in Canaan.
His first problem was a severe famine. This was a real challenge that threatened the health and life of Abram, his family, and his animals. We’re not told how long this famine lasted, but it was serious enough that that Abram chose to go down to Egypt for survival. This famine highlighted a key feature of Canaan’s geography, its reliance on rainfall.

Though the Mediterranean Sea was on its western border and the Sea of Galilee and Jordan River in the middle, the agriculture and vegetation of this region relied heavily on rainfall. With normal rainfall, the area was exceptionally lush and fruitful, but without rainfall, it was a difficult place to live. This dynamic divinely intended for it would require Israel to depend on God rather than be self-reliant. Other places, like Mesopotamia (with its Tigris and Euphrates Rivers) and Egypt (with its Nile River and Delta) relied less on rainfall and were therefore more self-sustaining.

Abram’s second problem was Egypt’s Pharaoh (or ruler). Unlike the first challenge, this was more of a possible challenge, not a real one. It was a problem Abram assumed would happen, not one that had actually happened. Abram’s prior knowledge of kings and rulers was that they added many wives to their harem. This was not so much because they wanted romantic relationships but because they wanted to form diplomatic, political alliances with as many nations and people groups as possible. Even so, some rulers would execute a wife’s husband to accomplish this goal.

In Pharaoh’s case here, we’ll never know if this would have happened because he simply took Sarai from Abram without even asking whether she was married. He later indicates that if he had known Sarai was Abram’s wife, he wouldn’t have taken her. So, it seems that Abram may have assumed the worse and then acted accordingly.

Can you identify or sympathize with Abram? Since you’ve begun to follow Christ, has God permitted difficult challenges to come your way? What were they, or what are they now? Perhaps you’ve faced actual challenges, or perhaps you’ve faced potential challenges which frightened you? How did you respond to these challenges or how are you responding to them now?

Abram faced those challenges without consulting God’s Word.

By the way Moses explains this moment in Abram’s life, we see what Abram both did and didn’t do. What he did do was attempt to solve these problems. He responded to each of them, both the actual problem of a famine and the potential problem of being killed in exchange for Sarai, by devising a solution.

• His solution for the famine was to relocate to Egypt for a while.
• His solution for being killed in exchange for Sarai was to declare her to be his sister rather than his wife.

Should he have done either or both of these things or not?

By relocating to Egypt, Abram did what many other people did at that time during a famine. They relocated, temporarily, to Egypt because Egypt enjoyed more reliable irrigation and offered a more naturally reliable food and water supply.

By declaring Sarai to be his sister rather than his wife, Abram positioned himself for favorable negotiations. A king, it seems, would often negotiate to marry a man’s relative but kill to marry his wife. Perhaps Abram hoped to negotiate a deal that would prevent Sarai from being taken, or perhaps he merely hoped to buy time for an escape.

For these two attempted solutions, people commonly accuse Abram of outright sinning, both for unbelief in going to Egypt rather than relying upon God for food and water and for dishonesty and lying for calling Sarai his sister rather than his wife.

While both accusations are possible, they are also not as obvious as we might assume. From what we can tell, God had never forbidden Abram (or anyone else) from relocating during a famine. Throughout Scripture, this was sometimes condemned but other times permitted (as when Jacob and his sons went to Egypt during a famine or when Joseph and Mary did the same in the New Testament to hide baby Jesus from Herod).

What’s more, Abram wasn’t necessarily lying, either, since Sarai was actually Abram’s half-sister, having the same father but a different mother from Abram (Gen 20:12).

[Note: intermarriage between close relatives was not forbidden by Scripture until the time of Moses, which was approx. 400 years after Abraham. Not until after Abraham did human genetics make such close marriages problematic due to the potential for deformities, etc.].

Consider the two sides of wisdom presented in Prov 12:22-23:

Lying lips are an abomination to the LORD, but those who deal truthfully are his delight. A prudent man conceals knowledge, but the heart of fools proclaims foolishness.

On one hand, God forbids us from telling outright lies for selfish or sinful purposes; but on the other hand, there are times when it is wise to withhold certain information from people who don’t deserve to know it. Christ himself did so at times, and we know that Christ never sinned. In this case, Abram did speak the truth, but only that part of the truth which he believed was safe to reveal.

So, what was wrong – if anything – about Abram’s solutions to these problems. While it is possible that he simply made sinful, wrong choices by going to Egypt and by identifying Sarai as his sister, it’s also possible that these choices were not necessarily wrong.

What we can say, however, is that there seems to be two more crucial and probable problems with his chosen solutions for his challenges.

First, we should acknowledge that his decision to call Sarai his sister rather than his wife was not necessarily dishonest but was more problematic, instead, because he was doing what Adam had done in the Garden of Eden, failing to protect his wife and to take personal responsibility for their relationship home and marriage.

• Adam watched and acquiesced (gave in) to Eve’s choice to disobey God by eating the fruit God had forbidden. God held Adam, whom he had assigned to be the head of the home, to be ultimately responsible for this failure. He should not have acquiesced to the wrong decision of his wife, but should have refrained from following her example and better guarded their home.
• Abram stood back and placed his wife at risk for his own safety and protection, rather than being the one who risked his own life to save and protect her. Rather than place himself out front to protect Sarai, Abram essentially asked Sarai to function as a human shield for him. Like Adam, he acted in his own self interest and neither led nor protected his wife from danger.

Most importantly, though, we see an even deeper problem – what I would call the root problem – in Abram’s attempted solutions to his problems. He made these decisions without consulting God and his Word for guidance and wisdom. He simply did what “made sense,” what was the culture norm for such situations at that that time, and what seemed to benefit him most.

In the next chapter, we see that when Abram returned from Egypt to Canaan, when this episode was all over, only then did he “called on the name of the Lord” (Gen 12:4).

This is what he should have done before going to Egypt, not just afterwards. If he had done so, then he would have known what God wanted him to do, whether to go to Egypt or not, and if to go, then how to best face the possible problem of being killed for Sarai by Pharaoh. As Psa 119:105 says:

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

As followers of Christ, we must believe this, not just in theory but in practice. Whenever we make serious decisions in life or face significant challenges, problems, temptations, and trials, we should search the Word of God and learn everything we can from the Bible which might apply to the situation at hand. We should do this before we draw up solutions, make key choices, and enter into agreements, commitments, and relationships.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” we say, but we have “eternal sight” given to us in God’s Word before we make our choices. We should let the wisdom of God’s Word guide us before we make major decisions rather than just do what seems to make sense at the moment or do what people in our culture and generation usually do.

Abram’s choices placed God’s promise & reputation at risk.

Now, Abram (just like Adam) – by his cowardice and weakness – placed not only his wife in danger, but he placed God’s purposes and plans in danger, too. By leaving Canaan and placing his wife, Sarai, at risk, he placed at risk God’s promise to provide him with a child, descendants, and a nation – and placed in jeopardy the future God had promised.

What’s more, and perhaps more clearly emphasized here in the Bible, Abram placed God’s reputation at risk. I say this because of how Pharaoh responded to Abram once he found out that Sarai was also Abram’s wife, not just his sister.

Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? (Gen 12:18)

Can you sense the agitation and frustration in Pharaoh’s words, here? Pharaoh had been judged by God for something he was oblivious to, thanks to Abram. This made Abram someone to avoid and to handle carefully. While Abram and Sarai walked away from this debacle unhurt and even quite wealthy, the situation made future relations between Abram’s descendants and Egypt (or other nations) potentially more difficult.

This clever (dishonest?) and self-protecting (cowardly) choice that Abram had made placed not only his reputation with Egyptian dignitaries at risk, but it placed at risk the reputation of God’s chosen people and the very reputation of God himself, since God had associated himself so closely to Abram through his promise.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matt 5:16)

having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation. (1 Pet 2:12)

This reminds me of something the Bible says about the first church (Acts 2:26-27):

Continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people

By the way those early Christians behaved and followed God, they had a good reputation throughout their unbelieving community – and this reputation resulted in others choosing to follow Christ and join the church.

Before we make choices and plans, we need to seek out what God’s Word has to say about our choices and plans, not only so that we can make good and successful plans but – more importantly – so that we will not turn people away from God or give them a bad or confusing view of him. Though other considerations must be made, they should never be valued more highly than or permitted to contradict or undermine our testimony for God.

God upheld his promise & reputation despite Abram’s poor choices.

All of this said, we must see what is – most likely – the most important point of this moment in Abram’s life. The most important point is not what Abram did or didn’t do, it is what God did. Though it is true that Abram’s choices placed God’s promise and reputation in jeopardy, I say this only from a human perspective, for from God’s perspective, there is nothing that could alter what he had promised.

Though Abram had made what seems to be some ill-advised choices (at best), God remained faithful to his promise to “bless those who bless Abram and to curse those who curse him” (Gen 12:3). God didn’t say he would do so only if Abram behaved well. He said he would do this without condition. God was going to bless Abram no matter what because he was going to fulfill his promise of a Savior and a kingdom through Abram no matter what.

In this episode from Abram’s life, we see that God protected Sarai from harm and also protected her marriage to Abram. We also see that God plagued the entire household of Pharaoh until she was released, blessing Abram with great riches and wealth, as well.

Through this experience, God not only provided food and water for Abram during the famine, but he provided him with great wealth and herds of all kinds (Gen 12:16). As a result, we’re told that had become “very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold.”

Why did God do these things? Not because Abram deserved it, nor because Abram had made wise choices, but because he had made a promise to Abram – and he is always faithful to his promises. Heb 10:23 says:

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

We don’t deserve such faithfulness, but God doesn’t bless us because we deserve to be blessed. He blesses us because he has promised he would. He is loyal even when we are disloyal; he is faithful even when we are faithless; he is gracious even when we are disobedient. This does not mean that our wrong choices will not produce undesirable consequences, for they often will. But it does mean that no matter what a follower of Christ will do, they cannot alter or change God’s purposes and promises towards them.

As Matt Papa wrote in his song called “Promises”:

You will be our God
We will be your people
You will be with us
Keep us from all evil
Every promise made
Is a promise kept
You are faithful to your promises

How should we respond to this story from early in Abram’s life?

We must face challenges guided clearly by God’s Word.

As followers of Christ, we must honestly evaluate the way we make decisions and respond to the challenges we face. Do we seriously consult what the Bible says before making big decisions, setting our priorities, and navigating difficult circumstances? Do we personally apply clear, biblical principles to our choices and, if we are unfamiliar or unsure of what the Bible may say, do we study carefully and even get some biblical counsel from a mature friend from church or a pastor?

Unlike Abram, we have a thorough, written record of God’s Word. We would do well to take advantage of that, for not only do we have a greater advantage, but we also have a greater responsibility before God:

For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required. (Lk 12:48)

You see, lest we be too hard on Abram, he was just a guy trying to figure things out, having no clear written guidance from God. We have extensive written guidance from God, let’s make sure we take advantage of that and become serious students of the Bible.

We can find peace knowing our poor choices cannot derail God’s plan.

Making decisions and navigating difficult circumstances can be daunting, creating much anxiety and stress. For this reason, even after we have prayerfully and thoroughly consulted God’s Word in our decision-making process, we may still be afraid to actually make a choice or do something, fearing we may mess things up.

For Abram, no matter how many times he messed up, God shows (not only here but in future situations from Abram’s life, as well) that he was still determined to fulfill his promise. Knowing this should never incentivize a careless life or sinful choices, as though it’s okay to make bad choices and to sin because God will do what God is going to do anyway. After all, we should expect consequences for wrong choices, just as Abram would himself experience along the way.

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? (Rom 6:1-2)

Also:

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. (Gal 6:7-8)

But when we’re faced with difficult choices in following Christ, once we’ve considered what God’s Word says, we should not let the fear of making a poor choice prevent us from making a choice or cause us to forever second-guess the choices that we make. Like Abram, we’re learning to live by faith and God knows that. He’s a holy God, but he’s also patient and gracious as we learn to walk by faith.

We should value God’s reputation over our own success.

Finally, in all the choices we make and in all the challenges we face, we must make God’s reputation our number one priority over our own success. We must ask questions like “what will bring most attention and honor to God?” or “what will people think about Christ if I do this?” We should ask questions like this first not last, early in our decision-making process, not as an afterthought.

Abram would have made different – likely better – decisions if he had asked, first, how his choices would affect what Pharaoh and the Egyptians thought about God. Instead, he thought first about what would happen to him, personally.

Now, compare that with how Paul thought about his own choices in life:

Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense, either to the Jews or to the Greeks or to the church of God, just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved. (1 Cor 10:31-33)

Here, Paul shows how he considered how his own actions, choices, and words might influence the way people thought about God and how his behavior and choices would either encourage people to come towards Christ for salvation or to turn away. May we do the same!

May we learn to make less independent and more God-dependent choices as we face the challenges that come our way as we take our next steps together in following Christ.

Discussion Questions
Life101

• Abraham faced new challenges after starting a life of faithful obedience. What are the most challenging things about a life of faith? They could be habits, lifestyles, or big decisions.
  • What are some things we need to turn away from? What are some things we need to start doing?
• When making a decision, how can we make a choice in faith when we don’t have a clear answer from Scripture on which way to go? Describe the mindset we should have.
• Failing to be a responsible and confident leader has always been a problem for husbands as it was for Abram in this passage. What can men do to be better leaders? What can wives do to help their husbands? What can churches do to promote strong male leadership?
• What does it mean to “call upon the Lord?” How did Abram do it? How do we do it today?
• What are some practical ways that we can make “calling upon the Lord” more regular in our lives?
• When discouraged by our own sin or by tough times, how do we encourage ourselves with God’s faithfulness to His promises?

Digging Deeper

• Abraham faced new challenges after starting a life of faithful obedience. What are the most challenging things about a life of faith? They could be habits, lifestyles, or big decisions.
  • What are some things we need to turn away from? What are some things we need to start doing?
• Abram selfishly chose to put his wife at risk to save himself. How is selfishness a lack of faith in God?
• When making a decision, how can we make a choice in faith when we don’t have a clear answer from Scripture on which way to go? Describe the mindset we should have.
• Failing to be a responsible and confident leader has always been a problem for husbands as it was for Abram in this passage. What can men do to be better leaders? What can wives do to help their husbands? What can churches do to promote strong male leadership?
• What does it mean to “call upon the Lord?” How did Abram do it? How do we do it today?
  • What are some practical ways that we can make “calling upon the Lord” more regular in our lives?
• What does it mean that our stories are really stories about God? What difference should this make for us?
• What happens when we forget God’s faithfulness and focus too much on our failures?
  • When discouraged by our own sin or by tough times, how do we encourage ourselves with God’s faithfulness to His promises?