Test of Faith

Genesis 12:10-20
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, April 10, 2022
Copyright © 2022, Gregory Broderick

Abraham was a man of great faith in our great God and in God’s great promises to us.  Abram believed God and lived by faith.  When God called him out of Haran to an unknown land, Abram took all his things and left.  He did not even know where God was leading him.  He did not know how to get there.  Yet he went, following God’s directions all the way.

Abram further demonstrated his faith in God by stopping in Canaan when God told him, “This is the place.  To your offspring I will give this land” (Gen. 12:7).  Abram showed his belief in God’s promise by going all over that land, exploring it and seeing what God had promised to Abram and to his descendants.  This was a great test of faith, and Abram passed the test.

But life with God is not just one test.  It is a series of tests.  And there is no final exam, at least until you die.  The question is, will you die in the Lord?  So in our text this morning, the great man of great faith, Abram, faces another test, and, as we shall see in the following weeks, another and another and another test.  Some tests, most tests, the big tests, he passed, and he is a great example to us how to live by faith in God.  But the test this morning, this second test, did not go so well.  Abram, great as he was, failed this test miserably.

This, of course, is an example to us and a warning to always be careful and to always seek God, to always trust in God’s commands, and to always obey God’s commands for our good and for His glory.

1. The Test

The great test in Genesis 12:10–20 is a famine—a severe famine, as it says in verse 10.  Sometimes it is translated “a heavy famine.”

Famine was a real problem, a life and death problem, in the ancient world.  There was no public charity to go to if you did not have sufficient food to eat.  You would just starve to death.  You would die, and your family would die.  And even if you did not starve to death, you could be totally ruined financially.  Eating your livestock to survive meant eating the means of production, or selling off everything you had bit by bit until you were penniless.  Think of the Egyptians in Joseph’s time.  There was another great famine at that time.  They first sold all their livestock, then all their land, and finally sold themselves to Pharaoh to avoid starvation.  And, of course, Abram was responsible not just for himself but also for his wife, his nephew, and for all the people they had brought down from Haran.  So it was a serious responsibility Abram has and a serious problem he is facing.

The obvious solution was to trek down to Egypt, to the fertile Nile River valley which always seemed to be flush with food.  Even in the seven years of famine in Genesis 41, they still had food down in Egypt.  So they could withstand the famine better than most parts of the world.  Perhaps Abram heard that there was food down in Egypt, as Jacob had heard in Genesis 42.  Or maybe his neighbors were all headed down to Egypt.  Maybe everyone just knew this was the thing you do in a famine—pack up your stuff and go down to Egypt.  Or perhaps his household members urged him to go.  Whatever the case, there was a serious problem and an apparent solution:  Go down to Egypt.

The only trouble with this solution is that God had said, “This is the land.  Canaan is the place.”  So herein lies the test:  Would Abram go with the “obvious,” with the “logical,” with the worldly solution and head down to Egypt like everyone else, or would Abram do differently?  Would he trust God, who said, “Go down to the land I will show you”?  Would he trust God who said, “This is the land I will give to your offspring”?  God said, “Go to this land, Canaan,” but he did not say anything about, “Go to Egypt,” or, “Go to any other place.”  Would Abram have the faith to hold fast to God’s command?  Or would Abram at least seek God, who had appeared to him multiple times by then?  Would Abram at least pray to God and say, “Lord, there is a famine.  Should I stay or should I go?”  Would Abram continue to live by faith and obey God?  It is a big test, so let us see how he did.

2. The Grade

Abram unfortunately gets an “F” on this particular test.  He goes down to Egypt.  God did not say, “Go to Egypt.”  God did not say, “Leave Canaan.”  But Abram goes.  It does not appear that Abram even prayed to God for clear direction about this important decision (at least no such prayer is recorded).  And even if Abram prayed, he was not told to go.  Abram should have prayed and obeyed.  And in the absence of a direct answer, Abram should have waited.  He should have followed God’s last instruction to him:  “This is the land.  Go to the land I will show you.”

This represents a total failure by Abram.  Perhaps you think that this is a harsh grade.  Perhaps you think we should grade Abram on a curve.  After all, there was a famine, a severe famine, a heavy famine.  It was a life-or-death situation.  He had a household.  It was not just his own self on the line.  And Abram was surely afraid.  Abram was surely hungry.  Everyone else around him was probably going down there.  It seemed only logical.

These are all understandable points, but this is simply unbiblical thinking.  It is godless and faithless thinking.  First, consider that it was God who sent Abram to Canaan.  Consider it was God who promised the land to Abram’s offspring.  Now, surely that same God is able to deal with the famine.  Abram, you will not starve to death.  You are supposed to have offspring.  God himself decreed it.  You are to have a great name.  All nations on earth are to be blessed through you.  God Almighty has declared it.  God, who promised a Savior to crush the head of the serpent in Genesis 3 is going to provide that Savior through you after many generations.  God, who sent a worldwide flood to wipe out all mankind and yet safeguarded Noah and his family, is the same God who is speaking to you.  Having done all of that, will God allow you to starve to death?  Will God allow the line of Shem and the line of Abram to be wiped out prematurely?  The answer is no.

Second, Abram should have understood that this famine was from God.  This famine was not a surprise to God.  He was not caught unaware by the bad growing conditions.  This famine was not even a mere obstacle for God to overcome.  No, God Himself sent this famine.  God is sovereign over all things, and God works out all things, everything, according to His will (Eph. 1:11).  Not one hair of our heads can fall out without God’s okay (Matt. 10:29).  His purposes cannot be thwarted (Job 42:2).  God works all things together for the good of those who love him (Rom. 8:28).  God sends the rain and God withholds the rain (Lev. 26:4; Deut. 11; 1 Kings 18, and so on).  God determined the exact times and places men should live, including Abram and including us (Acts 17:26).  So this famine is not simply happening.  It is not some event that is occurring outside of God’s plan, by the random forces of the universe or even by anthropogenic climate change.  No, God sent this famine, and it is for our good from God.

Abram should have begun with this principle.  He should have looked at the famine and said, I don’t know how this severe famine is for my good, but I know it was God who sent it.  And I know that God sends it for my good, and for the good for all who love Him, not just in my day but in all time.  I will go to this good God who sent it and I will ask Him, “What is it You want me to do?”  Maybe God will say, “Go back to Haran or Ur.”  Probably not.  Maybe God will say, “Go down to Egypt.”  Probably not.  Maybe God will say something else.  Whatever it is, I will obey it for my good and for God’s glory.

But maybe, even harder than those things, God will say nothing right away.  God answers our prayers “Yes,” “No,” and “Wait.”  What should I do if I am praying to this God, and He is not speaking anything to me?  That is simply “Wait.”  And, by the way, you have instructions already, Abram.  God already said, “Go to the land I will show you.  This is the land I will give to your offspring.”  So when in doubt, follow last instruction.  Trust in God’s goodness, and trust in God’s sovereignty, and He will take care of you.  He is able and He is faithful.  Yes, that fear is coming—fear for yourself, fear for your household, fear for the future—but overcome your fear or whatever other emotion with biblical logic.  Remember God is truth, and He cannot lie.  Remember God is sovereign, and He is able to do anything and everything.  Remember that God is for my good, and He wants me to know and to do His will.  He will tell me in the perfect time what to do in the perfect way, and He will give me everything required to do it.  It will be for my good.  It will be for my best.  It will be more than that.  It will be for the good of all God’s true believers for all time.

So famine, which looks severe, which looks scary, which looks heavy, can do nothing to me.  If I am in the will of God, man can do nothing to me.  The mighty devil can do nothing to me.  I am untouchable as long as I am in the will of God.

People of God, let us start with God reason from there.  Let us continue with God and persevere in the faith, and let us finish with God and be amazed at what He will do and how He will do it.  That is the grade.

3. The Reason for the Failing Grade

There are really two primary reasons for Abram’s failing grade here.  First, Abram engaged in godless thinking.  He panicked, and he focused on the problem.  There is a very real problem, but he focused on the problem and not on God.  His solution was also godless:  Do as the world does.  Do the “obvious” thing and head down to Egypt.  Get some food in fertile Egypt and ride out the problem there.  No need to check with God.  We know what to do.  That is the first reason.

The second reason for the failure, relatedly, is that Abram leaned on his own understanding.  Now, Proverbs 3:5–6 tells us to do just the opposite:  “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”  When our thinking is not God-centered, when our thinking is not word-centered, it has to be centered around something else.  That is often, if not always, our own understanding.  The problem with that, of course, is that our own understanding is very limited.  God is omniscient, but we are not.  God knows the famine is coming.  God knows the good purpose.  God knows how He is going to use it for good, but we do not.

Not only is our own understanding very limited, but our own understanding is often simply wrong.  God is infallible, but we are fallible.  That old sin nature is still with us, even as redeemed people, and our thinking and understanding is thus compromised.  Now, this is not a call to mindlessness.  This is not a call that, because your thinking is compromised, you should not think.  That is not the lesson being taught.  We are to have the mind of Christ.  We are to take every thought captive.  We are to engage in biblical logic and biblical reasoning from correct biblical principles.  But being aware of our innate corruption, we must never rely on our own understanding alone.  We must, like the noble Bereans, search the Scriptures daily to see if our understanding comports with biblical reality.  We must study ahead of the problem so that we are prepared for the problem, and we must study during the problem to ensure that we have not gone astray.  We must go back to the word of God.

We must also pray through the problem that God would give us some direct understanding of what He wants us to do.  We must seek godly counsel from godly people, and especially from the godly shepherds He has selected especially for us to lead us into green pastures (Ps. 23; Acts 20:28).  We must always remember that the question is not, “What seems right to me?”  but, “What is the will of God in this situation?”  “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Prov. 14:12).  We must use all these tools that I spoke about to discern the will of God: to get the answer.  We use the Scriptures, we use prayer, we use our biblical reasoning, we use counsel, and we use the guiding and directing of indwelling Holy Spirit.  And if God is speaking, all of these will lead us to the same conclusion, will lead us in one direction, to the place God wants us to go.

So we must do all those things and then, very carefully, we must listen—listen to what God is speaking, for God speaks through these various ways that I have discussed.  He will give us the great victory, the great deliverance, if we will only listen.  “Listen” here means “hear and do.”  The Lord says in essence in Psalm 81:13–16, “If my people would only listen, I would take care of them.”  So that is the reason for the failing grade.

4. The Result of the Failure

As a result of his godless thinking, as a result of leaning on his own understanding, Abram goes down to Egypt.  He is now outside of the perfect will of God, who told him to go to Canaan and who promised that land for Abram’s offspring.

Unsurprisingly, the result of this action is a mess.  As soon as Abram gets there, he encounters a problem.  He has no family.  (GTB)  He has no friends.  He has no allies, no connections, and he begins to fear:  “The Egyptians will kill me.  They will take my wife and all my property, and no one will know, and no one will care.”

Again, this is a real problem.  It is outside of our experience, and we may look at this and think it is overblown.  But it is not overblown.  Sarai was indeed a beautiful woman, remarkably so.  It says so in verses 14 and 15, and some of what Abram worried about came true.  They praised her to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh took her as his wife.  So Abram was correct to recognize, as soon as he gets to the border of Egypt, “Maybe I have not thought this all the way through.  There are some problems presenting themselves and I am not even across the border yet.”

But what he failed to recognize was that this was a problem of his own creation.  When we lean on our own understanding, when we cook up our own schemes and solutions without seeking God, we usually make just such a mess.  Many, perhaps most, of our problems are actually collateral damage from our own so-called solutions to our other problems.  When you face a problem in the middle of your plan, the proper response in such situations is to stop, look, and listen:  Stop what we are doing, look to God, and listen to what He is speaking.  In other words, hear and do.

Abram, unfortunately, did no such thing here.  Had he done so, had he stopped at the Egyptian border to inquire of the Lord at this point, perhaps God would have said, “Go back to Canaan.”  It seems likely.  Perhaps God would have said, “I can feed you through the famine.  It is not problem for Me.”  Remember, God is more than capable.  He fed Elijah with bread and meat from the ravens and fed three million in the desert with the manna.  Or maybe God would have said something else.  Whatever it was, God’s word at that point would have been the best solution.  But we are not going to hear the solution if we do not go to God with a heart to hear and do what He is speaking and with no preconditions.  Even in the middle of our problem wrought by our solution, we should go to God and say, “What is it that You want me to do?”

Maybe you are a young person with your own ideas of what to do and how to live.  I say, put it all on the altar and hear what God is speaking through the word, through prayer, and through God’s delegated authorities.  Maybe you are a father or a mother, accustomed to charting the path forward.  Abraham did not have anyone greater to tell him, “You are making a mistake.”  He did not have a senior pastor to come and say, “This is the way that seems right to you.  It is not the right way.”  So maybe you are accustomed to charting the path forward.  Stop and listen to what God is speaking, especially in the midst of the problem.  We have to ask ourselves, especially those of us who are used to being in charge, “Did I really pray and seek God’s determination in this situation, or did I just think it up for myself and declare that to be the will of God?”  We must be careful.

Maybe you are getting older, and it is time for your role to change.  We have had to counsel a number of older people lately as their role changes.  You were used to being the teacher who was in charge, or the mother accustomed to exercising God’s authority and making decisions for yourself.  But now you need more help.  And not only that, you may have to get it from someone who is younger than you.  You may have to get it even from your own children, and that is difficult to do.  Our initial reactions to such things—I am not there yet, but I can predict—my initial reaction to such a thing will be defensive:  “Don’t tell me what to do.”  But we have to be careful, especially as our roles change, that we do not plow ahead, doing our own thing: what seems right to us.  We must stop, we must look, and we must listen.   Submit to what God is saying, not to our own ideas.  Don’t plow ahead.  Unfortunately here, Abraham plows ahead without seeking God.  He attempts to solve his Sarai problem, which he created as a result of his sin by going down to Egypt, by sinning more.

Here Abram sins in at least two ways.  First, he tells Sarai to lie (v. 13).  “Say that you are my sister.”  God is a God of truth.  He speaks truth, and he commands us to speak the truth.  And Abram’s attempt here is to deceive the Egyptians into thinking that Sarai is just his sister.  So Abram lies and he counsels others to lie.  One sin leads to another.

The second sin of Abram here is that he sins by failing to love his wife sacrificially.  He asks her to sacrifice for him.  It is supposed to go the other way around.  See what he says:  “Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”  He hid behind Sarai and exposed her to hardship and potential disgrace for his own benefit.  That is not the call of the husband.  First, the two are to become one, so that any injury to her is an injury to him.  Second, he is called to love her just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.  As our Pastor has said, this is “Titanic” love.  She gets into the lifeboat, and you go down with the ship.  Abram here did the opposite.  He gave her up for his sake.  Sin makes a mess, and more sin makes a bigger mess.

I do not know what God’s solution would have been.  Probably it would have been, “Stay in Canaan and I will preserve you.”  But Abram acted faithlessly here.  He leaned on his own understanding, made a mess, and then compounded that mess by sinning further.

5. God Remains Faithful

As a result of Abram’s sin, fear, and lies, we now have a real mess on our hands by verse 16.  Abram is out of the Promised Land where God directed him to go, and he is down in Egypt.  Sarai is out of the house and has been taken to Pharaoh’s palace as a wife or some kind of concubine.

This is clearly a problem for Abram, but it also runs much deeper.  See, there was a risk of dishonoring God by this activity.  Abram, God’s man, looks like a coward; but, worse, he makes God look untrustworthy.  He makes God’s people look unholy.  Giving your wife to another man is not a good look for God’s people.  And there was a real risk to the promise of God.  God said to Abram, “To your offspring I will give this land.”  But what if Sarai had become pregnant by Pharaoh?  Whose offspring then would get the land?  Or how would we know whose offspring it was?  Short of that, what if Pharaoh had simply kept her as a wife or concubine?  I do not know what Abram’s plan was for getting Sarai back from living with Pharaoh, who was the most powerful person in the world, or at least in that region.  What was the plan here?  Was she just going to walk out one day and go back with Abram to Canaan?  This was not very well thought through.  Abram’s plan was to live in Egypt for a while.  I don’t know how long that is, but certainly for the duration of the famine.  And after having his wife live in Pharaoh’s house for several years, was she simply going to walk out of there one day?  And there was a risk of being stuck down there in Egypt, introducing confusion into the family line of the promised offspring.

But there was even a greater risk than that.  The greater risk was to the Messianic line.  We are not certain how much revelation Abram had to this point, but he at least knew the protoeuangelion of Genesis 3, and he would later receive even more revelation than that in Genesis 21.  But whatever his limited understanding, he knew enough that God had special plans—generational plans—for his offspring, and he risked mixing what God had made separate.  From Abram would come Isaac and then Jacob, and from Jacob’s children would come the twelve tribes, and from the tribe of Judah would come the Christ (Matthew 1 and Luke 3).  By allowing Sarai to be taken into Pharaoh’s household as a wife of some kind, Abram put all of this at risk, even, at least theoretically, our eternal salvation.

Yet even when we are faithless, God remains faithful (2 Tim. 2:13).  Fearful Abram made a mess, and fearful Abram took actions that endangered the promises that God had made about his offspring.  But God’s purposes cannot be thwarted, not by his enemies who hate him (Job 42:2; Ps. 33:10), and not even by the well-intentioned bungling of God’s people, including us.  God remains faithful—faithful to himself, and faithful to his promises.

So God rescues Abram from this mess of Abram’s own creation.  Without so much as a prayer or petition—at least as recorded in the Bible—God inflicts serious disease on Pharaoh’s household, and somehow Pharaoh learns that this is due to God.  God’s hand is upon him.  He learns that Sarai is really Abram’s wife and what he is doing is not good.  So he sends her back to Abram and deports them all from Egypt back to Canaan where God had told them to go.

God is mighty to rescue his people and to preserve His plan.  God’s will is always achieved.  His promises are always fulfilled.  So in one fell swoop and by miraculous action, God cuts through the entire problem.  Sarai, the future mother of Isaac and an ancestor of the Messiah, is delivered back to Abram, pure and vindicated.  Abram’s life is spared.  Abram even acquires plenty to tide him through the famine.  It says the Egyptians gave him all kinds of stuff when he left.  Abram was sent back to Canaan by Pharaoh’s deportation order.  So just like that, the wife is restored, the line is preserved, the famine is resolved, and Abraham is sent back to where he was supposed to go, all by God’s unilateral action.

No matter what happens, God’s plans will always be carried out.  You could even murder the Messiah, the Savior of the world on a dishonorable cross after trumped-up charges and a show trial that would make the Stalinists blush.  You could do that, and it is no problem for God.  You are simply carrying out His salvation plan.  You are simply fulfilling the word of God’s long-ago prophets.  The cross was not a great defeat for Christ.  He triumphed over sin and hell and death, suffering the full wrath of God in our behalf on that cross, dying in our place.  Yes, he died the death that we deserved, but He died a substitutionary death in our place as God had decreed.  And He rose again in glory by the power of the Holy Spirit, for He was without sin, so death could not keep a hold on Him.

Just as the devil could not thwart God’s salvation plan by his hatred of God and by his enmity towards God, so also Abram could not thwart God’s plan by accident.  God remained faithful to Abram, faithful to Himself, faithful to us, and faithful to His good promises for all His people.

Application

1. Pass the Test

What is the application for us?  First, pass the test.  Whenever a problem comes, begin your analysis with God.  Remember that God is sovereign, and that God has sent or at least allowed this trouble for your good.  Remember that God works out all things for the good of those who love Him and whom He has called, whom He has chosen, whom He has elected, and whom He has saved.

If you are not among God’s people, if you are not among those who have confessed Christ as Lord and Savior, then perhaps God has sent this trouble to drive you to salvation, to drive you to Himself.  So do it.  Call on the name of the Lord and be saved, not just from your immediate trouble, but from your eternal trouble.

If you are in Christ, then realize that nothing bad can happen to you.  It is all for your eternal good.  Even that famine, that severe famine, that heavy famine, is for your good.  Pray to God about that problem:  “What are You speaking to me, Lord?  What is it that You want me to do?”  If it is something new, the Holy Spirit will reveal it to you by various means, and having been revealed, do it.  But if you receive no new directions, then keep doing what God told you to do last.  In other words, follow last instruction, and trust always that God is working it for your good.  You may be delivered from trouble right away like Peter was from prison.  That is for your good.  Or you may suffer for a long time and in various ways like Paul.  That is for your good too.  You may even die at the sword like James or be crucified like Peter or beheaded like Paul.  It is all for your good, for you will simply go to glory.  Trust in God, seek God, obey God and He will take care of you.

When you run into trouble, don’t keep plowing ahead.  Stop and ask if you are really on the way that God intends.  He may intend you to go through those troubles for your good, or he may not.  Don’t be like Balaam, plowing ahead and crushing your foot against the stone wall.

The truth is, we will all have sufferings as God’s people, but not every suffering is required.  In his February 17, 2013, sermon on this text, Pastor Mathew noted, “We waste a lot of time, effort, and money when we do not walk with the Lord but turn to the right or to the left.  We make wrong decisions . . . whenever we do not pray or seek counsel from God-ordained leaders.”[1]  So we must pay careful attention to what we have learned from God’s word, and we must do it.

2. Fear Not

We must be confident, for God is with us when we are with Him.  The devil cannot thwart Him.  Our enemies cannot thwart Him.  Pharaoh cannot thwart Him, nor can we ourselves even thwart Him.  God will achieve His good purposes for us regardless.

This is not a call to recklessness, but a call to boldness.  We do not need to be timid or afraid.  We should seek God’s will boldly and do it boldly, knowing that if God is with us, only victory is possible.

Even if we are mistaken sometimes, even if we fail sometimes, even if we act faithlessly sometimes, we should remain confident because God’s purposes will prevail.  We may look at a situation and think we are too weak to handle it, we are too unable to handle it.  We may look at it and say we are likely to screw it up.  And let me tell you, it is all true.

But so was Abram.  He was a great man.  James 2:23 tells us he was a friend of God.  He was perhaps the greatest man that ever lived, leaving aside the God-man Jesus Christ.  How many people are called friend of God?  Not many.  It is a limited group vying for the number one position, including Moses, Elijah, Paul, Peter, and even King David.  Abram was a great man, perhaps the greatest man, but still just a man, still a sinner saved by grace.  When we look through this, we will see that Abram is going to pass some tests and Abram is going to fail some tests.  We should not look down on Abram.  We should not bash or beat up Abram.  We should look at this with fear and trembling.  We should take warning, for if this great man with great faith, this great friend of God, Abram, could sin in this way, then so can we.

We should take warning, but we also should also take heart.  Abram was great, but he was still flawed like us.  He was still prone to just fear like us, he was still prone to sin just like us, and he failed once in a while, just like us.  We are not failures because we fall in matters of faith.  We are only failures if we stay down when we fall.  So don’t stay down when you fall.  Let us have confidence that God will rescue us.  Then let us repent, let us get up, and as our Pastor tells us, do the next right thing.

As we will see in the coming weeks, Abram’s greatest tests of faith were still ahead of him.  Most of those he would pass with flying colors, especially the important ones.  Unlike greedy Lot, he chose God’s land by faith.  He rescued Lot, defeating four kings and being blessed by God’s high priest, Melchizedek.  He made and renewed his covenant with the Lord.  He pleaded for Sodom.  He sent away Hagar and Ishmael by God’s command—a serious test.  He was willing to sacrifice Isaac by faith—a most serious test.  He got a wife for Isaac from among God’s people by faith.  And he died in the Lord (Gen. 25).  Now, he is not going to pass all these tests.  You will see.  He failed a few times.  But the general direction for Abraham was to pass, pass, pass the tests of faith.  And Abraham now is in heaven.  Abraham now is in glory with all other of God’s people who passed that final exam.

God preserved Abram, and God will preserve us too, if we are in Christ.  We must persevere in the faith, despite our weakness and despite our ongoing battles with sin.

Again, do not look down on Abram.  Matthew Henry wrote that Scripture is impartial in recording the misdeeds of the most celebrated saints.  It is always for our good that this is recorded.  But the same God of Abram is the same God for us—faithful and merciful.

Brothers and sisters, let us avoid sin.  But if we do sin, let us repent and let us trust His promise to forgive.  This was Abram’s pattern, and this should be ours until we go to heavenly glory where we will worship Him face to face in perfection.  Amen.

 

[1] P. G. Mathew, “How to Pass Tests, Part One,” https://gracevalley.org/sermon/how-to-pass-tests-part-one/