Genesis 12
Abram and Sarai in Egypt
Genesis 12:1, God called to Abraham, “Go from your country, your
people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” （12:1）
It indeed required a very great faith to respond to this call of leaving
everything behind in one’s own home and land, and moving on to an unfamiliar
place.
However, “Abram went as the Lord told him. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had
accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set
out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.” (12:4-5）
This was the peak of Abram’s faith.
After that, “Abram traveled through the land to
the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in
the land.” (v.6)
The land was occupied by the
Canaanites, how could Abram settle down? This was Abram’s first challenge. Despite
this predicament, the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your
offspring I will give this land.”
Abram submitted to the LORD,
so he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to
him. From there he went on toward
the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the
west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar the LORD and called upon
the name of the LORD.” (8-9)
Abram built altars to worship God and called upon His name again and
again upon reaching a new place in the land of Canaan. Doing this, he made God
the center of his life wherever he was. He knew very well he was still a sojourner
in the promised land.
Building an altar to worship God was also a faith declaration that God’s
sovereignty was there. He declared by faith that he had received God’s promise
for him to possess the land.
However, a new life-threatening challenge was coming on the way for
Abram as he set out and continued toward the Negev (v.9).
Abram moved eventually to Negev (the south tip of Canaan), and he
gradually moved further and further away from the places that he had built his
altars. He went further and further away from the land of Canaan while moving
nearer and nearer towards Egypt.
Abram encountered a famine after he went to Negev, and hence he went
down to Egypt (v.10)
We might be questioning why there was a famine in Negev. How could God
allow those who trust in Him to encounter a life-threatening famine? Would one
encounter crisis in his life when he trusts and submits to God? The answer is
definitely yes.
Places all over the world today are under the gloom of the pandemic, and
God’s faithful children are threatened by it too. How then shall we protect and
manage our lives?
We also notice that neither did Abram inquire of God, and nor did he
wait upon God. His first reaction was to contemplate on his own safety. He
decided to go down to Egypt because Egypt was well-known as the storehouse of
grains.
Abram came to a foreign land. He became concerned that the Egyptians
might kill him and take away his wife because she was beautiful. He was so fearful
and worried that his life might be at stake, and as a result, he lied and
claimed his wife as his sister. (12:11-13)
When Abram responded to God’s call and went out from his country, he
went out with faith and without fear. God called him out. God would be with him
no matter where he went.
However, Abram failed subsequently after this in his life journey. What
indeed were the very reasons that caused Abram to fall from his peak of faith
and go down all the way to his faith crisis?
Why should he be fearful? How could he fall into temptation by relying
on his own little understanding?
In fact, this was because he had been alienated from God. He had drifted
from God further and further and moved nearer to Egypt instead.
Sometimes we will draw near to God in our lives, but sometimes we will
be drifting further and further away from Him slowly. Only when something
happens and we fall because of a crisis, then we come to realize that we have
no longer made God as the center of our lives.
Man does not fall away from God instantly but gradually. He moves away
from God slowly and moves closer to Egypt all the way. When man falls away from
God, he would be drawn into Egypt when he encounters problems in life.
Egypt in the biblical connotation, often represents man’s trust in man
and the world without trusting in God.
Abram started to see things from a worldly perspective when he reached
Egypt. If he had ever made God the center of his life, he would trust in God
and believe that God would protect his wife and Sarai’s beauty would not be an
issue for him.
Isn’t God almighty? Since Abram’s life came under the leading of God,
God would surely keep watch over him even in times of famine or in a foreign
land.
It seemed that Abram could not understand this simple truth because
suddenly he had fallen away from God. His faith was drifting away from God, and
hence his life was falling away too. Therefore, he was fearful and thus made
the wrong moves.
Abram built altars to worship God and called upon the name of the Lord
when he was at the peak of his faith. But when he arrived in Egypt, he lost his
trust in prayer and he did not call upon the name of the Lord anymore.
If he had ever believed in prayer, he would not have claimed his wife to
be his sister. Obviously, he did believe in God then but did not believe in
God’s power to protect him.
Many Christians behave this way. They still hold things in their own
hands after their prayers because they do not believe that God is able to solve
their problems. Their hearts are still inflicted with worries and fears. When
we become fearful, our faith and acts of living would not go in line with each
other.
We could pray with great strength in peaceful and good times, but do we
really believe prayer in our hearts in bad times or in crisis time?
Our faith is challenged when we face difficulties in life. Fear can
cause us to be inconsistent in our faith and living.
Self-seeking interest too would cause us to fall away from God other
than fear. The record found in Genesis 12:16 says that, “Pharoah treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle,
male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.”
Abram came to realize that he would gain much and receive special
treatment and even become rich by claiming Sarai as his sister. Sometimes we
would do something that cause us to fall away from God out of our seeking for
personal interests.
Many Christians believe in God, but they believe even more in money. If they
behave this way, it would be very hard for them to walk in the path of God.
The Abram by then was completely a different man from the Abram in the
first part of Genesis 12. Prior to this, he had set his heart to follow God and
let go of all his career and future when he left his country, his people and
his father’s household.
However, he forsook his faith in God for the sake of survival and
immediate gains. Subsequently, his faith life headed towards a bigger crisis
step by step.
Believers would face the same crisis when we live on earth. Today our
number one challenge and crisis is the widespread of the pandemic. How then
shall we respond?
Are we still following God closely and waiting upon Him and relying on
His grace for our living? Or are we falling away from God eventually and
trusting in our own understanding in seeking our own “opportunities” or
“helps”?
Satan, the devil, would like to be involved in our lives often and cause
us to fall away from God. But God also intervened. “But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his
household because of Abram’s wife Sarai.” (12:17)
As a result, Abram was driven out from Egypt, and faith in life was
restored. Hence, the faith and life of Abraham would never be the same again
after this.
We should not overlook the crisis of falling away from God be it out
fear or immediate interests, for even Abram was trapped in this crisis!
Application
When we are drifting away from God, our lives will not be aligned with
our faith. We would then be indifferent towards the heavenly things as we seek
earthly fulfilment. Pray that God would shower His mercy upon us and intervene
in our lives, that He would lead us with a string of love and not allow us to
keep drifting away from Him.
In this season of pandemic, challenges and pressure from every direction
are mounting up. If we feel that our faith has turned cold today, and our
hearts are drawn away from God, then we must confess and repent from our sins
quickly.
Let’s return to God. We must trust in God and worship Him and be
faithful to Him whether in good season or in days when the pandemic is
rampantly spreading. Let’s take heed of Isaiah’s claim of God’s promise for us:
“Do you not know? Have you
not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the
Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his
understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and
increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young
men stumble and fall;” (Isaiah 40:28-31)
