Faithful Behavior
I’ve
spoken in the past few chapters about Sarah’s lack of faith and her desire to
take matters into her own hands. As I
read through this chapter – especially when we hear Abraham explain himself in
Genesis 20:13 – I think we can see the break in the armor of Abraham’s faith,
too. I don’t say that to denigrate
Abraham or to think any less of him. Indeed,
who am I to judge?
Actually,
I say this because it makes him a flawed hero.
If God can love a flawed hero as much as He loved Abraham, there is no
reason to think that God can’t love a flawed human like me or you. If God can turn a flawed Abraham into a hero
in faith, He can turn us into flawed heroes as well. Faithfulness is about God’s character, not
ours. God made Abraham faithful in spite
of his flaws.
Abraham’s Flaw
So where
is this chink in Abraham’s armor of faith?
Well, we’ve been talking for a while now about how Sarah was barren and
God was powerful enough to combine an old man with a barren woman and after
many generations bring about the salvation of the world. That’s the long term point of view given from
a perspective of being generations after Christ.
For a
moment, contemplate what happens if Sarah were to have had sex with another man. Would not doubt be cast on whether Sarah’s
child was Abraham’s – and thus God’s – doing or the product of the other
man? You see, by allowing his wife to
act as though she was his sister, Abraham is displaying that he doesn’t fully
get what God is doing, either. While He
is certainly faithful to God, he doesn’t get God’s long-term plan. He is willing to compromise God’s long-term
plan for his own short-term survival. If
he understood God’s plan, he would know enough to protect the sanctity of
Sarah’s womb.
You know what? That is completely the grace I need to hear
today. How many times can I look back on
my past and say, “If I only knew then what I know now – if I only knew what God
was up to – then I would have made other choices!” I can say that repeatedly for my past!
But here’s
the cool thing. When God finally brings
about Isaac and explains to Abraham what’s going on, Abraham no doubt feels the
same way! God loves Abraham, who
typically only gets His plan after God fully explains it. If that’s true, then God can love me and you
when we struggle and make mistakes and only “get it” after God demonstrates
clearly what He is up to. Now there’s
grace – even in the Old Testament!
Abimelech
I’d also
like to look at Abimelech. Abimelech
technically comes first in the story, but today I needed to get those thoughts
regarding Abraham out first. So here is
Abimelech. He takes what he knows and
acts according to his legal right. He
thinks Sarah is available and he takes her.
However,
God intervenes. God intervenes to do
what Abraham does not: to protect the sanctity of Sarah’s womb. But there is more.
God also
intervenes to protect Abimelech from getting caught in Abraham’s lies. One of my favorite quotes is “God protects
the fools and the innocents.” Often I am
more the fool than the innocent, for the record. But God protects Abimelech in spite of his
ignorance.
So what
can we learn here? Genesis 20:6 tells us
quite clearly that God knows Abimelech’s innocence in this matter. Therefore, we can trust that even when we
stumble into the trap of other people’s sinfulness God can sort out the
truth. If we are innocent and if we are
pure, God knows.
Conclusions
On this
day I am given two messages that I desperately need to hear.
- Message number one is this: Go and do what God has called me to do. If I fall and stumble into other people’s sinfulness along the way, I should trust God to sort out the details.
- Message number two is equally important: Don’t ever stop trying to fully grasp what God is doing, and don’t ever work my own path in order to accomplish what I think God should be doing. He’s already doing it and I need to be patient.
<><
No comments:
Post a Comment