Abraham, Our Father in Faith

I want to spend more time with our father in faith, Abraham, over the next couple of days or weeks for there are rich treasures to be discovered in his life. Although he was a descendant of Shem, Noah’s righteous first-born son, Abraham’s family had moved away from the Promised Land some time before Abraham was born. God called Abraham back to the home of his ancestors. Abraham obeyed, and made his way to a place unfamiliar to him. Throughout the rest of the Old Testament, the people of God are trying to return to the Promised Land, beginning with Abraham. At the end of chapter 11 in Genesis, Abraham’s father, Terah, started the journey back to this land; he stopped short, but Abraham completed the move in Genesis 12.

This is the beginning of the constant theme of the quest for the Promised Land. What makes this land so special? God is a big God and the earth is a big planet, especially in relation to only thousands of people living on it at the time. Aren’t there many other equally or better suited locations to settle down? Why does God call Abraham back to this location, known as the land of Canaan? Another nation occupies the land, and God wants Abraham to take possession of that land away from the Canaanites. That does not seem fair or even right. Shouldn’t God send him to some unoccupied place to make him the father of a multitude of nations? Why displace another people?

In Genesis 12:7 it states: “Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, ‘To your descendants I will give this land.’ So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.” God promises him the land of Canaan. Then there is a famine in the land of Canaan, and Abraham finds help by going down to Egypt. His half-sister and wife, Sarah, is very beautiful, and Abraham is worried that the Egyptians will kill him and steal his wife. His solution: say to them that she is his sister and leave out the part about being married. The pharaoh, naturally, takes Sarah as a wife.

“But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. So Pharaoh called Abram, and said, ‘What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone.’ And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him; and they set him on the way, with his wife and all that he had.”

Why does Abraham act so poorly regarding his wife, allowing her to be taken by the pharaoh? This is the first time that there is a mention of the people of God making their way to Egypt, and this is repeated several times by Abraham’s descendants, and there are many parallels among the different journeys.

After returning to the Promised Land, “The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, ‘Lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your descendants for ever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you’.” Genesis 13:14-17.

The reason this land is called the Promised Land is that God promised it to Abraham, but that still does not explain why God chose this land and why He is willing to remove the Canaanites from it. There is a battle between kings of this land in chapter 14, and Lot, Abraham’s nephew is taken prisoner. Abraham saves him by defeating the kings who defeated the kings, making Abraham a sort of king of kings. Then he is blessed by the mysterious Melchizedek. Only after receiving the blessing, and at the very next encounter with God, Abraham, who is 75 and married to an elderly barren woman, asks God for a son. There is a connection between getting the blessing and passing it on to one’s son. He has the blessing, so now he needs and asks for a son. Again, we return to the quest for a son that we saw in the Fall.

Tonight, I just want to pose some questions and set the stage. Tomorrow, I may give some of the answers and continue to set the stage. Ultimately, I want to explain why God asks Abraham to kill his own son and how that connects to the sin of our first parents.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007