Last 5 Days
Trust and Obey Our Faithful God
4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. 9 And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.
10 Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. 11 When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, 12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.” 14 When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. 15 And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. 16 And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.
17 But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. 18 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? 19 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 go.” 20 And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.
Genesis 12:1-3 records the promise God gave to Abram (verse 2: "I will make you a great nation"), and within this promise lies the promise of "land" and "seed (descendants)", a recurring theme in the story of Abram (Abraham). What this means is that, in order for there to be a great nation, there must be land, and there must be people. However, even though God had given a promise, it was not entirely smooth-sailing for Abram henceforth. Instead, he began to face a series of trials that are related to the idea of "land" and "seed", each of which challenged his faith in God's promise.
Today's passage records what happened after God gave the promise. First, Abram faced trials that challenged the promise of “land”. Verse 4 tells us, "So Abram went, as the Lord had told him”. God's command was recorded in Genesis 12:1, where the Lord commanded Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you”. Abram did not resist God’s command in the slightest, and instead responded to God’s command with obedience. However, despite his obedience and God’s promise, he was not able to bear the land of Canaan immediately. When he came to the land of Canaan, the Canaanites were in the land. How would he be able to possess the land? Afterwards, there was a severe famine in the land, and Abram had to go down to Egypt to sojourn there. How would he be able to possess the land as God had promised?
When Abram headed to Egypt, he also faced the trial that challenged the promise of the "seed". When Abram came to Egypt, he was afraid that the Egyptians would kill him because of Sarai’s beauty, so he told a lie - Abram called Sarai his sister. However, behind this lie lay a threat to the promise of God's "seed". If Sarai had been taken as Pharaoh’s wife, how would God's promise of “seed” to Abram be fulfilled? Nonetheless, we see that through God's intervention (verse 17: But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife), Sarai was not taken by Pharaoh as his wife, and the promise of the "seed" was kept.
From today’s Scriptures, we seem to be seeing endless challenges and trials.
If God gave Canaan as the promised land, why are there still Canaanites living there?
Was the land of Canaan really a good land in the face of a severe famine?
If Sarai really became Pharaoh's wife, how was God going to fulfill the promise of the seed?
Why did God's promises contradict the actual situation?
In fact, aren't there many times such contradictions in our lives? Often times we find ourselves in situations where it seemed clear that God had commanded us to take a certain path, however, the path was not at all smooth sailing. On the contrary, the path of obedience to God appeared rocky, full of obstacles and difficulties, and we might even meet what seems like the end of the road.
Dear brothers and sisters, are you facing such conflicts and challenges in your current situation? Know that our circumstances may not always seem compatible in our understanding of God’s promises. There may be Canaanites in our "land" and there may be famine, but God is still the God who gives the land, and He Himself will fulfill His promises in His time.
Dear brothers and sisters, the truth is that the rocky roads, the trials we encounter, and the contradictions and challenges we face often require us to trust God with all our hearts and to be more sensitive to His wonderful works. Often, it is only when we face severe famine and reach a point of desperation that we find that God is asking us to learn to rely and obey, and every experience is a journey that tries and tests our faith. When you are down, look up, He will bring you through; when you are in the darkest valley, He will be that light at the end of the tunnel. Dear brothers and sisters, let us learn to follow our God closely in whatever circumstances we are in, and trust and obey Him!
