2023_02_06 Insight Post- Kim Feld

  -   February 6, 2023

This week’s reading- Genesis 12, Matthew 1:1-17, Genesis 14, Romans 4

There are stories in the Bible that make me uncomfortable. Some that I find upsetting. We often don’t get a lot of details in the stories that are presented, plus we aren’t living within the times or contexts in which they occurred, so reading them can be difficult. Genesis 12 is an example.

The chapter begins with God giving Abram (his name is changed to Abraham later) the incredible news that he will be the father of a great nation. But it will require Abram to take a leap of faith, leave everything familiar to him, and travel to an unknown destination. Amazingly, Abram complies. His belief is on point.

Genesis 12:7 says that the Lord appeared to Abram during his travels at Shechem and promised the land to him. Abram built an altar there to worship and honor God and the message He had given. Abram continued his travels and arrived in an area experiencing a food shortage, so he went to Egypt, where food was plentiful because of the Nile River. Here’s where the trouble begins.

Out of fear, Abram told the Egyptians that Sarai (later named Sarah) was his sister instead of his wife. He assumed he would be killed because Pharaoh would want Sarai for her beauty. So, he sacrificed his wife to save himself. Pharaoh indeed took Sarai, giving Abram additional wealth in return. God unhappy with that move and sent sickness to Pharaoh and his palace. Verse 17 says, “The Lord did it because of Abram’s wife Sarai.” Abram gets his wife back and can leave with all he has been given.

God rescued Sarai. She was part of the promise God had given to Abram. Go back to the beginning of chapter 12. God told Abram that not only would He bless him and make his name great, but He would also curse anyone who cursed him! He had God’s protection, yet he gave into fear.

We aren’t privy to Sarai’s thoughts about Abram’s plan or how it played out. But God made something good out of it by increasing Abram’s wealth which gave him positional standing in the area and allowed him to have “318 trained men” to aid in the battle found in Genesis 14 (see Genesis 14:14).

The part of the story involving Sarai and the Pharaoh is probably one I would have left out if I were writing the story. If Abram is the good guy, the story casts a shadow on him. But as I pondered this, I realized that Abram isn’t the story’s hero; God is. God who makes a way through the impossible. God who rescues His own. Abram was called and used by God, but never forget that it was God’s plan that was being implemented. Imperfectly, oh my goodness, yes. But what God wants to happen will happen.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
¹⁰ As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:9-11, NIV)