Abraham Father of Many Nations

Questions for Thought

1. Imagine living during the time of Abraham. If God had spoken to you and told you to leave home and go somewhere else, what would you have done?
2. When one is a follower of God, does that mean the person can no longer commit sin?
3. According to 2 Timothy 3:16, all scripture is by the inspiration of God, and it is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. In many places, we can read of God’s people sinning. Why did God include their flaws in His word?
4. How was Abraham the father of many nations?

In the last blog, we looked at the life of Job because I wanted to have his account in its most likely chronological order. Now, as promised, we are going back to Genesis 12 where we will look at the man God chose to be the father of many nations. I think we will see even the great man Abraham had flaws.

According to some of the Bible historians, Abraham was born in 2166 BC which means he was born around 3000 years after the creation of man. Keep in mind when Adam and Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, God promised in Genesis 3:15 there would be a seed of woman who would bruise the serpent’s head although the serpent would bruise the seed’s heel. We do not find any mention of this seed again until here in Genesis 12 where God is about to make a great promise to Abraham.

Back in the Genesis 11 genealogy section, we saw that Terah had three sons, one of whom was Abram. Abram married Sarai, but they had no children because Sarai was barren. Another of Terah’s sons, Haran died and in Genesis 12 when God called Abram to leave his kin folks and his land, Abram took Haran’s son, Lot, with him. Think what it must have been like to leave all of your possessions and almost all of your family and go off to a place decided upon by someone else. For some it would be easy but for others of us, it would be a hard decision to make.

But in telling Abram to leave his county and people, God also gave him a major promise. God promised Abram in Genesis 12:2 to make of him a great nation and to make his name great. In verse 3 God told Abram in him all families of the earth would be blessed. Then in verse 7, God promised Abram He would give to his seed or to those who would become his descendants, the land of Canaan. In verse 8, Abram built an altar to the Lord and he called upon the name of the Lord.

There was a famine in the land where Abram was staying and Abram took Sarai and Lot and went to Egypt. In Genesis 12:11-13, Abram asked his wife to lie to the Egyptians and say she was his sister instead of his wife, so the Egyptians would not kill Abram in order to have Sarai for their own. Sure enough Sarai was taken into Pharaoh’s house but God sent plagues upon Pharaoh’s house and somehow Pharaoh realized Sarai was Abram’s wife. He called Abram in and reprimanded him for the lie and then sent him on his way out of Egypt.

As Abram and his nephew Lot continued their journey, a little problem developed between them. Both of them had lots of animals. They had so many animals they were not able to live close to each other because the land did not produce enough pasture for all of them. Abram did not want any trouble between him and Lot so he told Lot to look at all the land before them and to pick which direction he wanted to go and Abram would take the other direction. Lot looked upon the plain of Jordan which was well watered and he chose that land for his dwelling. In this land was the famous place we know as Sodom.

Abram went to the land of Canaan. God once again promised Abram in Genesis 13:14-16 to give him the land and to make his seed as the dust of the earth. He told Abram to walk through the land of Canaan. Can you imagine what was going through Abram’s mind as he looked at the land which is later referred to as a land flowing with milk and honey. Of course, Abram had no children, so he must have wondered how he would have seed as the dust of the earth and how they could ever fill this land.

During this time while Lot was living in Sodom, King Arioch and some other kings made war with the Bera, King of Sodom, and his allies. Arioch’s side conquered Bera and his allies and they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah including Lot and his possessions. Someone came and told Abram what had happened and Abram armed his servants and went after King Arioch and the others. He overcame them and recovered all of the possessions and his nephew, Lot. On Abram’s way back, Melchizedek, King of Salem and priest of God, met him and blessed him. Abram gave Melchizedek a tenth of all he had recovered.

When the King of Sodom told Abram to only give him the people he had recovered and to keep the goods for himself, Abram refused. He told the King of Sodom he had lifted up his hand to the Lord God, the possessor of heaven and earth, and said he would not take anything from the King of Sodom because he did not want it to be said the King of Sodom had made Abraham rich. Afterwards, the Lord came to Abram in a vision and told him not be afraid and God was Abram’s shield and his exceeding great reward. Having God as a reward would be so much better than having any earthly reward.

Abram questioned God concerning how he was to be blessed since he had no children. God again promised him his seed would be many. Abram believed God and in Genesis 15:6 the account says because he believed in the Lord it was counted to him for righteousness. Abram fell into a deep sleep and God showed him how his seed would be a stranger in a land that was not their own and how they would be servants for 400 years in that land. After 400 years his seed would come out of that land with many possessions and they would inherit the land of Canaan after Abram’s death.

Abram’s wife, Sarai, felt a need to help the process of creating an heir since she was still barren. She told Abram to have a child by her maid, Hagar. Abram listened to his wife and had sex with Hagar who became pregnant. Sarai was upset with this result and made it so hard on Hagar she fled to the wilderness. An angel appeared to her and told her to go back to Sarai and submit to her. The angel promised her she would have many descendants. He told her to call her child’s name Ishmael. He said Ishmael would be a wild man who would be against every man and every man against him.

Abram was 86 when Ishmael was born. Finally, when Abram was 99 years old God appeared to him and told him again he would be the father of many nations. God then changed Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah. God told Abraham he was to keep God’s covenant of circumcision. Every male child was to be circumcised when he was eight days old. God then told Abraham His covenant would be established with Isaac, the son Sarah would bear in the next year. Abraham did as God commanded and circumcised every male in his house including himself.

On another day, the Lord appeared at Abraham’s tent along with a couple of men. Abraham quickly had them a meal prepared and while they were eating, they told Abraham Sarah was going to have a son. She heard them talking and she laughed about it. The Lord asked Abraham why Sarah had laughed and she denied having laughed because she was afraid. The men left the tent and headed toward Sodom where Lot was living. Abraham walked along with them for a while.

After the two men went on toward Sodom, the Lord told Abraham because of the evil of Sodom and Gomorrah, He was going down to check them out. Abraham asked God if He would destroy the righteous with the wicked. Abraham said what if there were 50 righteous in the city. God said He would spare the city for 50 righteous people. Abraham asked God what if there were 45 righteous and God said He would spare the city. Abraham kept going down with the number of righteous. He asked about 40 and then 30 and then 20 and finally 10. Each time, God said if He found that number of righteous in the city, He would not destroy it. The Lord left Abraham and Abraham went back to his place.

Most Bible students are very familiar with the land of Sodom where the people were so wicked. Two angels showed up at the gate of Sodom and Lot saw them. He went to meet them and invited them into his house for food and lodging. They at first refused and said they would stay in the street, but Lot insisted they should come to his house. They went to his house and had a meal and before they went to bed, the men of the city came to Lot’s house and demanded he bring the men out so they could know them. (When I was a kid, I thought they were being friendly and wanted to meet these men who had come to the city. I later learned that to “know them” was the writer’s way of saying to have sex with them. It is very obvious from Genesis 19:8 this was their intent as Lot offered the his daughters instead. Thankfully, the angels saved the daughters and themselves from this awful sin by pulling Lot back into the house and then blinding the men who were at the door.

The angels asked Lot if he had anyone else in the city. They told Lot to get them out of the place because the Lord was going to destroy it. Lot went to his daughters’ husbands and told them what was going to happen, but they did not believe him and refused to leave the city. The next morning, the angels rushed Lot and his wife and two daughters out of the city and told the to not look back. They told him to flee to the mountains but he persuaded them to let him go to Zoar. God did what the angels said He would do and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone out of heaven. Just recently I was reading an article about Sodom where it is claimed archaeologists believe they have found the remains with evidence of the destruction.

Lot’s wife looked back and she became a pillar of salt. Think how hard it would be to leave your home and not to look back to see what was happening. But God had said to not look back. I am very glad punishment for sins today is not as instant as it was in many cases in the Bible. I am very thankful if we sin today after having become a Christian, we can repent and ask God to forgive us.

When the two daughters found themselves dwelling in Zoar in a cave with their father, they somehow got the idea there were no men to become their husbands and they needed to preserve the seed of their father. They agreed to get their dad drunk and have sex with him. According to Genesis 19:31-36 the girls carried out their plan over a two night period and Lot did not even know he had slept with the girls. Both of them had a son by Lot. Their sons became the leaders of the Moabites and the Ammonites.

Abraham and Sarah continued to travel across the land and they came to Gerar where again Abraham lied about his relationship to Sarah. He told King Abimelech she was his sister but God showed the king in a dream the truth and Abimelech did not have sex with Sarah. Abimelech called Abraham to him and asked him why he had done such a thing. Abraham told Abimelech he knew the fear of God was not in that place and he was afraid of what they would do to him because of Sarah. He also told Abimelech Sarah was the daughter of his father but not of his mother so she was really his half sister who became his wife. Abimelech gave gifts to Abraham and told him to live wherever he wanted in the land.

Finally, the Lord allowed Sarah to conceive and have a son by Abraham. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son, Isaac, was born. On the day he was weaned, Abraham made a great feast and Sarah saw Ishmael laughing and it made her very upset. She told Abraham to cast Ishmael and his mother out as he was not to be an heir with her son. Abraham was grieved over the situation, but God told him to do what Sarah had said. God said he would make of Ishmael a nation too, but it would be in Isaac that Abraham’s seed would be called.

Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away and for a while it looked like they might not make it, but God was watching over them. He told Hagar not to fear and he promised her to make of Ishmael a great nation. The Arabic Muslims consider Ishmael as their ancestor.

In Genesis 22, we have the account of God telling Abraham to offer Isaac upon the altar as a sacrifice. Abraham did not question God but proceeded to do as He commanded. He took his son all the way to the altar and even bound him upon the altar. On the way to the altar, Isaac asked Abraham where the lamb for an offering was and Abraham told Isaac God would provide for Himself a lamb. Once Abraham showed his faith in God through placing his son on the altar and preparing to kill him, God caused an angel to stop Abraham from killing Isaac and God provided His own sacrifice.

From these events in Abraham’s and Sarah’s lives, we can see that even those people who know God and are considered to be faithful to him make mistakes. Both Abraham and Sarah were too impatient and wanted to help God with His promise to make of Abraham a great nation. Both of them lied not just once but twice about their relationship to each other. God in directing the writing of the book of Genesis, allowed us to see these people as humans who sin but yet as humans loved by God and accepted by Him. We too will go down the wrong path at times and find ourselves doing things that are wrong. When that happens, we have to realize our errors and correct them. I once heard a preacher say we should be sinning less and less as we get older. I hope that is the case with me. We must be teaching our children and others the importance of directing all of our steps in line with God’s will.

When Sarah was 127 years old, she died. Abraham purchased a burial place in Machpelah for her and there he buried her in Canaan. Abraham sent his oldest servant back to the land of Mesopotamia to find a wife for Isaac. The servant went to the city of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, and found the wife. We will pick up with that account in the next blog.