The Next Test

HOW long Abram dwelt here in peace and quietness we do not know. The Lord gave him a little season of rest and refreshing, and then puts His servant to the next great trial and test. There comes a disturbing situation, a famine in the land. How it must have troubled Abram. Was he not where God wanted him? Was he not in the place of fellowship? Then why a famine in the land? It was indeed a great test of faith, and Abram, we are sorry to say, failed, miserably failed. Instead of trusting God, he turned to his own reason, and sought the solution in the arm of the flesh. If Abram had only trusted God, and said, “God has placed me here and I am going to stay until He tells me to move,” God would certainly have honored his faith. He who fed Elijah by the brook, He who rained manna from heaven for Abram’s descendants, He who filled the disciples’ nets with fish and fed a multitude on a few loaves and fishes, surely He could take care of Abram also.

Poor Abram, still young in the faith, instead of trusting God, took matters in his own hands. We read the sad story:

Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land. – Genesis 12:10.

Abram went down. He turned his back on Bethel and went down to Egypt, a country which in the Bible is a type of the world. The lesson taught here is that it is better to starve in the place where God wants you to be than to live in luxury and not in the will of God, in Egypt. Abram was to find this out shortly. He was to pay dearly for his unbelief. In the story we have many, many evidences of this fact.

Abram first of all lost his sense of peace and security; he began to worry. He feared for Sarai his wife; for she was very beautiful, and he feared that these conscienceless Egyptians might kill him and take Sarai. How much better to have trusted the Lord in Canaan. Abram says to Sarai:

“Therefore it will happen, when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, ‘This is his wife’; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because of you.” – Genesis 12:12-13.

Is this the same man who trusted God, of whom we read, “He was the friend of God,” and “the father of the faithful”? Yes, it is the same man—none other than this same Abram. Abram’s action only proves how deceitful the flesh is, even in the believer, and how we ought to be on guard against it every moment. The flesh is still in us to overpower us the moment we are off guard and leave the place of perfect obedience. The saintliest and holiest believer is not immune to the flesh and temptation, but is all too prone to yield and submit to it when it appears that obedience to God may cost him too great a price.

Adapted and modified excerpts from Studies in the Life of Abraham by M. R. De Haan (1891-1964)
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.