ABRAHAM’S FLAWS AND FALLS

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us – 2 Corinthians 4:7

This man of faith was a man of failures too; very far from perfect. While the flaws in his character are to be neither condoned nor emulated, they do afford encouragement to one who desires to be of service to God and man, but is very conscious of his own frailty. It gives assurance that God is willing to use ordinary fallible men and women. Abraham’s life was marred by ignoble and repeated falls. His faith was sometimes chequered with doubt. Many other men of the Bible evinced a nobility which was lacking in his life. The treasure was there, but in an earthen vessel.

God was able to use him because these failures were incidental and not fundamental in his life. If he stumbled away from the pathway of faith, God drew him back and he always responded. It is significant that his failures were, in the main, in the very quality which later became his strongest point, his faith. As we recall the flaws in his life, our judgment should be tempered by remembering the moral standards of his times, and the way in which we who have so much greater privileges, have ourselves failed our God.

The first recorded failure came through unexpected adversity. …Abraham had not travelled far southward before “there was a grievous famine in the land” (Gen.12:10). In this new emergency his faith wavered and “he went down into Egypt to sojourn there” – Egypt, the stronghold of Satan, whose gods according to the Scriptures were demons. But Egypt was not the land God had shown him, and his defection from the path of faith involved him in acute distress. Disobedience always brings complications. Eventually he learned his lesson and found his way back to God and blessing by retracing his steps, and returning to worship at “the place of the altar which he had made at the first” (Gen.13:1,4).

Fearful that the Egyptian monarch would covet his beautiful wife, Abraham resorted to deceit to save his own skin…Thus the friend of God stooped to cowardly falsehood and was willing even to sacrifice his wife’s virtue in the interests of his own safety. True, it was only a half-lie, for Sarah was his half-sister, but she was also his wife. Not only was his action despicable in itself but it was an occasion of possible sin to others, and brought dishonour to the name of God. Only divine intervention prevented tragedy. He left Egypt, but not in a blaze of glory.

His next failure had its source in the ties of kinship. God’s call to him was three-fold. To leave his country; he obeyed. To leave his kindred; he partially obeyed. To leave his father’s house; he disobeyed. Apparently he was too timid to make such an absolute break with the past… His faith at first was tentative and he went only part way with God. His father Terah and his nephew Lot accompanied him. By the time they had reached Haran, Terah had tired of the adventure and the caravan came to a standstill (Gen.11:31). History was held up at Haran through an old man’s prejudice and a young man’s timidity…”