But Over Those Failures: God

I shared this with a family member several weeks ago. I offer it here lightly edited, trusting that the Lord will use it as He chooses.

It was great talking with you yesterday. In so many words, I was trying to communicate that the purpose of God continues regardless of what we see. It has and will continue to do so because of His faithfulness and desire to bring all things to their fullness in Christ. On the one hand, we see wickedness prevailing in the land, and what we may perceive to be a feeble testimony among the Lord’s own. On the other hand, and by faith, we see Him, crowned with glory and honor, bringing many sons to glory!

We often regard the so-called heroes of faith as superhuman, as men and women of almost unbroken obedience, whose walk was a steady ascent from glory to glory. But God is very careful to record not only their triumphs and lives of faith, but also their failures and their moments of walking by their own wisdom. The results of both are clearly seen.

If we could go to Abraham and say, “You are a mighty man of faith,” no doubt he would answer in humility: “Have you seen my colossal failures?” But over those failures: God!

Yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform. Therefore it was also credited to him as righteousness. Romans 4:20-22

There’s the overarching testimony, but we know that after God spoke to him in Genesis 12 to get up and go out completely unhindered, “Lot went with him.” He entered the land of Canaan from the north and came to Schechem, the heart of the land. The Lord appeared to him there and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” Abram’s response: “So he built an altar there to the Lord.” Then he proceeded onward and pitched his tent between two fortified cities he was not yet to possess (Bethel and Ai), “Now the Canaanite was then in the land.” He built his second altar in that place as an act of worship as a pilgrim and stranger in the land of promise, yet only the altars he built marked his possession of it.

Then he journeyed further south toward the Negev, the dry region of the land. The name has two meanings: dry land and south. After this came a famine in the land, which seems intended to demonstrate to Abram that his source of provision, even in the land of promise, even with all of his great physical possessions, depended entirely on the blessing, mercy, and grace of the Lord.

He Who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Romans 8:32

“He is able…”

But “…Abram went down to Egypt…”

Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, and trust in chariots because they are many and in horseman because they are very strong, but they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the Lord! Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract His works, but will arise against the house of evildoers and against the help of the workers of iniquity. Now the Egyptians are men and not God, and their horses are flesh and not spirit; So the Lord will stretch out His hand, and he who helps will stumble and he who is helped will fall, and all of them will come to an end together. – Isaiah 31:1-3

God protected him (and Sarai) even though he departed from the land, even though he told Sarai to deceive Pharaoh, thus trusting in his own worldly wisdom “that it may go well with me because of you…” Because of Sarai? Or because of the One Who had promised? “And that I may live on account of you.”

How far he had fallen! If the Apostle Paul had been alive, he would have “opposed him to his face!” But God mercifully kept both Sarai and Abram from the “house of evildoers” and they escorted him with his family and possessions back to the Negev, and eventually he returned to the placed where he pitched his tent between Bethel and Ai. “…and there Abram called on the name of the Lord.”

Abram’s departure from the land did not annul the promise. When years passed and the promise of a son remained unfulfilled, “and his body as good as dead,” Sarai told Abram to have relations with her maid Hagar. “Perhaps I will obtain children through her.” Again, this is the arm of the flesh, a plan born in impatience and unbelief. Ishmael was born, but he was not the child of promise.

The son of the slave was born according to the flesh, but the son of the free woman through promise.” – Galatians 4:23

Taking Lot with him did not annul the promise of God. Going down to Egypt did not annul the promise. Relations with Hagar did not annul the promise.

For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, “(as it is written, ‘A father of many nations have I made you’) in the presence of Him who he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. – Romans 4:16-17

What or who was dead and was called into being?

For Abram and Sarai, it was their ability to reproduce, and God’s miraculous answer was Isaac. For all of us, the deeper reality was our separation from God due to sin, and His miraculous answer is found in His Son, received through faith in Him.

“And we were dead in sins and trespasses…” In Adam we died. But in Christ, we were made alive! “The church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven…” And together, we who are alive in Him are made “the righteousness of God through Him.”

Therefore it was also credited to him as righteousness. Now not for his sake only was it written that it was credited to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification. – Romans 4:22-25

‘But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

– Ephesians 2:4-9

So much more we could say. Though Abram trusted in the arm of the flesh and deceived Pharaoh, God was not mocked! He delivered him (and Sarai) from the snare of Egypt and brought them back into the land like a father steadying the steps of a small child. “Not this way, my son. This is the way, walk in it.” As his gaze was upon God, he grew into a mighty intercessor, the father of many nations, the father of faith, and the father of us all.

What God did with Abraham is not only an old story to admire. It is also a pattern of His dealings with His saints. He does not abandon His purpose every time we stumble. He disciplines, restores, redirects, and continues His work, so that “no one may boast before God.”

The purpose of God in His righteous Seed will not be thwarted! On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was speaking in various languages of the mighty deeds of God. Today, He still intercedes through the inward groan “too deep for words.” As we await the “Son from heaven,” He too intercedes on our behalf that we would grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord, bear His image, and express His heart until His return.

In a similar way to His dealings with Abram, and as a demonstration of His great love, He says, “Your ears will hear a word behind you, ‘This is the way, walk in it.’ whenever you turn to the right or to the left.”1

“Abide in Me and I in you…that they may be one even as We are one; I in them and You in ME, that they may be perfected in unity so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”2

This is the fellowship that we are called into.

“until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. – Ephesians 4:13

Love,

Eric