“As it is written: ‘I have made you the father of many nations’ – in the presence of the God in whom he believed, the one who gives life to the dead and calls things into existence that do not exist. He believed, hoping against hope, so that he became the father of many nations according to what had been spoken: So will your descendants be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body to be already dead (since he was about a hundred years old) and also the deadness of Sarah’s womb. He did not waver in unbelief at God’s promise but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, because he was fully convinced that what God had promised, he was also able to do.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the more incredible things about the Scriptures is, other than Jesus, it doesn’t make any of the characters into heroes. Yes, some of them are praised highly for one character trait or another, but they are all broken in some way. They all have a fatal flaw or twelve that prevents them from achieving God’s righteousness and experiencing the full goodness of His plans on their own. Abraham is most definitely included in this less-than-perfect club. But he still got some things right. Let’s talk about what Abraham got wrong, what he got right, and the example he sets for us.

Abraham is held up as one of the preeminent models of faith in the Scriptures. In the author of Hebrews’ “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11, more time gets spent on Abraham than any other Old Testament figure. Paul refers to Abraham and his faith over and over again in his letters. Anytime there is a Sunday school lesson about faith, especially for kids, Abraham is almost always the subject. We are supposed to have a faith like Abraham. If there was ever a hero of faith, Abraham is it.

But…

The faith for which Abraham is praised (and rightly so) was not something that was always simply inherent to his character. It was something that developed slowly over time. It came in fits and starts. He would demonstrate great faith in God in one moment, and the next he would do something that reflected an almost total lack of faith. And, like I said just a second ago, Moses presents all of this in the Genesis account.

For instance, in Abraham’s first real action in the story (he was technically introduced the chapter before this), he demonstrates an incredible faith in God by being willing to leave everything behind to follow His call to go to a place he would only later be told he was supposed to go. His whole family had been called to go east from their ancestral home (Ur of the Chaldeans) in pursuit of God’s call to them, but they hadn’t followed far enough. They went a little ways, and then settled where it was convenient for them rather than where God was trying to lead them. But Abraham went when the rest of his family would not. He packed up his wife, their things, and his nephew, and continued east in obedience to God’s command.

Leaving behind one’s entire social structure to go somewhere unfamiliar was not a common move in the ancient world. In fact, it would have been seen as almost suicidal because of the general lack of the kind of infrastructure and social safety nets that we just assume on today. This was an incredible act of faith and faithfulness on Abraham’s part.

And yet, in the very next chapter, Abraham abandons the place God had sent him to as soon as it got hard and went to Egypt for relief. There, rather than trusting in God’s promise that originally prompted him to go east, he takes matters into his own hands. Fearing the Egyptians would see his very attractive wife and kill him to get her, he told her to tell everybody she was his sister. This resulted in the Egyptians’ not killing him, but they did take her (assuredly against her will) into Pharaoh’s harem. God intervened to rectify the situation, but Abraham looked like a faithless coward. And lest you think he learned his lesson, he would do the same thing again in a different foreign context a few decades later.

Later, when Abraham was back and settled in Canaan, he once again returned to faith as demonstrated by his receiving God’s promise to give him and Sarah a son of their own, and even entered into a covenant with Him to seal the promise. This was in spite of the fact that he was 75 and her 65 at this point. He continued trusting God for this promised son for another 25 years. As Paul points out, “he did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body to be already dead (since he was about a hundred years old) and also the deadness of Sarah’s womb.”

Paul goes on to further praise Abraham’s faith, saying, “He did not waver in unbelief at God’s promise but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, because he was fully convinced that what God had promised, he was also able to do.” What a remarkable line! He was fully convinced that what God had promised, he was also able to do. As a book of Bible stories turned to rhymes that we used to read to our boys puts it, “When God makes a promise, you know that it’s true.”

This was not, however, an uninterrupted, spotless record of faithfulness on Abraham’s part. Right in the middle of this quarter century, Abraham and Sarah both get tired of waiting around for God to do what He promised and decide to take matters into their own hands. Sarah, assuming that she won’t be the one to actually get pregnant since she was now in her late-70s to early-80s, tells Abraham to use one of her servants, an immigrant imported from Egypt named Hagar, as a surrogate mother, and the son he had with her would be the fulfillment of God’s promise. This act of gross faithlessness and rank injustice in using a helpless servant girl as essentially a sex slave resulted in all sorts of problems that would unfold over the course of many years to come.

What Abraham (and Sarah too) demonstrate for us so well is that faith in God is often a journey. It is a journey with both ups and downs; highs and lows. There are times when our faith is strong and we are consistently keeping God’s commands. There are also seasons when we can’t see beyond the edge of our field of vision and do things that make sense to us in light of those artificial limits, but which violate God’s character and command. That is, we trust in ourselves and what we can see more than in God and what He has commanded. Yet what God has promised, He is also able to do. And if we will return to that truth and demonstrate our trust in it by keeping His commands once again, He will readily receive our faith and keep on leading us forward to where He wants for us to go. He will keep on advancing His plans both for us and through us for the benefit of the people around us. Faith is always the key.

The invitation here is to follow Abraham’s example of faith. Follow his example, and take some small comfort in the fact that his was not merely a continuous record of faith credited as righteousness. He screwed up along the way. Sometimes royally so. But he kept returning to faith, and faith was the final statement on his story, and that’s what matters so much. What will the final statement on your story be? That you trusted in yourself, lived however you pleased, and accomplished very little of any truly lasting worth, or that you trusted in God, lived how He commanded, and were a part of advancing His eternal kingdom, accomplishing good and great things that will be celebrated on into eternity in that same kingdom? The choice is yours.