Sometimes I wonder where is God taking me on this journey called the Christian life and what does he hope to achieve? Recently I found answers to these questions in Genesis 12-25 in the story of Abraham. In this story, I discovered the answer that, like Abraham, God wants to take us from fear to faith. More specifically, to take us from our fear of insignificance in the face of death, to faith in God that He will give our lives significance beyond the grave.
Everybody is afraid of something. But our greatest fear as human beings is the fear of death. The fear of insignificance and nothingness at death. That our lives will in the end amount to nothing. That we will be forgotten.
Fear first appears in the Biblical story in Genesis 3:10 where Adam confesses “I was afraid” in explaining why he was hiding from God. Adam doesn’t tell us what he was afraid of. However, it seems Adam was afraid of death, given God’s earlier warning to him that death would be the consequence if he ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and that Adam only hides after eating from this tree and hearing God walking in the garden.
Hebrews 12:14-15 explains that Jesus shared in our “humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” This suggests that Satan seeks to control us by our fear of death. He gets us to act in irrational ways to preserve or protect ourselves out of our fear of death, even at the expense of harming others.
We can see this fear at work in the story of Abraham, who twice exposes his wife Sarai to harm and brings curses on others, by lying that Sarai is his sister and not his wife, out of his fear that others will kill him (Gen. 12:12 & 20:11). When God meets Abraham, he is controlled in this way by fear, but over the course of walking with him in Genesis 12-25 and a period of 25 – 100 years, God takes him from fear to faith.
In his book, Genesis: The Story We Haven’t Heard, Paul Borgman demonstrates that God’s journey with Abraham from fear to faith is organized around 7 visits or appearances that God makes with Abraham.
These 7 visits form a literary structure called a chiasm, in which visits 1-3 and 5-7 comprise an inverted series made up of 3 pairs of parallel visits that serve as a ring or sandwich around visit 4 at the centre. This structure puts visit 4 in the place of emphasis in the story, indicating this is where the narrator wants to focus our attention. In this fourth visit, God tells Abraham “Do not be afraid”, reflecting the fact that Abraham’s fear is the focus of the narrative, and the very heart of what God was seeking to address.
This literary structure can be depicted as follows:
A – Visit 1: Go … from your country, kindred, father’s house (Gen. 12:1-6)
B – Visit 2: Abraham initiates response to God’s promise (Gen. 12:7-9)
C – Visit 3: Walk [the land] (Gen. 13:14-18)
D – Visit 4: Don’t Be Afraid (Gen. 15:1-21)
Cʹ – Visit 5: Walk [before me; be blameless] (Gen. 17:1-27)
Bʹ – Visit 6: Abraham initiates response to God’s presence (Gen. 18:1-33)
Aʹ – Visit 7: Go … take your son … your only son … whom you love (Gen. 22:1-19)
When God calls Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3, he tells him to leave all his sources of security and significance (his country, his people and his father’s household) and go to a land that God will show him. God promises to make Abraham into a great nation and to make his name great and to bless him and make him a blessing to others.
Abraham’s original name, Abram, meant “exalted father” and expressed where his hope lay for significance and security. In his cultural context one’s name was carried on by having male offspring and to die without having a son was referred to as having one’s name ‘cut off’ or ‘blotted out’, and meant to cease to exist. To preserve one’s name beyond life by having a continual succession of offspring was considered to be a form of immortality. A son was important for not only carrying on one’s name, but for inheriting one’s estate and offering care in old age. In Abraham’s case, this hope for security and significance was in jeopardy because his wife, Sarai was barren, and as an old couple they had no children.
It is into these circumstances pervaded with the fear of death that God finds Abraham and promises to bless him, to make his name great, and that he will become a great nation. These promises also imply that Abraham will have offspring.
Over the course of Abraham’s story and his life as narrated in Genesis 12-25, God takes Abraham from the place of fear where he finds him initially, to faith. But this journey from fear to faith is not in a straight line from point A to point B. It requires growth, which is much messier than that, involving lots of ups and downs along the way.
Abraham’s story illustrates for us that God is willing to patiently journey with us over the course of our lives as he takes us from fear to faith. This is demonstrated by God’s unwavering involvement with Abraham over the course of his undulating faith, as he alternately gives in to fear and holds on to faith. The ups and downs of this journey can be outlined as follows:
In Genesis 12:1-9 Abraham demonstrates faith in leaving his sources of significance and security to go to a place where God would show him. But his initial faith is mixed with fear, as at first he only goes half the way by stopping at Haran and only later journeys all the way to Canaan where God wanted him to go. And both on his journey to Haran and later to Canaan, Abraham disobeys God by taking his family with him, when God had told him to leave his father’s household behind. Contrary to God’s instruction, Abraham’s father Terah and his nephew Lot accompany him to Haran and his nephew Lot goes with him to Canaan. In his fear he clings to his sources of security and significance even as he seeks to respond to God’s call.
In Genesis 12:10-17 in the face of a famine Abraham gives in to fear by leaving Canaan to go into Egypt. Whilst there he exposes his wife to danger and others to God’s judgment by using deception to protect himself out of fear that he will be killed.
In Genesis 13-14 Abraham shows faith by giving Lot the pick of the land and in rescuing Lot from captivity. He also refuses to take any of the plunder from his rescue mission when offered, because of his trust in God to provide for him.
In Genesis 15 Abraham shows faith by believing God’s promise to give him offspring like the stars but shows fear by asking God how he will know that he will get the promised land, leading God to enter a covenant to assure him.
In Genesis 16 Abraham and Sarah give in to their fear of not being able to have offspring by making Hagar a surrogate mother.
In Genesis 17 Abraham shows faith by immediately obeying the Covenant of Circumcision God establishes with him but laughs when God promises Sarah will bear him a child.
Genesis 18-19 portrays a maturing Abraham who intercedes with God for Sodom and whose intercession leads to the salvation of Lot and his two daughters because God remembered Abraham in destroying Sodom, like he remembered Noah in bringing the Flood.
In Genesis 20 Abraham gives in to fear in Gerar by repeating the “my wife is my sister” ruse, to protect himself, thereby exposing Sarah to danger and Abimelech and his people to God’s judgment and curse.
In Genesis 21 Abraham and Sarah experience the long-awaited culmination of God’s promise to bless them with offspring in the birth of Isaac. But almost immediately Sarah’s fear of Isaac’s inheritance being jeopardized leads to the expulsion of Hagar and her son Ishmael.
In Genesis 22 Abraham reaches the high point in his faith and passes God’s test by being willing to sacrifice Isaac, thereby demonstrating that he feared God in not seeking to protect the promise of offspring himself, but leaving it in the hands of God.
Genesis 23-25, the epilogue to Abraham’s story, portrays Abraham living by faith at the end of his life in finding a wife for Isaac and being buried in the Promised Land together with Sarah.
Ultimately God takes Abraham through all the ups and downs of his life, from fear to faith. From his fear of his name being cut off or blotted out because of having no offspring, to being able to surrender his only son because he trusted God to fulfil his promises, even if it would mean raising this son back from the dead (Hebrews 11:17-19).
In the end, Abraham was so free of fear and so full of faith that he could die in peace, confident that God would keep his promise of giving his descendants the Promised Land after his death. This confidence is demonstrated in Abraham’s purchase of a burial cave in the Promised Land where he and Sarah are buried. This burial demonstrating the confident expectation beyond the grave of one day possessing this land in keeping with God’s promise (Hebrews 11:8-10 and 13-16).
Abraham’s journey from fear to faith is a picture for us of where God wants to take each of us in our Christian walk. To transport us from the fear of death which controls our lives and leads to self-protective behaviour that hurts others. To take us to a faith in God to give our lives significance even beyond the grave and which enables us to face death with peace and without fear. This is where God is taking us.
For a sermon which explores in greater detail Abraham’s journey from fear to faith click on the video below: