So God chose Abram, as we wrote Sunday, and we don’t even get out of chapter 12 before we find out what kind of man Abram was. Genesis 12 is a good, maybe tongue-in-cheek, argument for the inspiration of scripture. If I were compiling a book about God’s work in the world and the story of redemption, I think I would have left this part out:

Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.” (Genesis 12.10 – 13, ESV)

Really? The man God chose to make a nation out of, the one who was “blessed to be a blessing,” is the kind of man who would lie to protect himself and allow his wife to be taken into another man’s home?!

Abram wasn’t all bad. The Lord told him to go, and he went:

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you…So Abram went, as the LORD had told him… (Genesis 12.1, 4, ESV)

This obedience is the first thing he is commended for in Hebrews 11, the Faith Hall of Fame:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. (Hebrews 11.8, ESV)

Enough faith to move to a strange place, but not enough faith to believe that God could protect him in Egypt without his lying about his wife. Do you think you’re unqualified because you don’t have enough faith? Think again.

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9.24, ESV)