Articles
"Helping" God Out
Genesis 12:1-3 reads: “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
God took a single, imperfect man to create a nation by which the Son of God would descend (cf. Gen. 22:18). He assured Abram that He would by His own hand provide an abundance of blessing through Abram’s progeny; yet, over the course of Abram’s journey, we see several stages in which he tries to “assist” God by invoking his own methodologies.
You’ll notice that although the promise is initially given in 12:1-3, it is reiterated several times to Abram in various stages of his life. This was necessary because Abram, like us, often fell prey to the desire to speed things along outside of the will of God. Below are several examples.
1) In Genesis 15, Abram assumes God will choose Eliezer, his servant, to be the one through which the promise will issue. He states, “O Lord God, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.” God, in response, emphasizes that the heir would be from Abram’s own body stating, “Eliezer will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.”
2) In Genesis 16, Sarai and Abram plot to use Hagar as a surrogate mother. That would technically meet God’s requirements, but it was not God’s plan. Nevertheless, Sarai presumes this is God’s intention: “Now behold, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Please go in to my maid; perhaps I will obtain children through her.” But despite Ishmael’s physical descent from Abraham, he was not the child of promise.
3) In Genesis 17 and 18, Sarah is specified as the physical mother though whom the promised one would come. Abraham’s bewilderment is related in 17:17: “Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, ‘Will a child be born to a man one hundred years old? And will Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’” Sarah’s is recorded in 18:12: “Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have become old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?’” Even with divine reassurances, they can’t help but laugh because of their incomprehension of God’s ability to overcome their physical obstacles. In answer, God affirms that nothing is too difficult for His powerful hand (18:14).
While Abraham and Sarah thought it wise to help God by their own innovation, God’s plan was accomplished by His hand and in His time. Waiting on God is difficult for us and you can be sure Satan will be crafty in the meantime. While tempted to “help” God, we must remember that He must pilot the ship, for we ourselves know neither the breakers nor the direction of the harbor. He must guide. He must fulfill. We must not be led astray by our own faulty speculation and presumption. When you face the challenge to wait on God in your own life, remember the example that we have in Abraham and Sarah. That’s why it’s there! (cf. Rom. 15:4)
