Temptation

Standing by a river and watching the water near the shore we may think that it is flowing up stream, but looking out to the center we see that the current is in the right direction. The eddies near the shore have deceived us. So with good men. The current of their lives is all right, but looking at only a part of their characters we may sometimes think that they are all wrong. Abraham was a good man with the current of his life toward heaven, but he sinned, and if Abraham, “the father of the faithful” and “the friend of God” was led by insidious temptation into sin, we are all in danger. A study of Abraham’s temptation and sin, as recorded in Genesis 12:10-20, will, I hope, put us on our guard and make us strong to overcome.

It is evident that Abraham’s sin grew out of some roots that were in his character at first.

Abraham was afraid that he would lose some-

53 thing. It is evident that he did not ask God if he might go down into Egypt. The famine was sore in the land; there was danger that the people should be in want. Abraham was rich. He could preserve his property as well as his life by going down into the land of plenty. He was led by his self-interest. He might have done good in Canaan and won some people to his faith, if, like John Clough in Telugu, he had remained and shared with them his plenty; but not he. Without consulting the Lord he decided that the best thing to do was to leave the place of famine and go to the place of safety.

We are in danger of being led by our interests rather than by the Lord. Christ was thus tempted. He was hungry and the tempter suggested that He make stones into bread. But Jesus repelled the tempter. He chose hunger rather than obedience to Satan. “But we must live.” “Not so,” said the martyrs. If John Huss had acted upon the principle which the Devil announced to Job, “All that a man hath will he give for his life,” he would never have been burned at Constance. His friends tried to persuade him that, under the circumstances, it was necessary that he should modify his views. But Huss stood for the truth. There never could have been martyrs, if they had accepted the principle that they ought to be led by their worldly interests rather than by the Lord. They chose deliberately to sacrifice their bodies to their principles. Abraham was led into this temptation by selfishness. He was immature in his faith; had just come out of paganism, and this fact may be something of an excuse for him; but all the same he ought to have consulted God, and we believed that if he had, he would have been led to stay in Canaan, and do what he could for the starving people.

Prudence is not among the graces of the Spirit. There is a holy recklessness, a spirit that does the will of God, let the result be what it may. It was very prudent in Abraham to agree with his wife to lie, that he might protect himself, but it was not true nor honorable; and, when we make prudence our guide, it is very difficult to be true. Carelessness as to results, when we are doing right, is a virtue to be coveted.

Abraham, it seems, was afraid to die for the truth. He preferred the sin of lying, even, to the danger of being killed. And he tempted Sarah. We blame Eve for tempting Adam, but in this case the woman was not the transgressor. Sarah obeyed her lord, and remained true to him. She might have remonstrated against his sin; but she did not. Selfishness and prudence are the parents of cowardice. When a man wants to save his own skin at whatever cost, his prudence will suggest that he may commit sin in order to do it. Abraham at this juncture was a moral coward. He showed afterwards that he was physically brave. He knew how to organize an army and make conquest, but here he fell before the possibility of being killed for his wife. There are men who can rush into the cannon’s mouth without a tremor, but quail before their moral enemies. They are strong in the excitement of the rush of battle, but in the quiet of their lives, when sin comes in subtle form, they are not heroic enough to resist it. Better for Abraham to have boldly died than to have ignominiously lied.

Sarah was the half-sister of Abraham, and he told a half-truth which was to Pharaoh a whole lie. It was the truth with a mental reservation. He acted a double part, and such sm is very common. When a man wishes to make a trade he is tempted to tell the favorable things and to keep back the unfavorable. On Wall Street thousands of lies are told daily just because iti would be against the selfish interests of men to tell the whole truth. It may be that no outright lie is told; what is said may be true, but it is not all the truth, and is therefore practically a lie. It is possible to utter the vilest slander without telling an outright falsehood. The slanderer simply tells a part of the truth; the part that is damaging, while the whole truth would change the moral phase of the case entirely. Abraham did not speak as before God; he spoke as before Pharaoh. To Pharaoh he was the brother of Sarah; to God he was half-brother and husband. God is our umpire of right and wrong, and a thing is bad or good, lie or truth, just as it appears to God. All through the New Testament we are urged to live as before God, and the man who does that will never be a hypocrite.

Let us now draw some lessons from this sin of the “father of the faithful.”

1. We may make our greatest blessings occasions of sin. It was something for Abraham Occasions have a wife like Sarah. She

of Sin g jjgij forth by Peter as the

model woman, “whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well” (I Pet. 3:6). Beautiful, industrious, faithful, she was such a woman as a husband might well be proud of. It was her beauty, so greatly prized by Abraham, which led him into sin. If she had been ugly and deformed, he would not have thought of acting the double part. And so the very blessings of life we may turn into curses through our selfishness, prudence, cowardice and diplomacy. We have known a parent led away from church by a beautiful daughter. He wished to please her; he began to live for her; every whim of hers he would gratify. Her beauty was his pride, her intelligence his joy. And these things that were indeed blessings he allowed to be occasions of temptation. Instead of seeking to consecrate her beauty and intelligence to the Lord, he allowed himself to be led off by her into the world. And so a man’s wealth, a real blessing if properly used, may become occasion for sin. In order to hold it or increase it, he yields to selfish prudence; becomes a moral coward, and, It may be, practices deception. How careful we should be to make the blessings of God really bless us, and in order that we may do so, we must live as before God, doing His will, and more anxious to have His smile than to keep any temporal blessings.

2. God takes the part of His sinning child. He plagued Pharaoh. His very silence and tender dealings were a rebuke to Gocfs Sin-Abraham. God never condones or S Child excuses sin. He forgives the penitent, but sin, whether in His children or others, grieves Him. However, He did not cast off Abraham because of his sin. He knew that the current of His child’s life was right, and He would take time to correct the eddies. We had the pain of being present at the hanging of three criminals. The public was very Indignant against them, cursing them for their crimes, but there was one old woman In the vast crowd who had nothing but blessing in her heart for one of them. It was her son, and the more the crowd cursed, the more she loved. “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him.” He corrects them; He chastises them;

He teaches them better, but He never forsakes them.

3. It is better to be a weak, struggling child of God than a strong son of Satan. Look at Which is th contrast between Pharaoh and

Better? Abraham at the time of this sin

and afterwards. Pharaoh impresses one as being the nobler of the two. As soon as he learns that Sarah is the wife of Abraham, he rebukes him for his sin, and returns to him his own. He does not even punish him for his double dealing. The selfishness, cowardice, and hypocrisy of Abraham were in sad contrast with the fairness, openness, and generosity of Pharaoh. But we must follow the two men to the end of their lives, in order to decide which one we would rather be. Where is Pharaoh to-day? He lived his life of sensuality, seeking earthly glory, with thousands of slaves to do his bidding. He died and was forgotten. His impress upon the world was almost nothing. On the other hand, Abraham, linked by faith with God, overcomes his sinful tendencies, and becomes a real saint, ripens for glory, and impresses the world with his character, so that no name is now more highly esteemed by millions of people. He became father in the flesh of the Jews, and, in the spirit, of Christians. It is better, however weakly, selfishly and cowardly you may be, to put yourself on the side of faith, righteousness, and virtue, and to let God mould you as He would have you, than to get the very best the world can give, living a life of independence and yet of degeneracy. Better be weak Abraham with the strength of God girdling you than strong Pharaoh left to himself.

The difference between Abraham and Pharaoh is illustrated by the difference between the Bellevue Hospital in New York and a hospital in Washington. At Bellevue the object is to cure disease; in Washington it is to cultivate disease. The physicians in Bellevue deal with men and strive to make them well. The officials in Washington deal with plants and strive to make them sick, so that they may understand and describe their diseases. Abraham was in the hands of the great Physician who had undertaken his cure. Pharaoh was in surroundings that cultivated the diseases of his soul, and the result was that he never grew any better.

In Bellevue Hospital there is a ward for prisoners. When a criminal in the Tombs becomes sick, he is sent there to be treated. In order to deliver him, you must not only cure his disease, but break the bars that surround his cell. He is out of relation with the State and with the forces of life that make for health. Abraham was, to be sure, a patient in a ward, but he was not surrounded by bars. He had been made free through the grace of God. Pharaoh, on the other hand, was sick and a slave. He was in the hospital where diseases were promoted, surrounded at the same time by iron bars of sin. God’s children, who have been made free through the blood of Christ, are not incarcerated by the powers of sin. Let us seek the liberty and the healing of Abraham, while we shun the diseases and bondage of Pharaoh. Our God is able not only to cure the diseases of sin, but to keep us free. “Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

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