The Next Test

HOW long Abram dwelt here in peace and quietness we do not know. The Lord gave him a little season of rest and refreshing, and then puts His servant to the next great trial and test. There comes a disturbing situation, a famine in the land. How it must have troubled Abram. Was he not where God wanted him? Was he not in the place of fellowship? Then why a famine in the land? It was indeed a great test of faith, and Abram, we are sorry to say, failed, miserably failed. Instead of trusting God, he turned to his own reason, and sought the solution in the arm of the flesh. If Abram had only trusted God, and said, “God has placed me here and I am going to stay until He tells me to move,” God would certainly have honored his faith. He who fed Elijah by the brook, He who rained manna from heaven for Abram’s descendants, He who filled the disciples’ nets with fish and fed a multitude on a few loaves and fishes, surely He could take care of Abram also.

Poor Abram, still young in the faith, instead of trusting God, took matters in his own hands. We read the sad story:

Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land. – Genesis 12:10.

Abram went down. He turned his back on Bethel and went down to Egypt, a country which in the Bible is a type of the world. The lesson taught here is that it is better to starve in the place where God wants you to be than to live in luxury and not in the will of God, in Egypt. Abram was to find this out shortly. He was to pay dearly for his unbelief. In the story we have many, many evidences of this fact.