In this Article, we consider a subject different from the beliefs of Abraham that we have already considered. Thus far, we have looked at the factual aspects of God’s plan and purpose which He revealed to Abraham. We learned Abraham believed in the resurrection, the forgiveness of sins, justification by faith, and the eternal kingdom on earth. He believed these blessings would come through his own seed, glorified to immortality. Now we look at Abraham’s belief in the personal involvement in our lives of the God who made these promises.
The mechanics are not vital
Discussions of the mechanics of providence — exactly how God works in our lives — can distract us from the salient issue that God does work personally with us. Such discussion goes beyond scriptural emphasis, and we will avoid it here. For the record, we know that God spoke to Abraham directly (e.g., Gen. 12:1), through angels (22:15), in visions (15.1), in dreams (15:12), and through others, such as Melchizedek (14:19) and Abimelech (20:9). Direct speech, such as “the Lord spoke to Abraham” comprises by far the greatest number of instances of God’s communications to Abraham. God also did miracles for Abraham, restoring his virility and Sarah’s fertility. To go beyond these simple observations into the mechanics of just how God did these things would distract us from the thrust of our theme, and the thrust of the scriptural account.
Two main themes prevail when we examine the life of Abraham with regard to Providence. The one theme we call action, the other interaction. Action on Abraham’s part confirmed his belief that God did have a personal care-taking role in his life. Interaction between Abraham and God reflects Abraham’s belief in a God who listened to and respected the prayers of His people and who would act upon the sincere prayers of the humble. These two concepts, action and interaction, suffice for a better approach to the subject of Providence than a framework centered on the details of how God works.
What does Providence mean?
The term Providence comes from the word “provide,” which, in turn, comes ultimately from the Latin roots providere, meaning “to see in advance.” Thus, Providence has the basic meaning of “foresight,” and therefore the derived meaning of “supply” in the sense of provisions. At one time, providence meant any form of supply or laying up for future needs, either from divine or human resources. However, only the Lord God can see perfectly in advance, therefore His Providence always perfectly suits our needs.
The connection between “seeing” and “providing” also shows up in Genesis 22:8. English versions usually translate the Hebrew “God will see” as “God will provide,” similarly in v.14 of some translations.
However, the usage of “provide” only shows up a few times in more than a thousand occurrences of the verb “to see.” Further comment on this passage is made later in this article.
English usage has grown the concept of Providence to a broader meaning than “supplying needs.” We use Providence to cover all the aspects of God which deal with His personal involvement in the affairs of people. Providence addresses the issue of proximity of God, whereas concepts such as God as Creator, God as Supreme Being, and God as Omnipotent stress the “distance” between the Creator and the created.
Providence speaks of the God who abides with us, the God who cares and loves, who protects and chastises, the God who tries and challenges.
So we consider Providence in Abraham’s life, and look for evidence of his beliefs. We look at his actions and interactions, and we conclude that Abraham indeed believed in a God nigh unto him. We will examine a few texts which will exemplify some different aspects of Providence. The events we will look at include Abraham’s leaving Ur, his justification by faith, his plea for Sodom, and his proclamation, “the Lord will provide.”
Leaving Ur
In the second installment of this series (May ’98) we delved briefly into Abraham’s life in Ur, noting that to dwell in Ur meant big city living. Ur was the leading manufacturing city of its day, and it abounded in scientific and technical achievements. We can easily imagine Abraham in a living situation not unlike most of ours — a good job, perhaps in industry or civil service, a comfortable home, a high standard of living. In any event, we cannot describe Abraham as a nomadic tent-dweller prior to his call from the Lord God. He had a cosmopolitan existence, a house and a regular job in a fixed locale. In all likelihood he had a stable, secure, an economically satisfactory existence. These he gave up to accede to the calling of God to His service.
We cannot err in overstating the exhortation implied in this conclusion. Abraham put his natural, material existence to bed when he woke up to God’s call. He quit his job, sold his house, and left town! He had no idea where he would end, nor could he have felt comfortable in his new lifestyle.
Could we ask for a stronger demonstration of his belief in Providence? How often have we faced the same decision points? Many brothers and sisters have quit a job for the sake of living the truth of God. Many have relocated to do God’s will, such as missionary or alternative service because of conscientious objection. Others have come to these decision points and not moved forward. Others might not have even considered them as options in their lives, preferring lifestyle to discipleship. What does God think of this feeble emulation of Abraham’s faith?
The evidence we have suggests Abraham made a tremendous sacrifice in these areas. He had confidence that the Lord who called him would also provide for his material needs during the time of his wandering. He left the natural means of his own providing — his house and his job — to sojourn and wait for the eternal inheritance of a city “whose builder and maker is God.”
Salvation by faith
The second example of Abraham’s belief in Providence comes in the account where God reckons his faith as righteousness (Gen. 15:1-6). This passage has enormous importance, as evidenced by its multiple citations in the New Testament. The details of this event reveal some nuances about Providence. The physical situation of Abraham’s justification — just what happened, and what didn’t happen — tell a story of faith beyond the tangible.
It happened at night, probably before moonrise. With Abraham usually asleep at this hour, the Lord took him outside (Gen. 15:5). There Abraham stood, an aging man on a dry Judean hill, staring up into a clear, dark, unpolluted night sky. Have you ever beheld the heavens on a moonless night in a remote area, far from any lights? If so, you can imagine what Abraham saw. He would have seen the vastness of the Milky Way, stars infinite and dazzling. The Lord asked rhetorically, “Can you count these?” Then, a quick sequence of four amazing steps occurred virtually simultaneously, and without any tangible or visible evidence. An observer would have seen nothing but the old man looking up into the night sky. However, consider what happened as miracles of Providence:
- The Lord said, referring to the glory of the heavens: “So shall your seed be.”
- Abraham believed Him.
- The Lord reckoned (or regarded or credited) his faith as righteousness.
- Abraham knew that God accepted his faith.
Only the last statement requires inference from the text. The significant lesson we learn about Providence stems from this fact: Abraham was doing absolutely nothing when all this happened. He only stood there, looking up into the myriad of stars, and somehow in that inexplicable neuropsychological process we call “thinking,” he believed God. This was a process of mind, void entirely of external manifestation. Perhaps he did whisper an “amen;” however, scripture notes that the Lord God accepted his faith, that intangible quality of belief, as righteousness. Abraham felt no need to convince God of his faith: he did no sacrifice, offered no alms or penance, performed no act of self-mutilation or abasement, uttered no special mantra or prayer, made no oblation or ritual. He simply believed, and, more so, believed that God reckoned his belief as righteousness!
For that matter, God made no great or visible manifestation, either. No one in the universe — except He who created — could have possibly known what went on inside Abraham’s head. How did Abraham know God had accepted his faith? Did He utter it aloud to him, as His other proclamations? The text only records God’s acceptance; the scene passes without any external manifestations — no flames of fire consuming a sacrifice, no waters parted, no miracle or sign or ritual of any sort. The text makes it plain this whole incident belonged purely in the realm of the mental, of two “beings,” one the Giver and one the gifted, who accepted each other implicitly.
“Abraham believed God, and God reckoned it to him as righteousness,” reads the text. The next step — Abraham also believed God knew precisely what went on inside his own head — tells us that Abraham had a profound understanding of how God works. God’s vision sees all our works, good and bad; He also sees the intangibles inside us, our heart and mind and soul. When God accepted Abraham’s faith, only “mind” operated. Abraham believed in an omniscient God, one with whom he feared no interaction, confident God had rightly seen the faith of his heart. In dealing with the God who provides, we, too, can be confident He rightly reads our hearts and responds according to His eternal principles.
Pleading for Sodom
We reckon among the most mystifying events in scripture those in which the Lord God converses directly with people. Having no parallel or equivalent experience ourselves in such manifestations of Deity, we read these accounts with wonder and perhaps not a little relief that we don’t hear the voice of God directly. Having a natural dread of dealing with the Creator face to face, how highly do we regard Abraham, who holds the longest recorded conversation with God?
Knowing that we ourselves would dare not even hear the voice of God, what can we say of Abraham who thought it plausible not only to listen, but to speak, and even negotiate with the Lord? A naive rube? An arrogant pedant? Neither, of course.
Because of his close walk with God, and the knowledge that God already knew his mind, Abraham felt little trepidation in setting forth his heart’s pain for the impending doom on his nephew Lot, a resident of Sodom (Gen.18:16-33). Though he clearly recognized his own human position, Abraham repeatedly asked God to consider the justice of doing away with an entire evil city when perhaps a few righteous souls might reside there. Having reduced the required coterie of righteous to a number that would certainly preclude Sodom’s, and therefore Lot’s, destruction, Abraham ceased, feeling that he had accomplished his goal of “reasoning” with the Almighty (Gen. 18:22-33).
The connection of this passage to the lessons of Providence derives from the intimacy which Abraham felt toward his God. Consider also the nature of his plea; he undertook this task on the behalf of another. Abraham did not just pray in the conventional sense for Lot, he negotiated for him in a living, two-way conversation. He humbly continued with God until he felt he had assured the safety of Lot. He had to have believed in the efficacy of petition. He believed in a God who not only made promises and revealed great truths about His creation, but also in a God who cared enough about the people of His creation that He would listen to and act upon their sincere requests. Again, we see both action and interaction demonstrated as a function of Abraham’s belief in Providence.
An unexpected result
We note a disturbing sequel to the famous dialogue between Abraham and the Lord. Having ceased at the agreement that the residence of ten righteous in Sodom would obviate divine destruction, Abraham woefully learned the next morning that Sodom couldn’t muster a minyan.
As he saw the smoke rising from the location of the late city of Sodom, he would not have known that God spared Lot. As far as Abraham knew, Lot had perished in the flames of Sodom. It seems possible, if not likely, that eventually Abraham did learn of his nephew’s survival, but Genesis has no record of this. As far as the text goes, Abraham lived the rest of his days assuming Lot and his family perished with Sodom. Although his pleading apparently went for naught, he never lost his faith. What a great lesson this makes for us, who often find our faith only as strong as the last good blessing God gave us. When life goes awry, when our prayers seem to come up empty, when the outcomes we hope for fail to materialize, we all too easily come to the wrong conclusion about God’s care for our lives. Abraham not only maintained his faith, but strengthened it, as the conception and birth of Isaac came shortly after the destruction of Sodom. For good or evil, for comfort or pain, Abraham’s belief in Providence extended to the accepting of whatever divine will, in its perfect foresight and knowledge, wrought in his life.
If Abraham did eventually learn of Lot’s survival, he would have learned a different lesson of Providence — that God can solve problems in more than one way. Often we pray for an outcome, and see only one way it can happen. God, seeing perfectly, affects the outcome as well as the process so that He maintains both His righteousness and His mercy.
God will provide
Obviously, a discussion of Abraham’s belief in Providence requires comment on the words in Genesis 22 where Abraham makes the declaration, “God will provide.” He said this to Isaac as they ascended Mt. Moriah and Isaac queried his father concerning the whereabouts of the sacrificial lamb. “God himself will see,” replies his father, meaning that God would see their combined faith, and would see in Abraham’s offering of Isaac the typical sacrifice of His own Son, Jesus the Messiah, as the lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
Actually, the phrase refers less to the provision of the ram entangled in the bush (v.13) than to the Lord’s seeing the typical enactment of voluntary sacrifice. However, the Lord did provide a ram, and later provided His own Son as the one sacrifice that could avail anything for Abraham or any of Abraham’s spiritual seed.
We cannot easily separate the ideas of “see” and “provide” here, as evidenced by the usual footnotes in English translations. Abraham knew both applications well. By this time in his life he had well learned God saw all he did, God knew his thoughts and mind, and God’s ineffable “foreseeing” would provide perfectly for Abraham in all the circumstances of his life. Once again, this incident demonstrates both the action and interaction aspects of Providence.
A closing comment
Scripture records the life of Abraham as a man whom God led to ever-increasing measures of faith. As Abraham grew in faith, God revealed more of His plan to him. As God made further demands on Abraham’s faith to grow it even more, He provided even more for Abraham His friend. These three facets, Abraham’s faith, the Lord’s revelation, and His providential care grow together as the threefold cord which cannot be broken. The great lesson we learn about Providence in the life of Abraham teaches us to look at our God not only as He who gives the great promises, but also as He who abides with us in all respects until those promises become fulfilled.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One