“Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father, though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife, and when God calls me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, this is the kindness you must do me. At every place to which we come, say of me, he is my brother.”
– Genesis 20:12–13
The reason I read these couple verses, Genesis 20:12–13, is because they describe how Abraham in traveling with his family, with his wife, made a pattern of lying and deceiving to protect himself instead of trusting God to protect him. In this picture, like we see all over the Bible in heroes so to speak of the faith, they are not perfect. They are sinners, like to the core, and we see in them, even amidst all that we’ve seen about Abraham trusting in God, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and here he’s not trusting God to protect him and to provide for him and his wife’s safety.
We are prone to all evils. We must trust in God amid temptations to compromise the truth.
Genesis 20:12–13 Leads Us to Think About Our Own Temptations and Sins
So I want you to think about your life, about the subtle ways you are tempted to compromise. Even specifically with your words. How are you tempted? How am I to lie? To deceive? To say things that are not true, that are half true, and oftentimes, we do this to protect ourselves, to promote ourselves.
God help us to watch our words. God, we want to speak truthfully and we want to act with trust in you. We want to trust you to protect us, to provide for us. God, please help us not to think that sinning is better for us, that sinning will lead to our good, that lying will lead to our good, that deceiving will be better in this situation or that situation.
God, help us to trust you. Help us to live with holiness and help us to speak truthfully and in the process to trust that you are good, that you will provide, that you will protect, that you have designed your commands in our lives for our good. So God we pray, that you would help us today, our every word, to be true. Our every word to be true. As we speak truth, help us to trust you as we live. Help us to trust you to provide for us in all the ways we need. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
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David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
