God's Omniscient; Man Isn't - Essay Example

3.5). Just like Moses after them, Abraham and Joseph humbled themselves before God and sought His wisdom and direction rather than relying upon their own reasoning and intellect. Moses, the man who stood up to Pharaoh and parted the Red Sea, demonstrates through the accounts of Abraham and Joseph that strength, victory, and wisdom come through a humble dependence on God for knowledge, while weakness, defeat, and foolishness are a result of a prideful reliance on one’s own knowledge and ability.

Abraham, whose name means “father of many,” ironically lived his first 100 years as the father on none, and Moses goes through great length to show the unshakeable faith Israel’s patriarch, which is demonstrated through his leaning on God’s promises. God’s first promise to Abraham (at this time, “Abram”) was to make him into a great nation (Gen. 12.2). God, who was unfamiliar to Abram at this point, also told him to leave his settled land and travel west into unchartered territory with his wife Sarai (later called Sarah) and a caravan of all their possessions, herds, and servants.

Abram unwaveringly obeyed ? although the promise and command he received made little sense to him and his people ? but God later blessed him with immeasurable riches and fertile land for his faith and obedience, as he relied on God’s understanding and not his own. Even though Abram and Sarai were far from young (75 and 65 years old, respectively) and already living comfortably in a settled land, Abram believed that God would bless him with countless descendants and safely establish him in a hostile and unknown land, which He did.

Moses shows through Abram that man, in his knowledge, cannot comprehend the wisdom of God or the scope of His plans, and that obedience and faith in God is much greater than human reasoning. Even though Abraham is known for having unparalleled faith, he had his lapses; yet Moses shows us how God, in His knowledge, rectifies the things man blotches in his limited understanding. When Abram and Sarai went to Egypt to escape a famine, Abram relied on his own cunning for protection – not God’s.

He told Pharaoh that Sarai was his sister ? not his wife ? because Sarai was beautiful and he thought that the Egyptians would kill him over her. God inflicted Pharaoh’s household with diseases so that Pharaoh would know Sarai was Abram’s wife and would not lay with her as his own wife (Gen. 12.20). Abram’s reasoning was exposed as foolishness that almost ended in disaster, but God still faithfully protected him and Sarai. God bailed Abram out once again when he relied on Sarai’s plan to deliver what God had promised – a child.

Instead of waiting upon the Lord, Abram took Hagar as his wife and impregnated her at the request of Sarai, who was now 76 years old and barren. God then had an angel send Hagar and her son Ishmael away to avoid Sarai’s jealous wrath and then opened Sarai’s womb to allow Abram – now 99 years old ? to impregnate her with Isaac. Because Abram and Sarai second-guessed God’s wisdom, Ishmael was born, whose offspring would be at war with Ishmael’s for millennia to come. But when God later tested Abraham (the name God gave him when He fulfilled His promise to make him fruitful and multiply) and told him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, Abraham unswervingly obeyed.

When he raised the knife, God ordered