Living in the Gap Between Promise and Reality: The Gospel According to Abraham (Gospel According to the Old Testament)

by Iain M. Duguid

the whole Old Testament was designed by God to provide a context within which to understand the sufferings and glorification of Christ.

In the Old Testament, going to Egypt is frequently the alternative to trusting in the Lord.

prosperity is a testing soil that exposes your heart idolatries in a similar way to adversity.

The garden of the Lord was also the place that contained the temptation that brought down Lot’s first ancestors, Adam and Eve.

Describing the land chosen by Lot as “like the land of Egypt” further reinforces the image of dangerous prosperity.

We tend to think that God will answer our prayers only if we have enough faith, but here we see God answering the prayers of those who have no faith.

Evil has become merely an alternative lifestyle choice, rather than offense before a holy God.

Even Sodom, for all its wickedness, need not have been destroyed if only ten righteous men had been found in it. That’s the difference that a small community of believers can make on a city, if God empowers them by his Spirit. As long as there is a remnant, there is hope, and so Abraham interceded.

She was able and willing to confront Abraham when necessary.

“God will provide a wife, and if he does not do so by this means, we will leave it entirely up to him to fulfill the promise in his own way.”