God’s Promises to Abraham

The story of Abraham is fundamentally a story about God’s promises. Throughout Scripture, God made covenant promises to Abraham that would shape the destiny of a nation and ultimately affect all humanity. Yet this remarkable man of faith encountered repeated failures—not failures of obedience to external commands, but failures rooted in a single, devastating deficiency: the absence of a son. Every major failure in Abraham’s life stemmed from this one critical lack, for without an heir, God’s promises could not be fulfilled. Abraham and Sarah’s desperate attempts to secure a son through their own schemes revealed their deepest struggle: the inability to trust that God would do what seemed humanly impossible.

God’s Central Promise: A Son and an Heir

To understand Abraham’s failures, we need to first understand God’s promises to him. When the LORD called Abraham at seventy-five years old, God made several significant promises. God pledged the land, national prominence, a great name, and blessings that would reach all families on Earth. However, all these promises rested on one essential requirement: a son. Abraham could become a great nation only if he had descendants. The land promised would be inherited by his offspring. His name would endure through his children. The blessing to all families of the Earth would come through his posterity. Every promise God made to Abraham depended on this basic promise of a son.

But there was a problem. Abraham was already seventy-five years old. Sarah, his wife, was sixty-five. Both were well past the age of childbearing. When God promised that Abraham would become the father of a great nation, Abraham responded with honest bewilderment: “O Sovereign LORD, what good are all your blessings when I don’t even have a son? Since you have given me no children” (Genesis 15:1–2 NLT). Abraham understood the impossible mathematics of the situation. He and Sarah were too old. Sarah was barren. By every natural standard, the promise was absurd.

Sarah understood this impossibility even more acutely. When the LORD announced that Sarah would conceive and bear a son at ninety years old, the very idea was laughable—literally. Genesis 18:12 records that “Sarah laughed silently to herself and said, ‘How could a worn-out woman like me enjoy such pleasure, especially when my husband is also so old?’” (NLT). The barrenness of Sarah was an immovable obstacle. In the natural order of things, their situation was hopeless. Yet God’s response to their despair cut to the heart of the matter: “Is anything impossible for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14 CSB). The fundamental issue was not their age or Sarah’s barrenness. The issue was belief. The LORD demanded that Abraham and Sarah trust in a promise that defied all human experience and expectation.

When Isaac was finally born—when Abraham was one hundred years old and Sarah was ninety—God proved that nothing is impossible for him. The son was named Isaac, meaning “laughter,” as a permanent reminder of Sarah’s disbelieving laughter and God’s power to transform it into joy. Yet between the initial promise and its fulfillment lay years of testing. During those long years of waiting for the promised son, Abraham and Sarah did not wait quietly. Instead, they took matters into their own hands. Their desperation to secure an heir led them into a series of failures, each one rooted in the same fundamental problem: failure to believe that God would provide the son he had promised.

The Five Failures of Abraham: A Pattern of Unbelief

Throughout the Genesis narrative, Abraham experienced five major failures. These were not isolated incidents or random moral lapses. Rather, they were all connected by a common thread: Abraham’s inability to trust God’s promise of a son and his consequent willingness to act on his own understanding instead of God’s Word. Each failure was an attempt to secure, by human effort, what God had promised to provide. Each failure demonstrated that Abraham believed his circumstances more than he believed God’s promise.

Abraham’s Background and Call

Before examining Abraham’s specific failures, it is crucial to understand who Abraham was and where he came from. Abraham was born into paganism. According to Joshua 24:2, Abraham’s ancestors “lived beyond the River and served other gods.” His family was immersed in idolatry. Yet when God appeared to Abraham—either in Ur or in Haran—Abraham made a radical choice. He abandoned the gods of his fathers and followed the true God into an unknown land. The author of Hebrews captures this remarkable faith: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8).

When God called Abraham the second time, while he was in Haran, God’s covenant was explicit and comprehensive. Genesis 12:1–4 records the divine command and promise: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” At seventy-five years old, Abraham obeyed. He left his homeland. He took his wife Sarah and his nephew Lot and journeyed toward Canaan. This initial act of obedience demonstrated genuine faith.

Yet as the years passed and no son arrived, Abraham’s faith was tested in ways he had never anticipated. The promises seemed to be stalling. Sarah remained barren. Abraham himself was aging. The internal pressure to produce an heir must have been crushing. In this tension between God’s promise and the apparent impossibility of its fulfillment, Abraham began to fail.

The Pattern of Failure: Attempting to Fulfill God’s Promise

The five failures of Abraham all share a common cause: his inability to wait for God to provide a son and his willingness to take action based on what seemed reasonable rather than on God’s Word. Each failure represents an attempt to solve, through human ingenuity and effort, the problem that only God could solve. Each failure reveals a man struggling between faith and doubt, between trust in God and reliance on his own understanding.

When the promised son did not come immediately, Abraham and Sarah began to question whether God’s promise could be realized through normal biological means. If Sarah was barren and Abraham was aging, perhaps God intended to fulfill his promise through alternative means. Perhaps they needed to help God accomplish his purposes. This reasoning led them into schemes and deceptions, none of which addressed the real problem: their lack of faith that God would do the impossible.

The core of Abraham’s struggles was not external disobedience to clear commandments. Rather, it was internal unbelief regarding God’s specific promise about the son. Abraham had not fully internalized the truth that God is capable of the impossible. He knew God intellectually, but his heart was not fully persuaded. This incomplete faith manifested itself in repeated attempts to circumvent the problem through human solutions. And with each failure, the tension mounted: the promise of a son grew more necessary, yet more impossible.

The beauty and tragedy of Abraham’s story is that he was a man of genuine faith who struggled profoundly with one specific promise. His failures were not the failures of an unfaithful man; they were the failures of a man whose faith was being stretched and refined by circumstances that seemed to contradict the very word God had spoken to him. The absence of a son became the crucible in which Abraham’s faith would either grow or collapse.

Conclusion: From Failure to Faith

The story of Abraham reminds us that faith is not a single act but an ongoing journey. Abraham began with remarkable faith—leaving his homeland, abandoning his gods, trusting in a God he barely knew. Yet as the promised son failed to materialize, Abraham’s faith wavered. He attempted to secure God’s promise through his own efforts. He tried to manipulate circumstances. He allowed fear to dictate his actions.

Yet God’s grace persisted. Despite Abraham’s failures, God remained committed to his covenant. When Abraham was one hundred and Sarah was ninety, when every physical possibility had been exhausted, God did what only God can do: He gave them the promised son. Isaac’s birth vindicated not merely Abraham’s earlier faith in leaving Mesopotamia, but also God’s patient work to deepen and mature that faith through years of testing.

All five of Abraham’s failures were rooted in one essential lack: the absence of the promised son. Without an heir, God’s promises seemed impossible. With an heir, all things became possible. Abraham’s journey was ultimately a journey from unbelief about the son to faith that God would provide him. When faith finally triumphed—when Abraham believed that God would do what was humanly impossible—the son came. And with Isaac came the fulfillment of everything God had promised, not because Abraham had solved the problem through his own efforts, but because he had finally learned to trust that God would.

Completed Studies on Abraham’s Failures

The Five Failures of Abraham (June 14, 2022)
Ur and Haran: Abraham’s Background (February 16, 2023)
The Failures of Faith in Abraham’s Journey
Abraham and Terah: Family Dynamics and Divine Calling
Abraham Before His Call: The Mesopotamian Context
The Call of Abraham: Divine Initiative and Human Response
Abraham and Lot: Separation and Its Implications
God’s Promises to Abraham
Abraham’s First Failure: Egypt and the Wife-Sister Deception
Abraham’s Second Failure: The Eliezer Solution
Abraham’s Third Failure: The Hagar Alternative
Abraham’s Fourth Failure: Laughter at Divine Promise
Abraham’s Fifth Failure: Gerar and Repeated Deception
The Testing of Abraham: From Failure to Faith

NOTE: For a comprehensive list of studies on Abraham, read my post Studies on Abraham.

Claude Mariottini
Emeritus Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

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