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The life of faith has many temptations and trials.

I. THEY MAY ARISE FROM TEMPORAL CALAMITIES. Famine.

1. They direct the whole care and attention of the mind to themselves.

2. They may suggest doubt in the Divine providence.

3. They serve to give us an exaggerated estimate of past trials.

II. THEY MAY ARISE FROM THE DIFFICULTY OF APPLYING THE PRINCIPLES OF RELIGION TO THE MORAL PROBLEMS OF LIFE.

1. We may be tempted to have recourse to false prudence and expediency.

2. We are exposed to the sin of tempting Providence.

3. We may be tempted to preserve one good at the expense of another.

4. They may tempt us to hesitate concerning what is right.

III. THEY ARE MADE THE MEANS OF IMPRESSING VALUABLE MORAL LESSONS. Abram would learn many lessons from his bitter experience in Egypt.

1. That man cannot by his own strength and wisdom maintain and direct his own life.

2. That adverse circumstances may be made to work for good.

3. That a good man may fail in his chief virtue.

IV. GOD IS ABLE TO DELIVER FROM THEM ALL. When a man has the habitual intention of pleasing God, and when his faith is real and heart sincere, the lapses of his infirmity are graciously pardoned. God makes for him a way of escape, and grants the comfort of fresh blessings and an improved faith. But —

1. God often delivers His people in a manner humiliating to themselves.

2. God delivers them by a way by which His own name is glorified in the sight of men.

(T. H. Leale.)

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KJV: And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.

WEB: There was a famine in the land. Abram went down into Egypt to live as a foreigner there, for the famine was severe in the land.