Genesis 12:8 to 13:4 Abram in Egypt

 Introduction: [Illustration taken from Jim McCullen's website]

 A young soldier and his commanding officer got on a train together. The only available seats were across from an attractive young woman who was traveling with her grandmother. As they engaged in pleasant conversation, the soldier and the young woman kept eyeing one another. The attraction was obviously mutual. Suddenly the train went into a tunnel and the car became pitch black. Immediately two sounds were heard: the "smack" of a kiss, and the "whack" of a slap across the face.

 The grandmother thought "I can't believe he kissed my granddaughter, but I'm glad she gave him the slap he deserved." The commanding officer thought, "I don't blame the boy for kissing the girl, but it's a shame that she missed his face and hit me instead." The young girl thought, "I'm glad he kissed me, but I wish my grandmother hadn't slapped him for doing it." And as the train broke into the sunlight, the soldier could not wipe the smile off his face. He had just seized the opportunity to kiss a pretty girl and slap his commanding officer and had gotten away with both!

Today's story from Genesis is about a similar deceiptful trick. Not as clever as the trick played by the soldier - nor as successful, but every bit as deceiptful. It is the strange story of Abraham passing off his wife as his sister, something that he did not once, but twice. Both here, and in chapter 20. But what does it all mean?

 My problem coming to this text is to work out what is this doing in the bible? I can understand why Genesis chapter twelve verses 1 to 7 is there, with its great promises from God, and its story of Abraham's great faith. But why is this odd story here? How does it fit in with God purposes in salvation history? And what can it possibly teach me as a Christian at the tail end of the 20th-century?

 Furthermore, the story poses other questions. How can Sarai have been beautiful? She must have been at least in her late '50s at the time! If you were Pharaoh, would you be attracted to someone the age of your mother or grandmother? What's up with the author of Genesis? What's going on here? Can we learn anything from this story?

 Well of course we can! 2 Timothy 3:16 says, "all scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, correction, rebuke, and training in righteousness." And Romans 15 verse 4 assures us, "For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope."

 Now if we are to get any hope from this passage tonight, we have to start by trying to understand the story in its original setting. Let's begin with Genesis 12 verses 1 to 7. Gary spoke a little about this last week in his sermon on Genesis 11. Let me remind you that these verses and especially verses 1 to 3, are among the most significant in the whole bible.

 The LORD had said to Abram, ''Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.

''I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you;

I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;

and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

 In chapter eleven the rebellious city of Babel did not obey God's command to fill the earth, but deliberately settled in one place to make a great name for themselves. So God destroys their great name. Abraham, on the other hand, is told not to disperse, but to settle in one place. He does obey the Lord's command to leave his home and go to Canaan. And so God graciously and freely chooses Abraham and promises to make his name great and to bless all people on earth through him. That is, the very peoples he has just cursed in the tower of bable incident. And Abraham responds by calling upon the greatest name - the name of the Lord.

 Abraham put his faith and trust in God, and acted on that faith by moving to the land. In verses 4 to 9 we see Abraham moving around the land and dedicating it to the Lord by building altars. Verse eight says "then he built an altar to the Lord, and called upon the name of Lord."

 This is a high point in the story. It connects Abraham with the righteous line of God's people descended from Seth, the son God gave Eve to replace Abel when Cain killed him. At the end of Genesis 4 we read, "at that time men began to call upon the name of the Lord." God has made his promises to Abraham, which later in chapter fifteen he makes into a more formal covenant, and Steve will talk about that next week.

 Abe is in the right relationship with the Lord, and he shows that by offering sacrifices and calling upon the name of the Lord. But from verse ten we see Abraham's faith tested. He fails God, by trusting in his own cleverness and deceipt. Yet at the end of the story Abraham arrives back where he started, in the land, calling upon the name of the Lord again.

 Let's pick it up from when things begin to go wrong. Verse ten. "Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe."

 When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Abram had only been in the land about five minutes, and already he's decided that this faith stuff is too hard! From faith to fear in five seconds flat! Sound familiar? Have you ever experienced something similar in your walk with the Lord? One minute you're praising him and being used in His service, and the next you're forgetting God, afraid, doubting, sinning, and getting into all kinds of trouble. The Bible is full of stories like this - stories that show even the giants of faith, like Abe, making a mess of their lives.

 Abraham's first mistake was not consulting God. Do we see him reminding God of his promise to give him the land? No. Does he ask for God's protection or guidance? No. Instead he falls back on his own wisdom. There is a famine here. Egypt is not having a famine, let's go there instead for a while.

 You will encounter similar temptations when the heat is on. Ever feel like it's too hard being a Christian and you'd like a holiday from it for a while? I'm too busy to pray. I'll just skip praying for a while until things get easier. Church is boring, and I can make money by working on Sundays. Maybe I'll just stop going for a while until I have enough for that new thing I want to buy. Christian morality is too hard. Just for a while I'd like to see how the other half live. People at school are really anti-Christian at the moment. Just for a while I'd better lay low and not say anything. Abraham thought he would leave the Promised Land for a while and go to Egypt, because being where God wanted him was too hard.

 Abraham's next mistake, was giving in to fear. Fear is the enemy of love, says a well known song. That's true. It was the enemy of Abe's love for Sarai. It is also the enemy of faith. When we give in to fear, in our eyes God seems smaller or more distant or less significant or less willing to help. Abram did not trust God to protect him from the Egyptians. At this time Egypt had just had a lot of trouble with Semitic immigrants like Abram. People from Canaan were not flavour of the month in Egypt. So Abram makes his own safety net. And at the center of it is a deliberate lie. Verse eleven. "As he was about to go into Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, "I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say 'this is his wife.' Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you."

 What a creep! Typical male stunt isn't it ladies?! Is Abraham being a faithful husband? Does he see Sarai the same way Adam saw Eve, when he said 'this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh'? I don't think so. You're supposed to love people and use things. But Abraham here is loving things and using his wife to get them. One commentator, Joyce Baldwin, puts it this way. "With a brutal disregard for Sarai, and a total lapse from faith in his Lord, Abram resorted to deceipt in order to save his own skin. Sarai was in fact his half-sister as well as his wife, so, while it was not altogether a lie to pass her off as his sister, it was a deliberate deception, intended to enable him to escape danger and incidentally to enrich himself. But it was a despicable ruse, and one which might have endangered the birth of his promised Son. He reveals his self centred reasoning, that it may go well with me... And that my life may be spared, no matter what happened to his wife."

 Well Abraham may have been a self centred chauvinist pig, but he was right! Verse 14 "When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that she was a very beautiful woman. 15 And when Pharaoh's officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. 16 He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants, and camels." Seems like it worked.

 Now let's pause for a moment and try to work out why this is happening. We know that Sarai must have been at least in her late fifties, and probably around 65. How could she have been beautiful? [See Kidner, Genesis, in NICOT 116,117]

 Genesis tells us that the life span of the righteous line of God's people was at that time still approximately double our own. This seems to have been a special gift of God to the descendants of Noah's son Shem. There is no indication that everyone living then had such long lives. Abraham died at one hundred and seventy-five, and Sarai lived to be one hundred and twenty-seven. Sarai's '60s would therefore presumably be the same as our 30s or 40s. So that explains why she was still thought to be beautiful. [But there is another problem. In chapter 20, Abraham pulls the same stunt with another king, Abimelech, when Sarah is nearly 90. Even with her extended life span, she would still be the equivalent of the least fifty. However, chapter 20 makes no mention of her beauty, and Abimelech obviously wanted to marry her to form a political alliance with Abraham, who was a very important man. So that explains also the reason that a similar event takes place in chapter 20. Now back to chapter twelve].

 Abraham must have been feeling pretty pleased with himself. His little ruse had worked. Not only had he saved his neck, but he had become wealthier. And all at no personal expense to himself. But, God, (remember God, Abraham?) did not let him get away with it. Verse 17.

 "But the LORD inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram's wife Sarai." Now, the text doesn't say so, but we must assume that God somehow told pharaoh the cause of these diseases, just as he did with Abimelech in chapter 20. For pharaoh says, "What have you done to me? Why didn't you tell me she was your wife?"

 [Just in passing, I want to point out that in the bible, there is no simple cause of sickness. In some cases, it has a merely physical cause. On other occasions, as in Job or Luke chapter 13, Satan and his demons are the cause. And in other cases such as here, or during the plagues on Egypt at the time of the exodus, it is God who afflicts. Sometimes God does this in judgment, sometimes to rebuke and correct his people, and sometimes as in this case, to warn someone that they are in danger. Pharaoh is in danger of committing adultery with Sarai.]

 Now we see that Abram's fears were completely unfounded. Pharaoh was a more righteous man than he was. And pharaoh in some way feared the Lord, and recognized that Abram was under the Lord's protection and a special friend of the Lord. Pharaoh had every right to punish Abraham, but instead he lets him go, and even lets him keep the live stock he has given Abraham as a bride price. What a nice pharaoh! Not at all like the pharaoh who wouldn't let Moses and his people go four hundred years later, was he? I think that's one reason why this story is in Genesis. When we get to the book of Exodus, it makes that pharaoh look even worse. And it reminds us of what God promised in Genesis Twelve 1 to 3. "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse." This pharaoh blessed Abram and allowed him to depart in peace with wealth - verse twenty. "Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had." But the pharaoh of the exodus would not bless Moses and the people of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, and so God cursed him with the ten plagues. So what we see here, is the first out-working of the promise to Abram that God will bless those who bless him and curse those who curse him.

 Now where does Abraham end up? Right back where he started! Verse thirteen - 'so Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, with his wife and everything he had.' And verse three of chapter 13: 'from the Negev he went from place to place until he came to Bethel, to the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier and where he had first built an altar.' And what does he do when he gets home? 'There Abram called on the name of the Lord.' So we've come full circle! We've seen Abram move from the heights of faith to the depths of despicable deceipt and back again!

 CONCLUSION

 That God raised Abraham and restored him to faith is a great encouragement to us to persevere in faith. It's great also because it meant God still used Abraham to be the one whose offspring would save the world. Jesus, the descendant of Abraham. Abe learned that God was serious about the promises he made. God is still serious about those promises, and we find their fulfilment in Jesus.

 God chose Israel and made her holy so that through Israel the rest of the nations would be made holy. That time has now come, says the New Testament. It came with Christ, who was the true Israelite, and who died to make people from all nations holy through faith in him, not just Jews. Even those who are not physical descendants of Abraham, can now share with Israel in the promises God gave to him in Genesis 12.

 Through Christ, the offspring or seed of Abraham, God has made Abraham's name great. We are the great nation, the people of God, living under his blessing. And God has given us a land. Not a physical land like Israel, but the Kingdom of God.

 Let me end by asking you this. How converted is your mind? Abraham was just starting out on his faith journey, like some of you are. And he fell flat on his face after only a few faltering steps, because he thought in a merely human way. But that wasn't the end of the story. We have seen Abram go from a great man of faith to a man of fear and deceipt. But God did not leave him there. He taught him a lesson, and raised him back up again. And that's great news for us. God is able to lift us up again, and to turn even our sinful sidetracks into blessings. Not only did Abraham end up with great and undeserved wealth, he also grew in faith. Abram learned not to trust in hand of Man. He learned that God was serious about the promises he made. You might have already made some pretty big mistakes in your faith journey. Like Abe, you might have fallen down. But God is not finished with you yet. There is still time to call upon the name of the Lord once again, and to set out in the right direction. But you may have to do some backtracking first, like Abraham. It could be that you have been sidetracked into something that is not helpful to your Christian faith. Then give it up, admit your sin and foolishness, and come back to the Promised Land, that is, to God's rule over your life, and call on Him in faith once again.

 Greg Munro, Panania/Milperra Anglican, 8pm Sunday 22 Mar 1998