Starting and Stumbling

Starting and Stumbling

Genesis 12:10-20

The immensity of Abram’s response in faith to God’s call is meant to remain as an everlasting wonder to us in the community of faith. Two thousand years before Christ, as Abram dwelt in the moon-worshiping context of the storied city of Ur, he heard the voice of God call him to an unspecified land where he would bless him, and through him bless the whole world.

And Abram believed God, ultimately leaving Ur and Haran “not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). As Abram followed God’s direction, he trekked a great 800-mile arc that took him east to west across Mesopotamia and down the east end of the Mediterranean, where he descended through Damascus into Canaan, which God then promised to him.

There Abram’s traveled the length of the promised land, building altars and calling upon (that is, proclaiming) the name of the Lord in the midst of the land’s pagan inhabitants.

Once again, the immensity of his faith stands as a wonder because he was not allowed to take immediate possession of the land. Rather, as Hebrews explains, “By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land; living in tents …” (Hebrews 11:9).

Abram believed that the land would go to his offspring. His journey from north to south served as a tour of inspection, but not outright possession. The writer of Hebrews explains, “For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10). He had nothing but God’s word. And he believed it.

But Abram’s layover wasn’t easy.

Naturally his initial expectation when he left Ur was to take possession of the land. But that was not to be. He remained a visitor in pagan territory. Everywhere he went he found Canaanites. Wickedness was the order of the day in Canaan, and he had seen enough of that in Ur. They probably laughed at his altars and his preaching.

And on top of all this, “there was a famine in the land.” As to whether Abram was surprised at this, we don’t know. Famine is always a possibility when you depend on the land but certainly this is not what we would expect after such an amazing display of faith. We would expect some tangible rewards, or at least a pleasant break.

After believing in Christ, people often expect nothing but blue skies and all their problems and worries taken away. But this wasn’t God’s way with Abram or his children. And because of this story’s primary importance, we learn that faith is regularly followed by famine, even severe trial.

That’s God’s way.

Faith is always tested. The tests may not be as immediate as Abram’s, but they always come. Experience and God’s Word taught James, Jesus’s half-brother, to write, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2–4).

Here faithful Abram, who had left all to follow the word of God, got whacked. He was literally starved out of the land.

Let’s pray and then we’ll read our text.

Pray!

Genesis 12:10–20 ESV

Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.” When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels. But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.” And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.

The first thing we’re going to look at is:

A Lapse in Faith

And in that we see:

Abram’s flight

There’s nothing remarkable in Abram’s decision to go down to Egypt for help.

10 Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.

All Abram intended was a temporary stay in Egypt until the famine ended. He wasn’t abandoning the promised land. If that had been his intention, he would have gone back to Ur. Going to Egypt was the natural thing to do. Those in Canaan and especially the Negev did this regularly because the Nile always guaranteed food.

Abram did the natural thing, and there lies the problem.

There’s no mention that he sought God’s will in the matter. The famine had created the fear of starvation, and Abram instinctively moved to calm his fear, without reference to God’s will. And when you look at what happened, it’s apparent that if he had sought God’s will, the story would have been quite different. Abram’s going to Egypt was not so much an intentional sin as it was a impulsive turn to his own devices.

He didn’t deny God; he simply forgot him. He forgot how great God is.

But how like Abram we are! Trials come, and we automatically go into survival mode. We scheme, we predict all the possible outcomes, we run through the “what ifs,” we build up our position, and pile sandbags. And God? Oh yeah, we ask him to bless our ways.

There is Abram’s flight and next:

Abram’s deception

The problem with going down to Egypt was that Sarai was a woman of legendary beauty. If the face of Helen of Troy could launch a thousand ships, Sarai’s could launch a thousand caravans.

Some have suggested that her beauty was in the eye of the beholder, namely, her lovestruck husband Abram. Such loving delusion isn’t uncommon. No doubt Abram always saw Sarai as an unfaded beauty. But Scripture also reveals that here, with Sarai sixty-five years old, the Egyptians thought the same!

Evidently Sarai was a knockout and remained the same for a long time. We must remember that the patriarchal life span was still about double our own. Abraham died at 175, Sarah at 127. Jacob thought that 130 years were “few and evil” (Genesis 47:9). Sarai’s sixties would be equivalent to our thirties and forties, and her ninety years at the birth of Isaac to our fifties.

Sarai’s eye-stopping beauty no doubt dazzled the Egyptians, and that could be a little bit of a problem. Abram had a pretty good reason to be afraid. The law of hospitality that was so central in biblical thought did not necessarily apply in Egypt, or so Abram feared.

All this ran through Abram’s mind as his family and servants crossed the Sinai Peninsula toward Egypt.

11 When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance,

12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live.

13 Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.”

This deception was not new to Abram’s thinking.

Earlier, when Abram left Haran, he had said to Sarai, “This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, He is my brother” (Genesis 20:13). Now, at the border of Egypt, Abram put the deceit to work. And he would do it again.

Abram, by nature, was a cunning man with a cunning plan.,

Those who imagine that he knowingly was risking Sarai fail to understand that posing as brother and sister was designed to buy time so they could escape. Abram was playing off the well-known custom of fratriarchy, as Nahum Sarna explained:

“Where there is no father, the brother assumes legal guardianship of his sister, particularly with respect to obligations and responsibilities in arranging marriage on her behalf. Therefore, whoever wished to take Sarai to wife would have to negotiate with her ‘brother.’ In this way, Abram could gain time to plan escape.”

Just as Laban, the brother of Rebekah, would use his position as brother to put off Eliezer’s approach, so Abram hoped to forestall Sarai’s would-be suitors. It was brilliant. No one would get hurt, apart from the feelings of Sarai’s would-be husbands.

And besides, it was only a half-lie because Sarai was his half-sister (Genesis 11:27–30; 20:2).

Abram could ease his conscience in saying “truthfully” that she was his sister, while also knowing how the Egyptians would take it. It was pretty smart! Abram probably patted himself on the back for being so smart and forward-looking. He was a responsible man. And he was helping God. After all, if something happened to him, God’s promise would be undone.

Abram was a clever guy, wasn’t he?

There were only a few little problems. This trickery was not an act of faith. Abram was living as if the God who had spoken to him in Ur, who had promised those incredible personal and global blessings, who had led him to and through Canaan and promised it to his descendants, didn’t exist.

God wasn’t in the driver’s seat—Abram was. And more, he was using a lie to promote God’s work. George Burns was joking when he said that the key to his success was first learning honesty; once he could fake that, he could achieve anything. Abram had mastered the art of fake honesty in Ur, and it was no joke.

How the great man had stumbled. And he didn’t even suspect it, yet.

There were faith lapses and next there is a:

Tragedy in Egypt

Abram had forgotten one thing: Pharaoh. The average Egyptian would have happily negotiated for his sister. But not Pharaoh. Abram never thought of that. And because of that we see that;

Sarai suffers

Everything fell apart, his cunning plan, his scheme, fell apart in an instant.

14 When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.

15 And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.

16 And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.

Sarai became a part of Pharaoh’s harem. What was going on in those chambers? Was she now in Pharaoh’s arms? Sarai, so beautiful, would surely become one of Pharaoh’s favorite entertainments. And from then on, life would have taken its natural course. She well could have lived and died in Egypt, had her place in a royal tomb—and her excavated mummy would be displayed in the British Museum.

Good job, Abram.

Sarai suffers and:

Abram prospers

But there was an agonizing moral twist.

Pharaoh was so pleased with obtaining Sarai that he made Abram a very rich man. Two of the gifts tell all—the female donkeys and the camels. Female donkeys were far more controllable and dependable for riding and therefore the ride of choice of the rich (they were the Lexuses and BMWs of the Nile).

The camels (there was more than one) had just been introduced as domesticated animals and were a rarity. They were symbols of prestige and wealth, for show by the very rich, not for actually being useful for everyday use (like a Ferrari or Lamborghini). And Abram now had several in his stable.

So faithless, deceitful Abram was inundated with luxurious things, while his beloved spent frantic days and sleepless nights in Pharaoh’s harem.

Faith lapses, a tragedy in Egypt and next:

God Intervenes

There was absolutely nothing that Abram could do except perhaps die in a pointless attempt to save his wife. Maybe it would come to that. It appeared that all was lost.

Then it was that God sovereignly acted:

17 But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.

The Lord inflicted great plagues on Pharaoh and his household. The Hebrew construction stresses the severity of the plagues; so, we understand that Pharaoh’s household was overwhelmed by them. But Sarai was untouched. The word translated “plagues” often refers to skin diseases. So possibly the Egyptian court suffered from something akin to a plague of boils.

God intervenes and:

Abram accused

We assume that because Sarai suffered no affliction, Pharaoh’s servants questioned her and learned of the deception and reported it to Pharaoh. Then came Pharaoh’s stinging criticism.

18 So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?

19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.”

The last line is staccato—just four Hebrew words: “Here … wife … take … go.” Such contempt. Pharaoh assumed the moral high ground. Abram appeared the sinner, Pharaoh the saint.

Had Sarai been in Pharaoh’s bed? Some scholars think so because Pharaoh says, “I took her for my wife,” indicating actual adultery, and the plagues seem to indicate that Pharaoh actually did commit adultery.

More likely Sarai escaped undefiled, as Allen Ross explains: “The words of Pharaoh need not be interpreted to mean that there had been sexual contact. He simply stated that he took her for a wife. In a royal household, it would take time for her to come before the monarch (there were twelve months for Esther’s preparation [Esther 2:12]).

Plus, the statement ‘Here is your wife’ strongly suggests that she was returned unharmed, as his wife.” Also, if Sarai had been defiled, she would never again consent to do the same deception later with King Abimelech—and neither would Abram!

Abram is accused and then:

Abram expelled

Abram’s exit from Egypt was in humiliation:

20 And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.

Abram remained silent under Pharaoh’s accusation, uttering not a single word. What could he say? He would build no altars in Egypt. Neither would he proclaim the name of the Lord. Abram and his entourage humbly crept out of Egypt.

Abram’s lack of trust in God (doubting that he would keep his promises) had reduced him to a scheming, little man. This great giant of faith had become, for the present, a very small man. And he felt it.

If we wonder why Pharaoh did not punish them but rather sent them off with their new riches, it is because Pharaoh was still suffering the effects of the plagues. He never again wanted to be on the receiving end of the power behind Abram.

And those newly gained riches were no blessing to Abram. They caused huge trouble in the following years, first in the conflict with Lot’s herdsmen, and then through a young Egyptian woman named Hagar, who was likely one of the maidservants given to Abram by Pharaoh.

Having looked at Abram’s failure, we must again affirm that he stands as a man of faith and among the greatest of men. If we doubt it, we must read on through chapter 22, or the celebration of his faith in Hebrews chapter 11, the longest section devoted to anyone in that famous chapter.

Abram started so admirably but stumbled in disgrace because he did not expect the famine, the trial that came after his experience of faith. But famines are God’s way. Trials are what produce perseverance and maturity so that we may become complete, not lacking anything.

Abram stumbled because, when testing came, he forgot God.

He did not disbelieve in God. He forgot how great God is. And forgetting God, he resorted to his own devices, his craftiness and manipulation. And then his world fell in. But this was allowed by the goodness of God, because God had greater things for Abram to do.

The message for us who have believed God and trusted him for salvation and life is this: Expect trials as a part of God’s plan, just as they were for Jesus who was made “perfect through suffering” (Hebrews 2:10; 5:7–10). We say this because the Apostle Paul reveals that God’s promise to Abram in Genesis 12:7 (“To your offspring [literally, “seed,” singular] I will give this land”) actually had Christ in view.

He argues this in:

Galatians 3:16 ESV

Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ.

Therefore, Christ is the one through whom the whole world will be blessed. He is the one through whom the global blessings will be fulfilled. Also, as the ultimate heir of Abram, he is the man of faith without equal.

Jesus didn’t stumble when trials came. His faith never wavered. He did not look to his own devices but only to God.

Abram was a great man of faith, but Christ is the perfect man of faith. Abram left his home and family in Ur to go to an unknown land, but Christ left heaven in obedience to the Father’s call. Abram is known for both his great faith and great failure. Jesus’s life was one of unexceptionable faith. His life was all in faith and by faith from beginning to end.

Here is the great benefit: As Christians who have experienced the regenerating power of Christ, we are in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). And, therefore, because we are in the man of faith, he not only saves us but empowers us to live a life of faith! The very one to whom Abram’s faith pointed, the very one to whom the promises pointed and who fulfilled the promise, is the one who enables us to live by faith. Jesus is the beginning and end of faith.

So, when trials come, as they must, do not turn to your own resources but to Christ. And he will sustain your faith.