Clough Genesis Lesson 43

Election; Abraham’s failure – Genesis 12:10-20

We have been studying the call of Abraham; we have run into the first biblical clear picture of election. This is the first picture that we have seen clearly of God dealing with a group of people, looking down in that group of people, picking one and rejecting other. This is a clear corollary of election; it’s a principle that modern man dislikes because it clearly makes God the Creator and man the created. It also clearly makes man, election and his state in life, not dependent under God upon his own human merit. Remember, at the time of Abraham there was at least one superior believer that walked the face of the earth and his name was Melchizedek. And so over against Melchizedek Abraham was chosen, showing very clearly election is not grounded on something in man.

Let’s look at the doctrine of election and see what we can pull out by way of review. Remember we summarized the doctrine of election under five principles; principles that go back far into church history, as the content of election. We have to explain ourselves because in our biblically illiterate day when one mentions an election one thinks of a political campaign, and so therefore we have to distinguish here we’re talking about God’s election in history. We said that God’s election depends for its appreciation and understanding upon the divine viewpoint framework; that is, it depends upon the events of creation and the fall. To conceive of election against any other backdrop than the backdrop of the creation and the fall is simply to misconceive it; it’s simply to misunderstand it. God says My ways are not your ways; neither are your thoughts My thoughts, and this means there is a fundamental difference between the way God looks at things and the say man looks at things. Therefore, we will never be able to wholly comprehend election. We can state it and try to do our best to state it in a noncontradictory fashion but when all is said and done, I’m not trying to snow you, there’s no way I can say I comprehend this doctrine and I can relay all its parts to all the other parts. I can just try to state it in a noncontradictory way and that’s all.

We also said in the doctrine of election that it’s God’s basic promise; it’s the promise underlying all other promises. Jesus says in Luke 10:20 that we are to rejoice in our election. In that context the disciples had had many interesting spiritual experiences, casting out demons, miracles of healing, all sorts of things that we would tend to get very excited about and like to talk to someone about, and Jesus said when you talk, don’t talk about miracles, talk instead about election, talk and rejoice that your names are written in the book of life. So it becomes the basic promise that is to receive our praise and our appreciation.

Moreover, the doctrine of election means that God’s plan is 100% certain. According to Isaiah 43:12-13 God said My ways are My ways and no man can change them; no group of men can change them; no great accident, calamity or war in history can change them; My plans shall never be amended by man or changed. God’s plan is 100% certain.

And then we have the fact that God’s plan is His free choice. God is not compelled, pressured, manipulated, into making history go the way history goes. Yes, within the plan of God we can interact with him, Moses can make intercession, we can have exchanges between God and man, but the matter of the fact is that behind it all is God’s certain plan that emanates from His free choice. This is why in Romans 9 it says the potter can do what he wishes to the clay.

Then we say that election always shows itself in a loving relationship. That means that wherever you see election functioning, you’re going to see people’s lives changed and brought into conformity with Scripture. It’s foolish to say that there’s election, there’s the result of election, that’s the result of election, and see no behavioral conformity to the principles of Scripture. Election is never in a vacuum, it’s always related to what empirically is going on in history and therefore in Genesis 18 and 19 God says I have chosen Abraham, and I have known him, that he may teach his children and the seed that follows after him. It’s always related.

Now we want to begin to use the doctrine of election to help us understand the text and to help you apply some of these great principles in your daily Christian life and walk. Abraham, we said, as a result of his election, faced trials and pressures. When Abraham walked into the land of Canaan he walked into a spiritual hotspot. Canaan, of all places on the faces of the earth, was the most degenerate. The land of Canaan had the worst spiritual environment for Abraham to go to. Of all places for God to pick to have a man set up a divine viewpoint counterculture, it was the land of Palestine, inhabited by the Canaanites. Yet, that is where God called Abraham to be. And so election precipitated trial in Abraham’s life.

Remember, he came in south of the Sea of Galilee, presumably on the Damascus Road, went into a highway that goes north/south, it still does in Israel, the main trade route in the mountainous areas, he stopped just east of the place of Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, a place called Shechem, and there Abraham established the first memorial to Jehovah in the foreign land of Canaan. Walking south, just north of Jerusalem, to the east is a town today called Beitin, in the Bible times it was known as Bethel. And that was the second place where Abraham established a physical testimony to Jehovah and His promises. What was Abraham doing? Abraham was involved in missions; this was an evangelistic campaign; it was an attempt to propagate the Word of God, not on the byways, not out in the sticks but on the main highways of commerce, trade and communications. And that’s where always a sound missionary strategy ought to be.

In the days to come as this congregation determines what it wants to do in the area of missions, in the area of supporting various missionary agencies, you should ask the outreach committee; make them supply you with the information on strategy that mission boards are following. You can’t vote on missions if you don’t know what their strategy is and one of the things that you ought to think about is, is this mission, has it any thought through strategy. Where is the strategy, not just a doctrinal statement, what is the strategy of this mission, how are they allocating their resources? And the sound missionary strategies, you will find, are those that emphasize first to dominate the areas of the main stream and then after that we concentrate on the byways; that’s always the way the Spirit of God works, wherever we can test by the text of Scripture.

Abraham, as he walked into this area, today we’re going to see him facing a trial, the first great pressure in his life. Now if Abraham were to respond to this pressure, trial and adversity the way most of us do, he would somehow respond to it this way: well, it must be that I’ve sinned somewhere along the line to earn this pressure, this trial; it must be that I’m out of God’s will. But Abraham wasn’t, Abraham was in God’s will. Abraham was in the center of the geographical will of God; the geographical will of God is the place God wants you to be. God wants you to be in a certain place just like He wants you to be with certain people. And there is a geographical will of God for you this moment; it is God’s will that you be in a certain place to do certain things that he wants you to do. We call that the geographical will of God. Abraham was called to be in this land of Canaan in order that he might do a witness to the Canaanite people and build up a divine viewpoint counterculture. And therefore when Abraham walked up and down and up and down this street, this highway, this area, as he did so he was in the will of God but Abraham faced a trial and a pressure because you see, there are more reasons than just sin why we face trials and pressures. In fact, because it figures so prominently in this story let’s take a few minutes and review another doctrine besides the doctrine of election and that is the doctrine of suffering or why we suffer as Christians.

We’ve divided the reasons why Christians suffer into six broad categories, arbitrary somewhat, you can shape and divide them the way you want, but there are basically, as we teach it, six reasons. Three of these are what we call deserved reasons; three are not deserved in the sense they’re not related to something you’ve done. There are pressures and are trials that come into your life that are not related to particular point acts of disobedience. So let’s review these and see where Abraham stands.

First the three reasons why we suffer that are related to our own personal sin. One reason we suffer is because with Adam we fell. It goes back to the fall. And therefore, we, as part of a damned human race share Adam’s condemnation. He was our federal head and when he sinned we sinned under his authority, under his responsibility. And you can carry on an argument someday with Adam about it but that’s the way it is; he sinned and you reap the results. That’s just the way God established history to function. Now when this happens, that means that were sentenced to physical suffering, physical death, trauma, and so on. So that’s one reason why we suffer, part of a damned human race.

Another reason we suffer is because of rebellion, that is, our personal rebellion, not the corporate act of falling in Adam but our own addition to Adam’s sin, our little goodies that we’ve added to the pile, our specific rebellion. And “be not mocked, whatsoever a man sows,” says the Bible, “that shall he also reap.” So here we have us reaping the results of our own spiritual rebellion. Never, by the way, do you ever reap all there is to reap from your spiritual rebellion; God always cushions the blow in grace.

And then we are identified with other believers who are suffering by our choice in divine institution. For example, marriage; the husband gets out of it spiritually, misleads his home, like you’re going to watch Abraham do here, and his wife and children suffer. Why are they suffering? Because the leader, spiritually, of the home is out of it, that’s why. And a lot of women suffer because their husbands are not the spiritual leaders they ought to be. That’s just the way it is and it’s tough on a woman to be in this situation but that’s just the way God established the economy and there’s really nothing a woman can do about it except pray. One thing she can’t do about it is nag, because then she’ll get other factors adding to it, as any male can testify. So we have those three reasons for suffering.

Now some reasons for undeserved, reasons for suffering that are not related to recent acts of sin. One of them is our identification with Christ in Satan’s world. That means when you become a Christian and you fly the flag of Jesus Christ, in the spiritual unseen realms around you, Satan’s hosts take note. Your neighbor may not take notice, your girlfriend may not take notice, your boyfriend, your husband may not take notice, but don’t kid yourself, the demon powers take notice and they take notice very quickly because they are aware of things we’re not even aware of. They can tell believers in some say and they watch and they seek to disrupt lives, to tear up believer’s relationship. When you fly the flag of Christ you are enlisting in a war. There is a holy war going on and there is no peace, and there will never be peace, there are no Salt Agreements reached between Christ and Satan until the return of Christ, and then there will be an agreement and the agreement is like any agreement to end a war, destruction of the enemy, and when the enemy is destroyed, then the war is over and you have peace. So we are in a spiritual war.

Now a little application here; if you know that you are going to be involved in spiritual war and the bullets are going to be flying in your direction, doesn’t it stand to reason that the smartest thing you could do is to become spiritually the most well-equipped person you can be. Isn’t that a logical application, if you know that you’re going to be involved in a war, isn’t it most logical to prepare for it, to be the best warrior you can be? Of course. Young people, or young men in high school and junior high had better get used to the idea they’re going to be in a war because the way things are shaping up, with a constant invitation on the part of the west to allow the communists to expand and expand, I remind you of four countries in the last 365 days have gone to communism; slowly the tentacles of the red powers are closing on the Persian Gulf, with the fall of Afghanistan just north of Iran, and now with Ethiopia. Now they know what they’re doing, they’ve announced their plan and the West retreats and retreats and retreats; 1935 all over again. As Neville Chamberlain went to Berlin and said we have peace in our time, I’ve a piece of paper that proves it. And so it goes on.

So my advice to young men in high school is you’d better get ready, you’re going to be called to war and you might as well be, therefore, the best killer, the best trained soldier because if you’re not, you’re going to get shot at and if someone is shooting at me I’d sure like to know how to handle myself and have the skills to do it with. So just take it as assumption there’s going to be a war in the next 5 or 6 years and make your plans accordingly. So we have that situation in the material realm and it’s true in the physical realm. We are in a war; we may not like it, we don’t like that kind of a thing, but we have no control over it except getting prepared to handle ourselves.

The fifth reason for suffering that we’ve gone over is the fact that we are put under pressure in order to learn. God puts spiritual obstacles in our path to teach us lessons. They’re not there because God relishes this particular teaching methodology but we are stiff-necked, stubborn, rebellious, spiritual slobs basically. We all fall pretty much into that category and therefore the only way we’re going to learn is God has to get our attention and he does so by putting us under the gun, under a little pressure because he knows that when we are under pressure, some of us never grow unless we are under pressure. I’ve observed this as a pastor; I know there are several people that come in every 3 or 4 years for counseling when pressure hits and they’ll stay with the Word of God, for five or six months you’ll see them here, Wednesday night, Sunday night, Sunday morning, and just as soon as they begin to prosper, boom, you never see them. And then they come in on a stretcher three years later on down the road all cut up and bruised, and now we’re back to the doctrine again. Why? Because in their particular case no learning ever occurs unless they are constantly put under the gun. And God is being very gracious to clobber them because otherwise they would never learn anything. So this is the fifth reason for suffering, and that is all of us have to learn this way.

And finally, God wants us to be witnesses, and none of us like to be witnesses and so therefore He sticks us in places where we can’t help but be witnesses, where we are going to be under pressure to become witnesses, period.

Now that’s Abraham’s situation. Abraham was involved in election, and the election of Abraham is what involved him in these last three reasons for suffering. Because Abraham was called to the mission God called him, therefore he had to suffer in those categories. Suffering here is not a result of his personal sin; it is the result of God’s call on his life. Those of you who remember Fiddler on the Roof remember the remark of the Jewish man who said, God, can’t you call someone else once in a while, can’t you elect somebody else. And in a poignant way that grabbed the doctrine of election, profoundly biblical statement. Election brings with it blessing but it brings with it sorrow and suffering. Election, therefore, plus suffering, gives us some application. Let’s look at some of these applications, then we’ll illustrate it from the story this morning.

If it’s true that the believer is elect, then it is also true and he can conclude, therefore, that his position is not a function of his own merit… it is not a function of his own merit. My position in Christ, and if you are a Christian this morning, your position in Christ is due to God’s design and not because you are such a fantastic person. Now let’s take a little more practical application of this because experience tells me in my own life and the live of just watching Christians, is that this truth does not leak in. Let me give you some remarks, off the cuff remarks that people often make that show that the truth still hasn’t leaked in. In facing failure or some situation where we’ve blown it, we’ve just dropped it all over the place, just spattered the walls, and we come out of that kind of a situation. All right, several reactions come; well, I don’t dare go to so and so (I assume so and so here is a trusted friend, I don’t mean blab it all over the place), I mean gee, I can’t go to so and so for help, encouragement or prayer because after all, I wouldn’t want so and so to think ill of me. If so and so knew that I had blown it, what would so and so think?

Well if your so and so friend is going to respond that way, they’re a spiritual fathead and a legalist and you shouldn’t bother with them anyway, because the whole point is, if our position is not due to our own merit, but due to Christ’s merit, why do we get overly embarrassed when these kinds of things happen? I’m not saying taking sin lightly, I’m saying getting this morbid, and I say satanically induced, embarrassment over sinful failure. Why do we act that way? Well, I’ll tell you why we act that way: because we don’t believe this. We pay it lip service but we don’t believe it; if we believed it we wouldn’t react that way. The reason we react with a satanically amplified embarrassment is because secretly in the depths of our unredeemed heart we have believed that we have something, that we’re not depraved. We still haven’t learned total depravity; we still think oh yes, but I’ve got at least this to offer to Christ; when I come to Him at least I’ve got this I can give to Him. And usually what is it that falls in the middle of a trial; just that. And then you stand there and you wonder, hey, you know what, I’ve got empty hands… empty hands, I’ve got nothing that I can bring to Christ. Exactly right, and that’s the way it should be.

If you think you are going to bring something before Jesus Christ that’s going to impress Him you are operating on the wrong frequency and you still do not believe the Scriptures. The Scriptures say you can’t bring anything to Christ. So therefore why are we so ultra embarrassed about sinful failures in our lives. Why do we act like, oh, if so and so thought that they wouldn’t accept me? Well God knew about that sin billions of years ago on an eternal scale. Isn’t God omniscient? Didn’t He see that thing there? Sure He saw it there and he went ahead and chose you in Christ anyway. Now if you’re acceptable to God why can’t you be acceptable to someone else? And that’s the challenge. And you see, wherever we get legalism, and religious circles breed this kind of ohhhh, did you hear what so and so did. Yeah, so what. So what! So and so is a depraved being like you are. That ought to be the response; it cuts it down real quick to get down to basic doctrine.

Now another thing; we feel like in this kind of a mess-up socially that if this kind of thing happens, the reaction is I have ruined my spiritual life, I’ll never be able to be the same again, I’ll never be able to produce for the Lord, I have totally, completely ruined my life. Says who! What you are saying is that you just unloaded a bunch of human good and therefore you are in a better position to produce in your future than you ever were before. Let’s take a crisis experience in somebody, for instance, let’s call it a nervous breakdown, that’s what everybody calls it. Only one problem, nerves don’t break down unless you have multiple sclerosis or something. This isn’t a nervous breakdown, no nerves breakdown. What has broken down is a complete human viewpoint lifestyle. You’ve come into this situation and although maybe professing belief in Christ, or maybe a genuine believer in Christ, and saying oh, I know this promise and I know that promise and so on, but somehow you’ve been deceived and you’ve constructed this vast edifice of learned behavior patterns, how you schedule your time, what your goals are, what your obligations are, where you’re going in life, what you do this day, that day, the next day and so on, and this is all built up until finally God, because He loves you, because you are elect, because He’s not going to let you get away with this, interferes with you.

And He keeps on for a while, for a while He interfered verbally in your conscience through the reservoir of the Word of God there, but you didn’t pay any attention to that, and so then He began to interfere perhaps physiologically, ulcers or some other way, not that all ulcers are due to that, but maybe headaches, maybe all sorts of other problems, maybe that was a second warning but that went without any heed, no repentance, no realignment with the Scriptures. And so you went on down the road further and God, because He continues to love you and because He elected you to learn something in history comes crashing in and you have what is called a nervous breakdown. Now listen, that is the greatest opportunity for the most rapid spiritual growth in your life. Do you know why? Because at least for a short time in your life you are unencumbered by all these past habits that led to your downfall. At last something has happened that has totally shattered the whole thing, ruined it, smashed it, bombed it out, and life is just a pile of shambles. Well, the only way you can start with zero is improve, and so when you hit a nervous breakdown situation, think of it as an opportunity, something was broken down and it wasn’t the nerves, it was the nerd that was broken down! And now you can grow spiritually, and you’ve got a tremendous opportunity.

Now in Genesis 12:10 we’re going to watch Abraham, not with a nervous breakdown but with a failure. And we want to study this failure, not because we relish and like to see the other guy get it, but it’s just encouraging to see the fact that these people in the Bible were made of the same stuff we are. Here’s one of the all-time greats, the father of them that believe, and he just blew it all over the place; it’s comforting.

Genesis 12:10, “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. [11] And it came to pass, when he came near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai, his wife, Behold now, I know that you are a fair woman to look upon; [12] Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save you alive. [13] Say, I pray tee, thou art my sister, that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee. [14] And it came to pass that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair. [15] The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. [16] And he treated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he-asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she-asses, and camels. [17] And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. [18] And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is that that you have done unto me? Why did you not tell me that she was thy wife? [19] Why did you say, She is my sister? So I might have taken her to me as my wife: now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go thy way. [20] And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him: and they sent him away, and his wife, and all that he had.”

This is an excellent profile of a believer slowly led into tremendous deception. The principle is expressed well by a title that you encounter often in the book of Psalms; it’s an expression that occurs there, I don’t know how it’s translated in the new translations but in the King James it’s called “the snare of the fowler.” And there’s an interesting picture behind this “snare of the fowler.” The snare of the fowler, from what we can tell in ancient times was catching these special kind of birds that were used for various things, feathers and so on, this isn’t the normal way of hunting the birds for hunting meat, this was a way of capturing birds that they wanted for either their feathers or they just wanted them for pets and so on, and they would have this cage and they’d prop it up with a stick, and they’d put a little food there in a line. And the bird would capture the first food and he’d do whatever birds do and find the next piece, and so on, it would go on down the line. Meanwhile this bird gets ever increasingly interested in the food and doesn’t see that he’s walking under a trap, and then the fowler pulls the stick. And this is used again and again by the psalmist to picture a believer slowly, at first, but finally being led down the trail of deception until bang, Satan springs the trap and the bird is a captive. Just like the Christian is a captive, captive so he can no longer function as a free agent in God’s plan; captive in a satanic plot and net like you see in Christian’s pilgrim progress, in the net there. So “the snare of the fowler” refers to a way believers become deceived. Now let’s watch it bit by bit.

Genesis 12:10, “There was a famine in the land,” notice, “the land,” I say this because we want to be very, very clear when we begin, that this trial that Abraham first faces is an opportunity for spiritual growth and he blows it. Notice, it says, “the land.” I emphasize that because “the land” was the geographic will of God. Now think of it for a moment; where did the famine occur? It occurred in the geographical will of God. Could Abraham say oh gee, look at this, this is terrible, I must be out of the will of God. No he wasn’t; he was walking on the will of God, the land, that was the will of God. So while in the geographic will of God he faced a trial, not because he sinned, but because he’s elect and because God sends the trial to him to cause the growth process to occur.

There’s something else about this particular trial, notice what it was. It was a famine; well, what’s that got to do with it? What business was Abraham in at the time? He was a rancher. Now what did we say in the doctrine of the Christian man that we noticed, the way Satan attacks Christian men? You know, in spite of some of the more ardent ERA enthusiasts who want to make an identity between the sexes, God sexually discriminates when He sends trials. It’s very interesting; you can go through the Scriptures and you can see that when a man gets hit, and when a woman gets hit it’s usually different areas. It goes all the way back to the fall. When God cursed He put a different curse on the woman than He did on the man. Remember how the man was cursed; the man was cursed in the area of his job. The woman was cursed in the area of child-bearing and child-rearing. Two different directions of adversity.

Now in this situation, the famine is a trial directed to the head of the house, the man. Where does Abram get hit? Not on the home front, he gets hit on his job first, and this therefore, application to Christian wives, pray for your husband for the trials on the job, that’s where he needs your prayer support. He doesn’t have to be met at the door with 25 things that went wrong after he’s faced that all day long. Now yes, there are some things that he can do around the house but that’s not the moment to hit him with it. The men are going to be hit, nine times out of ten, on the job and ladies who are Christians, you ought to remember that. Here it is and here’s where it starts, right here, as a rancher, what worse thing can hit him than a famine. He’s got to sell off all the stock; he’s got to decapitalize his assets. So he faces this pressure.

Now he comes up in verse 10 with a solution. “Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there,” the word “sojourn” is temporarily stay, he had no thought of totally leaving the land but he had the idea that the land was not the place of victory. The land… not the place of victory? I thought the land was the geographical will of God. Precisely, and Abraham forgot. Abraham forgot! The will of God was to stay in the land; God had promised that He would meet his needs, but no. Abraham said no, I’ve got to move, business is bad here, I’ve got to move somewhere else where my business will prosper. In this case it was not God’s will for him to move; sometimes it is, I’m just saying in this case it was not God’s will for him to move his business. But he decided he was going to anyway, “the famine was grievous,” the pressure was great.

Genesis 12:11, “And it came to pass,” when he came into Egypt. Now he comes into tidbit two in the to the fowler’s snare. The first tidbit was the famine. Now it’s interesting that faith always expresses itself by works and all men have faith, and you can always tell a male faith, a man’s faith over against a woman’s faith by how he responds to pressures in his job. That’s one of the interesting tests of men; what do they really believe in the depths of their heart. If you want to know, look how the guy operates in his business and that’ll tell you exactly what’s most on his heart, and that will tell you what’s most his faith. It’s not saying he’s not a Christian if he doesn’t adhere to total Christian principles throughout his business; it’s just to say that if you see a man who professes to be a Christian and his business is run on a totally unwise, stupid, foolish, decadent way, that’s saying something about what the guy believes. He’s articulating his faith in the works of his business, and Abraham is like it. Abraham articulates his faith in a business decision and it’s a bad business decision; it’s a decision that is based on his own human viewpoint faith.

So he goes down to Egypt and as he nears the border he comes to the second trial. Notice, trial number one is famine, he blew that one. So now he goes down and he’s going to get hit with another one, and it involves Sarai. Now this business of Sarai, why does he try to pass her off as his sister? Turn to Genesis 20:11, here he tried it again. Apparently this is a learned behavior pattern that just wouldn’t quit and God had to put Abram through the wringer a second time on this thing before he learned. In 20:11 he tells you how he thinks, a very valuable verse, because it clues you to what’s going on between the ears. “And Abraham said, Because I thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife’s sake.” Read that again, be sure you see it. “Surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife’s sake.” Now on the surface it’s quite obvious what he’s worried about; his wife, who by the way here is about 65 years old, and ladies, if you have men chasing you all over the country and you’re 65 you’ve either got some of the most fantastic cosmetics going or you’ve got something else but you’ve really got something. And Sarai really had something, from the human point of view this woman was a knockout, Abram had all the physical assets in his wife. Now this tremendous woman, elegant woman, and she apparently had quite a regal character by her name, which is Princess. She not only was a good looking woman but she had a very mature soul from the natural point of view.

All right, as he starts to traipse to the border he realizes oh-oh, all these guys around here oogling and awgling, and of course it was a little different, I understand the girls can’t even go around the park any more without somebody some making some remark, and it’s tragic that girls can’t do that. You can do that in Israel, incidentally, you can do that in Soviet Russia but you can’t walk out alone at night in the United States; that’s a comment on something. So in Egypt Sarai would have been looked upon, but looked upon in a more serious way; they wanted her for a wife and they would simply kill the man to get it. The historians say at this time the Egyptian women didn’t have too much going for them and the men were looking around. So there might have been social reasons for this.

But I want you to notice how he analyzed the problem; he made two very big mistakes in verse 11. I want to see how sharp you would have been, had you been there. Faced with this situation, where his life was apparently in danger because of his wife, what did he do? Well, first of all he says, “Surely the fear of God is not in this place,” meaning what we would normally say, well, they don’t have any respect for morals because the God of ethics is not adhered to, therefore their moral lifestyle is wrong and I’m threatened. Well, that sounds like a legitimate deduction but do you see there’s something missing. Abraham is thinking only in terms of a psychological and sociological but he’s thinking nothing in terms of God intervening in the situation. He is limiting how God can work down there; he doesn’t think to himself, well God’s just going to have to intervene to protect me. Instead of that he’s thinking that God only works indirectly; God works because I have an appreciation for God, that appreciation rubs off ethically. Well, that is true, but by itself that’s not the whole story; the God of the Bible just doesn’t influence people subjectively. The God of the Bible intervenes objectively, and Abraham forgot it.

But he even made a worse mistake; the Abrahamic promise promised that he would survive forever, didn’t it. Has he had his children yet? No. Wait a minute, if God promises his children are going to survive and he hasn’t had any he’s got to live, at least until his wife is pregnant. He never made that deduction, and he’s thinking strictly in terms of a limited God. All right, isn’t that like we all are? Isn’t the problem going back to our concept of God, our attributes, the attributes of God are like this when we first become a Christian, right with a microscope, oh yeah, I believe God is sovereign, God is righteous and God is just, and that’s just about how big it looks when the first trial hits. And this is the way God appeared to Abraham in this trial.

So back to Genesis 12; he comes up with this brilliant scheme of passing his 65 year old wife off. Now look what’s he got, by way of assets; he’s got a great business, he’s got a land promise. What were the three promises God has promised Abraham? A land, an indestructible seed, and he’ll be a worldwide blessing; three promises of the sovereign electing God. So he abandon promise number one, the land isn’t sufficient, I’ve got to go elsewhere; in other words, if he moves his business elsewhere and he prospers, oh that’ll be the Egyptians, or that was my business decision, boy, that really made my business, when I made all by my male self my own business decision, I baled myself out of bankruptcy by my cleverness. And God doesn’t want him to run it this way because he’s a believer; God wants to solve it His way, but Abraham has violated that promise.

The third promise was that he was to be a worldwide blessing. Do you read of any witnessing going on in verses 10, 11, 12, 13? Nothing’s happening there, no monuments, no altars, no calling on the name of the Lord, not even a prayer mentioned in verse 10, and there’s the trial. So he has a great business, great promises, beautiful wife, eternal election, one trial and he dumps it. Does that sound familiar?

Then he says in Genesis 12:13, “I pray thee, say thou art my sister, that it may be well with me for thy sake,” notice the two phrases, “for thy sake,” and “because of thee,” that completely turns the marriage role around. Let’s look at Abraham’s so-called solution and see what it’s done. The first thing that he’s done is that he’s reversed the roles of divine institution two. Now who is the protector and the provider in the relationship? Husband or wife? The wife is. So you see, look at what we’ve learned in divine institution one; divine institution one is human responsibility. When we violate divine institution one inevitably it overflows into divine institution two, and it usually does it that way. That’s why we label them, they are in sequences; Abraham made a wrong decision over here, his personal decision didn’t involve Sarah, Sarah wasn’t even connected with the trial, she was just the innocent bystander. It was his business that was the problem, he couldn’t manage his business, and as a result he made a bad business decision and who picked up the price? His wife did. The fallout was immediately transferred over to his wife. And not only that, but now she becomes the protector. Verse 13 couldn’t be phrased any other way than to make the wife the protector of the husband and make the wife the provider of the husband. That’s the first thing that’s wrong with it.

The second thing that’s wrong with it is that he hasn’t thought through the horrors that can come to his wife, turned over to a bunch of these guys, the nobility, to be used any way these men want to use her. And that’s the other thing, she is going to mistreated. He’s never given that a dime’s worth of attention. What about the mistreatment to Sarah? She’s the one that catches all the flack so he can get off; just look at verse 13 what it’s saying: I will be okay for your sake. So he’s risking that the woman he loved is going to be manhandled, probably gang raped, and at least put into an adulterous situation.

A third thing that’s wrong with this solution is that he has… and this is the most critical one, is that he now is taking the womb that is supposed to be bearing the Messianic seed and moving her into Pharaoh’s harem. And what was the whole point of calling him out of Ur? To get him independent, to develop a divine viewpoint counterculture apart from all the Gentile cultures. So now he takes the queen, God’s queen, the woman who’s going to be the Messiah-line bearer, and where does he put her womb? Over there in Pharaoh’s harem, because the word in verse 15, she “was taken into Pharaoh’s house” means into Pharaoh’s harem. So now he’s contaminated the womb, and at this point he’s violated the first promise of the Abrahamic Covenant, he’s violated the third promise of the Abrahamic Covenant, and he’s got it so fouled up that the second promise can hardly come to pass now. All this because he failed over here in his first spiritual trial, and the thing just starts snowballing on him; one thing follows another.

Now Genesis 12:16 is put in there as a very interesting note; you might wonder as you read the story, and here we’re talking about Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, and then we’re on the menservants, camels, she-asses and he-asses. Now how’d they get involved in this discussion about his wife? It’s very simple. What was this trial in verse 10 that started this guy off? His business; and what was his business? Ranching. And how are assets visible in a ranching business? Your livestock. And what do we find in verse 16? The livestock. His business is prospering in Egypt.

Here’s a very interesting thing. On a pragmatic basis, just a pragmatic basis, if Abraham thought the way some of us think he’d say why, God is blessing me, just look at these receipts, look at the prices we’re getting for this, the camels, the sheep and the oxen, look at these assets; my business is multiplying, God is blessing me. Completely wrong conclusion because he is evaluating his life solely from the pragmatic position. And you can be very seriously misled into the snare of the fowler in your Christian life by evaluating your life just pragmatically. Just because you are materially prospering does not mean God is blessing you. It may mean that, I’m not saying to be filled with the Spirit you’ve got to go around on welfare; I’m simply saying that you can’t argue from your prosperity over to God’s blessing. Material prosperity is not inevitably the sign of blessing of God and this verse proves it. From the pragmatic point of view Abraham says well, boy, I solved my problem, really met that one; now God, next problem.

Well, the next problem is verse 17 because God suddenly intervenes, and you notice all the way from verse 10 to verse 17 God’s name hasn’t been mentioned once. God hasn’t been consulted, His promises haven’t been trusted, there is no prayer, there is no altar, there is no naming of God, not even a prayer request. Abraham comes up to the situation and finds himself with absolutely no reliance on prayer and so now God initiates. “And the LORD plagued Pharaoh’s house,” and here’s some principles to notice. Did anyone ask God to do this? No. Why did God intervene in verse 17? Why, for example, don’t we read about God intervening earlier, or later?

Why does God intervene just at this crisis moment? Do you want to know why? Because the womb that must bear the Messianic seed has just been brought into the harem, that’s why. And her husband is still operating his happy, dumb pragmatic way in verse 16. And he’s oblivious to the threat. So who has to initiate? God has to initiate, and there you’ve got sovereign grace at work. God does not sit and wait for someone to ask Him something; God goes ahead and he initiates. He “plagued Pharaoh’s house,” because, not of Abram, notice, verse 17, it doesn’t say because of Abram, like verse 13, Abram, Abram, Abram’s the center of attention in verse 13, but notice, in verse 17 the center of attention is his wife; his wife is the one’s who’s protected because she doesn’t have a protector. Her protector just crashed and there’s, by the way, a testament to encourage women; remember Sarah in the harem here. She faced a very bad situation, and the solution wasn’t nagging her husband because that wouldn’t have worked; the solution was to sit there and trust the Lord, and that Jehovah has eyes to see little old her. And God looked down and He saw her and he intervened at just the right moment; He got her out of a jam, He protected her, even if her husband did not.

Genesis 12:18, “And Pharaoh called Abram,” now verse 18, the conclusion to the story, “What is this that you have done?” And in verse 19 he chews him out. So now what happens? Remember what we said the three promises of the Abrahamic Covenant were? The land, the seed, worldwide blessing, worldwide testimony. Let’s examine it. By the end of the story Abraham’s out of the land already, he just got in but he’s already out. The womb that is supposed to bear the Messianic seed is over there in Pharaoh’s harem, a real great position. And now his testimony is ruined before the greatest national leader of that day, the Pharaoh of Egypt. Strike one, strike two, strike three, you’re out! That’s Abram right at this point.

Now to show you that there were lasting effects, probably, in history, this is an inference, probably this set off an anti-Semitic attitude on the part of the Egyptians; at least it created disrespect to the Jew. Turn to Genesis 43:32, the last part of verse 32, “…because the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; for that is an abomination to the Egyptians.” They despised the Hebrews. Why did the Egyptians despise the Hebrews? After all, the only contact that the Egyptians ever had was with Joseph at that point, except one other Jew, Abram, the first one. And the first one was enough for the Egyptians. And so this set off a horrible prejudice and a bias against the one people that carried the torch of the Word of God; they stunk in the eyes of the Egyptian. Now that was the final accomplishment of this believer out of it.

Genesis 12 ends on a note of deportation. How more humiliating than you get than the last verse of chapter 12, the guy is deported as an undesirable alien, sort of like the border patrol, scoop them up and dump them across the Rio Grande. That’s the treatment Abraham got; Pharaoh’s police rounded him up, got his herd, and just said we don’t want to see you around here, get out and don’t come back, do us a favor. Well, that’s great, who was it they just threw out? The guy that’s carrying the Word of God. Don’t come back… that’s a wonderful missionary contact, really positive note for the future.

Let’s tie this together and list some of the things that we’ve seen here. Notice on our part as believers, let’s identify with Abram for a little bit here. He met his test; the test was not because he sinned. The test was given to give him a chance to grow. He fails the test, but oblivious to his own failure he goes on verifying his wife on a sheerly pragmatic basis, God is blessing, God is blessing, God is blessing, meanwhile like a bird coming close to the snare of the fowler, Satan is just about ready to close the trap. His wife is in danger, his marriage and its roles are reversed, the future plan of God is totally threatened, he’s lost testimony to one of the greatest key countries in the world. At that point God takes over.

Now what does God do? God called to Abraham originally and then what did God do? All during Genesis 12:10-17 what did God do? Wait. What was He waiting for? Just someone to ask Him for advice. God sits and He waits and He waits and he waits. You know, He must wonder, hey, when’s that guy going to look up, all this stuff happening, hey Abram, did you forget I’m here boy. But he doesn’t so God sits and He waits; He’s not asked, He’s not called, He’s not consulted, so finally God says well this guy is such a loser, now if anything’s going to happen, this whole thing is about ready to go so I’m going to go down and boom… God sovereignly initiated by grace, because He loves this man, in spite of the face he’s a clod, God loves him and He interferes and saves him and He pulls him out of the snare of the fowler, just in time… just in time!

And he’s going to go back to Canaan, and he’s got to rework the system and train Abram a little bit more but now look. What does that tell us about our lives if we’re Christians this morning? We’re just the same way; let’s not get uppity and look down our long spiritual nose at Abram. Every one of us can identify, same old song, second verse, that’s our stanza there. Don’t we do the same thing? We’re called in Christ, we have all this stuff, God gives us a trial, we blow it all over the place. Imagine Abram trotting back, boy, I blew it now, life’s all over, testimony’s gone. And he could respond that way, that is, if he didn’t appreciate the fact that the whole thing didn’t depend on him anyway, it depends on the sovereign God who originally called him.

Let’s conclude by turning to Romans 8 for a verse that expresses the principle in a more complicated way in the New Testament era, but nevertheless the same principle, Romans 8:14. This is not talking about guidance in the Christian life being in the will of God as such, it’s a larger idea in Romans 8:14, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God,” that leading there is the leading that you just saw demonstrated in Abram’s case, leading even when we are out of it. The leading here includes the times of carnality; the leading here includes the times when we’ve blown it, we’ve messed up, we’ve splattered it all over the wall, and God still leads us. In fact, the Bible is so insistent that God is a sovereign leading God, that Hebrews 12 puts it, if you lack this leading, you are bastards and you are not in the plan of God. The very superintending, last minute rescuing, this up and down and all around is part of being an elect follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. It depends, then, upon God, not upon us and therefore we will conclude by singing….