Genesis 12:10-20 Abraham Did What?

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service. This is a message from the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis, by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filsack.

If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

This morning we're going to dive into what has the potential from our cultural perspective to be a pretty bizarre story in the book of Genesis. We're going to see Abram go down to Egypt in the midst of a famine and lie about his wife being his sister and then Pharaoh is going to take his wife in to be his wife and it gets kind.

Of confusing.

It's like what in the world is going on here? So we need to understand some of that from a cultural standpoint. I would guess that unless and some of you may have.

Been sat through some.

Preachers who are preaching.

Through the book of.

Genesis, so you've heard a sermon on this But I would guess that if I was just picking a passage to preach on, this might not be the one that I would just select. And so that's one of the benefits of going through a book of the Bible and studying it chapter by chapter and section by section is that we hit some of these golden nuggets of strangeness that we might not normally pick up under normal circumstances.

So and it is right here in the pages of Scripture. It has a message for us about the character of God as well as something to say about our own character.

And I'm just curious, have.

You ever had that happen. Where when you're reading Scripture and it's like you're reading it and it's like that is interpreting me? Like I'm reading it and it makes sense of me and it's kind of like I see myself in the text and I can see myself behaving like this person is behaving or.

Whatever?

Have you encountered that? And then there's other times where you read it and.

It's like you get this.

Vision of God and you see who he is and hopefully those two come together routinely for you in Bible.

Reading.

Scripture really does paint a picture of understanding of who we are. Accurately,.

Not who the world tells you.

You are, not who Oprah tells you you are, not even who you say you think you are yourself, but ultimately who God thinks you are and his understanding of you. How many of you think that's valuable? You know, what God thinks.

Of us?

But then equally to understand who God is, you're not going to really find that anywhere other than the pages of.

Scripture.

And so we see that in our.

Text.

Last week, we saw God take initiative and strike up an agreement with a person. We've been marching through the book of Genesis and it was a turning point in the history of God and humanity where he selected an individual named Abram from among all the peoples of the earth and asked him to leave his home and his people to set out on a journey.

Now, we talked about that last week and what a big step of faith that was. God didn't even tell Abram where he was going. He said, pick up your family and leave. And I kind of joked last week about, you know, like, I guess I'll just get on 94 and drive until you tell me to stop or I don't know.

What does that look like?

I don't really even know how he did that, but that's what he did. And up and moved his family out of his country and from his place where he had established life. And God promised that if Abram would follow him by faith, then God made some promises.

He said, there's four things that I'm going to.

Give you.

We talked about those.

He said, I promise to make you into a great nation. I promise to protect you from those who would seek to dishonor you. So those who dishonor you, I will curse and those who bless you, I will bless, he said to Abram.

He made a promise to bless all the nations through.

Him.

We know ultimately that's fulfilled in Jesus Christ and that's obviously a major part of the Abrahamic covenant is that all the nations would be blessed through somebody, one of his offspring. And lastly, God promised to give him the land of Cain and once he finally arrived in that area, God said, look around you, this is.

Yours.

So last week, there was the.

Potential to leave with a.

Pretty good feeling like Abram, an example of faith,.

Right?

He steps out and he does what God told him to in.

Verse four.

It says, so Abram went as the Lord had told him. He obeyed last week. And then my encouragement to you was to seek God's guidance and direction for your life of what your next step of faith might be and hopefully you actually were able to think of that over this past week and maybe even write something down that was your next step of.

Faith.

What is God guiding and directing and moving you towards? Maybe it was to give up a.

Certain sin that God was.

Convicting you of that needs to be pushed out of your life or maybe there was some step of faith in regard to a career change or something that he was obviously directing in. So we ended with Abram trusting God, taking this huge step, moving his family, kind of upbeat message.

And so things turn a little bit in this text. So we're still in chapter 12 but what we see this week might make us think that we've started talking about a different Abram. Last week we talked about an Abram that was full of faith and that was willing to step out and trust in God and take a big step.

So we saw trust and faith but this week we see faithlessness and distrust on Abram's part in the promise of God. As we read in contrast the Abram of last week and the Abram of this week, I encourage you to think of cutting him some slack in a sense.

Now certainly I'm not going to cut him a lot of slack in the sense that what he does is sin here but I just want us to turn a little bit and look at ourselves and say have you experienced something of what it looks like to be at a spiritual high point where you're connected with God and you're walking in faith and that you can turn on a dime and express faithlessness in God and distrust in him instantly.

Have you experienced that in your life? Those high points, those high moments? I dare say that probably for many of us that can happen from Sunday to Monday.

You think about that?

I mean you gather together with God's people, we get a chance to sing songs, hear from his word. I know it is for me, maybe it is just me but for me Sunday is a high point. I love this and I love gathering together with you and talking with you, seeing how your week's gone and being encouraged, hearing from God's word and I'm hearing from it even as I'm speaking and you know so it's convicting to me.

And then what happens Monday morning, right? Or maybe we only have to go to Sunday afternoon if we're honest but I mean we can step away from high points of our walk and turn on a dime and that's what we see Abram doing.

It's not that we're talking about two different Abrams, we're talking about one Abram that acts just like us who can be like expressing significant faith, stepping out and surrendering things for God and the next minute he's going to do something that is just kind of stupid, really boneheaded and he's going to do that for us and show us.

You see, how many of you.

Know, your mistakes, are you glad that they're not in scripture? I mean, do you really want to have lived in Bible time so that God could be using you as an example and writing about you in the text so that centuries down.

The road they could be.

Reading about your stupid.

Mistakes?

Abram took the hit for us so that we can see a reflection of ourselves. Genesis 12, verses 10 through 20, if you open there, please, and you can turn to page eight in the Bible in the seat back in front of you.

And if you don't own a copy of the Bible, please take that one with you. We do want everybody to have a copy of the word of God. Follow along as I read Genesis 12, verses 10 through 20. 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 and.

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.

Let's pray.

Father, we look at this text and there's a lot of cultural mystery, fog in this text of what is actually going on and it seems pretty cold and callous in one way for Abram to respond to his wife this way.

And Father, sometimes our mind just turns to those really radical things that happen in the text and we miss the main point and the overarching theme that Abram is acting faithless in the text and you are proving yourself faithful to continue to preserve his life despite his own stupid decisions to embarrass a tyrant over the known world at the.

Time.

And Father, you are the hand that protects him. You are the one who keeps promises. And Father, as we have an opportunity to worship you this morning, I ask that you would help us to worship you out of recognition of who you are.

The great promise keeper, the one who has said it and it will be accomplished, the one who has promised us things like salvation in your son, Jesus Christ, and that all who are in him will be saved. And Father, I ask that you would help us to help us to understand that in our hearts and to sing songs and to worship you out of that, that this would not be just some sense of Christian karaoke where the words are on the screen and we sing along, but ultimately it would be our hearts engaged and delighted in you as the God who is faithful even in the midst of our.

Faithlessness.

I praise you for that in the name of your son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen.

Highly exalted in the name of Jesus Christ. I pray that that's reality in our lives as we move forward and even as we hear this message this.

Morning.

Make sure you have Genesis chapter 12 verses 10 through 20 open in front of you. Again, that's on page 8 if you got here late or you just lost your place. And remember that I know we just took a break, but you can get more coffee or donuts and then the restrooms are back here if you need those at any time during this walk through this awkward passage here.

So I'd like us to start by putting ourselves in Abram's shoes. I think a lot of times we can tend to observe the people of scripture as kind of flat without emotion. We have a tendency to look at these ancient documents and these ancient stories and kind of go, well, okay, they just kind of did what they did and they were like kind of robots.

But I mean, have you ever.

Tried to put yourself in Abram's shoes of what he's experienced in life? I think that there's some value in understanding that. Think about it in this context. Okay, so this guy is just minding his own business and God speaks to him.

I don't know what that conversation looked like. I don't know if it was like a voice from heaven, that audible thing, or if it was a still small voice inside his heart as he was out tending the sheep or.

Whatever.

But God spoke to him and told him to uproot his family and to move. He obeyed God, appearing, and then God appeared to him once after he arrived in the area of Canaan, told him that he was going to give Abram this land.

How many of you, by this point, if you're Abram, you're kind of just kind of freaked out like, what in the world is going on with my life? Like, what is happening? God, you know, I heard this voice, I'm trying to follow.

This.

I mean, it was obvious that by his response that he believed it was God speaking to him. And so, he's doing all these things and God is making promises to him. And then he moves to this land, God says, I'll give it all to you.

But Abram continues to move, and it's important, I say God promised to give Abram the land, actually, God promised to give his descendants the land, his.

Offspring.

So there was an understanding in Abram that God is giving him this land, but it's not necessarily the land. It's not necessarily for right now, down through my line, they are going to possess this land of Canaan.

So Abram continues to move around in a quest for pasture land for his flocks, at least that's what I assume is the case. And last week, we left him in southwestern Israel. I think there's a reason why he's moving around for pasture land because we see right here in verse 10 that there was a famine in the.

Land.

How many of you know famines don't just happen like all of a sudden, like everything just dries up like instantly, but it takes a little bit of time for that process to happen. And so, it's likely that as God is giving him the land, it's kind of drying up and he is down in this area of southwestern Israel as we left him last week in the text, an area called the Negev or the Negeb, depends on your translation, down near Egypt as it is.

We find out about this.

Famine in the land. What did God just do to.

This land?

What did God just say to Abram regarding this land in our passage last week?

I just kind of said it.

He gave it to him, didn't.

He?

Did he give this land?

He said, I'm going to give this to your offspring,.

Okay?

And yet, what's the first thing that happens to the.

Land?

There's a famine. Is there a little bit of.

Irony in this?

Okay, this is like the transmission going out on your brand new car. Okay, you're still paying payments on it and the transmission is blown. You get the new computer in the mail and the motherboard is completely scrapped on it.

That actually happened to me a couple of weeks ago, but so that kind of thing. Or you drop your brand new cell phone in the toilet. Okay, anybody have that.

Happen to you?

I would guess that that's happened to a handful of us.

Okay, so you're kind of.

Like, what is happening.

Here?

Okay, God promises, I'm going to give you a land and then the land turns out to be broke right away. But to be fair, God promised.

The land to Abram's.

Descendants and Abram didn't have the means to take this land at this point anyways. The Canaanites, as told us last week, are in the land. But there is an irony in this severe famine. So, Abram does what all.

People in the Middle East.

Do.

What do you do if you live in the Middle East in ancient times and there's a famine that hits the.

Land?

Where do you go? What do you do? Everybody goes to the same place. Egypt, you go to Egypt.

Okay, a couple people.

Would have survived in that context. Okay, you go to Egypt. There's a reason, there's this little known river that runs right through the.

Middle of Egypt.

Anybody know, have any guesses what the name of that river is? The Nile, the longest river on the face of the planet is the Nile River. Longest in, you know, the biggest in length. And it runs all the way.

Down into the heart of.

Africa so that things have to be really bad down in like the jungles of Africa for it to dry up. Okay, so it's not affected by the arid conditions and the droughts and the common famines of the Middle East and so it's a logical place to go for water, for food, for irrigation and that's a good thing.

So for the Nile to dry up would have to have problems going on way down hundreds of miles, thousands of miles away from where the Nile is in Egypt. So they go there. Many people would go there and we see kind of a history, a recurring theme of people going to Egypt for protection all the way up to the point where do Joseph and Mary take baby Jesus to protect him from the king of the area?

They go to Egypt.

There's a theme of going there for protection throughout Scripture. So Abram goes to sojourn there, he's planning to be there indefinitely, there's no end date in mind for him when he goes there.

I have often thought of the.

Word sojourn as a temporary word and it's not necessarily, it means to dwell or to live in. It's a pretty generic word.

Actually.

So Abram takes his wife, his stuff, his servants, all of his people and they move to Egypt. His motive in moving to Egypt is not a mystery. Abram wants to survive and to have food and water for his family and for his.

Livestock.

I don't think Abram's move to Egypt is particularly sinful or untrusting. God didn't promise to give him the land immediately so he's not disobeying anything directly from God. It seems likely that God might even be using that move to preserve Abram in.

Egypt.

I just want to point out it's possible to be overly critical of Abram and to think that he's taking too much into his own hands by avoiding this famine but faith doesn't always look like just sitting in the desert waiting and praying for water.

Like sometimes you need to be moving and he's moving here. So I don't fault Abram for moving to Egypt during this famine. That's not his primary sin in the text but there is going to be sin in the.

Text.

What comes next gets downright dicey and strange in verses 11, 12, and 13. Now verses 11, you know, there's some cultural tension in this but verse 11 like at least translates to us in a pretty direct way.

Abram sits down with his.

Wife, Sarah, and.

Establishes that she's a hoddie.

You look at it in verse 11 it actually says that. Okay, the word hoddie maybe not but when he was about to enter Egypt he said to Sarah, his wife, baby girl you got it going on. You see it right there?

Is that what your translation reads? No, okay. But it's something to that.

Effect.

Okay, that's kind of the gist of what he's saying.

To her.

Lynn and I have these kind of conversations routinely in our household, okay? So, you know, girl you're a.

Hoddie, that kind of stuff.

So far so good, right? Verse 11, is verse 11 a.

Good conversation? Good conversation.

Happening in the household.

Of Abram?

Yes or no?

Yes, this is a good.

Conversation.

Men, yes, this is a good conversation to have with your wives, okay? Wives, you enjoy a.

Conversation like that?

Yeah, okay.

Three of you? The rest of you, okay. Three of you enjoy that. I think verse 11, good discussion guys, okay? If you're going to open your mouth and use one of your 250 words that you say in, you know, ug, hoddie, that's okay, okay?

I mean if you're going to.

Use a couple of those.

Words, use them in a good way towards your wife. But just like so many men, the conversation, he just doesn't, okay, he gets running and then he's not going to stop there. And the reality is if you have a girl that is a hoddie, then it's easy for fear to set in, right?

I mean, I know. And so, like I don't want some dude hitting on my wife, okay? I mean, let's put some rubber on the tread of this tire here for a second. I don't want someone hitting on my wife. That's not going to turn out well.

That's not going to go.

Really super good.

So Abram, you know, in my context, in my situation, I mean, there might be some fear of losing my wife and something like that,.

Right?

I mean, there might be some legitimate fear for some of us kind of going, well, what if somebody hits on my wife and it doesn't go well and oh, that's not.

Cool.

But Abram's fear is.

Something a little bit different than that, isn't.

It?

Because we move on in the text and it's like verse 11, he says, I know that you're a woman beautiful in appearance and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife. Then they will what?

What's he afraid is going to.

Happen?

They're going to kill me and take my wife. So his fear is not losing his wife as much as losing his life. Huh, that rhymed. So yeah, he's afraid he's going to lose his life and that's pretty significant.

Now, I take for granted that this is not purely an irrational fear. It sounds like it from one notion, from one standpoint and I'm reading it, I'm kind of putting it in our context and going, if I leave, if I tell my wife, you know what, Linda, we're not going out to eat tonight or ever because I'm afraid somebody's going to think you're really attractive and kill me for.

You.

Okay, does that sound.

Irrational? I mean, is there maybe a hint of irrationality in that notion? Would you guys agree with.

Me?

Like maybe they've got to set up a meeting for me to meet with somebody and talk with them to get a little help for myself if that's kind of the way that I think society runs and the way that things are going to go for me.

So are you seeing what I'm saying that culturally we.

Have a little bit of a.

Hurdle to understand, a.

Little bit of fog.

Sometimes there's a difference between our culture where we live and the culture where they lived in biblical times that we have to bridge the gap, we have to clear the fog away to understand what's going on in that.

Time.

I don't think Abram is just like we're getting a little dose of his psychosis or that he's just, what's a paranoid or something like.

That.

There is something about the culture there that we're looking at that makes it clear. Abram's going to go to significant extremes to try to keep from being killed for his wife. Now, one of the things the.

Text tells us is that she's.

Extremely attractive. So that's an element in this that you can't dismiss. She's extremely attractive and that adds to his fear but then there's also the sense in which we have to understand that culture was just that bad.

Culture was that denigrated that they might take advantage of him and actually kill him for his wife. So that was apparently not that far off the radar. The potential was there for that to occur. And not only that but we also need to understand culturally that certainly he has some help, he has some servants.

We saw that earlier in the text that he had some servants and people traveling with him. Don't get in your mind that it's just him and Sarai wandering around out in the desert but equally he doesn't have the extended structure that families and clans had for each other at that time.

He's been told to leave his clan behind in Haran by God and so now he's come out from underneath a structure of protection in his culture and he's moving to Egypt where he probably doesn't know the language super great, all of those kinds of things.

There's a lot of room to be taken advantage of in a foreign country, isn't there? If you don't know the language, you don't know the culture, you don't understand how things are.

Going.

So all of that, does he have a legitimate fear? Yeah, he's legitimately afraid that this might happen but so he's going to come up with this and there's a fear there. But what should we do with our.

Fear?

When we see that fear well up in us, where should we turn when fear occurs? Where does Abram turn when fear occurs? He's going to turn to a.

Plan.

He's going to come up with,.

I got this one.

After just meeting God and God making some significant promises to him, he's going to look and say, you know what, God I trusted you just last week, earlier in this chapter, I just trusted you but you know what, watch what I can.

Do.

I'll take care of this. How often do we act like.

That?

I mean, we just came from a.

Text that talked about.

Abram being promised that he would become a great.

Nation.

How many of you think he needs to stay alive a little longer for him to become a great nation? He doesn't even have any offspring yet so that would be kind of a clue that like God's going to keep him.

Alive.

He's going to be a blessing to all people, probably going to do that by being alive and having.

Offspring.

And he has even been offered divine protection, the one who blesses you I will bless, the one who curses you I will curse. And so, how many of you think that he probably has received ample information from God to trust him with his future?

Has he? He even demonstrated a level of trust in that and now he's going to go off on his own and come up with a plan in verse 13 that's a harebrained plan, it's a strange plan but it also isn't maybe as strange as what we think when we read it at face value.

How many of you think this sounds like a horrible plan.

At face value?

At face value without.

Understanding the cultural.

Context it's like what's he going to say? Say, he says to his wife, say you're my sister, okay you lost me somewhere in there, 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.

So they're going to go down to Egypt, they're right on the edge of Egypt, they're getting ready to go in and he's like just tell everybody that we meet, we're going to act like brother and sister while we're there, everything's going to go fine.

What? What is going on here? It's a little bit strange. The plot is simply this, when they arrive in Egypt they will act like brother and sister so that he will be treated well by the Egyptians who all want to get in good with Abram because of his beautiful sister.

Now the other thing that we find out that gets a little bit strange, we don't see it in our text but I think it's valuable for us to pull this in because we're going to see this type of event happen three times in the.

Book of Genesis.

Two times Abram's going to.

Do this.

So what we see here is not like a learning experience for Abram. He's going to do this again when they're coming into another land, the king Abimelech is going to do the same thing, he's going to find Sarah attractive, take her in and then his son Isaac is going to do the same thing with his wife, like where do you think he learned that?

Okay, so he's going to learn that from dad and he's going to try to pull off the same plan. So in that context, if you're taking notes you can write down this reference, Genesis 20 verse 12 is another part where this is happening again and Sarai is there in the text called the daughter of his father but not the daughter of his mother and there in that later context Abram uses this half-truth as justification for his lie.

He says, well technically she is my half-sister,.

Okay?

Technically she's the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother. And so he basically says, well it's kind of true. And how many of you know you can tell a half truth and at the same time be telling a whole.

Deception?

You can be telling a half truth and at the same time be telling a lie because you're intentionally deceiving somebody and that's the heart of lying is intentional deceit,.

Right?

That's the heart of a lie is intentionally intending to divert somebody to a different direction and primarily most lying is for personal gain, right? Diverting somebody for our own gain and for our own benefit.