Faith, Fear, and God

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 12.
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We continue on this morning in our verse-by-verse study of Genesis.
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And we're going to be looking at Genesis chapter 12 basically as a whole, but we're going to even dip our toe into chapter 13.
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So you'll hold your place at verse 4 and we'll go from Genesis 12 forward to Genesis 13 for when we read.
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But before we do that, I want to sort of begin with a question.
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If I were to ask you to describe the relationship between faith and fear, what would be your thoughts? Some might say that faith and fear are antonyms, that they're opposites.
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They might say something like if you truly have faith, you should never have fear.
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Well, in one sense, the Bible does tell us that fear is not the condition that God wants us to live in.
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It tells us very clearly that God has given us not a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of self-control.
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1 John 4, 18 tells us there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
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So it's clear that God doesn't want us to live in such a way that we're always quaking in our boots.
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Yet at the same time, we know that sometimes we do fall prey to fear.
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Even people who have great faith can experience times of fear.
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So fear is not always the opposite of faith.
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Because people of faith can experience fear.
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But fear is a challenge to faith.
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In our text today, what we're going to see is Abram is going to give a wonderful expression of faith.
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God calls him, go from your country and from your kindred and from your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation.
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And I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you and in you all the nations of the world will be blessed.
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And so he goes.
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And in an act of great faith, Abram shows that he believes God.
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Not just believes in God, but he believes God.
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There's a difference.
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But then, almost immediately, it's followed by an expression of fear.
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But in the end, God will intervene even in the midst of Abram's fears.
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So we're going to stand, as we always do, to give our attention to the reading of the word.
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And we're going to read verse 4 down to chapter 13, verse 4.
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Genesis 12, verse 4.
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So Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.
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Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.
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And Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all his possessions that they had gathered and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.
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When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem to the oak of Morah.
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And at that time, the Canaanites were in the land.
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Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring I will give this land.
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So he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him.
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From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.
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And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.
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And Abram journeyed on still going toward the Negev.
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Now there was famine in the land.
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So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there.
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For the famine was severe in the land and 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.
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But they will let you live.
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So 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.
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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.
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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.
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But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife.
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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.
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Now then here is your wife.
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Take her and go.
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Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.
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So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had and lot with him into the Negev.
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Now Abram was very rich in livestock and silver and in gold and he journeyed on from the Negev as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning between Bethel and Ai to the place where he had made an altar at the first.
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And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord.
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Father I pray Lord now that you would keep me from error as I preach.
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Fill me with your spirit and boldness.
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And Lord may I be moved out of the way, may I decrease, may Christ increase and may your Holy Spirit be the teacher.
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May those who are here who know you be confronted with the word and Lord encouraged and convicted but Lord for those who do not know you whether they be old or young may today be the day that they see that there is only one who can save and it is our Lord Jesus Christ in whose name we pray.
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Amen.
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Since we're doing such a long narrative study today I want to give you the outline in the beginning.
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The outline is relatively simple.
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What we're going to see is in verses 4 through 9 of chapter 12 Faith brings Abram to Canaan.
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That's the first section of the text.
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And then we're going to see and you can bring this up on the screen if you would Nate.
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Faith brings Abram to Canaan that's verses 4 to 9.
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Fear takes Abram to Egypt.
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That's verses 10 through 16.
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And then God brings Abram back.
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That's 12, 17 to 13, 4.
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So let's look first at the first point.
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Faith brings Abram to Canaan.
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It says, So Abram went as the Lord told him and Lot went with him.
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Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.
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Now at this particular time in history the ages of the patriarchs were quite a bit longer than our current living expectation.
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It wasn't quite as long as what was before the flood.
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Before the flood men lived into 800-900 years.
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We all remember Methuselah.
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He lived the longest any man has ever lived.
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But after the flood the ages began to decrease somewhat and we see Abram's life will not go on forever of course.
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But at 75 he's not as old as maybe he's not in the sense of maybe a 75 year old today.
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But still old.
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Still past the age that we'll see later of what would have been normal child rearing and child bearing years.
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It says, And Abram took his wife Sarai and Lot his brother's son.
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You'll remember his brother's son Lot.
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That is the brother who died.
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So Abram seems to have taken a position of fatherhood for him.
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Somewhat of a position of leadership in his life and mentoring and leading.
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And it says, And all their possessions that they had gathered and the people that they acquired in Haran.
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Now you remember when God called Abram he called him I believe in Ur of the Chaldees which was in Mesopotamia.
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And God called Abram from there to go to the land that he would show him which we know will eventually be Canaan.
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But in between that there was a interlude of time where Abram's father wanted to go to Haran.
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And we discussed this in weeks previous.
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It was likely that he wanted to go to Haran because he was a worshipper of the moon god Nanna.
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And he wanted to go there because there was a place to worship Nanna there in Haran.
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And Terah, we don't know if Terah ever was converted to Yahweh.
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We don't know if Terah ever really became a follower of Yahweh.
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But we know that he would not leave Haran.
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He would not continue on.
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So Abram waited until Terah died before he continued on to Canaan.
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And it says here an interesting statement in verse 5.
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It says not only did Lot and Abram take all their possessions but it says it took the people that they had acquired in Haran.
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And that's an interesting statement because when it talks about the people that they had acquired some people think that that refers to slaves.
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That that refers to them taking slaves with them.
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And it would not be beyond reason that Abram, a rich man at this particular time in history, would have had servants.
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So it certainly is not beyond the realm of possibility that these would have been slaves.
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But there is another way to understand this section where it says the people that they had taken because it could be translated the souls that they had won.
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The souls that they had won.
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And one translator even translates it that way.
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And he argues that that translation is better exegetically and it's more in line with rabbinic interpretation.
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So the idea there is that Abram has an entourage of believers who are going with him.
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That he has already been, as it were, proselytizing for Yahweh.
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He has already been proclaiming Yahweh as he goes.
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Yahweh spoke to me and I'm going and now there are people who are believing and going with me.
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And so the entourage is not made up merely of slaves, but could also be made up of people who were believing in the God of Abram.
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As it were.
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And so imagine, as it goes on to say, Abram passed through the land and to the place of Shechem to the oak of Morah.
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And it says, and at that time the Canaanites were in the land.
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Now, just imagine, they left Mesopotamia, which was filled with idolatry.
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They went to Haran, which was a seed of idolatry.
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And now they've gone to Canaan.
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And you might think, well, Canaan is the promised land.
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They're going to go there and it's going to be great.
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No, still filled with idolatry.
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Because the Canaanites are idolatrous.
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These are the descendants of Ham.
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And you remember, those descendants were cursed by God.
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And what we learn from history about the Canaanites is that the Canaanites were actually corrupt to the core.
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Their idolatry was throughout.
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And so here comes Abram with his entourage of at least some believers coming with him.
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And here he comes into the land of Canaan.
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And it says he went past the oak of Morah, or to the oak of Morah.
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And that's an interesting little nugget.
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A lot of people just read past that.
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I don't know where that is.
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I don't know what it means.
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The oak of Morah was a place where the Canaanites would go to worship.
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It was a place where the soothsayers would give their oracles.
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It's a place where they would pronounce their proclamations.
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And what they believed was as they heard the wind blowing through the tree and they heard the rustling of the leaves and the oak tree, they believed they were hearing from their gods.
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And they believed they were hearing announcements and oracles and proclamations from their gods.
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So this was a place where people went to hear from the divine spirits.
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And here comes Abram with his entourage, the follower of Yahweh.
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At that point in time, the one in the world who knows the Lord, the friend of God, having left one land of idolatry, now having moved into another land of idolatry.
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And you might think Abram would come into the land and maybe sort of get his bearings a little bit.
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Maybe he might come into the land and sort of just let things go and we'll let them be them and we'll be us.
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No.
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It begins to tell us in verses 7, 8, and 9 that Abram actually went in and began to worship and set up places of worship.
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Look with me at verse 7.
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It says, Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring I will give this land.
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So Abram, first of all, just imagine that.
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God appears to him.
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We read that.
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We go right by it like it's no big deal.
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God appears to him.
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Now we call this a theophany.
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More specifically, I would say it's a Christophany.
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I believe this is the Lord Jesus Christ appearing to Abram.
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If we go to the New Testament, the Bible says no one has ever seen the Father.
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So that would lead us to conjecture that anytime someone sees the presence of God in a human form in the Old Testament that that would be the Son, that would be Christ.
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So likely this is Christ who is, and we know later, Abram's going to eat with this same figure later.
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And so we have Jesus more than likely as the one that's being spoken of here.
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And he's coming and he's appearing to him.
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He says, this is the land that I promised you.
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Remember when he called him from Mesopotamia, he didn't tell him where he was going.
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He said, go from your country and your kingdom and your Father's house to the land that I will show you.
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Future tense.
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I will show you.
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You just start going and I'll let you know when you get there.
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Well, here it is.
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He's arrived.
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And he looks around and he sees this place filled with idolaters.
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This is your land.
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This is the land that I'm giving your people.
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This is the land that I have set aside for your offspring.
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And notice what it says in verse seven.
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So he built there an altar for the Lord who had appeared to him.
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What is an altar? An altar is a place of worship.
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It is a place of sacrifice.
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It is a place where the people of God meet with God.
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You know, a lot of times you'll hear people in churches today talk about the front of the church as an altar.
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It's not the case.
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In fact, a lot of times churches will have benches at the front and they'll say come to the altar.
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That's not an altar.
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That's a mourner's bench.
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That's what it's called.
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That's actually the more technical term is the mourner's bench.
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It's not an altar.
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This table, also, not an altar.
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I had an argument one time with a lady because she was arguing with me about the altar cloths and I literally didn't know what she was talking about.
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She was talking about the cloths that cover this table.
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She goes, what are we going to do with the altar cloths? I said, what altar? She said, the altar cloths.
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I said, what altar? She said, where we have communion.
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I said, that's not an altar.
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It's a table of remembrance.
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An altar is where a sacrifice is made.
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We have one sacrifice.
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There's one sacrifice that was made for the people of God today and it's the cross.
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And this remembers that but it does not represent that as falsely as taught in Roman Catholicism.
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Roman Catholicism teaches that every time that you have the bread and the cup Jesus' sacrifice is represented on the altar for you.
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That is a lie.
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That is false theology.
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Not only is it a false theology it calls into the question the very text of Scripture which says that Christ died once for all time.
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His sacrifice never needing to be repeated.
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Only remembered.
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But obviously Abram lives prior to the cross.
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And every sacrifice that was made every altar that was built prior to the cross had one purpose.
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Look forward to Jesus.
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Look forward to the cross.
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So Abram builds this altar and he worships God at that altar.
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Now he moves again.
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Verse 8.
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Abram's always on the move as we'll see.
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Verse 8 it says from there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent.
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The word Bethel means house of God.
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And with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east and there he built an altar to the Lord.
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Second altar.
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He's built another altar.
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And it says at this time he called upon the name of the Lord.
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Very important phrase.
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We often think of calling upon the name of the Lord as prayer.
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However it can also mean the proclamation of the Lord's name.
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It can also mean preaching.
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In fact I'll give you a quote from Luther.
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Luther, Martin Luther was convinced that this text is not just that Abram went off to himself and prayed quietly but that he went out in the midst of the people and proclaimed the name of Yahweh to the people.
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He called upon the name of the Lord publicly and so much so that Luther was willing when he translated this text into German.
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You remember he was the one responsible for translating the Bible into German for the German people back in the 1500's when he translated this text into German.
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He translated it and he preached the name of Yahweh.
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And he preached the name of Yahweh.
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Calvin says this.
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He says, Moses commends Abram's unwearied devotedness to piety.
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By these words he intimates that wherever place Abram visited he publicly worshipped God.
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Both so he might have no religious rights in common with the wicked and so that he might keep his family in sincere piety.
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So you might say, even if he didn't preach, even if Luther's a little beyond on his interpretation, one thing he did do is he called upon the name of the Lord with his people and his family and he made sure he was separate from the world around him that was heavily influenced and if you will just drenched in idolatry.
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Beloved, is there an application for us in that? Absolutely.
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That we who are families, particularly husbands and fathers, your job, your responsibility is to watch over the integrity of the sanctification of your family.
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That you proclaim the Word of God to your family.
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You call upon the name of the Lord before your family and you protect your family from the idolatry of the world.
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You have that burden and that responsibility.
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It is a blessed burden.
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And Abram did that.
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Ken Hughes in his commentary says this.
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He says, The brief itinerary of Abram has taken him from the northern to the southern border of the land.
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He not only saw what had been promised to his offspring, he walked through it, lived it, and worshipped in it and symbolically he was taking possession of it.
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Put an altar at the north, put an altar at the south.
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This is God's land.
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It was claimed.
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Remember when we went to the moon? What did we do when we went to the moon? We stuck an American flag in the dirt of the moon.
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We claimed this is claimed.
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As Abram went into the promised land, he built an altar two places.
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This is Yahweh's land.
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So faith takes him to Canaan.
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Now we get to verse 10.
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Fear takes him away.
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Almost immediately.
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Now we don't know how long it took, but almost immediately, at least as far as the text is concerned, almost immediately he's out again.
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He makes it all the way there, builds two altars, calls upon the name of the Lord, got an entourage of people.
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He is worshipping and praising Yahweh and boom, he's gone.
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Again, how many analogies to our own life? We come to Christ and almost immediately the world tries to suck us back out.
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Think about Jesus when He was baptized.
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What happened to Him? He went into the wilderness to be tempted and Satan attacked Him right then at the moment, at the beginning of His ministry.
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I want to say this to you.
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If you're a new Christian, I know some of you are, some of you are young people, some of you are new folks.
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If you're a new Christian, you're in a very dangerous place because the world wants nothing more than to see you be like that soil that Jesus talks about that springs up for a little while and withers away.
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But why did it wither away? Because it had no root.
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Right? Be rooted in the faith for certain.
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But let's just look.
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Fear takes Him away.
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Verse 10, it says, 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.
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Now, it doesn't tell us how long this took.
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As I said, there's no passage of time mentioned.
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It just says now.
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Now there was a famine in the land.
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And I have to consider this for a moment.
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God promised Abram this land.
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Abram goes to the land and guess who's there waiting on him? God.
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He speaks to God.
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He builds an altar to God.
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But then the land becomes barren, unable to sustain he and his people.
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And that may have been really confusing to Abram.
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Just think for a moment.
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And try to read a little existentially when you read this.
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Try to put yourself in his place.
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Because Abram, he said, you're going to be a great nation.
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And here's your wife who's barren.
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You're going to have a wonderful land.
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Here's the land.
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Also barren.
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You know, it's like, John Currid said this in his commentary.
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He said, just as Sarai was barren, Canaan was barren, in neither situation do the promises of God seem to fit the physical reality of the situation.
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You're going to have a nation from a woman who can't have kids.
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You're going to have a land that can't feed you.
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What a blessing.
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So Abram packs up and leaves.
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And from a human standpoint, that's the most natural thing in the world, right? The Nile always had food.
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Guaranteed place of food.
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We'll see later.
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Remember, later there's a famine.
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In fact, this story of Abram's life really does seem to mirror what happened when the Israelites went to Egypt.
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They went because of a famine.
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They end up getting sold into slavery.
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And then it was through plagues that God gets them out.
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We're going to see there's a lot of mirrors to that situation.
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So Abram goes to Egypt where there's certainly going to be food.
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But I want to ask this question.
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And I know that this is a dangerous question to ask.
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Perhaps some of you may be uncomfortable with me asking it.
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But I want to ask.
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Because I thought about this as I was preparing.
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And sometimes what happens when I prepare, you know, I print the text out and I write a lot on there.
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And most of the time I'm writing questions as I'm reading.
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And one of the questions that just kept coming over in my heart and over and over is what would have happened if Abram had just stayed? You know, would God have let him starve? Would the promise of Yahweh that he would be a great nation fail? Abram had the promise of protection from Yahweh Himself.
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God said, those who bless you I will bless, those who curse you I will curse.
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That's a promise of protection.
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You'd think that would be enough to keep him in place.
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But it wasn't.
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Instead, Abram did the natural thing.
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He did what most of us probably would have done.
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He went where the food was.
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And there's a, you know, the Bible doesn't necessarily condemn him for this or give him accolades for this.
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So we sort of have to kind of decide, you know, as we're reading this, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well, what comes next kind of shows us that at least it's not the best thing.
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Because what happens next is he's forced to...
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His fear is going to force him not only to flee, but his fear is going to force him to lie.
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See, the fear of starvation moves him to Egypt.
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And then the fear of man moves him to dishonesty.
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Look at verse 11.
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When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai, his wife, I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance.
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Men, turn to your wives and say that verse.
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It's Mother's Day.
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I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance.
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You didn't think I was going to bring this into Mother's Day.
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I did.
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Tonight, before you go to bed, say, baby, Genesis 12, 11.
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I know that thou art a woman beautiful in appearance.
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It'd be great if he just stopped there.
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And she turned to him and says, Thank you, Abram, for that wonderful compliment.
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But it wasn't a compliment.
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It was the prelude to a terrible idea.
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And the idea is in verse 12.
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And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife.
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And then they will kill me, but they will let you live.
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What a guilt trip.
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They're going to kill me, but they're going to let you live.
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Verse 13.
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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.
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Now, for a moment, before we get to verse 14, just for a moment, I want to sort of kind of get an idea of what may be going through Abram's mind here.
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Again, we're having to sort of use a little sanctified imagination.
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The narrative doesn't tell us everything.
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But here's what some have conjectured that maybe what Abram is doing here is Abram is trying to be somewhat wise because he knows, for one thing, Sarah must have been an absolute knockout because this happens again.
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This happens in chapter 12.
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Chapter 20 with King Abimelech, same thing.
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We're going into a land.
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Say that you're my...
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And again, she's 65, y'all.
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So she's a little older.
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And yet, she's so beautiful that he fears death for simply being connected with her.
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So he says, say that you're my sister.
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Now, some of you may come to me later and say, listen, he wasn't lying because in Genesis 20, verse 12, we find out that she is actually his half-sister.
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She is the daughter of Terah, the same as he is the son of Terah.
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Must have had a different mother because he says she's his half-sister.
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And some of you may come to me and say, you didn't know that.
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I knew that.
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I can read too.
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But here's the thing.
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People reading this for the first time don't know that because they don't get that information until chapter 20.
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And the Holy Spirit, inspiring this, inspired it in a certain way.
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He inspired not to give us that little tidbit of information until chapter 20.
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Why? I think it was to show us the deception here because we're not going to find out that there's a half-truth until later.
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And you know what a half-truth is when it's intended to deceive? It's a whole lie.
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A half-truth when it's intended to deceive is a whole lie.
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So Abram is lying here.
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And again, I'm not saying none of us have any room to talk because every one of us have lied.
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In fact, that's the one thing that is universal.
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I ain't never met a person ever, ever where I said, have you ever told a lie? Who said, no, I've been honest every day of my life forever.
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And then they just lied.
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Thank you.
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That's right.
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Because that's it.
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So I'm not condemning Abram to, you know, to being worse than me or anything like that.
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I'm just saying we can't overlook that this is obviously an intention to deceive.
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But some people say this.
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Some people say Abram was being somewhat wise here in his deception because if Abram says she is my sister, then if a man wants to marry her, if a man wants to have her, well, in this part of the world, in this time in history, a man would have to go through the next relative to have the permission to marry her.
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So Abram was setting himself up in a position where he could simply say no.
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Or he could negotiate an unreasonable dowry and say, you know, if a man comes and wants, here's Sarah, here's the deal.
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She's not Sarah yet.
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So here's Sarah, here's the deal.
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If they come and they want to marry, I'll just tell them no, or I'll ask for more than I know they can give.
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You know, you're very beautiful.
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So it's all going to be okay.
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So he's got a ruse going.
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He's trying to protect himself in a sense.
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I want to know this.
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And again, I write 1,000 questions.
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I want to know how he got everybody else in on the deal because he got a bunch of people with him.
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They all know this is his wife.
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She ain't got another tent.
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I mean, she's been in his tent this whole time.
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He's got to walk around and say, hey, Job, come here.
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Keep this between us.
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I mean, for everybody in the group, he's got to convince everybody to go with it.
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And that's fine until the next part happens.
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Verse 14, When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.
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And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house.
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Now, here's the thing.
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If this would have just been some Tom, Dick, or Harry Egyptian, pretty sure neither one of those names are Egyptian, but if this would have been just some run-of-the-mill Egyptian guy come up to ask Abram for Sarah's hand, he could have negotiated.
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But when Pharaoh wants a wife, Pharaoh gets the wife.
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Pharaoh doesn't have to negotiate.
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He is going to give a dowry, we'll see, for Sarai, but he doesn't have to ask permission because he is the Pharaoh.
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So, you just imagine Abram sitting next to the fire with Sarai, and here comes the princes of the Pharaoh.
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Abram, your sister is exceedingly beautiful, and the Pharaoh wants her.
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What's he going to do then? Oh, he can't have her, she's my wife.
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Now he's in trouble.
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So now he's found himself in a situation where he's kind of caught between a rock and a hard place.
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But, interestingly enough, it says in verse 16, And for her sake, he, that is Pharaoh, dealt well with Abram.
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And he had sheep, and oxen, and male donkeys, and male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.
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By the way, and this is, boy, this is, I gotta do this quick.
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There's an apologetic argument that this text proves that the Bible is anachronistic because the argument goes camels were not domesticated at this particular time in human history.
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And you may hear that one day if you're ever dealing with some atheists or something who are trying to prove the Bible wrong.
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They'll say, see here, it says they had camels domesticated.
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Camels were not domesticated at this time in history.
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You can answer it in two ways.
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You can say, yes, they were.
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The Bible says they were.
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And that's it.
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Or you can say later evidence has actually proven that that conjecture is actually false.
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And there were domesticated camels in the time of Abram.
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And that little piece of argumentative conjecture has been proven wrong.
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It's actually not true.
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So Abram did get donkeys.
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And he did get servants.
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And he did get camels.
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In fact, one of those servants, I imagine, doesn't say, but I imagine one of those servants was a lady by the name of Hagar.
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Because she was an Egyptian handmaiden.
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And she's gonna play an important part of the story later, isn't she? Whenever she's used.
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To again, for Abraham to exercise a moment of fear.
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But we'll talk about that later.
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So now, we have Abram here.
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He's gotten all of these things.
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He's already a man who has an entourage.
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He's already a man who has many things.
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But now he has been made very wealthy because of his beautiful wife.
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But fear has taken him from his land.
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And fear has taken away his wife.
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So he's rich and miserable.
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He's not where he's supposed to be.
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And he's not with the person he's supposed to be with.
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Oh, but he's got all the money in the world.
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Beginning at verse 17, we see the intervention of God.
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Abram has, in a sense, failed.
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But God is not going to allow his promises to go unfulfilled.
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So verse 17, God brings Abram back.
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It says, But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife.
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So Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this you have done to me? Why is it that you do not tell me that she was your wife? Now, you've got to think for a moment.
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The text, again, doesn't tell us everything.
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And one of the things it doesn't tell us is how Pharaoh found out this ruse had happened.
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But I imagine it sort of went like this.
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Pharaoh's house was hit with an affliction of plague.
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And guess who didn't get the affliction? Sarai.
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Sarai is not afflicted because it says it was on her account that the affliction came.
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So she's not included.
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So everybody else has got this plague.
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And we don't know what it is, but let's just imagine it's some type of a skin disorder where you can see it and everybody knows it.
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Everybody knows who has it except for this one lady.
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And guess what? It started when she came.
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So deductive reasoning can bring about the idea that she's got something to do with this.
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And it could be that Pharaoh went to her and said, or one of Pharaoh's princes went to her and said, What is this? Ever since you've come to my home, everybody else is sick but you.
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And perhaps at that time she told him that Abram was her husband.
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Now that could be, but it could also be that what happened to him happened to Abimelech.
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If we go to chapter 20, when it happened to Abimelech, God told Abimelech in a dream that you have taken another man's wife.
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But what's interesting about this scenario and the scenario in chapter 20, both of these ungodly men get to go and chastise the man of God.
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Look what it says.
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What is it that you have done to me? Why did you not tell me she was your wife? Why did you say she is my sister so that I took her from my wife? Now then, here is your wife.
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Take her and go.
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And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.
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Just think about it.
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Here is Abram, the man of God, the preacher of righteousness, the one who believed in Yahweh getting chastened by a pagan, idolatrous Pharaoh.
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Sometimes we do things that are not in keeping with our faith and the world will not let us forget.
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The world is watching us live out our faith.
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And when we demonstrate a sinful attitude, the world will remind us who we are.
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I thought you were a Christian.
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Have you heard that Gary? Never.
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I only say you because you've told me that before.
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We talked about being in the Navy all those years, right? People expected something out of you because you were a Christian.
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And as well they should in one respect.
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Because we are the ones who bear the name of God.
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And so the Pharaoh seeing Abram, he says, look what you have done.
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Why would you do this to me? You've got to imagine Abram's countenance fell.
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He had no excuse.
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And he becomes the first man in history, at least recorded history, to be deported.
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Read it.
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Verse 20.
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And Pharaoh gave men's orders concerning him that they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.
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You're out of here, buddy.
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Take him to the border of Egypt.
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You don't come back.
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And he never does.
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Abram never comes back to Egypt.
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Now that would be the end of the story, we think.
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Because that's the end of the chapter.
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But remember, the Bible wasn't written in chapters and verses.
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Those were added later.
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So the story continues.
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And therefore I must continue, at least for just another moment, into chapter 13.
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In chapter 13 it says this.
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So Abram went up from Egypt.
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By the way, remember we talked about, I think recently I talked about geography in the Bible and how sometimes there's a theology to geography.
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One of the things you'll always notice is when you go to Egypt, it's always going down.
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When you go to Jerusalem, it's always going up.
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And so he went up from Egypt.
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He and his wife and all that he had and lot with him into the Negev.
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And now Abram was very rich in livestock and silver and gold.
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Why? Because Pharaoh didn't take it back.
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Pharaoh let him have it.
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I mean, when you've got a guy who's creating plagues, you just want him gone.
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You're not asking for a receipt for a bill of goods.
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You just say go.
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Take it and go.
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And he journeyed on from the Negev as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning.
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This is key.
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At the beginning.
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Between Bethel and Ai.
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To the place where he had made an altar at the first.
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And there Abram again called upon the name of the Lord.
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Remember that altar? We talked about it a little while ago.
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This is the one he made when he was between Bethel and Ai.
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And the text here says this was the beginning.
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And I think that the phrase the beginning is stressed there because this is where Abram essentially started his life of faith.
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And more correctly, this is where he called upon the name of the Lord.
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This is where he started proclaiming the name of the Lord.
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And God has brought him back where he started.
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So think of it like this, if you would, just for a moment.
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Abram's fear took him away.
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God's faithfulness brought him back.
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But where did he bring him back to? He brought him back to where he started.
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And some people have looked at this, even some commentators have looked at this and said Abram didn't go anywhere.
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He didn't make any headway.
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He's right back where he began.
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But I like what Brian Borgman said about that.
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He said this circular excursion can oftentimes be an intensive time in the school of faith.
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God brings you back to the beginning.
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But you learn something on that trip.
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You learn something on that trip.
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Now as I said earlier, we don't have an altar.
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We didn't sacrifice an animal.
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We didn't begin our life of faith the way Abram did.
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Abram has a physical place to go back to.
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He has a real altar that he can go back to and he can touch and feel, he can move, he can wipe it off and he can start over.
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Where do we go when fear takes us away? Where do we go when we find ourselves in doubt and fear and away from God's will? We go back to the foot of the cross.
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That's where our life of faith began.
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That's where we became aware of God's promises.
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That's where we placed our faith in His goodness.
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That's where He saved us and that's where we need to return.
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Do you ever go back in your mind to the moment when you were saved? Some of you say, well, I don't remember the exact moment.
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You know, God took me through a time.
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But I'll tell you this.
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We know that we were dead and now we're alive.
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We were lost but now we're found.
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We were blind but now we see.
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And maybe we don't have a physical place.
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Like George Whitefield, he knew exactly where he was saved.
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He says, every time I go to Oxford, I know the place.
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He says, it may feel superstitious to some people but he said, every time I go back to Oxford, I walk back to the place where Jesus revealed Himself to me.
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And I experience it yet again.
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That reality that Christ saved me.
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Right here, right there.
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I remember it.
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I was on Broward Road in a Dodge pickup truck.
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Driving home from America Online.
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Having gone through two of the worst weeks of my life of absolute dread and doubt.
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And I called upon the name of the Lord and He saved me.
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I still drive right where I was and know right the moment that God saved me.
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I don't remember the day, the hour, the time but I know where I was when God saved me.
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Do you remember when God saved you? Do you know when your life changed? When Christ gave you new life and you found yourself at the foot of the cross? Fear and doubt are always going to come into our lives at some point.
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No matter how faithful we are we're always going to struggle at some point with that.
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But might I remind you that if you find yourself today go back to the cross.
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Go back to the beginning.
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There is no greater strength than at the feet of Jesus Christ.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You that You don't leave us in Egypt.
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Lord, for those who You have called and justified, You are sanctifying and You will glorify, Father.
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And I pray that if we have strayed from You today that we would come back to the foot of the cross.
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I pray that if we have gone away from You, Lord that we would return.
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And Lord, that we would find comfort there.
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Lord, I pray that as we surround the table now and we prepare to receive the bread and the cup that we will be reminded yet again in this place of what Christ has done for us and be encouraged that neither death nor life nor angels nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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And it's in His name we pray.
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Amen.