“10 Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. 11 As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. 12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.” 14 When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that she was a very beautiful woman. 15 And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. 16 He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants, and camels.
17 But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. 18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” 20 Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.
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It’s easy to fall off mountaintops. If you’ve been walking with God for a while now, you know that. You have a notable experience of God’s grace that leaves you rejoicing and three days later you sin as if you’ve never met God at all. I know what that’s like. I imagine that you know what that’s like. Abram knew what that was like. Today we see Abram, who put remarkable trust in the promises, lose sight of the promises. We see this man who obeyed lose sight of obedience. We see this man of God lose sight of God. Every follower of God knows what that’s like.
While Abram lost sight of the promises, God didn’t. While Abram lost sight of God, God didn’t lose sight of Abram. God was more committed to Abram than Abram was committed to God. God was more committed to the promises than Abram was committed to the promises. That was Abram’s only hope. The same is true for all the children of Abram. God is more committed to His promises than we are and that is our only hope. That is the claim of this sermon: God is more committed to His promises than we are and that is our only hope.
We will study this fall from the mountaintop in two points. First: Abram’s plan. Second: the Lord’s response. We see Abram’s plan in verses 10-16. We see the Lord’s response in verses 17-20.
First: Abram’s plan. Abram had left everything comfortable for the sake of a promise. He had left everything comfortable for the sake of promises that required miracles. As we saw last week, Abram was no stranger to faith in the face of complications.
At the beginning of this passage, he encountered another complication. This one called the promises into question. As we will see over the course of Abram’s life, the promises were often called into question. As you will see, and have seen, over the course of your life, the promises of God are often into question. The life of faith is not for the faint of heart. It is for people with hearts that belong to God and are born of God.
We see the complication in verse 1, “Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.” Abram had left everything for the sake of promises and now it seemed that the promises didn’t seem to live up to expectations. The Promised Land seemed disappointing.
Perhaps you’ve experienced something like this. You so excited to move into a new house. It seems to be everything you’ve ever hoped for. It’s not. You find yourself replacing appliance after appliance. The room that seemed cozy now seems cramped. The aspects that seemed charming now seem silly. What seemed like a bargain now seems like a costly misstep. Now, I’ve never had that experience. I’ve had great houses, but I have feared that experience. I know what buyer’s remorse is like in smaller purchases and so I fear it with larger purchases.
Abram was a bit disappointed in the Promised Land. He had given up everything in exchange for promises and now the promise seemed lacking
He decided to go to Egypt. This will not be the last time we will see the patriarchs leave the Promised Land. Each of them left due to famine. Egypt was a logical choice because of its extensive irrigation and the dependable Nile river.
The author didn’t include the fact that Abram decided to go to Egypt for merely agricultural reasons though. He included the name of the land as a foreshadowing. The Exodus is never far from the author’s mind in the book of Genesis. The Scriptures do, after all, truly begin with Moses. This account in Genesis 12 looks back on Abram’s trip to Egypt similar to the way a biography of Nixon might tell about him staying in the Watergate hotel years before the scandal. It looks back and so foreshadows what’s ahead.
Abram went down to Egypt. Living in Egypt would have been even more uncomfortable for him than life in the Promised Land. Unlike the people of Ur, Haran, and Canaan, the Egyptians didn’t speak a Semitic language. If Abram was a stranger in Canaan, he was doubly a stranger in Egypt.
He was also doubly vulnerable. Foreigners and immigrants have always been vulnerable to exploitation. We rightly applaud those who try to help these people and families integrate into their new culture, but few of us see the mistreatment that does occur. Israel did. They lived it. This is why after the Exodus God told them, “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.”
Abram was quite vulnerable. He had no connections. He had no support system. This is psychological backdrop for Abram’s decision regarding Sarai. You know what it is like to make decisions out of fear and anxieties. So did Abram. You’ve had them blow up in your face. So did Abram.
Abram feared that the Egyptians would kill him to marry Sarai. That’s not far-fetched. Consider what happened to the immigrant Uriah when the king wanted his wife Bathsheba. Foreigners had to be careful.
Abram felt that he needed to be careful because his wife was so beautiful. It’s clear that this wasn’t simply a husband’s pride. Not only did men want her, the Pharaoh wanted her in his royal harem.
Some people scoff at this because Sarai was 65 years old by this point. Now, what I’m about to explain about involves the age, appearance, and desirability of women. In other words, if anyone is looking to be offended, I’m dancing through landmines right now.
As all you mothers know, it is true that having children does something to your body. Sarai hadn’t had any children by this point and Calvin thought that helped her retain her youthful figure. That is why some Hollywood stars decide not to have children.
That is one interpretation. I think, however, what is more pronounced here is the fact that different cultures have different standards of beauty. We live in a noticeably shallow culture. Our standards of beauty are superficial and bizarre. As Genesis scholar John Walton noted in his treatment of this incident, “We need not think that every culture is so superficial in their assessments of beauty as ours is.” Gordon Wenham agrees saying that for the culture of that time and place, “well-endowed matronly figures, not slim youthful ones, tend to represent their ideal of womanhood.”
Sixty-five-year-old women were often attractive candidates for marriage especially if they were wealthy. Abram and Sarai were wealthy. There was no way to hide that fact. Given that Abram had no connections, it wasn’t too hard to imagine a man killing him and taking Sarai and their wealth.
That might sound strange to you, but reading the Bible requires you to recognize that these were people quite different from us. Of course, as you know it also requires you to recognize that they were exactly like us. In other words, it requires you to recognize that everyone is the same and everyone is different, but you already knew that.
Abram was afraid that the Egyptians would kill him to take his wife. As he put it in verse 11, ‘I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, “This is his wife.” Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.’
Now Abram’s plan is rather difficult to understand. That shouldn’t surprise us. Plans borne out of fear are often difficult to understand. They are filled with underreactions, overreactions, and unnecessary reactions. Fifty years from now any number of plans made in the midst of this pandemic will seem confusing to people who didn’t live through it. Some of the decisions will seem insufficient and others unnecessary by new scientific standards.
The fact that Abram’s plan seems a bit strange shouldn’t surprise us. Some try to explain it by saying that Abram was attempting to play the role of the big brother who was responsible for arranging potential marriages for Sarai. She would remain with him while he played suitors off one another until it was time to leave Egypt. By this line of thinking, Abram was taken aback when Pharaoh simply took his wife into his harem. Most everyone agrees that Abram never imagined that this plan would end in Sarai with another man.
There are other explanations as well, and while we can make our guesses about Abram’s intentions, I think that John Walton is right to say that, “The unfortunate fact is that at the present time we remain ignorant of what sociological realities commend this course of action to Abram. The original Israelite audience undoubtedly knew what advantage was to be gained from the ruse, so there was no need for the author to explain it.”
Regardless of Abram’s logic, what’s clear is that none of this plan came out of faith. Faith would have stayed in the Promised Land. Abram’s lack of faith put his wife in an awful situation. We will see that it put the Pharaoh in an embarrassing situation. Abram’s lack of faith also put Abram himself in an impossible situation.
That is the way it goes with disobedience. We disobey because we, like Abram, distrust God’s promises. We don’t think God can be trusted to take care of us, and, therefore, we don’t think we can afford to obey God. We remove God from the picture and are left with only sin. This line of thinking is part of the root system of sin.
Children, right now we’ve got four flowers in different bowls in our kitchen. Each of these bowls contains water with different a food coloring. Those different colors are making their way up those stems and into the petals of those flowers. They are changing color.
That’s how it works with faith in God’s promises and unbelieve in God’s promises. If you have faith in the promises of God, like Abram did last week, that will color you. It will color your decisions and actions. We saw that with Abram last week when he trusted God and obeyed.
If you don’t have faith in the promises of God, that will work its way into all of you and color you too. It will color your decisions and actions in the way that it colored Abram’s decisions and actions in Egypt. Abram stopped trusting the promises and that colored everything.
To avoid that, you must keep the promises in front of you. Abram went wrong, said Luther because he, “let the word get out of his sight.”
By leaving Ur and Haran, Abram showed that he trusted the promises more than he trusted what he could see around him. By going to Egypt, Abram showed that he feared what was around him more than he trusted the promises.
Abram did both. People are mixed bags. They are truly kind and then truly cruel. They say something quite foolish after saying something remarkably insightful afterward. Don’t be surprised that this man who just ascended the mountaintop fell from the mountaintop. You’ve done it yourself.
You avoid doing it by trusting the promises of God in front of you. At the beginning of last week’s passage, there was one safe course of action available to Abram—leave for the Promised Land. At the beginning of this week’s passage, there is one safe course of action available to Abram—continue to trust God’s promises. Abram didn’t. He doubted that God would be true to his word and so he left for Egypt. Once Abram stopped trusting the promises of God, he was left with no good options. We will see what that looked like for Abram. When you stop trusting God, you are left with no good options. You know what that has looked like for you.
You avoid that trouble by continuing to trust the promises. Not surprisingly, you never stop trusting the promises if you continue to trust them. To do so, you need to keep God’s word in front of you. Never let it out of your sight to borrow a phrase from Luther.
This will require effort on your part. You have to work to keep the word before you. Remember that Abram was no slouch. You can’t slouch your way through faith and avoid the sorts of pitfall we see in this passage. Keeping the word of God before you is, most likely, the hardest task you will ever undertake.
You can’t rest on past mountaintop experiences. Abram couldn’t. You can’t. You need to trust the promises every day. “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” That is how you continue to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. If you don’t have any plan or pattern of doing that, ask yourself what’s to keep you from doing what Abram did here?
We’ve seen Abram’s plan in all its folly. Now we turn our attention to the Lord’s response. That is our second point: the Lord’s response.
Pharaoh had taken Sarai into his harem. The Lord was not pleased with any of this. Verse 17, “the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai.” Ancients understood something of the interplay between morality and mortality. When confronted by crises, they were much quicker to search their hearts than we are as we saw in our study of 1 Kings 8.
The narrator doesn’t tell us exactly how Pharaoh located Abram as the source of this plague. That wasn’t of interest to the author of Genesis. What was of interest was Pharaoh’s response. “Pharaoh summoned Abram,” as verse 18 put it.
This language of “summoning” makes clear that from a merely human perspective, Abram was in Pharaoh’s hands. Pharaoh was very much in charge. Abram had every reason to think that he was about to executed. He had put the Pharaoh in a horribly delicate situation. Adultery, or even the hint of adultery, was seen as a particularly grievous sin. This is why Pharaoh asked, “What have you done to me?”
Pharaoh’s rapid-fire questions in verses 18-19 receive no answer from Abram because no answer was possible. What would you say if you were Abram, ‘What have you done to me? Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, “She is my sister,” so that I took her to be my wife?’? You would have nothing to say because you put yourself in an impossible situation. Your plan was filled with lies. Pharaoh was shocked by Abram’s behavior. The people of God don’t always give the best witness to the world.
Pharaoh was exasperated. As Gordon Wenham points out, his order to Abram is barked out with four Hebrew words, “Here… wife… take…. go.” Pharaoh expelled Abram from Egypt.
Pharaoh was, by any standard of the day, remarkable lenient upon Abram. This was all God’s doing. As Claus Westermann put it, “The reason Abram emerges unpunished is solely that the Pharaoh has experienced the power behind him.” Pharaoh had learned the reality of Genesis 12:3, Abram, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.” Taking a man’s wife certainly qualifies for that cursing category. It doesn’t matter that Pharaoh didn’t know Sarai was Abram’s wife. Pharaoh bumped up against God’s promises and it was Pharaoh who fell down.
This is all about the promises. Abram did not believe God would keep the promises and so he left the Promised Land. God did keep the promises and, “far beyond any reasonable expectation,” as Walter Bruggeman pointed out.
God’s promise keeping is so for beyond any expectation that we tend to miss it in this account. We read this passage and find ourselves frustrated. Abram did wrong, and yet he was blessed while Pharaoh was cursed. We find ourselves puzzled.
We find ourselves puzzled by grace. Grace is the x-factor in this passage. God had chosen Abram. He told Abram that he would be blessed. He told Abram that anyone who did anything against Abram would face God Himself and that is precisely what we see here. Grace is always the x-factor when it comes to God’s people.
Now if you are still puzzled by God’s behavior with Abram in this passage, if you still want Abram to suffer justice for what he did, ask yourself if that’s what you want for yourself. The measure that you use will be used on you.
Anyone who knows your story could be just as irked by God’s blessing upon you as you are be irked by God’s blessing upon Abram. “Neither Pharaoh nor Abraham can finally control the power of blessing,” as Bruggeman explained. “God presides over that in His own free ways.” That has always been true.
In parable after parable, Jesus made that clear. God chooses to keep His promises to bless not because we are worthy, but because He has made promises to bless. In other words, it really is all grace.
God chose to keep His promises to Abram because through Abram the whole world would be blessed. Throughout this story, we’ve seen that Abram wasn’t mindful of these promises in the least. His lack of mindfulness didn’t make the promises go away any more than your lack of mindfulness about whatever you’ve been sitting on during this sermon made that seat go away. The fact that Abram wasn’t mindful of the promises doesn’t mean they ceased to exist. God was mindful of them. He remembered that He planned on blessing world through Abram. He remembered that when Abram left the Promised Land for Egypt even though Abram didn’t. He remembered that when Abram hatched that scheme about Sarai even though Abram didn’t.
God had Jesus in mind even though Abram didn’t. As we’ve seen, the sevenfold promise to Abram that caused Abram to leave Ur was really about Jesus. He is the only way those promises could be fulfilled. Jesus is the way the whole world would be and has been blessed through Abram. Now Abram’s sin in this passage didn’t derail that plan any more than your sin derailed what Jesus did in the cross. In other words, it is while you and Abram were still sinners that Christ died for you.
God doesn’t find us at the mountaintops. He finds us where we fall. “Well I’ve realized that falling down ain’t graceful,” as the song goes, “but I thank the Lord that falling’s full of grace. Cause sometimes I take my eyes of Jesus and, oh, that’s all it takes.” That’s all it took for Abram. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Amen.