Genesis 12:1-8

Abraham's Call

In spite of culture, learning, advancement and science, the early inhabitants of the earth discovered that sin closes the door to Paradise, and that none of these branches of human learning and achievement can re-open it. The happiness that man lost when he rebelled against God, and the state of lostness and of estrangement that resulted was not one which man could recover by his own unaided and native efforts.

Babel was the last commentary on man's inability to reach God. Despite planning, preparing and executing the building of a tower which would reach Heaven, the result of all of man's achievements was confusion and a rabble.

Things have not changed very much. In our world, marching swiftly towards the dawn of a new millenium, even with all the insights of technology and science, the world is still confused as to how to get back to Paradise. There is still a Babel of uncertainty in our world, which is crying out for an answer and for a direction.

Genesis 12 points us in the direction of a solution. For now God intervenes, to do for man what man could not do for himself - to bring him back into a right relationship with God. That is what the story of Abraham is all about - the intervention of grace, and the coming of God into the confused and muddied waters of our broken lives. For in God's call to Abram (as he was originally known) we see God's determination to save; the same covenant promises which were given to Adam after the Fall and to Noah after the Flood are given to Abram after the Fiasco of Babel as a reminder of God's drawing near to man, despite man's drawing away from God.

God's Call

The voice of God was unmistakable to Abram - "Get out from you country and from your kindred ... to a land that I will show you". The sovereign voice of God was a voice of grace and a voice of salvation, which pointed Abram in a particular direction and which was full of the hope of better things to come.

This was the authentic voice of the Evangel, calling Abram, as God calls each one of us in the Gospel, to be His follower. Adam sinned when he stopped listening to the voice of God and when he turned his ear from the call of God. That road let to ruin and to hopelessness and to despair. But to hear God's voice and to go out after Him is to follow a path which leads to hope and to eternal life.

The world today needs to hear that call as never before. The call of separation, that says "Come out and follow me". Have you taken up your cross to be a follower and faithful disciple of the Lord? Is your back to your past, with all its sin and Godlessness and hopelessness? The only alternatives before us are either that our sin will separate us from God, or that God will separate us for ever from our sin. Abram hears in faith, and God comes in to his life. ButGod's call is also a call to consecration; to devotion and dedication to Christ. Abram went out, as Hebrews tell us, in faith, not knowing where he was going, but knowing that the inheritance which God promised him was his. As a child of faith he believed that God would meet all his needs, and that his greatest blessing was to be lived in obedience to the call of God.

What a privilege to have the work of grace operating and operative in our lives, enabling us to live for God and to die to sin!

God's Promise

The faith of Abram was rooted and grounded firmly in the promises which God made to him: "I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing". The call of Abram was of personal significance to himself, but it was to be of universal blessing also. All nations of the world would be blessed through him.

God's purposes of salvation stretched far beyond anything that Abram could see with his natural eye, to the coming of Jesus Christ into the world and the atoning, saving work which He would perform. Christ was Abram's seed (cf. Matthew 1:1), whose day Abram saw afar off. The promise to Abram was not simply that Abram would be made great, but that Christ would be made great through him, and that the nations of the world would be blessed in Christ's salvation.

If the story of Abram teaches us anything, it teaches that what we see with our eyes is not all there is to see. God is working his purposes through the experiences of the world, so that the earth and all the nations will know of his salvation (Psalm 67).

Abram's Obedience

Abram obeyed God (Hebrews 11:8ff), believing the promises and resting on the revelation of God to him. He did not know HOW God would do what he said, but he knew THAT he would do what he said. And all his trust, hope and confidence were in the God of the covenant and in the covenant of the God of the Bible.

May we follow in the footsteps of Abram our father, and respond in service and in consecration to the Christ of God, whose voice in the Gospel still calls us to follow him!

Genesis 12:10-20

Abram In Egypt

I am no musician, but I know that sometimes the effects of a tune are heightened by the introduction of notes which sound discordant and out of place to an untrained ear. The effect of a tune and the power of the tune are related to the way notes are made to work together, one bringing out the effect of the other and each finding its own place in the composition.

Similarly, in the stories of the Bible we sometimes hear notes which strike a strange note indeed. One such is before us today. Abram, we are told, went to Egypt because of the severity of the famine. With him was his young, attractive wife Sarai. Afraid that the Egyptians, on seeing her beauty, would want to have her, Abram persuaded her to pretend she was his sister. It has always struck me that he might have had more chance to protect her if he had simply told the truth! But he did not.

Pharaoh treated them well because of Sarai; but the Lord sent a plague on the household of Pharaoh, for which Abram was directly responsible. The result was that they were sent away.

Right Motives - Wrong Behaviour

It is possible, Bishop Ryle says, for a man's heart to be quite right, and his head quite wrong. There is no doubt that Abram had the best of motives when he made up the story about Sarai being his sister; he had a care for her honour and a zeal for her safety. He had a duty towards her, and his actions were motivated by love and by a genuine concern.

Yet his head was all wrong. Like Peter in the upper room, when he said "You will not wash my feet!", or like the two disciples going to Emmaus, whose hearts burned within them while their understanding was closed to the teaching of Scripture, Abram puts in motion a chain of events that grow out of his sinful action, even though his motives are good. Ends do not always justify means, and the safety and security he sought for Sarai were compromised from the outset, from the moment he decided that deception was a legitimate line of defence.

How careful we ought to be to realise that our behaviour can be wrong even when our motives are right! God wishes us to be sincere, and honest, and genuine in all that we do, so that both in heart and in life we will honour him and serve him faithfully and cheerfully. Our sinful actions are like stones thrown into a brook, that cause ripples to splash ever outward, affecting others and causing them harm.

Do our motives match our behaviour? Do our hearts and our heads agree on what is right and good? Our great example here is not even the greatest of the patriarchs, but the Lord Jesus Christ, who did no sin, neither was there guile in his mouth (1 Peter 2:21). How dangerous to follow the example even of the best of men, who are only men at best. There is but one example worth following - that of the Lord Jesus, in all the glory and beauty of his holy life and character.

God's Zeal For Truth

Perhaps Abram thought that God was bound to help him - after all, the great promises of the covenant were still ringing in his ears. Did God not promise to bless him? To make him a great nation? To bless the families of the earth through him?

Maybe Abram thought God needed a hand. Lack of food drove him to Egypt, along with his wife. He needed a wife if he was to have a family, and if the blessing of God's covenant was to be realised. I suspect that part of the reason for the deception was the thought on Abram's part that God needed this action in order to fulfill his covenant promise.

It is always part of our madness and folly to think that God needs us, when in actual fact we are the ones who stand in need of him. There is no greater folly than to imagine that the holy Lord God, sovereign in the affairs of men and nations, stands in need of the help and the work of modern man. He is no man's debtor. Grace achieves its goals without us, and in spite of us, although often through us.

Far from being blessed by Abram, there was a family in Egypt - the highest family in the land - that enjoyed no blessing, but only the pain of sickness and plague because of Sarai, Abram's wife. God sent the plague, because God loves the truth. Listen to Psalm 45:7, in its picture of Christ's throne: "You love righteousness, and hate wickedness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness more than Your companions". God has a passion for glory and for truth. Sin breeds deception, which brings illness and sickness into Pharaoh's household. Let us make sure that we put on the new man, created according to God in righteousness and true holiness... putting away lying, and speaking the truth to our neighbour, for we are members of one another (Ephesians 4:24-25).

The Price of Deception

What a costly exercise it was for Abram to deceive. Egypt can hold him no longer. Pharaoh sends him away, and the very thing Abram thought he would have - peace and security and safety, is now lost on him as he pays the price for his sin.

Let us never imagine that there is ground to be gained or blessing to be had by walking the path of unrighteousness, or sin, or deceit. There can only be heartache and misery for us down that road, and the Lord will not overlook sin in any shape or form, no matter in whose life it may be found.

Yet that is not the whole story. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. We shall see (DV), that having returned from Egypt, the covenant is renewed, and Abram is once again promised the possession of the land of Canaan. With God, salvation is guaranteed. Our unfaithfulness does not threaten his. With us there is sin, and failure, and let down and disappointment. But he is a God of hope, and of salvation and of blessing. He delights to give to us, even though we often rob from him. May we learn to wear truth on our loins like a girdle, and learn to love, "not .. in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth; And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him...." (1 John 3:18-19).

© Iain D. Campbell 2002