Genesis 12. We're going to focus on the second half of it, but just for continuity's sake, I'm going to read the entire chapter so you get a feel for the flow of the story. And before I do that, I'm going to repeat the same quote I read earlier for those of you who are here this morning. Sort of the theme of what I believe is the theme of life of Abraham. How do you feel when there seems to be a huge difference on one hand between what God has promised and on the other hand what you see now? That's what Abraham is forced to deal with. The difference between what God has said and the difference between what he sees before him. What do you do when the vision you had of the way your life was supposed to work out seems to be crumbling into dust? In the pages of Genesis we find recorded for us the faith, and the failures of a man like us who lived in the gap between promise and reality. What does it mean to live by faith? Well, Abraham is our example. Tonight, though, we see an episode in which Abraham shows us faith by one of its opposites, we could say. Instead of faith tonight, he's going to fail. There'll be a test. And he's going to fail, and really it's going to be due to his anxious fear, it would seem. In the passage we're studying, Abraham is not the example, triumphant example of faith that we wish to find. And in some ways we could say, according to the New Testament language, that he's walking by the flesh here and not walking by the spirit. But this is just as important for us to see. Ed and Emily Hartman have been teaching us a marriage conference over at first prayers, and one thing they say a lot in the marriage conference is, no one is just one thing. In other words, you need to expect to see inconsistencies in your spouse, you need to kind of anticipate that in marriage. Again, it's a marriage seminar. But the same is true as we look at the people of the Bible, that the Bible is honest and open about failures of the saints, and that should do a lot of things. One, it should make us look at our own blind spots and also it should encourage us. Abraham and Sarah were people just like us and they had good days and they had bad. The way I thought about it, have thought about it, is sort of like negative space. Some of you are artists and you know how important when you're making a composition that negative space is. Not just the object and what you do with the object, but the space around it and kind of leaving space open. so that your eye kind of falls on the object that you're focusing on. This quote from an artist, negative space is most often neutral or contrasting, focusing our attention on the main subject and providing a place for the viewer's eyes to rest. Well, in some ways, what we have in the second part of Genesis 12 is the negative space of Abraham's life. It kind of brings into focus his faith because it shows us, again, its opposite. It shows us his, at times, anxiety that lead him to the decisions he makes here. So, look with me in Genesis chapter 12, and we'll read all the way to the end in verse 20. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land I will show you and I'll make of you a great nation and I'll bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I'll bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran and Abram took Sarah his wife and Lot his brother's son and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people they had acquired in Haran. And they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the yoke at Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring I will give this land. So he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. 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. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negev. Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai, his wife, I know that you are a woman, beautiful in appearance. And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife. Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake. When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. And for her sake, he dealt well with Abram. And he had sheep, oxen, male, donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels. But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarah, Abram's wife. So Pharaoh called Abram and said, what is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say she is my sister so that I took her for my wife? Now then here's your wife, take her and go. And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had. The grass withers and the flower fades. The word of God will remain forever. Let me pray for us again. Father, you are a God who sees us. You know our joys and sorrows, even though no one else can truly understand them like you do. You know our fears and weaknesses, and you know even our deepest desires, some of which we are even unaware of ourselves, possibly. We pray that you'd instruct us from this passage this evening. Give us a renewed sense that you are intimately involved in all that takes place in this world. and you are concerned about our individual lives, the decisions we make, the trials we're in. Lord, show us the ways that we try to take shortcuts, how we take good hopes and desires and pursue them with sinful and selfish means. May we turn from our feeble means of rescuing ourselves and survival and turn to you who sees us and look after us and who care for the brokenhearted and the downtrodden. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. My outline for tonight is going to be these four bullet points. We'll go through them quickly. One is the promise. I'll talk to you about the promise again. It drives everything. Second one is the test. Clearly, we come to this part of Abram's life very quickly, we might add, of testing, being in a circumstance that is difficult and him having to make tough decisions. Thirdly, we're going to see him fail. And fourthly, we're going to see God rescue. So the promise, the test, failure, and rescue. Now, I know as I speak to many of you who are familiar with life in agriculture that you would understand what took place in the 1930s, what's called the Great Dust Bowl. It was preceded by the great plow up of the 1920s. This is sort of in the Oklahoma region of the world. And all this excitement as people moved to that part of the country to plant. It was fertile land. There was all this hope of what it might produce. And apparently, as they were in their excitement, they sort of ignored common practices for letting the land rest, so to speak, and they all just sort of dug in. And what happened was turned out to be a very great disaster. The drought that followed the 1920s, leading us into the 1930s, brought what we call the Dust Bowl and what people have termed the Black Blizzards, where wind would sweep over Oklahoma and stir up these black lizards that would cause you not to be able to see your hand in front of your face. It could be so dark because of all the dust in your face. And it was dangerous, hazardous. type of pneumonia you could gain from this. And people who had moved out here for this promise of a new life, promise of riches, so to speak, in farming terms, ended up having to leave everything. Thousands of people who migrated there had to leave houses, homes, farms, because it just wasn't sustainable. As we think about those things, That is the picture that Genesis 12 paints for us of this call and promise to Abram. He does what God asks him, and just let verse 10 settle in for a moment. Now, there was famine in the land. There was famine. Those simple words, there was famine. Remember the promise God said at the beginning of chapter 12, and I'll make of you a great nation. And I'll bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. And I'll bless those who bless you. And him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." God made big promises to Abraham. And because of Abraham's faith, he obeyed. He he did what God asked of him because he trusted him at his word When I'm explaining this to students and miss Thompson took me over to the classroom this morning and showed me her her Diagram that I'm going to use by the way with my students to help them understand covenant theology but when I explained to the students the the implications of Genesis 12 and I talked to them about a covenant often compare it to a covenant of marriage and I talked to them about the the marriage ceremony because they don't have any ideas of what a covenant is other than we actually use those terms when we talk about a marriage ceremony, a covenant of marriage. And we could say that Genesis 12 is the statement of intent. Those of you who have been married or recently been in a wedding, the traditional outline of a wedding is you have the statement of intent where I ask the groom, Will you have this woman to be your wedded wife, to live with her after God's commandments in a holy state of marriage, will you?" And of course he responds, I will. And then I ask that rhetorical question, who gives this woman to be married to this man? And her husband, I mean her father hands her off to the groom. And then we continue the ceremony, but it's symbolic of all, you know, things relating to courtship and dating. I intend to be this for you. And then we, you know, often process up a stage and we ask more promises, what we call the vows. And then we give rings, the signs of the covenant. Well, Genesis 12, if we can put it this way, is the statement of intent. God is telling Abram, I'm committed to you in a covenant. Now, he doesn't use the word covenant yet, but he will. And then when we get to Genesis 15, we could say that's the vows. That's actually, some of you are familiar with the scriptures know that There's a covenant ceremony that takes place there. And then we get to Genesis 17, and God commands Abram to circumcise his children, and we call that the covenant signs, just like the wedding rings in a ceremony. Covenant signs, outward signs of an inward reality. Well, this is where we find Abram in this process. He has heard God's statement of intent, and he's trusting Him at His word, and he's moving forward. He's believing the promise, just as you and I are to believe God at His word and take Him at his promise. But here in Genesis 12, we quickly run into this dilemma that Abram's done what God's asked him to, and yet there's famine. In the very land where he was to be blessed, he's experiencing famine. Now, one of the ways that that struck me as I was trying to teach Genesis 12 And as I've been meditating on this, is that how often when I get in a circumstance and things go south, my first instinct is to say, I'm in the wrong place. You know, God doesn't want me here. The suffering's too bad. I'm getting a lot of pushback. People aren't responding to me the way I wanted to. We're encountering a lot of difficulty with a life decision. with a family problem, with something going on in our workplace. Isn't that our first instinct? I must have done something wrong. I took a wrong turn. I should have gone left instead of going right, or I should have gone right instead of going left. Well, here we have someone who divinely, by God's supernatural intervention, comes to him and speaks clearly and says, you are to go to this place and be there, and there you will experience blessing. This is what my students long for with all the decisions they're making in their life, for God to say, marry this person. You know, take this job. I'm the most indecisive person I know, and I would long for God just to make those kind of decisions for me, so I don't have to make them. And yet, what does Abraham encounter? He encounters trial. He encounters famine. He gets to the place God told him to be, and there is famine waiting for him. This is God's design. Like, what are we to understand a faith from Abraham? It's that sometimes following Christ will feel like famine. Sometimes God tests us with famine in the very places He commanded us to go. In the very places where we're exactly in the place where God would have us be, yet those are the places where we experience challenge, where we feel weak. Before we talk about Abram's failure, I want us to give him some slack, as it were, as we think about his situation. He's in a new place, he's got a family, he's got these possessions, people under his care, animals, and yet this famine is striking, and guess where all the pressure to provide is landing? It's right on him, and he panics. And it says in verse 10, so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land." See, it says famine twice. There's famine in the land, and then it says the famine was actually severe. And it says, when he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarah, his wife, I know that you're a woman beautiful in appearance. And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife. Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Now, this is the part of the story that's Abraham's failure. This is where Abram goes down to Egypt and anyone reading Genesis needs to sort of have this in the back of their mind that whenever Egypt is mentioned, it usually has negative connotations. Because the first hearers of Genesis, when Moses told them the story of Genesis, would have been people who had just left Egypt and who were very tempted to go back. So when they hear the story of Abram, the true story of Abram, and they hear that he's thinking about going down to Egypt to solve this dilemma, to find some food, they would have known, oh, no, no, that's a bad idea. That's not good. We have a friend, y'all know how much these rivalries between the state schools play a part in the South, and we have a friend, a sweet girl, who was at the time about second grade, and she was at our house with my daughter Caroline, and we said something about Starkville, and Grace said, oh Starkville, mean people live there. And she was serious because she was from an Ole Miss family and her brothers had told her Starkville was a mean, bad place. Well, that's the kind of idea you would have gotten from being an Israelite and talking about Egypt. And it was because it was true, because their temptation was to go back to where they thought times were good, even though they were misremembering, and to find provision there instead of trusting God. So this is what Abram's doing. And it says that when he gets there, it says when he's about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarah, his wife, it's like he's moving along, he's going to Egypt and something registers where he recognizes, wait, I'm going to be in danger here too, because my wife is beautiful. And when the king of Egypt sees her, he's going to take her for his own. That's what Abram's starting to be afraid of. Do you see the pattern? He's living in this fear, this anxiety. We need to celebrate his faith. Earlier in the chapter, he went as God told him, he obeyed God's command, and yet here his faith is faltering, and he's living in this anxiety that God will not take care of them, and that he better come up with this plan on his own. And so, it says, It says in verse 12, And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, This is his wife, and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake. When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw the woman was very beautiful. And when the princess of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. And for her sake he dealt well with Abram. He had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels. the story is working out the way Abram meant for it to work out. Like they're surviving. He's alive. Sarah's alive. I don't want to be too hard on Abram in these circumstances. I mean, he's very realistic about what could happen. And yet we also have to be realistic about his sin here. Like he is married to Sarah and he lies about that. And as it were, he pushes Sarah in such a way that he has her step out. And she's the one having to take all the risks. And she's the one that's been left out in the cold. And she's the one that's about to be married and brought into Pharaoh's harem, as it were. And this is all Abram's doing. Now, he's alive. He's made it to Egypt. It says that Pharaoh gave him possessions. And yet, you've got to imagine that he's not happy. You've got to imagine that he knows in his heart of hearts that something's wrong here. And yet this is the Abram of faith. I mean, this is the Abram that we're told throughout the rest of scriptures how his faith didn't waver. What's going on here? How do we reconcile what the scriptures say about Abram? And yet here we have him clearly failing. This is a great picture of how we at times will fail. You and I, and I know there are many of you who know and examine your hearts and you see little and big ways in which you've done this. Ways you may even have to go to your wife or go to your husband and say, you know what, I really let you down and God has convicted me of that and I need your forgiveness. Or to your kids, to call them on the phone and say, you know what, the Lord just brought to mind a conversation we had a long time ago or I lost my temper and I handled that wrong. We need to be Christians that are big hearted enough to recognize when we fail, when we mess up. In fact, next chapter, we're not going to read it tonight, but next chapter, Abram's got to kind of retrace his steps when they go back into the promised land and call upon the name of the Lord. And the idea seems to be that Abram is trying to return to where he got off course and go back to where he originally called on the name of the Lord and say, Lord, please, you know, restore me. Remind me of your promises and let me try this again. That's not something that might happen in your Christian life. That's something that will happen in your Christian life. We need to be people that aren't afraid to see our sin, that aren't afraid to mess up, because our faith isn't just about our faith. Our faith is in God and His promises. And so we have the promises, we have the test, we have the failure, but what I want to emphasize in this story is God's rescue, because that's where the story goes. It says in verse 17, But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarah, Abram's wife. So Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say she is my sister so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here's your wife. Take her and go. And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had. The good news of this story is that it's one of God's amazing rescue, that God intervenes in such a way that it says the Lord afflicted Pharaoh in his house with great plagues because of Sarah, Abram's wife. And we don't know how Pharaoh connected the dots. It doesn't say that he had a dream or anything. It just says it was clear enough that when he was about to marry Sarah that all these things started happening in such a dramatic fashion that he got hold of Abram and said, What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say she is my sister so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here's your wife. Take her and go. What's God doing? He's rescuing. He's being the great rescuer, which he is of the Bible, which he is of our lives. He is stepping in the gap. And he's saying even though Abram's faith failed, that he wasn't restricted by Abram's faith, that he acted around Abram's faith and intervened. and came in and rescued Sarah. For the women in the room, picture this. You've been left out in the cold with your husband. You've been left to be taken in by this Pharaoh. And yet Sarah would have recognized God's love for her that he swoops in and that he protects her, and that he stands up for her, and that he sends this plague against what might have been the most powerful man in the known realm at that time. This is Pharaoh. This is the only land with provision at the time. This is the person who you couldn't cross. Abram, when he walks into this country, knows that all he has to do is say the word and he would be killed. And it's this Pharaoh that God stands up to, and God shows just a little glimpse of his power. Now, think for a moment how this played into Abram's and Sarah's life as the story progresses. If you skip two chapters, you'll hear that Lot, Abram's nephew, is taken away, that he sort of gets caught up in this war battle between kings, and there are four kings over here and five kings over there, and it just sounds like World War I. And yet, what happens, Abram says, I'm going after him. Abram's saying, lots been taken, saddle up your horses, we're going to rescue them. And you've got to believe that Abram learned from this episode that those who bless me will be blessed, but those who curse me will be cursed. That God is for me and that I can stand in the gap, that I can stick out my neck, that I can take risk and I can take chances. And he won't do it perfectly. In fact, this very story is going to almost duplicate itself in a few chapters. And so Abram's still going to be a limited man, a finite man who makes mistakes, who at times falters. But recognize that Abram would have been built up in the faith, he and Sarah, by seeing God's rescue of them here, by seeing God take on Pharaoh, by seeing God send them back to the Promised Land with more than they could ever imagine. God is teaching them this, and this is what we're to learn as well, that He will provide, that He will rescue. And the reason that He will provide and rescue, even when we're faithless, is because our faith doesn't rest on our perfection. Our faith always rests on God and His provision. And so fast forward all the way to the New Testament, you have this episode where Jesus, in Luke chapter 4, He's just been baptized by the Spirit. He's brought into the wilderness. And guess what? By the Spirit's leading, He fasts for 40 days. Remember verse 10 in chapter 12 of Genesis? There was famine. Which is if Jesus is now going through the test as an individual that Abram went through in Genesis 12. And Jesus is in this famine, He's experiencing hunger pains, and it says that the devil came to test Him, and it says in verse 5, one of the three tests, the devil took Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to Him, To You I will give all this authority in their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If then You will worship me, it will all be Yours. And Jesus answered him, It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, In Him only you should serve. In Him only you shall serve. See, Jesus is passing the test that Abram failed. He's passing the test that you and I fail. And I love it how Will put it this morning when he's talking about our union with Christ, that what is true of Christ is true of us as Christians, and that we belong to Christ. And so the test that Jesus passes, we, in a sense, pass. We're credited with that righteousness. We're credited with that success. In the same way that Abram would need to put his faith in God's provision for his righteousness, for his care, And it's the same way we have to depend on Christ to provide for us, to rescue us, to be our rescuer, to be our redeemer, to be the husband that doesn't throw us under the bus, but is there for us as His bride, His church, that stands strong in famine, that stands strong as He faces Pharaoh, as He faces the devil saying, all this could be yours. Jesus says, no. He passes the test. He says, the Lord, you shall worship the Lord, your God. This is the great rescue that Jesus gives us, and this is why we can have this faith. This faith that even in the view of failure, we can survive. And we can remember, even in the midst of the consequences of those failures, that I'm right where I should be, and that God's hand is holding my hand by His Spirit to lead me to what's ahead. May God by His Spirit do that in our lives as we live by faith even in the midst of failure. Father, I thank you for these people. I thank you for their friendship, their brotherhood, their sisterhood in Christ. I pray that you would give us a clear sense of what you're calling us to, and that even those times and places where we failed, we know your mercy, your grace, that we need a Savior, and that is why Christ came to this earth because we couldn't do it on our own, and I pray that you give us that courage to now move forward, and may we trust that you will rescue us on that day. We pray in Christ's name, amen. Okay, we're gonna sing one last hymn, hymn number 305, Arise My Soul, Arise. Please stand as we sing, Arise My Soul, Arise. Rise my soul, arise. Shake off your guilty fears.