Episode Transcript
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Genesis twelve, verse ten through thirteen
two. Now there was a famine in
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the land, so Abram went down
to Egypt to sojourn there, for the
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famine was severe in the land.
When he was about to enter Egypt,
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he said to Sarah, his wife, I know that you are a beaut
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a woman, beautiful in appearance,
and when the Egyptians see you, they
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will say this is his wife.
Then they will kill me, but they
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will let you live. Say You
are my sister, that it may go
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well with me because of you,
and that my life may be spared for
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your sake. When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptian saw that the woman was
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very beautiful and when the princes of
Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to
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Pharaoh and the woman was taken into
Pharaoh's house. And for her sake,
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he dealt well with Abram and he
had sheep, oxen, male donkeys,
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male servants, female servants, female
donkeys and camels. But the Lord Afflicted
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Pharaoh and his house with great plagues
because of Sarah, Abram's wife. So
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Pharaoh called Abram and said, what
is this you have done to me?
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Why did you not tell me that
she was your wife? Why did you
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say she is my sister, that
I took her from my wife? Now
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then, here's your wife, take
her and go. And Pharaoh gave men
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orders concerning him and they sent him
away with his wife and all that he
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had. So Abram went up for
me Egypt, he and his wife and
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all that he had and lot with
him, into the NEGAB. Now Abram
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was very rich in livestock, in
silver and in gold. He may be
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seated. So in our previous passage, the beginning of Genesis Chapter Twelve,
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God had made a very outstanding promise
to Abraham. The Lord called him out
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of paganism, out of his country, out of his family, and called
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him to go into cane in the
land that I will show you, the
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land that I will show you and, as I mentioned last time, this
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land was going to take a central
place in the story of Genesis and really
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this whole story of of the Old
Testament. But, as we also considered
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from Hebrews, this land that Abra
him went to was amazing, but yet
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still a foreshadow of something greater that
God was promising to Abraham, a heavenly
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country, is Hebrews puts it,
and he goes from there and he gives
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him more blessings. In addition to
this, God blesses Abraham and says,
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I will make you a great nation, I will make your name great,
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you will be a blessing. I'll
bless those who bless you, and him
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who dishonors you I will curse,
and then you, all the families of
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the earth, will be blessed.
Then in Chap in verse ten, we
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read that there was a famine in
the land. This pattern of God making
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this amazing promise and calling us to
follow him, to believe him for the
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things that he has said, and
then immediately that can counter difficulty is not
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uncommon, and perhaps you have experienced
this in your life. To hear the
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word of God, hear the promises
of God and then immediately find yourself in
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a situation where that faith is tested. In a way, we might say
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that these promises, which are the
very foundation of the things that God would
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do in Christ we can say that
the gossip pool itself was under threat at
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this moment. Why? Well,
one there was famine in the land,
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this land was not being the blessing
that God had said it would be.
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And then, of course, with
famine comes the fear of death. And
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if Abraham Dies and if Sarah I
dies, well then God has not fulfilled
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his promise, has he? He
promised that through them there would be offspring
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that would be born, that they
would be blessed, that they would inherit
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this land, all of it would
be torn apart, and we read that
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this was no yet I don't know
if there's an ordinary famine, but it
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was. The text tells us that
it was a severe not only that it
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was a famine, but it was
a severe one. So we have this
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question, then, that all of
us are required to ask when our faith
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is tested, our faith and the
things that God has promised and said.
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Will God take care of Abraham?
How Will God overcome these things? How
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will Abraham and endure this famine?
How will God keep him? But of
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course we can't answer any of these
questions because Abraham doesn't stick around to find
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out. He leaves, go to
the land that I will show you great
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famine by. He leaves, he
goes down to Egypt. It says he
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fears the possibility of God's unfaithfulness more
than he trusts God. What if God
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doesn't keep his promise? What if
I die here what if my wife dies
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here? And so Abraham makes a
decision to risk his life, his honor,
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his wife's honor, his marriage,
I would guess, to secure something,
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all of these things I just mentioned
that he's risking to secure them,
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but of course they haven't really belonged
to him in the first place. They
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belonged to God. As king who
to whom everything belongs, and so he
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leaves this place where God has placed
his name, where God has called him,
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where God has told to him that
he would be present with him,
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and he leaves the place that God
has told him to go to go to
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Egypt. In this I'm reminded of
Jonah, who's called by God to go
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do something, and Jonah goes down. He flees from the presence of the
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Lord. Also reminds me of a
LIMOLEC and Naomi who also during the famine
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in the land. They leave,
they don't stay and endure the discipline of
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the Lord. Instead, they take
their sons to MOAB AND MARY WIVES MAKE
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ANY PAGAN WIVES MOABITE wives. How
did it turn out for Jonah, the
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belly of the whale, big fish? How did it turn out for this
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little family of Israelites? Two sons
dead, a husband dead, the solution
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of the family. Compare these actions
of Jonah, of Abraham, of a
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little like and Naomi, to Jesus. When Jesus, during a time of
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great hunger, was tempted, was
tried. Let me read to you from
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Matthew Chapter Four. First, I
noticed that it is the spirit of God
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that brings him into this place.
Matthew Four. Then Jesus was led up
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by the spirit of God into the
Wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
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And after fasting forty days and forty
nights, he was hungry and the tempter
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came and said to him, if
you are the son of God, command
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these stones to become loaves of bread. Stop your suffering, you can end
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this right now. Go to Egypt, go to MOAB, runaway, turn
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the stones into bread. Jesus answered
him. It is written man shall not
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live by bread alone, but by
every worried that comes from the mouth of
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God. What if Abraham and had
remembered that to recognize the famine around him
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and to say man does not live
by bread alone, but by every word
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that comes from the Mart of mouth
of God? And God has told me
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to come here to be here to
live here. Of course, that's the
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hard thing. I can understand Abraham's
actions every level. Really, even his
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lying is it's only kind of a
half lie. Really. Sarah is his
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sister. We remember that from the
genealogy that came before and from other places
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in Genesis. She's she's his half
sister. This is something you can say
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when kind of look the guy in
the eye and she can look the guy
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in the eyes say yeah, but
of course in saying it this way they're
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holding the truth back, and so
it it is in fact a lie,
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but he's scared. He does this
disobedient thing. In Jesus, example,
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we see God's righteousness, we see
his amazing obedience. Even where Prophets and
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Patriarchs would disobey, Jesus did not, and this is good news because it
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means that one day he would be
this perfect sacrifice. It would a tone
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for our sin and allow us to
find ultimate safety and security in the Lord.
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We also see in this that we
are being called to trust the Lord
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to live by his word, even
when that means suffering. In this world,
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it may mean coming under temptation of
the devil himself, it may mean
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fighting doubt in our hearts. It
might mean feeling very bad in our own
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bodies, but we must remain strong
because, as we see from Abraham and
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Sarah's example, Abram's and Sarah's example, things do not go well for them
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when they leave God's commands and promises, despite hoping to secure food for their
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Tummies, lots of other problems and
things go wrong. Sure, they might
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have founded their food they needed,
but for what? Can you imagine this
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terrible situation Sarah's in? I don't
know if Abraham fully gained this all out.
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He's worried for his own life and
he says so, you say this
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and they'll leave us alone. So
she says the thing he asks her to
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say and they say great and take
her into his house. Now what can
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you imagine being Sarah the strange person's
house? They think they're gonna they think
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that he can marry her. I'm
sure that they were worried about their their
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deaths. What if Parah finds out? What happens? Then, how will
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this king react to these sojourners in
the land who have just deceived him,
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tricked him, embarrassed him. So, as I said, Abram and Sarah,
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I didn't trust the Lord. They
didn't trust they doubted that he would
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be faithful. But despite the feelings
of threat and doom, there was never
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any real threat at all to the
Gospel, that is, to God's promises
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to bless them. Why? Because
of who God is. This is the
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thing we must remember. Deuteronomy seventeen
for y'all way. Your God is God
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of Gods and Lord of Lords,
the Great, the mighty and the awesome
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God. There is no threatening God, there is no undoing his promises.
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If God says this will be,
it will be, no matter how things
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look. Know How to our bad
things get. Jeremiah, Thousan two hundred
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and twenty seven. Behold, I
am the Lord, the God of all
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flesh. Is Anything too hard for
me? Matthew, one thousand nine hundred
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and twenty six. But Jesus looked
at them and said, with man this
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is impossible, but with God all
things are possible. One more revelation,
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one eight. I am the Alpha
and the Omega, says the Lord God,
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who is and who was and who
is to come, the Almighty,
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the Almighty. When God promises to
you that you will have everlasting life,
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when you put your faith in Christ. That is the way it will be,
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period. That's the way it will
be, matter what comes. God
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will save you. And of course, God comes through. Even though Abraham,
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like Jonah and Naomi and Almela,
can you and me, we get
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ourselves into the situations, God comes
through. You might have read the story
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like I did, and you see
and say something like this, maybe even
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out loud, that doesn't seem very
fair. Poor Pharaoh, he really gets
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the short end of this stick.
In a way, at least it seems.
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Pharaoh gets tricked and Abraham gets blessed
despite lying, despite giving up his
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wife and all these other things.
And you would be exactly right. It's
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not fair. But this is a
story not about fairness and about justice.
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This is a story about God's grace. Remember how genesis twelve begins. It
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is a story about God's grace,
about giving to Abraham something he didn't deserve.
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And in this covenant of Grace,
these promise, the solemn oath he
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makes to Abraham and all the world
through him, this promise in which we
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believe. This story that we have
right here as part of a very big
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story, a true story about the
grace of God, grace to Abraham,
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and even grace to Egypt, to
all gentiles. For Abraham, we see
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that his life is in fact preserved, his life's life is preserved, even
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her honor and their honor is preserved, and he comes back to the land
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of Canaan more wealthy than he when
he left. Amazing in Verse Sixteen and
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says and for her sake he dealt
well with Abram and he had sheep oxen,
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male donkeys, male servants, female
servants, female donkeys and camels.
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Just a couple fun historical notes on
this. The what is the way that
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this is listed here is pictured.
You sort of imagine this long procession,
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and this is why the male donkeys
are separated from the female donkeys, with
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the male and female servants in between. This is how you would possess in
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this order. The camels would have
been rare, donkeys not so much.
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Camels, though, would have been
very special at this time, something to
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something that would have been a great
sign of wealth. And so you can
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picture in your mind, as one
commentator put it, Abram and Sarah I
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riding on these, you know,
Rolls Royce has these camels riding on these
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high up on these camels looking out
on this great train as they leave,
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as they go up from Egypt,
he and his wife, with all that
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he had and lot with him.
Abraham leaves better than he came, and
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this is this is the grace of
God, isn't it? He leaves us
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better than we came. We come
with nothing, we come with sin,
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we come with pollution, corruption or
rebellion, disobedience, and we leave with
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all the blessings of heaven. This, of course, is perhaps a little
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bit of foreshadowing of Israel leading Egypt
later on. But think about Pharaoh too.
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It's true that this didn't quite turn
out as he had hoped, but
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nevertheless, notice that he doesn't sin. God preserves him in that, and
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he preserves his life too. He
gives him a trial. Yes, even
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as Abraham and Sarah I found themselves
on a trial, Pharaoh and his house
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find themselves with a plague, a
great trial. But what did God use
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that for? To help them,
to help them to realize what was going
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on, the problem at hand,
to realize that Sarah I was not who
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she said she was. But it
gets even better than that, because by
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allowing Abraham to go and therefore fulfill
the God that promised, God the promise
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God had made him. God kept
this promise that through Abraham, all the
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families in the world would be blessed, including Egypt, because these things that
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God did here in Egypt, in
this pagan king's life and in his household,
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he ended up bringing the possibility for
the whole world, because Abraham lived,
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because God kept his promise. Remember, it was through Abraham that all
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the world would be blessed, and
so this includes Egypt. For Egypt,
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Abraham and the Israelites should be grateful. Deuteronomy Twenty three says you shall not
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abhor and Egyptian because you were a
sojourner in his land. In this we
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see yet another level of God's promises
playing out in the world. You remember
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that when God established his covenant of
Common Grace After the flood, he established
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this covenant with the Whole World and
principles of justice, this principles in which
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the the the events of the world
would play out so that a covenant of
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Grace would be made and fulfilled.
That's happening right here, as God works
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in the lives and gives common grace
even to people who are yet outside of
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the Covenant, so that the Covenant
can play at. The covenant of Grace
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can play out in the world and
be fulfilled to the blessing of these very
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people, to the gentiles, to
you and to me, and these events.
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As Man Sins and crosses his arms
and says I don't want to do
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that, God continues to work his
plans that he began before the beginning of
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time, his plans that he has
promised in the world. He he's bringing
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it all together. And so,
in all of this, though, we
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see that God is absent from sin, he is very much present in grace.
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We ought to pray him for this. We have to trust him too.
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Were the faithless ones? Were the
ones who struggle to keep our promises?
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Were the ones that fall? Struggle
to obey and to do what we're
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told? God? No, God
always does the right thing, exactly as
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he says he will. And so
because of that, when he makes these
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promises to us and says and he
gives to us the offspring of Abraham,
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the Lord Jesus Christ, and causes
him to be born of a woman,
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in born under the law, to
redeem us out from under the law,
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to redeem us out of our sin
and our bondage, to bring us from
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misery to blessing. We have to
trust him in all times, in all
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circumstances and in every way. This
will involve hardship, it will, but
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when we face those moments, let
us remember the steadfast love of the Lord
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rely on His grace. We don't
need to look back to Egypt or go
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down to Egypt. We need to
look up to heaven. The Christ is
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securing our place, having secured it
by his own blood,
