ABRAHAM’S HALF-TRUTH PLAN
Sakkie Parsons
Someone asked me to explain Genesis 12 as I understand it – and of course one can look at this chapter from a few other angles as well, but I share with you what came to my mind in answering this question.
As man is by nature sinful, the people where Abraham lived, turned their backs on our LORD and became wicked and then even more wicked.
God then chose Abraham from whom He would acquire a people for Him who, unlike all the other nations, would be His people, who would serve Him and be His special possession:
GEN 12:1 Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
Then Abraham (our LORD changed his name from Abram to Abraham in Genesis 17:5) arrived in the land that the LORD pointed out to him and he moved deeper and around the land – but it is now not exactly what he expected and because Abraham is a human being and just like many of us humans would have done, he just look to what he sees and it is not completely acceptable to him – and he put aside what our LORD told him and followed his own mind in what he see and judge in his humanity and rather went down to Egypt, where it seems much better – but if you are disobedient to our LORD, it always comes at a price and usually, at a terrible high price.
He is now entering Egypt – out of the land in which he was traveling and did not like what he saw. Though our Lord thought it was a land of milk and honey, for our Lord is all-knowing:
EX 3:8 and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
So, along with the drought were the:
EX 3: 8 :… Canaanites and Hittites and Amorites and Perizzites and Hivites and Jebusites.
Yes, for him the land that our LORD wanted him to live in was, so to say, just too much and he got a plan:
GEN 12: 11-13
11 When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance,
12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live.
13 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.”
Now at first glance it seems like it was a great plan. Because we read:
GEN 12:15 And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.
GEN 12:16 And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.
However, as I personally understand it with my disposition and I do not think I am different from other men who love their wives, it came at a terrible price.
I do not think it was different for Abraham, because according to all the evidence at our disposal, he was very fond of his wife, but I think it must have been devastated for him, so to speak, to look at all the gifts he received, saying to himself with a terrible reproach something like the following:
What have I brought about myself now!
“Tonight, my wife whom I love so much, sleeps in Faro’s palace. maybe in Faro’s bed, maybe in Faro’s arm
Because Faro took Sarah as his wife.
We read:
GEN 12:18 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?
GEN 12:19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.”
I would like to end this writing with the following thought that came to my mind when I read Genesis 12 again:
As Abraham, the patriarch of Israel and finally also of you and me, we who have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour, because we read in this regard, among other things:
GAL 3:7 Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
GAL 3:8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”
Also:
GAL 3:29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
Well, if Abraham, in an unguarded moment, could be seduced by satan into such a great wrong, what chance do you and I have, if we take our eyes off Jesus?
How often, as children of our LORD, do we not follow our own heads and end up in the greatest mess.
However, our LORD is not going to leave His child in those unbearable circumstances.
Abraham now experienced what he had done to himself and his wife and our LORD now after Abraham bumped his head and learned his lesson, as our LORD always does in His great love – came to Abraham’s help. Because we read:
GEN 12:17 But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.
Under the normal circumstances of the heathen, Abraham and his whole house would have paid with their lives for, among other things, the mockery they made of Pharaoh – but I think the Pharaoh looked at the plagues that befell him:
GEN 12:17 But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.
Then he wanted to get this man and his entourage out of his country as soon as possible:
GEN 12:20 And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him (Abraham), and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.
I now leave you with this thought that came to my mind when I read Genesis 12 again and waited on our LORD about what I should share with you:
We read:
HEB 11:17-21
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son,
18 of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.”
19 He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
20 By faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau.
21 By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff.
Then there follow a few more examples and I now leave you with this section that is so special to me:
HEB 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
HEB 12:2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Greetings,
Sakkie