I think one of the things that is most surprising to New Christians when they begin reading the Bible is the remarkable honesty, the disarming candor of Scripture in describing the heroes of our faith. As an outsider, coming to the Bible expect a certain degree of hype, and that you're reading when we read these patriarchs or the account of David or the apostles, we're imagining that they're going to be put on some kind of pedestal to give great authority to their words perhaps. But in fact, as you well know, the Bible is really the most remarkably honest text in terms of disclosing to us the foibles, deficiencies, and grievous sins of these forefathers in the faith. It's not surprising then when we come to New Testament, the Apostle Paul does not hesitate to identify himself as the chief of sinners, and it's not just said for rhetorical effect in that passage and Timothy, he goes on and reminds himself and his reader of his career early on as a persecutor of the church. He actually murdered men. He was a blasphemer, a violent man, and though he was caught up in self-righteous sparisaism and thought he knew it all, he now sees that he knew nothing what he did, he did an ignorance to his own disgrace. And you say, well, that's a before and after picture, that's before he was converted. But in fact, we find the same kind of honesty and candor with respect to Peter. The Apostle Peter, at one point in the ministry of our Lord Jesus, Peter is asked with the other disciples, who do you say I am? And Peter confesses, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus immediately responds, flesh and blood, it's not revealed this to you, but my father who's in heaven. Here's the high watermark in terms of the Apostle's recognition of Christ, of his person. Here's clearly the work of the Holy Spirit, removing the scales from his eyes. According to Jesus, it had been revealed to him. Here's his conversion, if not before. And yet as we all know, later on, when our Savior was being rejected by his own abused, suffering, their false accusations and being prepared, then for crucifixion, Peter is in the outer court, while that's going on, denying Jesus before servant girls, three times, and even swearing to God that he doesn't know the man. That's after his conversion. Subsequently, at the end of the Gospel of John, we then have the record of Jesus' gracious restoration of Peter and establishing him again with a fresh ordination to the ministry inviting him to love the sheep and feed Christ's sheep. Well, we could go on with many other examples, and the Old Testament, of course, David and others are ones that immediately come to mind. And you say, why is this so? Well, of course, it's because the real hero of our faith, the real hero is not Moses or David or Hezekiah or Paul or Peter. The hero of our faith is God. The Bible is about God and his faithfulness, not about our imagined fidelity. And I say then, by way of introduction, that this is the orientation that most Christians, I think, bring to our text this morning when they look at this episode in the life of Abraham and Sarah, what looks like a very sorry record of their failure. It seems like here, once again, we have our heroes portrayed, warped, and all. And the lesson is, well, nothing new to us, God is the hero, not Abraham. Abraham is, of course, someone who is a sinner and nothing more than a sinner saved by grace. God is the hero, not because he's sinless, but because his sovereign plan of salvation cannot be thwarted even by the likes of Abraham. God will have his way, and his plan cannot be overturned. His plan to bless the nations through Abraham and ultimately through the seed of Abraham. Nothing will stop him. On the conventional view, then Abraham is, if he had the ability, trying to get in God's way by telling a half-truth which, of course, is a whole lie. We know from Genesis chapter 20, it is true, as Abraham defends himself to a bimolec. That indeed, Sarah, or Sarah, as her name came to be, really is his sister. That is, he says, the daughter of my father, though not of my mother, and she became my wife. So there's the element of truth. Sarah really is a half-sister to Abraham. And in fact, it's more than likely, based on what is said at the end of Genesis 11, that the precise relationship to Sarah, Sarah, might have been an adopted daughter of Abraham. Not a biological one, but an adopted one. We know in the days of Abraham, that was a very common practice in preparation for marriage, for a man to adopt a woman, and it conferred certain economic consequences that we'll be talking about. But in any case, whether a biological half-sister or an adopted sister, that's the basis of the half-truth. But you say, well, what's the excuse for this mendacity? How could Abraham ever have gone around advertising the wife of his youth as his sister? What is he trying to do, what's his motive? Well, in our text, it says, say that you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake, and that my life will be spared, perhaps for your benefit. That could be also because of you. Here's one of these translation issues. But it may be for your benefit. Now you may think Abraham is lying through his teeth, but he's not a fool, and perhaps then he's stressing that the purpose of saving his life is not just that he's looking out for number one, but he's really genuinely concerned or pretending to be for his wife, that my goodness, if they kill me, we know that what they have in mind for you is going to be something worse than death. So it's for your benefit that we need to do this, so that they won't kill me, I who am your guardian and protector, possibly that's his intention. But then what's the purpose of this deception? Well, you read the text, at least superficially, and it seems like Abraham is only interested in saving his skin and, oh, by the way, lining his pockets. There will be some financial advantage for him. The traditional view would have us believe that Abraham is actually prepared to trade his wife's virtue for a few extra bucks. That he is completely indifferent to her feelings, her honor, her person, she's expendable. Well, as I say, if that's all true, and it's possibly the case, then all we have here in Genesis 12 is what we know from all the rest of the Bible that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Abraham's no exception. The fact that he's a scoundrel in a cad shouldn't surprise us, that's just standard procedure. It's possible. And then the real hero of the story would be God, and he'd be the hero, not because he's the only one who sinless, though that, of course, is true. But he'd be the hero, because even Abraham's shenanigans do not thwart him in his sovereign purpose articulated there in the Abrahamic covenant to bless the world, ultimately, through Abraham. This is not, by the way, the kind of comfort that's meant to excuse lukewarm discipleship. When we take this comfort, we're not getting ready to say, well, then it doesn't matter if I do my part. God over rules and rules and the affairs of men, and he can win the loss with or without me, whether or not Park Street Church raises enough money to send our missionaries out to Thailand. Well, the Hannah's, God bless them, God will get them out there somehow. We don't need to worry. That's not really what we're supposed to conclude from this line of thinking. Instead, we have to recognize, yes, God will be faithful, though we are faithless. But if we are faithless, we will, in fact, disadvantage ourselves, and we will forfeit the privilege that could have been ours to be instruments of his will in bringing the blessing, mediating that blessing to the nations. I'm often reminded in this connection with what Mordecai said to Queen Esther. You may remember it. He said to her, if you remain silent at such a time as this, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another quarter. God is faithful even when we are faithless. God won't let his people down. He loves them too much to depend on the likes of you or me. So yeah, relief and deliverance will arise from another quarter. But you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this. You, if we are faithless, you and I, we will miss the privilege that could have been ours to be used mightfully for his honor and glory. May it not be said of us. May we not make that mistake. Okay, so this is the possible lesson. Not everything Abraham did was exemplary and approved by God. The question is, is this passage in Genesis 12 yet another example? Before we jump to the conclusion that Abraham is a scoundrel, let's keep in mind, folks, our track record when it comes to judging the motives and moral behavior of one another. Or you keep in mind a track record of others with respect to judgments of you. I isn't not the case. And here is perhaps the one brightest, most helpful conclusion from postmodernism. We need to cultivate a kind of permunutic of self-suspicion. We need to doubt our abilities to read others' hearts. Because my goodness, most of the time, isn't it true, they get it wrong, we get it wrong. Most of the time we project, most of the time we connect the dots according to what they would mean in our life. And so even Jesus contemporaries, when they saw the Savior keeping the company of tax collectors and prostitutes, they figured, hey, it's as plain as the nose on my face. I know what I'd be doing if I were keeping the company of the likes of them. And clearly, then, this Jesus is no holy man. Well they blew it. And we blow it. And do we think we're going to do better when it comes to reading Bible characters than we do with our neighbor? So my first plea is, have a little healthy self doubt about easy conclusions that one of God's characters, the heroes of our faith, is in fact committing some grievous sin. Let's let the text speak for itself. Let's not jump to conclusions. In fact, sensitive Bible readers, through the centuries, have known that there are a number of serious difficulties with that traditional understanding of Abraham and Sarah and what they're up to. The first of all, of course, is the moral problem, but I say, that's no news. We're all sinners. So Abraham could well be a sinner. And yet, subsequently, God's verdict about Abraham and Genesis 26 is that Abraham obeyed me and kept my requirements, my commands, my decrees, and my laws. Surely he should be accorded the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he failed here. We know he does fail later on in Genesis 16 when he gives into Sarah's initiative and advice that he take haigar as a way of fulfilling God's will. But let's not condemn him before the evidence is in. What's more serious a problem with respect to his failing regarding haigar and trying to do God's work man's way. You know, he took Sarah's servant woman and had a baby by her and said, see, God, here's the child of promise. Well, God wasn't interested. But Abraham at least then sees the era of his ways and repents and doesn't do it again and for 15 more years waits in faith, although the faith is shaky. But in this case, this practice of identifying Sarah as his sister, he never is corrected. He never learns his lesson. He never repents. He continues to do this with impunity. In Genesis 20, he's still doing it. He does it when he introduces his wife to a bimolect, the king of Jarrar. And there he even says, by the way, this is our standard procedure. This is what we always do. When God had made me wander from my father's household, I said to Sarah, this is how you can show your love for me. Everywhere we go, everywhere we go, say of me, he's my brother. In fact, the only two places that we have detail about it appear to be the places where that plan failed, not where it succeeded. All the times it succeeded, we don't read about it. This is the standard procedure. And by the way, also Isaac, Abraham's son does it because why shouldn't he? God never corrects them. Isaac does it with Rebecca, who also was a near relative. She being the grand niece of Isaac's father. And so in terms of biblical usage, she was his sister. What makes this even worse, folks, is this last week, honest. You're not going to believe this. This past week, I got an email from a pastor, dear brother, in Gainesville, Florida, I've never met the man. Apparently, he must have been surfing the web and saw our web page. And for whatever reason, what's prompted to write me and share a problem he was having in his pastoral counseling, there was a couple who came to him apparently. And they had read the New Testament in 1 Peter 3, where the Apostle Peter tells Christian wives that they need to follow the example of Sarah in being submissive to their husbands and obeying their husbands. I think they want to be blessed of the Lord. And this pastor was wondering, well, wait a minute, in terms of the counseling, I gather this had caused some tension because it implies that a husband could try to impress his wife or have her tell half truths, and that she ought to go along with it. Maybe the husband, I don't know, he didn't go into all the details, perhaps he was filling out his income tax returns. And he wanted his wife to sign at the end of the statement, the 1040, that kind of fudges the details a little bit. Should a good Christian wife, following the example of Sarah, obey her husband and give into his suggestion? Well, it all depends on this text. You see, all of a sudden, the moral problem isn't just Abraham's problem. Now, reading it through Christian eyes, through 1 Peter 3, the problem has become enormously amplified. If Abraham really is sinning here, we've got problems. Yes, Abraham and Sarah made other mistakes, but on the other occasion, it was Sarah, who was trying to get Abraham to comply with her wishes, when she suggested the use of hey guard. That was an Abraham's idea. This is Abraham's idea. So here, then, is very much an example, apparently, of the kind of thing God approves. Well, but does he? Still worse, of course, is not just Abraham's ethics, but his intelligence. Maybe he's allowed, but is he a lunatic, I have to wonder. I mean, just for a moment, join me in thinking about this. What was Abraham thinking would happen using this particular strategy? What was in his mind, Mr. Pharaoh, here's my sister. The apparent intention is, according to the traditional view, to advertise her availability. What if Pharaoh takes the bait? What if Pharaoh then comes to Abraham and says, hey Abraham, wow, is your 65-year-old sister a knockout? I can hardly keep my hands off of her. I just want to marry her and make her my wife. Tell me, just name your price. Name your price so I can marry her. Now what's Abraham going to say? Well, Mr. Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the upper and lower lands, the incarnation of the Sun God Ray, at least according to your own view of yourself. Pharaoh, I have to tell you the bad news. The good news is, yes, she's gorgeous, bad news is, we don't want her marrying lower than her station in life. You're not good enough. All the money in Egypt wouldn't be enough in the way of a marriage. I mean, what's he going to say? He already has anticipated that Pharaoh won't hesitate to murder him if he's Sarah's husband in order to marry her. Is Pharaoh going to hesitate to murder him if he's just her brother? Obviously, this has got to be an insane plan. It won't work. Well, you say, yes, it does work because Gordon, you're not thinking badly enough of Abraham. His intention was, in fact, to happily accept Pharaoh's request and give his wife, sister, her hand in marriage. And then you see, no one would be the wiser, he wouldn't tell anyone, and he'd be laughing all the way to the bank. That was his intention. That sounds like a very plausible explanation, but the problem is it commits two fatal mistakes. The first mistake is that it fails to recognize that no one in the ancient world, no man, no matter what a moral scoundrel he is, no man, not king, not Judas, certainly not Abraham, whatever willingly invite another man to sleep with his wife. It's historically impossible. Oh, I realize that now in the 21st century, you can imagine some level of decadence where this could happen. That's because we've dug the cesspool so much further than it could have been imagined in biblical times. There's not another example of anyone, no matter how wicked, willingly complying and going along with such a plan to invite other men to sleep with their wife. It can't happen. It's an anachronism in our thinking that we would think it possible. Secondly, and perhaps even more fatal, is that we are imagining the practices of Abraham in terms of what goes on in some African societies but has nothing to do with the ancient world. In the ancient world, the practice of marriage went this way. A suitor would fall in love with a young woman, decide that he would like to marry her, and the first step in showing the sincerity of his intentions would be, in fact, to offer the woman's father, or if the father is dead, her brother, who would be her legal guardian, a marriage present, kind of like what you see going here, going on here. So you offer a marriage present, but the difference is, once the wedding is concluded, once the girl gets married, all that wedding present is added to other assets that the father wants to pass on to his daughter, and together they comprise what's called the dowry. In other words, if the marriage went forward, every single nickel that Abraham received, every penny that he got would have been passed on to Sarah in her new marriage in the form of a dowry. Abraham would not earn a nickel from this plan. If that was the purpose, it was a stupid plan, not only an evil plan. Well, anyway, and then we got even further problems than that. We also have the problem, of course, with the psychological improbability of what Pharaoh does, and later Abimelec, because this happens once again in Genesis 20. Here to imagine, on the traditional view, Pharaoh brings Abraham in on the carpet, says, what did you do this for, why did you say she's my sister, and so on, and then Abraham explains what it was that he did, probably using the very same explanation we find in chapter 20. And then the text says that Pharaoh, apparently very angry or whatever, responds by saying, okay, well then you have your wife back here, take Sarah, and leave. And oh, by the way, you know all that silver and gold I gave you, you know those men's servants and female servants and those he asses and she asses and camels, you take every last one of them and get out. Now how would that be possible that the Pharaoh would do that? Pharaoh who thinks he's got on her son, God, Ray, incarnate, you just lied to me. Why wouldn't he just kill him both then on the spot? Or at least send him out and say, well, let God deal with you. By the way, you can leave the presence right back here on your way out. Don't you see that Pharaoh is clearly doing what Abimelec later does, and that is when he gives him these gifts, he's acknowledging that he was 100% in the wrong, and Abraham was 100% in the right. That's what Abimelec says is the case in chapter 20. Well, we have to come back to that. Finally, of course, the problem is, what about the immorality of God? You know, in many passages we don't know what God thinks. When Paul and Barnabas didn't get along and they split up their missionary journeys, we don't know whose side God was on. We can't tell. God doesn't reveal his judgments. There are a lot of times that passages are recorded and don't include any moral comment. But here, there's no guessing. Here, we know what God thinks. Here, God makes absolutely clear whose side he's on. The text says the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abraham's wife, Sarah, in fact, using vocabulary later used in Exodus of the plagues. God reveals his judgment, and he does the same thing with Abimelec. All the women in the land have their wooms closed because of this sin. We know what God thinks. God thinks Abraham is innocent and Pharaoh is guilty. No wonder Abraham never repents of what he does because what he did was not wrong. We're going to have to get back again. Well, why is that so? And there are a lot of incidental problems I wish I could go through them all. How about just one out of another ten or so? How is it possible by the way that Sarah could have been so irresistibly attractive at age 65? I'm sure there are a lot of women in the congregation like to know this or how about age 90? Age 90 is how old she is when it comes again in Genesis chapter 20. Abraham says as they enter Egypt to his wife Sarah, I know you're what a beautiful woman you are or what an attractive woman you are. Why doesn't Sarah respond something like, oh, oh, Abe, you're so romantic. You only think that because we're married. And you know, you're looking at me through rose colored glasses. Other men wouldn't find me so irresistible. It's just you. You know, why doesn't she respond something like that? Or maybe you could turn around and say why doesn't Abraham realize the problem, thinking his wife so attractive? Why doesn't he say to Pharaoh something like, hey, I know she's a knockout. You know, she's a complexion so attractive. My goodness, she doesn't look a day over 50. But actually, she's a lot older than she looks. You know, why doesn't he try some other approach to protecting his marriage, if that's his concern? Well, I'd like to give you an alternative approach, another proposal for what's really going on here. And I think it's helpful for us realize it's not just a problem of translation. There's some minor translation questions but Bill and Paul a hand have reminded us of the importance of being able to read the Bible in English and how precious it is for us as a church to get behind them so that those in far parts of the world can read the scriptures in their own languages. But it isn't always just a problem of language or translation. Very often, the problem for us is cultural context. You know, if you were to read, for example, the statement, Ellis Burke's Stole Third and Ran Home. Your response, if you were not from America, might be my goodness. What a moral lapse. Stole Third, Ran Home. It's obviously, you know, he's self-condemned, no wonder he ran home. What you don't know is that it wasn't a moral lapse. It was, well, it was actually a lapse of good judgment on the part of the Red Sox to let him go. But the reality is, no, that was a wonderful accomplishment in the field of baseball. And it's the same thing here. I know the words look like they're all real clear in their meaning. But it's the context that we're missing, the cultural context. And what is that context? Well, you need to know two things. First of all, you need to know that Pharaohs and kings and potentates in the ancient world did not get married or for love. They got married for power and wealth. That's what they were interested in. In Egypt, in fact, we have wonderfully clear extensive records for at least a period of 700 years, hundreds and hundreds of marriage records, and there's not a single example of polygamy among them. The only polygamy in Egypt, and mostly this is true everywhere in the ancient world, was with the kings, the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh was very busily marrying women. And notice, it's always foreign women. That's what makes Sarah so attractive, in part. It's foreign women, Solomon, all of his wives, none of them were Israelite. They're all foreigners. And the reason is because the kings and Pharaohs of the ancient world used marriage to secure marriage alliances, and to inherit wealth, and inherit rights to thrones elsewhere, sometimes even Solomon's marriage to the daughter of Pharaoh meant that he could now have title and rule over the city of Gaser that was part of the dowry. So the first thing is, the motivation of Pharaoh, what makes Sarah so attractive, is in fact the promise of great wealth and power and connection. The second thing we need to know about this text, in terms of background, is that Abraham, by stressing that Sarah was the sister, was actually stressing the most salient issue. He was doing his best to protect his marriage by the most critical piece of information that would keep a Pharaoh or an abimolec away. So they wouldn't be interested in wrecking this marriage, they wouldn't be interested in killing Abraham or in stealing his wife. How's that so? Well, it's this. I already mentioned the normal way weddings worked. The lover, the suitor, the fiance, gives the father-in-law a marriage present. The marriage present then is added to other wealth that was going to be the inheritance of this daughter, that's why they sometimes call it a pre-mortuary inheritance. This is how women inherited. Men have to wait till their father dies. Women inherited on their wedding day in what's called the dowry. And so that was the norm. And based on the norm, if you saw Abraham and Sarah traveling along coming to your northeastern boundary in Egypt, what you would have seen is this. You would have seen a vast entourage, not just two poppers crawling along. The Bible tells us that Abraham, when he left Iran, left with possessions they had accumulated, and the persons they had acquired in Iran, Genesis 12.5. In Genesis 14, we know that they had 318 men who were born in their household. He would have seen an army, stretch limos in many others joining Abraham and Sarah's, they make their way down to Egypt, a vast multitude actually based on what the Bible says. Moreover, we've already mentioned Sarah's name means princess. They thought of Abraham that he was a great prince. Remember the Hittites said, the great prince in the land. They look like powerful people, power brokers in the ancient world. They would have found out that Sarah's great grandfather's name was Sarah, and there was a city in North Mesopotamia named after him, that her grandfather was Nahor. There's another city named after Nahor, her grandfather was Tara, another city named after Tara, rather her father, or her stepfather. Another city named after Tara, and this is like the name Kennedy, or Rockefeller, or something like that, Sarah would have looked tremendously attractive to an abominable lack or Pharaoh. She would have looked so appealing as a candidate, and the older she was, the better, especially because she has no children. Why do I say that? Like I say, it would have been assumed. Pharaoh would have thought, oh all of this wealth, divide by two, that must be probably about half of that is all dowry. All that's going to go with Sarah, whoever marries Sarah is going to be the lucky man, and get all of that, all that prestige, all that influence. When Abraham says, she's my sister, what that means is all of this wealth is just Abraham's. Because normal marriages, a wife had a dowry, but when you married an adopted sister, or a true relative sister, there was no dowry. All of it was the husbands. And if you kill Abraham, none of it goes to her either, because wives didn't inherit from husbands, instead it would all go to Aliezer of Damascus according to Abraham. So even once the story is out, if Pharaoh then said kill him, he gets nothing. It all goes to Aliezer of Damascus, safely out of the way, whose legal and moral responsibility would have been to take care of his adopted widow mother, Sarah, for the remainder of her days, a trust account, if you will. So you see, it was a well-intentioned plan. It's not a lack of faith. It was trying to protect the marriage in Pharaoh and everyone else from doing what would have been, utterly wrong to do with respect to this couple, Abraham and Sarah. You say, why didn't it work then? Or at least why didn't it work these two times? Well, it's because Abraham could never have guessed how utterly decadent Pharaoh was in Abimilek. In his worst imagination, he thought, well, maybe he'll kill me and take her. I better let him know, there's no percentage in it. You do that, you get nothing. But what Abraham had never anticipated was that there would be a culture where people would just take a woman and sleep with her and then think about marriage later. This, of course, is something that comes up later on in Genesis. You remember it later on in the incident involving Dyna when Shekham, same language, sees how beautiful she is, takes her and then decides to work on marriage negotiations later. God is revealing through this painful episode how low the morality had sunk among these people groups who were bypassed in terms of the line of promise. In order to see how righteous his judgments were against them, he was helping them to see a kind of spirit of Sodom and Gomorrah that was suffusing the population. Abraham couldn't have imagined such a thing because if it had gone the normal way, Pharaoh would have said, I noticed you have a very cute sister, let me marry her, or at least she looks pretty well connected and powerful. And then Abraham would have said, are you kidding? We're already married. And now it would have been the end of it. I'm not going to range for a marriage, you can't take her. But the text says they took her. They abducted her into the harem, just like back in Genesis 6 where the great kings of the earth were abducting women into their harems and expanding their harems in this lawless act. This tyrannical abuse of power that these kings were so characterized by. Why does Abraham, how could Abraham respond when he said, why don't you tell me she's your sister? That's a little bit like the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah are asking, why didn't you tell me that you were angels? Then we would have behaved better. It's a self-condemning question. And so Pharaoh recognizing how condemned he is allows Abraham and Sarah to leave with this money that is their vindication and exoneration. That's why also by the way, later on, Abimalek doesn't hesitate to keep calling Abraham brother. Abimalek said, my land is before you, settle where please is you. And to Sarah he said, look I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. He doesn't say your husband. It's your brother, I recognize it. A thousand pieces of silver, it's your exoneration before all who are with you, you are completely vindicated. What are the wonderful lessons that come out of this? Very briefly, just two. There was a great lesson on the traditional view, all our sinners. What's the great lesson on this understanding? There are two of them. Genesis 12 begins with the promises to Abraham, there are seven of them and you can divide them into two parts. The first part is God's going to bless you. And the second part is God's going to use you to bless the nations. He's going to bless the whole world through you. That's the two parts, sum it up. Bless you and God's going to use you to bless the nations. The problem with that promise is we're apt to misinterpret that we don't understand how that ought to be applied. And so this story is an answer, a protection against some misunderstanding of those two promises. God is going to bless you, first of all. Well, what does blessing look like? Well, I'll tell you what it looks like. It looks like leaving everything you count dear, your language, your people, all that back in, her hand and who are. It means not having any children at age 65 or by the way 85, in fact not until you're a hundred. It means immediately encountering a life threatening famine. Now you're in the promised land. And what's the first thing that hits them? A famine. Doesn't it look like God must be making a mistake? How did he lead me here? I couldn't even arrange for a little better climate in order to take care of the needs. This looks like blessing. And so then Abraham goes down to Egypt and what's the next thing that happens? His wife is kidnapped. Oh, this looks like blessing, doesn't it? You see, we are apt to hear when God promises to bless you that that somehow rather should be translated as a successful trouble free life is up ahead. I'm not going to run into any difficulties. No bumps in the road. We've got it wrong. If you want to know what a blessed life looks like, you lead the life of Abraham. That's why this is in here. That's why we need it. And what's truth, Abraham is true for his seed as well. It's true for all those who are his descendants spiritually and literally it was true for Israel. It was ultimately true for Jesus. And then secondly, through you, the world will be blessed. Now we hear that and think, oh great. That means when I go to Thailand or anywhere to bring the gospel, they're just going to throw out the red carpet. You know, roll it out and welcome me because they want to hear the good news of Christ because I'm sent by God to bless the nations. But don't you see the purpose of this story? The purpose of the story is to help us realize that no blessing the nations doesn't mean that they're all going to be welcoming you with open arms. There is justice likely to greet you with a lynching mob. And so God reveals His blessing. And ultimately, in fact, does bless the nation first by revealing His awesome power in a mighty hand and an outstretched arm by which He protects those who are His own from abuse. From the maltreatment they receive, from those to whom they are seeking to minister. God said, I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse. That's a message for missionaries. It's a message for all of us in our call to be ambassadors of Christ. God will curse those who curse you because He identifies with you. Because He says whoever receives you receives me and He who receives me receives the one who sent me. He identifies with His people. And if the world rejects you, they've rejected Christ. We don't relish this thought, but it's a reality. And so when later on that experienced Abraham is repeated in the life of Israel, the response is the same. Israel also went down into Egypt because of a famine. You know that. Once they were down in Egypt, you know what happened to them. They were mistreated though they had done nothing to deserve it. By the way, that can help confirm our understanding. And what was the mistreatment? The mistreatment was Pharaoh tried to kill the boys to keep the girls alive. An amplification of the sin we see here. And how did God respond? Do you just blow it off and say, who cares? No, you see, he who touches you touches the apple of his eye. God revealed his might by responding with plagues on Pharaoh in his house just like in this text. Abraham is a prophet. His life is a prophet, a prophetic life of what was to come. And in the end, what happened was Pharaoh sent Israel out, recognizing his wrongdoing, sent them out. And as they went out, they dispoiled Egypt of their wealth. They took great possessions with them just as Abraham and Sarah does as they leave. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse. Later on when the seat of Abraham David is standing before Goliath, little wimpy David standing in front of great Goliath and Goliath starts cursing David. That's when Goliath signed his own death warrant. Because whoever curses you, I will curse. God responds in protecting his messenger but not in order to cream the citizens of Gath because they got the point. And after Goliath was dispatched, what we read about later on is that David went in among the citizens of Gath and they ended up being converted. The 600 men of Gath become his closest loyalists later on. They come to believe in David and in David's God. And the same thing happened with Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came to his own but his own received him not. They abused him and ultimately cursed him, the prophet who was to come, the ultimate seat of Abraham. And they consigned him to the curse of the cross. But what did God do? Did he just fold his hands and say who cares? No, instead he raised Jesus from the dead as his vindication so that now the gospel would be preached to the nations and we would see the error of our ways and recognize that God and his forbearance has stayed our judgment and execution that we might come to the Savior. He allowed no one to oppress them for their sake. He rebuked kings. Psalm 105 says, saying touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm. It's a passage that refers to Abraham's experience here and it refers to that which is our heritage as well. Oh, who's worthy of these things? For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing to the one we are the smell of death. Those who curse you, I will curse. But to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? He who receives you receives me. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we ask that we might take these two great lessons to part that the promise to Abraham to bless him and to us who are his seed to be blessed is no assurance of trouble free living but rather an assurance of your presence with us. And that the promise to use Abraham and to use us to mediate your blessing to the nations is is no promise that they will throughout the red carpet for us, but rather is a promise that he who receives us receives you. And so we pray, O Lord Jesus, help us if that be true to be more receivable for your name's sake we pray. Amen.