40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 18

Episode Date: June 9, 2015

Abraham the sinner. Pharaoh the righteous?

you are listening to a podcast produced and distributed by christholdfast.com please visit christholdfast.com for additional resources this is 40 minutes in the old testament Welcome to episode 18 of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. It's not as early as it has been just because it's a holiday, which also tells you exactly how dedicated we are to you, dear listener, having a right understanding of the Old Testament, that we would spend part of our holiday serving you because that's that's just how we are uh brandon how are you doing hey guys it's a privilege

how you doing chad no i'm good i'm good where are we at today we are of course we're still in genesis uh we're in the middle of chapter 12 and i was thinking you know if this is episode 18 we're on chapter 12 we're actually doing pretty good because that means we're covering uh more than just half a chapter every episode which is pretty good back in the day when i taught genesis as a class at the seminary we spent a whole quarter so 10 weeks and rarely got out of chapter three so look at the progress we're making we are we are moving right along well we've definitely picked up the pace since the beginning when we were we were hitting it like three verses at a time yeah well you gotta you gotta spend more time on those first three

chapters because they're the bedrock of everything that comes after so we uh we got into chapter 12 last time, which is the beginning of the story of Abraham, and we'll be with Abraham for quite a while now. We talked about the opening verses quite a bit, the promise that God makes to Abraham about making him into a great nation, and the blessings that are going to come through him, through his seed to all people, and spent some time also talking about faith and what it is and what it isn't. So that was a good beginning, and we'll pick up the story today, and we've got some good stuff to talk about because in the next couple sections, we're going

to have a chance to talk about altars and sacrifice and worship, and then also the latter half of the chapter. It talks about Abraham and Sarah's journey down into Egypt and some rather unsettling things that happen while they're there. So we'll have a chance to talk about pharaohs and lies and adulteries and all sorts of very intriguing subjects. So that's what we've in store. I guess we will jump into it with, I guess you could say we're beginning here at about verse 4 or verse 5 of chapter 12. Here's what's happened, just to recap a little bit. Abraham, who is still called Abram at this point, he's left his father's house with his wife, Sarai, later to be called Sarah, and his nephew, Lot. And they got a bunch of people

with him. It's not just like there's just the three of them. They have these servants and animals and this whole entourage. And God calls Abraham into this foreign country, and he goes not knowing where he's going, as the book of Hebrews says. But we do know that when he enters the Holy Land, that he moves north to south. And it's kind of interesting that he follows the same basic pattern that Jacob will follow later on, and it's the same pattern that the Israelites will follow when they conquer the Holy Land generations later. So I'll talk more about this in a few minutes, but we already see in the movement that Abraham

goes through, moving north to south, stopping at various points along the way. We already see here that when you look at Abraham's life, you're going to see a pattern. A pattern that is going to be repeated by his individual descendants as well as by the nation, Israel, that's going to come from him. Abraham, in many ways throughout his life, establishes the type or the pattern or the example that's going to be followed by generations after him. So, first of all, I want to talk about what happens in a couple of different spots with altars in worship. I'm looking at verse 7 of Genesis 12, and it says, The Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your descendants I will give this land.

So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. And then you have another occurrence right after that, verse 8. He proceeds from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and with Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. So you've got a couple of altars being built here by Abraham. And then you have God appearing and speaking to Abraham, too. And I think there's a couple of things that are worthy of noting about this. One is something that I think we just too easily passed over, beginning of verse 7, when it says the Lord appeared to Abram.

As a general rule, whenever God appears in the Old Testament, it's the Son of God. so when we when we see the lord appearing or god appearing just in your mind insert jesus there because he is the one who reveals the father to us not just in his incarnation but already from beginning so if you think back to genesis chapter 3 when god is walking in the garden in the cool of the day. That's the Son of God. He's come down from heaven, walking in the garden. He confronts Adam and Eve about their sin. He's the one that speaks to Cain after Cain murders his brother. He's the one that tells Noah what to do. Christ is the one who will later lead his people out of Egypt. Christ is the one who is giving the Ten Commandments and

the covenant to Israel there at Mount Sinai. We know it's him because he's the one who's the revelation of the Father. So anytime that you see God speaking or God appearing, this is the second person of the Trinity. This is Christ already before his incarnation, already before his work of salvation in the flesh. He's the one who is interacting with his people. so when it says

that Abraham in the Gospel of John it says Abraham rejoiced to see my day he saw it and was glad well he did because he was seeing the Son of God he was hearing him the Son of God was appearing to him

already during his journeys and he appears to him and what he does what Abraham does is he builds an altar An altar in Hebrew can be pretty straightforward at times. An altar, the Hebrew word for altar is mizveach, which just means a place of sacrifice.

Tuzavach is the sacrifice, so a mizveach is just a place to sacrifice. Which tells you, first of all, the main purpose of an altar. The main purpose of an altar is to have a place on which to sacrifice. And it also tells us about how central the altar is to the worship of God's people. I've always found it insightful that you can have an altar without a tabernacle, but you can't have a tabernacle without an altar. You can have an altar without a temple, but you can't have a temple without an altar. because the altar is the pivotal point for the interaction between God and his people. It's on the altar that the sacrifice is offered,

and it's through the blood shed by that sacrifice that the people have access to God, and through which then God comes to the people to bless them. The book of Hebrews talks about how without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. That shedding of blood always took place at an altar, at this place of sacrifice. So the fact that Abraham builds an altar after this appearance by Christ to him is an indication that he realizes that as God appears to him, he needs the altar as this place of sacrifice so that as he worships the Christ who appears to him, he worships him in and through the sacrifices that are offered.

and he's building these altars in various places because right now there is no central place of worship that's going to come way later after the tabernacle is constructed then you have one altar and it's only at the tabernacle but before this you got multiple altars and wherever these altars were built

the patriarchs were already in advance doing what was going to happen later at the tabernacle so you have altars because you need sacrifice you need sacrifice because without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins and i think the only other thing that i would point out that i think is is significant here is that the english translates it that they that he called upon the name of the lord there's actually a bit of ambiguity there in the hebrew because it can mean that he called upon the name of the Lord in the sense that he prayed to God, but that can also be translated that he proclaimed the name of the Lord, and I was reading Luther's

part on this, and I tend to agree with him here that it can mean to pray, but as Luther does, I would as well, I would put the focus more upon the proclamation that Abraham built us all to hear, not just for the purpose of sacrifice and not just for the purpose of calling upon God, but also as the place in which he proclaimed God's name. In other words, he preached. We hear later on, chapter 20 of Genesis, that Abraham was a prophet. And there's no reason whatsoever for us to assume that Abraham was keeping quiet about his faith. God called him out. He gave him the gift of faith. He gave him these promises.

And so Abraham becomes a preacher. In other words, he tells others about these promises that God gives to him about the seed. So Abraham is a patriarch. He's a prophet. But he's a preacher as well. And we see a little bit later on in chapter 13 that there were others who joined with Abraham, like Mamre and his family. They linked themselves up with Abraham because they no doubt heard this message from Abraham that he was proclaiming at these altars that he set up. So Abraham is also a proclaimer as well as a prayer at the altars that he constructs along the way.

So that's the beginning of what happens when they get to the Holy Land. And then we have an unexpected intervention in the story. And this we see multiple times in the book of Genesis. Verse 10 says that there is a famine in the land. Each of the patriarchs, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, they all faced famines. And all, as a result of that, had to decide what they're going to do. With Abraham, he decides that the best course of action is to head down into Egypt. So that's where he and his family are going to journey.

And so it's to Egypt that our story now turns. And there's lots of good things to talk about with their time in Egypt. Before I do, I want to make sure you guys are awake. i'm awake i'm awake see if you got any uh see if you got any uh insights that you want to so far or if you're just so eager to get into egypt that you're you're biding your time i think um eschatologically uh that it's interesting that that all your patriarchs and face famine and that there's famine over and over and over again in the Scripture, which is like a sign of the tribulation.

There's murder, there's famine, there's pestilence, all these things that we're sure are end times sort of stuff. In the end times, there'll be all these things. And we're so we're so used to, you know, at least at least if you live in the country I live in and listen to this, everything being relatively easy that that we have this idea that in the end it'll get really hard. it'll get really hard and like all of these all these uh prophecies and about there being famines all the time everywhere all the time and pestilence and death but the fact is is that we've been we've been in the tribulation since adam and that stuff has been going on since the beginning since the fall there's been all of those things uh all over the place and uh we've been uh spared largely

uh from that uh thus far anyway but uh but we're sort of naive about history and about what's going on in the rest of the world when we think that well these things are coming well these things have been and continue to be all over the place tons of deaths tons of pestilence tons of tons of famine everywhere and i don't want to get into a huge eschatological thing but every time that i read like and then there was this famine i always think yeah that's that's great tribulation stuff yeah it's not like we're waiting for signs of the time it's every every generation has faced these every generation is reminded the end is near yep it's almost like the world this good world that god created and all the creation that he blessed as good has almost turned against that which it

was created for and the world refuses now to give up its grain to give up its food for for man and almost out of vengeance for being hurled into sin in the depths of depravity. And I think that this is not something that is going to be necessarily compartmentalized in a single seven-year period down the road, but it's something that we see over and over and over, and Paul makes reference to it, For we know the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves are the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. And, you know, we know that the the whole creation, God is reconciling all things to himself. But these are just signs that continue to point us back to back to God.

We are not sufficient in and of ourselves. and uh even the world is refusing to suffice for uh being enough for our needs i know we're getting we're getting into some some some controversial water there i i assume that we all agree that that's the case well we can say well we're not gonna we're not gonna touch that maybe it is a literal sentence. Maybe it's not. Well, it is an appropriate topic to bring up because

the beginning of Revelation is Genesis. The first and last book of the Bible are intimately intertwined. You read the last chapter of Revelation and it sounds like Genesis all over again.

What we see happening in Genesis is the foundation of everything that's fleshed out in the book of Revelation. In fact, I've always considered the book of Revelation quite possibly the most unoriginal book in the whole Bible. Because there's hardly a verse in Revelation which in some way is not summarizing or echoing or quoting that which has been produced in all the books before it. Yeah, it's set up differently,

but over and over he's quoting from Ezekiel or from Daniel or from Isaiah or from the Psalms or from Genesis. It's basically a summary, an eschatological summary, of everything that the Scriptures have been saying up to that point. It's like the great crescendo, but this musical crescendo is using all of the notes from the first books of the Bible to pull this all together. So Revelation is anticlimactic in that sense.

It's not an original book. It's a condensation of everything that the Scriptures have said up to that point. Yeah, Revelation is jamming in the key of Old Testament. I like it. That's right. that's right as are all the New Testament books I like to call the New Testament the inspired commentary on

the Old Testament it is the scriptures expounded in reference to the incarnation of Christ if you happen to disagree with all of that eschatological stuff it's okay you can keep listening

yeah that's right keep listening keep listening Let's go into Egypt and see what awaits us down in Egypt because we've got some interesting stuff here. So I think it's, first of all, worthy of note that how many times God will say something and then something happens which totally seems to contradict the promise. So you've got this great, magnificent promise to Abraham. I'm going to give you all this land.

It's going to be great. You're going to have descendants. It's as numerous as the stars in the sky, sand on the seashore, all of these magnificent, great promises. God appears to him in this land, and then all of a sudden, it's like nobody can live here because the famine is so severe. So you have the promise, and then this famine comes along that seems to negate the promise. And that is often the way it appears in the scriptures as well as in our own lives, where we can't live by sight. Instead, it's faith in the promises of God, and it was no different for Abraham. Except what we'll see in his case is that the way that he handles this is certainly not in any kind of exemplary way.

so what they do when this famine comes upon them is they do what a lot of people did in the ancient world we know this from lots of historical records they go to Egypt because Egypt at least had this annual flooding in the Nile

and most of the time when there was a famine elsewhere you could at least find food in Egypt that happens later on of course with Jacob and his sons when they go down into Egypt to get some grain during their time of famine and Joseph is already there taking care of things.

But they go down there with no protection. The Hebrew word for a sojourner is ger, G-E-R. And a sojourner, by definition, has no rights. It's not like you're there illegally, but you don't have any of the protection that a citizen would have. This is the ancient world. So you are basically at whatever the whim of the people of the country that you're in is going to be. If they want to protect you, if they want to not hurt you, if they want to help you, that's great.

If they want to kill you, they can do that too. So they have no legal recourse. They have no legal rights. They're just living there, doing their best to get by. And Abraham knows this. So he comes up with this plan. he uh he talks to sarah and uh he says now look uh we're going down in egypt and here's what's going to happen he's this is verse 11 he says look i know you're a beautiful woman he almost

sets it up that way right he's complimenting her first i know you're ma'od yafa in the hebrew you're extremely beautiful and so here's what's going to happen it's going to come about when the Egyptians see you, they're going to say, well, this is his wife, and they'll kill me, and they'll let you live. I'm going to pause there for a second before I go on to talk about his plan. First of all, think of the assumptions that Abraham is working with here. Okay, his wife is at least 65 years old, and it's a bit unusual for a woman to be very beautiful as Abraham describes his wife when she's 65, but maybe this was her gift. She's very beautiful at her age, but think about the assumptions that he's making.

The assumption is that when they're going to get down there, that they're going to see his wife, and they're going to kill him. So this is his fear, and this is feeling even more fear. And so he comes up with this whole scenario in his head as to how things are going to go down. So he's operating not on the basis of anything more than being afraid. And what he's afraid of, I think that's telling as well, he's afraid of losing his own life. doesn't say anything about her but he's afraid that they're going to kill him

and let her live now based upon this fear he comes up with a plan verse 13 says so please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you

and that I may live on account of you so that's the setup and it turns out when they get down into Egypt that that's the way things go at first but it turns out to be much worse than what Abraham thought was going to happen we can assume I think that Abraham thought

that, yeah, they would see that his wife was very beautiful, but, you know, he was her protector, he was her brother, and so they really couldn't do anything without his permission. But that's not what happened. When they saw that she was beautiful, the

servants of the Pharaoh, they see her, they praise her to Pharaoh, and she ends up being taken away from Abraham, and she is taken into Pharaoh's house to be his wife. Now there's lots of things that are worthy

of talking about here. And just to begin with one, this is a great example. I was talking to Dan about this before we started recording. There's a lot of times when we get in our head that a story happens a certain way or that there's an element in a story that happens in a certain way that really isn't there. We just assume it is, and so every time we hear the story or read the story, we kind of insert that into the story and assume, and we don't even realize the assumptions that we're making. Now, for as long as I can remember, every time that I've read this story or thought about it, or written about it even, I've been working with the assumption that

even though Sarah was taken into Pharaoh's house, that God protected her so that Pharaoh did not actually have sex with her. Instead, she was there, and God set these plagues before Pharaoh slept with her, And so adultery or rape was averted because of that. And then I'm reading it this morning, and I realize for the first time that there's absolutely no indication whatsoever in this story that Sarah was protected from adultery. Instead, there's every indication that in fact Pharaoh did have sex with Sarah.

it was a on his part anyway it was an unintentional adultery and the reason i say that is because first of all she's taken into pharaoh's house into we assume what would have been his his harem and as the story unfolds and pharaoh finds out what happens and he confronts abraham about what he's done then pharaoh says to to to abraham he says you told me that she's your sister so i took her for my wife which means that basically uh he took her into his house he took her as his wife and therefore he would have taken her into his bed so there's there's no indication whatsoever to indicate, there's no indication in the text that would suggest that

in fact Sarah was protected from adultery and every indication to say that as a result of Abraham's lie as a result of him protecting himself and subjecting his wife

to danger that she was in fact subjected to adultery as well by the king of Egypt. I think that because of the other story where we see that God did sort of protect that from happening, that we then assume that that's what happened here.

But the language there, you know, biblically speaking, that language typically means that something happened. when you take someone to be your wife or bring them into your house uh that's that is uh that is saying that something happened in a in a nice way uh i mean like even if uh you know even if you watched like um you know old movies about about that take place in the dark ages or if you or or like fantasy fiction and stuff like when they say like in those books or in those movies like you know he took so like oh he took her to to be his wife you'll you'll you see the response is then well that's what happened uh you know you see if somebody steals uh steals you know

somebody's daughter or sister or something and takes them for their wife that they assume that she's been defiled and all this stuff like that's that's what that means um and so uh and like there's others the scripture in the same way when it talks about that i mean that's that's where they that's where that language is is derived from uh we we we talk that way or or used to um based on a uh an old an old school translation of of the scriptures so the scriptures the scriptures use those terms to explain that so writers started using those terms to explain it that way too

yeah I just don't see any anything whatsoever in the story that would say that Sarah was protected from this but in fact that's what happened to her and so

Pharaoh sleeps with her and what's even more interesting about this is how this all unraveled. Because the more that I read this story, the more it seems like

you've got Abraham, this man of faith, God's chosen, the one through whom the seed is going to come. And he's the one that ends up as the liar and the unrighteous one and the one

who is acting out of purely selfish interests this is this great man of faith and then you have pharaoh who is completely outside of this chosen family who we don't even know if he's a a believer in the true god he might be a just you know a pagan and he's the one who ends up acting righteously. He's the one who ends up acting unselfishly. He's the one who's actually more interested in Sarah's welfare

than Abraham is. Because here's what Pharaoh does. As the story goes on, God sends these plagues on Pharaoh's house, and Pharaoh somehow, we're not really told how, but he finds out the truth.

He finds out the truth that Sarah's actually Abraham's wife. And he responds by confronting Abraham. And so, first of all, he stops the adultery. He doesn't continue it, even though it seems that Abraham was letting it go on. He rebukes Abraham for lying to him, and he doesn't kill Abraham.

He lets him live, and he had been giving all this stuff to Abraham because of Sarah. He's been enriching him, and he doesn't demand any of it back. He lets Abraham keep all of the property, and then he expels them from the country. But as he does, he sends an escort to make sure that they're safe as they're leaving. So it's kind of like the story of Judah and Tamar much later on when Judah says that she is more righteous than I. I think that we can say the same thing about Pharaoh here. As far as just outwardly external righteousness, Pharaoh's the one who does the right thing, and Abraham doesn't.

In fact, I don't see a single thing that he does right here. This whole story is filled full of nothing that puts Abraham in a good light. it's a good point to make then that perhaps, just perhaps, that horizontal righteousness is not indicative of vertical righteousness. So doing the right thing, being an upright man, being a blameless man horizontally before the face of other men does not necessarily mean that you are a man of faith i know lots of i know lots of guys that um that are very upright this is one of the reasons why when we when we talk about good works and and horizontal righteousness and and uh that's as a as a way to know you're a christian or or anything like that

that's why it always comes up short because i know lots of people that don't believe that outwardly very very morally upstanding um i know people who belong to abrid christian groups you know um some of the some of the uh some of the the most righteous people i know are are mormons uh i've uh i know i have lots of mormon friends and and uh they're killing me on the on the good And the good works department, you know, knocking on more doors than me, abstaining from more things than me. Just, yeah, you know, they've got that stuff down. And so is it indicative that, you know, that they're believers then? Is that what that means?

And does it mean that you're not? Abraham's not a man of faith because look and Pharaoh must be because look and then the opposite is true yeah Pharaoh's an idolater he's got some fruit that you could measure and weigh that says well he's

a pretty righteous guy and then you say well Abraham's a man of faith he's the father of the faith it's like I don't know he's got some pretty nasty fruit that you can measure and weigh that say otherwise. I think that's one of the reasons I love these stories so much, because they do reveal

that if we're talking about vertical righteousness, if we're talking about the righteousness that is credited to us by God because of the work of Christ, then it's a radically different righteousness than what we think of as righteous behavior in this world. When we're talking about the heavenly righteousness we have because of christ it's uh it's a gift it's unmerited that means that you don't be you don't have to be good to receive it and uh your your external goodness in this world is no indication that you have it it's entirely a gift and these stories we have of noah getting drunk or abraham lying and and uh and uh having the result that is that his wife is forced into adultery or any of the other stories that we have that are like this

are great reminders to us, not excuses for sins, but reminders of the fact that we don't deserve this righteousness from God. It is a gift that's based completely upon the actions of Christ on our behalf and not on our good behavior or our ethical lifestyle in this world. Well, at least you know that Abraham would never do anything like this again. Right, yeah. Then you have this repetitive behavior. He doesn't learn his lesson.

He does the exact same thing, as does his son, Isaac, much later on. He's like, well, true repentance, you know, he won't do this again. He'll know that this is a terrible idea, and he will never, ever engage in such behavior again. Or maybe just immediately following that. Either way. That's the way it goes. And that is one of the gifts of the scriptures to us who are honest about our struggle with sin,

as opposed to those who just talk about it. You've never done the same thing twice, have you, Chad? No, I've always done it at least three times. That way you struck out completely. Yeah, right. That way I struck out completely. I'm not going to get just two strikes. I always want to be out. The scriptures are full of stories of people who fail,

and then they fail again, and then they fail again, in order that it might be driven home into us who face the same temptations and way too often give in to those temptations. that ultimately it's not about what we do. It's not about how well we repent. It's not about how often we avoid falling into sin.

It's all about Christ. It's all about His cross. It's all about the righteousness that God gives to us based upon who Christ is and what He does. Not upon us keeping the commandments or trying to keep the commandments or having some

kind of perfect repentance that doesn't repeat the same mistakes over and over. So thank God that the stories in the Scriptures don't whitewash the lives of the saints. Instead, they include stories like Abraham using his wife. That's what he's doing. He's using his wife. He's lying about his wife in order that he might be protected,

and he's even profiting from it. He gets rich by creating a false situation in which his wife is subjected to adultery. And that seeming craziness of the story underlines that the grace of God is not about how well we act, how well we perform in keeping the law. It's all about grace. that's what grace is it's not about what we merit or what we deserve but what God gives

on account of Christ and we're done we're done that's 40 minutes of good old Genesis that's the way to end it right there that as they say was a good word so thank you guys

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next week © transcript Emily Beynon