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"God hath said, I will make thee a great nation: Abram saith, the Egyptians will kill
me. . . . he through inconsiderateness doubted twice of his life doubted not the life of
his seed. . . . yet it was more difficult that his posterity should live in Sarah, than that
Sarah's husband should live in Egypt."
When we analyze unbelief, it is of all things most unreasonable. Abram would
doubtless have defended his attitude by saying that after all Sarai was his sister. The poet
has it that the lie which is half the truth is ever the blackest of lies, and it is more
abominable in Abram to make the semblance of truth his refuge, than for the wicked to
lie outright. The world, the Pharaohs of this spiritual Egypt, they will even reprove the
man of faith for his inconsistency. The famine in Canaan was a trial certainly, but all
trials that come upon the child of God are intended to lead him more continually to
Christ. If Abram had only thought what he was doing, as he drew near to Egypt, he
would have realized that to take refuge in a lie was to depart from God. True, Abram
exchanged Canaan's famine for plenty--"he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and
menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels"--but he had no fellowship
with God. This we shall see in the sequel.
The plagues sent by the Lord because of Abram's wife are sent to unmask Abram's
deceit. An unbeliever (or at least a type of this world), rebukes the man of God:--
"And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is this that thou hast done unto me? Why
didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife? Why saidst thou, she is my sister? So I
might have taken her to me; now therefore, behold thy wife, take her and go thy way."
Let us notice how Abram's sin involved others. "What is this that thou hast done unto
me?" The pilgrim cannot step aside from the path of faith without evil resulting to
himself and others. How sad to think that he who had been specially called out to be a
blessing to all nations, should by his first individual act involve (but for the mercy of
God) a nation in sin!
Chapter 13: sees Abram leaving Egypt rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold, yet poor as
yet in the treasures of faith:--
"And he went on his journey from the south, even to Bethel, unto the place where his
tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Hai, unto the place of the altar which
he had made there at the first, and there Abram called on the name of the Lord."
This is a picture of restoration, "He restoreth my soul, He leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness for His name's sake". The time which Abram spent in Egypt was so much
waste, so far as God was concerned; he had to retrace his steps to the starting point.
Similarly, Jonah ran away from the Lord, and entered a ship bound for Tarshish, yet
when the great fish vomited up Jonah, he was upon the coast of the country he had been
told to visit:--
"And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to
Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee."
Not only is it true that these lapses in the path of faith are so much lost time to the
individual believer, but it enters also into the great prophetical reckonings of God with