very convincing trail to have
Abraham going down into Egypt. Now remember, my first message
about Abraham was his call. His call. How he was called as
God. And then lastly, we talked about
how he journeyed. How he was journeyed. And it
says there in verse 9, and Abraham journeyed on, journeyed going
off toward the south. Now let me read now from here
to the end of the chapter, and see if I can say a few things
about it. And there was a famine in the
land. And Abel went down into Egypt to sow his earth, and the
famine was previous in the land. and it came to pass that he was
come near unto Egypt, and he said unto Sarah his wife, Behold,
now I know that thou art a fair woman to look for. Therefore
it shall come to pass that the Egyptians shall see me, that
they shall say, This is his wife. They will kill me, but they will
save me a life. Say, I pray thee, thou art my
sister. that it may be well with me for
thy sake, and my soul shall live because of thee." And this came
to pass that when Abraham was coming to Egypt, the Egyptians
beheld a woman that he was very fond of. The princes also of
Pharaoh saw her and commended her before Pharaoh, and the woman
was taken into Pharaoh's house. And he and Peter and Abram willed
for her sake. And he had sheep in auction,
and he asked for new service and maids, and she asked for
cash. And the Lord plagued Fabel with
his house of great plagues, because of Sarah, Abram's wife. And Fabel
called Abram, saying, What is this that thou hast done unto
me? Why did thou not tell me that she was thy wife? Why saidst
thou she is my sister? So Allah hath taken her from
me, her wife, and I therefore behold her by a taker, and go
thy way. And Pharaoh commended his being
concerning him, and they sent him away, and his wife, and all
that he had. Abraham and Eve. Faith has its
trials. If you're sure you have faith,
it's going to be trials. And it's a rare, rare occasion
when all is true faith. Very rare occasion. But faith
is to try to lead us into a deeper and more mature experience with
what God is to our hearts, to make you more precious to us,
to make our need of Him to be greater, to make His presence
more precious to us. But many people mistake an easy
life and the coach and their life is what they do Or where
they're going because they have no problem. Well, I must be right. I must be right. I must be doing
what's right I must be doing what's good I think it must be
awful easy for people to have no problem. I wouldn't trust
that, would you? No, no. The path of obedience,
obeying the Lord, taking Him at His word, following Him in
His precious Word, following Him as Christ told us to do.
He that loveth me will keep my word. That's what our Savior
said. He that loveth me keepeth my word. And we keep his word,
but the path of obedience may often be found to be the most
trying to flesh and blood, following Christ in his blessed word, following
Christ in this world, often proved to be the most trying to flesh
and blood. As soon as Abram went into Canaan,
it says back up there in verse 6, he said, and the Canaanite
then was in Galatia. So he got into a place where
he came and I was in the lane. God had promised him that he
said, in verse 7, I said, I see, will I get this land? And there
he went over and there he appeared, the Lord appeared unto him. So
there was, he would come into the country and the first thing
he could burn was the Canaanites within the land. Then he was
in the land. Then we wasn't there very long
and there was a famine in the land. And I'll tell you this,
Dylan, and I've seen this and you have too, in the natural
world and in the spiritual world, change can come that quick. I
mean, in the natural world, a man can be going along just fine
and bam, things change that quick. And they can do that same thing
in the spiritual world. You can be going along in the
spiritual world and everything seems to be fine and boom, your
world turns upside down that quick. Things can change in a
dime, on a drop of a dime. A dear neighbor, a man of faith,
And the first temptation that comes his way, he turns to Solomon. He turns to Solomon. And I do
know this, in our best and strongest moment, we're in danger of falling. I know that. We're kept by the
power of God through faith. And I know this, beloved, it's
pained evening. If a man, any man, thinks that
he's standing, it's pained evening. Blessed be Paul. So, here's April,
he comes into the country, he comes into the, he was chosen
of God, chosen out of their mother. There in the town, he's got a
message of danger. Cain is just like God told him
to after his father died. And here he comes into Egypt.
He's done good worshiping God. God has done a good job. So God
will give you some land. This land is going to be for
your seed. And then the first trial comes
along and it says there in verse 10, and there was a famine in
the land. There was a famine in the land.
Now this, he's in the land of promise. He's in the place that
God told him to go. He's exactly where God said,
did you go down yonder and you came? That's where I want you
to go. This is the land of promise.
God made him a promise. He gets down there and the first
thing that happens, abandonment happens. He starts getting hungry.
He starts getting rough. He starts getting pretty dangerous. And the first thing he says,
am I in the right place? Am I where God called me to be?
Am I supposed to be where I'm really supposed to be? They got
out of the world of God. And here's a family, no pastor,
drowning in the land, and this is in the land of promise. He said, oh my, there was a famine
in the land. I mean, he's in the land of promise.
And no doubt this was a deep cry for his faith. I mean, he'd
come into the place that God told him to. God gave him the
promise of the land, and here he was, the first thing that
happened. Why are we going to leave? How
are we going to leave? Will God be able to keep us?
You know when Paul, Paul was, so you know, he saw a man from
Macedonia in the desert. He said, come over to Macedonia
and help us. You know what happened, the first
thing that happened to him when he got into Macedonia? You know
what the first thing that happened to him? He got put in jail in
Philadelphia. I said, Macedonians, come over
and help us. He went over there to help us.
And you know, the first thing that happened, him and Silas
was put in jail and put in strife for preaching the gospel. Oh, I said, oh, boss, you know,
do you think this is the, do you think I will elucidate the
same? That vision probably exists in
my mind, probably a dream or something. No, no, he didn't
say this is the end of my call to Macedonia. No, you know what
he did when him and him stopped? Him and Silas began to sing praises
unto God. That's what he did. And so, you
see, beloved, you may think, oh, this thing's going to happen. And he comes into the promised
land, the famine came. Paul's call to Macedonia ends
up in jail. You don't want to make things
change in a hurry. And that's why we don't walk
by pain, we walk by time. We walk by faith. If we walk
by tithe, we wouldn't get anything done. We wouldn't do anything.
And all we know is the Lord has directed Abraham not to go anyplace
else. He said, if you go down into
Canaan, if you go down to that, I'm going to give you this wonderful
land. I'm going to give you the seeds
of this. Your seeds are going to all inherit
everything. And the Lord didn't tell him
to go anywhere else. The Lord didn't tell him to do
that. And you know, Peter said it this way, if need be, if it's
necessary, if it's necessary, you are in heaven through men
of old temptation, that the time of your fate be much, much more
precious than of old. So God put your faith in the
fire, put your faith in the fire. Said you received the end of
your faith, what is that? The salvation of your soul. And oh beloved, he wasn't in
well-watered valleys preaching to the isles. But faith has to
lay hold on the things that's unseen. And that's where he messed
up. Trial makes the promise sweet. Then look what else happened
now. He, he's the trial. Now look at the failure. In verse
10 again. And there was a famine in the
land, and listen to what it says here. And Abram went down into
Egypt to sow discord. So the famine was his escape.
Do you notice it says he went down. Whenever you walk away
from the promises of God, start walking by tithe instead of by
faith, Not trusting God and His promises, you ain't got nowhere
to go but down. You can't go nowhere but down.
And has God failed us? Has God failed anyone? Has God not given the promise?
No, God made His path plain. He was exactly where God told
Him to be, where God had put Him, where God had made the promise.
But His, in what He did, He walked aside and stood by faith. His looking forward to the blessing. the land instead of God who gave
you the land. He was looking more to his circumstances
than the God who made the promise. And I tell you, beloved, that's
one of the, if circumstances means what goes on around us,
if we say that God has called us and God's going to do what's
supposed to be, then, you know, that don't mean everything's
going to be just perfect all the time. It means that there's
going to be things happening. And that's what happened to him.
He walked aside. Oh, he wanted to look to the
gift. He said, the land that I'll give
you. He wasn't supposed to look to that. He was supposed to look
to the giver, the Lord God in heaven himself. And then the
scripture says he went down. He had to go down. And I'll tell
you what, God brought Israel up out of Egypt. And 435 years
after this, he brought us up. But Abraham, he was down there. And I mean he was in a bad place. In a bad, bad place. So let me
show you what happened to him. Look what happened to him. Well,
well. There we go. There we go. And
the fainter, he went down in need. He went down in need. And you know what happened when
he went down in need? This is what it says in the first
letter, in 12. And it came to pass when he was
come near to enter into Egypt that he said unto Sarah his wife,
O now I know you're a fair woman, you're a beautiful woman. And
therefore when I get down into Egypt, them Egyptians gonna see
you and they gonna kill me and take you. Oh my, 1st Saint, when
he went down, he led the fear. Not the fear of God, he led the
fear for himself. He was afraid that they'd kill
him. He said, oh, they'll kill me. They will kill me. And they'll
say, you're a liar. And he was afraid for his own
life. He said, they'll kill me. He
carried the dog. Now, why was he scared? Had God
left him? Had God forsaken him? Had God
renewed all his promises? No. In other words, it means
that here, there was self-conceit. He was more concerned for his
own life than he was for his wife's. He was more concerned
about what was going to happen to him than to himself. They'll
kill me, but they'll save your life instead of it being the
other way. You know, the Scriptures tell
us that Mary is a picture of Christ and our relationship with
Christ. That's why Paul said, I show you a picture. But he
says, a man doesn't as love your wife even as Christ also loved
the church. And here's a man, a man of faith,
a man chosen of God, a man who says, we want in the footsteps
of our father Abraham, that he knows God, he needs him. And
the first thing he did, he said, oh, I'm going to die down here. I'm going to die down here because
my wife's a good living and my wife's a good living. They're
going to kill me and save her. So this is what I want you to
do Sarah. He was more concerned with himself
than he was with his wife. You say, well I don't sound like
he's got much faith. You know, none of this stuff
is mentioned in... This is what's so wonderful about
the New Testament. When you read the New Testament,
nothing is said against David until it's done. Nothing was
said like this about anybody else. David? Nothing. It wasn't mentioned. But, oh
my. Oh, he was born to serve for
his own life and safety, and to honor and chastise his wife.
Man returns from faith, his life is self-centered. Self-centered. He gets interested in what? How's
it going to affect me? How's it going to affect me?
And not only does it lead to fear, it leads to selfishness,
but look what else it leads to. It leads to hypocrisy. Look what
he said in verse 13. And he said, listen, it led to
a hypocrisy. He said, say I pray thee, that
thou and my sister, that it may be well with me for thy sake,
and my soul shall live because of thee. It ought to be the other
way around. It ought to be just the opposite
of that. But he said, if we can go there
and say, I'm going to be your sister, I'm going to be your
sister. Oh, he pretended to be what he wasn't. and had a wife
who did what she would. Oh, this was a deliberate misrepresentation. All to cause fear. He went down,
he went down. He let the hypocrisy pretend
to be what he wasn't. Had Sarah pretend what she wasn't. And this was just a deliberate
misrepresentation. And then look what happened.
Start in verse 14, down to verse 18, look what happened. And it
came to pass that when Abel was coming to Egypt, the Egyptians
beheld the woman that she was bearing child. The prince, who
is also a fabler, saw her and commended her before fables to
the wind, and said, Look here, what a beautiful woman, fabler.
And the woman was taken into fables house. And all of this
will have to stop. And God is, this is moral, but
even with, this is what it means when I'm never legal and never
protected. Look what happens now. And he had treated Abram
well for her sake. He's done Abram really, really
good because of Sarah's sake. And he had sheep and oxen, and
he asked his in-servants to make sure that she ate, and cattle.
He said, oh, he's been doing good for 10 years. And then,
oh my, look what happened now. And the Lord, like Pharaoh, and
his house was ransacked because of Sam, Abel's wife. Look at
all this red skin now. And Pharaoh called Abel and said,
what is this that thou hast done unto me? Why didst thou not tell
me that she was your wife? Now, this led to open rebuke,
including what kind of man rebuked Abram, a man of faith. There
was a heathen, a dollar-fish king, rebuked by an enemy of
God, a man of the world, a man of the world, a man that just
absolutely has no regard for God whatsoever, he openly rebuked
Abraham. Abraham and said, Abram, what
in the world have you done? Why did you say this to me? Why
did you do that? It brought me such sorrow, such
trouble, such... all the things that it caused
to him. In order to be rebuked by man
of the world, by an enemy of God, Oh my, how sad! No wonder the apostles said,
let us walk with wisdom toward those that are without. And oh,
it led to such trouble for us. The Lord's flag eased because
of Abraham's wife. Others suffer often because of
our impatience. We have John Donne who said this,
no man's an island and no man's a rock. There's nothing that
we do that does not affect somebody else. And Abel Gerson, the man
of nature, when he goes down there, and God. How blessed God
is that even though Abraham went down out of fear and selfishness,
and self-centeredness, and impoverished, and was rebuked by Pharoah, that
God saved him in his pride of himself, and is thankful that
a man cannot what we do has effect on other people. And our unfaithfulness
oftentimes is a great burden to other folks. And when we become
unfaithful to God, to our Lord, it will lead to hypocrisy, it
will lead to selfishness, it will lead to the fear of danger.
They lead you down the road. Well, you start down walking
by the side instead of up there. They can't do nothing but lead
you down. That's all they can do. That's
all they can do. Now, but all this is not going
to stop that. Look what happens in chapter
13. Look what happens. In April, the same old first
point he says in February, commended his men, saying, Pharaoh told
them, take your wife and go now your way. And Pharaoh commended
his men concerning him, saying, now don't you go bothering him
or her. And they sent him away and his wife and all that he
had. And it keeps nothing but poor Abel sitting out with everything
he had. And look what happened. Abel
went up out of Egypt, and his wife and all that he had, and
blocked with him into the south. And Abram was very rich in cattle
and silver and in gold. And with it all, he went on his
journeys from the south, even to Bethel, under the place where
his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Dan, under
the place of the altar which had been there at the first,
and there Abram called on the name of the Lord." You know where
he ended up. Let's actually start. That's
where he goes. Went right back to the place
that he was at when he walked off his holy duties. He went
back to Bethel. And Bethel always means the house
of God. He went back where he, look what
it says there in verse three. It says, he went where his kin
had been at the beginning. When his birth came into existence,
he went right back where his kin, the first time, and the
birth came into existence. He went to that place where he'd
been at the beginning between Bethel and Hell. He went under
the place of the altar which he had made when he first came
in the kingdom. And there Abram himself told
us that there Abram called on the name of the Lord. He went
to the very first place that he had left. He did, went back
and did the first work. He went back to his first love.
And let me tell you something about the child of God. A child
of God makes a very, very poor world. He makes a poor world. He makes a very poor world. He
can't, he can't disguise himself. He can't, he can't disguise himself. He goes, ain't no good to disguise
himself, tell him to disguise himself, and everybody's down,
therefore it's over to him, he's got to get a new one. We're all
in Egypt. When he was in Egypt, he had
no wall. When he was in Egypt, he had no communion with God.
Egypt was not the place of God's presence. And he lost that. He
sought more than he gained. He was like, oh, what is this?
Egypt. Now, we may have released some
of our temporary presence, temporary needs. The boy knew the provision
was God and came down from heaven to get it. And let me give you
four things to remember. Remember this. The call of Abram
goes to all of God's children. When God called Abram, God called
all of his children. And he called him to absolute
confidence in God. take god in his word step walk
and live by faith before god almighty all of god's children
have the same call believe him in his word have confidence in
him walk by faith And the second thing to remember is, the tribe
of Abraham's faith is the lot of all his children too. That's all of Abraham's old joys.
Children of the tribe of Abraham's faith is the lot of all his children. If we make a profession, it has
to be tested. It has to be tested. The mill
barrel may get very, very low. But it will never run out. Never run out. And we must be
occupied, not with the circumstances, but with the doctrine of our
circumstances. You've got to stand for it. And
I'll tell you something else in a minute. Here's the third
thing. Beware of going down easy. What do you mean by that? He
said we'll be a friend of the world if the enemy is God. That's what the Scripture says.
And God says that He delivered us from the distress of the world. So beware of going down. So even
though you have to go down, you have to go down. And the fourth
thing is this, as we see ourselves in Abraham, standing wondrous
and amazing at the mercy of God in Christ. Marked at his patience
and his longsuffering with us. Because we certainly, certainly
have spent some time in Egypt if we've been believers. And
God has been so merciful, so patient, so gracious to us in
Christ. And we're reminded again, that
all that the Father hath given to me shall come to me, and he
that hath left coming to me, I will do no while, cast him
out. Goeth he into Egypt? God, he
won't cast him out. Goeth he into Hippocrates? God,
he won't cast him out. Hath he the fear of man in him?
God, he won't cast him out. Beeth he selfish and self-centered?
God, he won't cast him out. God, he won't cast him out. If
they cry your name? God, he won't cast him out. God,
he won't cast him out. our father in the blessed name
of christ our lord lord you're so kind and gracious and patient
with us and i'm thankful and i'm thankful for the services
they had this morning And Lord, I pray that what few
words I had to say tonight would be used with you, be used with
you to speak to all of us, especially to me. And Lord Jesus, please
give us the grace, the wisdom, the understanding that's coming
from above. Give us the wisdom of God. Fill
us, Lord, with your grace. Give us some funding, sir. Direct
us by your mercies. Lead us not into our sin, for
the Lord will tell a world we don't know to give back to us
mercy. So, Lord, lead us not into our
sin. Thank you for the dear saints of God. Bless, strengthen, and
encourage us. Again, we pray for the lost among
us and for Christ as He came. Amen.