Dev Ramcharan - Class 1: Lech Lecha

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   This is the Rocky Mountain Bible School, Monday, June 24, 2019, Class 1. Our speaker is Brother Debraham Shearn from the Toronto West Ecclesia, Ontario, Canada. His theme this week is entitled, Abraham Believe God. In today's class, he's entitled, Go For You, based on Genesis Chapter 12. Thank you, Brother. Now, I know that that title is going to be a little disturbing to some of you, but we'll explain it as we get a little bit further along.

2. 0:35

   So, when I heard, or when I was planning to be here, and get ready to come here to Colorado in summertime, I packed a bunch of summer clothing. And then, the day before I got there, somebody said, you know, I think there's been snow in Steamboat Springs. So, I said, what, are you crazy or something?

3. 1:00

   This is summer. And then, when I got here, somebody said there had been 20 inches of snow in Steamboat Springs. And then, as we drove by mountains and trees covered in snow, it was an unbelievable sight. And we're having all this prattling on, so that people can actually go up these disastrously noisy stairways, resume their seats, and then we can get started.

4. 1:29

   So, that was quite a shock. I didn't think that you'd have snow this particular time of year. That's been interesting to see. Beautiful, beautiful country, though. And to look out in the cafeteria window and see the mountains, it is a glorious sight. Lech, lecha, is what those two words are pronounced like, and they mean go for you.

5. 1:56

   Go for you. Literally. If there was to be a literal translation of that. The Jewish medieval scholar Rashi interpreted that to mean go for your own good. Go for your own sake. Go for the safety of yourself and your family, in other words. That's what the words mean. Lech, lecha. Go for you.

6. 2:25

   But the backdrop of the story of Abraham is an interesting one. Perhaps sometimes we may not look at it closely enough in connection with Abraham. If we were to go to chapter 11, beginning at verse 1, we would read the following words. The whole earth was of one language and of one speech.

7. 2:50

   One speech. One language. One language. What does that mean? They had a single language and no dialects. Just the one dialect. Now you think about the world we live in today. A few of you have traveled to Australia. Right? Where they speak a foreign language called English. And somebody will say something and you'll be sitting there as the dumb North American.

8. 3:19

   Right? You know, the roads, they're not crash hot. And you will have discerned roads, crash, and hot in a juxtaposition that makes no sense for American English or Canadian English or British English. And what they mean by that, based on the local vernacular that has historically evolved, starting with prison days, all the way through to now.

9. 3:50

   Well, not all of Australia has those origins. But, is, is, is a kind of, of, of vocabulary that is very unfamiliar to us. The roads not being crash hot doesn't mean that the roads get hot and because of the asphalt burning out your tires, you have a crash. What it means is that they're not very good.

10. 4:07

    And there is no way, in, in any way, form, or form, I could have interpreted that that's what they were saying. So, those are analogous. There's an analogy to dialects. There are formal dialects. So, Hindi, for instance, has a number of associated dialects, many of which are quite different. They are related to Hindi, but they don't sound closely like Hindi, and they are very different in the structure, and the vocabulary that's used.

11. 4:39

    But, these people had one language and no dialect. One way of interpreting language. And we saw what that resulted in. Now, remember what had led to the flood. It was violence, mayhem, people who were all about themselves. I have killed a man, da, da, da, the usual nonsense that we read about. You know, when we are reading about the decisions, descendants of, of, well, the first people on the earth.

12. 5:12

    And the violence and the wickedness are so great in the earth that God decides he's going to destroy it, but preserve a remnant through whom he will repopulate the earth. These are their descendants. And you would think, learning what they learned, having seen what they saw in past generations, in connection with the flood, and the origins of the flood, that instead they would be the kind of people to honor God, to elevate God, and to not be all about themselves.

13. 5:45

    It would not be a humanist, human-centric culture. It would be, it would be one that had God at the center. But at the beginning of the chapter, we read, the whole earth was, as it was, it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar.

14. 6:07

    So there's a, there is a migration of peoples that is occurring. They say one to another, go to let us. And if you were to count out the uses of the words us and we, whatever your translation is, you would have a variation between four and seven times that those words are used, depending on the translation that you use.

15. 6:33

    So this is all about we and us. What can we do to safeguard ourselves so that we are never, ever, drowned in a flood again? Now God had said that he would not do this again. But these people are not the kind of people who trust God, who have faith in God, who have confidence in him.

16. 6:56

    And so they say, let's make brick. They didn't have stone or anything with any kind of significant durability to it. They're using inferior materials already by starting off with clay. And then they use, instead of cement, bitumen or asphalt, slime, to be able to hold the whole mass together as they build this building, this ziggurat up to heaven.

17. 7:23

    And as it goes on, it says, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven and let us make us a name. And you just think about that. Holy Jerusalem coming down from God. A city honoring him completely. A city that is about his name. And these people are making a city for their name.

18. 7:51

    And that attitude hasn't stopped, has it? It's everywhere in the world today. It's still the attitude of human nature speaking in its constructions, in its devices, in the things that it makes for itself to have a figment of shelter from the storms. And so they build this to make themselves a name lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

19. 8:23

    So they're united. They have unity. And if you want to know what would complete unity be amongst mankind today, this side of the kingdom, it would be utter breaking loose and rebellion. That's what it would be. And so they are making themselves something to prevent themselves from being scattered abroad, as had been the case at one point in time.

20. 8:52

    And they do not want to be drowned. They're going to have something that they can ascend and be at the top of lest there ever be a flood again. And it reaches up to heaven, which means they're challenging God. They're challenging God. Now what they are doing is the opposite of what God told them to do.

21. 9:12

    He said, be fruitful and replenish the earth to Noah and his children. And that word replenish means to fill or to fill again. So it was not about concentration of people in one area. It was about them repopulating and spreading out of the earth. So this is an act of disobedience on multiple levels.

22. 9:37

    On multiple levels. It goes on and it says, the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded. And Yahweh said, behold, the people is one. The revised version says, they are one people. One people. And they have all one language. And this is what they begin to do.

23. 10:06

    Now nothing will be withholden from them which they purpose to do. And so the angel of Yahweh who is speaking on his behalf and evaluating the situation who is down there in the midst of humanity. Now could they not have done that from heaven? Oh the heavens? Of course they could have. But there's a message.

24. 10:33

    God's angels are in the midst of humanity without them ever knowing. They're in our midst without us ever knowing. And he evaluates. He says, look, because of the unity in number, their aggregation as one people and because they speak one language, they are able to do this thing. Now you just think of the internet that we have today and what it allows people to do.

25. 11:08

    People in Sweden are able to get information on how to build a bomb from people who are in Iraq through the internet when any kind of communication along those lines would have been impossible 50 years ago. You couldn't write a message to a terrorist in a letter and post it 50 years ago.

26. 11:31

    Today, on the internet, anything is possible. Anything is possible. Advanced research is occurring in China which allows for the severing of the head of a live person to put onto a dead but still healthy body of another person so that that person can be a strong and healthy and walking and vibrant muscular individual.

27. 11:59

    That's research that's currently underway. Research today, likewise, is underway to be able to find ways. Are there ways? Are there ways to be able to take thought and to electronically codify not just thought but memory? Think of what mankind could be capable of. Artificial intelligence is now at a level of sophistication where you might think a robot will interact with you or an application, a system will interact with you and it will be very machine-like.

28. 12:42

    But there's a new in-depth research that's occurring. MIT and now Microsoft are involved in this research and it's called artificial emotional intelligence which means through the loading in of images of all the variations in emotion of a single person multiplied by 10,000 people an app is able to learn the subtle gradations of human response and emotion and interact accordingly.

29. 13:19

    Already you may have, whether you know it or not, whether it exists or not, technology at the American border which is looking for heat distribution on your face as you lie about not having bought anything on your vacation.

30. 13:37

    Now these are just the baby stage of what could happen, of what could happen. Mankind can easily destroy itself with its own technology. When God sent that angel down, to evaluate what was going on, it wasn't with the intent of destroying mankind. It was with the intent of saving mankind so they did not destroy themselves.

31. 14:12

    And so the angels say what they say. These people have one language, one dialect, and one notably rebellious disposition. The seven go to, let us go down there and confound their languages that they may not understand one another's speech. So, they're going to take the one language and put confusion into it. And put confusion into it.

32. 14:38

    So Yahweh scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth and they left off to build the city. It would be like opening your Facebook account in which you are interacting or your Microsoft application with which you are interacting with teams and all of a sudden all you can see on it is Russian or Pashtun or Swahili and realize we can't do anything.

33. 15:06

    We don't understand their language. They don't understand our language. However God did it we're not told that languages come into being so that cultures and countries and kindreds and families aggregate around language. Around language. Today there are 3,000 languages and formal dialects on the face of the earth. 3,000. 3,000. Once there was only one.

34. 15:37

    The multitudes on the earth spoke the one language and collaborated together for rebellion. Why is that so important in the Abrahamic story and the narrative? Because Abraham now has to think outward from his country from his kindred and from his family to go into a world where he has to be led by faith and periodic guidance from God to a country he's not certain of the actual positioning of.

35. 16:23

    He's given promises by God and he has to now live by faith. And he's in the territory of peoples who are foreign because of what happened in Babel. And an interesting point is Babel in Hebrew means confusion. But the Babylonians called it something different. They called it Bab-ilu which means the gate of the gods.

36. 16:54

    And so they saw this ziggurat that they were building as something that was a gate to the gods when it was just a piece of rubbish made of clay and slime and didn't go forward. We're then introduced to the generations of Shem which leads to the generations of Terah. And verse 26 Terah lived 70 years and begat Abram, Nahor and Haran.

37. 17:24

    And these are some interesting names. If we are to take on board the definitions of some of the lexicons. So Brown Driver Briggs defines Nahor as meaning snorting. Strong says it means snorer. Well some of you snort while you were snoring. Just ask your wife. She'll confirm that that is the case. Right?

38. 17:52

    It comes from the word Nahar which means to snort or to snore is what Strong tells us. Terah means delay. Delay. Delay. There's almost an element of temporizing in that. In other words let's see how it will go. Let's not make a decision one way or the other. Let's see where the wind blows us.

39. 18:16

    Terah. And so a family moves and moves and moves verse 28 Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity in Ur in Ur of the Chaldees. And Ur means light. It means light or flame. And the Chaldees well Brown Driver Briggs says that Chaldees means clod breakers. Clod breakers.

40. 18:48

    People will break up soil ground. Perhaps it's a reference reference to those who are farmers and who cultivate the land. Perhaps that's what it is. But Ur means light. And in its time Ur was the advanced city of the region. It had indoor plumbing. There were recreational facilities, libraries filled with clay tablets that could be used for research by scholars.

41. 19:17

    people had proper homes, well built, robust, and strong. And God says to a man, I want you to leave all this behind. And so it goes on and says, in verse 30, referring to Sarai, the wife of Abraham, or Abram, she was barren. And she had no child. And of course, that reminds us of all of the barren women in Scripture through whom a miracle child came and through whom God would do miraculous deeds in the work that he needed to do, including the Lord Jesus Christ.

42. 20:00

    Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan. And they came into Haran and dwelt there in the days of terror, 205, terror died in Haran.

43. 20:22

    Brother Harry Whittaker in his little commentary, Abraham, talks about archaeological evidence that would seem to indicate that there was a migration of peoples at this particular point in time. He ties some of it back to some of those who might have become persecutors of individuals whose religion might not have kept step with the religion of the gross idolaters who became more and more dominant in the world at this particular point in time.

44. 20:54

    Well, we may not have huge evidence for that, but it is one way of explaining some of the migration of the peoples at this particular point in time. Or it may just have been that environmental conditions, drought, and so on, moved people along, moved people along as time went by. We don't know and it's not important.

45. 21:17

    What is important is that these people were on the move and then stopped and didn't move further. But God knew they had to keep moving. But he knew only one would have the character, the strength of personality to stick to it and to do what he said and to obey him. And so it says, Now Yahweh had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house until land that I will show you.

46. 21:53

    Now you know brothers and sisters, we read that and you do those readings and you see it year after year after year. And what was required of Abram is not always utterly clear. The story of Abram, the father of the faithful, begins with an exodus. The story of the children of Israel as a nation begins with an exodus.

47. 22:25

    The story of the savior of spiritual Israel finds its crescendo, its most dramatic moment beside the resurrection, in his exodus, which he was about to accomplish in the crucifixion that Moses and Elijah spoke to him about on the Mount of Transfiguration. The story of your life as a believer began with an exodus out of Adam and into Christ.

48. 22:58

    and every one of us has a wilderness wandering that accompanies that exodus. God is asking Abram to leave kith and kin everything that's familiar. In the society, the social fabric, the milieu that had been created by the creation of languages that didn't connect. What became most important to people was your country, your people that you were related to, and your family.

49. 23:37

    And God says to him, I want you to leave all of that. And he says to him, Lech Lecha, you have to do it for your own good, Abram. Leave for you. Leave for your sake. Because if you stay where you are, you will not become my child.

50. 24:10

    And so this sending forth of Abram involved leaving behind everything that was familiar. And think of the character of Sarai who believed that God spoke to her husband, who so respected him and loved him and honored him that she called him Lord in her heart. Even at those times when it was so difficult to do it.

51. 24:42

    Think of the quality of this woman who leaves her home behind so that she can knock about in the wilderness in danger with dust and dirt coming into the tent every day. Nothing settled, nothing stable. and being willing to do that because she believed.

52. 25:10

    It says and I will take you to a land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and I will make your name great. Now what was it that the people who were trying to build Babylon wanted to make? A name for themselves.

53. 25:33

    A self-made name. All about humanism. Human centric thinking. But God says I will make you a name. I will make you a name. I will make him a reputation. He will make his name honorable. He will make his name something great. That's what he will do with his name. God would say the same thing to David in 1 Samuel chapter 7 that he would make him a name likewise.

54. 26:08

    And we only need to read Matthew 1 verse 1 to see the name that's made where billions of people have read these words about Jesus Christ the son of Abraham the son of David. God made it for him. And thou thou shalt be a blessing. Thou shalt be a blessing. All those who would be associated with Abraham would be blessed in him.

55. 26:44

    Abraham's life would function as a template for the most godly life not perfect but a godly life full of faith and trust. When the eyes of flesh saw nothing to validate that trust. The way that he interacted with his wife though he made such grievous mistakes with her. Now I'll put in a plug for a book not because he's sitting in the audience but because it's a good book.

56. 27:14

    If it wasn't a good book I wouldn't put a plug in for the book. And that is Brother Rogers Abraham and Sarah. Beautiful study. Fleshes out beautifully the relationship between the two of them. What they went through together thematically from the beginning all the way to the end of their lives. A profoundly lovely text.

57. 27:37

    If you can get a copy of it in the rush to the table after this class please get a copy of it. Harry Whitaker's book on Abraham if you can find it is also worth having a look at in reading. And look at what Brother Thomas says about Abraham and how this Israel.

58. 27:53

    You might be surprised about the wonderful things that he talks about. In this particular instance there are about seven elements to the promise that God makes at this initial point with Abraham. Seven points. And if we were to list those seven points. One, he's promised that he will make of Abraham a great nation.

59. 28:26

    Then land is promised to Abraham's seed. Then the land is promised to him on the basis of three conditions of which the first one is going to be met with him leaving where he is at this particular point in time. Fifth, Yahweh's fatherhood is delegated to Abraham and the promise of a divine family to come.

60. 29:00

    Then next, there is a promised seed that will be made reference to in Genesis 17 and verses 15 to 16, 18 verse 10 and 14.

61. 29:13

    Of course, Isaac would be born 12 months after this particular point in time. And then finally, the promise as the life of Abraham progresses and he demonstrates his faith and his belief, though not without problems in two instances, then what happens is the promise becomes unconditional. The cross reference for that you might look at is Hebrews 6 verses 13 to 18.

62. 29:40

    Now, all of these things have been cataloged by brother Jim Cowey in this particular catalog summary. Also, he points out the fact that the Abrahamic covenant is preceded by a covenant with the Gentiles that is made in which seven new lambs are offered in Genesis 21 verses 22 to 23. Hence, Beersheba, the well of the seven or the well of the oath.

63. 30:07

    And then he notes it culminates with Genesis 22 verse 18. And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. All the nations of the earth. Now, this is how brother Thomas summarizes it in Elpis Israel. There have been multiple editions. The one I'm quoting from is, well, the last published fourth edition that was edited by him.

64. 30:30

    The actual edited edition. This is what he says. Eight points. One, that God would multiply his descendants as the stars of heaven for multitude and make them a great and mighty nation. Two, that at that time his son, his own name, Abraham's name, would be great with the multiplication of the people. Three, that out of his posterity should arise one in whom and in himself all the nations of the earth should be blessed.

65. 31:02

    Four, that he together with this personage, Abraham and Christ, should have actual possession of the land of Canaan forever. Five, that they too with all his adopted seed should possess the world. Six, that the seed or Christ would be an only begotten and beloved son. Even the seed of the woman only and therefore of God.

66. 31:37

    That he would fall a victim to his enemies and in his death be accepted as an offering by being raised from the dead after the example in the case of Isaac. Seven, that at a second time Christ would possess the gate of his enemies in triumph and obtain the land of Canaan and the dominion of the world according to the promise and eight, that at that time he and his adopted seed would be made perfect, receive the promises and enter into the joy of their Lord.

67. 32:15

    Isn't that wonderful? It means everything we believe is encapsulated in the promises made to Abraham. Which start being made in Genesis chapter 12 and then are augmented more comprehensively in chapters following. But it's all there, the entire gospel. The gospel was preached to Abraham by God. Abraham believed the gospel. The identity, the face of the individual, that seed of his that would come, he couldn't see yet.

68. 32:48

    But he had all of the gospel. He knew about the king that would come. his suffering. The multitude and the seed that would be multiracial. All those people in Revelation chapter 5 who sang. He knew all of that. And so right up front God gives to him, even in the briefest of summaries in chapter 12 that we see summarized for us in the written text, a comprehensive view of the gospel that we believe today.

69. 33:21

    Abraham departed as the Lord had spoken unto him and lots went with him. And Abraham was 75 years old when he departed out of Haran. He takes his wife, he takes his nephew, he takes all their substance and all the souls that they had gotten in Haran. And so wealthy people at that particular point in time had servants.

70. 33:50

    I grew up in a home in Trinidad which was just a moderate middle class home and there were people who were servants. People that did the laundry, people who took care of the gardens around the home. And the wealthier families had battalions of servants who did everything in the home. And servants weren't in this time necessarily slaves.

71. 34:14

    They might be people who freely volunteered to become paid servants or members sometimes of the family almost. So you have that variety of people. When we read of Eliezer, he may not be a slave. In the sense that we would think of African slavery, for instance, in the British Empire and in North America in its time, at its time.

72. 34:38

    So all of the servants that he had go with him, his wife, his nephew, traveling. Zolotus is a man who has some kind of faith in him. Some kind of faith in him. But he's like those people that are described close to the end of Matthew chapter 28. after Christ has revealed himself.

73. 35:06

    And it says, they believed, but some doubted. The resurrected Christ is talking to them. He's proven to them who he is. And some still doubt. Wavering. Wavering. On the dividing line between belief and unbelief.

74. 35:26

    And so, Lot, whose name, some interpret to mean a covering or a veil, goes along with his uncle and his uncle's wife. Verse 6, Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem unto the oaks of Morah. The Canaanite was then in the land. And there's a cue to us that there's danger in the story.

75. 35:57

    That where they are is not necessarily a place that is safe. That these foreign people are not going to be the kind of people that will mix with them or that they want to mix with. And could be an incredible danger to their personal safety. So there are now major safety issues that have to be contended with.

76. 36:18

    And that Abram has to be concerned with. And Yahweh appeared unto Abram and said unto him, Thy seed will I give this land. This land? this land. And there builded he an altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him. And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel. And look where he pitches.

77. 36:41

    Between Bethel, the house of God, and Ai, a heap of ruins. every moment of every day of a life in belief in the world is lived between those two.

78. 37:04

    We are members of the house of God, but we often find ourselves dancing in that borderline between a heap of ruins and the house of God on the other side. You will recall Judah, the son of Jacob, the grandson of Isaac, the great grandson of Abraham who went for 20 years to live in the equivalent of a heap of ruins.

79. 37:33

    And his life became a burnt down rubble of a life, a 9-11 of a life when he brings himself back home to his father's house and reenters Bethel.

80. 37:50

    So Abraham is in this place between these two terrible sets of choices. Now, some people believe that faith is a bucket of something that falls on you and immerses you as you learn the truth. That's not what faith is. We know that it's about confident assurance and believing the things that we learn in the gospel and the truth as we are instructed from baptism.

81. 38:21

    But faith becomes a choice at a particular point in time. Some people are waiting to hear a voice. Some people are waiting for there to be a sudden moment that comes where they believe.

82. 38:39

    But in fact we choose to believe these things. I believe these things with all my heart and I choose to believe these things. There's an analogy linguistically, just a tenuous one, but the word agape, we say it means self-sacrificing love. That's not how it's defined by commentators and by lexicographers. It is love that chooses its object with a decision of will.

83. 39:10

    When your 16-year-old son is standing in front of you, Christadelphian dad, swearing at you and you would like to slap that face right off his head, you make a choice to love him. That is agape love. You are not lovable, but I choose to love you. Because you are my child. And I will be faithful to my love for you, no matter how you behave, though I may have to take corrective action.

84. 39:45

    And so faith is a thing that we have deep inside of ourselves and grows and grows and grows through the years, but we make the choice to believe. And so sometimes when we're on the edge, we're in that nexus between belief and unbelief. between Bethel and Ai, and we're looking at the scientific evidence and we're confused by the billowing clouds of information that seems to disprove the Bible, you make a choice to say, what?

85. 40:14

    I'm not going to believe that. I believe scripture and I have enough confidence in what I see in it. What I see is demonstrable evidence of its trustworthiness and God's hand in my personal life and I choose belief. And I choose to believe. It's a choice when those days come. And for many of us, if not all of us, there are struggles with doubt in faith.

86. 40:42

    with doubt. Is this really so? Does this little group of people actually have the truth? Is it the truth? Well, evolution says this and the people who are doing advanced research in genetics are saying this or that. well, they've always been building a clay ziggurat. They've always been. It just looks different from age to age.

87. 41:08

    We step aside from that and say, no, I'm not going to believe that. I'm going to believe this. I choose to believe it. I am going to choose to love God and I'm not going to let go of that no matter what.

88. 41:24

    And so, the story continues and it says in verse 9, he journeys going towards the south and there was famine in the land. God promised him this fruitful land and the moment he promises it to him, he dries up the ground and the animals start to starve and the servants are losing weight and the children are crying for food and Abram is looking at all of this and he's a man of faith.

89. 42:01

    Now, I, Harry Witt and many others would have thought that when Abram makes his decision to go down into Egypt that it's a panicked, pell-mell, moment-in-time decision especially when he comes up with this ruse, this counterfeit truth, this half-truth about his relationship to Sarah but I think Roger explains it more logically in his book looking at the whole character, the whole depiction of who Abram, Abraham is as an individual.

90. 42:37

    He never does anything in a slapdash or knee-jerk way. He is a thoughtful, reflective and cautious man and the decision that he makes is weighed every which way for its potential for good or for evil and so he thinks to himself which is absolutely true at this moment in time, I am a chieftain according to the cultural norms of this multi-racial, multi-linguistic society, I am a chieftain and therefore I have a responsibility for my family members and for the people who belong to my tribal unit and that is going to be respected in the countries I travel through so Sarah, I am afraid that somebody might take you away from me because of your incredible beauty and so I want you to say you are my sister because they will honor that, that they will honor because they will know if I want that woman to be my wife I have to engage in a process that has stage gates and milestones all the way through the process, the flow of that process and they are going to have to seek my permission for you to marry them and we can figure out a way to get out in that period of time while all that process is underway.

91. 44:04

    He never expected as Brother Roger points out that they would arrive at the door and demand to take Sarah with them to the king's palace and that's how sometimes things happen when we try to go by our own lights intelligent though we may be wonderfully effective though we may be in the world around us when we try to use our worldly intelligence apart from reliance in prayer on God to make these kinds of decisions in our lives he got into such trouble his every day and every night was spent with weeping exhaustion this terrible sense of what he had done and what he had said and what it resulted in for his wife it says in verse 10 famine arose they went down to Egypt to sojourn for the famine was grievous in the land it wasn't his intent to live there he was going to sojourn until the famine was over and then leave and he came to pass that he was come near to enter into Egypt he said to Sarah his wife so he's been thinking this through but he didn't tell her until they are near to entering into Egypt lest she have time to think about it and say no counter his argument with where is your faith or say I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this he talks it through with her and she is convinced behold I know you are a beautiful woman to look upon it will come to pass when the Egyptians see you that they'll say this is his wife and they will kill me to save you alive save I pray thee say I

92. 46:04

    pray thee thou art my savior that it may be well with me for thy sake and my soul shall live because of thee and both brother Roger and brother Harry point out he shifted the risk all the risk from himself to his beloved sister wife brother Harry points out we should not feel anything but the greatest compassion and sympathy for this man it is easy for us to be armchair critics of his decision because we're not there we're not there we don't have to smell the stink of animals carcasses around us and to see the starvation of those we care about around us who we're responsible for or a wife who herself is giving up her food so the children of the servants can eat and is getting thinner and thinner we're not faced with that but that's where he was between AI and Bethel and he moves towards AI in this decision it goes on and it says it came to pass when Abram was coming to Egypt the Egyptians beheld a woman that she was very fair princes tell Pharaoh they come and they take the woman to Pharaoh's house can you imagine that moment of separation if you want to see it fleshed out read Brother Roger's book and he entreated Abram well for her sake and Abram has to keep up this travesty Sarah has to do it for love of him likewise and Pharaoh keeps giving him gifts and giving him gifts and giving him servants and giving him animals everything he lost in the famine he regained but at what a terrible cost and then finally God touches the Harim

93. 48:14

    the women's quarters where all the women lived raised the children and so on and they're affected and Pharaoh comes to understand why and Pharaoh can you imagine that moment there was a Pharaoh that stood in front of Jacob and said how old are you as a Pharaoh that stood in front of Abraham and said what were you thinking why did you lie to me why did you say this to me Abraham doesn't even have an answer there's no answer later on in another situation there'll be an answer but not at this moment and then he says look here's your wife and what did he see an Egyptian princess in front of him clothed with Egyptian clothing her eyes widened with the dark lines with which the Egyptians made themselves up her hair quaffed as would be the hair of an Egyptian princess jewelry on her and he was responsible for all of that and he leaves and God leaves it up to us to imagine the conversations the feelings that come after that Pharaoh gave commandment concerning him and he sent him away and his wife and all that he had there isn't one single life in this room that is clean and clear and free of sin shame regrets things we wish we could go back and undo or unsay or unexperience but that is the life of a believer and we push through and we get past if you have no regrets to look back on in your life you haven't changed because you don't see anything wrong with what you did or said or experienced but if we have things to look back

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    on and wish we could go back and redo them we're actually growing in the faith Week Week