Beyond the broad Euphrates, the great river we have talked of before, which flows into the Persian Gulf, lived Abram, and Sarai his wife, with Nahor and Haran his brothers, and Terah their father. Haran died sometime after his son Lot was born. All of them, and I suppose nearly everyone in their country, and all over the world, both prayed and made presents to idols; they were idolators, as we say. Probably only three hundred and seventy years had gone by since the flood, but Satan had been very busy, and the whole world nearly, was by this time given up to worshiping false gods that men had made with their own hands.
And now God chose one man out of all this idol-worshiping world,—this Abram that I mentioned first,—made Himself known to him, and told him to get out of his native land, away from his relations and from his father’s house, to go to another country that He would tell him of afterward. It could not have been because Abram was any better than other people that God did this and I don’t think he was any better. I think it was just as, long afterward, God did with Saul of Tarsus, in the Acts, chapter 9, when He took a man who cared nothing for Him, and after bringing him to see how bad he was, and that God alone could save him, giving him something to do in the world for Him.
It could only have been because Abram believed what God had said to Him, that he gave up his home and started off for an unknown place with nothing but God’s spoken word to depend on. We have more than Abram had; we have God’s written word to tell us about God, and if we believe in our hearts what His word says about. us, and God’s way of salvation, we are saved, and going to a better country than Canaan, the land to which Abram was sent. Do you remember the verse in Acts 16:31,31And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. (Acts 16:31) “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved”? God has made it very easy for us to be saved from His anger in that coming day of judgment, but do not put off, dear children; “Now is the accepted time,” as God’s word itself says.
Well, Abram started from his home with his wife and his father and his nephew Lot. This was not doing exactly what God had told him, and so they stopped at a place named Haran, and did not go all the way to the promised land until after father Terah was dead. Then the three, Abram, Sarai and Lot, set out again, and coming into the land of Canaan from the north, they went through it to a place not very far from Jerusalem, though there was no Jerusalem then, I think. The maps in the back of your Bible will show you about how Abram must have journeyed.
There were several nations living in the country they went through, and like those who lived where Abram had,—like Abram himself had been, too, they did not know or care about the true God, and worshiped idols. Abram had come to Canaan on a simple promise from God, and He now appeared to him again, saying, “Unto thy seed (or children) will I give this land”. And there Abram built an altar,—a place on which to offer sacrifices,—to the Lord who appeared unto him. When he moved to another place, he built another altar, and from what the latter part of the eighth verse tells us, I am sure that Abram was learning more of God, and his life was showing it too. If you are one of the Lord Jesus’ lambs, your words and ways ought to show it too, shouldn’t they?
Wonderful man as Abram was, though, he failed when trial came. God let him be tried by a famine in the country. Perhaps there had not been enough rain to make the farmers’ crops grow; there certainly wasn’t much food to be had, either for themselves or their animals, and there was plenty in Egypt, and so Abram, forgetting to trust God to take care of him, as surely would in the place He had sent him to, went down there to stay until the famine was over in Canaan.
Now it is something I have proved many times, and perhaps my readers have too, that one wrong thing leads to another. That was the case here, for Abram didn’t get further than the boundary of Egypt, before he and his wife fixed up a lie to tell when they were down there. Sarai was a pretty woman, and Abram was afraid the Egyptians would want to take her from him and would kill him, so he asked her to say that she was his sister. It happened as Abram feared; the king, or Pharaoh of Egypt, took her for one of his wives. and gave Abram many valuable presents of cattle and servants and donkeys and camels for Sarai’s sake. And now again God came into what was going on.
Abram and Sarai were in serious trouble, and only God could help them. If we are saved, we ought to ask God in the Lord Jesus’ name to help us in every trouble. He will, just as surely as can be. Verse 17 tells us that He made a lot of trouble for Pharaoh and his household; we don’t know just what it was, but something that made the king of Egypt send Sarai away, and Abram, too, very quickly. It wasn’t very nice though, that someone who didn’t know God, should have to tell one of God’s children about his ways not being just right or truthful.