1. Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word, as we continue our Lenten Midweek series on, “Coming Home from Exile: The Exoduses of the Scriptures,” is taken from Genesis 12:10-20, and is entitled, “Abram’s Exodus before the Exodus,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. There goes Abram, heading down to the land of pyramids. He’s going the wrong way, isn’t he? Isn’t Canaan, the land of the Jordan, the Holy Land, his to have by God’s decree? It is. But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. And, Abram had hungry mouths to feed. His own, Sarai’s, and plenty of others. So, with famine devouring Canaan, he set his sights on the lush fields of Egypt.
3. There goes Abram, revealing his plan to beautiful Sarai. “Tell these foreigners you’re my sister,” he says, “or I might find my head at the wrong end of a rope.” Abram’s going the wrong way, isn’t he, trying to pull the wool over Egyptian eyes? Shouldn’t he just have kept his mouth shut, or revealed the truth and suffered the consequences?
4. And there goes Pharaoh, taking this retirement-age beauty queen into his royal harem. Pharaoh’s going the wrong way, isn’t he, abusing his powers to amuse his libido? He most certainly is, as he’s soon to find out. For he’s nabbed no ordinary lady, no Jane Doe, but Abram the patriarch’s wife—she from whose womb is to issue forth the promised seed Isaac. Unknown to him, Egypt’s king just stirred up a heavenly hornet’s nest.
5. So there come the plagues, crashing into Pharaoh’s house, causing who-knows-what to happen; but whatever it was, it wasn’t pretty. Unlike a much later Pharaoh this king doesn’t need a ton of plagues to arm-twist him into submission. He escorts Sarai to her home, though quite angry at Abram for hiding the fact that Miss Sarai was actually a Mrs. “Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go” (12:19). And the patriarch does go with his wife Sarai, saying adios to Egypt for good. But, he doesn’t leave empty-handed. For Sarai’s sake, the king had opened wide his wallet, giving Abram sheep, oxen, donkeys, servants, and camels. Protected by grace, enriched by Egypt, and blessed by God, the father of faith heads home to the Promised Land.
6. Amazing, isn’t it? But here’s what is the most amazing of all: all these things happened and were written down for your sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come. For the story of Abram—later Abraham—is Israel’s story, and Israel’s story is the story of Jesus, and the story of Jesus is your story—the tale of your exile and return to the God of salvation.
7. What happened to father Abraham happened because of his sons, yet to be born. Not three generations would pass before grandson Jacob and great-grandsons Joseph and his eleven brothers would all wind up in Egypt because of a famine. In time, they would get in hot water with Pharaoh. God would bombard Egypt with plagues—a whopping ten of them. Then, finally, this king would surrender under heaven’s pressure and free the children of Abraham, but not before the Egyptians had emptied their own wallets to fill those of their Hebrew slaves—a well-deserved back pay for their years of unpaid sweat. So there go the Israelites—protected by grace, enriched by Egypt, and blessed by God—finally homebound, just like Abram. Same song, second verse.
8. But still the song goes on. For who is Abraham and who are the Israelites but those who blazed the path we now tread? For no matter what city and state are written on your birth certificate, here is the actual truth: we all were conceived and born in Egypt—a far worse Egypt than Abraham entered, ruled by a far worse tyrant than Pharaoh, under a slavery far, far worse than that suffered by Israel.
9. What is Egypt but a picture of the land of the shadow of death, the country called sin? And who is Pharaoh but the devil’s puppet? He’s like the serpent in Eden, the outward mask of the inner demon, who rules the land of sin with a rod of iron forged in the flames of Hades. And what is the slavery suffered in Egypt of old but the image of the shackles that bind man and woman, infants and elderly—the slavery to sin that leads to the grave and plunges one into hell and the lake of fire?
10. Hear the Word of the Lord, sons and daughters of Abraham: Repent! For, worse than the fact that you were born in the land of sin, you keep returning! For caged though you were, you loved the forbidden pleasures, the sweets thrown you by the devilish master. Worse than the fact that you were ruled by him, you still submit to the devil’s temptations and kiss his scaly feet. Worse than the fact that you were enslaved, you have kept the chains, willingly strapping them on still, enjoying the slavery to lust, greed, power, wealth—whatever the poisonous weeds are that grow so well on Egyptian soil. Repent! For the night of slavery is over; Sarah has been freed and you with that lady of faith leave the devil’s harem and flee into the arms of your Lord Jesus, the heavenly Bridegroom. Wash Pharaoh’s stench from your flesh in the holy waves of repentance and forgiveness. Come to your true home; come to Zion, the city of the living God, to the promised land of Jesus. Come home, for God has left the light of his grace on for you, shining in the face of him who is Light of light. Come out of Egypt, for the way has been prepared for you.
11. Abraham’s story is Israel’s story, and Israel’s story is the story of Jesus, and the story of Jesus is the story of your salvation. For, wonder of wonders, God protected Sarah’s womb from Pharaoh that, in the end, Jesus might be born for you. From Abraham’s seed came Isaac through the womb of Sarah; from Isaac’s seed came Jacob through the womb of Rebekah; from Jacob’s seed came Judah through the womb of Leah; and, finally from no man’s seed, but conceived by the Holy Spirit, the promised Seed himself came through the womb of the Virgin. He came for you, to make you sons and daughters of Abraham by faith.
12. For there goes Jesus, coming down from heaven to the Egypt of sin and death, all to redeem you and make you his own. And not only you but Abraham and Sarah, and, yes, Pharaoh and his household, Mary and Joseph—all of them and all of you. For he goes head-to-head with the Egypt of sin and death, the pharaoh of hell itself, and wins by losing, lives by dying, saves you by letting himself be crucified on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins. For the Israelite babes thrown in the Nile to the unborn murdered in the womb—he is born and dies. For the women forced into harems to those who willingly defile their bodies—he is born and dies. For the men who betray their wives to those who fantasize about doing so—he is born and dies. For one and all, the bad and worse, rich and poor, black and white—he is born in Egypt, suffers the plague of God’s wrath toward the sins of all humanity, and in so doing smashes the chains of sin and death that bind you.
13. O Christian, rejoice, for you are free! You are redeemed! No longer are you a foreigner and exile from the promised land. You are a citizen by grace, by the One who bought your citizenship with the gold of his body and the silver of his blood. He has led you forth from the place of captivity and death, washed you clean in the Red Sea waters of the baptism font, and filled your body and soul with the riches of the kingdom of heaven. The light is on for you, for you stand in the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. By Grace, Jesus Leads You from Captivity and Death to Stand Again in the Light of His Glory. Amen.
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