Focal passage: Genesis 12:10-13, 17-13:4
We don’t know what it was like for Abram to hear God’s voice, calling him away from his home to set out and make a home with the Lord. Whatever expectations he must have had as he packed his belongings, readied his family and then took the first step, I bet he never expected famine. A few verses before our text begins in Genesis 12:10, God had appeared to Abram. God had promised abundance both for Abram and for his offspring. And we see that Abram felt the magnitude of the moment: scripture says he built an altar to the Lord who appeared to him and worshipped.
I don’t know what Abram’s worship looked or sounded like. Did he dance? Did he sing? Did he roar out in victory, amped up in adrenaline by the appearance of the Lord, or take a deep, satisfied breath resting in the security of God’s providence? We don’t know. But Abram, a sojourner and stranger leading his family in a new land, heard the Lord, followed the Lord, saw the Lord and worshipped the Lord. And then famine hit.
The famine, Genesis 12 says, was so severe that Abram and his family had to move. God didn’t speak this time. He didn’t appear. He didn’t warn Abram. The famine hit, and Abram journeyed on. In the midst of this upheaval, the famine stirred deep, debilitating fear in Abram.
This will be the end of me, you can imagine Abram thinking. “[The Egyptians] will kill me,” Abram told beautiful Sarai, “but they will let you live.” So lie, Sarai. Lie to keep me alive. And she did. A single lie could have put the promises of God and the future of the people of God at stake, but God intervened. God guarded and God afflicted. Before the plagues in Exodus, we see a quieter – only one verse this time – account of “great plagues” on the Pharaoh of Egypt. And, as the one true God does, He delivered those whom He called and made Himself known.