God’s promises trump our plans...

This week, we are looking at a section of the very first letter in our Bible, called the book of Genesis. In this section, we saw Abram believe that he had a plan to ensure his survival that was fool proof and would cover all the bases. A plan that would result in Abram being treated well by the Egyptians who he believed would attempt to win Abram over so he would to agree to let them marry his “sister”. A plan that would ensure the survival of Abram and Sarai from a famine and the advances of any man who would be interested in marrying his beautiful wife.

Yesterday, however, we discovered that, like so many plans, there was a major problem with Abram’s plan. We saw Abram’s foolproof plan fall apart, as Sarai was given in marriage by her husband Abram to Pharaoh and became a part of Pharaoh’s harem. Abram’s foolproof plan backfires as he loses his wife. Abram’s foolproof plan results in Sarai sleeping with and having an affair with Pharaoh.

Instead of trusting and obeying God for his survival, Abram decided that he was going to help God out by coming up with a plan to ensure his survival and the fulfillment of God’s promises. But now, far too late in the game, his plan has now backfired and has threatened the fulfillment of God’s promise. Today, we will see that it is in this context that we see God step into the situation in a powerful way in verse 17:

 But the LORD struck Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife.

Here we see the Lord respond to Abram’s illegitimate attempts to help God out by bailing Abram and Sarai out of the horrendous mess that they had made. The Lord responds to the situation by inflicting Pharaoh and his household with a series of plagues. Now a natural question that arises here is “Well, Dave, why did God inflict Pharaoh with a series of plagues? I mean Pharaoh did not know that Abram had lied to him? How can God punish Pharaoh when Pharaoh was ignorant of Abram’s deceptive plan?”

If these questions are running through your mind, I want to let you know that they are great questions to be asking. And my response to those questions is this: Just because Pharaoh was ignorant of Abram’s deception that does make ignorance an excuse for selfishness and rebellion. Throughout the pages of the Bible we see revealed for us the reality that ignorance is not an excuse in God’s eyes.

And while Pharaoh was ignorant of Abram’s deception, he was not ignorant of his rebellion against God when it came to how he expressed his sexuality and by how he viewed himself as a god. And, as we will see, Pharaoh clearly understood that he was experiencing divine judgment for his selfishness and rebellion. We see this reality revealed for us in Pharaoh’s response in verse 18:

 Then Pharaoh called Abram and said, "What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? "Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her and go."

Pharaoh responds to the divine judgment that he and his household was receiving by angrily summoning Abram and Sarai into his presence. Pharaoh focuses his anger at Abram with three sharply worded questions: "What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? "Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her for my wife?” You see, Pharaoh now recognized that he was guilty of adultery as a result of Abram’s deception.

Yet, unlike another ruler, King David, Pharaoh resists the temptation to further exercise his power in a selfish and rebellious way. Instead of killing Abram and keeping his wife, Pharaoh recognizes that the punishment would be even more severe on him and his family if he killed Abram. From Pharaoh’s perspective, if he experienced these severe plagues after sleeping with Abram’s wife, what would happen if he killed Abram?

So Pharaoh repents of his adultery by restoring Sarai to Abram, without asking for the large dowry that made Abram an amazingly wealthy man, and then tells them to leave. And as the story concludes, we see Pharaoh make sure that they leave in verse 20:

 Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him; and they escorted him away, with his wife and all that belonged to him. So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, he and his wife and all that belonged to him, and Lot with him.

Now when Moses says that Pharaoh commanded his men to escort Abram and Sarai out of Egypt, this phrase, in the language that this letter was originally written in, is the exact same phrase that is used to describe how God removed Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3. Pharaoh had some of his men act like bouncers and threw Abram and Sarai out of Egypt.  Abram, Sarai, Lot, and the large dowry that made Abram amazingly wealthy, left Egypt and returned to the Promised Land, to the area near its southern border.

Now, I don’t know about you, but this story makes me want to go take a shower. This story has a high “ick” factor to it that makes you want to cringe, doesn’t it? But it is here, in this story that makes us want to cringe, that we see God reveal to us a timeless truth when it comes to God’s promises. And that timeless truth is that God’s promises trump our plans. Just as it was for Abram and Sarai; just as it has been for humanity throughout history; God’s promises trump our plans.

I mean, if we were brutally honest with ourselves, how often are we tempted to act just like Abram? How often do we find ourselves tempted to attempt to help God out by coming up with our own plan, instead of trusting in God’s promises and obeying God’s plan?  How often do we find ourselves in a place where we attempted to follow our foolproof plan, only to later look on as our foolproof plan backfires and falls apart?  And how often can we find ourselves in a place in our lives where we experience the wake of consequences that comes as a result of trusting in our plans instead of God’s promises? How often have we been in a place where God fulfills His promises to us in spite of us instead of because of us?

So here are some questions to consider: What are you trusting in? Are you trusting in God’s promises by following God’s plan? Or are you trusting in your attempts to help God out by coming up with your own plan?