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Gen 12:1 Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
Gen 12:2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
Gen 12:3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
This is the second time God has spoken to Abram (that we know of from the Bible), and this time, he listens, and heads for Canaan. And when he gets there, God speaks a third time:
Gen 12:6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.
Gen 12:7 Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.
Note: THIS land. God is telling Abram, "You are there!" This is where God wants him. But...
Gen 12:8 From there he moved ...
Abram is really having a hard time getting the message. So he moves a little farther down. What was wrong with where God told him? But he's not in trouble yet; he' goes to "between Bethel and Ai", still in the land, just about 20 miles south. And he builds an altar and calls on the Lord. But then...
Gen 12:9 And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.
Catch that? "STILL GOING..." Why?
I believe it is a matter of TRUST. He's looking at a land that is okay... but surely God can do better? Or maybe it's the famine conditions that are still drying out a land just 360-some odd years after the worldwide flood, three generations since the re-arrangement of the world in the days of Peleg. Either way, for some reason, where God told him to stay put wasn't good enough, and he ended up...
Gen 12:10 Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.
Egypt. I can think of, including this one, four times someone on God's heart went to Egypt- two on God's urging, two against His will. Joseph led his family to Egypt under God's design, to let them grow as a people, before the utter dipstickery of the sons of Jacob- marrying Canaanites, sleeping with Dad's concubine, getting the daughter-in-law pregnant- undid all of His plans. Mary and Joseph also took the child Jesus to Egypt on God's urging, to protect the child from Herod.
But I want to look at the two that should NOT have happened, because we learn something of God's carpentry on Abram from them. There are two main reasons to disobey God: One is, you don't trust enough, and decide he needs YOUR help. This was Abram's problem, and if you know the story, you know it takes a LONG time to get that fixed in him. That other time came after Jerusalem fell, and the last king, Zedekiah, was dragged in chains to Babylon. There were Jews left in Jerusalem. and God through Jeremiah told them to trust the Babylon-appointed governor, Gedeliah. If they stayed there and obeyed Gedeliah and the Babylonians, God would protect them. But oh, no, they had to assassinate Gedeliah and run things their own way. Even then, Jeremiah told them, "God will still help you just DON'T GO TO EGYPT." And they replied,
Jer 43:2 Azariah the son of Hoshaiah and Johanan the son of Kareah and all the insolent men said to Jeremiah, “You are telling a lie. The LORD our God did not send you to say, ‘Do not go to Egypt to live there,’
Jer 43:3 but Baruch the son of Neriah has set you against us, to deliver us into the hand of the Chaldeans, that they may kill us or take us into exile in Babylon.”
Now it's time for US to practice trust. For Jeremiah, as he was being dragged with them into Egypt, prophesied,
Jer 43:9 “Take in your hands large stones and hide them in the mortar in the pavement that is at the entrance to Pharaoh's palace in Tahpanhes, in the sight of the men of Judah,
Jer 43:10 and say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will send and take Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will set his throne above these stones that I have hidden, and he will spread his royal canopy over them.
Jer 43:11 He shall come and strike the land of Egypt, giving over to the pestilence those who are doomed to the pestilence, to captivity those who are doomed to captivity, and to the sword those who are doomed to the sword.
Jer 43:12 I shall kindle a fire in the temples of the gods of Egypt, and he shall burn them and carry them away captive. And he shall clean the land of Egypt as a shepherd cleans his cloak of vermin, and he shall go away from there in peace.
Only thing is, if you listen to the experts, this never happened. They know of Nebuchadnezzar attacking Egypt more than once- and failing. BUT- one of those supposed failures occurred during a time of Civil War in Egypt- and a lot of details in the history are missing. One of the sources I looked at mentioned a 40 year span of very cloudy history- and from his place among the earlier exiles to Babylon, Ezekiel backs up Jeremiah, predicting a 40-year destruction of Egypt- and both prophets claim Egypt would recover, which it did. Don't let scientists scare you. No one thought the kings of Israel were anything but myths until Ahab's name was found an an Assyrian monument in 1861; no one thought Troy was anything but a legend until Schleimann found it in 1871, and no one thought King Tut was real until Howard Carter found his tomb in 1922.
One day, perhaps, the evidence of Nebuchadnezzar's invasion will be found. But if you trust in God, and you follow the true science that has confirmed nearly every other history the Bible has shown us, you will be one step ahead of Abram at this point, and be able to trust God with everything- even staying put in a famine.
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