This is one of the few times in the Bible where Abraham is shown getting off the track. The reason he was doing it is because he thought that he was gaining for himself greater safety and liberty. He lost his footing regarding Sarah, he was not trying to gain the Kingdom of God, but he was trying to gain the world. The result was a stinging rebuke by the pagan Egyptian.
I get the picture of Abraham being escorted right out of the country. That is the way he got rid of the plagues.
Now think about this. What a humbling experience that must have been for Abraham. A Christian ought to have power over other people’s conscious for good. In other words, when it comes to good and evil, we ought to make them feel a measure of guilt for doing evil if we do nothing except not participate in what they are doing. And if we do not, we are a poor witness for God. We do not have to change them, but we should make them feel a measure of revulsion for us, want to get rid of us, expel us, want us out of their presence, however you might want to put it, not want us around.
Abraham’s expulsion here, I think at least shows you and me that the world will not have us among them. If we do not leave, they will force us out. What it shows then is Abraham making a turn and once again escaping from the world.
Abraham had a lesson to learn. That is, cleverness is no substitute for faith. Now he contrived this deceit, which was half true, but it may as well been all untrue, but it was half true, indeed she was his sister. But he did this in order to save his own life. He had not learned yet the type of faith that he would trust in God to the extent of actually giving up his life. He had to learn a lesson that sin does not solve problems, it only produces more problems. That is the lesson of unleavened bread, how that sin spreads. This deceit that he pulled not only began to affect him, but also began to affect the Egyptians as well because God plagued the Egyptians because of the sin that was being committed here.
God Almighty had to lead through many forked roads our forefather Abraham, in many of which he took the wrong fork. In Genesis 12:11-20 (before the Pharaoh in Egypt) and also in Genesis 20:1-2 (before King Abimelech), events in Abraham's formative years (lessons placed there for our contemplation and admonition), Abraham compromised with God's law—at least that part dealing with bearing false witness. God Almighty allowed Abraham to take the wrong fork in both situations, and then in His mercy bailed him out of a bad situation, but not before Abram stewed in his predicament for awhile, learning some hard lessons about taking the expedient, faithless way out.
Now I'm going to throw one in here. This was the second time that it happened! Look back at Genesis 12:10-20 and the same thing happened between Abraham and Pharaoh fifteen or twenty years before. How long was God's forbearance now? Fifteen or twenty years.
But He had given Abraham time to repent of this sin, but he never did it. Eventually I'm sure that he did, but here we have a fifteen or twenty-year period of time where God tested him on the same problem in order to help him grow in character. I thought that was kind of interesting.
