Gen 12: God calling Abram and blessing him to found a great nation; Abram lying about Sarai

In this passage we are told of Abram's calling, his obedience and journey to Egypt. There, overcome by fear, he lies, putting his wife in danger of adultery with Pharaoh. God however, intervenes to deliver her.

• v1: God called Abram and told him to move out of the land of his nativity, into the land of promise. Abram had to take a step of faith – to leave all that was familiar, to move into the new thing that God had for him. There are times in our lives when God tells us to leave everything behind, even the good things, in order to move into the new things that he has for us. Are we obedient to His call, even when the thing that God is calling us to seems so unfamiliar, so distant and so unappealing compared with what lies behind? Luke 14:26 - "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple." This was also a test of Abram's obedience when he did not know of the promised land as yet - God did not say "go to the land I will give you", but He said merely "a land that I will show you". Abram had no details, and hence we must exercise faith, putting trust in things as yet unseen.
  
• v2: God gave Abram a promise. It sounds too wonderful to be true, for Abram was childless, and he and his wife Sarah were both old. To believe what God wass saying, he had to believe against hope, and his faith must have been built firmly upon the power that called everything into being. Are we clinging on tightly to the promises of God, even when our circumstances seem to say otherwise? Are you living in the reality of God's promises or are you overwhelmed by the circumstances surrounding you?
• v3: God promised to make Abram's name great, despite deserting his country and everyone he knew and being childless. "you will be a blessing...all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" : We see in this verse a prophecy of the Messiah, the promise that crowns all the rest, that Christ will descend from the bloodline of Abram.
• v4: Abram departed, in obedience to God’s call, without knowing what was ahead. Abram’s age when he left is a reminder for us, that it does not matter how old we are, because God can call anyone at anytime. For "By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going" (Heb 11:8)
• v5: Abram took everything, because he had no intention of returning to the place God had called him to leave.
  
• v6-7: God appeared to Abram, promising him the land as his inheritance. But note that when God promised Abram the land, it was already inhabited by the Canaanites, a great and mighty (although godless) people.
• v8: Abram continued to praise and honour God – he built an altar to worship and seek God, even though he was not able, as yet, to see what God had promised brought into fruition.
• v10: The fruitful land was now barren, not just to punish the iniquity of the Canaanites, but perhaps to test Abram’s faith, whether it would endure through such hardship, unlike his seed, who complained that they were brought forth "to be killed with hunger" (Ex 16:3). Perhaps it was also a test of his endurance, whether he thought that God’s promise was worth all this trouble seeking. We cannot expect things to be smooth-sailing for us just because we are walking in God’s calling.
• v11: Abram denied his wife, and pretended that she was his sister. Even the greatest men have their failings, reminding us constantly that he who thinks he stands may take heed lest he falls. He did not exactly lie, but had the purpose to deceive, and as a result, exposed both his wife and the Egyptians to sin. Why does he think that the Egyptians would rather be guilty of murder than adultery? Abram fell into sin through his unbelief and lack of faith that God would carry him through, even after God had appeared to him twice.
  
• Along with Isaac, Abram was the centre of the promise-plan by which God was going to bless every nation, in spite of all their blundering, lying and fearful ways. Both Abram and Isaac practised deception, but God came through and preserved the purity of Sarai and Rebekah. It was true that Sarai was Abraham's sister (Gen 11:29), and it was highly unlikely that Abram was willing to sacrifice his wife's honour and allow her to marry any suitor in order to save his own skin and possibly get some financial gain (Gen 12:13 - "Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake..."). Attitudes toward adultery were much more sensitive than ours (Gen 20). Abram probably hoped to get out of his brother status the right to receive and deny all suitors' requests to be Sarai's husband (eg. Laban and Rebekah in Gen 24, Dinah and her borhters in Gen 34).
• v14-16: as a result of Abram’s actions, Sarah was in danger of having her chastity violated by the king of Egypt.
• v17: God delivered Sarah from danger. He chastised Pharaoh and hence prevented the progress of his sin. Likewise, if God did not deliver us out of our distresses which we bring ourselves into by our own foolishness and sin, where would we be now?
• v18: Pharaoh reproved Abram – “What is this that you have done?” Pharaoh reasons with Abram, intimating that if he had known the truth, he would not have taken Sarah into his house.
• v19: Pharaoh restored Abram's wife to him without any injury to his honour and sent him away in peace
• There seems to be a resemblance between Abram’s delivery out of Egypt and the deliverance of his descendants. 400 years after Abram went into Egypt because of a famine, the Israelites too, went into Egypt to look for food. As Abram was dismissed by Pharaoh due to the plagues brought upon Pharaoh and his household by God, and enriched with the Egyptians’ riches, so were his descendants.