Out of Egypt, But – God Overrules

ABRAM had left Egypt, but Egypt had not left Abram. Egypt’s cattle went with him, and became the occasion for the strife between the brethren before the eyes of the unbelieving Canaanites and Perizzites. How sad, this strife between the brethren; and all of it because of the disobedience on the part of Abram. Had he only trusted God when the famine came, and remained in the land of fellowship, the quarreling would never have happened. Abram is reaping now what he had sown. God did forgive, to be sure, but the penalty had to be borne.

What a warning and lesson all of this presents to us. Believers cannot disobey God and expect to go unpunished and unjudged. They cannot go into the world, and remain unaffected and untainted. To make God’s forgiving grace the occasion for careless living is to invite the chastening and the judgment of Almighty God. O, how we wish that we could drive this truth home. Thousands of God’s dear children pay until their very dying day for their mistakes and their carelessness in life. Yes, God does forgive, we praise Him for that, but they still pay, pay in remorse, in hindered testimony and in the consciousness of loss of reward and limitations of their joy.

There is another great lesson here. God could use Abram’s mistakes and Abram’s sin of backsliding into Egypt the means of separating him from Lot. God had said, “Get out . . . from your family,”—Lot, who represented the world and Terah, who was a type of the flesh. By a painful experience Abram had gained victory over the flesh when he buried Terah, in Haran. Now he must be separated from the world as well. God in His infinite wisdom can use our failures, yes, even our sin, that He may the better exhibit His grace and make even the wrath of men to praise Him. He, therefore, permitted Abram to disobey; and He used that very disobedience of Abram to carry out His divine plan to separate Abram from the world in the process of perfecting his faith. Of course, Abram was in no wise justified in his disobedience, but God could still overrule to accomplish His purpose in Abram’s life in preparation for the final victory of faith when he withheld not his own son, Isaac. Without these experiences both of failure and of success, defeat and victory, Abram could never have attained the glorious climax of his faith whereby he earned the distinction of being called the “father of the faithful” and the “friend of God.” Yes, where sin did abound, grace did much more abound.

Adapted and modified excerpts from Studies in the Life of Abraham by M. R. De Haan (1891-1964)
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.