“The Meaning of a White Lie”
(Genesis 12:10-20)

Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor
July 19, 2009

 (© 2009 by Robert M. Thompson.  Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures quoted are from The Holy Bible,
New International Version, Copyright 1978 by New York International Bible Society.)

Freedom – Middle School Style

You really should, at least once in your life, hang out with Middle High kids for a week at camp.

I’ve always loved this age group.  They are old enough to begin thinking for themselves, but young enough for try new things and have some uninhibited fun.  They get excited about singing silly songs, ringing an old railroad bell, canoeing down a river, learning to be alone with God, hearing Hamp Shuford stories, climbing up a rock wall, and sitting around a campfire oh, and a 6 AM polar plunge into the Johns River.  Middle High kids are also refreshingly honest.

Chris Van Allsburg and I led them in Bible study every morning and vespers (devotions) every evening.  One day we had a very interesting discussion about the story of the bent-over woman that Jesus healed on the Sabbath in Luke 13.  (I have three degrees in Bible, theology, and ministry, and have read the Bible through several times, but this is one story I had overlooked somehow.  When I saw in the curriculum that we were going to study the bent over woman, I thought somebody made that up.  But it’s there – check it out.)

Chris and I set up the discussion by getting into a planned argument.  He showed up a few minutes late, and I gently chided him.  Then we got into a minor tiff about keeping rules and schedules, and even had a couple of staff members join the back and forth.  Most of the kids didn’t realize we had set this up, and it even made a couple of them uncomfortable.  “Can’t we just forget this and get on with the lesson?”  That, of course, was the reaction we wanted.

I was trying to explain that we have to try to find a balance between too many rules and too much forced cooperation on the one hand, and the anarchy that results when there is no structure and no authority.  Thinking I was asking a rhetorical question, I said, “How many of you would like to come to a camp with no rules, no structure, and no schedule?”  About half their hands shot up!

I recovered quickly enough to say, “That’s why Middle School kids aren’t in charge of the world.”  They insisted they would love to be in a camp where they could sleep until 1 PM or eat when they were hungry or explore what they wanted when they wanted.  Unrestrained “freedom” sounded good to them.

And I answered, “OK, suppose you want to sleep until 1 PM.  But there are no rules.  So the other kids can throw a bucket of ice water on you at 3 AM.”  Chris wisely chimed in by telling the story of the novel, Lord of the Flies.

Whether they got the point, I’m not sure.  But their underdeveloped reasoning about freedom certainly illustrates well a significant if unpopular point of Christian doctrine.

If you happened to miss last Sunday’s sermon, a word of explanation is in order. This month marks the 500^th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, the Protestant reformer whose influence remains pervasive on our nation and our church tradition.  To honor Calvin, my sermons will review some of the key points of his teachings.  We began last week with predestination.

But it would hardly honor John Calvin to preach about Calvinism for seven weeks.  He would, in fact, be horrified at the prospect.  Calvin believed the role of the preacher is to preach the Bible.  The pulpit should be elevated and distant – but not to promote the preacher or puff up his pride.  The Word of God deserves our respect, and both preacher and hearer should keep their focus on what God is saying through the Scriptures.  He said if a pastor did not first study the Bible thoroughly, “it would be better if he were to break his neck while climbing into the pulpit.”

So we will center our attention on the text.  Then we will step back from the text and relate it to Calvin’s life and teaching.

Abram’s deception

We will explore the life of Abraham as we teach the basic doctrines that Calvin taught.  Last week we began with the call of Abraham, still referred to as Abram during this part of his life.  God chose Abram not because he was worthy or talented or a self-starter, spiritually speaking.  It was God’s initiative to move Abram from Ur to Haran and then to Canaan, with a promise to bless him, bless his descendants, and bless the world through them.

If you have found yourself awakened by the awareness that God chose you in spite of yourself – that he gave you privilege and opportunity and salvation that you never possibly could have orchestrated yourself – that’s what we mean by predestination.  Don’t get into arguments over whether that’s fair or what happens to people who aren’t chosen.  The starting point in Abram’s life is simply the knowledge that he was chosen by God.  So were you.

As we come to Genesis 12:10, we come to a strange twist in the story – several strange twists, in fact, will follow.  Abram leaves the place to which God has called him, the place where he had built several altars to Yahweh – sort of like planting multiple flags.

A famine has battered the land.  Archaeologists have found evidence of a 300-year drought cycle that humbled what would become the Promised Land.  So this nomadic patriarch was forced to leave what he thought would be home to his family and his descendants, and he went to Egypt.  The Nile basin provided a stable environment for a way of life dependent on water.

The Bible makes no condemnation of Abram for this survival response, but what do you suppose Abram was thinking?  How do we tend to respond when we believe we are doing the right thing but circumstances turn on us?  We start to think “God has lied to me.”[1]

But Moses (the author of Genesis) shows us that Abram still trusted God, because he went to Egypt “for a while.”*  Abram’s example should encourage all of us to hold on to faith when problems beyond our control force us to alter our plans.  Our plans may change, even our physical location, but our faith must stay strong.*

In verses 11-13, Abram feels threatened by this new circumstance.  He’s married to a beautiful woman, and he’s worried that the Egyptians will kill him so they can take his wife.  So he instructs Sarai to tell everyone that she is his sister.

That’s strange, on a number of levels.  Let’s not jump too quickly to judge Abram.  We should give him the benefit of the doubt where he deserves it, but we should also assign blame where he deserves that.*

We learn in a later incident (20:12) that Sarai technically was Abram’s sister – half-sister, anyway.  This was a half-truth, a white lie.  But it was deliberately deceptive and, more importantly, he put his wife in a vulnerable position because she could have been treated as a prostitute.*  He was thinking only of his own self-preservation.

Many times we also do the wrong thing with some pretense of self-justification.  I did it to save my skin.  I really was telling the truth, not just the whole truth.  A better response would be wait, pray, and take a risk that doing the right thing will not ultimately pay off.*

People often ask how Sarai could have been considered such a beautiful woman when she was in her late 60s – beautiful enough that Abram felt someone might murder him to have her.  There may be several possible explanations.  Some commentators suggest that since people are recorded as living much longer at the time (Sarah died at 127, Abram at 175), you have to figure about half the years in terms of aging.*  So think of a woman in her mid-30s.  Other commentators note that beauty is not just about facial features or form.  Her elegance, clothing, jewelry, and her smile made her beautiful.  In either case, you just have to love the story of a man who’s still so in love with his wife of many years that he sees her as a woman other men envy.[2]

As it turns out, Abram’s suspicions of how the Egyptians would see Sarai were spot on.  We see in verses 14-16 that word spread throughout the whole palace about this beautiful “unmarried” woman.  The officials take her straight to Pharaoh, yet another reminder that people in power often demand that their subordinates pander to their lusts.*

Apparently the king never had his way with Sarai, but the gifts he gave to Abram seemed rather to be preparation to buy her hand in marriage.*  Verse 17 says that a plague on Pharaoh’s household was God’s punishment, and the monarch recognized it as such.  He spared Sarai and Abram this violation, and it is a reminder to us as well that God often protects us from those who are more powerful.*

It seems unfair that Pharaoh was punished for Abram’s deceit, but this is a point for humility.  We are not in a place to question how God imposes his judgments, and it is an important reminder to those in power to exercise their authority carefully because they, too, have a judge.*

At the end of the story, it is a pagan king, however, who chastises Abram in verse 19, and he deserves it.*  He makes no response, probably indicating that he agrees with the rebuke.*

Furthermore, the king, knowing his own people might threaten Abram on his way out of Egypt, provides him and his family safe passage to the border (v. 20).*

Lessons

What can we learn from Abram’s experience in this story?

First, we are not as good as we think we are.  Abram certainly learned this lesson in a most embarrassing way.  I don’t know what it is that causes us to rationalize and excuse our behaviors.  But probably everyone here has areas you would not want exposed to the world – the part of a tax return where you fudged the numbers, the unkind words spoken behind closed doors, the times when alcohol or drugs are clearly in control, the moments when it feels like a white lie is justified.

Most of the time, we’re not caught.  But when we are, like Abram, it’s humiliating.  It’s not only humiliating; it’s revealing.  The meaning of a white lie is that it exposes us.  We’re nailed.  Almost everyone will fudge the truth or color the truth or not tell the whole truth if a white lie or a misleading statement is safer.

Second (and this is a point I’m not sure Calvin would have made in the same way), others are not as bad as we think they are.  One of the intriguing parts of this story is that the Egyptian Pharaoh has more integrity than Abram.  He could have killed Abram whether he was Sarai’s husband or brother.  He could have taken her into his harem without marrying her.  Once he found out Abram lied to him and caused death and fear in his household, he could have in anger terminated Abram immediately. 

It turns out Pharaoh wasn’t so bad after all.  He (a) showed restraint and honor toward a woman he thought was single, (b) confronted Abram and gave him a chance to explain, and (c) sent him away not only with safe passage but apparently with all the possessions Abram had accumulated through his deceit.

It is amazing that the Bible includes this story where one of its heroes, Abram, turns out to be less honorable than a pagan king.  Maybe one of the lessons is that we need to stop assuming the worst about other people.  Sometimes we’re just projecting our own evil thoughts on to them.

Third, we are all desperately in need of grace.  This is the place at which I want to return to John Calvin’s teaching and to an important building block of Christian doctrine.  Abram’s moral failure illustrates the teaching. 

The Bible teaches us.  “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10).  It’s in our songs.  “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”  And it’s certainly in the writings of great Christian thinkers, like John Calvin.  We have a name for it – total depravity.

The order for communion in your bulletin (John Calvin’s 1540 Strasbourg liturgy) puts this doctrine into words as a confession of –

O Lord God, eternal and almighty Father, we confess and acknowledge sincerely before you holy majesty that we are poor sinners, conceived and born in iniquity and corruption, prone to do evil, incapable of any good, and that in our depravity we transgress your holy commandments without end or ceasing.  We purchase for ourselves, though your righteous judgment, our ruin and eternal destruction. 

John MacArthur writes, “It is impossible to overstate the importance of total depravity in Calvin’s theology….It is a point to which Calvin inevitably refers, no matter what other doctrine is under discussion.”[3]

If as MacArthur is right about Calvin, then Calvin is off balance here.  What I mean is that if we are to teach what the Bible teaches, the Bible does not refer to total depravity on every page and subject.

It’s not the whole story.  But it is a necessary part of the story.  Total depravity does not mean that apart from Christ we do nothing that is kind or brave or honest or generous.  It means that any good we do is by God’s grace.  And ultimately we are incapable of changing our hearts and to turn them Godward.

In other words, those Middle High kids who think they want to go to a camp with no rules are only expressing what is in every human heart apart from grace.  They’re just refreshing enough to admit it.  What they really mean is, “I want to do what I want to do, but I would like you to put some restraints on everyone else.”  They’re also saying, “I trust myself to do the right thing by me, but I don’t trust anyone else – especially those in authority – to do the right thing.”

Apart from God’s grace, we are all there.  And this is an essential building block of Christian teaching.  Without “total depravity,” the rest of our world view falls apart.  If we’re not rotten to the core, we don’t need God, we don’t need Jesus, and his cross makes no sense.

We’ll pick it up there next week.  For now, let us simply admit our condition and revel in God’s provision around the Table of the Lord.  Amen.