The Deceptive Patriarchs
Part 1: Abraham and Isaac
Genesis 12:11-13
Introduction.
We often hold up the patriarchs of Genesis up as models of virtue, particularly Abraham.
But as we talked about a couple weeks ago, sin tends to spread even to the next generation.
And while Abraham was a righteous man, as were Isaac and Jacob, none of them were perfect.
This gives me great comfort to know that we, too, can be righteous without being perfect.
Granted, we have more information than Abraham did in the form of the Bible, and we have a perfect example to follow in Christ.
Of course, Christ represents a standard of righteousness we will never really be able to attain.
Still, a man praised for his faith like Abraham is not something we should ignore.
But one sin seems to have spread from Abraham to his son Isaac.
That is the sin of deception.
On top of that, we find that Isaac married a woman, Rebekah, who is also rather deceptive with a very deceptive brother, Laban.
Their father was Bethuel, and who knows how bad the deceit was in that family!
But that deceit continues with Jacob—we’ll talk more about that as we move on.
The lies of Abraham and Isaac are similar, so I’m breaking this lesson up into two sermons.
Part 1: the Lies of Abraham and Isaac and Part 2: The Lies of Jacob.
The lies of Abraham and Isaac both have a similar story.
Each time they go to a foreign land and lie about the nature of their relationship with their wives, Sarah and Rebekah.
They do this because they are afraid they will be harmed so the king in the land can have their wives.
Of course, there are several problems with that thinking, as we’ll see (it would mean they would have their wives anyway, it shows a lack of faith in God).
Since these lies are very similar, we will consider three things:
Description (Gen. 12:10; 20:1; 26:1-6).
Deception (Gen. 12:11-13; 20:2; 26:7).
Development (Gen. 12:14-20; 20:3-18; 26:8-11).
Body.
Description (Gen. 12:10; 20:1; 26:1-6).
There are a lot of parallels among these three events.
In at least two of these times the purpose for Abraham or Isaac going to another land is because of famine in Canaan.
It could be that Abraham went to Gerar (Gen. 20) due to famine, but the text doesn’t say so explicitly—in fact Gen. 26:1 seems to suggest it wasn’t.
Of the two times Abraham went, the second time was to Gerar having encountered their king, Abimelech.
Isaac also visited Gerar and visited King Abimelech.
It is possible that Abimelech is simply a title for kings, like Pharaoh in Egypt or Caesar in Rome, since Isaac’s encounter was about 80 years after Abraham’s.
Though Abimelech does become a name for others in Israel, most famously for Gideon’s son who became an illegitimate king for three years.
There are, of course, other similarities, but we will save those for other points.
And there are differences, as we will examine the context of each situation.
Abram in Egypt.
In Genesis 12, Abram (not yet called Abraham) was just given a major promise.
We talk about these often as the land promise, the nation promise, and the seed promise (12:1-3).
These promises were reemphasized later, but he was promised quite a lot for a 75 year old man with no children.
So he moves to Canaan, Shechem specifically, after having moved from Ur to Haran.
These were not short distances, particularly on foot.
He left his home and moved to this strange land on a promise from God.
This shows immense faith already!
Then the Lord appears to him again and says, “To your descendants I will give this land” (Gen. 12:7).
He builds an altar and settles in an area between what is later called Bethel and Ai (Gen. 12:8) – there he calls on the name of the Lord.
After heading a little further south, there is a famine in the land and he heads to Egypt.
This doesn’t show a lack of faith per se—it shows instead that he didn’t know the path that God would take him on to fulfill His promises.
He could always return to Canaan after having left it for Egypt.
But we see that his faith does waver with the lie told.
Abraham in Gerar.
A lot had happened between Abram going to Egypt and this point.
He and his nephew Lot separate, he is then taken captive and Abram rescues him.
The promise to Abram is renewed three times, and the second time comes with a name change to Abraham and mark of circumcision.
He tries to fulfill the promises of God his own way by having a child by his wife’s maidservant Hagar.
The third time the promise is renewed, three heavenly visitors assure him that he will have a son—then Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed for their wickedness.
A lot has happened by the time Abraham goes to Gerar, enough that you would think his faith would be strengthened.
And yet he tells the same lie he did in Egypt.
But what about Isaac.
Isaac in Gerar.
Finally, Abraham has the son of promise, born to him of his wife Sarah.
As a teenager, Isaac is nearly sacrificed to the Lord to show Abraham’s faith.
There is no indication he fought it, but you have to wonder what was going on through the young man’s mind.
Did his father’s faith transfer to him? We’re not told. In fact, we are told very little about Isaac himself.
But Sarah dies, and Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for Isaac among his relatives in Padan-Aram.
Amazingly, he finds a beautiful young woman named Rebekah, thoughtful and kind.
Abraham remarries, has more children, and dies not long after, having left Isaac his full inheritance after having given gifts to his other children.
Isaac has two sons, Jacob and Esau. As they grew Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for a pot of stew—we’ll talk more about that next week.
But then there’s another famine, and he goes to Gerar (Gen. 26:1).
The Lord tells him not to continue on to Egypt as his father had, but affirms the promise given to Abraham to Isaac (Gen. 26:2-5).
Given all that, and the promises that had been fulfilled thus far, you would think his faith would have been strong.
And maybe it was, but it did falter in one area, as it did with Abraham—so he lies just as his father did.
Deception.
In each case, the lie is the same.
The lie was with regard to the man’s wife.
Abraham and Isaac both tell the people in the land where they are that their wife is in fact their sister.
In Abraham’s case, that’s not entirely inaccurate, for Sarah was his half-sister.
Since they often called relatives “brother” or “sister,” it’s not entirely inaccurate for Isaac, either, since Rebekah was his cousin once removed.
These relations sound repugnant to us today, but they were rather common up until a few hundred years ago.
So what was the reason for this lie?
Reason for the lie.
Each time the reason given is the same.
As we stated earlier, both men were afraid they would be killed so the men there could have their beautiful wives.
There are several things wrong with this way of thinking.
What’s wrong with this?
First it assumes that these men are totally wicked enough to murder for their libido (Gen. 20:11).
Sadly, about 1000 years later, the king who was a man after God’s own heart would do just that.
But that’s something that never came into the minds of the kings of Egypt or Gerar—at least that’s what they say when the lie is discovered.
Abimelech even calls his nation a righteous nation, and God seems to agree with this assessment! (Gen. 20:4-6) – a Philistine nation, no less.
In any event, we shouldn’t assume the worst about people when there is no evidence to suggest we should.
Should we be cautious? Well, depends on the situation. Should Abraham and Isaac have been cautious? Yes, probably, but then we’re forgetting the second reason why this was a bad idea.
They assumed that these kings would kill them for their wives.
Well, wouldn’t that then negate the promise given to them?
As we just stated, the first time Abraham lied in Egypt, he had not long been given this great promise.
The second time, that promise had been reaffirmed three times!
Isaac also had just received that promised personally and stayed where the Lord wanted him to stay.
In all their lives, they had no reason not to trust the Lord, and yet such lies to preserve their lives seem to show a lack of faith on their part.
While they may have later been lauded for their faith, apparently it wasn’t a perfect faith.
These lies made the would-be sacrifice of Isaac necessary to solidify Abraham’s faith in the Lord—aside from Isaac being another type of Christ.
That may be a bold claim, but I think it fits.
When we lie or sin in any way, we are showing a lack of faith in God.
It’s not that we have to atone for it (Christ has done that for us), but we do need to reaffirm our faith in Him by repenting and confessing our sins to Him (1 John 1:9).
Well, let’s see how this shook out in these areas, and what other lessons we can learn from it.
Development.
Abram in Egypt (Gen. 12:14-20).
At first it started well—Sarai was taken to Pharaoh’s house and Abram was treated well.
Then the plagues started.
We often talk of the ten plagues of Egypt in Exodus, but that wasn’t the first time God plagued the land of Pharaoh.
In this case, however, Pharaoh’s heart was not hardened—when he learned that Sarai was Abram’s wife, he gave her back.
We’re not told how Pharaoh learned of this, but once he did he was eager to return her.
Amazingly, he had not done anything inappropriate with her before this time—and it’s even more amazing the next time this happened.
In any event, Pharaoh was furious and sent Abram packing.
That’s how lies often pan out, isn’t it?
We start off reaping the benefits of it, but when we are found it (and we will be found out), the people around us are angry and often want nothing to do with us.
We are taken in and a trust is broken, relationships are harmed.
Abram does not return to Egypt after this, and it is in Egypt that his descendants are enslaved for hundreds of years.
Abraham in Gerar (Gen. 20:3-18).
We are given more details in this event.
Of course, this was after the names were changed to Abraham and Sarah.
God comes to speak to Abimelech directly, revealing Abraham’s lie.
God tells him what the penalty would be his death if he went ahead with it.
Then Abimelech comes back by asking if He would slay a righteous nation also.
Wait, who said anything about the nation, Abimelech?
Recall in Egypt there were many plagues in the land warning Pharaoh against taking Sarai, but there wasn’t that here.
No, instead, almost as an afterthought, it is revealed that the Lord had closed up the wombs of the women in the house of Abimelech.
We also find that perhaps Abimelech himself was sick because it says that God healed him and the women in his household.
If the women suddenly were barren, then it could be viewed as slowly killing a nation which is what Abimelech was asking about.
But it does raise an interesting question: how long were Abraham and Sarah there before the lie was exposed?
Long enough for them to discover that the women were barren! And yet no one had taken advantage of Sarah yet.
Surely the hand of God was in this situation.
God tells Abimelech that Abraham is a prophet, so when he returns Sarah he also gives him a bunch of stuff to appease him to go before God on his behalf.
I don’t want you to get the wrong message here: it would seem that if you lie, you might be rewarded when the lie is found out—that almost never happens.
No, the lesson is that our lies often harm others, often far greater than we could have thought possible.
Abraham’s lie threatened the lives of the people in Gerar.
What harm might we cause when we lie?
Isaac in Gerar (Gen. 26:8-11).
This event lacks any mention of plagues or other penalties for taking Isaac’s wife.
There is also no mention of a divine warning given to Abimelech.
If this is the same Abimelech, then it’s likely he knows who Isaac is, who is father was, and what he did to him last time they met.
If it isn’t, then perhaps he remembers stories told of what happened before.
In any event, I sense a certain level of suspicion on the part of Abimelech here as he is takes in Isaac.
Here is this man’s son, this man who lied to me that the woman with him was his sister, and here is his son telling me the same thing—red flag!
After all, he later says, “One of the people might soon have lain with your wife,” not that he would have done so.
Nevertheless, he gives him the benefit of the doubt, but then his trust is immediately betrayed—like father, like son.
So he happens to catch a glimpse of Isaac and Rebekah together through a window.
What they are doing is not entirely clear. The NKJV translates this has “showing endearment;” KJV says “sporting.”
But this word elsewhere means, “to laugh.” Other places say, “to mock,” or “jest,” or even “to play” in Exo. 32.
In any event, whatever they were doing, they were showing a certain familiarity that only a husband and wife did back then.
Do you think that might have played a role in the envy they felt later in the chapter and the following disputes over the wells?
I don’t know, it doesn’t say. But given the nature of lies and how they affect our relationships, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I’m sure Abimelech was happy to get rid of them.
Conclusion.
Solomon writes that there are “six things God hates, yes seven are an abomination to Him” (Prov. 6:16-17).
The first three are, “a proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood.”
I don’t think this was put in any kind of order when it comes to severity, but lying is certainly among the things mentioned as something God hates!
You can still be saved if you have ever lied, but as we have seen in these passages, much harm can come from it.
There is a school of thought that there are situations where it is acceptable, maybe even proper to lie.
They’ll bring up theoretical or even historical situations, asking if it was wrong for people in Nazi Germany to have lied about whether or not they were hiding Jews in their home.
They will contend that when someone’s life is on the line like that, then lying is the right thing to do.
That’s a difficult situation to be sure, but how likely is it for you to be in that situation.
“Stephen, you don’t know my wife. If I don’t lie to her and tell her the pot roast is good, she’ll kill me!”
Be that as it may, let’s always strive to tell the truth.
Both Abraham and Isaac perceived their lives to be in danger, yet in lying to protect their lives, they endangered the promises given to them, showed their lack of faith in God, hurt other people, and hurt their relationships with them as well.
They endangered those promises by risking the impregnation of their wives by other men, making it difficult to know if the child was Abraham’s or Isaac’s seed, calling the promises of God into question.
Abraham already tried that with Hagar, but that was a failure.
So, being people who value the truth, we recognize who the father of lies is.
That’s Satan himself!
Let us follow after God, and be people of the truth, trusting in God no matter what.
Yes ready to listen to part two. Is it available?
Yes indeed! Part 2 is right here: https://www.rutherfordtonchurchofchrist.com/the-deceptive-patriarchs-2/