Exodus, Prologue: Who Is This God?

Genesis 12

Today we’re really excited to be beginning a new series on the book of Exodus which will bring us up to this summer. It genuinely was not a joke we’d planned for this series to coincide with our leaving one location and going to another; we had planned on this series long before we knew about the move. But it is strangely appropriate.

If you’re only joining us recently, you may not know this, but what we’ll be doing over the next few months is what we usually do: with only a few breaks here and there during the year, we preach through books of the Bible, from beginning to end. We do this simply because we believe it’s the most faithful way to preach the Bible—if we go through a book from beginning to end, that means that you all can follow along with us, and hopefully understand why we’re saying what we’re saying. At the end of the day it’s not our opinion or our teaching that matters, but God’s Word, and what he wants to say to us through his Word.

We’ve got a bit of work to do today, because even though we’ll be starting at the beginning of the book of Exodus, we’re not starting at the beginning of the story. The story of Exodus is actually the second part of a much longer story that makes up most of the Old Testament; in order to truly understand the book of Exodus, we need to understand the book of Genesis, which is the first part.

Of course we can’t see all of that today, so we’re going to spend our time today in Genesis 12, which will serve as an introduction for what’s coming starting next week. For all the other things we need to understand but can’t cover today, we’ll fill you in as we go.

And we’re seeing this text, not so much to give us historical context, but more thematic context. That is, in Genesis 12, we see a sort of microcosm of the bigger story we see played out in Exodus, and in the rest of the Bible. The Bible isn’t ultimately the story of God’s people; it’s the story of God himself, and in this passage we see two massively important aspects of who God is. We’ll see these two aspects of his character over and over again, in the book of Exodus.

Who Is This Man?

But before we see all that, let’s look at the passage. In v. 1 of chapter 12, we’re introduced to a man named Abram (who would eventually be called Abraham). We see Abraham all over the Bible, in the Old and the New Testaments. So one of the first questions we’ll want to ask is, who is this man, Abraham? We’ve heard so much about him—who is he?

Well, first off, remember Noah’s sons? After they left the ark, Noah’s three sons had kids of their own. And in chapter 11, starting in v. 10, we have the line of the descendants of one of these sons, Shem. This genealogy follows the same pattern from beginning to end: “When so-and-so was so-and-so-many years old, he fathered so-and-so, and so-and-so lived so-and-so-many years and had other sons and daughters.” (So clearly not everyone is mentioned here.) But at the end of the genealogy, the pattern is broken: 26 When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

Not a lot is said about Terah’s family; it says they lived in the country of Ur; that Abram had a wife, Sarai, who was barren; that they moved from Ur to Haran and settled there. But something is mentioned in the book of Joshua which is, I believe, significant. In Joshua 24.2, we see Joshua speaking to the people of Israel, Abram’s descendants: 2 And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.’” So Abram’s father, and (it would seem) Abram himself, was an idolator. He was not faithful to the Creator God of Noah; he served other gods.

But despite this, one day God decides to do something incredible. 12.1:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So you see, God makes Abram a promise, and he gives Abram a command.

He says, “Leave,” and he promisesto make him into a great nation.

Now there are two great leaps Abram has to make here with the information he’s been given. Firstly, God doesn’t tell him where he’s supposed to go. He doesn’t say, “Go to this place, because where you’re going it’ll be way better than here.” No—he just says, “Go where I will show you.” Could you imagine following such an order, with no idea of what you’d find when you got there?

Here’s the second leap. He tells Abram he will make him into a great nation…but we’ve already been told, just a couple verses before, that Abram’s wife Sarai was barren. How would God make him into a great nation if he couldn’t have kids? God explains neither of these two things; he simply gives Abram an incomprehensible command, makes him an incomprehensible promise. And what does Abram do?

v. 4:

4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”

It’s not until they arrive in Canaan that God explains to Abram why he brought him there: because God was going to give this land to Abram’s future offspring.

v. 7b:

So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. 9 And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

So he’s off to a pretty good start, right? God calls him to an unknown land, promising to make him into a great nation, and Abram just goes, “Yeah. OK.” Reading this for the first time, what are we tempted to think? We’re tempted to think God picked the right guy. This is the kind of guy I want to be! God does a great job picking those whom he’s going to use; he knows how to look through a stack of CVs and find the guy most suited for the job.

That’s what we think, and that’s what we’d be tempted to keep on thinking…were it not for what follows. Now, I realize that I haven’t yet talked about Abram’s faith in leaving—a faith that is not negligible. And I’m not going to in this message, because I believe the thrust of this chapter is not to applaud Abram’s faith (at least not yet; the author will get there in chapter 15, and the author of Hebrews will come back to it much later). The center of this chapter, I’m going to suggest later on, is not primarily Abram, but God. So let me show you why I think that.

In v. 10 we see that there was a famine in the land of Canaan. So Abram goes down to Egypt with his wife to stay there, in order to survive the famine. And in v. 11, Abram does something absolutely despicable.

11 When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, 12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.”

Now reading this, we might not yet see the gravity of it. But we can see the gravity of it in what follows:

14 When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. 15 And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.

(Later on, in v. 19, Pharaoh explains what this means: he took her as his wife.)

Upon entering Egypt, Abram was faced with two choices: either tell the truth and more than likely be killed; or lie about it, say she’s his sister…in which case nothing would keep anyone else from taking her and sleeping with her. No one would be knowingly committing adultery; no one would be knowingly stealing her from her husband. Abram knew good and well what saying she was his sister would mean for Sarai…and he did it anyway.

Can we all agree that this is a massive marriage fail? “Honey, say you’re my sister.” “But someone’s going to want to take me as their wife if they think I’m not married!” “Don’t worry about it—I’ll survive. Do you love me? You want me to survive? Go ahead, honey—take one for the team.” This is disgusting behavior.

Thankfully, it doesn’t last long: the Lord sends plagues to afflict Pharaoh’s house because he’s taken Sarai as his wife. And somehow—this passage doesn’t say how—Pharaoh figures it out. So he goes to Abram and (very rightly so) asks Abram what’s going on.

18 So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife?

The answer? He was afraid.

And that’s it—the Pharaoh gives Sarai back to Abram and says, “Get out.” He orders his men not to touch them, and they go back home.

Now if we went back to the beginning, and read v. 1-9 knowing what kind of guy Abram was—the kind of guy he proves himself to be in v. 10-20—does it make any sense at all? From this man Abram, God is going to build up the people of Israel, from whom Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior and Messiah himself, would be descended. In other words, to work his redemptive purposes, God chooses to use an idolator, a coward, and just about the worst husband imaginable—if a man tried to do that today, what would we call him? An abusive husband. Abram is often painted in this glorious, almost-perfect light because of his faith. But by his actions he proves himself to be a deeply flawed man, at least at this point in his life.

So here’s the question I’d like to ask today, because I believe it’s a question the text prompts us to ask. I don’t think the main point of this text is to get us to look at Abram, and how wonderful his faith was. There was faith, but there was also incredible weakness. Abram isn’t the focus here: I think the text is prompting us to notice some things about God: how he operates, how he chooses to act.

I believe the author brings us here, not to get us to ask ourselves, “Who is the man, Abraham?” but rather to get us to ask ourselves, “Who is this God?”

Who Is This God?

Well, what does the text show us? What does this tell us about God? How is his glory seen in his actions here?

I think the answer to those questions can be summed up in two words: majesty and condescension. (I stole the juxtaposition of these two words from Jonathan Edwards, whom I’ll quote later on.) I think that as we look at what God does here, we can see both his amazing majesty on display, and his amazing condescension. So let’s take a few minutes more to see that in the text.

Majesty. I say “majesty” because when we talk about God’s majesty, we’re talking about his power and authority. Look at God’s command to Abram first:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”

How could anyone make such a ridiculous command? “Pack up your things and leave, take your family…but I’m not telling you yet where you’ll be going. Just go.” The only way that command makes any kind of sense is if God has the authority to command such a thing. He comes in as a God among others—remember, Abram’s is a family of idolators, they worshiped other gods—but when God speaks to Abram, clearly he has an authority that the other gods don’t. His authority is also present in the fact that Abram begins to call upon his name, v. 8:

8 From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.

Calling upon the name of the Lord was an act of worship which showed dependence on him. So Abram has moved from being an idolator to being a man who recognizes his dependence on God.

We see God’s majesty in the promise he makes to Abram. v. 2:

2 And I will make of you a great nation…

Think about this: Abram is an old man at this point. If I wanted to make a great nation of anyone, I wouldn’t use him. First of all because the idea of him and his super old pregnant wife is almost laughable, but after that they’d have to care for this baby and raise him!

But that’s exactly what God does! He makes him a ridiculous promise, and he makes that ridiculous promise because he’s powerful enough to make good on it. Not only is he able to make a woman that old have a baby, but he also tells Abram that he will use him to bless all the families of the earth. Can you grasp the expansiveness of that promise? Only one who is infinitely powerful can make such a promise.

We also see it in God’s judgment on Pharaoh’s household. v. 17:

But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.

God hasn’t yet worked a miracle in the life of Abram; he hasn’t yet made Sarai have a baby. But already he shows his power to do supernatural things by judging Pharaoh’s house with plagues because of them. God is able to say, “Leave those two alone” and absolutely make sure that Pharaoh does what he wants. God’s majesty is evident in his power and authority to command what he wants and to fulfill his promises.

Condescension. This term will probably have to be explained. It’s a word the old Puritan theologians often used, and I thought for a long time of other, simpler possibilities, but none of them fit. When we talk about God’s condescension, we mean his wisdom and his choice to accomplish his infinitely great will using weak, finite means. This is not a negative term, like we would often use it (“My boss always speaks to me in a condescending way”), but rather a choice he makes to execute his great plan at our level.

Think about God’s plan for the redemption of man on a grand scale. God’s plan to show his beauty in creation, and to redeem the fallen world after sin entered it, to save the men and women who have rebelled against him, is a glorious and infinitely massive plan, and his desire is that the world see his glory in the immensity of his plan.

Now, if you were God, how would you do that? How would you go about implementing and bringing this massive plan to fruition? If you wanted to show strength, whom would you use? Strong people! If you wanted to show holiness, whom would you use? Holy people! Think of Abram in Egypt: he and the Pharaoh are both sinful men, but Pharaoh is clearly more powerful. Wouldn’t it be natural to imagine that the Pharaoh would be the more likely candidate to be used to display God’s power to the world?

But that’s not what God does. Here in Abram we see it clearly: God uses a weak, cowardly, sinful man to bring about his plan of redemption. In other words, he doesn’t need to make a big show of it. He manifests his power in weak, ordinary people. He chooses one man, a very flawed man, and through this one man he starts humanity down the road that will lead to the cross.

In Genesis 12 we see God’s majesty in his authoritative call to Abram, in his power to fulfill his promises to Abram; and we see his condescension in his desire to use weak, imperfect people to accomplish his will. Now why did God begin his redemptive plan in this way? Because it was exactly in this way that he planned to finish it. We can see in the whole sweep of Scripture this pattern of amazing, powerful acts being done by lowly, unimpressive people—and it’s not difficult to see that God always chose to do things in this way to prepare us for Jesus, in whom we see the ultimate combination of majesty in condescension. In other words, God manifested a peculiar glory in Christ, for it is in Christ that his majesty and condescension find their ultimate expression.

Here’s a quote from Jonathan Edwards which perfectly explains why (it’s lengthy but it’s worth it):

“[Because Christ’s] glory [shines] upon us through his human nature, the manifestation is wonderfully adapted to the strength of the human vision; so that, though it appears in all its effulgence, it is yet attempered to our sight. He is indeed possessed of infinite majesty, to inspire us with reverence and adoration; yet that majesty need not terrify us, for we behold it blended with humility, meekness, and sweet condescension. We may feel the most profound reverence and self-abasement, and yet our hearts be drawn forth sweetly and powerfully into an intimacy the most free, confidential, and delightful. The dread, so naturally inspired by his greatness, is dispelled by the contemplation of his gentleness and humility; while the familiarity, which might otherwise arise from the view of the loveliness of his character merely, is ever prevented by the consciousness of his infinite majesty and glory; and the sight of all his perfections united fills us with sweet surprise and humble confidence, with reverential love and delightful adoration.”

In other words, Christ’s majesty reminds us of who he is, protects us from presumptuously assuming that he’s our “buddy”; it reminds us that we are not dealing with a mere man; it keeps us from sentimentally treating him like a mother hen. But his humility gives us an access to him in relationship we could never otherwise have; it makes it possible to believe that the God who created us and who has the right to judge sin desires to adopt us as sons and daughters; it gives us a reason for incredible gratitude, for “joy unspeakable and full of glory,” that comes from knowing that such a great God as he loves and cares for such weak creatures as we are.

Conclusion

I know this seems like a strange way to introduce the book of Exodus—I haven’t really given any historical background yet, any information that will help parse out the story. (We’ll get to that next week.)

The reason I wanted to do it this way is to show that what we see God do in the book of Exodus, he’s actually been doing it since the beginning. In Exodus, we see a microcosm of what God does and is still doing on a global, universal, eternal scale. We see the gospel, acted out, almost as if it’s a backwards allegory, written before the events it’s meant to represent ever take place.

And most especially, we see God. Exodus is not primarily about God’s people—the Old Testament is not primarily about God’s people. It’s about God.

So our call, looking at a text like this, is very simple: SEE the God who saved you.

See the One who created the entire universe by the word of his power.

See the One who gave a simple man, a veritable newborn, the task of naming the animals.

See the One who governs every atom of every molecule of every plant and tree and living being in creation.

See the One who gave simple men and women the task of cultivating and keeping his creation.

See the One who has the authority to judge sin and rebellion against him.

See the One who graciously replaced fallen man and woman’s pitiful fig leaves and with clothes of animal skins.

See the One whose anger justly drowned the world.

See the One who warned a sinful man of the coming flood, and provided him with a way of escape.

See the One who has the authority to command what he will, and the power to fulfill every promise he makes.

See the One who chose a weak, fearful man from whom his own Son would descend.

See the Savior who will crush Satan under his feet, vanquish death and sin and all the powers of hell.

See this Savior—who did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, who humbled himself unto death, even death on a cross.

See your God. Be stunned by him. Serve him. Worship him. Love him with your lives.

And if you don’t know him yet—he may yet be your God. Turn to him. Accept the gift of forgiveness and salvation that is offered to you. Repent of your sins and turn to him. Know this amazing, glorious, majestic, humble Jesus Christ, who humbled himself and gave himself up for those who are his.