Genesis 12:10

Genesis 12:10

Went down from one civilisation to another, went down from one society to another, went down from one religion to another. Man is a traveller not in one sense, but in all senses; and he is always travelling. We have to go out into the world; the question is, How are we going?

I. A widened world always tries a man's first faith and first ways of doing things; he gets the true perspective as he moves through widening space. Abraham went down from Ur of the Chaldees with a very narrow policy, and when he came into great Egypt he encountered the new civilisation with a lie. When a young man comes from comparative quietness and leisure to the bustle and strife of a great city, he must expect to have his faith rudely and constantly attacked. Christianity has to fight for every inch of its progress.

II. The great thing to be kept in mind is, that we have to enter into a hundred new worlds. We do not enter into the world once for all: within the world there are a thousand other worlds. We need guidance and preparation in view of the new worlds and Egypts into which we have to go. There has been only one man in this world who could safely go into every circle and society which this world contains. Jesus Christ was His name. With the spirit of Christ you can go anywhere and everywhere, and you can give all languages a new accent and a new meaning, and lift up all the relations of life into a nobler significance.

Parker, The Fountain,June 9th, 1881.

I. Egypt was to Abraham, to the Jewish people, to the whole course of the Old Testament, what the world with all its interests and pursuits and enjoyments is to us. It was the parent of civilisation, of learning, of royal power, of vast armies. From first to last this marvellous country, with all its manifold interests, is regarded as the home and refuge of the chosen race. By the stress laid on Egypt the Bible tells us that we may lawfully use the world and its enjoyments, that the world is acknowledged by true religion, as well as by our own natural instincts, to be a beautiful, a glorious, and, in this respect, a good and useful world. What was permitted as an innocent refreshment to Abraham, what was enjoined as a sacred duty on Moses and Apollos, what was consecrated by the presence of Christ our Saviour, we too may enjoy and admire and use. Power and learning and civilisation and art may all minister now, as they did then, to the advancement of the welfare of man and the glory of God.

II. The meeting of Abraham and Pharaoh, the contact of Egypt with the Bible, remind us forcibly that there is something better and higher even than the most glorious or the most luxurious or the most powerful and interesting sights and scenes of the world. The character and name of Abraham, as compared with that of the mighty country and the mighty people in the midst of which we thus for an instant find him, exemplify, in the simplest yet strongest colours, the grand truth that 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' To be in the world, but not of it; to use it without abusing it, this is the duty which we find it so hard to follow; but it is the very duty which Abraham first, and our Lord afterwards, have set before us.

A P. Stanley, Sermons in the East,p. 1.