Lot has now passed off the scene--his sun has gone down amid thick clouds and a gloomy atmosphere; it now remains for us to pursue, for a few moments longer, the narrative of Abraham's ways, and God's dealings with him.
There was one point involved in chapter xii. which I left untouched, knowing that it would come before us again in this place.
When Abraham went down into Egypt, he entered into a compact with Sarah his wife _to conceal part of the truth_, "Say, I pray thee," said he, "thou art my sister" (Chap. xii. 13). One evil ever leads to another. Abraham was moving in the wrong direction when he went down into Egypt for help, and therefore did not exhibit that refinement of conscience which would have told him of the moral unsoundness of this mental reservation. "Speak every man truth with his neighbor," being a divine principle, would always exercise an influence upon one walking in communion with God; but Abraham's desire to get out of present trial was an evidence of failure in communion, and hence "his moral sense," as a recent writer has termed it, was not as keen or as elevated as it should have been. However, although the Lord plagued Pharaoh's house because of his having taken Sarah into it, and further, although Pharaoh rebukes Abraham for his acting in the matter, yet the latter says nothing whatever about the deliberate compact into which he had entered with his wife, to keep back part of the truth; he silently takes the rebuke and goes on his way, but the root of the evil remained still in his heart, ready to show itself at any time if circumstances should arise to draw it out.
Now, it is marvelous to behold Abraham coming up out of Egypt--building an altar and pitching a tent--exhibiting the noble generosity of faith--vanquishing Chedorlaomer and repulsing the temptation of the King of Sodom--urging his request for a son and heir, receiving the most gracious answer--on his face before God in the sense of His almighty grace and power--entertaining the heavenly strangers and interceding for his brother Lot. In a word, I say, it is marvelous to behold Abraham passing through such brilliant scenes, comprising a series of years, and, all the while, this moral point, in which he had erred at the very threshold of his course, remains unsettled in his heart. True, it did not develop itself during the period to which I have just referred, but why did it not? Because Abraham was not in circumstances to call it out, but there it was notwithstanding. The evil was not _fully brought out_--not confessed, not got rid of,--and the proof of this is, that the moment he again finds himself in circumstances which could act upon _his weak point_, it is at once made manifest that the weak point is there. The temptation through which he passed in the matter of the King of Sodom, was not by any means calculated to touch this peculiar point; nor was anything that occurred to him from the time he came up out of Egypt until he went down into Gerar, calculated to touch it, for had it been touched, it would no doubt have exhibited itself.
We never can know what is in our hearts until circumstances arise to draw it out. Peter did not imagine that he could deny his Lord, but when he got into circumstances which were calculated to act upon his peculiar weakness, he showed that the weakness was there.
It required the protracted period of forty years in the wilderness to teach the children of Israel "what was in their hearts" (Deut. viii. 2); and it is one of the grand results of the course of discipline through which each child of God passes, to lead him into a more profound knowledge of his own weakness and nothingness. "We had the _sentence of death in ourselves_, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead" (2 Cor. i. 9). The more we are growing in the sense of our infirmities, the more shall we see our need of clinging more closely to Christ--drawing more largely upon His grace, and entering more fully into the cleansing virtue and value of His atoning blood. The Christian, at the opening of his course, never knows his own heart; indeed, he could not bear the full knowledge of it; he would be overwhelmed thereby. "The Lord leads us not by the way of the Philistines lest we should see war," and so be plunged in despair. But He graciously leads us by a circuitous route, in order that our apprehension of His grace may keep pace with our growing self-knowledge.