Genesis 20:1-21:8 Testing Paternity

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.

This is a message from the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis, by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filsack.

If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com.

Here's Pastor Don. We think in terms of a simple model of Christian growth.

It is our desire that everybody is growing in the church, and we believe there are three primary categories in which every believer ought to be growing.

If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, then growth, wherever you come into Recast at. Now, some of you have been believers for a long time.

Some of you are new, and you're kind of fresh to this whole thing and figuring things out. But regardless of how old you are, how mature you are, how immature you are, we all have the ability to grow and continue growing in these three spheres, and that is growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service.

And that fits into our core values under simplicity, that I hope that the more that you've attended here, the more that that's become kind of part of your understanding of what we do, that many of you could actually repeat that to me.

How do you grow at Recast Church? We grow in faith, we grow in community, and we grow in service.

But it's not accidental that faith comes first. Whenever you hear me say that, I say here at Recast Church, we want to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service.

I'm convinced that how much we experience true community and are able to genuinely serve others is in direct proportion to our belief and trust in God, that is faith.

And so, these three things are interconnected. Have any of you ever been in a position where you were serving others, and because you were serving others, your faith grew?

Have you been in that situation? Or where you were in community with other believers, and your faith grew?

Have you been in that situation where you have accountability and relationships with others, and your faith is sharpened because of other people?

So, you can kind of see the inner, there's an interconnectedness about these three. But I'm convinced, well, ultimately, we believe, what we believe about God and how much we trust

Him is of first importance. And so, that's why I put growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service, I put faith first.

But I'm convinced that this is one of the main reasons so much of Scripture and so many texts of Scripture are recorded for us, with the main point being the faithfulness of God, the trustworthiness of God.

Because it's like Scripture is teaching us, is showing us, is introducing us to God, that we might know who

He is and how we are to respond to Him. And how are we to respond to Him? Well, He demonstrates Himself as faithful and trustworthy.

And therefore, He is constantly calling for us to put our faith and trust in Him. And that's one of the reasons that so many texts have that as the main point, like our text this morning.

This morning, we're going to finally celebrate the birth of a much -anticipated baby. If you've been here for a few, within the last few months, we've been talking about the life of Abraham through the book of Genesis, and ultimately

Abraham and Sarah. And they are going to finally have a baby in our text this morning.

They had been promised years before that God would give them a child, who then in turn would have many other children and they would become a great nation.

That great nation would be given a great land. And out of that great land and out of that great nation would come a great leader, who would be from the offspring of Abraham, who would be a great blessing to all nations.

And we know Him as Jesus Christ. But even now that we come to a place in our text of a promise fulfilled, it's set in the backdrop of Abraham behaving poorly.

Now, how many of you have been here for much of the series on Abraham? You've heard me preach on Abraham a handful of times here. Some of you have been here for a while.

Does Abraham behave poorly sometimes? Would you agree with me on that? Sometimes he's doing good, sometimes he's not doing good.

I would suggest to you that as we read and study the pages of Scripture through the book of Genesis, that we actually find that Abraham's kind of a sketchy character.

He's sketchy in some of the decisions that he makes, and some of the things that he chooses to do. At times he shines bright with faith and bravery, and at other times he cowers in fear and refuses to lead at all.

He is, in this sense, very much like you and me. Each one of us is a conundrum of faith mixed with doubt.

We are capable of great evil and great good. Do you agree with me on that? Do you know what I'm talking about? You see that in your own life?

The hands we raise in worship could be used to slap our child on the way into church this morning.

The mouths we use to praise God could be found cursing drivers on the way home.

Right? You know what? And so, with that serious indictment of each one of us, let's take encouragement.

Recast, it's not about us. It's not about us.

It's not about our glory. It's not about our performance. It is not about our ministry.

It is about the God who has promised reconciliation for His children.

It's about Him. And so, in that light, I want us to dive into this promise as it's fulfilled.

Open your Bibles, please, to Genesis chapter 20. And you can find that on page 13 in the

Bible that's in the seat back in front of you. So, if you take that Bible out, turn over to page 13, boom, there it is.

If you don't own a copy of the Word of God, you can take that one with you if you want and follow along.

I'm going to read the entirety of Genesis chapter 20 and then the first seven verses of 21. I'll follow along as I read.

And Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him,

Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife.

Now Abimelech had not approached her, so he said, Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Did he not himself say to me, she is my sister?

And she herself said, he is my brother in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands,

I have done this. Then God said to him in a dream, yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart and it was

I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her. Now then, return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you and you shall live.

But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.

So Abimelech rose early in the morning and called all of his servants and told them all these things. And the men were very much afraid.

Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, what have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you that have brought on me and my kingdom a great sin?

You have done to me things that ought not to be done. And Abimelech said to Abraham, what did you see that you did this thing?

And Abraham said, I did it because I thought there is no fear of God at all in this place and they will kill me because of my wife.

Besides, she indeed is my sister, the daughter of my father, though not the daughter of my mother. And she became my wife.

And when God caused me to wander from my father's house, I said to her, this is the kindness you must do me at every place to which we come.

Say of me, he is my brother. Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen and male servants and female servants and gave them to Abraham and returned

Sarah, his wife, to him. And Abimelech said, behold, my land is before you. Dwell where it pleases you.

To Sarah he said, behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. It is a sign of your innocence in the eyes of all who are with you.

And before everyone you are vindicated. Then Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelech and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children.

For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. The Lord visited

Sarah, as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore

Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him.

And Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son

Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son

Isaac was born to him. And Sarah said, God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh over me.

And she said, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?

Yet I have born him a son in his old age. Let's pray.

Father, we come in to this text into the midst of a history with Abraham.

A lot of different things going on, including your introduction to him and your promises to him.

And then we see this fulfillment. And we see you as you are, a

God who finishes your promises. If you declare it, it will come to pass.

If you promise it, it will indeed happen. And Father, I ask that you would bolster our faith and encourage us to see you as you are.

That we would understand and be a people who seek after your promises and look in Scripture to see that which you have indeed told to your children will come to pass and that which you have said is true of you and that we can bank on those things,

Father. That we would recognize how trustworthy and faithful you are. Father, I pray that you would move in our midst to believe your word in such a way that our lives are conformed and transformed and changed because we see you as you are, high and exalted and merciful and patient, fulfilling and completing your promises in your good timing.

I ask that you would move our hearts to trust you. And even as we have an opportunity to praise your name through singing,

Father, that you would move in our hearts with delight and with joy and with enthusiasm and excitement about the promise that was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

And that is the bedrock of our hope and our faith. And we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks a lot to Josh and Heidi for leading us in worship this morning.

I'm grateful for them stepping in and leading in that way. So, thank you guys. Be sure to get comfortable.

You can get more coffee, juice, donuts. I say that every week, but you can take me up on that if you need to at any time during the message.

And I'd also ask that you please have your Bibles open in front of you. I think it's just helpful for you to be able to look down and see the text of Genesis chapter 20 in case you weren't here when we read that earlier or lost your place.

But Genesis chapter 20, and you guys that have been here for a while, you know that, I mean, the text is my outline in essence.

And so we just kind of march through these texts and walk through it and hit the highlights and the points that God has for us in here.

But last time, just to kind of tie this in with last week, last time we saw Abraham, he was looking down on what used to be

Sodom and Gomorrah. So last week we talked about judgment. We saw God rightly, justly, righteously judge

Sodom and Gomorrah for their evil. And Abraham in the text had just a cameo appearance and he was standing on the ridge looking down in the valley as the smoke of Sodom and Gomorrah was boiling up out of that valley.

And then now here abruptly, okay, so that's where we left him. He's there. He's looking down wondering what's going on.

From there, Abraham journeyed towards the territory of the Negev. We see him moving. There's movement right away in the text.

He's on the road. And we find him moving his camp to a place called Gerar, which is west from his settlement in Mamre, the opposite direction of the valley of Sodom and Gomorrah.

He's heading westward in almost kind of an Egypt -type direction, but more directly west, not too far off actually of modern -day

Jerusalem. What's motivating the move? That's really left up to our imaginations to some degree.

The text doesn't outright declare why he is moving. We know that famine has hit in the past, and that's moved him on and some different things.

But just in context, there's nothing here that states that there was a famine, so we can't jump to that conclusion. But I wonder if distance from the valley of destruction was part of the motivation.

Can you imagine that if you lived in a neighborhood and the neighborhood next to you was completely obliterated by a fire from heaven that you might be tempted to relocate?

Are you getting what I'm saying? I think there might be some level of motivation there that he's like, God destroyed this valley.

I'm going to distance myself from this valley. I'm going to move on. I don't know. I'm just speculating.

But I wonder if that didn't factor in. So they arrive in the land of Gerar, and Abraham repeats a half -truth that he told back in Genesis 12.

It's almost kind of like some people have actually thought we're looking at two different accounts of the same event. But there's a significant amount of difference that highlights that Abraham has done this twice.

And then we see something in the text that actually indicates that this was the way that Abraham and Sarah rolled. This is the type of stuff that they did regularly.

And so he's going to repeat a half -truth. He's going to basically... How many of you know a half -truth is a half -lie as well?

No, it's a whole lie. No, it's not a half -lie. A half -truth is a whole lie. That's what I meant to say. Not a half -lie.

And so back in chapter 12, there was a bit more buildup to the similar event that happened there.

We found out that Abraham was fearful for his life, that his wife, the text told us, was very beautiful, and he was afraid that other men were going to want his wife and kill him for her.

But we don't really see much of that buildup. The text just moves, boom, right into verse 2. And Abraham said of Sarah, his wife, she is my sister in Abimelech.

The king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. Done. I mean, that's pretty concise. The plot is moving quickly in the text.

So here we see that the king, King Abimelech, thought Sarah was so beautiful that he took her.

And there's some of the same motivations for Abraham telling the half -truth here in the text that he's afraid that he's going to be killed for her or something like that.

But there's something that you're thinking about, maybe, potentially, about Sarah. Does anybody in the room know how old

Sarah is in the text? She's about 90, okay? She's about 90, and she's here in the text.

And all I can say is that Sarah aged very well. This king, this king takes her for his wife.

She's getting married at the age of 90. And nothing in the text declares her beautiful in appearance like chapter 12 did.

But the fact of the matter is, in the text, Abimelech, the king over Gerar, takes Abraham's sister to be his wife.

And that's exactly what the text says, even at 90. That's what's happening. The narrative moves quickly.

And in verse 3, God appears to Abimelech in a dream. Now, put yourself in Abimelech's shoes.

He's a pagan king over a territory. He has probably not had any interaction in reality with God at all.

This guy comes into town with a beautiful wife, I mean a beautiful sister, from his perspective, and he calls for her and takes her as his wife, which is all legal and above board and all of that stuff, according to the culture and the times and all of that stuff, everything he's done so far with integrity.

And then in the middle of the night, and I say this because I'm speaking from Abimelech's perspective, a god appears to him in his dream.

I'd imagine that Abimelech had that mindset towards this being that met with him in his dream.

He's like, a god met with me last night. He hasn't met this god prior to this account or to this event.

And this god's first words are, dude, you're dead meat. That might grab your attention.

You're a dead man. Okay, you just snapped me awake. I am totally engaged in this conversation.

What's going on? What have I done to offend you? What's happening? And then the reveal from this deity in his dream, who we know to be

Yahweh, the only true God, and he reveals, Sarah, the one that you took, is already married.

She already has a husband. God speaks words of judgment immediately to Abimelech, and yet he gives

Abimelech the chance to repent. Now some of you are kind of going, wait a minute. Has Abimelech sinned?

Has he done anything wrong? We're going to see in the text that they haven't even consummated the marriage yet. So has he sinned?

Well, hold on. Hold on before you say that. I try my best not to throw out trick questions.

I realize that was. Answer this question. Is it a sin to take another man's wife to be your wife?

Is it a sin to take another man's wife to be your wife on accident?

Still a sin. Is the sum total of sin our motivation?

And so, hey, I had pure motive, so it was okay. I didn't mean to insult you, so it must be your fault.

Have you had that conversation? If you're married, you've had that conversation, something to that effect, right? It's your fault that you're offended.

That doesn't quite cut it, right? It's not the sum total of sin is not our motivation. It's not what we're trying to accomplish.

It's not always what we accomplish. And sometimes we sin in our ignorance, but it is still sin nonetheless.

Has Abimelech sinned here? He has. But we're going to see that he's going to defend himself in a way that I can't understand how he's defending himself here in just a minute.

But even that God comes to Abimelech in a dream, shows mercy and grace, do you see that? Could God just deal with this right here and right now and get it done with?

But instead, he graciously meets with him and offers him a chance to repent.

Repent being turning from your way, turn from what you're doing and turn to God's way. Well, like I said earlier,

Abimelech and Sarah had not consummated the marriage. And so Abimelech challenges the mercy of this unknown God.

This God is meeting with him in a dream and he's like having a conversation and this is real. And we get a front row seat throughout the pages of Scripture.

In Genesis, we're seeing people meeting God. We get a chance to see Abimelech meeting

God. And there's something significant about that. He's getting to know him and so God is revealing things about him.

And we're seeing that throughout the pages of Scripture, different people getting to know God. And there's a recurring question that they keep asking.

Abraham asks God, how merciful are you? Right, do you remember that from a couple of weeks ago? How merciful are you,

God? Well, what's happening is these people, put yourself in their shoes. They're meeting God and in the process of meeting

God, how many of you think you'd be like God is awesome? You met him, you met him, you talked to him, you'd be like boom, mind blown.

Okay, you're super powerful, you're super awesome, you're super amazing, and you could snuff me like a bug under your thumb.

And so now all of a sudden, you start to see this question bubble to the surface and it's a pretty logical question when you think about meeting

God, the almighty one. Question, how merciful are you?

Do you see what might motivate that level of questioning? What kind of a God are you and how do you interact with people?

Abimelech asks, are you the kind of God who kills innocent people? Is that how you roll?

I don't know you, I haven't met you, but I'm kind of hoping not. And so you can understand the logic of the questions that are being asked of God in the text and in the pages of Scripture because I think it's very similar to the questions that we might ask were we to stand face to face with the almighty.

Be merciful, please be merciful. I think that would be the first words out of my mouth. Be merciful, please.

And he is, this was awesome. But although Abimelech acknowledges that he has taken

Sarah, he doesn't deny it, it's not like he tries to divert the attention or go, I did, I did indeed take somebody else's wife, apparently,

I didn't know. But he does make excuses which seem to be reasonable ones from a human standpoint. I think, if you bear with me,

I think you'll see that his argumentations make sense to us. He points back to Abraham and he says, when

I talked with this dude, he came into my territory, I talked to him, he said that this was his sister, that's how he introduced her.

And Sarah went along with it and said, he's my brother. So, you know, I mean, like, why are you coming after me?

These guys set this up. And at the end of verse 5, Abimelech appeals to something pretty significant. He says, with integrity of heart

I have done this thing. In other words, I didn't do wrong in my heart. My motivations were not wrong in this.

I didn't do this intentionally knowing that he was her wife.

Or she was his wife. And then he appeals secondly. So he talks about the integrity of heart.

You know what that, I think, a hard time imagining that sometimes. Because, I mean, we know what it means to have a disintegrity of heart.

But he's saying, I have an integrity of heart. I didn't do this in this specific situation regarding Sarah. I didn't take her knowingly.

And then he appeals to his integrity of his hands. He says,

I haven't actually done anything wrong. Even in his ignorance, he has not defiled

Sarah by adultery. They didn't consummate the marriage at this point. They are indeed married, but something has stopped them from consummating the marriage.

And we're going to see what that was here in just a moment. So Abimelech, speaking to God in a dream, has a lot to say about his innocence.

Do you think that he really had a completely pure heart, Abimelech? Did he have completely pure hands?

No. I mean, really, if we think about it, to have integrity of heart and integrity of hands, who could really ask for more than that?

That's something that I long for, to be completely in my heart, 100 % devoted to God and right in my attitude and my thoughts about God, and then also to be right in my actions, you know, the hands being a symbol and scripture of our actions, our behavior.

How many of you long for that day when you have integrity of heart and integrity, complete integrity of hands? It's a good day.

One of us is longing for it. The rest looked a little bit confused there. Do you want? Okay, a couple more hands went up.

You're starting to warm up. That's good. I really want to just call for an amen or something.

Thank you. Thank you. This concept of an integrity of heart and integrity of hands, but he says,

I didn't think wrong. I didn't do wrong. But then verse 6, and verse 6 should stop us in our tracks.

Verse 6 is, you ever encounter a verse in scripture and you've got to read it again, and you're like, that's mind -numbing. Like my brain hurts, like I can kind of, and your brain just melts.

Is it coming out of my ears right now? Then God said to Abimelech in the dream,

Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of heart. I know that your motives have been okay in this.

I know that you were deceived and you didn't really know what was really going on. And it was

I, God speaking, who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her.

God kept Abimelech from sinning against him in regard to adultery with Sarah.

Okay, so God does this kind of thing where he can stop people from sinning.

Now I want to point out that we're going to see that Abimelech has a health issue here in just a moment that needs to be healed.

We're also going to find out that all the wombs at the very end of the text, not until the end of the text do we find out that all the wombs were closed in Gerar because of this scenario, the situation that's going on.

But many have thought that it was possible that God used some medical condition or issue that kept them from sealing the marriage.

But in a genuine real sense, it is God who gets the credit for them not completing this deal.

In a very real sense, God gets the credit regardless of what means he employed or used in all of this.

Sovereignty of God is a very mind -bending thing. Everybody in the room has an opinion about God's sovereign will and man's free will and all that stuff and just kind of like, where do you fall on that?

Have any of you ever had a nice discussion with somebody on the opposite side of where you stand on that issue? We live in West Michigan.

Calvin College is just up the road. Calvinism, Arminianism, all that stuff. Raise your hand if you've had that kind of discussion with people before.

Okay, a handful of us in the room. I remember a drive home, me and Zach and Kyle coming back from a conference in Louisville, about a five -hour drive, and the entire time we talked about this subject.

And how far do you think we had moved by the end of the conversation? We didn't scratch the surface of this discussion about the interplay between man's free will and God's sovereign rule.

I think you could literally drive yourself nuts trying to wrestle through this issue.

I mean, certifiable. So I want to just be honest with you as your pastor.

I lean very heavily to the side of God's sovereignty. I could even maybe go far and extreme in that in some people's minds and some people's thoughts, in the way that you were raised or whatever, how far

I go into the sovereignty of God and that He is genuinely ruler over all things, and all things are going to be done according to His will and desire.

And in the end, I think we're going to see that. But part of that is motivated because it's my study of Scripture that I've become convinced of that.

Little texts like this, like this verse 6, just kind of... Do you see how it highlights that?

That God is able to stop somebody from sinning? Is that pretty significant about God's rule? Is that stating something?

It's not like it's in Spanish. It's not like it's in a foreign language. We can understand what is declared there. Now, what we struggle with is how that interplays with our lives.

We know what the words say. God stopped Abimelech from sinning. He kept him from sinning.

Where we struggle is then how do I fit into that? Where do I come into that? And what I really believe regarding the sovereignty of God is that I don't think that I'm going to get to heaven someday, and God's going to say, you know what?

You had me all wrong. You thought I was more cool and more awesome than I am. Okay, you had me too sovereign.

You thought that I was more than I am. Or that I'm going to go that way. I'm going to be standing before Him going, you know what? I guess we were pretty important.

I guess our decisions really were what it was all about. I think I'm going to bow on my face before God and go, you are it.

You are the one. Your majesty, your sovereignty, your rule forever and ever and ever.

And these little things that we thought we were doing in this life amount to very small things in comparison to who you are.

And then, boom, shut the mouth and just rejoice in His presence. Nothing more to say about questioning

His motives, questioning His thoughts. I think in the presence of God, our questions go away, and He is shining out that He is the answer.

And when we stand in His presence, we're not going to go, oh, man, I guess you weren't that much.

I say, you are sovereign, ruler over all, king over all things.

Right here in the text, it says clearly that God prevented Abimelech from sinning. And I think that if we could think about this from a different perspective, we actually carry this over, this concept into the

New Testament, where Jesus, in the process of teaching us how to pray, teaches us something that I think could be a little bit confusing to our minds in the way that we process things.

If you were to really think about it, now, many of us in the room could quote the Lord's Prayer, right? How many of you probably could?

I mean, I'm not going to call you out and ask you to. But you probably could quote the Lord's Prayer if we said it. But how many of you know we can memorize things that we don't really think about, don't really think deeply about what it means?

What does it mean to pray? It means to say, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. What are we asking for when we say that prayer?

Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil. Do you know what we're praying?

We're asking, keep me from sinning. Preserve me from sinning. And now we're getting a chance to actually see, in the

Old Testament, a case study where God has demonstrated the power to do so. That by faith, we can grab ahold of this story and say,

God is able to keep us from falling. He is able to. And rejoice. And so be asking

God to deliver us from evil. Now is it a carte blanche promise that every time you pray that, you're going to be delivered from sinning?

Don't think of it that way, but think about the power of God to do so. He is able to do this.

And so we pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil with hope and faith and trust.

And even an example given to us in the Old Testament, whereby God has done such a thing. And we see it in action, in a real person's life and history.

Not only that, but our final hope is that God is not just able to keep us from falling in the day -to -day, but we know ultimately that He will present us blameless before His glory with great joy.

That's what Jude says. There's something else in verse 6 that I've noticed that I think keys into a corrective to a problem in our understanding of sin in the

American church. So look at verse 6 with me again. Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was

I who kept you from sinning against Abraham. Do you see it in the text? It was I who kept you.

Is that what it says? Is anybody looking at the text? Did I say something wrong? What did

I say wrong? It's God. How many of you think that taking Abraham's wife,

Sarah, into his household with him as his wife is a sin against Abraham? Is it?

It would be, right? I mean, again, not a trick question. It is a sin against Abraham, but primarily sin is an affront to God.

He is. If God is not in your definition of sin, then you don't have a robust biblical definition of sin.

And I fear that many of us have a definition of sin that sounds like this. And our culture has gone wholesale into this, and much of the church has gone wholesale into this definition of sin.

It is hurting other people. Sin we equate with hurting others. And if we're hurting somebody, then we're sinning.

Well, there's truth to this standpoint. So if you understand philosophy and logic and how that works, it is accurate to say when you hurt somebody else, you are sinning, right?

But not all sin is hurting somebody else. Are you getting what I'm saying? So there are sins outside of the category of hurting others, and primarily all sin, even when it's hurting another person, is still defined as an affront to a righteous and holy

God. And so a definition, an accurate definition of sin must contain

God, and He is the one who defines what is and isn't sin.

As subtle as that difference is between what the Bible defines sin as, as an affront to God, and what we define it as an affront to a person, if we think of sin as an affront to God, as verse 6 says, then the question becomes, what does

God think of X? Or what does God think of Y? Or whatever that thing is.

But if we think of sin merely in terms of an offense against people, then the question becomes and shifts significantly to, who is hurt by X?

Who is hurt by Y? And this has led to all kinds of misguided thinking on sin.

Primarily, I see a strong movement in our culture towards an, if it doesn't hurt anybody, it's okay attitude.

That's fundamentally a misunderstanding of the word sin. If we take

God out of that definition, then we should expect more and more of this faulty thinking. We need to have a robust definition of sin that defines that word in accordance with the character of a holy

God, and His will and His desire. God identifies in the text sin as against Him.

And now in verse 7, God provides a way out for Abimelech, repentance. Repentance is a beautiful word.

It's the ability to go God's way instead of our way. And Abimelech has that option presented to him.

In pretty direct terms, for Abimelech, repentance looks like going

God's way, which means to return Sarah to Abraham. He is told that Abraham is a prophet, and that if he returns

Sarah, God will use Abraham's prayers to heal him. Again, indicating that there's some infirmity that's going on in his household and in him.

Notice a choice given here. Abimelech has a choice. Some of you might go, it's a shoddy choice. It's like go my way or die.

But it is a choice nonetheless. I mean, it's real. He can choose one or the other. Abimelech has a choice. Do things

God's way and be saved, or do things His own way and be judged. And in that way, Abimelech is a model for every one of us, in that he has a choice before him to choose to go

God's way or to choose to go his own way. And the fact of the matter is, each one of us in this room has a default setting for our way.

Whether it's upbringing or experiences and all the values that you have and everything, they all play into, and some of us,

I mean, we could categorize. We could say, okay, people who live more this way sit over here and sit over here and sit over here. And we could kind of sit around different styles of life.

But when it really comes down to it, all of us have a broken way that is a default for the way that we live life.

Let me give you an illustration of that. One of the ways that we might live our lives is to be a religious goody -two -shoes.

You were raised that way. And so religion and religious behavior is where you feel most comfortable. And so you can become a religious person without a relationship with God, right?

Are you getting what I'm saying on that? I mean, you could be a very religious person and just go through the motions, and that makes you comfortable, but that is not

God's way. That's not the way that God has provided for us for salvation. Maybe the other end of the spectrum is the rebellious party boy or rebellious party girl.

Living life for yourself, and that's your default setting is just going out and hedonism and have as much fun as you can.

That's one way of life. Would you agree with me? It's an option. Or some people, the way that they roll is

I'm just too intelligent for faith. I'm just too smart for this stuff. There are many ways, and I just point this out to say there's many ways and flavors of human lifestyle, and they're all opposed to God.

But he has provided a way. His name is Jesus Christ, and he declared himself.

He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.

Repentance in this new covenant era looks like going God's way, and going

God's way looks like selling everything that you have to go all in with Jesus Christ, completely all in with him.

That is God's way, being completely sold out for Jesus Christ, all your eggs in one basket.

Habimelech had a choice, and we all do too. Go God's way and experience salvation and life.

Go our own way and experience death and judgment and destruction. There's no anticipation in the text.

Habimelech gets it. He's there. He's engaged in this dream. I'd imagine that he woke up and didn't go back to sleep that night.

Early the next morning, it says, early the next morning, Habimelech calls all of his people together, explains his dream, and the people tremble with fear.

There's another group of people last week we saw that were told about judgment, the sons -in -law of Lot, and what was their response?

They laughed and they thought it was a joke. Here we come to a pagan nation, and they hear the judgment of God is coming towards them, and they respond with fear and reverence for God.

They take it seriously. Habimelech calls in Abraham and has a little bit of a heated exchange.

I don't think these are just pleasantries and niceties being exchanged back and forth. "'How could you do this to me and my kingdom?'

says Habimelech. "'Things like this should not be done.'"

And once again, we find a pagan king taking the prophet of God to task justly.

Abraham has wronged him. And I just take this moment to point out to you something that I find imminently obvious, and that is that Abraham is not a perfect man.

God has not called out perfect people, but he has no perfect people to work with, and so he ends up taking us and using messy us to accomplish his purposes.

Verse 9 is full of rhetorical questions. "'How could you do this to me?' "'How could you do this to my kingdom?' I don't think he's anticipating a real answer, but verse 10 anticipates an answer.

Verse 10 says this, "'And Habimelech said to Abraham, "'What did you see that you did this thing?'

Now, Abraham has been identified in the text by God to Habimelech as what? What's his title?

Prophet. He says, "'What did you foresee? "'Well, what did you think "'the end result was going to be, "'you prophet of God? "'What did you think was going to happen "'when you came into my nation?

"'What did you foresee in all of this?'' Well, some see

Abraham's answer in verse 11 here as inauthentic or kind of like, well, it wasn't true or whatever.

Abraham said, I did this thing because I thought there was no fear of God at all in this place, but he was inaccurate. I think he was accurate in this assessment.

I think prior to coming to Gerar, the place was indeed a place of violence.

I think it was indeed a place where there was no fear of God. And I think Abraham, in a very convoluted way, brings the fear of God.

What do you think, that this is a convoluted way to win a community for God? Are you tracking with me?

Now, the blessings of God follow Abraham where he goes. Why? Because God chose him.

Not because Abraham's doing it right. It's like he's inadvertently being used by God, accidentally.

He's almost kind of putting hurdles in God's way to accomplish the promises, and God's still doing his thing.

This is not a case study, by the way, in ministry methodology. Don't go about doing what

Abraham... I mean, how many of you, if I brought in a missionary speaker, we're gonna have a missionary speaker later in August that's gonna come in and share about some of the work that's going on in Nepal.

We brought them a server for the hospital that's there, a missionary doctor. Excited about him,

Sunil and Gina John. And they just set up that server over there. We actually bought it last year. It took them a while to get it there and get it set up, but they've got that going.

Some exciting things going on there. So how many of you, we brought in a missionary speaker. They came in and they were like, we haven't been to the field yet.

We're raising support, but we're gonna do some dynamic ministry. We're gonna do something different than everybody else is doing. Here's our plan.

We're gonna move overseas to a country. We're gonna lead others to sin so much that God brings judgment down on them, and voila, fear of God, and everybody's gonna become a follower of God.

We're gonna engage in sin. We're gonna have a fun time, and then boom, God's judgment and fear, and everybody's gonna be saved, and it's gonna be awesome.

How many of you are like, you're reaching in the wallet. You're like, how much can I give you to support you for this missionary work?

You know, this isn't the way that you ought to be going about missions, but again, it just demonstrates how

God can use our messes and our crud, our dumb things and our dumb decisions, and I'm not suggesting then that you,

I mean, Paul might ask the question, should we then sin so that grace can abound all the more? May it not be.

By no means, right? But the gospel is open to that kind of abuse, isn't it?

If you are understanding the gospel fully, then the next question is, can we then live any way that we want?

Do you see how, if you really understand how radical the grace of God is and how all -encompassing his salvation really is, then that is a logical question, and Paul dealt with it in the

New Testament. Abraham was not just motivated, though, by an assessment of their culture.

He's, as a prophet looking forward, kind of saying, well, they're going to kill me for my wife or something like that. There's this fear, but also he defends himself because he says, well, it was half true.

It was half true, which then gets creepy in the text. He thought they would kill him, so he bends the truth.

I mentioned previously in chapter 12 that Abraham and Sarah may have indeed been half -brother and half -sister.

Would you guys admit that that's creepy? You shared a dad? That's weird.

I mentioned a cultural custom that people have identified from this time where the father -in -law would adopt his daughter -in -law just prior to the wedding, and part of that would be motivated out of keeping the dowry that was given to the wife in the family at large so that in this situation, the dowry would be given to Abraham unless he still lived under the household of his father, and he adopts

Sarah as his daughter -in -law, now daughter, then now the dowry goes to Terah, the head of the whole household, and is at his disposal.

Are you getting the picture? There's financial motivation for doing something. I love to think that that might have been the case here, but just confession as a pastor,

I'm about 50 -50 on whether or not they were literally half -brother and half -sister or whether or not there was this cultural understanding whereby

Abraham's dad adopted his wife. I don't know. Have we seen some sketchy stuff in the pages of Genesis so far?

Last week? So, I wouldn't put it past him to have actually married half their half -siblings.

Abraham now confesses to Abimelech that he and Sarah had this arranged standing policy as they traveled.

Do you see that in the text? They had this, they had sat down and decided, hey, when we go into a new area, let's act like brother and sister.

This would be cool. Creepy. We know that they did this little ruse in Egypt.

We know that they did it in Gerar here, but who knows how many other times they tried to pull this off. They just basically said, whenever we go into a new area, this is what we're going to do.

You say you're my sister. I'll say I'm your brother. It'll be okay. How many times did they pull that off and everybody thought they were brother and sister and they just skated on through and no problems, but we know at least two events, two accounts where it didn't go quite as planned.

But Abimelech, showing a respectful fear of God, blesses his prophet. Now at this point, how many of you hear

Abimelech could be angry at Abraham? So you're kind of looking at the text and you're going, he gives oxen, he gives sheep, he gives servants to Abraham.

Like what in the world is going on there? Right? Well, he is doing so out of deference to God.

He's a changed man. Abimelech is getting this. I mean, this encounter with God at night and this encounter with Abraham is rocking his world.

So Abimelech offers sheep and oxen and servants. He returns Sarah and allows

Abraham to stay anywhere that he wants. That might not be my first reaction to what's going on here, but this is the way that Abimelech, because he is now encountering a prophet of God.

And in this text, we are supposed to intentionally contrast Abraham and Abimelech. We know that Abraham was a good host.

Lavish hospitality. Do you remember that from a few weeks ago? How he had visitors and he just brought out, you know, killed the fatted calf and all kinds of stuff.

And he's a really good entertainer. It's really good to be coming under his hospitality.

It's another thing to have him as a guest. I wouldn't want Abraham to come and stay at my house. Wherever he goes, he seems to leave with the silverware, the china, and buckets of money.

It's like he shows up, you're like, okay, God, take everything. Have it all. I mean, he comes into Gerar as an already intensely wealthy individual.

Potentially maybe one of the most wealthy people on the planet at the time. And he walks away. If he only had in his possession as he walked away, what he is given there, he would be one of the most wealthy people on the planet.

Let alone the stash that he's adding to when he leaves. How many of you sign up to host

Abraham when he comes into town? You excited to have him over? You're not gonna have anything when he leaves.

And in verse 16, Abimelech gives another thing. So he's given all this money, but we're gonna see something different from 14 to 16.

But notice how he identifies Abraham in verse 16. To Sarah he said, behold, I have given your brother, you think there's a little bit of sarcasm in that statement?

I've given your brother a thousand, what's the text say? A thousand pieces, another word some people have measured that, shekels, a thousand pieces of silver.

That amount has been tabulated to be about 165 years worth of wages during this era.

He's getting some money here. This money isn't given for the same reason the offering was made in verse 14.

In 14 it's an offering to the prophet of God because of his status as a prophet. But the silver is given out of a custom of posting a significant gift to one whose reputation you have wrongly tarnished.

So in other words, if you have slandered an individual and said things of them that were not true, then the way that you rectify that in this ancient culture was to gather the town together and give them a huge offering and exonerate their character.

Are you getting what I'm saying? So it's your pain, your loss, that you are saying this person is completely innocent of the things that are declared of them.

And so you can see what this symbolizes for Sarah. It is her innocence and her vindication that she has not been compromised.

There was no adultery that happened. Do you get that? So that's why this thousand pieces of silver is given.

But consider here what is at stake in this situation. Abraham, in trying to save his own neck, has placed the promise of God in jeopardy.

You think about that? He's supposed to be having a baby with his wife and now there's a threat that somebody else could have had a baby with his wife.

Do you see the threat there? Ultimately, it's like the Maury Povich show. I mean, we're talking about paternity here, right?

A couple of you know what I'm talking about and I'm not sure that's a good thing. This is, in essence, a text that is about the paternity of Isaac in one way.

That's what's at stake in this really bizarre text. God goes over the top to demonstrate in the pages of Scripture that Sarah did not get with Abimelech.

He intervened to be sure that Abraham and Sarah have a child together. And I want to suggest to you that at times it seems like Abraham is doing all he can do to interfere with the promises of God.

It's like he's trying to get in the way. Now, I don't think he literally is, but I think it just kind of goes to show have you ever felt that way in your own life?

That you go through a stage or a time or a period of life where you recognize that you are your own worst enemy, you are getting in the way of what

God wants to do? You know what I'm talking about. And I think that's a picture of what we have of Abraham at times in this text throughout the book of Genesis.

At times it appears as though he's interfering, and yet there is God working to bring his promises to fruition despite his chosen man.

And now in verses 17 through 18, this sketchy prophet of God prays and Abimelech's household is restored to normal.

It really isn't until the end that we find out that, like I said, all the wombs in Abimelech's household were closed due to Sarah, and now after prayer, everything begins to function well again in his community and in his kingdom.

But do you see, did you guys just hear what I said? Abraham prays and what happens? The wombs are open.

Do you see a bitter irony in that? What has been the number one desire of Abraham and Sarah throughout, since we first met them in the text?

They want a child. And yet God uses this childless man to pray and open the wombs of an entire nation.

A little bit of irony? Yeah, I would suggest to you a lot of irony.

His wife has been bitterly barren for decades, and with a prayer, he opens the wombs of a nation.

Do you think that maybe he's spent some time on his knees praying that they might just have one child? Just one?

And he's been praying. And really, it's for that reason I couldn't end the text here and then take on the birth of Isaac next week, but I had to go on.

God is not cruel. He who promises will complete it, and here we have it. And so in verse 1, it states this directly.

The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, as he had promised. And the

Lord did to Sarah as he had what? Promised.

And he had promised her back in Genesis 18, 14. You could look that one up, that he would visit her in a year, and she would be nursing her own child.

And the Lord made true on that promise. Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham, and the baby arrived in God's timing, at the time of which

God had spoken to him in verse 2. How many of you think that Sarah's timing might have been different?

How many of you think Abraham's timing might have been a little bit different? The baby arrived on God's schedule.

They obeyed and named him Laughter, and the name will certainly become a double meaning. They who laughed, a mocking laugh, when they were told that they would bear children at their age, will certainly now laugh for joy as they hold the very child that God had promised to them.

And again, Abraham now suddenly is strong and obedient and demonstrates that by having his son circumcised on the eighth day according to the command of God.

All of a sudden, he's back in obedience mode again. Abraham was 100 years old, and Sarah was 90 years old, and if you find that that stretches your faith to consider a 90 -year -old and a 100 -year -old man having a baby, consider that it stretched the faith of Abraham and Sarah as well.

Nothing about this text acts as though it's normal. Nothing about this text implies that, oh yeah, of course, everything is surprised that Sarah has a baby at 90.

And Sarah bursts into Hebrew poetry, incorporating the name of her son, literally saying, it could be translated this way, the actual name and full ending and everything on the

Hebrew word is Isaac in this sentence. Everyone who hears will Isaac over me.

Will laugh over me. And possibly, our best response to this text would be a hearty chuckle.

A 90 -year -old having a baby? God, really? Wow. Or even joy -filled laughter because God, the

God who created Adam and Eve, the God of Noah, the God of waffling Abraham and Sarah, our

God, keeps his promises. If he says it, it will happen.

And it will happen when he says it will happen, and it will happen in the way he says it will happen.

Who would have said, the text asks us a question here at the end, verse seven, and she said in her poetry, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?

Who would have said that God would be born among us? Seems like a long shot. Who would have said that God would subject himself to a cruel death on a cross?

Who would have said that God would bring victory from a cold stone grave? Who would have said that you or I could stand holy and blameless before our

God? And the answer to every one of those questions is the same. No one would say such a thing except for God, and he said it, and it will come to pass.

We're a lot like Abraham. We are growing. If we're connected to Christ, then we are growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

But that's not linear. You know what I'm talking about? A couple steps forward, three steps back, five steps forward, two steps back.

How many of you experience life that way? Any of you here just like, yes, my steps today are stronger than the ones yesterday, and tomorrow will just be better, and every single step

I've taken in life has just been, ooh, higher than the one before. If you have, I want to meet you for breakfast early tomorrow morning.

I'd like to just sit under your teaching and figure that out, but I know that my experience in life is that it's fits and starts, beginnings, slow, fast, big jogs ahead, big steps ahead, big steps back, and it's just been like that, and that's the reality of life.

We're a lot like Abraham. We have setbacks and dumb decisions, but my encouragement to you this week is that you fix your eyes on the one who makes promises and keeps them.

The more we fix our eyes on ourselves, the more discouraged we will become. Have you experienced that part of life?

The more we focus on our sin, trying to overcome our sin, the more tempted we are to sin, but the more we fix our eyes on the author and perfecter of our faith,

Jesus Christ, the more we see his cross, the more we recognize that that is where my sins were dealt with, the more strength we have to take the next step.

That is the fuel for the Christian life, is fixing our eyes on Jesus Christ, keeping him in the proper place, which is central to our thinking, waking up with thoughts of Jesus, with thoughts of the cross, with accurate thoughts of ourselves.

That's the place of accurate thinking. I'm both loved because Jesus died for me, but I'm so bad that it took the death of Jesus Christ, the son of God, for me.

That's where we have a healthy view of ourselves, not too inflated and not too down, but just right in the middle.

Are you getting what I'm saying? Correct understanding of who we are before God. Yes, he loves us, loves us so much to send his son to die for us.

Yes, we're horrible, so bad, that he had to send his son Jesus to die for us. And that makes his love all the more amazing.

Nothing will stand in the way of his promises. Not foreign kings, not wicked cities, not threats to paternity.

No hurdle will get in the way of what he has promised. How many of you think then that it might be valuable for us to understand some of what

God has promised? There are all kinds of false promises that you're not going to find here that people have taken and ripped out of context from Scripture and have applied to themselves.

Kind of like if we were to just say, okay, well, let's look for promises in Scripture and find the promise that is given to Sarah that she's going to have a baby and then cling to that ourselves and say, well, everybody who is in Christ should be able to have a baby then.

Do you see how that would be a misapplication of Scripture? Just go, okay, well, we're going to dig through here for any time that God promises anybody anything and then make that our own.

And so we look at things like a big common promise that people have misapplied in the church is prosperity.

That God wants you, and that if you are blessed and you are in faith with God and in a good relationship, then you'll be wealthy.

That's a misapplication. Are you getting what I'm saying? So knowing what God has promised, and there's one promise of God that just keeps rolling over my mind,

I can't get rid of it, and so I keep saying it and it's probably going to show up in weird places in sermons here or there, but I just cannot break free and I don't want to break free of this promise, and it is that God promises that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

For the law, and it goes on to say, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ from the law of sin and death.

Set free from the bondage of condemnation under God. That just keeps rolling over my mind.

I just say that that's not the logical outcropping of this passage, but what is is that God keeps his promises.

So when you find those promises to his people, in the New Testament, hold on tight to those.

And that implies that we're actually reading something here, that we're actually getting something in here and actually getting to know him and what is he promised.

Because how many of you know you can't cling to promises you've never heard? Right? You've got to know them, so we've got to get in here.

If you're here and you are in Christ Jesus, you have acknowledged that he is the promised one who came to purchase us by his blood, that that defines you.

If you've asked him to save you, then please join in communion with all of us.

Do so with joy. Rejoice that the one who keeps promises fulfilled all of these things in the

Old Testament. And the baby that was born to Sarah, named Laughter, had children who had children who had children, on and on, until one offspring was born in a stable.

And he is the one who is the answer. Let's pray.

Father, I rejoice in your promises. Just even that one applied from the Old Testament, kind of taking how you have revealed yourself as a promise keeper and then thinking through how you declare of us that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And I know that I'm in you. And so for all of us who are in Christ, we rejoice that you are one who keeps your promises and that we will stand before you one day with no mention to condemnation because of what

Jesus Christ has done for us and because you keep your promises. Father, I rejoice in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that has made me well in your eyes.

I know that I still have sin, I still have crud, I still have junk, but I rejoice that my sin has been dealt with and that you are progressively moving me forward steps at a time that that which is declared of me, righteous and blameless and holy, is becoming more of me day by day.

And even despite setbacks, I rejoice that we have this model in Abraham who was not perfect, who made mistakes, who did stupid things, and yet your promise still continues forward and that we know that you can keep us to the day of salvation because of your power and your might and your keeping your promises.

I thank you for the cross and as we take the juice and we take the cracker, may we reflect with joy the great sacrifice that has bought us freedom.