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 Filcik.

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

Growing in Faith, Community, and Service

Recast, 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.

Abraham’s Sketchy Behavior and God’s Promise Fulfilled

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. Abraham really, 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? You know what I'm talking about? Do 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.

From there, Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur and he journeyed in, he sojourned in Gerar. And Abraham said of Sarah, his wife, she is my sister. 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.

God’s Faithfulness, Human Failure, and the Birth of Isaac

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, who 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 what 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, doughnuts, 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. And so, but we don't really see much of that buildup.

The text just moves, boom, right into verse 2. And Abraham said of his wife, of Sarah, his wife, she is my sister and Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah.

Done.

I mean, it's just, how many, 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 anybody kind of, 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? So 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 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. How many of you, 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? I mean, 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, is not what we're trying to accomplish, is 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. 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?

Like 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. Um, and so you can understand the logic of the questions that are being asked of God in the text 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.

Ah, be merciful, please be merciful. I think that would be the first words out of my mouth, be merciful, please. And he is, that's what's 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.

And 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, well, 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, why are you, why are you coming after me? These guys set this up. And at the end of verse five, 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, I didn't, 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 I'm, you know what that, I think, a hard time imagining that sometimes. Because, I mean, we know, 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, 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.

But, so Abimelech, speaking to God in a dream, has a lot to say about his innocence. Do you, do you think that he really had a completely pure heart, Abimelech? No. 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 look, do you want, I mean, 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. Um, this, this, this concept of an integrity of heart and integrity of hands, but he says, I, I, I didn't think wrong. I didn't do wrong. But then verse six, and verse six should stop us in our tracks.

Verse six is, you ever encounter a verse inscription, you got to read it again. You're like, that's mine. That's mind numbing. Like my, my, my brain hurts. Like I can kind of, and your brain just melts.

And you're like, 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 weren't, 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, sovereignty of God is a very mind bending thing. Have any of you ever, I mean everybody in the room has an opinion about God's sovereign will and man's free will and all of that stuff and just kind of like where do you fall.

On that?

But have 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 just didn't have any, 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 actually, I think you could literally drive yourself nuts trying to wrestle through this issue.

I mean, certifiable. But when, 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 come, become convinced of that little text like this, like this verse six, just kind of, do you see how it highlights that, that God is able to stop somebody from sinning?

Is that, 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, you thought that I was more than, or that I'm going to go that.

Way.

Like, I'm going to be standing before him going, you know what, I guess we were pretty important. I guess we were, I guess our decisions really were what it was all about. I think I'm going to, 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, uh, 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 we, 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? 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. Keep me from, 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 a hold 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 or, you know, 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 six 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 six 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 was, 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?

I mean, it would be, right? I mean, just again, not a trick question. It is a sin against Abraham, but primarily sin is an affront to God. 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 six says, then the question becomes, what does God think of X?