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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Genesis 21:22-34
And I'm very thankful to the Lord and for his providence that we were able to experience Brian's ministry over the past month. I'm so thankful for his resolve and ability to cover on short notice and trust.
The Lord, as always, didn't allow his word to return empty and you found that providence to be a blessing.
To your walk as well.
But now we have to return to Genesis 21. And we wanna finish out this chapter that we began over a month ago. Abraham and Sarah are now finally walking in the fulfillment of God's promise that they would receive a child, an heir from their own loins.
We can be sure you can almost picture them sitting at the door of their tent, joyfully holding up their precious Isaac, this long awaited son of promise, every day blessing God, just amazed at the wonder that this has happened.
When they hold him, when they feed him, as they teach him by the wayside, when they rise or when they lie, as he takes his naps, they are in awe at the miracle that God has brought into their lives, even in their elderly age.
And there they are in this joy and in this wonder in the midst of this town of tents. Whenever I think of Abraham, in my mind, I always think of a solitary tent and an elderly trio in the middle of a desert.
It's probably completely unrealistic. I'm sure there was all sorts of foliage surrounding them and it would have looked like a UN refuge village. It would have been a town of tents, considering they had hundreds of servants and all sorts of livestock.
But nevertheless, the center of this is this family of three, Abraham, his wife, Sarah, and the child of promise, Isaac. And so we read, beginning in verse 22. And it came to pass at that time that Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, spoke to Abraham saying, God is with you in all that you do.
Now therefore, swear to me by God that you will not deal falsely with me, with my offspring, or with my posterity, but that according to the kindness that I've done to you, you will do to me and to the land in which you've dwelt.
And Abraham said, I will swear. We read that Abimelech comes to speak with Abraham. This is already something we don't want to read past too quickly. Notice it's not the messengers of Abimelech, who's now just Abimelech, as though he and Abraham are on equal footing.
Don't forget, he's the king of Gerar. We remember him from chapter 20. He doesn't send his messengers. There's no homing pigeon that finds its way to Abraham's tent. The king himself comes to address this old sojourner living on the edge of the territory.
He doesn't send a roving unit of the Gerar border patrol with their cowboy hats and whips riding on the horseback. This is the king of Gerar himself. He's coming to address Abraham. And he likely has a whole train of servants and soldiers.
If you have the five-star general with you, he's not coming alone. There's at least some sort of security presence. But the opening words of this exchange are almost as striking as the whole retinue of the king coming to address Abraham.
God is with you in all that you do. This is like a Melchizedekian blessing to Abraham. Amen, king of Gerar. God apparently is with me in all that I do. Abimelech, of course, has seen firsthand how God is with Abraham in all that Abraham does, whether good or bad.
In Abraham's success and even in his failure, as Abimelech saw, God has been with him. God has protected him as his shield and provided for him, lest the promise come to naught. And so here the king, and this is striking, here the king is led to confess the God of Abraham.
God is with you in all that you do. Here the king comes to seek the blessing of Abraham. Swear to me by God, by this God that you serve. And so God had revealed to Abimelech, if you want healing, you must go to Abraham,.
For he is a prophet.
And now the king has come to the prophet. The king confesses the God of the prophet. The king seeks the blessing of the prophet. This is very instructive for how God has designed the prophetic mantle of the church to operate in the world.
He acknowledges that Abraham and his posterity.
Are here to stay.
He's addressing an elderly man. And he's saying, treat me kindly. Treat my children kindly. Be loyal to my posterity. I'm still hoping the kingdom of Gerar is here. I hope that my great, great, great, great grandchildren are taught to be kind and that you will treat them kindly because I know you're here to stay.
Yeah, you're in a town of tents, but you're here to stay. The king's practically confessing that Abraham is indeed the heir of the land. Now we get to verses 25 to 31,.
And I'm just gonna pause before we address them.
The bulk of the application today is gonna come from verses 25 to 31. But so just jump down to verse 32, which is the conclusion of this episode. And I wanna try to, before we move into a certain application, just wanna show you the larger theme here.
Why is this episode included? How does this fit into the larger storyline of Genesis? So beginning in verse 32. So they made a covenant at Beersheba. So Abimelech rose with Phicol, the commander of his army, and they returned to the land of the Philistines.
And then Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba. And there he called on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. And Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines many days, a long time. Abraham seems, at the end of this episode, to raise an Ebenezer.
He plants a tree. And that perhaps has symbolic significance. Here he is in the Negev, in the dry south. And he has this memorial tree, perhaps a marker of the shading protection of God. God has been his refuge.
God has brought life and vitality to his promise. And so he plants this tree as an Ebenezer, pointing to the faithfulness of all that God had promised. And certainly for Moses' audience, remember Moses is writing this, and the Israelites receive it as they look toward the conquest of the land.
Certainly this multi-generational promise of God would have been striking to them. Even the little lines like, he stayed in the land of the Philistines for a long time. That would have been an encouragement to them as they prepared for the conquest of the land ahead.
As Alan Ross notes, the importance of oaths and covenant agreements would have been appreciated by Israel. And this foundational passage would have been instructive. Abraham, the founding father, made a treaty to live in peace in the land.
And so Israel would have been exhorted to make peace with the non-Canaanite groups in the land, so that these might share in the blessing of the covenant. Now theologically, this is maybe a minute of review, theologically the land takes on this context, takes on this symboletry of God's presence being restored to his people.
You cannot make sense of the promised land if you sever it from Eden, if you sever it from Genesis one through three. The sense in which Adam was cast out of the Edenic presence of God is carried through Scripture when Israel, which is as it were the Adam of God, God's son Israel, remember out of Egypt I've called my son, is then also cast out of the presence of God, sent into exile.
And so there's a major theological thread here that runs through all of Scripture, and the significance of the land is this is the place where God's people will be restored to God's presence. And so the temple of Eden guides us all the way to a new heavens and a new earth, which has no temple, and the Lamb is its light, and the whole thing is holy to the Lord.
Of course, God's promise of the land is what we might call an already not yet promise. Abraham's in the land, but he's surrounded by a whole lot of unfulfilled promise. By faith, he looks toward that which God will fulfill.
We had more time would consider this in Hebrews. I know we've done it in times past. He was looking for a city whose builder and maker was God. Abraham was already in the land, but he had not yet taken possession.
The fulfillment of the promise had not yet arrived. Not yet. And so Abraham is waiting for the promised inheritance. And in the meantime, as he waits for the promised inheritance, he must learn how to live among those outside.
And Israel enters the land after 400 years, according to God's word. And as Israel awaits the inheritance, they too must learn how to live among those who are outside of the inheritance. And then we, as the church, brothers and sisters, as we, like Abraham, like Israel, as the Israel of God await our inheritance, we too must learn how to live among those who are outside of our inheritance, which is ours by faith in Christ Jesus.
So this is where I think this passage is so helpful. In this passage, I think we can find some application about how to live among those outside. While we wait by faith for our inheritance. How do we live among those outside?
Outside of the promise. Outside of the inheritance. Outside of the faith. How do we live among them? And in these verses, I really find four things that I want to focus on. Four things. I won't give you them now, lest you get the four, write them in your notes, and then kind of tune out for the next 40 minutes.
I know Brian has you on bad expectations.
About sermon length.
We're gonna work on that.
The first point is this. Living among those outside requires integrity. Living among those outside requires integrity. This is the longest point by far. Genesis 21. We see this at the very beginning. It came to pass at that time that Abimelech and Phicol spoke to Abraham, saying, God is with you in all that you do.
Now therefore, swear to me by God that you will not deal falsely with me. Remember that Abimelech has a pretty good reason to ask Abraham for an oath of honesty. Back in chapter 20, Abraham failed to trust the shielding protection of God.
He lied about his relationship to Sarah, and in the long run, that deception brought a curse upon Abimelech and his house. No wonder Abimelech's going, please stop lying to me. Can you take an oath that you'll never deceive me again?
I can't afford any more of that burden on my house. But by chapter 21, look at the difference in Abraham's life. By chapter 21, he's grown to see the fulfillment of God's promise, even when he's waited for it for decades.
It's finally come, and he's got the diaper bag around his shoulder when he's talking to the king, and the car seats on the camel in the back, maybe over the second hump. Finally, the promise is there.
And this has shaped his character. He knows that if God could bring this life out of seeming death, what will my God not accomplish? And so now he's gone from self-preservation, I need to lie lest I fall into the hands of this king.
Now he's gone to trusting the shielding protection of God. His faith has matured, and so he desires to act with integrity.
I will swear, I will swear.
Everything that follows is Abraham acting with integrity, not just here, but even as we move forward to chapter 23. Put another way, this is the principle, it is because Abraham has learned to trust the promise of God, that he will make a trustworthy promise to Abimelech.
Integrity begins in the Christian life with integrity toward God. When we have integrity toward God, we will have integrity toward our neighbor, integrity toward our employer, integrity toward our fellow man.
You will not get the reverse of that. Integrity doesn't start there and work its way up in the spiritual life, never. And if you lack integrity in your relationship with God, look around you. You'll be lacking integrity in every relationship in your life.
Abraham desires now to make up for the damage and the loss of witness, the lack of faith. Well, what an awful thing to bring upon Abimelech. And so he wants to make up for that. Now he wants to act with integrity.
He wants to be well-regarded. He wants to be seen as trustworthy. He wants to sojourn in peace. He wants his boy to grow up and sojourn in peace among these Philistines. And so he's living out this principle that God gives us in his book of wisdom.
Proverbs 22, one, a good name is to be chosen rather than great wealth. A good name used to be that way, not in my generation, not in our age of litigation and endless footnotes and all the lawyer contracts and NDA agreements, but it used to be that you'd rather take a loss in your business than go against your word.
You know, you spit in your hand and do the handshake, and if that means you're gonna have to do that repair at a loss, you're gonna do it because your name is on the line, and a good name is worth.
More than great treasure.
Do you care what other people think about you? I don't mean in a teenagerish way. I don't care what other people think about me.
I'm like, yes, you do.
More than any other human your age group cares about what people, your whole life is ordered by what people think about you. But I'm asking in this mature Christian way, do you care how others regard you?
Do you care how you come off to those outside?
Should you care?
It's an interesting question. This is not easy to give a firm yes or a firm no to. I'm gonna have to build one side of the case and then try to build the other. Do you care whether you are well regarded by those outside of the faith?
Do you care?
What strikes me about this passage in Genesis 21 is how it really points us to a very frequent exhortation, especially in the early church, especially from the apostles to Christians that are facing all sorts of infighting and pressure without, hostility and persecution.
And the constant exhortation is act and work and behave with integrity. Be a good example to those who are outside. Don't give them any cause to mock or jeer or taunt or blaspheme. Be well regarded by them.
That's just a never-ending exhortation to almost any of the churches that are addressed by letters in the New Testament. This is what is a requirement for an elder, according to 1 Timothy 3. This is a requirement.
The Apostolic Commission says, "'Churches, don't you put forth an elder "'if this isn't in place?'. 1 Timothy 3 said, then, "'He must have a good testimony among those who are outside. "'He must. "'He must care how he is viewed "'and regarded by those who are outside.
"'He must, lest he fall into reproach, "'the snare of the devil.'". Paul is saying, "'Timothy, when you're considering "'who seems spiritually mature, "'don't just go for the one "'that everyone in the church thinks well of.
"'He must be regarded well by those outside of the faith. "'He might be the proud turkey every Sunday "'when he comes into the little house church there, "'but what do his coworkers think of him? "'Do they roll their eyes and they say, "'He's a cheat, he's a slouch, "'he makes our lives harder?'.
Listen, if the elder has a one-star Yelp review, he cannot be put forward. That's what Timothy's saying. I thank God there's no such thing as an elder Yelp review.
Oh Lord.
The Apostle Paul,.
When he stands before Felix the governor in Acts 24, he says this, "'I myself always strive "'to have a conscience without offense "'toward God and man.'". That is an amazing statement because the last part is so easy to miss.
I myself always strive to have my conscience without offense toward God.
We go, amen, and man. Well, you know, and man, you know.
Sometimes you gotta step on toes. And who really cares? And these people are sinners anyway,.
They don't understand these things.
Paul says, no, my whole I always am striving to make sure there's no needless offense that what's up to me. I live peaceably among men. And that if it's up to me, I don't remove the offense of the cross, but I seek to be well regarded.
There is a certain type of personality, it's rampant within our reformed corner of the tent. Rampant. That almost does the opposite of this. They strive to offend rather than strive not to offend. And it's one thing if we're offending in the right way, because we are gonna be offensive.
If you're a Christian, you're offensive. In our culture, if you're a Christian, that actually means what he says. That actually believes what he confesses. You're offensive de facto by virtue of being a Christian, you're offensive.
But what I'm trying to distinguish is this. There is an unavoidable offense of the cross, and we may never remove it. God forbid we remove it. Because when you remove the offense of the cross, you remove the gospel.
If it's going to be a witness, there must be the offense of the cross. That's what Paul does when he comes to Corinth. You wanted me to pander to you and get up on a soapbox and show all of my Hellenistic oratory prowess?
I won't do it. When I came to you, I desired to know nothing among you, but Christ and Him crucified. I dare not remove the offense of the cross. Is that cross a stumbling block for the Jews and a foolishness to the Greeks?
Yes, and I dare not remove that offense. And let me say, I would much rather labor alongside men and women that because they're so zealous for the truth, they occasionally, unwittingly, maybe intentionally, stomp on people's toes, and they have rather rough edges toward those who are outside.
I'd still much rather, a hundred times over, labor alongside people that are zealous for the truth and have collateral damage than to labor alongside those who are constrained by their desire for the approval of the world, that they risk offending God rather than man.
I don't want to labor among those people. But can we say, like Paul, that we always strive to have a conscience without offense toward man? In 2021, can we say we always strive to have a conscience without offense toward man?
What lengths have we gone to to ensure this? In other words, what we need is integrity. Do we recognize that the church is not meant to be a sealed-up city on a hill, barring entrance to those outside?
We're a city on a hill that we might be seen, that the light might be shared, that there would be a draw. Oh, that looks like a place of refuge. That looks like a place of security. I must go toward this city and leave this desolate wilderness.
In Acts 13, we read, for David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, he fell asleep. And this is what the great Puritan John Owen had to say about that verse. God has work to do in this world.
And to desert it because it's difficult, because of the entanglements, it's to cast off His authority. It's not enough that we be just and that we be righteous and that we walk with God in holiness we must also serve our generation as David did before he fell asleep.
God has a work to do and not to help Him is to oppose Him. Are you tempted in the way that I am?
Let's seal up the city,.
Focus on our righteousness and holiness. Isn't that enough? What more does God require? God has a work to do in this world. You must serve your generation. And of course, as we understand God has a work to do, we understand God has given us works to do.
In fact, He's ordained works beforehand for us to walk in. Jesus in Matthew 5 says that the blessed people of the beatitudes are those who are going to be insulted and persecuted and lied about, have false witness born of them.
And in fact, these ones, these persecuted sufferers are the light and the salt and the city on the hill. And that light by verse 16 in Matthew 5 is said to be good works that shine before men so that they might glorify our Father in heaven.
The light is good works.
The light is not me and my private piety. The light is not, well, just take a look at my Instagram and see the kind of things I read and how I am. The light is my good works in service to the generation, to those outside.
It always has been. 1 Peter 2 is drawn on Matthew 5, if not dependent upon Matthew 5. Uses a lot of the same language, probably alluding to it in a way that Peter's hearers would have understood, yes, you're saying take Jesus' teaching and apply it in this way.
The setting seems to be that those outside were rather hostile to those inside. This Christian community became an irritating thorn in the side of the city. Of course, these Christians have been converted.
They used to take part in the public and social aspects of pagan syncretism. They used to be present when the idols were being prayed to and having incense and meat slain in their honor at the pagan festivities.
But now these annoying Christians are refusing to bend.
They're refusing to compromise.
They're threatening our peace and security, our business, our way of life. And so the reaction is to revile the Christians, to say that they're criminals, wrongdoers. That's what Peter 2 says. And so verbal abuse, defamation, chalked up charges, persecution is coming to the church.
They're antisocial, they're atheists. That was one of the charges against Christians in the ancient world. They're anti-imperial. And Peter has to address this. And what does he do? How does Peter address this?
Well, the first thing to say is there is something to say about that justice and that righteousness and that holiness. That's not like you can choose between it if you don't have that, if you don't have integrity there.
If you don't have the integrity of a close walk with God and holiness, anything else that's said, you're just not gonna be able to reach it. Beloved, he says, 1 Peter 2, beginning in verse 11, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, personal holiness first, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.
And if you have that integrity, now you can put it outward, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your light, by your good works, which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.
If you wanted to give a message translation of 1 Peter 2, 11 and 12, it would be this. Brothers and sisters, as you face this trial, have integrity, have integrity.
Do good, walk closely with God,.
Be honorable in everything you do. Have integrity, don't give them an inch. Let all of their false charges be transparently false. When they say you're an evildoer, overcome that evil with good, don't give them an inch, have integrity.
Peter's been using this language of Israel as a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a treasured possession of God. It's all the vocabulary that belongs to the nation of Israel, and Peter's saying, you're that nation, church, you're the Israel of God.
And so, as he's addressing the church in this way, he speaks of the outsiders as the Gentiles, when those Gentiles, most of the church is Gentiles in a sense, and yet he's saying, you're the Israel, you're the royal priesthood, you're the treasured possession, and when these Gentiles revile you, don't forget your vocation before God.
You were meant to be a light to the nations, so have integrity, have integrity. At the end of the first century, 1 Peter was likely written late, so maybe within 40 years, we have a sermon written by Clement of Rome.
Clement of Rome is some of the earliest writings that we have outside of the New Testament. In Clement of Rome, 2 Clement is a sermon, and in 2 Clement 13, he's applying this again to the church, and he says, brothers, let us repent, let us be serious about what is good, for we are full of so much folly and wickedness.
Let us blot out our former sins from us. Let us not become men-pleasers. That's one thing we have to talk about. But also, let us not desire to please only each other, only those inside, only other Christians, but also the ones that are outside, by our righteousness, so that the name will not be blasphemed.
He's saying, you're the Israel of God. For the Lord also says, my name is continuously blasphemed among all of the Gentiles. How is it blasphemed? Well, the Gentiles marvel at our words. They say they're beautiful and great when they hear from our mouths the oracles of God, but afterward, when they've learned that our works are not worthy of the words we speak, they blaspheme, they say it's a fable, a delusion.
For example, when they hear from us that God says, what good is it to you if you love those that love you? Do not the tax collectors do the same? But thanks is due to you if you love your enemies and bless those that hate you.
When they hear these things, they marvel at the excellence of the kindness, but then they see that not only do we not love those that hate us, we don't even love those who love us. And so the name is blasphemed.
See, Clement's saying, we need integrity. We need integrity. How are we gonna learn to love our enemies if we can't even love our friends? We can't even love those that love us within the church? The idea of integrity is wholeness, stability.
You think of integrity on a suspension bridge, right? There's something structurally solid about it. And how we're viewed by those outside runs right through the early church's concern, no matter how rough the outside gets.
This is a constant exhortation. When times of persecution and hostility run hot, don't give them an inch, have integrity, be honorable, be humble. And so the whole church, this is from Titus 3, remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be ready for every good work.
This is a faithful saying. And these things I want to affirm constantly that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are good, profitable to all men. Do you care about what people think about you as a Christian?
Do you care about how the far left regards you?
Isn't it a little bit too easy to say I could care less?
You hate me, good.
Let me give a little more fuel to your fire. There's this attitude of flippancy. We're completely disobeying what the Bible is calling us to in times of hostility and persecution. God has a work to do.
It's what Owen says, right? God has a work to do. And if we don't help him in this work, we oppose him in it. So how do we carry out this work? I want to touch on this point. Clement rightly said, we don't do this as men pleasers.
That's always a danger, right? I could see how all of the things I'm saying would be amened by certain sectors of evangelicalism, and I want to be quick to tear that away from them because they're not actually having integrity.
They're having a sort of man-pleasing attitude, a way of courting and curtsying worldly approval. We're not to be, to put it in Jesus' words, reeds swaying in the wind. So we don't host revoice conferences.
We don't begin to kowtow or take seriously the most insane spouting of transgender rhetoric, right? This is not what we're talking about. What we mean when we say we don't want to be men-pleasers or reeds swaying in the wind is we want to be not just hearers only, but hearers and doers.
Integrity is at the heart of that. That is integrity, not just to hear and not do, but to hear and do, that's integrity. Otherwise, all of our attempts to be salt and light, and we have many examples of this in the evangelical world, but all of our attempts to be salt and light are actually just driven by the flesh.
And they're maneuvering the way that the world might react rather than having integrity before God, and from that toward man. That's the key. We can never forget, as Paul exclaimed, that we are the stench of death to those that are perishing.
That's what we are.
One of the things that I hated about COVID was losing my sense of taste. I was gonna say smell. Actually, I don't mind losing smell. It's kind of nice, actually, in some way, except you can't check yourself.
You're like, oh boy, I have no idea.
If my breath is horrible, you know? That's the unfortunate thing about it. But other than that, I'll take it. But losing taste, that was really rough. But Paul says, whether you can smell yourself or not, you are a stench to the world.
And a lot of sectors of evangelicalism get industrial-sized cans of Axe body spray, and they try to hide the offense of the cross. Or, it's not so bad. Can't we come a little bit closer? We'll use your preferred pronouns.
Paul says, no, you're a stench. If they're perishing, you're a stench, you're odious. But have integrity, because you're the fragrance of life.
If they're being saved.
You're the city on the hill, you're salt. To please the world, to lose integrity, is to remove the offense of the cross, to remove the gospel itself. But when we're not seeking to have integrity, have regard for those outside, by maneuvering to things that might be provocative, or to dance to their tune and think somehow we can just welcome them into the church by using their categories and worldview, and by numbing, indulging, and marginalizing.
The claims of God.
When we actually do the opposite, when we seek integrity before God, our attempts, as feeble as they seem, are driven by the spirit of God, for the sake of man's salvation. And so, in light of that, we can, as Paul practiced, strive always to have a conscience without offense toward those who are outside.
Integrity is not something rigid, inhospitable. That's not integrity. That's a straw man of integrity. That's reformed false integrity. Oh yeah, I have integrity, I'm a Calvinist. I don't give quarter to anyone.
I won't look an Arminian in the eyes. That's not integrity, you're a buffoon. Integrity is not rigid, inhospitality. Integrity is not inflexible harshness. I've been thinking about this statement.
I have to be careful with it.
I haven't really thought about this enough, but I think I'm on square ground here,.
So I'm gonna go with it.
I've been thinking about this statement. I think it was from Martin Lloyd-Jones. He said, one hasn't truly preached the gospel of God's free grace without at least being accused of preaching lawlessness.
Okay, do you understand the point? Right, he's basically looking at Romans 6 and the fact that when Paul is showing the grace of God that is at the very beating heart of his gospel presentation, he has to then defend himself against charges that he's just preaching lawlessness.
And so that bridges Romans 6 to Romans 7. And Martin Lloyd-Jones picks up on that and he says, you know, it must be the same with us. Have we really preached God's free grace and salvation if we couldn't be accused of preaching lawlessness.
Like Paul was?
So I've been thinking about that and I'm trying to extrapolate a little bit. Because Paul the apostle wasn't just accused of preaching lawlessness by his opponents, he was also accused of being a man pleaser.
So for instance, in Galatians 1, he defends himself against this charge. Do I now persuade men or God? Or do I seek to please men? If I still pleased men, I would not be a slave of Christ. Saying he's defending himself, I'm not a man pleaser.
The accusation here by the opponent is Paul has no integrity. He sways in the wind. If he thinks Gentiles might be more responsive in this way, he's gonna sway. If he thinks Jews are gonna be more responsive in this way, he's gonna sway, he's a man pleaser.
That's the accusation. Paul has no integrity, he's simply a man pleaser. And in 1 Corinthians 9, he gives a defense. For though I am free from all men, I've made myself a slave to all, that I might win them all.
And so to the Jews, I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews. And to those who are under the law, I came under the law, that I might win those who are under the law. And to those who are without law, I became as one without law, not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ, that I might win those who are without law.
And to the weak, I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men that by all means I might save some.". Paul saying, you want to call that man pleasing? Fine. Is it for the Jews' sake?
Is it for the sake of those under the law? Is it for the weak's sake? Is Paul just a peddler? Is he just a pleaser? Has he lost his integrity? Has he no backbone? How dare he be so accommodating, so flexible?
He's a man pleaser. He has no integrity. He's not like us stiff upper lip Calvinists. But what does he say? Why does he do it? Was it for any of their sake? Verse 23, I do this for the sake of the gospel.
Jesus' blood is worthy of this. I'll do anything if I might save some. How must I be? How must I live? How must I dwell among people that I have an integrity that's not off-putting but actually inviting, that's actually heralding?
How can I have missionary integrity? That's what Paul's saying. Missionary integrity. If you want to accuse me of being a man pleaser, fine. So I go back to Lloyd-Jones and I wonder if we have the same principle.
If it's true that we have not really preached the gospel of free grace without at least being accusable of preaching lawlessness, could we also say that we have not truly lived out a gospel-centered, gospel fueled missionary integrity unless we could be at least accused of being man pleasers?
I fear that otherwise our heart for the lost simply shrivels under endless excuses that we create so that we can go on being hostile, offensive, despising our enemies, keeping that drawbridge on the city on a hill up tightly, and bolting shut the gates.
Phew! Good thing we don't have to deal with those pagans out there. I fear that Reformed Christians especially have become so entrenched and embattled in these violent tides of our hostile culture that we have settled, even defended, even enjoyed what I would call porcupine integrity rather than missionary integrity.
Living among those outside requires integrity. That was a really long point, and the next three are super short. I know you won't believe it till you see it, you're like, prove it, but all right, here we go.
So the first point, of course, living among those outside requires integrity. Not what we like to think of as integrity, but what is actually integrity? Missionary integrity. A desire to be well regarded by those outside, if at all possible, though not to the point that we remove the offense of the cross.
We have integrity and it's missionary integrity that realizes we're stinky to the world. That's what it is. Second, living among those outside requires boldness. Just a quick point here. One of the things that strikes me about Abraham's interaction with Abimelech is that Abraham's integrity leads right away to boldness.
Notice the very first words of verse 25, then Abraham rebuked Abimelech. Here's the king and this whole retinue and they come to the tent and this elderly man hobbles out, you know, he's barely holding Isaac up, and here's the king and the generals there, he's got his hand on his shoulder, all the armor is rattling, he looks back and what does Abraham do?
He rebukes the king. He rebukes the king. He's this sojourning herdsman. He's an elderly man and he's rebuking a king. Integrity leads to boldness. Abraham rebukes the king and what does the king do? He's like stammering.
I don't know who's done this thing, you didn't tell me, I didn't even hear about it until today. It's like, he's stammering for excuses. Remember that this is the same Abraham who a chapter ago resorted to lying, throwing his wife into danger to basically be abused just because it would be possible that he might get into trouble.
Oh, he starts daydreaming of all that could happen. Sorry honey, you're gonna have to go into the harem of the king of Gorah again. I thought we dealt with this back in Egypt, but now look at him. This elderly man is rebuking a king to his face and the king is the one stammering.
Integrity leads to boldness. Integrity leads to boldness. When we have integrity in the things of the Lord, the Lord gives us strength and not just a quiet inner strength, but strength, boldness. And when we have integrity in times of persecution, we need such boldness.
So that's why the exhortation goes out, don't lose your integrity, be honorable in all that you do, be watertight, be close to the Lord, live a holy life. You're in the refiner's fire, the persecution is burning hot, have integrity.
And if you actually have the integrity that's given to you by God, if you walk in that, you will be bold, you will live boldly. Think of Nehemiah. Nehemiah is a great example of this. Remember in Nehemiah 13 when he's rebuking all of the nobles, all of the Judean nobles, he's rebuking them.
He's the beard-tearer. That's the kind of that's the kind of boldness this guy has. It's incredible. Where does that come from? Integrity with the Lord. He has integrity for the Lord, integrity for the Lord's work, and it gives him a boldness.
Think of John the Baptist with Herod. John the Baptist has integrity with the Lord, and though he he has this missionary integrity to welcome all the repentant to come to the waters of baptism, he can also look to Herod and say, it's not lawful for you to have her, even if he's preaching that through through iron bars.
That's integrity, that's boldness. There is a remarkable boldness that God gives to his people when they face trials with integrity. It's a pitiable sight when the Church of God faces a trial without integrity and loses all of her boldness.
She just sounds like the king, Abimelech, stammering and stuttering with no real response to the world. I was thinking of an early Christian leader. I love this. This has no application value, but I just I have to share this.
It's amazing to me. There was an early Christian leader named Lactantius. This is what I love about him. This is like, you know, some of these early Christian guys are really bold, you know, like Carl Truman says about the Nicene Council when it convened.
I mean, there had been so much persecution up to that point that when it convened, you know, the bishops and the church leaders came and some of them were missing arms and some of them had gouged-out eyes.
I'm like, alright, let's hand her out the doctrine of the Trinity. You know, these guys were bold. They were bold. Well, Lactantius, you know, what we do is we read accounts. If you're like me, I read the history of the Covenanters in Scotland.
We read the accounts of Christian martyrs. They were faithful to the end and we delight in their faith. That's what gives us the joy. Give me that kind of faith. Thank you that, like Tertullian said, the blood of these martyrs is the seed of the church.
Well, Lactantius was a tad bit different. He wrote his equivalent of the Fox's Book of Martyrs, but instead of recounting the deaths of all the faithful martyrs, this was his book, on the deaths of the persecutors, not the martyrs.
His joy to read was like, oh yeah, it's coming. Oh yeah, that jailer that dragged those Christians to jail, check out how he died. That was his joy. That's a bold Christian, on the deaths of the persecutors, which was probably an apologetic work.
I don't think he took what the Germans call schadenfreude, a joy in one's demise, when he wrote that. He was kind of saying, hey, are you gonna still persecute us? You might want to read this book. It's not gonna go well for you.
Jacques Allul. Allul is a, he was a French theologian, a French philosopher. Hard to read. I don't agree with everything he wrote, but he was writing back in the 60s and 70s, and he's one of, you know, there's a few writers, and they tend to be people who have very closely read scripture and understand history in light of it, that for us, we can only see a few inches in front of us, but there's these rare breeds that they can see a century in front of them, and he wrote a work called the Technological Society before they even really had what we consider technology nowadays, in 1971, and if you read this, you'd think he wrote it last month.
It's incredible. It's prophetic. This is what Jacques Allul has said. Christians were never meant to be normal. We've always been holy troublemakers. We've always been creators of uncertainty to the world, agents of dimension completely incompatible to the status quo, because we don't accept the world as it is.
We actually insist on the world becoming the way that God wants it to be, and we insist that the kingdom of God is utterly different to the patterns of this world. He's saying Christians have always been holy troublemakers.
I think that's a good point. Now, if you've understood what I said about integrity, integrity leads to boldness, and you might be thinking by boldness I mean troublemaking. Let's get out there and ruffle some feathers, guys.
Holy troublemaking, which certainly can be rather offensive and sometimes does make legitimate trouble for the world, but if you understand what Allul means by holy troublemaking, he's talking about the boldness that comes with Christian integrity, and that brings us to the third point.
If integrity before God gives us integrity toward man, a desire to be well thought of, if it's up to us insofar as it's up to us to live peaceably with all men in a missionary way, and that then gives us boldness, boldness like Nehemiah or John the Baptist or Paul before Peter at Antioch, Galatians 2, that kind of boldness, that kind of holy troublemaking, then what must come with that is the third point.
Living among those outside requires meekness. I was so encouraged that when Joshua prayed, he prayed that we would have boldness, we would walk boldly and humbly with the Lord, and I thought, how did he look at my sermon notes?
That we would walk boldly and humbly, that with integrity before God and toward man we would have boldness, but that that boldness would not lead us astray toward arrogance lest we fall into the judgment of God, but that with that boldness we would also have meekness.
That's what we see with Abraham here. Abraham sets sheep and oxen, right? So this whole dispute about the well breaks out, and Abraham has the stuttering, stammering king, and he says, okay, fine, here's what we're gonna do.
If you're not gonna speak, I'll speak for us. Here's some oxen, here's some sheep. He provides the sacrifice necessary to make the covenant, and then on top of it, verse 28, he gives a gift of seven ewe lambs, and Abimelech, you know, he understands how you make a covenant.
So when sheep and oxen are given, Abimelech's not like, oh, what are you doing? He's like, yeah, okay, let's cut them in half. We're gonna walk through it. This is the covenant between us. Now, that part's understood, but notice Abimelech's reaction.
Well, here's also these seven precious spotless ewe lambs, and Abimelech goes, what is this for? What are you doing? Why are you doing this? What's the meaning of these seven ewe lambs? And Abraham says, take these.
I want you to take these. This is gonna be a record between us. So Abraham gives a gift. Abraham has integrity, I will swear, and that gives him boldness. He rebukes the king, but with that boldness, there's meekness.
I'll provide the sacrifice, and here's a gift to you. I want nothing in return. There's this meekness that he's actually blessing someone he actually is owed by. I'm so sorry my servants did this to you.
Here's how we'll repay. Actually, Abraham's the one paying. Abraham's the one gifting. Rather than pressing his claim further, Abraham takes radical steps to reconcile, because Abraham also has this meekness.
His boldness has not become arrogance. His boldness has led him to be humble, to have meekness. And so even though Abraham is wronged, Abraham is meek enough to bless the wrongdoer. Insofar as it depends on you, live peaceably with all men.
With integrity comes boldness. With boldness, there is a snare of arrogance. There is a snare of pride. All of the time, especially in our circle, we see men that God has given incredible gifts to, and they're lion-hearted men.
They're stout men. They're heralds of God. They have boldness, and they had begun this course with integrity, but that boldness gave them an arena, and in that arena, they began to lose their meekness.
And so they really thought it's not the gifts of God, it's me. It's my skill. It's the factor that I bring. It's what I've built. And they lose that meekness, and they fall into a pit of hell built by their pride.
God pulls them down. How many times have we seen this? Just in the past ten years, we've seen this. Unless boldness is tempered by meekness, there's a spiritual danger lurking at every turn. That's why we already read it, but we didn't read the verse before it, 1st Timothy 3 .6.
If you appoint an elder, he must not be a novice, lest, being puffed up with pride, he falls into the same condemnation as the devil. And then, moreover, he must have a good testimony among those who are outside.
Why is that good testimony there? It's a way you check against being puffed up by pride. Is he just so proud and so arrogant in the church, or has his meekness been demonstrated toward those outside? Do they regard him well?
2nd Timothy 2, a servant of the Lord must not engage in heated disputes. He must be kind toward all, an apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents in gentleness. Doesn't sit well with our idea of boldness, does it?
Man pleaser, swaying with the wind, anything to protect home base. I'm, no, I'm sorry, I'm actually following what God has for me in 2nd Timothy 2. Not engaging in a heated dispute, not getting my blood pressure up, and even my opponents that are putting feckles of spit in my face when they scream at me, I seek to correct with gentleness.
This is what a servant of the Lord must do. We already read part of Titus 3 too, but just let's just blow this up. This is not an instruction for an elder, this is an instruction for the church. Titus 3, beginning in verse 1.
Titus, remind them, remind the church to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men. Remind them, because they're gonna forget, and the next ding on their phone in the headline, they're gonna forget, and the next time that the news ticker runs across and Mr. Potato Head is now trans, they're gonna forget.
So remind them, speak evil of no one, be peaceable, be gentle, show all humility to all men. This is not the time to let boldness become arrogance, this is a time for boldness to be put, that iron boldness to be put in the velvet glove of meekness.
And you might say, Paul, how in the world do you expect me to do that? And so he explains how we're able to do that. Verse 31, sorry, verse 3 and following. For, how are you gonna do this? For we ourselves were also once foolish and disobedient and deceived and serving lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another, but when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared toward man, not by the works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he has saved us through the washing of regeneration, through the renewal of the Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us abundantly in Jesus Christ our Savior.
That's how you do it. How do you expect me to temper my boldness with meekness? Just remember who you were first. Remember what you were like before you were saved, and then you'll learn how to live among those who are outside.
You'll be patient, you'll be gentle, you'll do good, and you'll say, Lord, show mercy to this enemy. We get all hot and bothered by the persecutors, by the Tobiah, the Ammonites in our culture, and it just shows how little we've been persecuted.
Because when you go to other countries where there's there's real devastating persecution, as our brother said, when they actually hobble together and get through the security checkpoints and meet in that basement, they're praying for their persecutors.
They're praying with all humility and all gentleness and in meekness they're saying, Oh God, might you save our persecutors. With integrity in the way of the Lord and the boldness that flows from it, now more than ever there is a need for meekness before God.
Not smugness, not arrogance, but meekness. James 3 addresses the same issue. Who is wise among you? Who is of understanding? Who's listened to the most podcasts? Who reads every word of the epic times?
Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. If that desire to know the times and to stand up with integrity and address them and to be prophetic and rebuke, if that boldness that God must grant by his Spirit lest we never see days of revival, if that's not tempered by meekness, James says, you're not walking in wisdom.
You have no understanding. Paul would put it this way, I can see you have zeal, not according to knowledge. Jonathan Edwards said this, a truly humble Christian is clothed with lowliness, mildness, meekness, gentleness of spirit.
These things are just like garments to him. Christian humility has no such thing as roughness or fierceness or bitterness in its nature, yet when it searches the awakening conscience, the Christian is like a son of thunder.
He should be like a lion to a guilty conscience, but like a lamb to men and women. And that's Abraham, like a lion to the conscience of the king, but in his demeanor, in his gifts, in his willingness to bless one who's wronged him, he's like a lamb.
In fact, he gives seven lambs, and that's part of the beauty of this whole episode. Abraham and Abimelech are mentioned seven times. The well is the place of seven, be a Shiva, Shiva being seven, seven lambs, and Abraham's a lot like a lamb in his meekness.
I wonder, brothers and sisters, are we a lot like lambs in our meekness? Last point, and this is really brief. I know we're going a little bit over. So we've said, just to recap, living among those outside requires integrity, living among those outside requires boldness, living among those outside requires meekness, and lastly, living among those outside requires worship.
Do you notice how our episode ends in verse 33? Abraham plants a tree as a memorial to God's faithfulness, and we read there, he called on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. So here, Abraham does what he's always done, he turns in worship to the Lord.
Calvin says it's because he's now lived under this covenantal agreement with the king that he wants to make known this testimony. Don't think, King of Gerar, that I feel safer because we made a covenant.
You're not my protection, you're not my land grant, you're not the the juror of my inheritance in this land, so I worship and I call upon the name of the Lord, and Calvin says for the same reason. This is why he includes the title of the everlasting God, as if Abraham would say that he had not put his confidence in an earthly king.
We read these things out of historical context. When Calvin was writing that in the late 1570s, 1578, it was something like five to eight thousand Protestant refugees swarming Geneva, and so it's not just some observation, it's application.
You're sojourning here and you're a refugee, you don't know how it's going to go in the land that you've left behind, but don't you dare put your confidence in a king. The Lord is your shield. So Abraham worships.
Worship is what forms our witness. Worship is the arena. It is the display case for Christian integrity. It's where Christian integrity is built and formed. It's where Christian integrity becomes a witness to those who are outside.
It's where the boldness of our witness becomes amplified because we gain strength as we pray and as we gather, as we receive the Spirit-wrought gifts that are unique to each of us. It's where values are molded.
Christians are convicted by the Spirit that they're lacking integrity compared to their other brothers and sisters, and so they repent and they form habits and influences take hold and a vision is cast before them and they say, this is the direction that I'm going in holiness.
Worship in the community reinforces the gifts and the calling of God. It puts exemplars before people like we saw in Philippians 2 when Paul said, you know, regard Epaphroditus. Follow his example. He's an exemplar for you, and God has given grace, reformation, exemplars.
It's very much a part of how we live among those who are outside. I'm so thankful that if I interact with some YouTube quarterback who's watched, you know, who's lived his whole life completely unfazed by trial, but he watches YouTube marathons of debates about how God cannot exist because there's suffering in the world.
I'm so thankful that if I cross this path, I can say, you're saying that there cannot be a God, and if there is a God, it can't be an all-powerful God. If he's an all-powerful God, he can't be a good God if he allows suffering.
Listen, will you come with me on Sunday? There's some people I want you to meet. I don't know what kind of suffering you've experienced in your life, but there's some people I want you to meet. We have exemplars.
Living among those outside requires worship. Abraham calls on the name of the Lord. It's this exalted understanding. It's a new name for God in Genesis, the everlasting God. He's matured in his faith to the point that this self-preserving deceiver is now a boldly king-rebuking Christian, and he turns in worship at the end.
He has this exalted understanding, the everlasting God whose purposes cannot be thwarted. I will not depart from your way, O my King. And in that blessing that he's received and how that blessing has turned to worship, we realize we're about to turn the page to chapter 22, and God says, you've come to this place of blessing, and I've given you more of an understanding in me, and by my grace I've given you more strength, more faith, more confidence.
I've shown more of my protection for you. Abraham, you're gonna need it because the hardest trial of your life is coming. Barrenness gives way after decades to the birth of the Son. Trial in the Christian life gives way to blessing, and we worship, and that worship prepares us as that blessing gives way to trial.
That's what happens when we turn the page, and yet though trial leads to blessing and blessing leads to trial, in every season the people of God put their hope in him. I was just so encouraged. Alicia's had a really hard time, and sometimes she, every day for two months, she can't come down the stairs, so I always know she's woken up, right?
I'm sleeping on the couch and the girls have the mattress next to me, and Alicia's upstairs in a pitch-black room with fans blasting, eating melatonin gummies, doing anything she can do to try to sleep.
I know when she wakes up because she'll start scooting down the stairs. It used to be, oh, you know, Elsie's up. Now it's like, oh, Alicia's coming, and she got to the bottom of the stairs and she had tears in her eyes, and she just said, I just feel so discouraged.
He gives his beloved sleep. Why won't he give me sleep? Why won't he give me strength? It just seems like he's against me, and I remembered this quote from from George MacDonald, the Scottish writer, and I was just encouraging her and praying with her.
God is for us. Even when he is against us, he's for us. Such marvelous depth to that. Christian, God is for you. Even when every turn, every season, every providence in your life seems like God is against you, he's actually for you.
And Abraham needs to have faith in that very promise, in that very character of God, when God calls him to put Isaac on the altar. So brothers and sisters, as we close in every season, the people of God put their hope in him, and we as the people of God, we live with integrity before him, because unless we have integrity before him, we'll never have integrity before man.
We'll never obey the calling that we have to serve our generation, and as we walk integrity before him and become a witness of the integrity we have in him before others, God gives us a holy boldness.
We become holy troublemakers in all that we do, but that boldness we temper with meekness, and so often that meekness comes with trials, and it's tempered by the Spirit of God, and in the continually worship the everlasting God.
Let's pray. Father, thank you for the example of Abraham and the calling it puts on us, Lord. Lord, if my brothers and sisters feel the way I feel, I pray you would grant me more integrity than I have today.
I pray I'd have more boldness than I have today. I pray I'd have more meekness than I have today. I pray that the worship of you in this assembly would be forming and building these things into me, reinforcing what you've given by your Spirit.
Help us, Lord, as a church, Lord, to receive the wisdom of your Word in these ways that despite the hostility of our culture, the things that grip us with angst and frustration, that we would never lose our integrity but rather be called upward to it, that we would gird ourselves, that we would have a holy boldness so that we can be as Nehemiah was in his day, but that your Spirit would temper that boldness with meekness, that we might bless those that revile us, do good to those who curse us, that we might love our enemies as you've commanded us to do.
Lord, that's difficult, Lord. Remind us of what we once were and how it is not by our works, not by our virtues, not by our desires that we've been saved, but only a result of your grace. We were just like them, just like those outside, and often far worse.
Let this be a part of our worship as well, Lord, that we never cease to be in awe of the grace that you've shown us and that that would fuel integrity in our lives and boldness and meekness as well. These things we ask in the name of our Savior.
Amen.