Besetting Sin, Amazing Grace (Genesis 20)

Alright, well let us turn our attention now and open our Bibles to Genesis chapter 20. And as we begin, as I always do, I want to prepare us for the reading of the text by simply making a few comments.

The first thing I want to do is simply clarify from last week's message. We talked about the righteousness of Lot, remember? And then we saw Lot do some things which we would say seemed very unrighteous, offering his daughters and then falling into drunkenness afterward and even having the desire to stay in Sodom even when the angels were urging him.

It said he lingered, you know. It's interesting to think about the fact that Lot was righteous yet imperfect during the time of the Reformation, Martin Luther coined a phrase, simul justus et picator, and that is Latin for at the same time righteous and sinner.

Simul justus et picator, at the same time righteous and sinner. What he meant by that was our righteousness comes by imputation, which means it is given to us, it is charged to us because of the righteousness of another.

Because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, we have been declared righteous through Him. All our sins become His, all of His righteousness becomes ours, and therefore we are called righteous, and we are.

When the Lord sees us, He sees us through the blood of Christ, and we are righteous in Him. And yet, we still struggle with besetting sin. Do we not? Am I the only one? I didn't get an amen, so I was thinking maybe I'm alone, you know, I'm the only one up here, and so maybe I'm alone.

I don't think that I am. The Christian is not sinless. We battle with the flesh, we battle with the lack of faith, we battle with fear, and we battle a host of other issues. So when I say Lot was righteous, I'm not saying he was sinless.

And now we come today to Abraham, and we see the same thing. Abraham was declared righteous by faith, Genesis 15, 6, and Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him as righteousness. But he also experienced failure.

In fact, the failure we're going to see is a failure he's experienced before. I don't know if some of you do this, I hope you do, I hope you read ahead, because you know where we're going to be, right?

Every week you know where we're going, we're verse-by-verse study, that's the one blessing, you know where we're going to be. And perhaps if you read ahead this week, maybe you noticed that this story seems like a repetition of something that's already happened.

Back in Genesis chapter 12, we see almost the same situation. There was a famine in Egypt, Abraham takes his, I'm sorry, a famine in Israel, in Canaan rather, Abraham takes his family to Egypt. And when he's there, Pharaoh takes his wife, why?

Because he said, she's my sister. So Pharaoh figured it was okay to take her into his harem. And then of course, God, through His grace, gives her back to her husband, and she's saved from that indignity.

But that has already happened. Well, now we come again to the same thing, almost the exact same story. And what's interesting is we're going to see in Genesis 26, the same thing is going to happen to his son Isaac and Rebekah.

It reminds me of the story of the nuns that were caught in the fire, did you guys hear that story? There was a convent that was on fire and the nuns were on top of the convent and the firemen couldn't reach them in time, so they decided to take their outer cloaks off and tie them into ropes and climb down.

And they were able to climb down, and when they got there, the firemen said, you know, that's amazing that you did that, I can't believe it worked. How did you know that the cloth would hold you so well?

And they said, well, you know, old habits are hard to break. You know, it was kind of, that's Andy's joke right there, that's for Andy, that's for brother.

Andy.

A habit is what they wear, by the way, if you don't know. So old habits, that's what we see with Abram here. In fact, he's going to say in the midst of this chapter, something that's amazing and we should not miss it.

It's almost the very last verse, he's going to say this, he's going to say, we do this everywhere we go. When he talks about telling people that Sarah is his sister, we know about it twice, but he says, we did this everywhere we went, like this was the habit of Abraham.

And old habits are hard to break. So, with that being said, let's read the whole chapter together. I want to invite you again to stand. We stand when we read God's word to show honor and reverence. We'll read the chapter, it's not long, it's just 18 verses.

From there, Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur, and 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, in the innocence of my hands, I have done this. Then God said to him in the 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 you 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 these things? Abraham said, I did it because I thought there is no fear of God in all of this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.

Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father, though not the daughter of my mother, sorry, I'm trying. 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 to 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 behold, 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.

Father in heaven, I pray that you would keep me from error as I preach. Open the hearts of your people, not only their ears and their eyes, but their minds and their.

Hearts, Lord.

Father, for those who know you and know your grace, may today be a day of challenge for them to draw closer to the Lord Jesus Christ, and those who do not know you, may today be the day of salvation, a day of reckoning for the soul.

In Christ's name, amen. This scene in the life of Abraham seems to come out of nowhere, and it seems to somewhat be out of place. And I say that only because what we have been watching in the narrative of Abraham's life is that Abraham has been seemingly increasing in faith and increasing in blessing from God.

We go back to chapter 12, he's called away from Mesopotamia, he's called to leave and go to the land that God will show him, he's told that he's going to be a blessing to the nations. And so he goes, and then in chapter 13, he goes and has an incident of war, and then in chapter 14, we see the incident with the division from Lot and the different things that happened.

In chapter 15, he sees God in the smoking fire pot, and it says, Abraham believed God and it counted to him as righteousness. And then moving on, we see his failure with Hagar, and of course that was a setback.

But then after that, God tells him, you're going to have a child with Sarah, and he believes.

It.

He believes what God has to say, even though he finds it humorous, he believes what God tells him, this is going to happen. And so it just seems as if, even though Abraham has some setbacks, he's moving forward it.

Seems.

And yet, we get to this chapter, and as I said, it seems out of place because it seems like another setback. The last we saw of Abraham was Abraham looking down on Sodom. Sodom is now a smoldering pit of ash, the entire city having been consumed by fire from heaven.

And Abraham looks down, and as I said last week, I think he must have been thinking were there not even 10, because he had bartered with God in a sense, and asked God, please, if there are even 10. And God said, if there were 10 righteous, he wouldn't destroy the city.

He gets up, he sees the smoke billowing up from the destroyed city, knowing that there were not even 10. What in our minds would we think would the next story be about Abraham? The next story, it would seem, would be that we're going to hear about the birth of Isaac.

Because if you go back in your mind, right before the destruction of Sodom, God visited Sarah and Abraham, and he ate with Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, and he told him about this time next year, Sarah will have a son.

So timeframe, prior to the destruction of Sodom, Abraham was told, you're going to have a child in a year. So now the time, now the clock's ticking, right? And you would think after the destruction of Sodom, because sometimes the narrative jumps 10 years at a time, sometimes it jumps one year at a time, we never know.

But we figure the next thing we're going to hear about is the birth of the son, right? That's the next logical step. But no, the next thing we read is from there. And by the way, if you look at verse one with me, it says from there, Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur, and he sojourned in Gerard.

Okay, so where are we talking here? Well, where Abraham was, he was in Mamre, which was near Hebron. Now Hebron would have been a location where he would have been a lot closer to Sodom. Certainly he would have been.

He was able to get up and go and look and see the billowing smoke. We read that in the last chapter. But it says from there, he journeyed toward the Negev. Negev is, it means, in fact, in the King James, it simply says he journeyed toward the south.

It means the south land or the dry land, and Gerard is actually close to the Mediterranean.

Coast.

So it'd be south of Gaza, would have been further away from Sodom. And the text does not tell us why he moved, but I sort of have a sanctified opinion. You can tell me what you think. Because the first time Abraham moved, and this happened, was back in chapter 12, and it was due to a famine.

Right?

There was a famine in the land, so he moves to Egypt, and he goes to Egypt, and that's when everything happened with Pharaoh and Sarah.

Right?

Now, Abraham wakes up and he looks out and he sees the smoke from Sodom. And again, it's my opinion, you can take it for what it's worth. I think he said to himself, you know what, I don't want to look at this every day.

I'm going to move, I'm going to move on. He's already, he's a nomadic man anyway, he moved anyway, not moving is not a problem for him, and so he moves on. And he does. He moves to a different area. And when he gets to where he is going, verse 2 says, and it says, and Abraham said to his wife, Sarah, she is my sister, said of her, she is my sister.

And Abimelech, king of Gerard, sent and took Sarah. Understand this, Abimelech, the title, is not a proper name, but rather, or it's probably not a proper name, it's probably a title. In the same way Pharaoh is a title, and there are many Pharaohs in Egypt, there would have been many Abimelechs, and we will see Abimelech here in chapter 20.

We will see Abimelech again in chapter 26, and if you were to go over to Psalm 34, you'd see Abimelech there. So this title, Abimelech, seems to be, it simply means father of the king, so it's simply, it's a reference to a title more than a proper name, but this man is in charge of this area.

He's in charge of this land called Gerard. And so Abraham goes to this place, and when he goes, he tells Sarah the same thing he tells her apparently everywhere they go. Tell them that you're my sister.

Now why? Because he tells us, I was afraid you would kill me to have my wife. Many people have pointed out that Sarah must have been some kind of a beauty to have such an impact that Abraham's fear was, she is so beautiful that wherever we go, men will be willing to kill me to have her.

And remember ladies, 90, she has a little, she's got some mileage, you know, she's older. She's 90 years old. And somebody says, well they lived longer then, so maybe somewhere around 50.

Still, still.

Now there are some people who say it had nothing to do with her beauty, it had to do with the fact that Abraham, Abraham was a rich man. Remember wherever he went, he had an entourage. And so maybe what it was, was they weren't going to take her because of her beauty, but rather they were going to take her to try to establish some type of a relationship with Abraham.

That is possible, but that actually makes it worse that he would say that it's her sister. Because by saying it's her sister, it opens it up for that kind of interaction. And that may be what Abimelech was thinking.

Here is this beautiful sister of this very rich man who's just moved to town. And now that this rich man has moved to town, I'm going to take his sister into my home and therefore we will establish an alliance with his riches and my riches and now we'll be even more powerful than we were before.

So that could be the reason why Abimelech took Sarah. But remember this, this is all based on a deception. In fact, the five points of today's sermon, the outline of the text, I have it as this. The deception, the intervention, the trepidation, the confrontation and the intercession.

And I'm not going to try to go through that a bunch of times because if you're trying to write it down, just get with me later and I'll give it to you. But the first thing we see is the deception. He tells Sarah, say you're my sister so that I'll be safe.

This has happened before and apparently it's happened on several occasions. Verse three, but God came to Abimelech in a dream. This is the intervention. 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.

You ever had a dream that just startled you awake? I dream really vivid dreams and I don't put any type of prophetic stock into my dreams. So don't think I'm going to start telling you about the things that, you know, how, because I do think sometimes it's just because, you know, maybe had that had too much, too much spicy food before I went to bed, you know, and the dreams maybe come from some weird place.

But there we do know there are times in history where God has worked through dreams, prophetically, particularly prior to the coming of Christ, where the writer of Hebrews tells us that God in various ways and various times spoke to our fathers through the prophets, you know.

So there's different ways God spoke to men. And one of the ways that he spoke to men was through the process of dreams. And Abimelech realizes that this dream is not just, you know, he had too much salsa before he went to bed.

This is real. God is impressing upon him the reality of this dream. And God comes to him with a fearful message. You are a dead man. I don't know about you, but that would get my attention. I'd be awake or maybe not awake, but I'd be alert in the dream that this is serious.

And I want to before we get to verse four, I want to make a point. We don't know how much time has passed at this point. And I say that because this is it might seem as if, OK, Sarah goes to his house that night.

He had a dream. The text doesn't tell us that. But what the text does tell us later is that the wounds of the women of Gerar had closed. So there was enough time has passed. That they realized, hey, something's wrong.

So keep that in mind. I don't think that this is the first night after Sarah arrives. I think that it's been some time. But even though Sarah has been there, Abimelech hasn't touched her. Maybe one of the commentators I read, John Currid, really great commentary on Genesis.

He said this.

He said, perhaps that we normally think of closing the womb is like infertility.

Right.

But John Currid said maybe it was there was a sort of a universal dysfunction that came upon the people, men and women alike. And maybe that's why Abimelech did not go to her quarters. Maybe there was some form of a physical dysfunction that fell upon the men and the women.

And I thought that was kind of an interesting interpretation to say, OK, maybe it was because later it's going to say they didn't have any babies. But understand this. There's there's different things that cause people not to get pregnant.

And it could have been that there just wasn't any. I'm trying to be less graphic here.

You understand.

There's there's nothing happening in the bedroom, as it were. OK, got it. Something has happened. So let's say that that had been going on now for a few weeks. Let's say there's no nothing happening physically.

People feel uncomfortable. They feel sick. They feel unable to have that intimate relationship. Now, God comes to him in a dream. He realizes something's going on in the kingdom. He sees that, you know, this is happening and he knows there's a problem.

Now God comes in and says, you are a dead man. Now you have even more reason to listen because you're already recognizing there's a problem in Jericho. There's a problem here.

OK. All right.

So with that being said.

Verse four.

Now, Abimelech had not approached her, so he said, Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Did he not? Speaking of Abraham, 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. By the way, just think for a moment. Abraham brought Sarah in. He deceived Abimelech. This is my sister. Abimelech takes her into the house. But Abimelech didn't touch her. Now God comes in and says, you're a dead man.

You've got a wife of another man in your home.

And Abimelech says, I am innocent.

And he's right.

In regard to this, he has not done anything wrong. For one sense, he hasn't touched her. And in another sense, he didn't know. So one, he says, I'm innocent and I'm ignorant. So he's claiming both. He's saying, not only have I not done the sin of sleeping with another man's wife, but even if I had, I wouldn't have known because they deceived me.

And then he asks the Lord a huge question. And honestly, I see a connection between. Sometimes my brain makes weird connections. I see a connection between this and Genesis 18. And I'll tell you what it is.

Because he says here, he says, Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Go back two chapters to Genesis 18 .25. What did God or what did Abraham ask God? Lord, will you kill a righteous people? Will you kill people?

The righteous along with the wicked. He's talking about Sodom, remember? He said, you won't do that. The judge of the universe will not bring an unrighteous judgment. Oh boy, are the amen stuck in a sack today?

Because that was an amen moment. Right there, seriously, it's true. The judge of the universe will not bring unrighteous judgment.

That's a beautiful truth.

And that's the truth that Abimelech is holding on to. And you say, he doesn't even know God. No, but he understands ought and ought not. We know that because later on in the story, he's going to look at Abraham and say, you did what ought not be done.

You know why unrighteous people do things that are right? Because there is a natural sense of ought and ought not that is placed in the heart of every man. You read Romans chapter 1. You read Romans chapter 2.

And it tells us that the work of the law is written on the hearts even of the Gentiles who have not the law. And they demonstrate it when they do what the law requires. Because they have a natural sense of ought and ought not within them.

By the way, before Moses wrote the Ten Commandments, there were already laws that were in place. The Code of Hammurabi and other things. There were already laws in place. And you know what those laws almost always included?

A law against adultery. In fact, go through the Ten Commandments in your mind. You go through the Ten Commandments. You go through the first few. You know, have no other gods before the Lord. For the Lord did this.

And do not take the Lord's name in vain because of this. But when it gets to murder, adultery, and stealing, there is no explanation. Why? None needed.

Right?

They needed to understand the Sabbath command because of God calling them to this, keeping this command. They need to understand more about the Father and Mother so that you may live long in the land.

But then it was, if you read in Exodus 20, it is just three lines. Not murder, do not steal, do not commit adultery. It is boom, boom, boom. No explanation needed because you know it is wrong.

Right? You got that.

It is the ought and ought not. This is why when you go and evangelize the unbeliever and you explain to them what sin is, you explain to them sin is breaking the law of God that you know you have broken.

The law that God put in every man. You ever told a lie?

Yes.

What are you? You are a liar. What does the Bible say? All liars will have their place in the lake of fire. You say it was just one little white lie. If you have only told one lie in your life, you are a liar about that.

Because you know you haven't only told one lie. You know we stand before God guilty of having broken His law. So we come here, we look at Abimelech, and Abimelech appeals to God's righteousness. I didn't touch her, which is true.

And even if I had, I was ignorant because he lied to me.

Also true. Also true.

And I just love the fact that the unrighteous Abimelech, the unrighteous king of Gerar, appealed to the righteousness of God. Will you kill an innocent people? What is the answer?

No.

Now, one might take a step back and say, Wait a minute, Abimelech, but you are still a sinner.

I mean, you've got a harem. I mean, come on.

You are a sinner. That's not the point. That's not the sin that God was judging him on the basis of. Because he said it. He said, You are a dead man. You've got a man's wife in your house.

That was the sin.

And so Abimelech appeals to God's righteousness. He says, No, I am innocent of that. Not innocent of everything, but I am innocent of that. So he appeals to God's righteousness. And he points to Abraham's scheme.

And then we get to verse 6. And this might be the most beautiful section here. In an ugly story, we have a beautiful passage.

Look what it says.

Then the Lord said to him in the 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.

Let me tell you something.

A lot of people like to shout about their free will. I bet you Abimelech wasn't proclaiming the greatness of his free will. Because if it had been up to his free will, he would have already been in Sarah's room.

But God overcame the freedom of Abimelech's will to ensure that Sarah would be safe. God restrains the hearts of men for his glory and for the protection of his people. That is a wonderful and beautiful truth.

That God restrains the hearts of men.

Let me ask you a question.

Has God restrained your heart? Has God restrained your heart this week? I know the ability and the depths of my own soul. And I know where God keeps me from going. God keeps me out of the deep end many times where I would drown.

And God restrains me. And here this pagan king is being told by God, I restrained you too. You did this in the integrity of your heart. But understand your heart is still under my control.

That's a beautiful thought.

Your heart is still, what does it say? The king's heart is like water in the hands of the Lord who turns it wherever he wills. What a wonderful reality. Now then, verse 7. Return the man's wife for he is a prophet.

And you got to think, I don't mean to stop mid-sentence, but you got to think, Abraham, he's a what? You mean that guy who came up in here with this deceiving story, he's a what now? By the way, first time in the Bible the word prophet is used is right here.

The very first time the word prophet is used to speak of Abraham. In the context of moral failure. He's still God's man. He's still God's prophet. Even in the midst of error, he says, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you and you shall live.

But if you do not return her, no, you shall surely die, you and all who are yours. Abimelech has a choice to make. Now one might say he knows the right choice to make. But guess what? A lot of people know the right choice to make and don't make the right choice.

But by God's grace he does. Look at verse 20, or verse 8, chapter 20, verse 8. So Abimelech rose early in the morning. By the way, rising early indicates steadfast obedience. It's the idea of wanting to be obedient.

We're going to see in chapter 22 when God calls Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on the mountain. It says he rose early in the morning. I always said if that was me, I might have slept in a few hours. I wouldn't want to get up and go right to the mountain.

But it says he got up early and went. The idea of getting up early is a reference to obedience. And so Abimelech gets up early in the morning. And he called all of his servants. He told them all these things.

And the men were very much afraid. Here's the irony of this verse. Because I think this verse is the center verse of the whole story. The irony of the verse is Abraham feared Abimelech. But Abimelech feared God.

The whole story could have been overpassed if Abraham would have just feared God more than he feared Abimelech. If he would have trusted God more than he feared the king. But Abraham feared Abimelech.

Abimelech feared God. And he goes and he tells his servants, this is the dream I had.

They all believe him.

I don't know if there's any in the crowd that's going, wait a minute, how do you know you just didn't have that salsa? No, they trust him. This is real. Maybe, again, going back to my earlier idea, maybe they all understand.

We're all sick. We're all dealing with something. Our wives aren't having babies.

Something's wrong.

Yeah, this is real. Verse 9. We get to the confrontation between Abimelech and Abraham.

It says,.

Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, What have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you that you have brought on me and my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done.

Remember I said a moment ago, he understands ought and ought not. And he's challenging the prophet of God. You did what ought not be done. Let me ask you a question and be honest. Have you ever had a time in your life where you had an unbeliever rebuke you?

Maybe I'm not as good as you, but I have. I've been in times where I've had a failure and an unbeliever rebuked me. And I tell you what, you feel about that big because at that moment you realize, in this I'm supposed to be representing God.

I'm supposed to be the believer and the one who's doing right. And the unbeliever is challenging me.

This is the moment in Abraham's life.

The unbelieving pagan king who has now been visited by God in a dream. Now he knows who God is. Now he's going to come and say to Abraham,.

You ought not have done this.

And you would think Abraham would simply fall on his knees and be broken in his sin. No, Abraham does what we all do. He loads up on excuses.

It's in the text.

I'm not making it up.

Look at it there.

Verse 10, it says, Abimelech said to Abraham, What did you see that you did this thing? In verse 11, Abraham said,.

I did it because I thought.

There is no fear of God in this place and they will kill me because of my wife. So the first thing, the first excuse Abraham gives in verse 11, there's no fear of God here. Again, the irony. They did fear God.

When God revealed himself to Abimelech in a dream, it says they all fell in fear. They were all afraid. I think of like Nineveh. Remember, Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh because Nineveh was the great enemy.

It was the capital of Syria, the great enemy of Israel. Jonah did not want to go, right? But when he did go and he did preach, what did the people do? They repented from the top down. All the way from the top down, there was repentance.

Same here. Abimelech gets this dream from God. He falls under the fear of God. All of the people fall under the fear of God. And Abraham is now saying, I didn't think that that was possible. The difference with Jonah is Jonah knew it was possible because that's why he didn't want to go.

He says, I don't want to go because I don't want them to be saved. Jonah is a whole other story. But again, an example. Prophets aren't always, they're not sinless, right? And Jonah had that attitude.

I don't want to go because I know they will repent. Abraham's attitude was different. I don't think that they fear God at all. So that's his first excuse. His second excuse is in verse 12. He says, besides, she is indeed my sister.

By the way, this is the first we hear of this. You read through Genesis. She is mentioned in chapter 11. She is mentioned in all the chapters after 11. This is the first time it's referenced the fact that they're half brother and half sister.

The daughter of my mother. She became my wife. Excuse me, the daughter of my father, not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. I want to ask you a question. In your mind, you answer, don't answer out loud.

But is it true that this truth of Abraham was still deceiving in nature?

I would say so.

Because the intent was known by the person, by Abraham. Tell them you're my sister, not because you're my half sister, but because we don't want them to know.

I'm your husband.