Near Disaster Averted Genesis 20:1-18

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Last week you heard from Rob on the will of God and I trust that was a blessing to each of you
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I listened to his sermon and really enjoyed it and So that was last week
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So we took a break from our sermon series through Genesis and two weeks ago.
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We finished up the story on lots We've learned that lots life is
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Primarily a story about what not to do. We saw that we are not to be fearful people
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We are not to let others Influence us into sin and we are not to be known for egregious sins in our lives like a lot like a lot was
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Today we are shifting the focus back to the life of Abraham Two weeks ago We saw Abraham standing on the high hill as he looked down toward the smoke going up from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah And what we are going to see is that he leaves that location to go to another
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Following the life of Abraham has been quite an adventure. We've been with this guy a long time
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We've seen him travel all over the place. We have seen him do good things and we've seen him do foolish things
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And his life has been like the wild thing roller coaster at Valleyfair, you know goes up and up and up He's doing great.
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He's doing great. Also in crash. He he goes down Many ups and downs in his life and at times he has demonstrated faithfulness that is worthy of admiration
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Other times you wonder why he is referred to by the Apostle Paul as the man of faith We pick up Abraham's journey again in chapter 20 that this sermon today is titled near disaster averted
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And we will be looking at all of chapter 20 today, which is verses 1 through 18 If you're using a red
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Bible, it's on pages 17 and 18 in the pews Our proposition our big idea is the
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Lord is intimately involved in the affairs of sinful humans for his good purposes The Lord is intimately involved in the affairs of sinful humans for his good purposes and we're gonna see two ways how in this text the first way how is he bears with believers as They fall into repetitive sins
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He bears with believers as they fall into repetitive sins and we'll see this in verses 1 and 2
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So I'm gonna begin by reading verse 1 and we'll pick up where Abraham is now from there
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Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and sure and he sojourned in Gerar Now in verse 1 says from there
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What this means is that Abraham went back to Hebron after looking at the destruction in the valley region
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Remember Hebron was his hometown He then left Hebron to go south to the
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Negev the net the Negev was located in southern Israel So he went from the Dead Sea. He went west and then he went south
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And he went to a place That is still in the land of Canaan the land of Canaan is the promised land of the land of the
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Lord promised to Abraham So Abraham is still within the borders of the land by going to this region
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But the question that arises here is why did he leave Hebron? We do not know for sure
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But the reason may be that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was either such a such a traumatic event
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That he needed to leave town and sometimes people have they just need to go because something horrible happened
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I just need a change of scenery or The area may still have been smoky or spent or smelt like sulfur that he had to leave
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He had to evacuate because the smoke was was spreading west toward his home now what we are going to see in verse 2 is that Abraham commits a grave sin and He commits a sin that he committed many years before and what we're gonna see is that he did not learn his lesson, and we'll see this in verse 2 and Abraham said of Sarah his wife
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She is my sister and at Bimelech king of Gerar sent and took
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Sarah Now you might say Haven't we seen this before?
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The answer is yes, sadly we have At this stage in the narrative Abraham is 99 years old
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He committed the same sin with a different people when he was 75 What we have to understand is that at this point in history there was a danger of a man's wife being ruthlessly stolen from him
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These were savage times Abraham would have been aware of this so you can see why he did what he did
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You might be able to remember earlier in Genesis 12 10 through 20 when Abraham went to Egypt with his wife
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Sarah He was worried about the Pharaoh and the Egyptians stealing his wife God punished the
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Egyptians by sending a plague on them and it became known to the Pharaoh why the plague happened the
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Pharaoh took the wife of God's blessed man to be his wife and what Genesis 12 3 tells us is those who honor
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Abraham will be honored those Who dishonor him will be cursed and so what happened to the Egyptians and Pharaoh is that they were cursed because they dishonored
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Abraham And what happened is the plague came upon them and This forced them to return
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Sarah to Abraham and then Abraham went back to the land of Canaan The same sin that Abraham committed with with the
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Pharaoh is the same sin. He commits in our text with Abimelech king of Gerar This is how sin works
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It has a Repetitiveness to it at times as you fight your sin
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You are left scratching your head wondering why do I keep doing the same thing over and over again?
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Some sins that we fight are a lifelong battle and the goal of the Christian life is to kill this sin little by little and day by day
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Rob talked about that last night God's desire or last week He talked about this how God's desire is for you to grow little by little day by day
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Into Christ's likeness Romans 8 13 says but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live as You as you fight sin, you should not be discouraged.
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The Bible tells us that it will be a fight Scripture would not give us all the commands to turn from sin and to put it to death if the sin in our hearts was
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Not there to fight it is a fight But it's a fight we can be successful in with the
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Holy Spirit My old pastor once said the presence of sin is not the problem
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It is the absence of repentance. That is the problem So are you sorrowful for your sin?
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Are you desiring to turn from it? Are you seeing progress in your life? The Bible teaches that those who continue in sin unrepentant the whole way through show that they are not truly believers
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First John 3 9 says that no one born of God makes a practice of sinning What that means is that you're comfortable in your sin.
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You can stay there without feeling convicted On the other hand believers still sin, but it is different The believers life is a life of continual repentance
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Turning from it desiring to grow desiring to be more like Christ And what repentance means is an acknowledgement of sin sorrow for it and turning from it
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This turn is not a perfect turn, but you should see some progress of growth in holiness in your life
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So you would think that Abraham had learned his lesson like we would learn our lesson and never sin the same ways again
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I mean, I'm scratching my head sometimes when I sin learn. Why do I keep doing this?
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But this is not the case We all we know this all too well
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And we should not be surprised to see Abraham commit the same horrible sin twice Because we don't often learn our lesson just like Abraham doesn't learn his lesson
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And he does the same sin here for the same reason he did before when he was in Egypt He wanted to protect himself in these ancient times.
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The wife would be stolen and the husband would be killed By strangers in a foreign land so you can see why
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Abraham is telling the king of Gerar that Sarah is my sister They would take
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Sarah and leave Abraham alone by believing this lie that he told him and That is what a sinner does in a situation like this
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He is resorting to a sinful solution and not a godly one. He's not trusting the Lord here to take to take care of him
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What Abraham is doing here is just silly The Lord had protected Abraham in chapter 12 by delivering him from the threat
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So he should have known okay. The Lord was was looking after me I don't need to do that same thing again and Abraham knew that God was for him and protecting him he and he just saw the power of God destroy an entire region as God brought judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah The root of Abraham's sin here is unbelief
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After knowing all of this about God and seeing the work of God How could he distrust him so much to make up his own foolish plan?
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That's how sin works It's irrational. It doesn't make any sense Sin makes people do things that make absolutely no sense and we know this from our own lives
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You see people ruin their lives by committing a major sin and you look at what their life would have been like if they never sin that way and You see how much better their life would have been how much trouble it brought upon them
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We look at look at the life of King David his sin with Bathsheba. Look how horrible it was
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Look up look how much suffering he went through because of that sinful act he committed with her And what makes this sin worst of all is that God's promise of offspring is put in jeopardy
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Remember, he's been making this promise to Abraham long ago that this chosen child is gonna come from Abraham and Sarah and no other way
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If that Bimelech takes Sarah as his wife and gets her pregnant the promise is over This child is supposed to come through Abraham not a foreign king
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Abraham may have thought the promise could still happen because he would still be Sarah's husband, even though a
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Bimelech would not know it But Abraham should have known that God would not work with that deceptiveness
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It's sad to see Abraham revert to his old sinful ways But what we need to see here is that once again, the
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Lord is not done with Abraham He's not giving up on this promise. He's great promises that he's made to him
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One of the major themes of Genesis that we have seen is the faithfulness of God. He stands by his people
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He stands with this man of faith, even though he stumbles Abraham is still considered faithful and the
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Lord stands with him And when we when we fall into sin as long as it is
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Accompanied by repentance which shows that we are true believers in Christ As long as that is there the
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Lord stands with us Because if you're not a true believer You it may get to a point where the
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Lord just gives you over to your sin Just like Romans 1 describes he just gives you over but if you're faithful if you are his he's not gonna neglect you
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He's not gonna give up on you. He's gonna stand with you and we have that encouragement and we see that right here
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So we see the Lord is intimately involved in the affairs of sinful humans for his good purposes
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And the first way how we see in this text is that he bears with believers as they fall into repetitive sins
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The Lord is intimately involved in the affairs of sinful humans for his good purposes in the second way How is
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God is sovereign over the actions of believers and unbelievers and we'll see this in verses 3 through 13
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This is a two -point sermon so Point point two is a little bit bigger than point one Now in the account with the
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Pharaoh in chapter 12 the Egyptians knew that Sarah was Abraham's wife because plagues came upon them
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This was how God made it known to them In verse 3, we are going to see that the Lord makes it crystal clear to Abimelech That he had crossed a line.
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This is what the Lord says to Abimelech in verse 3 But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him behold
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You are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken for she is a man's wife
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The Lord comes to Abimelech in a dream and makes it known to him that he is in big trouble
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God is threatening to bring judgment of death upon Abimelech because he took Sarah to be his wife
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We need to remember That you do not mess with Abraham even when he does something very foolish
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Genesis 12 3 those who dishonor Abraham will be cursed Abraham is
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God's chosen man Abraham is the one with whom God has made an everlasting covenant
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The Lord is 100 % committed to him and God doesn't break his promises From the man
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Abraham is going to come offspring a nation and land and The most important aspect of the promise of God that he made to Abraham is the offspring promise
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This is so important because none of these promises none of these forever Promises are going to happen without the all -important offspring promise
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Because I ask you the question who is eventually going to come from this line of offspring
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Jesus he's the one we're gonna be preaching all week to these kids Sunday through Thursday. Jesus is the one who's coming from this line
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From Jesus saving work on the cross would come the true offspring of Israel those
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Israelites who believe in their Messiah in the nations That's us here in Eureka, Wisconsin We are the nations the global church is mostly made up of the nations with some
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Jews who are also among that group and Jesus is the most important offspring that joins us all together
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He joins Israel the people of God in the Old Testament and the church together through this one man
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Jesus Christ And when a biblical act takes Sarah to be his wife the offspring promise is threatened and the
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Lord tells that they might you are a dead man Sometimes you hear that in movies you're a dead man.
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The Lord said that first, right? To Abimelech Everything seems to come back come from the
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Bible even even things like this What we are going to see is that the Lord was sovereignly gracious to Abimelech But before we see that we will see
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Abimelech's defense in verses four and five. This is what he says to the Lord And now
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Abimelech had not approached her. So he said Lord Will you kill an innocent people?
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Did he not himself say to me she is my sister and she and she herself said
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He is my brother in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands. I have done this
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When a biblic addresses the Lord here this does not mean that he knew him personally Abimelech was a foreign king who was probably a polytheist and what that means is that he believed in many gods
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So when the God of Abraham the only true God addresses him Abimelech probably just sees him as one of the gods out there
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It is important for us to understand how a pagan king would respond to a deity addressing addressing him in a dream
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Abimelech thinks about divine justice as he addresses God and he pleads innocence
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The king like all people had a sense of right and wrong Romans 2 15 says that everybody has the law of God written on their hearts.
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Everybody Knows right and wrong to a certain point including this king right here and In verse 4 he said he had not approached her
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What this means is that he did not have sexual relations with her. So Abimelech is saying
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I am innocent on that charge In verse 5 he tells the Lord that he did not know that Sarah was
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Abraham's wife He thought she was Abraham's sister as they both told him this
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So he is telling God I am innocent of that also now in verse 6
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We are going to read something very interesting Abimelech is innocent of the charge that he did not know that Sarah was
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Abraham's wife But he has God to think that he did not cross the line by having sexual relations with Sarah So we see this in verse 6
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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
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I who kept you from sinning against me Therefore I did not let you touch her
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The Lord tells Abimelech that he knows that he was ignorant of the fact that Sarah was
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Abraham's wife But the reason he did not have sexual relations with Sarah is because God kept him from doing it
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God was merciful to this King and This brings up an interesting discussion on the sovereignty of God What does sovereign mean?
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That's not a word you probably hear every day The word sovereign has the words reign over in the word.
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We talked about this in our small group on Wednesdays What this is describing is God's governance over the universe his governance over the entire universe
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God is sovereign over every detail that happens in all of history Ephesians 1 11 says that all things happen according to the counsel of his will
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Even apparent random events are not random as Proverbs 16 33 says it says the lot is cast into the lap
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But it's every decision is from the Lord. That's in the Bible The lot is cast in the lap, but it's every decision is from the
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Lord God is sovereign over this over the decisions that make that you make in your life
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You have a free will in the sense that you willingly do what you want to do No one no one's ever holding a gun to your head
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But God is over at all. God is writing your story, but you are acting it out Psalm 139 16 says your eyes saw my unformed substance in your book were in every one of them the days that were formed for Me when as yet there was none of them
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This is a great mystery But this is what the scripture teaches God is sovereign and we willingly make our own choices
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Abimelech willingly chose not yet to have sexual relations with Sarah and yet the
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Lord tells us in verse 6 It was I who kept you from sinning against me.
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Therefore. I did not let you touch her The Lord was gracious in not letting
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Abimelech go down this path and for those of you here today who know Jesus Christ is your Lord Savior and treasure, which
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I know that many of you in this room. We need to be amazed at how gracious The Lord has been to us He has led you to follow him and he has sent you down the good path the path of life
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The the path the fullness of joy that that's what the path of life is the fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore
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It is the Lord who has been gracious to you Sometimes we think you know what if I just had this life out there, you know that these people look like they're so happy They're doing but you but if you know
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Christ, you know what the Lord has been so good to you He's been so gracious to you. That's what we must understand your life could have turned out different But it hasn't because the
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Lord has kept you from sinning in egregious ways and going down the wrong path We see the
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Lord sparing Abimelech by saying I did not let you sin in this way After the Lord explains to him that he has been gracious to him
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By not letting him defile Sarah. He commands him to do something that will spare his life and the life of his family in verse 7
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Now then return the man's wife For he is a prophet This is what the
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Lord saying to Abimelech 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
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The Lord commands Abimelech to make things right now that he knows what he knows he is to return
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Sarah to him To Abraham the Lord told Abimelech something about Abraham.
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He told him that he is a prophet and he will pray for you This is the first time in Scripture that the word prophet shows up a prophet was someone who
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God communicated with in the Old Testament and in the New Testament the Apostles were the ones who performed that function of God communicating with them with them and then them communicating to humans
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We have already seen the continual communication. The Lord has had with Abraham One thing that a prophet was able to do was to intercede or to pray on behalf of people
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After the Lord shared information with them we already saw Abraham do that with Sodom and Gomorrah the
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Lord told him I'm gonna destroy this place and Abraham said If there's anyone righteous, will you spare this place?
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We've already seen this And we'll see Abraham intercede on the on behalf of Abimelech later on At the end of verse 7 the
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Lord delivers a warning to this king if he does not return Sarah He will die along with his family
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We already talked about the sovereignty of God that God is over every detail of our lives Yet the
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Lord holds us firmly responsible for our actions. We can never say
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God made me do it James 1 13 through 15 says let no one say when he is tempted
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I am being tempted by God for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one
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But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin
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The Lord is sovereign over Abimelech's actions yet. He tells him you better return Sarah to Abraham or you will be put to death
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This is called human responsibility By feet by theologians. This means that you are responsible for your actions whether your actions are praiseworthy or deserving of punishment and this is true while God is sovereign over everything and Again how
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God's sovereignty and human responsibility work is a great mystery but we see scripture teach to teach it consistently from Genesis like right here all the way to Revelation and Not only does the
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Lord sovereignly keep Abimelech from sinning against Abraham's wife Sarah The Lord also uses Abimelech to sovereignly rebuke
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Abraham So we see the Lord's hand in this through Abimelech's words to Abraham in verses 8 through 10
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So we'll see the Lord use Abimelech to rebuke him So Abimelech rose early in the morning and called all his servants and told them all these things and the men were very much afraid
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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?
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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?
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This king is angry at Abraham and rightfully so Why do I say that the Lord uses him to rebuke
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Abraham? Verse 6 just said that the Lord graciously kept him from sinning to prevent him from getting
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Sarah pregnant The Lord restrains Abimelech to preserve the promise of offspring through Abraham.
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Now, he uses him to discipline Abraham Okay, so he's he's he's working through this man
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And we see that here and as Abimelech says this he and his men were probably thinking about what could come upon them
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The people in this region knew what the God of Abraham did to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah that is why at the end of verse 8 it says they were afraid as Abimelech rebukes
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Abraham. He is clearly outraged that Abraham Would put his people in this position put him and his people in this position and in the ancient
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Near East Which this place was called during this time laws condemned and adultery with the sentence of death
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So he knows that if he commits adultery he is deserving of death Even though he didn't he didn't know personally the
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God of Abraham so Abimelech tells Abraham that you have brought on me a great sin and He did something that ought not to be done and this is very likely a
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God -designed rebuke Out of the mouth of Abimelech as commentator Ken Matthews notes one cannot help
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But think that the rebuke has a divine cast to it just as God choreographed
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Abimelech's repentance Does the king speak unwittingly the words of divine correction to Abraham?
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Okay, so we see here the Lord used the pagan king to discipline his chosen man Abraham Then Abraham gives his unconvincing response to to defend his actions in verses 11 through 13
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Okay, so now Abraham's gonna try to defend himself here of why he did what he did Abraham said
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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
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Besides she is indeed my sister the daughter of my father though Not the daughter of my mother and she became my wife and when
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God caused me to wander from my father's house I said to her this is the kindness you must do with me at every place to which we come say of me
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He is my brother So Abraham gives two reasons why he lied to Abimelech the king of Gerar and the
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Pharaoh back in chapter 12 he thought This region he sojourned in was an immoral place where there was no fear of God Okay, so he didn't think very highly of a bunch of godless people.
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I can't trust you you know if they go into a Place in our world and just thinking okay.
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We need to come up with a plan here because this place isn't isn't good The second reason was that Sarah was
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Abraham's half -sister So this was a half -truth as they share the same father, but not mother
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Abraham told Sarah from the moment they became sojourners when the Lord called them all the way back in chapter 12
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That they would protect themselves by telling this foolish lie And what is interesting is that Abraham hoped that either
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Pharaoh in the first case or the king and Gerar would not Would not do What they did he was hoping they'd say okay, and then let him go, but what happened was okay, okay?
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Well, no, then they took him as their wife so the plan backfired And at the root of this sin for Abraham is unbelief
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He did not trust that the Lord was going to take care of him And so he took things into his own hands and the
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Lord uses a Vimalak the king of Gerar to rebuke him for his foolishness
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Has the Lord ever used anyone in your life to rebuke you to offer correction a
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Number of years ago. I was at a friend's house From my old church, and he's a godly man
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And I was staying at his house for a few days, and we had some other friends who came over to visit us and I Like to joke around with people like Mark knows this all too
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Well mark and I joke around quite a bit and sometimes it could go too far right and it What happened was is that I took it too far with this with this other friend that we had and so when they left?
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He told me in private. He said Seth you went too far you you poked at him too much
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To the point where he actually felt like I was threatening, you know, I was threatening him in some way and so I considered what he said the correction that he offered and And I actually read
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I sat down just to read my Bible and I was actually going through Proverbs at that time And it was the Lord's Providence. I opened up to Proverbs chapter 9 and this is what
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I read Verses 7 through 9 whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury
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Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you Reprove a wise man and he will love you
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Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser teach a righteous man and he will increase in learning
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Then it's an amazing proverb What the Lord taught me there was that wise men receive correction because it is an opportunity to grow in holiness and be wiser
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And so with my friend I could when I read that I was like, okay, I gotta apologize here he's right I did cross the line and this is an opportunity for me to grow so that I don't do these same things in the future so I called the the friend up and I apologized and he received the apology and I was so grateful the
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Lord showed me this and when wicked people are corrected as this proverb says They continue in their wickedness because foolish people always think they're right
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They always do even when they're mostly wrong There there's too much pride to ever admit that they're wrong and so they keep going down that foolish plot path
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Righteous people are humble people right because they're willing to receive correction to say, you know what? I was in the wrong and I need to move down the path of holiness
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And as Abraham receives this correction here, we can assume that he received it. Well a Large portion of the faith chapter in Hebrews chapter 11 would not be devoted to him if he didn't respond well to this and all correction he was a wise man who did foolish things from time to time and needed to be corrected and We too need to be corrected when we go down the wrong path
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And it was interesting said the Lord doesn't just use other Christians to correct us Maybe you've had this experience and sometimes you can be corrected by an unbeliever
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He might use someone and that's what it's really humbling. It's like, okay. He just used this person to rebuke me
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I mean at least use someone I could I respect right? But sometimes he does that Because that's what he did here.
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He uses a pagan king to rebuke Abraham So we see the Lord's sovereignty
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He is sovereign over the actions of this world good and evil and the red the reality of this ought to lead to great comfort as we think about God's over every detail and this is so because everything is meant for our good for everyone who belongs to Christ Romans 8 28 says and We know that for those who love
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God all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose
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We saw that in the call to worship Jesus Christ. He used the wicked acts of The Jewish leaders and the
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Romans to bring salvation to the whole world. We see God God bring about the greatest good through evil and this includes
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Correction that we receive that is meant to make us more like Christ God uses correction, even if it's from an unbeliever
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For our good and we need we need to can we need to weigh it and consider is what this person says, right?
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Because it may be The Lord is intimately involved in the affairs of sinful humans for his good purposes
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And the second way how this text shows this is that God is sovereign over the actions of believers and unbelievers
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And what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna I'm gonna close out this narrative by reading the last five verses verses 14 through 18 and we're gonna see how this closes out and Before I read that I want to want to emphasize this we ought to take great comfort in both of these truths that we saw today that he bears with believers as They fall into repetitive sins
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Okay So God is intimately involved with us through that and the second truth is that he is Sovereign over the actions of believers and unbelievers that this should bring us great comfort knowing that God is over both of these
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Okay, so let's let's close out this narrative by reading verses 14 through 18 and then I'll summarize it here quickly
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Then I've been what took sheep and oxen and male servants and female servants and gave them to Abraham and returned
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Sarah his wife to him and a bit like said behold my land is before you dwell where it pleases you
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Do all we're pleased it's just so to Sarah he said behold I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver
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It is a sign of your innocence and the eyes of all who are with you and before everyone you are vindicated
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That Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelech and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children
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For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah Abraham's wife.
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Okay, so we see that Abimelech listened to the Lord by giving Sarah back to Abraham He also gave male servants female servants sheep and oxen to him
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Since and since Abimelech did this he avoided divine punishment Abimelech had a life -threatening disease.
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That's what I said in in verse 6 He had a life -threatening disease that he was healed from and the wombs of his wife and female servants were opened
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So the means by which this was brought about was that Abraham prayed for him in this prophetic role
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The Lord listened to Abraham's prayer and then answered it and he also told
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Abraham that there would not be any threat to them They could live wherever they pleased and the king then gives
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Abraham and Sarah a thousand pieces of silver And what this means is that her shame is covered and they are vindicated
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This sets the table for the legitimacy of the birth of the promised child
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Isaac this money represents that there was no shame and no wrong done to Abraham's wife and This promised child will not come about through illegitimate means
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But through God's chosen man Abraham and And finally next week.
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It's been a long road here. We started in chapter 12 with the promise of this promised child Isaac and Next Sunday is when we finally get to see this promise come to fruition
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The Lord is faithful and he's going to deliver on this miracle child. I Look forward to that next week.
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Let's pray Father in heaven, I thank you Lord for your help in in in preaching and Lord, I don't do this on my own strength
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I do this with the strength that you supply and I just want to say thank you for that. And and Lord I pray that the seeds that were sent out during the sermon that they would take root in people's hearts.
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I Pray that that Satan would not snatch them away I pray that they would not just drift away, but that indeed they would sink in people's hearts
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And the people would bear fruit as a result of the preaching of the word Lord, there's nothing flashy about this as we go verse by verse through the
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Bible. There's nothing flashy about it, but You work through this This is your word.
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You want us to see what's here? It's it's like digging for gold and made this change people's lives
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May we come become more like you little by little and day by day. We ask for this help in Jesus name.