Sunday Night, November 25, 2018 PM

Now there's 18 verses in this chapter. I'm going to go ahead and read through the whole chapter so we hear the story as it all really hangs together. Now Abraham journeyed from there toward the land of the Negev.

So after observing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham now travels south by southwest. He settles there between Kadesh and Shur and then he sojourned in Gerar. So he is in the land of the Philistines and we'll start reading about the people who would become the Philistines.

They're not really officially the Philistines yet but they're on their way to becoming them. So Abimelech or Abraham said of Sarah his wife, she is my sister. So Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah but God came to Abimelech in a dream of the night and said to him, behold you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken for she is married.

Now Abimelech had not come near her and he said, Lord will you slay a nation even though blameless? Did he not himself say to me, she is my sister and she herself said, he is my brother. In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.

Then God said to him in the dream, yes I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this and I also kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her. Now therefore restore the man's wife for he is a prophet and he will pray for you and you will live.

But if you do not restore her know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours. So Abimelech rose early in the morning and called all his servants and told all these things in their hearing and the men were greatly frightened.

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 upon my kingdom a great sin. You have done to me things that ought not to be done.

And Abimelech said to Abraham, what have you encountered that you have done this thing? Abraham said, because I thought surely there is no fear of God in this place and they will kill me because of my wife.

Besides she actually is my sister, the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother and she became my wife and it came about when God caused me to wander from my father's house that I said to her, this is the kindness which you will show to me everywhere we go.

Say of me, he is my brother. Abimelech then took sheep and oxen and male and female servants and gave them to Abraham and restored his wife Sarah to him. Abimelech said, behold my land is before you, settle wherever you please.

To Sarah he said, behold I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. Behold it is your vindication before all who are with you and before all men you are cleared. Abraham prayed to God. God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maids said that they bore children for the Lord had closed fast all the wombs of the household of Abimelech because of Sarah Abraham's wife.

The story sounds a little familiar. It sounds like the end of Genesis 12 where Abram took Sarai and all their folks and they went south to Egypt because of a famine and there down in Egypt Abram and Sarai told their little lie.

He says she's my sister, she says he is my brother and Pharaoh king of Egypt takes Sarai into his household, his palace and the same thing happens. God restrains. Pharaoh confronts him, throws plagues on him.

Pharaoh finds out what the problem is, confronts Abraham, gives Sarai back to her husband Abram and then gives all sorts of spoils and treasures and sends them off. Same thing happens here but closer to home.

Not down in Egypt but in Gerar in the southern area of Canaan. Liberal scholars look at a passage like this and say something to the effect of see here we have stories being repeated obviously it's the same story with different facts.

It's a, you know, a corruption of the events. We don't know really what happened. Something happened and this is just a different version happened to be placed here. But in fact it is interesting to me that we have an encounter down in Egypt and then we have an encounter closer to home, parts of which are in the promised land proper, but the encounter is with Abimelech of the Philistines who is king of the Philistines.

Abimelech is probably a title as much as Pharaoh is. Pharaoh is the title of the king of Egypt. Abimelech means my father is king or my father the king which would be a royal title, you know, I reign because my father was king, you know, that kind of idea.

This is what Gideon named his son whom he wanted to reign in his place. But Abimelech is closer to home, kind of a Philistine character. Well, by the time we get to Genesis 26, Abimelech and his military commander Phycol are being called the Philistines by that point.

And the Philistines are a people group who have descended from the Egyptian people groups. So there's a racial connection there. So this is repeated, not because it is a corruption of the text or it really didn't happen this way, but I think it's repeated for the following reason.

Remember that God has inspired Moses to write down these stories, these and not others. There were others, there are other things that happened in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There are other things that happened in the ancient world, but not everything was written down in God's holy book.

These two stories written down, it begs the question, why would we have two stories of such similar character put into God's holy book? Shouldn't one story of the same type have enough to teach us and we can move on?

Why do we have to have another story? Well, there's a couple of reasons. I think one, because for most of the time of God's word being in existence, not everybody has a written copy. So for the greatest length of the time of God's word being written down, it was written down for the scribes to read out loud, for the Levites to read out loud to the people so they would hear.

So when they would hear a similar story repeated, that would help them remember the truths of the text. So repetition is good for those who are listening. But additionally, there are differences in the story.

We think about Sarah. Very often we think of the patriarchs and we think of how important Abraham was or how important Isaac was or how important Jacob was. But what about Sarah? How important is Sarah?

Very important. She is critical to this story. Remember, we're reading the story from Genesis chapter three of the seed of the woman. That's the story we're tracing, the seed of the woman. And the story has led us to this couple, Abraham and Sarah, who have been childless.

Childless. For a long time, they have had no children. They still don't have any children just yet. Now the promises from God are coming thick and fast. I mean, God is saying, you're going to have a child.

In chapter 18, God has given them a timeframe. Finally, this time next year, Sarah's going to have a son. So they're in a critical phase now. So what happens if Sarah is taken away by Pharaoh when she's 65, thereabouts, and captured by Pharaoh and made one of his wives and Abraham loses his wife forever?

What happens to the tracing of the lineage of the seed? We're totally off now. There's a great threat to the Messiah, to God's clear plan for the seed to come from the descendants of Shem and Eber, so that the Hebrews are born of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Judah.

So there we have Jacob's name to Israel, Judah's to the Jews. So the Hebrews, the Israelites, the Jews, this is the lineage of the Messiah, of Christ. But if Sarah is captured by Pharaoh, then the whole lineage is stolen away, and all who Israel would be would be absorbed into the Egyptians.

Same goes with Abimelech. She still hasn't had Isaac yet. She is captured by Abimelech, she is brought into this kind of Canaanite slash Philistine group, the same threat is there. She is kept forever by Abimelech, then what happens to the lineage?

So you see the peril to the Messiah, the peril to the people of Israel, and the Messiah who would come from Israel. So whether it's Egypt or Philistia, Canaan, the threat is that Sarah will be lost to one or the other.

Now, remember that Moses is writing all of this down. The Holy Spirit is giving him the words, he is writing it in his own style. He is the shepherd of a people named Israel. They are encamped at the Acacia Grove under the shadow of Mount Peor, preparing to cross over and take the promised land.

They hear a story about how there was this great threat to their whole nation, where Sarah was, the risk was that she would be swallowed up by Egypt. But no, God turns it around, and Abraham and Sarah leave Egypt having plundered Pharaoh.

And does that sound familiar to these Israelites? They were on the verge of being swallowed up by Egypt. The serpent was coming after them. The male babies were supposed to be drowned in the Nile River.

The threat was that all the male babies would be drowned in the Nile River, and then all the females of Israel would be taken by the Egyptians, and their whole race would just dissolve into the Egyptians.

That was the threat, but God turned it around, and God brought them up out of Egypt, and they plundered Egypt on the way out. So Genesis 12 sounds like their history. So the Israelites are saying, yeah, okay, well, I'm connecting with the story of Abraham and Sarah.

That happened to them. Well, it happened to us too. Now, here comes the other half of the story, the repetition of the story. Now, they're on the verge of going into Canaan. They're going to fight all kinds of Canaanites, and they're going to fight all kinds of Philistines.

They're on the verge of going into the Promised Land, and they've been told again and again by God's law, they've been told, do not intermarry with the Canaanites. Do not take their gods as your gods.

Do not give your daughters to their sons. Do not take their daughters for your sons. So what's the risk? The risk is that Sarah will be captured and absorbed by these Pagans. They're going to have to go into Canaan.

They're going to have to go into Philistia. They're going to have to go in there and fight, and of course, the risk is that Israel will be absorbed by these nations. Well, this has already happened, right, in the sense that Abraham has been traveling about, and Sarah, once again, down in Egypt, is also captured by Abimelech.

But what happens? Ultimately, what happens is, despite Abraham and Sarah's unfaithfulness, despite their waffling on this issue, that God shows himself strong, and the lineage is not lost, the seed is not erased, God's promises are still true, and despite the lying of Abraham and Sarah, despite the lies of humanity, the truths of God stand, and they are preserved, and we have this Abimelech's remarkable statement, the land is before you, settle wherever you want.

Well, that's exactly what the Israelites are going to do when they go into Canaan. They're going to conquer the enemies by God's power, and they're going to settle wherever they want. So, this is foreshadowing for the Israelites first hearing this.

They have the retrospect from the end of Genesis 12, yet this has happened. Yes, we were delivered from Egypt, we plundered Egypt, and this is prospect. Yes, we're going to go in, and because of God, we're going to succeed.

So, that's, I guess, one reason why there's two stories that sound a lot alike. Because, one, it happened. Two, these were included for instruction for the Israelites. And also, there's instruction, I think, if we can isolate the main problem.

Like, if you're reading through these 18 verses, reading through the story, what's the main problem? Why do Abraham and Sarah feel the need to lie? There's a lack of faith. There's a lack of trust in God.

So, they're scared. Why are they scared? I mean, this doesn't happen all the time, right? It happened twice, but it didn't happen all the time. What are they scared of in this area? It's in verse 11. Yeah, he was afraid he's going to get killed.

So, it's interesting. It's interesting that Abraham is scared of something happening to him that was happening before the flood. Before the flood, we have violence filling the earth. In Genesis 6, the language is that the violence filled the earth and that men fill the earth with violence, so God's going to fill the earth with water.

And that was the language of Genesis 6. And there was also marrying between the godly and the ungodly lines. And so, the godly lines were being completely absorbed by the ungodly and great violence. So, we have a connection there from Genesis 20.

But he is concerned. Abraham is concerned that someone's going to kill him and steal his wife. So, he has made this bargain with Sarah that goes all the way back before they ever left. When he knew that they would be wandering, he says, okay, this is going to be our story so that I don't get killed because of you.

And she went along with it. This is a really bad plan. If, you know, because what we need to do is isolate the problem. The problem is in verse 11. When Abimelech asks him, what have you seen that would make you do this to me?

Why would you lie to me like this? What's the problem? What are you scared of? Abraham says, the problem is there's no fear of God in this place. Because there's no fear of God in this place, there's lots of violence.

Because there's no fear of God in this place, there's lots of violence and not only violence against men, but violence against women, the taking of women away from their husbands after their husbands are killed, and so on.

Which also brings to mind lots of, that's theft, it's also sexual immorality, so on. There's no fear of God. So, we know what's wrong with our world today, don't we? There's no fear of God. That's why there's so much violence.

That's why there's sexual immorality. That's why there's so much theft. It's because there's no fear of God. If there's a person who rejoices in those things, if there's a culture that upholds those things, that's because there's no fear of God.

And Abraham knew he was in a bad area of the world. You know when you drive into a bad neighborhood. Like, I don't think I belong here. Abraham knew they were going to a bad neighborhood. So, he says, here's what we're going to do.

There's no fear of God in this place. So, we're going to do what we can to protect ourselves. So, they lie. Now, I have a question for you. If this is the problem, the problem is that there's no fear of God in that place.

Can the people of God engage in lying and fix that? We can't fix the lack of fear of God by lying to people with no fear of God. That does not help. So, actually, the opposite is true, right? Telling the truth.

Telling the truth. That is how you fix this. So, you know, we're not given the alternative, the hypothetical reverse situation that we would have liked to have seen from Abraham and Sarah. They would walk into a there was no fear of God.

And Abraham would say to those who come to assess what he has and try to take something from him, even his wife, we would like him to say, we're here because God Almighty has sent us here. He has told me to walk the length and the breadth of this land of Canaan, which he's given to me and to my descendants.

He is God of heaven and God of earth. And he has made all things and he's control of all things. And, you know, if you have any success in harming me or my family, it's only because God allowed it. But I'm here.

And if you mess with me, you're messing with the God I serve. There's the truth. And that says, here's the great big God whom you don't know and you don't fear. And that's why your culture is in the mess that it's in.

So telling the truth is the antidote to this, not lying. And we know that from the text, because even though Abraham and Sarah didn't tell the truth, God did. Right? So Abimelech takes Sarah to his house and then God confronts Abimelech with the truth and a dream of the night, which is in this case, the only way Abimelech was going to hear the truth because the prophet God sent there didn't tell the truth.

So God hits the override button and says, okay, my prophet's not telling the truth. I'm going to tell the truth. I'm going to speak to Abimelech. And he says, okay, you're a dead man. That'll get your attention.

In the middle of the night, you have a dream and God almighty says, you are a dead man because of what you have done. You see right there, the truth is spoken and the fear of God is already at work in Abimelech's life.

You are a dead man because of the woman you have taken for she is married. Now we hear how God feels about marriage. Here's what God thinks about marriage. One man for one woman. If somebody takes her, he says to him, you're a dead man.

That's how serious God takes marriage. But Abimelech could not come near her. And he said, Lord, will you slay a nation? Apparently he had the idea that if you attack the king, you're attacking the whole nation.

He, you know, probably the case. He says, even though blameless, he says, I'm blameless. It's his fault. It's her fault. They told me lies, which is true. He says in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands, I've done.

He's saying innocence of my hands. I haven't done anything wrong with my hands. So he says, you know, you've got nothing on me. You're going to kill me. You're going to kill an innocent man. Well, we just had this little discussion back in Genesis 18 of will the, well, a righteous, a good Holy God destroy the innocent as he would the wicked.

So that's kind of echoing there. Now God says that he says, I know that in the integrity of your heart, you have done this. You know, obviously Abimelech would, if he had, we don't know if Abimelech would have went ahead and taken Sarah and killed Abraham in the process.

If he had known that they were married, but the point is he didn't know that they were married. He thought he could, you know, Abraham's obviously a rich and powerful man. If this is your sister, I will marry your sister so that we can be allied.

And you're a wealthy, you know, influential man. And I want to have that alliance. That was a very common thing to do. Well, he says in the instance of my hands, I've done this, but notice that God says, I kept you from sinning against me.

So Abimelech wants to say, I didn't do anything wrong. God says, actually, I'm the one who kept you from doing anything wrong. So Abimelech can't pat himself on the back and take credit for that. God is the one who kept him from sinning.

And this should bring to mind how often we should be thankful to God that he's kept us from sinning against him. So I kept you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her. Now, this is an interesting point.

If Abimelech did not know, he did not know that Sarah was Abraham's wife. He didn't know that he thought it was legitimate for him to marry her. He did not know the details. God says, if he had, if he had gone through and consummated that marriage, that he would have been sinning against God, even if he didn't know it.

This is an important part about sin, the doctrine of sin. You can sin without understanding that you're sinning. Many theologians in history have tried to root the sinfulness of sin in our understanding of whether it's sin or not, which makes it a completely roller coaster sliding scale.

If it's only sin, if you understand it to be sin, then the definition of sin depends on our awareness, depends on our conscience, the level of whether it's seared or not, and so on. But in fact, the definition of sin is tied to the definition of holiness, God's holiness, who God is, his character.

Sin is that which is against God, that which is against who he is in his nature, in his character, not based on whether or not we understand it or not. Now, there, Jesus does talk about those who sin in ignorance and with less knowledge are less guilty than those who sin with great knowledge and sin presumptuously.

That is true, but it's still sin. It's still sin. So God says to Abimelech, I kept you from sinning against me. I did not let you touch her. He says, now, therefore, restore the man's wife, for he is a prophet.

You couldn't tell that, but he is. He is a prophet, and he will pray for you, and you will live. But if you do not restore her, know that you will surely die, you and all who are yours. So Abimelech must restore Sarah.

He must do this. He must go to the man who lied to him and ask him to pray for him, intercede for him, lest God strike him down and everybody with him. So God is revealing himself to Abimelech as a powerful, sovereign God who is not hampered by the failings of his own prophet, and he's telling Abimelech what to do.

So Abimelech follows through with this. Now, he's pretty upset with Abraham and Sarah. He rose early in the morning. He didn't wait around. He called all his servants and told all these things in their hearing, and the men were greatly frightened.

Success. The issue is there is no fear of God in this place. Abraham and Sarah didn't help it by lying. They should have told the truth. They didn't tell the truth. So God told Abimelech the truth, and Abimelech told his servants.

All of a sudden, they're all frightened. Guess what? There's a whole lot of fear of God now in the palace. Look at what got turned around because the truth was told. Now there's fear in the palace, fear of God.

And verse 9, 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 on my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done.

If the problem is in our culture, if the problem is that there is no fear of God in this place, and we lie to the people in this culture, we lie to save our own hides, we lie so that there's no conflict, we lie so that there's no confrontation, we do not spark the fear of God.

We do not elevate the fear of God in their lives. And in fact, we sin against them and lead them into further sin. So there's no help. There's no help unless the truth is told. Verse 10, Abimelech said to Abraham, what have you encountered that you have done this thing?

And what have you seen about us that you have done this thing? Why did you lie? What caused you to lie? And that's when Abraham identifies the problem. Because I thought, surely there is no fear of God in this place that will surely kill me because of my wife.

And then Abraham explains how they came up with the lie in the first place, kind of a rationalization. Besides, she actually is my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.

And it came about when God caused me to wander from my father's house. Does this sound like Adam? The wife, the woman you gave to be with me, God caused me to wander, and that's why we had to come up with this scheme to preserve ourselves.

You know, God will cause us to go places that we're not comfortable. God will cause us to go and be around, be in a godless culture. But that's not a good excuse for lying. The God who sins us is the God who will ensure that we'll, that gives us the truth and the strength to do what he's called us to do wherever he sins us.

So he shouldn't be blaming God. When God caused me to wander from my father's house, that I said to her, this is the kindness which you will show to me everywhere we go. Say of me, he is my brother. Well, bad plan, but God triumphs over the bad plans of Abraham and Sarah.

Verse 14, Abimelech then took sheep and oxen and male and female servants and gave them to Abraham and restored his wife, Sarah, to him. Abimelech said, behold, my land is before you. Settle wherever you please.

To Sarah, he said, behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. Behold, that is your vindication before all who are with you. And for all men, you are cleared. Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maids.

They bore children for the Lord and closed fast all the wombs of the household of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. Abimelech gives servants and livestock and a thousand shekels of silver, a thousand pieces of silver to Abraham.

Why? I mean, Abraham should be paying Abimelech a thousand pieces of silver for all the trouble he's caused him. That's what it is. You see, it's Abimelech is doing what God told him to, restoring Sarah.

And that wasn't just, well, go back to your husband. No, he's restoring her. He's restoring her honor and treating God's prophet, Abraham, the way he would treat God if God was there personally. Abimelech has been exposed to the truth of who God is.

And now Abimelech fears the Lord. He may not be a believer, but at the very least, he's like the demons who believe in tremble. All of a sudden, the fear of God has arrived. And that's the reason why he treats Abraham and Sarah the way he does.

It's not because they deserve it, not because of their character, not because of their conduct. It's because he fears the Lord. This is encouraging as well, that as we go through a godless culture where there's no fear of God in the place that we go, we don't have a license to go and act however we want.

We're not saying it doesn't matter how we act, but we see that the change of heart ultimately is going to depend upon God, not on our quality, not on our proficiency in doing well. But we should trust the God who is worthy of fear, worthy of reverence.

And Abraham prays to God. God heals Abimelech and his wife and his maids and their children. God had stricken Abimelech and his household with barrenness. Somehow they knew that. And Abraham intercedes so that that is lifted from them.

And again, this only solidifies the sovereignty and the power of the one true God among those people. And from that point on, every time there was a new child born in that household, they recognized it was only because the God of Abraham allowed that.

The God of Abraham arranged for that. And now the fear of God is there. It was not there, but now it is there because of the truth that was told, not because of the lies that were told. Well, that's Genesis 20.

Any thoughts or questions about that? With Abraham and Sarah, right? Yeah. The sins of ignorance. That's right. Yes, absolutely. We see that the patriarchs, the heroes of the Bible are full of flaws, right?

And the people that God chose to work with were not of the highest quality. As 1 Corinthians talks about, not many noble, not many mighty, not many wise. Exactly. And again and again, what you see when you read through these, God delights in doing possible through the unlikely.

Well, she's obviously complicit in it, but she's also honoring her husband and doing what he asked. That's a tricky question. She is held up as an example of honorable submission to her husband, an example in Peter.

Obviously, she's very afraid. And we can think of that on the personal level. What was she going through? You find this again and again with the women in the Old Testament who are standing in for Israel in the storyline.

Will she be preserved? You can think of it even not just Sarah, both in Egypt and amongst the Philistines, but also you can think of Esther in the courts of Persia. Will Israel be snuffed out? That's the question in Esther, right?

Will Israel be completely swallowed up and snuffed out? Well, that's the same question for Esther. Will she be completely paganized by being brought into Hazaras's palace? And ultimately, she sides with her people and says, my people, you're trying to kill my people.

And she says, I'm standing with my people, the Jews. Those are the questions that again and again, you see many times in the Old Testament, the principal women. And the question is, will Israel stand or fall?

And the women are often personally in those positions. And so both stories are being told at the same time. Where did that come from? It came from the Bible. Well, let's go ahead and close by singing the doxology together.