accomplish any and everything he wants to accomplish on the earth, in heaven, and beneath the earth. Secondly, he must be all-loving. He could be all-powerful, but if he's not all-loving, all we might have is a dictator. So he must be all-loving as well. This way we know that he will only use his power to do that which is loving to His creatures, loving to His own. But then again, He must also be all-wise. He could be all-loving, want to do what's best for us. He could be all-powerful and able to do what's best for us, but if He was not all-wise, He might not know what's best for us. But since He is all-wise, He knows what is the best for us and the best way to accomplish His own glory. Now we're asking and answering the question, is God sovereign over people's actions? And we saw Two things we're looking at. First, God prompts people to do His will. Now, can you think of examples of God prompting people to do His will? Excuse me? To serve Him. Okay. I want some examples from Scripture of Pharaoh. All right. And how did he prompt Pharaoh? OK. All right, so did. So he could accomplish his will through Pharaoh. In another example, you remember we talked about of God moving people to accomplish. King Cyrus, all right, and King Cyrus was moved to make a proclamation, a decree that the Jewish people could go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. And this indeed was God's will. Okay, any other example comes to mind? All right, prompted, that's right, to crucify Jesus, put Him on that cross. Exactly, good. Thank you for that, Reggie. All right, now we're going to move to the second aspect of God controlling people's actions. Not only does He prompt people to do His will, but He also restrains people from acting contrary or against His sovereign will. So it's one thing to prompt people to do something, it's another thing to restrain people from doing something that would not be. And that brings up a couple of questions. And let me ask you, do any examples come to your mind of God stopping, restraining someone from doing something that is against his will? Any examples in scripture come to your mind? All right, the guy who's donkey, Balaam, yeah, that would be an example that Balaam was going to do something God did not want him to do, so God even talked through his donkey, made his donkey speak to stop him. Good example, Reggie. Can you think of another one? Paul, on his way to Damascus Road to persecute Christians, And God turned him around, didn't He? He arrested him by the power of His Spirit. Amen. That's another good example. Now we're going to ask the next question. Does God violate their free will when He restrains them from doing things that are against His will? Did He violate Paul's free will when He stopped Paul from going to Damascus? No. Did He violate Balaam's free will He restrained Balaam from going to deliver that false prophecy. No, God just made a want to do it. God's great at making us want to do something, right? He doesn't have to make us do it. He just shows us the consequences of either not doing it or the blessings of doing it, and that makes our will fall into gear. All right, that brings us to our study tonight. God restrains people. The first example we find over in Genesis chapter 20, and you might have your Bible turn over to that. Here we have Abraham and Sarah, his wife, and she had to have been some good-looking woman if at probably the age of 70 plus He worries that if the king of the land knows that she is his wife, that he might well kill him in order to take her unto himself. And so Abraham takes what I consider to be the chicken way out. And he says that she is his sister. And here we pick up our story in Genesis 20 beginning with verse 1. Now Abraham sojourned from there toward the land of Negev and settled between Kadesh and Shur. Then he sojourned in Gerar. Abraham said of Sarah his wife, she is my sister. So Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. And do you think he was taking her to have intellectual conversation with her? No, he was not taking her to see if she had any good recipes that she might fix him some good food to eat. No, his intentions were to take her and be involved in a sexual relationship with her. But, verse 3, 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 in the innocence of my hands, I have done this. Boy, I didn't know any better. 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." Now, what I want you to see in this situation in particular is that Even though Abimelech took Sarah, and his intention in taking her was to have sexual relations with her, he did not have those relations. For some reason, he chose not to do so immediately at the time that he took her. So you remember what he says? He talks about not going into her. And God says in verse 6, I kept you from sinning against me, therefore I did not let you touch her. Now it's interesting, we have no indication in this passage of God doing anything outwardly. I mean, he didn't put an angel between Abimelech and Sarah. So that when he tried to approach her, there was a fiery angel there. He did not even put on hers and make her somehow look very unattractive to him. All we know is that Abimelech did not take her to himself. It was his own choosing that he restrained from doing that which was originally the intent of his heart. Do you see that? His intention was to violate her. But God worked through the situation in a way that Abimelech was acting out of his own free will when he decided not for some reason to have relations with her and then God comes in her dream and explains the situation and of course at that point he realizes the sin and he does not do it and so God restrained Abimelech from violating Sarah another example we have similar to this is over in Genesis 26 And here we have Isaac, of course, the son of Abraham, and he's doing a very similar situation. As we pick up the passage, Genesis 26. Now there was a famine in the land besides a previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. So Isaac went to Gerar. to Abimelech king of the Philistines, excuse me, the Philistines, the Lord appeared to him and said, do not go down to Egypt. Stay in the land of which I shall tell you. Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and bless you for to you and your descendants, I will give all these lands and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father, Abraham. I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven will give your descendants all these lands, and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Because Abraham obeyed me and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. So Isaac lived in Gorah. When the men of the place asked about his wife, he said, She's my sister. For he was afraid to say my wife, thinking the men of the place might kill me on account of Rebekah, for she is beautiful. It came about when he had been there a long time that Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out through a window and saw and behold Isaac was caressing his wife, Rebekah. And it was not a way a man caresses his sister. So Abimelech noticed immediately something was not right here. Then Abimelech called Isaac and said, Behold, she certainly she's your wife. How then did you say she is my sister? And Isaac said to him, Because I said I might die on account of her. Abimelech said, What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife and you would have brought guilt upon us. So Bimelech charged all the people saying, he who touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death. Again, the natural inclination of those men in Gerar would have been to have violated Rebekah. That was well known to Isaac and therefore he lied because he was afraid they would kill him in order to do so. And you remember it said they were there a long time? And then God providentially had Isaac caressing Rebekah when the king looked out the window and saw it. So God again rescued her, kept her from being violated, stopped those men from doing the natural inclination of their hearts so that He might protect Rebekah. So God restrains those who would seek to do things against His will. And perhaps another example is over in Genesis 35. Now this is a rather, how do I say it? Story that you might if you haven't read it before you might be surprised. It's in Holy Scripture But God doesn't cover up his people's sins or their mistakes And that's one of the reasons that that we know the Bible is God's Word Those other writings would present their heroes as heroes and I want to show their shortcomings but it so happens that Jacob and his sons were in the land, and his daughter, Dinah, went to visit some of the girls of this other tribe, these unbelievers, the heathens in the land. And this fellow named Shechem saw Dinah and immediately felt in his heart, I've got to have her. And so he raped her. So she goes back and tells her brothers and her father. And he tells his father, I want her as my wife. Do something so that I can have her as my wife. So he, father, goes and talks to Jacob and says, we want you to give Donna to Shechem as his wife. Well, Jacob said, the only way we can do that is that all of your males must be circumcised. That's the only way we can do it. We cannot be involved with an uncircumcised crowd. And so they were willing to do so. So every male in that camp, in that tribe, was circumcised. Well, the scripture says that Jacob's sons waited to the third day when all those men were extremely sore from their circumcision, and then they went on them and killed them all. I mean, they just destroyed them. Now, naturally, you would understand how the people of the heathens of that land would get upset knowing how they had been tricked and how God, excuse me, how Jacob and his sons had done this thing to them. But look what the scripture says in Genesis 35, verse 5. As they journeyed, there was a great terror upon the cities which were around them, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. Now the normal thing would have been for the other surrounding tribes to take vengeance on Jacob and his family because of how they had killed Shechem's family and all that group. But God intervenes And it says clearly, they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. A great terror fell upon the cities. God restrained them by bringing that terror upon them and they did not pursue Jacob and his family. Perhaps one of the greatest examples is what God told the nation of israel in exodus chapter twenty four excuse me exodus chapter thirty four when god commands that all the men of israel come up Three times a year, all the men come up and worship at the temple in Jerusalem or the tabernacle where it was. Now imagine if you were a foreign nation, an enemy nation, when would it be a great time to attack another nation when all their men have left and assembled in one place? Imagine if three times a year all the men in America had to go to Washington, D.C. So at those three times of the year, you would not find a single male 12 years and older anywhere in any of the United States. We would all be in Washington, D.C. Now, wouldn't that be a tremendous time if you wanted to invade the United States? I mean, the armed forces would be there. Everybody. Every male would be in Washington, D.C. You can invade the West Coast. You can invade the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf Coast, and have your way. Now, one of the strongest sinful desires is covetousness, right? You remember Paul said that when God wanted to reveal His sinful heart, the commandment, I shall not covet. was what revealed it to him, better than anything. Because we by nature want to have what somebody else has. How many wars have come because of coveting, wanting to have somebody else's. This whole thing about Russia being in Crimea and being in Why? He wants it. He wants what they got. He wants their access to the sea there, the Bering Sea, the Black Sea, one of those. He wants their ports. He wants what they got. Love, either love or covetousness, is the reason for all wars. You know, some wars were fought over a woman, Fred. that face that launched a thousand ships. Men will fight over love, and they'll fight over territory. They'll fight over wanting what somebody else has. But God says He's going to take one of the strongest desires among sinful men to covet, to have what somebody else has, and He's going to prevent all of these foreign enemies all of these foreign nations that would covet Israel, God is going to keep them away from Israel during these three times of the year. Three times a year, all your mails are to appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. For I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your borders. And no one shall covet your land when you go up three times a year to appear before the Lord your God." Now notice, this is land they've taken away from these nations. They say, it's ours, they took it away from us, we have a right to get it back. As soon as all their guys are gone, let's go get it back. But no, God would not let these foreign enemies Now, that had to have been an exercise of trusting God for all those men to leave their families, to leave their wives and their children defenseless with these enemy nations just miles away, some on the border, but they had to believe God was going to protect them like He said He would. And there's no example in Scripture where this word was ever violated that anybody ever attacked Israel during one of these three annual feasts. God restrains those from doing what He does not intend for them to do. You can trust God to keep people from carrying out evil intentions that will not fulfill His purpose for your life. You got a coach that's out to get you? A boss that's out to get you? That boss cannot thwart God's purpose for your life. He cannot keep you from getting that promotion if that's what God wants for you. He cannot get you fired from that job if that's not what God's purpose and plan for your life is. God is well able and does restrain people from doing anything to us that is outside His sovereign will. So if it gets done to us, it doesn't mean your boss might not get you fired, but if it does, you know, hey, this is God's plan. This is not outside God's control. God's got a plan in this. He's got a purpose in this. Right? And so God is well able to do all things and protect His people from those who would seek to do evil against them. There you go. Don't want to work on Sunday. That didn't fly for me. I tried to get out of that, but I never could. All right. All right. That brings us to our conclusion tonight. But we'll pick up your outline, keep the outline. We'll pick it up next week, Lord willing. And now, Paul, if you'll come and do the Bible study. Prayer.