Let's turn to God's Word, Genesis chapter 21, chapter 21. In your pew Bibles, I'll tell you what page that should be. That should be page 15. And I do invite you to stand out of respect for the reading of God's Word. I'm going to start in verse 22 and read through 34. At that time Abimelech and Phechel, the commander of his army, said to Abraham, God is with you in all that you do. Now therefore, swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my descendants or with my posterity, but as I have dealt kindly with you, so you will deal with me and with the land where you have sojourned. And Abraham said, I will swear. When Abraham reproved Abimelech about a well of water that Abimelech's servants had seized, Abimelech said, I do not know who has done this thing. You did not tell me, and I have not heard of it until today. So Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a covenant. Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock apart, and Abimelech said to Abraham, what is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs that you have set apart? He said, these seven ewe lambs you will take from my hand, that this may be a witness for me that I dug this well. Therefore, that place was called Beersheba, because both of them swore an oath. So they made a covenant at Beersheba. Then Abimelech and Phekel, the commander of his army, rose up and returned to the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a Timurisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. And Abraham sojourned many days in the land of the Philistines. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Amen. You may be seated. Have you ever been surprised by how someone you know very well has changed over the years in a good way? Have you ever been surprised by how maybe someone goes off to college and before they were They had obvious wisdom issues, you know, an example of foolishness. And then they come back and, wow, this person has changed so much. God's hand has really been upon them to mature them, to grow them. And it feels like, is this the same guy that I knew months ago, a year ago? I think probably each of you can point to a person in your life, even if it's yourself, and point to a period of time in which you changed under the Lord's steady hand, his work, maybe the things he put, the situations he put you in, and you come out on the other side, a different person, a new man, a new woman. This is what we find in the new Abraham in our text this morning. I want you to think back to chapter 20, just a few weeks ago, where we first heard of Abraham's foolish encounter with the king of the Philistines named Abimelech. The first time that Abraham met Abimelech, what was he like? He was afraid. He was a coward. And he worried about what Abimelech and the Philistines might do to him. And so he lied. And what did he say? That Sarah was his, just his sister. And he ended up being this foolish example to the nations. Not a witness, not a watch for the nations, but a problem for the nations. Not a witness, but an issue. And he drugged down Abimelech with him until Abimelech's house felt the heavy hand of the Lord and said, what is this you've done? And Abraham said, oh, I'm sorry. I said, she was just my sister. She's really my wife. And then I want you to notice what's happened here. By the end of chapter 21, we see Abemlek again, but this time, it's a totally different Abraham, isn't it? He's not cowardly. He's not tripping over himself. He's not acting towards the nations out of fear. What is he doing? He's courageous. He's a leader. He has respect. And yes, he is this witness to the nations where even the King of the Philistines says, God is with you in all that you do. Let's make a treaty. I could benefit from you, Abraham. You see, Abraham has become a fearless example to the nations, the exact opposite of what he was in chapter 20. He's become finally a successful sojourner. What we mean by that is, of course, that Abraham was wandering around in the land of promise. He knew that it was not his final home, but he needed to learn how to navigate the people that live there, how to live amongst the nations that didn't believe in God, how to be a witness to them, to be salt and light in the world that did not know the true God. And finally, finally, when we get to the end of chapter 21, it's like, oh, he's finding his stride. This is a new man. This is a different guy. He's not Abraham of chapter 20. He's Abraham of chapter 21. Isn't it encouraging to you right off the bat that God does this sanctifying work in our lives? And maybe this is something that you can hold out hope for your own children or for yourself and say, under the Lord's steady hand, even over a short time, just one chapter of my life turns. And by his grace, I can be a new man. We need to become new men, new women. The reason why is because we too are sojourners. The New Testament reminds us over and over and over again. You are not yet to Zion. You're on your way. But for this time, you live amongst an unbelieving people. You live amongst a twisted generation. Therefore, you are to be lights in this world until you inherit the new king, the new heavens and new earth. You are to be successful sojourners. not corrupted by the nations, but courageously bringing Christ to the nations. And so we need to learn from Abraham here how we can be successful sojourners. We need to learn from his example as we face our fears and become pilgrims in this world, sojourners who honor God. And I want us to see, I want us to learn from Abraham's example by noticing his dealings with the world and then his differences from the world. And we too can see, we have ways in which we must deal with the world and yet we must be fundamentally different from the world. And then we really need to close off this lesson from the end of chapter 21 by saying, how did Abraham change so much in one chapter? Because I want that for myself. Well, notice first, Abraham's dealings with the world are our dealings with the world. We, like Abraham, are in the world and we share many of its interests. That's not wrong. It's not wrong that we have issues like property lines and Covenants, as it were, that we sign with secular authorities and agreements that we come into with our neighbors. Fences we put up. Doesn't someone, I think it's a poet who says, good fences make good neighbors. And I don't know, we have some folks in our congregation who work on fences. We have to deal with unbelievers in this world. We have to navigate neighbors. There are times when Christians must cooperate with pagan people in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our city councils. Abraham shows us how to do this and how to do it well. How to navigate, how to live in an unbelieving world. And notice the very first thing that Abraham teaches us is, The way that we navigate, the way that we deal with this world is we pursue peace. We pursue peace. Now, there are times in the Bible where you see the Philistines in this holy war with Israel, with death and bloodshed and purging of the nations. But you also see this, a call for peace. Abraham prioritized peace. Right here, when he agreed to this pact of non-aggression with his Philistine neighbors. Here comes Abimelech and he's got his general. And you know what that means? It means that Abimelech knows that there is the threat of war between him and Abraham. You have to remember, Abraham, by this time, had a large group of people living alongside him. He had children and servants and friends that had come to live close to him. And we also know other places in the book of Genesis that Abraham had become a military force and he had people he could call upon when there was a dispute. And when Abimelech brings his general, he says, he's saying in essence, Abraham, I realized that we could be at war. I'm bringing my general so that you know, this is serious. And also that I respect you. What does Abraham do? Does he right away launch a holy war against the Philistines? Say, no pact, no agreement, let's go to war. No, he says, Let's see if we can find peace. And he prioritizes this. In the same way, Christians should take reasonable measures to live at peace with everyone, including our civil leaders. We see this in Romans chapter 13 and Hebrews 12, 14 says this, live at peace with all people as far as it is possible. I realize there are times when that is not possible. But we ought to be doing everything we can, straining as it were as Christians, to say, look, I really, really want this to work. I really want to live at peace with you. I don't want to be known as a belligerent Christian who is picking up a fight every moment I can. I want to be known as someone who is peaceful and pursues peace and is known for this. How do we do this? Well, we do this by pursuing peace through truth. Now, notice in this text how truth is an essential ingredient for peace in any of our relationships, but it's non-negotiable when it comes to sitting down with secular authorities or our unbelieving neighbors. Abimelech says, look, Abraham, I need to know, I need you to swear that you're not going to deal falsely with me. Now, why would he ask for that? Because back in chapter 20, what did Abraham do? He dealt falsely with Abimelech. And now Abimelech sees that there's a threat of war. He says, Abram, I need to know that you're the kind of guy that I can trust. I need to know that your word is your word. Your word is your bond. This is important for us, isn't it? We need to, as Christians, be known as the kinds of people who speak and what we say is true and it can be depended upon. Yes, in a culture that bends the truth and that twists words and that plays games. We need to be known as those who speak and our word is our bond. If we say we're going to arrive at a meeting at a certain time, we're there. If we sign a contract, we hold to it. Truthfulness, an essential ingredient for peace in any of our relationships. Demolexus, do you swear you'll be true? I wonder where we, where you, need to work this morning on being maximally truthful in all your relationships. Yes, with your family and other Christians, but also with an unbelieving world. Your word's dripping with truth so that someone can say, you wanna do business with this guy. Yeah, he's a Christian. I think that's why you can really trust him. His word is his bond. He does fair business. You can trust him. But notice, pursuing peace through truth, but also, not at the expense of justice or integrity. Abraham is no pushover, is he? Because as soon as Abimelech starts to bring forward, could we agree to not fight one another? And could we agree to live at peace amongst one another? What does Abraham say? Yeah, I think we can do that. But there's something I'd like to bring to your attention. There's this well that I dug. Your men stole it. And I dug that well. Why is Abraham so fixated on this well? You have to remember the culture that they're in. This is in the Middle East. This is in a land where water rights were crucial. You just can't go anywhere and turn on a faucet and get water. It's not free. It comes at a price, at a dear price. And whoever owned land and dug a well and owned that well, well, that was a rich source of prosperity and essential to their livelihood. So Abraham says, look, I went through a lot of work to dig this well, and then your guys took it over. You're gonna need to make this right if we're gonna have a relationship. And what does Abimelech say? Oh, I didn't know about this. Okay, we'll work this out. In our dealings with the world, we must be bold enough to address problems that stand in the way of true peace. Not pushovers, not saying, oh, whatever it takes to live at peace, I won't bring up an issue. No, Christians, like the Apostle Paul, right? When his rights were violated as a Roman citizen, he said, I'm going to need you to make this right. We too should take that stand, like Paul, like Abraham, because true peace, yes, and I'm even talking about the temporary kind of peace with our unbelieving neighbors, does not come at the expense of integrity, injustice. It comes as we maintain those things. So I'm calling upon you this morning to be the kind of people who would pursue peace through truth, but also upholding integrity doing the hard work of hammering out agreements and talking through difficult things with our neighbors. I bet each one of you could think of a practical way in which this plays out in your lives because you all live somewhere. You all have neighbors. None of us is floating around up in the clouds and we just come down for church and then we float back up. No, we have places we live and people we live amongst. I have to navigate with my neighbors how I'm going to trap a groundhog that has been eating all my vegetation, all my plants. And I have to navigate this with my neighbors who don't want their cats to get hurt. As they walk around outside, well, how do I do this? Well, not gonna deal in falsehood, not going to twist the truth, not going to lie, going to be honest and open and pursue peace with this pursuit of this groundhog. So we have to be these kinds of people. Now look, look at this. In the workplace, in our neighborhoods, and in the political sphere, we should be so respectful, so truthful, so peaceful, so useful, that we honor God's name before a watching world. That's what this is really about. It's about being a good witness and bringing honor to God's name in all of our dealings. Listen to what Abimelech says. God is with you, Abraham, in all that you do. Think about that. That's what the king of the Philistines, he's a pagan king. And he looks at Abraham and he says, look, I'm looking at everything that God touches turns to gold in your life. So I want to be around you. I want to be part of your life. I want to make agreements with you. I wonder if your coworkers would say that about you Christians. What about your neighbors? Do they see God at work in your life where they say, I wanna hire him because he's a Christian. I wanna work with her because I know when she speaks, it's true and I can count on that. I wanna work with him because he works with integrity and he brings his values, Christian principles to work with him. Would your neighbors, your unbelieving neighbors notice how you handle death differently than the rest of the world? How you handle politics differently than the rest of the world? Would they see you as salt and light in this world? Because what we have here is this picture, this call to see in Abraham, a man who comes to the table, he's in the world and he gets to work in the world with unbelieving people in such a way that he upholds his Christian witness. That's for us too. Jesus says it this way, you ought to be salt and light. You ought to be lighthouses in this world because people are watching and your lives are a witness. Where do you need to change to be more peaceful, more useful, more truthful? To a watching world, to your next door neighbors, to your coworkers. And so we're called to be successful sojourners while we're in the world, But notice we are to never be of the world. And Abraham shows us this too. He shows us our dealings with the world. You have to cooperate with the world to some degree, but you ought to be fundamentally different. And his story here reminds us that this world is not our final home. We as sojourners, we have to remain separate and distinct. And isn't this the age-old problem, the difficulty that we know we're in the world, but if we're going to be in the world, if we're actually going to engage, and some Christians would argue, well, you should never go to the voting booth, you should never make any deals with non-believers, you should just maybe go and live in a commune and stay completely away from non-believers. Well, that's ignoring the fact that we have to be in the world and dealing with others. But then you go to the opposite extreme and you see people who are just so hungry to have a place at the table and have influence and power in this world that they start to lose the sharp edges of their Christian witness and they start to lose their saltiness and their light gets pretty dim. Why? Because they just start looking like the unbelieving world and operating like the unbelieving world. They forget that this world is not their home. I see this all the time today, especially when I'm noticing the dominant Christian voice right now on social media. Maybe it's just the algorithm that plugs this stuff towards me, but I'm noticing Christians who are so hungry to get to a place of power and a place at the table that they forget that we should be different in the way we speak. We should be cognizant of the fact that this world is not our home. We don't belong to this fading world. We belong to an eternal God. And so notice that after this covenant was complete, you know, Abraham and Abimelech shake hands and say, all right, we're not gonna fight. We're gonna live peacefully amongst each other. And then Abimelech and his general go home. And Abraham goes where? He doesn't follow them. He goes home. They go their separate ways. The text draws this out. Where do Abimelech and his general go? Well, they go home to their Philistine ways, to their idols. And Abraham goes where? He goes back to worship his God. His immediate response after this covenant was made is, I'm gonna go and worship the Lord because he continues to provide for me. He has this tree planting ceremony, doesn't he? He said, I wanna worship my God, I wanna honor my God. And so he plants this tamarisk tree in the soil as this symbol that God is faithful, that he provides, that his resources don't come from his deals with the unbelieving world. powerful men, but his resources come from where? From the everlasting God, and this is the one place in scripture, the first place in which God has called this, the everlasting God, the one who stands above the nations, the one who stands above all things and who supplies his people richly from the wells of water that spill up from his rich soil. See, Abraham is able to navigate in this world while also realizing that His home is with the Lord. He can strike deals with generals and still say, but my King is God. What we have here is this picture that we ought to take away and we ought to walk away from this text saying, I want that to be me. I want to be able to work in the world but not put my faith in it. I want to be able to deal with the world but know that my security lies with God. I want to be able to to benefit my neighbor, but not to be so hungry for his or her approval. It's God. I can't think of a time where we're reminded of this better than when we worship. Whenever we worship, when we come and gather, what are we saying? We're saying, This world is not my final home. The new heavens and new earth, when this world is remade, that's my home. There's a table that's more important than the table with my neighbors and with unbelieving secular authorities. What's that table? The Lord's table. The table where I sit down and feast with Jesus and with his saints. When we worship, we remember that we don't belong to this fading world. We belong to an eternal God. So here we have him, the successful sojourner, dealing with the world, but different from the world. Is this you? Where do you need to grow in these things? Abraham grew. One chapter of his life passed and he became a new man under God's faithful hand. And I wanna look, ask that question, how did Abraham become this kind of man? I believe that our text points us to that as well. How did Abraham become? How did he move from being fearful to faithful with his dealings with the nations? How did he move from being cowardly to courageous? How did he go for looking to the nations for approval? to looking to God as his all-sufficient reward and hope. How did he do this? Well, he planted his roots of devotion deep, deep in the everlasting God. That's what he did. This tree here, this Tamarisk tree, it's more than just a casual tree-planting ceremony. It reminds us, doesn't it, of Psalm 1. The tree, planted by streams of living water, it yields its fruit in season. Its leaf doesn't wither. Think what Abraham is doing here in this tree he plants. He's planting a symbol, as it were, of God's faithfulness to him. Abraham is becoming, day after day, and he knows it, more and more that Psalm 1 kind of man. The tree in the desert symbolizes Abraham's life, which is, its root runs deep into the wells of satisfaction in his God, devotion to his God. You should look up later a picture of a tamarisk tree. It's this beautiful green tree that grows in the desert, and it sends its roots deep, and it taps into wells of water that are, wherever it can find them. What we have here in Abraham is a picture of the kind of man, how does he thrive in the desert? How does he thrive as a sojourner in this world? Well, because the roots of his life are planted deep in his God. And for this reason, we're gonna get to chapter 21, and God is going to say, I'm gonna put you to a test. Would you even lay down the life of Isaac, your only son, out of your devotion to me? And Abraham is going to say yes. How can Abraham become the kind of man who says yes? How can he become the kind of man who stays faithful and true to his God? Well, it's because of where he's rooted his life. Not in the fading covenants and pleasures and agreements of this world, but deep in his love for the everlasting God. Brothers and sisters, if we want to be successful sojourners like Abraham, we must begin with this, with our devotion to God, with our devotion to Christ, to our devotion to the one who gave up everything so that we would have a true and better home, heavenly home. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, pray that we would be successful sojourners in this life, faithful in our dealing with our unbelieving neighbors, true, full of integrity before a watching world, that we would not shrink back from our engagements, that we would go to the table pursuing peace, laying out truth, But Lord, we would not be so caught up in the dealings of this world that we forget you. We forget the gospel. We forget our heavenly reward. We pray that we would be witnesses to a watching world because the roots of our life are planted deep in devotion to our King Jesus. We pray this in his name, amen.