We're looking in a moment at Genesis chapter 20, Genesis 20, page 17 of the Red Pew Bible. Many ugly and hurtful things had been said that night. And as she lay crying alone in the darkness of their bedroom, she already regretted the bitterness and hatred of her words. What he had done was awful, some might say unforgivable. But if sin is unforgivable, then isn't life hopeless? More than that, she'd prayed at church many times, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. As we forgive our debtors, in the manner that we forgive our debtors, like we forgive our debtors, in proportion to the way that we forgive our debtors. Forgive us like we forgive others. His sin against her was terrible, but so too were some of hers. Could she really judge him to be unforgivable? And then pray next Sunday, forgive me as I forgive him. So what was she going to do? What were they going to do? He too was in pain, sitting in his truck regretting what he had done and hurting from what she'd said. This was the only girl he'd ever liked, ever had a crush on, ever loved. The moment her family showed up at their church and he'd pulled her braid in sixth grade Sunday school, he liked the sass in her response and he'd been sweet on her ever since. And though it took her many years to see their relationship the way he saw it, the wait paid off the day she said it, the day she said, I do. She does, he thought to himself, we're married. His childhood sweetheart was now his wife. He was quite literally living the dream. But he had jeopardized all of it. He couldn't forgive himself. And based on what was said that evening, it didn't seem like she could either. So alone in the truck in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, all seemed hopeless, had he ruined the best thing that ever happened to him. Fast forward some 30 plus years, the two hurting people, this couple that we've just met, weren't quite so young anymore. Now they're counseling a couple at church, half their age, going through a very hard time in their marriage and wondering if they could make it. Ironically, the older, wiser protagonists of our story shared how struggles and trials and even sin had deepened their relationship, ultimately bringing them closer together. They would never wish that amount of pain on anyone. After all, shall we go on sinning that grace may increase? Never. God forbid. But still, somehow, God had used that horrible, painful ordeal that night to mature them and bind them. These two were more one than they would have been if that night had never happened. Somehow, God had taken that mess, that sin, and spun it into a blessing. No, it didn't justify his failure or her ugly response. Those sins were still very much sins. But the tapestry of their lives together was richer for having gone through that together. Lord, as we take up the question of sin's blessing, help us to appreciate the unsearchable depths of your providence at work And as we come to see your unbelievable faithfulness, help us believe it. Amen. Genesis 20, page 17 in the Red Pew Bible. Genesis 20 is a story which could be easily set aside. As we read it, it is going to sound familiar to us. Yeah, Abraham and Sarah travel into a foreign land. He lies about her being merely his sister. She draws the attention of the local king. Yada, yada, yada. Been there, done that. We saw this back earlier. We've seen this already. It's a do-over. And so I suspect that as we are reading through our Bibles, perhaps that annual reading plan you have or that through the Bible plan, you get to a chapter like this and you just kind of buzz through it thinking, what's the point of hearing the same story over again? But let's not hurry through this. Let's linger over it for all of the things that Moses, at God's behest, left out of Genesis. He does include this story a second time. Why? Genesis 20, beginning in verse 1, reading to the end of the chapter with comments, many comments, along the way. From there, that is from the camp near the Oaks of Mamre, where we last found Abraham and Sarah back in chapter 18. Remember, Abraham was talking with God and the angels right before the destruction of Sodom. From there, Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur. And he sojourned in Gerhar. Gerhar was a city of the Philistines. And unlike chapter 12, where Abraham and Sarah go down to Egypt because of a famine, we are not told why they are sojourning this time. But Abraham is by now an exceedingly wealthy man with enormous flocks and hundreds of mouths to feed. So presumably, it seems safe to assume that they have picked up and moved to find greener pastures, quite literally. And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, she is my sister. And Abimelech king of Gerhar sent and took Sarah. If you have been with us through Genesis for any length of time, you may share my urge to yell at the page at this point. Seriously, Abraham, not again. I thought you learned your lessons back in Egypt. I thought you were better than this. And to a degree, Abraham has been better, hasn't he? We've seen him fight with bravery the five eastern kings so that he could rescue Lot. We've seen his spiritual maturity when he tithes and worships through the king-priest Melchizedek. We've seen his wisdom when he avoids the entanglement with the king of Sodom in the aftermath of all of that. and we have seen his compassion as he prayed for the people of Sodom when he learned of their looming destruction. Abraham is a better man and yet he is not. He is a man who is beset by sins. This fear of death on the account of his wife is a recurring theme in his life. In fact, we're gonna find out as we keep reading here, it's happened a bunch of times that we haven't been told about. This is a common sin for him. This is what the Puritan writers would refer to as a besetting sin. And I realize that's kind of some archaic language, very churchy language, and yet it's very descriptive and useful language. So what is a besetting sin? It comes from the King James Version of Hebrews 12, 1. Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us. There's that root of that idea of a besetting sin out of the King James language. So how would recent translations render it? What might be a more modern expression? Well, the NIV and the NASB translate it this way. Sin, which so easily entangles us. The Net Bible and the ESV offer this translation. Sin, which clings so closely. The setting sins are those that entangle us, that stick to us, those that we cannot shake, those that we cannot seem to get rid of. You know that feeling of walking through a spider web and then for hours afterwards not being able to get the web off from you? You're pulling at it, you're trying to find it, and you can't get rid of it. That's the picture. of a besetting sin. It just sticks to you and you can't seem to shake it no matter what you do. That utter inability to get ourselves out of that which entangles us, that which is clinging so closely, is a besetting sin. Despite his progress in sanctification, Abraham has at least this one besetting sin. He is afraid of being killed on account of his wife. And that, in spite of the fact that God has promised a son through that wife, So how could she possibly be killed or him killed until at least one child is born to her? And yet he lives in fear rather than faith. While pride was the root of the first sin and while pride is still the root of most sin, fear also undercuts faith and fosters a great deal of wrongdoing. But Paul writes to Timothy, God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-control. Self-control, Abraham. God has given you a spirit of self-control. Why are you living in the spirit of fear? We want to yell at Abraham. Don't repeat this besetting sin. You know, after the discouraging account of Lot's abysmal life in chapter 19, his life of compromise and faithfulness, many of us were kind of hoping the return to Abraham would be a return to spiritual success. A return to the story of sanctification. A return to the uplifting, encouraging picture of a man growing in faith. And what we return to is a picture of a man repeating the same sin over again. And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, she is my sister. And Abimelech king of Gerhar sent and took Sarah. Despite that discouraging couple of sentences, the next two words are some of the best in all of the English language. But God. But God remembered Noah. But God did not allow Laban to harm Jacob. But God led the people away from Pharaoh's army. And though Saul sought to kill David every day, but God did not give him into his hand. You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly lived when you walked in the ways of this world, but God made you alive in Christ." The whole of human history turns on the phrase, but God. And the key to this story hangs on that same phrase. Abraham is beset by the sin of fear. Verse 3, but God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife. You kind of wonder why the translators use the word dream and not nightmare. When God comes to you and says you're a dead man, that's terrifying. By the way, Abimelech appears to be a throne name like Pharaoh or Caesar. I say that because some 75 years forward, Isaac is going to meet Abimelech. It's not the same guy in all likelihood. It's the same throne name. Verse four. Now Abimelech had not approached Sarah, that is sexually, so he said, Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Note God used the singular man, you are a dead man. Abimelech responds with the plurality of will you kill a people? We're going to see as this unfolds that Abimelech's understanding is correct. As the head of state, God's threat is not just against him personally, but against all of the people. Verse 5, did he, Abraham, not himself say to me, she is my sister? And she herself said, he is my brother. In the integrity of my heart, in the innocence of my hands, I have done this. Then God said to him in the dream, yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart. And it was I who kept you from sinning against her. Therefore, I did not let you touch her. It's not made plain how God prevented adultery, but later, verse 17, there seems to be a powerful suggestion of some sort of sexual disease or dysfunction that kept Abimelech from being able to consummate his relationship with Sarah. To the bigger point in the book of Genesis, While the account in Genesis 12 seemed to point strongly to the fact that Pharaoh and Sarah did sleep together, the point here is to be crystal clear. There were no sexual relations between Sarah and this man. Why? Because we must understand that the son to be born in the next chapter is not Abimelech's son. Verse seven, now then return the man's wife for he is a prophet. First use of that word in the scriptures, prophet. So that he will pray for you and you shall live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours. Now we see God affirming Abimelech's understanding of what was going on there. 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." Though it is a pagan fear, though it is an unredeemed and unredeeming fear, nevertheless we must note their fear for it's going to be significant in this story. Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, what have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you that you have brought on me and my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done. And Abimelech added and said to Abraham, what did you see that you did this thing? What justification do you have, Abraham, for having lied to me? Now, if you were thinking that Abimelech seems like the better man than Abraham at this point in our story, spoiler alert, that's not about to change. In fact, throughout this account, Abimelech comes off looking much more righteous than Abraham. Abraham's response to King Abimelech does not help our hero look better, but actually worse. Listen to verse 11 in his lame reply. Abraham said, I did it because I thought, there's no fear of God at all in this place. And they will kill me because of my wife. It's your fault this happened, because y'all are pagans. How can I trust pagans? After all, you don't fear God. A Biblical act, ironically, is coming to Abraham out of his fear of God. That's why he's talking to Abraham, because he feared the dream. And he feared God. And what does Abraham do in his lameness? You wouldn't fear God. You don't fear God, and therefore I was afraid. Now, the problem here is Abraham doesn't have a proper fear of God. Verse 12, besides, she is indeed my sister. the daughter of my father, though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. Oh, this is rich. So first he's justifying himself, and then he turns around and says, I don't need any justification. I didn't actually do anything wrong. I told you the truth. My dear friends here this morning, a truth used for the purpose of deception is still a lie. A truth used for the purpose of deception is still a lie. Abraham was wrong. And he knows it or he wouldn't have been justifying himself. What do the Proverbs teach? Where words are many, sin is not absent. When I come home from Home Depot with something boring like a saw blade, my wife doesn't ask and I don't have to explain. It's obvious it must have been truly needed. But when I come home with the fifth new drill, that one requires a little justification. Well, honey, you don't understand. This one, my old one was 18 volt. This is the 18.5 volt. And that extra half a volt, that's going to make all the difference in my workload. And besides, this one, it's just got a better hook on my belt. And it was on special. If I didn't buy it, I wouldn't save money. I mean, come on, honey. I'm a man. I need my tool. Where words are many, sin is not absent. The very fact that Abraham is going to great lengths to justify himself is evidence that his own conscience is convicting him. He knows he did wrong. Verse 13. And when God caused me to wander from my father's house... So, Abimelech, you're a pagan and don't fear God, so I couldn't trust you. Oh yeah, I didn't really do anything wrong. But if I did, it's God's fault. And when God caused me to wander from my father's house, I said to her, this is the kindness you must do me at every place to which we come. Say of me, he is my brother. You see, if God had left me back home in Ur of the Chaldeas, well back there I would have fit in with the culture. Everybody would have known. Everything would have been fine. I would have had no fear for my life. It's God's fault I'm here among the land of the Philistines as a stranger in a strange land. It's God's fault I'm living in fear. It's God's fault I had to deceive you. Oh, but I didn't really deceive you because, you know, she is my sister. Abraham is simultaneously justifying his wrongdoing and saying he did nothing wrong. Where words are many, sin is not absent. Of course, Abraham is the only person who cannot see his sin. Sarah sees it. Abimelech certainly sees it. We're clearly meant to see it. Everyone who's read the story over the last 35 centuries has seen it. It is Abraham alone who is unable to see his sin in this story. Verse 14, that Abimelech took sheep and oxen and male servants and female servants and gave them to Abraham and returned Sarah, his wife, to him. Again, it harkens back to what happened in Egypt. And Abimelech said, behold, my land is before you. Dwell where it pleases you. Abimelech grants Abraham additional wealth in the form of herds and servants. And he gives Abraham the very thing for which Abraham came, pasture land, a place to roam and to graze the flocks. So in Egypt, Abraham's sinful fear and his careless exposure of Sarah to danger, in Egypt, that had led to great reward for Abraham. And now we see it happening again. Again, looking ahead in our text, it is no wonder that in the years to come, Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, will repeat this same sin. for Abraham is never going to see it for what it really is and therefore not warn his children against it. And so it will be repeated in the next generation, the sins of the father visiting the children. We might be tempted to look at this story and look at the sermon's title, which is a little unnerving, Sin's Blessing? We might be tempted to say to ourselves, well, okay, I see where pastor's headed with this now. So Abraham gets reward in Egypt for his bad behavior, that's Sin's Blessing. And he gets reward in Gerhar for his bad behavior, there's Sin's Blessing. But that's not the point of the title of this sermon. For those temporal things are actually no blessing at all but a great curse to Abraham. For it is presumably Abraham does exactly what we do. Look how God has provided for me. Look at how he's given to me. What I'm doing must be right. The big church must be doing the right ministry because they're big. That speaker must be proclaiming the truth because he's always out on speaking tour. We have a tendency to look at the outcome of a situation and to think backwards that it must be proof that the situation was a good one. But there is no blessing here for Abraham at all. The reward of this behavior back many years ago in Egypt seems only to have fostered more of this behavior. In other words, Abraham wasn't disciplined and sanctified back in Egypt. He was rewarded and therefore he again repeats the same bad behavior. And he can't see it. but instead justifies himself on every side. Far from being a blessing, this financial windfall is a curse. It's why we see Isaac raised up in the same sin. The sin which clung so closely to Abraham, his besetting sin, will be passed on to his son Isaac. This wealth that is bestowed on Abraham is not sin's blessing. It is a curse. And dear friends, we must never assume such cause and effect things in the spiritual realm. We must not make this same mistake. The apostles did everything right. Well, they didn't do everything right, but they did it mostly right. and not a one of them received blessing in this life, or at least not a blessing of this sort. And Jesus himself warned that the one who seems blessed in this life, the rich man, the wealthy, they have an incredibly hard time entering into the kingdom of God. The apparent blessings in this life cannot be used to measure what's really going on behind the scenes. When sin's blessing is of mere wood and hay and stubble like we have here, it will be burned up and actually be a curse. This is not sin's blessing. And parents, when we celebrate our child's sin, we reinforce this kind of behavior. You say, well, I don't celebrate my child's sin. Oh, really? Do you never put a picture of the defiant, disobedient child on Facebook because it was cute? Do you never laugh when they say something defiant because it struck your funny bone? Laughing in front of them so that it's reinforced in their behavior. We must not foster sins in ourselves or in anyone for whom we are responsible continuing in verse 16 to Sarah he said behold I have given your brother you just picture the air quotes as a bim Alex says this behold I have given to your brother a thousand pieces of silver it is a sign of your innocence in the eyes of all who are with you and before everyone who you are vindicated I think Abimelech's speech is directed at Sarah as a way of saying, hey, listen, sister, I want you to know I gave him this money. Next time he says you don't have money for a new dress, you've got money for a new dress. The sin was done to you. I don't want Abraham benefiting from the payout. But I also want us to recognize what's the whole point of the payout. Why does Abimelech pay her? Well, when a judgment is rendered in court, The two parties walk away, one paying and the other being paid. The one who is being paid is understood to be the innocent party. And so while Abimelech has said, I'm not guilty, nevertheless, he wants to be sure it's crystal clear that Sarah is not. He pays the fines and the fees rendered by the court of judgment so that it would be crystal clear that she was the one who was innocent in all of this. It is a testimony from a pagan king as to the veracity of the paternity of the child who's about to come in the next chapter. Then Abraham 17, then Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelech and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. We now understand that nobody's been able to be sexually active or at least not fruitful in their sexual activity. For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. For how many years had Abraham been waiting for his wife to have a child? Now he has to pray for the fertility of another man's household. and God listens. You know, from the renewed promise of a son given back in chapter 17 to its fulfillment in the next chapter, in chapter 21, only one year passes, give or take a bit. Thus, all of this has had to happen rather quickly. And that certainly is the sense of this passage. Abraham prays and it's like, boom, immediately everybody's pregnant. And the point is the immediacy of the answer to prayer. You and I are to see it that way. More to the point, Abraham was to see it that way. It's painfully ironic for him. And then you add in this. Some 12 years earlier, he and Sarah had conceived, pun intended, a really bad idea. That he would sleep with Hagar and produce a child for Sarah through that union. And that child's name was God hears. Ishmael. God hears. given in name, given in words, and now God hears given in pictures, in life's events. Abraham prays and the wounds of Abimelech are opened up. And it does make you wonder, has he been praying for Sarah all along? Is that the point of Ishmael's residence there? God hears. As soon as Isaac is born, Ishmael vanishes from the scene. He's driven out. Every day, Abraham has been saying, Ishmael, come here. Come here, son. Ishmael, it's time for dinner. God hears, it's time for dinner. God hears, you need to come in. God hears, you need to go mow the grass. He's been saying over and over to him and to his household, God hears. And now there's a picture that God actually hears. You do have to wonder how many of us say, well, God is sovereign. God's in control. He's made promises. He's going to bring them about. I don't really need to pray over those things. I don't really need to take to God what God has already said. And yet that's really the sense of this, isn't it? That when He finally prayed for wombs to be open, wombs were open. It does make you wonder, given that the very next chapter is going to be the pregnancy of Sarah, as he was praying for Bimelech's household, did he also slip his own in there? God hears. Reading on, one more verse. The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, And the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised, and Sarah conceived. If sin's blessing is not the ill-gotten gain Abraham acquired from Abimelech, then what is it? Where is there any blessing in this repeated sin of Abraham? Before we answer that question, and the answer is surprisingly brief, but before we answer that question, we must first be careful to distinguish between intent and outcome, between purpose and providence. And to do that, I invite you to come and listen to my story about a man named Jed. Poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed. Then one day, he was shooting at some food, and up to the ground came a bubble and crude. You can be really glad I didn't sing it. It's a wonderful picture of how good things can come out of bad. Jed and his family, the Clampetts, become millionaires. They get to live a better life. Does that make his shot a good shot? It missed the mark, didn't it? Didn't hit what he was aiming at. It was not a good shot. Interestingly enough, that's the very root of the definition of sin. The Greek word in the New Testament for sin, hamartia, is an archery word. It means to miss your target. It means to not hit what you were aiming at. And as we aim at the high glory of God and His righteousness, we don't hit it and we sin. Jed Clampett did not hit what he was aiming at. And yet, blessing came from it. He did not intend it that way. His shot is not good shot. It doesn't matter how things turn out. His shot was bad. We must not mistake the outcome as some kind of justification for the action that led to it. No amount of bubbling crude made that shot a good shot. Any discussion of sin's blessing must keep that in mind. Sin is never okay. It's never excusable. It misses the mark. Sin's blessing does not make sin good. Turn in your Bibles to Romans 6. Romans chapter 6, verse 1. If you're using the Red Pew Bible, page 1120. Romans 6, verse 1, page 11, 20 of the Red Pew Bible. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. So what is it that Paul is anticipating here? His argument here in these verses is an argument that says, hey, if good things come out of sin, then let's go on sinning. Look at the previous two verses. Let's back up to the end of chapter 5 and we'll understand the context of his argument. Verse 20. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through the righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. That's the context in which he then anticipates the flawed thinking. Well, if that's the case, Paul, if God takes sin and makes grace abound because of it, then logically we should sin more. And Paul heads that off before you can even think it. No way. God forbid. I'm trying to head off that same flawed thinking. Sin's blessing is never meant to foster sin, and yet it's a real blessing. Just as Jed Clampett's missed shot truly provided blessings for his family, so too does God take our failings and make out of them blessings. St. Ambrose of Milan, that gifted preacher, spoke of the fortunate ruin of Adam in the garden. the fortunate ruin of Adam in the garden, without which we would never have been exposed to the great love of God. You know, if God's election is, according to Ephesians 1, to the praise of his glorious grace, well then so too was the fall which made election necessary. For without it, there would have been no grace to praise. Ambrose's most famous convert, a man by the name of Augustine from North Africa, from Hippo, known most often as Saint Augustine, would go on to take up the same reasoning when he wrote this, God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist. Now, Augustine is diligent never to judge evil as good. Evil is evil. Neither does he ever accuse God of bringing about or causing the evil, but he recognized the good which God brought from that evil. Just as Jed's shot missed the mark, but by providence, goodness arose from it, Adam's sin missed the mark, but God brought goodness out of it. God has so ordained this world that it would fully reveal his glory in its entirety. What did we confess last week from question one of the catechism? What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God. Question two, what rule has God given by which we might glorify him? The Bible. And what does the Bible primarily teach? Well, that was question three. The Bible primarily teaches what man must believe about God. Now, I have truncated all of those for my purposes. But the Bible primarily teaches what man must believe about God. You cannot properly glorify what you do not know. And if we are here to glorify Him, then we have to know Him. Thus we must understand His holiness, the purity of God, His holiness. We must fully appreciate it, which we better can do because of sin. Whatever person this world has deemed, whatever mere human this world has deemed most honorable, most noble, most pure. I don't know, Mother Teresa maybe. That Swedish teenage girl, Greta Thunberg. I don't think she's a teen anymore, but she's still quite young. Whoever it is, against their esteemed goodness, God's goodness will be all the more stunning. If we humans hold Mother Teresa here, and then God is found to be up there, we are going to be all the more shocked by His goodness. God can and will only be worshipped fully and rightly when His justice is comprehended. And for that reason, Jesus had to die. God can and will only be worshipped fully and rightly when His love is comprehended. Thus he was willing to kill Jesus so some might be saved. God can and will only be worshipped fully and rightly when his grace is comprehended. Thus the death of Jesus is applied freely without any merit in the recipient. But all of those things presuppose the need, the sin. On and on the list goes. There are myriad truths of God impossible to comprehend in a sinless world. And so, as Augustine noted, God judged it better to bring good out of evil than for evil to never have existed. Sin's blessing is the full revelation of God's glory. Sin's blessing is the full revelation of God's glory. The married couple at our sermon's beginning were brought into a fuller, deeper, richer relationship through their sin, ironically, because it revealed each to the other in a new and previously unknown way. What you intended for evil, God intended for good. That couple came to better understand one another's love because they fought for the recovery of their relationship. That couple better understood each other's grace because they forgave each other. That couple better admired the other's commitment because he or she did not walk away. Their relationship was stronger, richer, deeper because of the trial they had gone through together. I can recall when I was the headmaster at the Christian school, how the teachers would bemoan the fact that the teenagers didn't sing worship songs with a great deal of gusto. And we did realize that part of that is they haven't experienced God's grace the way we older folks have. I look back on a life of sin and I'm amazed that God still loves me. And as a result, I want to sing those songs. Sin's blessing is the fuller revelation of God. And so what is revealed in the second account of Abram's sin? Well, the key is in chapter 1, chapter 21, verse 1. If we're going to understand chapter 20 and why it's here, if we're going to understand why we have another account of the same sin in Abraham's life, we've got to read chapter 21, verse 1. The Lord visited Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as He had promised. Despite the besetting sin, God was still faithful and did for them as promised. The message of Genesis 20 is this. Abraham was entangled in sin from which he could not free himself, in a large part because he couldn't even see himself as a sinner in the situation. And yet the Lord did as he had promised. So hurting brother? beset by fear, lost, alcohol, insecurity, weighed down by sin, convinced of your own unworthiness and worthlessness, the Lord will do for you as he has promised. Dear sister, damaged by the sins of others and trapped in your own sins of doubt and fear and distrust, you are neither worthless nor invisible nor forgotten. The Lord will do for you as he has promised. Romans 7, our New Testament reading. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." The near destruction of their marriage made their marriage stronger. Sin's blessing. Jed's missed shot was used by God to enrich the family. Sin's blessing. The fall of Adam laid the groundwork for the revelation of God's mercy, justice, compassion, grace, love, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, to the praise of his glory, sin's blessing. And the story of Abraham's besetting sin reveals God's faithfulness. He did for them as he had promised, despite this repeated sin. Sin's blessing is found when it draws when it flings you, when it casts you, when it thrusts you into a closer relationship, a closer understanding, a deeper appreciation of God's faithfulness. 2 Timothy 2.13, if we are faithless, he remains faithful. If you know that in your own life, or if you learned that in the account of Abraham here in Genesis 20, then that has been for you sin's blessing. Sin's blessing is a fuller revelation of our wonderful God. Let's pray. Lord, we do not want to be sinners. We do not want to justify our sin because there is some blessing that comes out of it. And yet we are amazed that you can take and make blessing out of it. And so we stand in awe of you, grateful to you, reassured and renewed this morning that you will be faithful despite our faithlessness, that you will do for us all that you have promised. It's in this good news that we take encouragement. Despite the sins that beset us, despite the spider web of evil that sticks to us and clings to us, we nevertheless rejoice that you are a faithful God and do all that you have promised. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.