Well, this evening we continue our series in Genesis, looking at the life of Abraham in particular, and tonight we're reading from Genesis chapter 20. Genesis 20. We'll read the whole chapter. It's on page 14 if you're using one of the church Bibles. Genesis chapter 20. From there, Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur, and he sojourned in Gerar. And Abraham said of Sarah, his wife, she is my sister. And Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah. 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. Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, Lord, will you kill an innocent people? 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 you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her. Now then, return the man's wife, for he is a 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.' 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. 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 said to Abraham, What did you see that you did this thing? Abraham said, I did it because I thought there is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife. Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father, though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. And when God caused me to wander from my father's house, I said to her, this is the kindness you must do to me at every place to which we come. Say of me, he is my brother. Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen and male servants and female servants and gave them to Abraham and returned Sarah, his wife, to him. And Abimelech said, Behold, my land is before you. Dwell where it pleases you. To Sarah he said, Behold, I have given 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 you are vindicated. Then Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelech and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. Amen, and may God bless his holy and inerrant word to each of us this evening. Let us come again in prayer before God, let's pray. Our Father, we bow before you again and we come to you in prayer, so conscious of our own weakness, of our own fragility, of our own tendency towards waywardness, our own propensity for evil, even as those who have been brought to such a wonderful and glorious and saving knowledge of your beloved Son. And so we come this evening recognizing that we need, as always we do, to receive that good food which comes to us from your hand. We acknowledge our need for strengthening To have our minds renewed in the knowledge of our Savior, and to be edified in the faith, to be made ready to serve you well and to walk according to your righteousness. We pray, Lord, for all these things. We ask that you would bless your word to each of us by the power and ministry of your Spirit. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. One of the things that I've mentioned before, I'm sure several times, and which the Bible makes very clear, is that although we are forgiven of our sins and we are justified before holy God through faith alone and in Christ alone, yet even still, for as long as we live our lives on this earth, we continue to find, don't we, that we are still in a daily battle with sin itself. If that is not true, let me put it like this, you're not a Christian. If you're not aware that you're in a battle with sin, if you have no acknowledgement that there is still that battle, you cannot possibly be in Christ. We've been forgiven of our sins by the sacrifice of Christ. We're therefore considered as righteous before God on account of Christ's imputed righteousness. But even still, there is this law of sin, says Paul in Romans 7, which is still at work within our members. None of us have yet been completely sanctified or made perfectly holy. And of course this law of sin manifests itself in many different ways. Sometimes it comes out in the little idiosyncratic rough edges of our personalities, mannerisms or traits which are displeasing to God, but which are still in the process of being refined by his ongoing work in our souls. Sometimes this law of sin manifests itself in a kind of habitual pattern, like gossip or slander or impure thoughts, something which hasn't yet been truly put to death in the course of a person's life. And sometimes this law of sin takes such a hold that the man of God or the woman of God actually falls in a more dramatic kind of way, into a more obvious and blatant act of transgression against God. It's all sin, of course, and all sin is serious, and to understand these things is never meant to justify one sin against another kind of sin, but it's simply to say that there are sometimes particular moments in the Christian life when the man of God crosses the line, and he falls in a more blatant and dramatic kind of way, when he simply seems to forget who he is, to whom he belongs, what has been given to him, and where he is meant to be going. I suppose the most obvious example is David and his episode with Bathsheba. There was a very blatant, a very obvious moment of relapse in an otherwise godly man's life, a great fall from grace, a terrible fall, a heinous sin. We might think of the Apostle Peter and his denial of ever knowing Christ, having just spent three years in his company, having just promised that even if the whole world disowns the Lord, not me, Lord. I'm made of different stuff. I'm ready to stand, come what may. And all of that to say that this is Precisely what we see another example of in the case of Abraham in Genesis chapter 20. We're told that after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negev, and he lived between Kadesh and Shur, and he sojourned in Gerar. While he was in that place, he decided to tell Abimelech, who was the king of Gerar, that Sarah was his sister, on the basis that, verse 11, he believed that the people would kill him in that place if they knew that Sarah was actually his wife. Now, notwithstanding the fact that Sarah was actually Abraham's half-sister, and we can see that he desperately tries to justify himself by raising that point later on in verse 12, whilst that may be true, it is important that we don't miss the fact that what Abraham did in this whole episode, in Genesis chapter 20, was indeed a blatant and a serious sin against God. For two reasons. First of all, we know that this was basically a repeat of precisely what Abraham had already done way back in chapter 12. in the context of Pharaoh in Egypt. Do you remember what happened when he was in Egypt? Well, he was found out then as well, wasn't he? Pharaoh was afflicted with great plagues as a judgment from God because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. And he then said to Abraham, that is Pharaoh said to Abraham, what is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say that she was your sister so that I took her for my wife? And then here in chapter 20, look at what Abimelech says in verse nine. What have you done to us? Sounds familiar. You have done to me things that ought not to be done. And in a way, there's a sense here in both of these situations that God himself was speaking to his servant Abraham through these two unbelieving pagans. They weren't prophets of God, Pharaoh and Abimelech. They weren't even members of God's household. But nevertheless, it's as if they were simply being used of God. They were expressing the very same sense of disapproval which God himself felt in regard to Abraham's actions. And so, first of all, we can see that this was a repeated sin. It was a recurring error. on Abraham's part, he'd already been restored from this error, this sin in the past by the grace of God. And I think what we're meant to take away and to reflect on here, what we're meant to think to ourselves is, well, surely after his time in Egypt, Surely he would have had a moment of reflection, and he would have seen the error of his ways, and he would have drawn an imaginary line in the sand, as it were, and he would have said to himself, okay, I can now see that this is definitely not the will of God. I can see, I understand this is not the honorable way to go in this kind of situation, and so therefore I'm putting this to death, and I'm going to move on. And yet here we are, 25 or 30 years later, the same pattern of behavior comes to the fore once again. How old habits die hard in the Christian life. We're like those wonky shopping trolleys that you get at Tesco's just when you think you've got it under control. Off it pulls to the side again, It's good for us to understand that. It's solemn and it's humbling, but it's important. And yet even more than that, even more than this being a recurring sin, think about the seriousness of this, the seriousness of this sin in terms of what was actually at stake, the bigger picture. Sarah, this man's wife, Sarah was the woman whom God had promised over the course of the previous eight chapters of this book, she was the one through whom God's covenant line was going to continue to the blessing of all the nations of the earth. Yet here was Abraham basically acting in such a way that he was consenting to his wife being taken away from him with the possibility that anything could be done to her and she might never again be returned to him. Do you see that this was a serious act of misjudgment and miscalculation and sin on Abraham's part? It is a reminder to us that even the very best of men are capable of terrible things. It's also a reminder of just how patient, how long-suffering this covenant God is and needs to be with even his most trusted servants. And so to the question, why? What is it that caused Abraham to behave in such a foolish way? We need to understand this for our own benefit, for our own good. This is why such a story exists in the Bible. If misleading Abimelech and acting in a way that was seemingly dangerous and threatening to God's covenant purposes, notwithstanding his own ultimate sovereignty, of course, but if that was the surface sin, then what was its underlying cause? What would lead such a good man to do such a bad thing. And I think there's two things that we see from the text itself. First of all, it seems fairly obvious that Abraham had allowed a fear of man and what man might do to him to become more significant in his mind than God's own promises. He says in verse 11, the reason he acted in this way was, quote, I did it because I thought there is no fear of God at all in this place and they will kill me because of my wife. Now, clearly there are some things that would go a long way to justifying that perspective. First of all, Abraham had just witnessed the sheer darkness and the devastation of Sodom and Gomorrah. It's quite likely that he was still, in a sense, reeling from that whole experience. Think about it. He'd seen these cities so overwhelmingly consumed with evil and all that is wicked, and so maybe this had caused him to fear the very worst wherever he went from now on. to see every situation through very dark glasses. Not only that, but Gerar itself was actually later on a place that came to be associated with the Philistines, the enemies of God and his people. We see that in Genesis chapter 26. And so the point being, this place, this wasn't exactly Jerusalem, a place where later on God would be revered and obeyed and worshiped by the people. This was Gerar. This was a place of false gods and unbelief. And so not to justify his actions, but we can perhaps begin to understand, can't we? We can begin to empathize with the way that the world out there may have started to get the better of him. in the way that it can get the better of us. A world of such widespread sin and immorality and wickedness and evil, a world where the man of God often feels so isolated, can very easily start to feel like a world where God is nowhere to be seen. In other words, he loses sight of the fact that the whole world is still in God's hands. He loses sight of the fact that even in the context of such fallenness and paganism and immorality, yet even still, unbelievers are still capable of good things because of God's common grace. And worst of all, he loses sight of God's personal and covenant promises upon his life. God had said to him back in Genesis 12, verse three, I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse. Chapter 15, verse one, fear not, Abram, I am your shield. In other words, there's no need for you, Abraham, to become overly preoccupied with those who may or may not war against you. Why? Because I am promising that I will protect you and I will deal with all such people. Your job, Abraham, is to keep your eyes on the road ahead. Your duty is to walk by faith and not by sight. But what happened? The sight, the sight of this world, all of its potential danger becomes bigger in Abraham's vision than the sight of God and his promises. Just like the Apostle Peter when he was out there on the Sea of Galilee, do you remember? Trusting one moment in the power of Christ, looking to his Savior as he walked towards him on the water, the waters that were so threatening to the disciples in the boat. But then it says in Matthew 1430, when he saw the wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink, cried out, Lord, save me. So first of all, there was this fear of man, a fear that was brought on by unbelief ultimately, a losing sight of the promises of God, a failure to exercise childlike trust in those promises. But secondly, there was also selfishness. Selfishness. I mean, why was Abraham doing what he did? He was doing all of this. He was placing his wife in danger and the covenant in jeopardy. Why? Simply in order to preserve his own life. He even underlines this point when he was finally confronted by Abimelech, and he says in verse 13, I mean, these are hardly the words of a servant-hearted, dying-to-self man in marriage, are they? This is not exactly the picture that the New Testament will later portray of the man in marriage who mirrors the role of Christ, the one who laid down his life for the sake of his bride. It's as if the only thing, the only thing on Abraham's mind is self-preservation, is staying alive, irrespective of the cost. It's humbling, isn't it, to see this, to think what a great man Abraham was, to think how highly God's own word esteems him, and yet to see, just as we see later on with David, a man after God's own heart, that even the very best of men are men at best. And as such, we are prone to wondering, from God's ways, How quick we can be to forget the promises of our God. To remember that if He is for us, then who can be against us? How often we find ourselves influenced and led by that which is seen, instead of that which is unseen and eternal. How easily we slip into a course of action which, like Abraham, is motivated by selfishness and self-preservation instead of a willingness to deny self and to take up our cross and follow in the way of Christ. Well, friends, if that is truly the case, And it most certainly is. The question that we then need to ask is, what kind of a God do we therefore most desperately need? What we need is a God who is very, very different to what we are. What we need is a God who not only initiates the covenant of grace and therefore begins well, but one who jealously upholds that covenant as well. What we need is a God who not only makes the promise, but who then honors and upholds that promise and who keeps us in the promise every day and in every situation, all the way to the end. And that is what we see. So clearly here in this chapter, not just the sin of the servant, but the steadfastness of the saving God as he intervenes, as he overrules in such a way as to once again bring order to the chaos and to make sure that his covenant of redemption would continue and at last be brought to fruition. And I want you to notice Three things that God did in this situation before we close this evening. First of all, God spoke. God spoke. He said to Abimelech in verse three, Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife. Quite a statement. I mean, I remember in the playground, people saying, Gibson, you're a dead man. That's one thing. But to hear Almighty God, you're a dead man. Abimelech then explains that he knew nothing about this because Abraham had effectively lied to him. God responds in verses 6 and 7, "'Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart,' and then later, "'But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.'" And so, first of all, God, He speaks forth His Word. And it's on the basis of the fear that that word of warning brings, verse 8, that Abimelech responds by doing exactly as he was told to do. In other words, God speaks and the course of history changes for the good of his covenant and for the blessing of his servant. Secondly, God not only speaks, but he also acts. He acts. Look again at what he said to Abimelech in verse six. Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, that is, without knowing that Sarah was in fact Abraham's wife, but then this, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. In other words, the only reason that Abimelech had not yet become intimately acquainted with Abraham's wife was because God had kept him from doing so. Maybe he had removed the desire itself from Abimelech's heart. Maybe he'd providentially overruled in all of the circumstances surrounding Abimelech's life in such a way that the opportunity simply hadn't yet arisen. Well, we don't know, but whatever it was, God had sovereignly acted in human history in order to preserve this woman, in order to keep her from being stained and polluted by sexual immorality, in order to deliver her from an adulterous affair and what would have been absolutely disastrous for the covenant of redemption. Not only that, but God also acted judicially as well, because in verse 18, verse 18 says that the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. It was as if God was saying, unless these things are put right here, and my covenant purposes are put back on track, there's going to be no future for the house of Abimelech. You fail to honor my servant and my purposes and I will curse your whole family and you will see no blessing in the days ahead. So first, there is God's word, he speaks. Then there is God's intervention, his sovereign action. Finally, there is God's provision. It says in verses 14 to 16, Abimelech took sheep and oxen and male servants and gave them to Abraham. And he returned Sarah, his wife, to him. And Abimelech said, Behold, my land is before you. Dwell where it pleases you. To Sarah he said, Behold, I have given 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, you are vindicated. Now clearly there was probably a bit of contextual custom behind this sudden kindness on the part of Abimelech. He was, in a sense, righting a wrong, as it were, in the context of the culture at that time. But nevertheless, All of that provision was still ultimately the result of God's sovereign intervention and his initiative. He is the one who had spoken. He is the one who had acted in such a way that his covenant would go on unhindered to the blessing of his people. Do you know, friends, when you really stop and you think about all of this, all that takes place in this chapter, and all that God was doing in that situation, this is ultimately a picture of what this same God has done for every one of us in the person of his beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Why do I say that? Well, we too were once a people. We were men and women who lived our whole lives in the manner of Abraham in this chapter. We did all things from a place of unbelief. We made decisions on the basis of not what is right before a holy and almighty Creator God, but what is best for me, myself, and I. We lived as those who were taken in completely by the world around us, who were utterly blind to the promises of God and His Word. And yet, what happened? What happened to us? Why are we here this evening? On what basis have we been able to come here and had a desire to worship this God in spirit and in truth? Well, first of all, God spoke into our lives, didn't he? He enabled us to hear his voice in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then what? He actually intervened in our hearts. He overruled in our own circumstances. He acted in such a way that, like Abimelech, we too were prevented from going further into sin and rebellion against him. What is the result of this sovereign and this merciful intervention in our lives? Well, just as Abraham was then restored to God, and just as Abraham was blessed by way of so much provision, provision which he surely did not deserve in this circumstance, provision which came from a certain king, Well, how much more are we now blessed, not just with physical provision like the ones that we read of in this chapter, but with the eternal riches of another King, namely the Lord Jesus Christ. And to think, friends, that all of this is ours on what basis? On the basis that the God who at one time closed the wombs of the house of Abimelech as an act of judgment, is the same God who would later make fruitful the womb of a young virgin named Mary. Why? So that the same covenant of redemption would at last be realized through the one who was promised to our forefather Abraham all those years beforehand. Amazing. In other words, it's here we're reminded that when Jesus Christ said, I will build my church and not even the gates of hell will prevail against it. What he was really saying was, I will build my church and there is nothing on this earth or outside of this earth, not even the sin of the very best of my servants. that will prevent its consummation. Why? Because God himself is jealous for the glory of his covenant of grace. And as such, he is the one who is always sovereignly overruling throughout all of history to uphold that covenant and to keep his people for salvation on the final day. And this is where our ultimate security lies, dear friends. The reality that God is the one who has taken the initiative and the reality that he is the covenant-keeping God. We've seen it over and over again, haven't we, in this series. And it should bring great joy to us, not that it would ever, ever justify or enable us to make light of sin. It should do the very opposite. If this covenant has been realized in our lives, if we have come to know this God who is holy, and pure and righteous and sovereign and who has gone to such lengths to bring us out of darkness and who has promised to keep us to the end. Why, why would we not trust his promises and turn from everything that hinders the life of godliness in our own existence? Karl Truman writes, When the problems of this fallen world close in on us, as they inevitably will, there can be a tendency to see our sin or our suffering or the evil machinations of the world around us as the last word. God's grace in Christ says otherwise. And the church which takes that grace seriously will constantly point her people to that truth with the aim of reassuring them that whatever comes to pass, God is both sovereign and gracious. Let us bow before him together in prayer. Let us pray. God our Father in heaven, we have seen, as we've just been thinking together so many times in your word in this series that we've been studying together, the reality of your faithfulness, the wonder of your covenant of redemption. Lord, we are so conscious before you and we confess that if it was not for your sovereignty in our salvation, we would never have come near you. And we acknowledge that if not for your sovereignty in keeping us to the end, for that final glorification, Lord, we would surely have wandered away. We would surely have turned our backs many times. And so, O Lord, we Rejoice this evening in a salvation which is, as the reformers used to say, in a sense outside of ourselves. A salvation which has been granted for us by grace alone and in Christ alone through this gift of faith which you have granted to us. And yet, O Lord, as we acknowledge that this is all of your doing, We have been reminded also this evening of this law of sin, which continues to wage a war within our members. We pray, O Lord, that we would yield to the power and ministry of your Spirit in every aspect of our lives. We pray that we would not treat sin with lightheartedness or be casual in the face of those things which perhaps have recurred many times in our lives. We pray that by the blood of Christ and the power of his resurrection we would put all things to death which are offensive in your sight. Father, as we prepare for another week and the days which are before us. We thank you, O Lord, that you are the Lord of our lives. We thank you that all our days were numbered before one of them came to be. And so we can do nothing better, and we would do nothing else, than simply commit ourselves afresh to you this evening. We pray, oh Lord, that we would have the faith to simply look to you in all things. to say, but my trust is in you, O Lord. I say, you are my God. My times are in your hands. We pray that you would protect each one from evil, from the wiles of the devil, and from harm. We pray, O Lord, that we would know the joy of our Lord Jesus Christ in the days ahead. We ask all of this in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen.