A Faith That Relapses: Genesis 20

Well, this morning we are returning to our series in the book of Genesis, Living by Faith, Lessons from Genesis.

And as we return to Genesis, it's an appropriate time to announce the new theme for this new school year.

As many of you know, that our elders have been praying over the last couple months.

Lord, what theme would you have us focus on as a church body?

What is the word that you have for your church this coming academic year?

And as the session has prayed, they have believed that the Lord is calling us to the theme of waiting.

What does it mean to wait well?

What does it look like to wait in faith?

We have already seen in our series of the book of Genesis Abraham called to live a life of faith, to live a life of waiting.

And for this whole coming school year, months ahead, we're going to continue to explore what it means to be a church and as individuals, what it means to be families that wait well.

Well, again, as we return to our series in the book of Genesis, we were here last three weeks ago.

Pastor Tom on September 6th preached on the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah in chapter 19.

Chapter 20 is the next scene as the book unfolds.

And it is a story of Abraham deceiving a ruler about his relationship with Sarah.

And this is the second time we've seen Abraham did do this.

He did it back in chapter 12.

And at first blush, this can just be a very discouraging passage about the power of besetting sin, about patterns of sin in our life that continue to grip us.

It can also be a discouraging passage because the man of the world, Abimelech, actually has more integrity than the man of God, Abraham.

But if you can see deeply in the passage, you're actually going to see that although Abraham has these recurring patterns of sin, although he lacks integrity before the world, God still owns him.

God still identifies with him, God still keeps covenant with him.

And it is a window into the gracious heart of our God.

Please contend to God's word from Genesis chapter 20, verses 1 through 18.

Genesis 20 · chapter mention

Hear now the word of God.

From there, Abraham journeyed to the territory of the Negeb and lived between Kedesh 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 who 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, 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 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 his servants and told them all these things, and the men were very, 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 in 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 wife, though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.

And when God called 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 in it 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.

This is God's inspired and inerrant word.

Would you pray with me?

Holy Spirit, as you inspired Moses long ago to record these events, we ask that you would open up our hearts and our minds in a new way to hear from you this morning.

Lord, where our hearts are lifted up, we ask that you would grant us humility to receive what you would say to us.

And Holy Spirit, we ask above all else, you would show us the beauty and the glory of Jesus Christ.

Lead us this day, even as we sit here, to worship and adore Him afresh.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, again, as I said a minute ago, this is one of the harder passages to read.

Some people are even alarmed when they read this for the first time.

It's alarming because we see in Abraham this repeating pattern, what we call besetting sin, of really acting out of fear, acting out of unbelief.

We've seen this twice previously in his life, starting in chapter 12.

We also see at first glance here, it's discouraging because, in a sense, the man of the world, the non-Christian, has more integrity and honesty than the man of God, the Christian, Abraham.

And though this passage at first glance seems to be discouraging, it is wondrous to what degree God will own Abraham despite his sin, that God will identify with him.

And this morning, what I want to do is really bring us uh into the heart of God's grace through three things.

We're gonna look first, uh, we're gonna first identify with Abraham in the sins of our heart.

And we're gonna see that what he reveals here in sacred scripture, certainly true of my heart, uh, and perhaps true of your heart as well.

So we're gonna look first at the sins of our hearts, but then secondly, we're gonna look at the grace of God's heart, and we're gonna see how far God will go to own Abraham.

And then thirdly, we're gonna look at the faith which receives grace and rises in new strength to live before God.

So the sins of our hearts, the grace of God's heart, and the faith which receives this grace and rises in new strength.

Again, very simply on the passage here.

I'm not gonna go through the whole text, but just hit a couple things, you get the feel of it.

It says in verse 1, From there Abraham journeyed from the territory of the Negev, so the central region of Palestine, down to the south, and lived between Kedesh and Shur, and he sojourned in Gerar.

This is the future land of the Philistines.

And Abraham said of Sarah, his wife, She is my sister.

And Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah.

And Abimelech is uh taking Sarah.

We don't know exactly the context, it may be to add her to his royal harem.

It may be that he sees that Abraham is a man of wealth, a man of strength, and he wants to build an alliance.

But he is doing what men of the world does.

And the Lord confronts and defends and protects Abraham.

Uh and uh Abimelech returns Sarah, but he reproves Abraham.

And in verse 9, Abimelech says to Aram, What have you done to us?

How have I sinned against you that you have wrought on me in my kingdom a great sin?

You have done to me things that ought not to be done.

And this is a great window into peeling back kind of the layers of our hearts and the layers of sin.

Because on the surface, what you have here is just lying.

In Abimelech, although the Ten Commandments are going to be revealed later in the book of Exodus, Abimelech, because he's made in God's image, already has the law of God written on his heart.

He knows that he is uh that Abraham is violated, in a sense, the eternal law, the law that we all know, the natural law, revealed to all humanity.

And what is the law, as the ten, when later, when the Ten Commandments are given, what is the commandment that Abraham has broken?

Well, he's breaking the ninth.

You know, the command to tell the truth and not to bear false witness.

And it's leading to the breaking of the Sabbath, not committing adultery.

But what's striking about this, when you peel back the question of why is Abraham breaking the ninth commandment and potentially the seventh commandment, it's because in his heart of hearts he's he stopped believing that God will save him.

And Abraham has believed that he has saved himself.

This tactic, this strategy that he lives by comes out of fear, it comes out of unbelief.

It's the way that he takes charge, it's the way that he controls.

And you start thinking about it in those terms, and you say, Well, what does that break?

What I want you to see is the reason that Abraham breaks the ninth commandment and the seventh commandment is because he has first broken the first two.

You shall have no other gods before me.

Not to look to anything to save you other than the Lord your God.

You shall not make yourself an idol.

And who is Abraham in this moment breaking down in faith, looking to to save him?

Well, he's looking to himself.

He's made himself an idol.

The idol of Abraham now has become Abraham's God.

The surface sin is lying.

The sin underneath is unbelief, leading to idolatry.

Abraham becoming his own savior.

And this just, you know, as a reader, of course, it breaks your heart.

Because God has made these tremendous promises already to Abraham.

We've looked at these in previous chapters, but if you if you have your chapter, your Bible, it's worth just looking quickly, if you would, flip back from chapter 20 back to verse chapter 12.

Because as we see God's promises made to Abraham, we're really going to see how this passage connects to us.

All the way back at the beginning, when Abraham was living 600 miles away near the modern-day Persian Gulf in the Ur of the Chaldees, it says in chapter 12, verse 1 The Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country, right?

Go from the place where you know everybody, that's your place of physical and financial security, the place of cultural familiarity.

Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, the land of promise.

And I will make you into a great nation.

So there's a promise of offspring, there's a son of promise.

And I will bless you.

I want to provide for you.

I'm going to sustain you.

Know that your safety is going to be in me.

And I will make your name great.

Although you're going to move from a land where you're a somebody to a land where you're a nobody, your identity, your significance is going to be rooted in the identity and the honor that I give you.

And I will make you a great nation.

And I will bless you, and I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

And I will bless those who bless you.

And him who dishonors you, I will curse.

The Lord is saying, I'm going to be your shield.

I'm going to be your defender.

Abraham, you're not going to have to protect yourself.

You're actually going to be able to move forward with courage, knowing that I am going before you to defend you.

And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

It is, God, I the Lord is saying to Abraham, I'm going to draw you into my great story, which I am weaving to encompass all the nations.

And of course, these promises aren't just for Abraham.

These promises are for you and I.

But if you or I are grafted into the same covenant of grace, who is the true son of promise?

It is not Isaac.

It is the Lord Jesus Christ.

What is the true land of promise, right?

It's not Palestine.

It is the new heavens, new earth, the city whose builder and architect is God.

And this promise of all the nations of the earth being blessed, we are participants in that.

As Jesus has resurrected and the Spirit has come and the gospel has been preached among the nations, you are actively living out.

We're participants, we're characters in that great drama.

And as Abraham turns in unbelief from believing God's promise to relying on himself, to having his own strategies to control.

So we also are prone.

I know that I am prone to do the same thing.

I can remember being in middle school and you know being very nervous about having friends and wanting friends.

And I remember students asking me, Oh, did you see such and such football game?

Or did you see such and such show?

Or do you like such and such band?

And I didn't see the game, I didn't watch the show, I never heard of the band.

But believing that it was on me to make friends, in unbelief that God would provide the community I need, what did I do?

What did you do?

Or say, oh yeah, that was a great game.

Hey, it was a great show.

Yeah, it was really funny.

Yeah.

That band, wow, they they rock, you know.

And it's such a small, small thing for a seventh grader.

But the heart dynamic is the same.

The heart dynamic is the same.

Yeah, just to be candid, I can remember uh being uh a young adult out of school and applying to a job here in DC.

And uh that the interview was going well.

I was I had all the P's and Q's right, but then I got asked about this one particular program which this government organization used.

And I was actually unfamiliar with the program.

And he was kind of like, well, you feel like you could work with this?

And I was like, the right answer is you know, I've never heard of that.

But instead, the interview, it's like, no, I think I could, I think I could work that out.

I think we could do that.

I think, you know, a little bit of a stretch there.

And it's the same heart.

Lord, what keeps us afloat in a competitive, expensive area?

Is it the Lord's promise to provide our daily bread?

Or or is it solely on us?

Abraham has his strategies, he has his go-tos.

Do you know yours?

Abraham ceased trusting in the God to be his savior and became his own savior.

Do you see that propensity in your own heart?

Where in your life do you feel that you are on your own?

Where do you feel that you have to make it happen in your own strength?

Where do you feel like an orphan rather than a daughter, rather than a son?

Where do you live with just a lot of white knuckle pressure?

Right?

Where do you feel right on the brink?

Where do you feel vulnerable and being exposed?

Where do you say to yourself, hey, my future depends upon this?

And can you trace that back to not just the surface sin, right?

Not just the anxiety and fear, but can you trace it back in the layers of your heart to say, fundamentally, I've I've I've put myself in the position of Jesus Christ.

I have become my own Savior.

And as we do that, it opens up our hearts in a new and profound way to receive the grace of the gospel, even found here in Genesis 19.

I know that I took you to chapter 12 of Genesis, uh, the book of Genesis.

If you would flip back to chapter 19 and see the good news of the gospel.

Yet see in verse 3, it says, 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.

That is, God comes to defend Abraham and to identify with Abraham even before Abimelech.

And not only does God identify with Abraham, he honors him.

Looking down at verse 7.

He says, Now then, return to man's wife, for he is a prophet.

Right?

Not only do I own him as my own, but he actually speaks on my behalf.

So that he will pray for you and you will live.

And uh, surely at some level, Abimelech and all who are with him, even as they are afraid of the Lord, they wonder and they marvel.

I don't know if you've ever been in a situation at school where someone is exposed as a cheater.

What do we naturally tend to do, right?

We tend to kind of move away, right?

What if you've ever been in a company or an organization where somebody gets exposed of committing fraud?

What do we do?

We kind of tend to we tend to move away.

But you see what God is doing with Abraham?

He's doing the exact opposite.

He's saying, No, that is that is my servant.

I know him.

I own him, he belongs to me.

And what's striking about the passage is there is not a word of reproof.

And as redemptive history unfolds, Abraham, especially in the New Testament, is held up as the great paragon of faith.

James Boyce, in his commentary on this passage, he says this: he says, in all the references to Abraham that we have in the remainder of the Bible, never once does God bring up this incident as if to highlight Abraham's failure.

Not in the New Testament book of Romans, not in Galatians, not in Hebrews 11, the great hall of faith.

In Hebrews 11, Abraham is praised for the faith he showed in four situations, leaving Ur for an unknown promised land, staying the land, even in times of gate deprivation and danger, as Abraham never went, never went back.

Three, believing that God could give him a son when he and Sarah were past the age of having children.

And then fourthly, being willing to offer up Isaac, counting that God could raise him from the dead.

Not once in all this great survey of Abraham's progress in the life of faith does God refer to his past sins as if to shame him by remembrance of it.

It was forgiven.

It was gone.

It was forgotten.

And again, how marvelous is that?

And we ask ourselves the question: how could God never bring this up again?

How did he get to be so forgiven and so forgotten?

More than that, Abimelech had to be shocked and saying, how could God, who is holy and just and righteous, writing his law in our hearts, identify with this man and honor this man?

Well, Abimelech didn't know the half of it.

But you and I do.

How far does God go to identify with those who lie out of fear, those who break his commandments, those who stop believing that God will save them and begin to trust in themselves and with schemes of managing and controlling life?

How far does God go to identify with idolaters and liars?

Let the scriptures speak.

He poured out his soul to death, and he was numbered with the transgressors.

He bore the sins of many, and he makes intercession for the sinners.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, for me, for you, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous, right?

For who?

For the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Holy Spirit.

God in Christ would identify with you, me, Abraham, and all those of history, who in our unbelief, our anxiety, our fear, our idolatry, our deceit, our treachery, he would identify with us to such a degree that God the Son would be willing to be cast out so that we could be welcomed in.

He was willing to be made an object of reproach so we could be made objects of glory.

He would live the perfect life that we should have lived and die the death we deserved, living the perfect life of faith, obedience, integrity, and dying the death we deserved, being an object of holy indignation, so that we could be an object of delight.

How is it that God so freely pardons Abraham?

It's because the Son of God would be condemned in his place and in my place and in your place.

And Abimelech had no idea.

No idea how hard, how far the God, the God of all creation, the God of the living of the dead, the God of all righteousness would come to identify with sinners.

But you and I see it.

And then there's the question, of course, of you know, when have you been at your best, acting with integrity, acting with courage, and who has loved you?

But then the flip side of that is who has loved you when you were at your worst?

When you acted with fear, when you acted with duplicity, when you lacked integrity, when you fell into idolatry?

Who has remained committed to you?

Who has loved you?

And if you've had someone like that in your life, maybe it's been a parent or a good friend or a spouse, they are a small shaft of life.

Into the brilliant sun that is the love of God for you.

They are a small wind to into the God who keeps covenant with those who are covenant breakers, the God who is faithful even when we are faithless, the God who is still Lord, even as we stray into idolatry.

And Abraham experiences this.

He tastes it.

And his heart is moved by it.

We have seen the sin underneath the sin.

Underneath the surface sins of what we call the second table of the law, commands 6 through 10, excuse me, 5 through 10, or breaking of the first table of the law.

Anytime we lie or deceive or do any of the things like covet, we functionally have made a different God.

But we've also seen God's grace for sinners, that He owns us, even when we're at our worst.

And then we see Abraham's faith respond, receive this grace, and rise to new levels of obedience.

To go back to the passage, verse 14, it says 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.

And what does Abraham do with all these gifts?

Does he say, No, no, no, no, no, I don't deserve them.

I'm in the wrong.

No, you see what he does.

He graciously receives them, though he does not deserve them.

Here, when Abraham is in the wrong, he receives the gift and he perceives God keeping his promise.

Though Abraham has been unfaithful, God has been faithful to him.

And as Abraham experiences this grace and kindness, it renews his faith.

In the narrative arc of Genesis, we're going to see in two chapters that all the events of Abraham's life, all the challenges, all the promises of God, all the pieces of the covenant are going to culminate in this final test of faith in chapter 22.

And I don't want to give a spoiler alert.

And the supreme test, what's going to happen?

Knowing the goodness and graciousness of God, knowing God's utter trustworthiness in life and death, knowing God's power to save and deliver far beyond all that we could ever ask or imagine, Abraham's faith rises to obedience and worship.

And God is glorified.

And the gospel is proclaimed.

And that work that Abraham did, the work that God did in Abraham's heart, that is the gospel narrative.

And again, that is the narrative to which, if you are in Christ, have been brought into, it is the gospel narrative that you are living in right now.

And it is the work that God is doing in your hearts, even now.

Are you pricked of conscience of trying to control things that you can't control?

Of living in fear, of trying to be your own savior.

Well, the work that God does of grace in Abraham's life to change and renew him, it is precisely the work that he is doing in your life even this day.

Yeah, I talked to Pastor Tom about this passage this week, and he talked about how our growth in faith is often like a yo-yo going up and down.

But it's like a yo-yo going up and down as we walk upstairs that God is completing the good work that he has begun.

God has called you through his gospel so that you may obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The God of all grace has promised to restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

For this is the graciousness of God's heart.

This is the covenant of grace, and this is the grace in which we stand.

My hope this morning is that your heart apprehends that and that you just simply, wherever you have fear pressing in upon you this day, that you can leave this room just resting in it.

Wherever your attention is focusing in on yourself and what you must do, rather than trusting in providences, your heart can turn outward and say, No, I know my Lord, I know my Savior, I can trust him, I can worship him, and I can adore him.

So that end, let me pray, and we'll uh continue our worship.

Father, we see your graciousness and your goodness uh to Abraham, though uh he acts with less integrity than a man of the world, though he has this repeating pattern of sin in his own life, Lord, you do not disown him, but you own him.

And Lord, you grow his faith ultimately as he continues his walk with you.

We thank you also that you work this on us.

We thank you for your graciousness and goodness to us.

And Lord, how can we Lord, we simply respond this morning with love and affection.

We worship and adore you, raise our voices in our hymns of praise to sing your glory.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.