SPEAKER_01: Our reading today is from Genesis chapter twenty.
SPEAKER_01: From there, Abraham journeyed towards the territory of the Negeb, and lived between Kadesh and Shur, and he sojourned in Jarar.
SPEAKER_01: And Abraham said to Sarah his wife, She is my sister.
SPEAKER_01: And Abimelech, king of Jarar, sent and took Sarah.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: Now Abimelech had not approached her, so he said, Lord, will you kill an innocent people?
SPEAKER_01: Did he not himself say to me, She is my sister?
SPEAKER_01: And she herself said, He is my brother.
SPEAKER_01: In the integrity of my heart, and the innocence of my hands I have done this.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore I did not let you touch her.
SPEAKER_01: Now then, return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you and you shall live.
SPEAKER_01: But if you did not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, What have you done to us?
SPEAKER_01: And how have I sinned against you that you have brought on me and my kingdom a great sin?
SPEAKER_01: You have done to me things that ought not to have been done.
SPEAKER_01: And Abimelech said to Abraham, What did you see that you did this thing?
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father, though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: Say of me he is my brother.
SPEAKER_01: Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and male servants and female servants, and gave them to Abraham, and returned Sarah his wife to him.
SPEAKER_01: And Abimelech said, Behold, my land is before you.
SPEAKER_01: Dwell where it pleases you.
SPEAKER_01: To Sarah he said, Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver.
SPEAKER_01: It is a sign of your innocence in the eyes of all who are with you, and before everyone you are vindicated.
SPEAKER_01: Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves, so that they bore children.
SPEAKER_01: For the Lord had closed all the wounds of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.
SPEAKER_01: And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_02: My name is Peter.
SPEAKER_02: I'm one of the leaders here at City.
SPEAKER_02: More famous for um or famous for being uh for making a gingerbread house with Nicole.
SPEAKER_02: Um and indeed uh it was fun.
SPEAKER_02: Um so I would recommend signing up for that um if you're a woman.
SPEAKER_02: Um it's sorry.
SPEAKER_02: Our um while I'm while I'm getting set up here, if you want to turn to Genesis 20 um and open it up there, our um our hall at home is every time we go in, if we leave it for a while and the doors are closed in the hall and stuff, it smells of gingerbread when we go in because of the gingerbread house sitting there.
SPEAKER_02: So that's another reason.
SPEAKER_02: Um it's another reason to to go along.
SPEAKER_02: Um speaking of gingerbread and sweets and all uh all things confectionery.
SPEAKER_02: Um have you been I I don't know if everyone, I don't know if this translates across cultures, but I'll explain it anyway if it doesn't.
SPEAKER_02: For anybody Irish, I presume English, I'm assuming American, um English-speaking people will probably know the phrase uh don't eat that, you'll spoil your dinner.
SPEAKER_02: So if you do go along and make a gingerbread house, don't eat it before you have your dinner because you'll spoil it.
SPEAKER_02: Now, if that doesn't, if you don't know what that means, all it's it's saying it's not saying that your your food will literally go rotten on the plate if you eat sweets.
SPEAKER_02: That's obviously not what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_02: But you're not gonna have the appetite to eat it because you'll have eaten sweets, whether it's a bar of chocolate or uh some just even a gum, a few gummy bears or whatever.
SPEAKER_02: You could probably have a few, probably have a bit of the corner of the gingerbread house, it'll be fine, but not too much.
SPEAKER_02: This happened on Wednesday at our community group as well.
SPEAKER_02: Somebody was very, very uh uh had a lot of self-respect and ate their dinner before having I can't remember what what did we have?
SPEAKER_02: I can't remember.
SPEAKER_02: There's a good reason to be in community groups, more sweets.
SPEAKER_02: I'm just we're just we're just getting all the sweet stuff, is how we attract you in.
SPEAKER_02: Um and but the thing is we usually I usually don't we don't usually have to say that to adults.
SPEAKER_02: We say that to children because they struggle, they struggle with putting off something in the present for something better, and in this case, better is is your dinner.
SPEAKER_02: Sweets versus dinner.
SPEAKER_02: Dinner is better, it's more healthy, it's uh it's gonna give you the vitamins and all that sort of stuff that you need.
SPEAKER_02: Whereas the sweets are only gonna satisfy you for a little bit and it's actually not gonna be good for you long term.
SPEAKER_02: We don't say this to adults because adults are mature, aren't they?
SPEAKER_02: Um they know the outcome of eating something they shouldn't, and then not being able to eat any or all of their dinner.
SPEAKER_02: Adults would never spoil their dinner because they know better.
SPEAKER_02: They've learned from experience, they've learned from previous failure.
SPEAKER_02: How could someone who spoiled their dinner before do it again?
SPEAKER_02: Anyone feeling guilty?
SPEAKER_02: And you see, this this is a human problem.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, we say to children, don't spoil your dinner, don't eat that.
SPEAKER_02: But it is a human problem beyond just for children.
SPEAKER_02: And it's beyond just eating sweets when we shouldn't.
SPEAKER_02: How do we deal with the fact that we sin repeatedly?
SPEAKER_02: So we'll turn our attention to the passage uh to Genesis 20, and almost immediately here in Genesis 20, we find Abraham telling everyone that Sarah is his sister.
SPEAKER_02: And we're like, and the whole sister thing, we'll we will get back to that.
SPEAKER_02: Just pack that for a moment.
SPEAKER_02: And we're like, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_02: Didn't he do that before?
SPEAKER_02: And it ended terribly.
SPEAKER_02: Don't you just want to scream, oh no, Abraham, not again.
SPEAKER_02: Come on.
SPEAKER_02: You write you might remember that back in chapter 12, which is where we started off, I think it was September we started this uh Genesis series.
SPEAKER_02: Um, we picked up in in chapter 12 or 11, somewhere around there.
SPEAKER_02: But back in chapter 12, Abraham and Sarah went to Egypt because there was a famine where they were.
SPEAKER_02: In this case, it just says that he journeyed uh he journeyed toward the territory of the Negeb.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't say there was a famine, it doesn't say why he left.
SPEAKER_02: People speculate.
SPEAKER_02: But back then it was a famine.
SPEAKER_02: He he was uh he went along to uh Egypt, and um when they went to Egypt, Abraham again was scared that the men would take Sarah and would kill him.
SPEAKER_02: So, like here in chapter 20, he asks Sarah to tell everyone that they're siblings, because technically they are half siblings.
SPEAKER_02: Again, we'll get back to that.
SPEAKER_02: But what's going on?
SPEAKER_02: How could Abraham fail in the same way again?
SPEAKER_02: Hadn't he learned?
SPEAKER_02: How could he be so forgetful and foolish?
SPEAKER_02: And it's not just that this basically happened before with Pharaoh, it's it's all that's happened since.
SPEAKER_02: There's been the covenant, there's been promises from God, etc., etc.
SPEAKER_02: There's been highs and lows, but we haven't had this repeated sin before.
SPEAKER_02: How disappointing.
SPEAKER_02: What a failure.
SPEAKER_02: We need to ask, of course, why did Abraham sin here?
SPEAKER_02: Why did he have this lapse of faith at the start of chapter 20?
SPEAKER_02: Abraham's problem is that he's he's focusing on the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_02: He's focusing on others in a detrimental way.
SPEAKER_02: Other people had this grip over his thoughts, over his actions, they controlled what he did, and he was also focused on himself, on self-preservation.
SPEAKER_02: And this deadly concoction comes together in Abraham's case as fear and judgment.
SPEAKER_02: In having this wrong focus, Abraham feared what these men would do to him.
SPEAKER_02: He feared that they would kill him.
SPEAKER_02: And so Abraham's wandering around, we find him at the start of the passage, just uh we're not sure why, as I said, he ends up living in the kingdom of Gerar where Abimelech was the ruler.
SPEAKER_02: And it's in wandering around as a foreigner in this land that his heart fills with fear for his life.
SPEAKER_02: The same fear that came over him in chapter 12 before.
SPEAKER_02: He feared for his life because he thought these unknown men that they would take his wife and they would kill him for it.
SPEAKER_02: It maybe it seems like it'd be legitimate.
SPEAKER_02: You want to you want to be um you want to think Abraham wasn't being completely irrational.
SPEAKER_02: Um but his it's clear that his fears were not good because of what they drove him to do.
SPEAKER_02: Fear should have driven him to God, especially because of what he'd learned before, because of all that had happened since chapter 12.
SPEAKER_02: And it should have motivated him to protect his family.
SPEAKER_02: And ironically, when he explained his motivations down in verse 11, you'll see he said, I did it because I thought there is no fear of God in this place.
SPEAKER_02: It was actually him who had no fear of God, not them.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham feared this earthly king instead of the king of the universe.
SPEAKER_02: He feared the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_02: And it's not that it's not that we need to be scared of God, but in the Bible, fear is what looms largest in our lives.
SPEAKER_02: It's what takes our focus.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham's gaze was fully on the potential of what these people could do to him.
SPEAKER_02: And he didn't pay any heed to God in these decisions or actions.
SPEAKER_02: Again, he feared the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_02: But not only does this focus on others show itself in him fearing others instead of God, he actually judges them with this prideful disregard.
SPEAKER_02: He's putting himself in the position of God.
SPEAKER_02: He pronounces that there's no fear of God in this place.
SPEAKER_02: I just mentioned how ironic that is because he's the one who isn't fearing God, but he's actually just plain wrong as well.
SPEAKER_02: We find this uh in his in his in Abimelech's conversation uh with God and with his uh conversation with his officials.
SPEAKER_02: Not only did, when when we see the conversation between God and Abimelech, not only did uh he fear God, but when he comes, when it comes to him uh the next morning with his officials, he gets them all together, and they're very worried when they hear what God said.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham is so prideful in what he thought, disregarding others and simultaneously fearing them.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham, he's not just disregarding them, he's disregarding God, both in his ability to protect him and in his ability to work in and through others.
SPEAKER_02: And this disregard of God and his pride is only made worse in verse 13.
SPEAKER_02: Have a look at it.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham says, and when God caused me to wander from my father's house, and when God called me to wander from my father's house, he's being so prideful.
SPEAKER_02: He's calling into question everything God had done for him.
SPEAKER_02: He's shifting the blame for these things in his life on to God.
SPEAKER_02: And then there's the half-truth.
SPEAKER_02: He plays pretty fast and loose with the truth.
SPEAKER_02: He's deceiving those around him with this half-truth.
SPEAKER_02: It is strange to our eyes, but um, and later on, scripture does prohibit uh siblings being married, you'll be glad to know.
SPEAKER_02: And this is not uh prescriptive, as we keep saying through Genesis, not prescriptive.
SPEAKER_02: Don't take this and do literally what it says.
SPEAKER_02: Um don't um don't don't marry your sibling.
SPEAKER_02: Um but it's how it was.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham and Sarah were half siblings and they were married.
SPEAKER_02: Yet Abraham thinks he can control what what's known and what's true and what's said and what people think.
SPEAKER_02: He thinks he control all this, and how much of it people can get.
SPEAKER_02: And it's not that this was a spur-of-the-moment thing.
SPEAKER_02: There's this determined, willful, long-term decision here.
SPEAKER_02: He said to Sarah long ago, presumably this was on their way to Egypt, or uh maybe a long time before that, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02: But um, it seems when God called them, as he said, um, that that she should do this kindness, that she should tell everyone this half-truth, he says, we'll control what people think and know about us.
SPEAKER_02: And that's so prideful, too.
SPEAKER_02: In both his fear and his prideful disregard, Abraham's focus is on others.
SPEAKER_02: Like I said, there's everyone else is looming so large.
SPEAKER_02: They're all he can see in front of him.
SPEAKER_02: As he wakes up each day, he's thinking about these people and what they could do.
SPEAKER_02: He's thinking about what he needs to say, what Sarah needs to say to make sure he he doesn't upset these other people.
SPEAKER_02: He's going, he's probably going to sleep at night thinking, what's going to happen the next day?
SPEAKER_02: What's going to happen if I bump into this person?
SPEAKER_02: I need to trade with this these people.
SPEAKER_02: What's going to happen?
SPEAKER_02: What are they going to do?
SPEAKER_02: He cares so much about what these people think of him, yet in his heart he has contempt for them and he disregards them in pride.
SPEAKER_02: He fears them, and yet he puts himself over them in judgment.
SPEAKER_02: I wonder if you can identify with Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe not in being scared you're killed because someone will want to take your wife, but maybe other people are looming large in your life.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe they're all you can think about.
SPEAKER_02: Thoughts about uh thoughts about them, um, what they think of you.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe they consume you.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's all you can think about at night when you're trying to sleep.
SPEAKER_02: And maybe it's leading to sinful, harmful actions.
SPEAKER_02: It might be seemingly as innocuous as overworking or trying to live up to whatever standard you think others have.
SPEAKER_02: It could be feeling like you need to have the house spotless for certain people.
SPEAKER_02: Or even that you're seen in the right places.
SPEAKER_02: On the surface, those things might seem far removed from Abraham, from his actions and his fears from Genesis 20.
SPEAKER_02: But it's the same human heart under it.
SPEAKER_02: We're looking at humans here in Genesis 20.
SPEAKER_02: We're looking in the mirror when we look at Scripture, with our hearts being reflected.
SPEAKER_02: For us, as for Abraham, focusing on others like this never leads to godly living.
SPEAKER_02: But it's not just that Abraham fears the wrong thing, it's not just that he's consumed by these thoughts of others, it's not just that he's had this lapse of faith, it's that it's happened again.
SPEAKER_02: It feels like it's bad enough that it happened back in chapter 12, but for it to happen a second time, surely that's too much.
SPEAKER_02: Surely he had learned his lesson.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham had way more reason to fear God and to trust him now too.
SPEAKER_02: He's seen God at work over and over.
SPEAKER_02: He had more reason to trust God than when he was in Egypt.
SPEAKER_02: At that stage, he had just been called by God.
SPEAKER_02: He was basically a baby Christian.
SPEAKER_02: He was basically on the start of his journey with God, but since then God had helped him be the hero.
SPEAKER_02: He had seen God make a covenant with him, he had been circumcised, he had entertained angels, and just recently he had been promised a son very soon.
SPEAKER_02: They're not things you can easily forget.
SPEAKER_02: Last week Lisa was teaching the kids uh about the covenant, which hopefully you'll remember from a few weeks ago.
SPEAKER_02: One thing she was worried about was being too graphic with the story because in it there's animals who are cut in half.
SPEAKER_02: And one half of the animals are on this side and one half are on the other.
SPEAKER_02: And um parents, she did a great job.
SPEAKER_02: You don't need to worry that they've been traumatized.
SPEAKER_02: But it's that's pretty memorable for Abraham and all the other stuff too.
SPEAKER_02: How could he forget?
SPEAKER_02: How could he forget that?
SPEAKER_02: All that's happened.
SPEAKER_02: We look at Abraham here and think, this shouldn't be happening, you in Genesis 20.
SPEAKER_02: You shouldn't be falling into sin like this.
SPEAKER_02: You're a mature Christian, known as a man of faith.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham, in focusing on others and in sinning again like this, he had forgotten God's good character.
SPEAKER_02: He'd forgotten that God had promised to protect him.
SPEAKER_02: He'd forgotten that God had promised a son, he'd forgotten all the ways God had proved himself time and again.
SPEAKER_02: And this happens so often for us too, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02: It's not like we leave uh church and immediately forget.
SPEAKER_02: It's not like we read our Bibles and forget what we've just read.
SPEAKER_02: It's not like the knowledge of what God has done for us in Christ just vanishes from our brains all the time.
SPEAKER_02: But we do enter situations at home, in work, and wherever in life where we practically forget God, where we practically forget his promises, where the way we act and function is actually as if we're atheists.
SPEAKER_02: How do you react when you fall into the same sin again?
SPEAKER_02: Maybe there's a pattern of sin in your life, maybe it's habitual.
SPEAKER_02: Do you think to yourself, how could I let that happen again?
SPEAKER_02: God is surely fed up with me at this stage.
SPEAKER_02: I'm such a failure.
SPEAKER_02: There's some comfort in knowing that Abraham was just like this.
SPEAKER_02: Take heart, even the man of faith proved faithless.
SPEAKER_02: Before we look in more detail at what God has done in this situation, we need to look, take a look at the consequences of Abraham's sin, and this is really important to look at.
SPEAKER_02: Last week we saw how Lot got closer and closer to Sodom, not just physically, but in terms of society and culture, and the devastating effect that this sin had on his heart, on his soul, on his mind, the devastating effect it had on his family.
SPEAKER_02: And in Genesis 20, here we see the devastating consequences of the sin of Abraham's heart on those around him.
SPEAKER_02: There are warnings that we need to heed here in terms of how damaging sin can be.
SPEAKER_02: It's not just the judgment, but it's also the suffering and hardship it causes to those around us.
SPEAKER_02: Sin is necessarily harmful to ourselves and those around us.
SPEAKER_02: We'll look at a few ways Abraham's sin causes others to be harmed, but first I want you I want to highlight the quiet and secretive way he goes about it.
SPEAKER_02: This is something that's between him and his wife, that they've agreed together, that he probably doesn't think others outside will know or be affected by.
SPEAKER_02: But it goes, it does go way beyond that, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02: As we'll see.
SPEAKER_02: Uh J.I.
SPEAKER_02: Packer, the author and uh preacher, he has an analogy that I find very helpful in his book, uh Knowing God.
SPEAKER_02: He likens sin in our hearts to a fleet of ships, where one ship isn't functioning well on the inside.
SPEAKER_02: There's some mechanisms broke or the rudder's rotten or something like that.
SPEAKER_02: And what's gonna happen?
SPEAKER_02: The ship looks fine on the outside, but it's gonna crash straight into the other ships around it.
SPEAKER_02: That's what it's like with the sins of our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: They're always gonna have an effect on others.
SPEAKER_02: Sarah, she did have a part to play in this half-truth, in this uh sin, agreeing to it.
SPEAKER_02: And it's hard to forget all that went on before uh with Hagar.
SPEAKER_02: Sarah, we don't have a pretty picture of uh Sarah as with Abraham in a lot of these stories.
SPEAKER_02: And I don't want to excuse her, but it's Abraham's idea.
SPEAKER_02: He's the one who asks her to do it, he leads her into it, and yet she She's the one who bears the awful consequences.
SPEAKER_02: She's one of the ones who bears the awful consequences.
SPEAKER_02: And remember, this is just after God had told Abraham that Sarah was going to conceive and give birth in about a year.
SPEAKER_02: If Abraham didn't have enough reason to protect her before with Pharaoh, he now is a pregnant or at least soon-to-be pregnant wife.
SPEAKER_02: And this is how he treats her.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham's sin has put Sarah in harm's way.
SPEAKER_02: And Abraham's sin also affected Abimelech in a pretty big way.
SPEAKER_02: And not just Abimelech, Abimelech's wife, the females of his household, and even potentially the whole nation.
SPEAKER_02: In verse 4, Abimelech understands that the sin he was unknowingly committing or about to commit, that that would lead to the potential of not only him bearing the punishment, but also the whole nation.
SPEAKER_02: And then at the end in verses 17 to 18, we learn that Abimelech, his wife, and all his household had been afflicted.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham's sin almost caused Abimelech to unknowingly sin.
SPEAKER_02: And even though he didn't sleep with Sarah, there is obviously an offense in taking her, in taking another man's wife.
SPEAKER_02: That Abimelech, he didn't know he was committing this.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham's sin almost, except for God's intervention, it almost had fatal consequences for someone else.
SPEAKER_02: Don't be foolish.
SPEAKER_02: Don't be foolish in thinking that your sin, even secretive, doesn't matter, or that it doesn't have an impact.
SPEAKER_02: We learn more about the nature of sin in God's conversation with Abimelech, which is really important.
SPEAKER_02: In verse 3, God says to Abimelech that he's a dead man for this sin, for taking another man's wife.
SPEAKER_02: But then, after pleading his innocence in verses four to five, God agrees in verse six, saying, Yes, I know you have done this in the integrity of your heart.
SPEAKER_02: You might think, did God learn something between verse 3 and verse 6?
SPEAKER_02: Did Abimelech give him fresh information that he didn't know in verses 4 and 5?
SPEAKER_02: Did God not know that Abimelech fully believed Abraham and Sarah were siblings?
SPEAKER_02: Another way to look at this is to ask if Abimelech should be on the hook for sinning it unintentionally or unknowingly.
SPEAKER_02: Should we be held to account for the things we do unintentionally when we sin unknowingly?
SPEAKER_02: What we learn here and elsewhere is that the answer is yes.
SPEAKER_02: One place we learn this is in the law that was given later in Leviticus.
SPEAKER_02: There's two whole chapters in verses in chapters four and five where the descrip where there's descriptions of what's to be done if someone sins unintentionally.
SPEAKER_02: There's provision for them.
SPEAKER_02: There's a way for their sin to be covered and atoned for.
SPEAKER_02: But this is one big thing we learn here.
SPEAKER_02: Unknown sin is still sin.
SPEAKER_02: There's another couple of crucial things we learned from this conversation about the nature of sin.
SPEAKER_02: They come in the second part of verse six where God says, It was I who kept you from sinning against me.
SPEAKER_02: If you look at it there in verse six, it was I who kept you from sinning against me.
SPEAKER_02: We'll come back to that first part that it was God who kept him from sinning, but I want to focus on the second part first.
SPEAKER_02: God tells Abimelech that this potential sin was against him, that it was against God.
SPEAKER_02: But what was it that Abimelech was going to do?
SPEAKER_02: It was that he was going to that he had taken another man's wife and he was going to sleep with her.
SPEAKER_02: Surely then the sin is against Sarah and Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: Likewise for Abraham, wasn't his sin against Sarah and against Abimelech?
SPEAKER_02: Abimelech seems to think so.
SPEAKER_02: He's pretty vexed and demands an answer.
SPEAKER_02: After calling all his officials together, like we saw in verse 8, telling them uh telling them about the whole situation, everyone being very much afraid, Abimelech summons Abraham and says in verse 9, What have you done to us?
SPEAKER_02: And how have I sinned against you that you have brought me uh that you have brought me in my kingdom a great sin?
SPEAKER_02: You have done to me things that ought not to be done.
SPEAKER_02: And then he gets Abraham's seems silent.
SPEAKER_02: Um Abimelech pushes Abraham further.
SPEAKER_02: He pushes him further in verse 10, asking for an answer.
SPEAKER_02: What did you see that you did this thing?
SPEAKER_02: Both Abraham's intentional sin and Abimelech's unintentional sin are against others, and they have grave consequences for others.
SPEAKER_02: But ultimately they're against God.
SPEAKER_02: The same is true for us.
SPEAKER_02: The consequences of our thoughts, of our words and our actions, wherever sinful, are they really important to reckon with and to acknowledge and to ask others for forgiveness.
SPEAKER_02: Yet these thoughts, these words, these actions, wherever sinful, they're ultimately against God.
SPEAKER_02: Later on in the Bible, we read how great King David committed adultery.
SPEAKER_02: He tried to cover it up, he failed, and then he had the husband killed.
SPEAKER_02: Yet after being confronted with his sin, he responds like this in Psalm 51 in asking God for mercy and forgiveness.
SPEAKER_02: Against you, you only have I sinned and done evil, done what is evil in your sight.
SPEAKER_02: Our sin is primarily against God.
SPEAKER_02: And one of the biggest consequences of Abraham's sin is that it puts God's promise of a son in jeopardy.
SPEAKER_02: He's willing to throw away this thing that he wanted so much because of fear, because of pragmatism.
SPEAKER_02: And God had promised him that it was just around the corner.
SPEAKER_02: Back in chapter 18, God had said, I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah, your wife, will have a son.
SPEAKER_02: But Abraham puts this on the line in the decision he makes.
SPEAKER_02: Not only is he separated from Sarah, so there's no opportunity for her to become pregnant by him, but also if Abimelech sleeps with her, then regardless of whether or not she's pregnant at this stage, or if Abraham ends up sleeping with her, the paternity of the child would be in question.
SPEAKER_02: If everything panned out the same as it did, except for Abimelech sleeping with Sarah, then it wouldn't be certain that Abraham was the father.
SPEAKER_02: And that's a big deal.
SPEAKER_02: The promised child was to come from Abraham and Sarah, but Abraham's sin puts all this at risk.
SPEAKER_02: And that's the thing about sin.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't lead us to do rational things.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't let us see things, especially God, the way they truly are.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham had just been promised what he had always wanted, a son.
SPEAKER_02: Yet here he is making choices to throw all that away.
SPEAKER_02: That's not rational.
SPEAKER_02: And another irony here is that Abraham is self, is he's motivated by self-preservation, yet his actions, but for God's intervention, would have led him to not having the son that would continue his name and line.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham's sin, his bad motivations, the harmful effect of his sin, and the fact that it's happened again, that it's repeated, are all pretty heavy.
SPEAKER_02: And although it's not exactly the same in detail to us, we can see ourselves in him.
SPEAKER_02: And that does provide some comfort in knowing that Abraham was just like us.
SPEAKER_02: But the real comfort, there's far more comfort.
SPEAKER_02: Even life to be found in knowing Abraham's God.
SPEAKER_02: So we ask, what do we learn about God here?
SPEAKER_02: What do we learn about his character?
SPEAKER_02: What do we see God do?
SPEAKER_02: And more important than just learning about God is to truly know him.
SPEAKER_02: Surely fire and brimstone is deserved like last week for sin.
SPEAKER_02: God says it himself in verse 3, Abimelech, you're a dead man for what you've done.
SPEAKER_02: But God is so patient and he relents and doesn't do what he would be completely justified in doing.
SPEAKER_02: And he provides a way for Abimelech to be saved and to be healed through obedience and through Abraham's prayer.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't smite Abimelech, but listens to him and provides a way for his sin to be covered.
SPEAKER_02: God doesn't smite Abraham either.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't treat him or see him the way we might.
SPEAKER_02: Even calls him a prophet.
SPEAKER_02: He says to Abimelech, You need Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: He's he's a prophet, he'll pray for you.
SPEAKER_02: He's so patient.
SPEAKER_02: God is so patient.
SPEAKER_02: He's persistently patient.
SPEAKER_02: He's faithfully patient, time and again.
SPEAKER_02: And here, he's not just patient with Abraham in one sin or even many different sins, but he's patient with him in this repeated sin.
SPEAKER_02: God doesn't say, I can't believe you've done that again.
SPEAKER_02: Haven't you learned?
SPEAKER_02: Okay, Egypt, that was one thing.
SPEAKER_02: You were young in the faith, but now you should be better than this.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that I brought you through since Egypt, how could you be so cowardly and foolish and stupid?
SPEAKER_02: God doesn't say that.
SPEAKER_02: Instead, he's so patient with Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: Isn't God so patient with us two?
SPEAKER_02: Think for a moment about maybe how you feel now or how you felt when we were thinking about Abraham and his sin.
SPEAKER_02: Identifying with him in his failings.
SPEAKER_02: How have you felt about yourself when you've fallen into habitual sin, into repeated sin?
SPEAKER_02: God is faithful in his patience.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't grow weary of being patient with us.
SPEAKER_02: Let that sink into and soothe your weary heart.
SPEAKER_02: God is persistently patient.
SPEAKER_02: And God isn't just patient with Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't just withhold punishment, he doesn't just relent from pouring out his justified wrath.
SPEAKER_02: He's not just gracious in what he doesn't do.
SPEAKER_02: He's so lavish in his generosity to Abraham through Abimelech.
SPEAKER_02: The last time in Egypt, when Pharaoh found out that Abraham and Sarah were married, he gave Sarah back to Abraham and told them to leave.
SPEAKER_02: He didn't want anything more to do with them.
SPEAKER_02: That's pretty reasonable because of their lies and because of what had happened to him.
SPEAKER_02: Here, though, Abimelech tells Abraham to dwell where he wants in the land.
SPEAKER_02: And then he gives them a ton of things too.
SPEAKER_02: He gives them livestock, labour, and a thousand pieces of silver.
SPEAKER_02: This is pretty generous.
SPEAKER_02: Now, Abimelech wasn't necessarily a perfect chap, and he wasn't necessarily acting out of the goodness of his heart, since he still has this threat.
SPEAKER_02: You're a dead man, Abimelech gives Sarah back.
SPEAKER_02: He he has that hanging over him, and those around him were afflicted with something or other, and the future of the nation was under threat too, and God told him he needed Abraham to pray for him.
SPEAKER_02: So we do take that into account, but I don't think he needed to be this generous.
SPEAKER_02: And he specifically treats Sarah well, making sure her innocence is made clear to everyone.
SPEAKER_02: This generosity is such a grace to Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: Grace being ill-deserved kindness.
SPEAKER_02: And what a prime example of something being ill-deserved.
SPEAKER_02: What a prime example of lavish kindness.
SPEAKER_02: And we're getting to the heart of what Moses, who wrote Genesis, what he wants to teach us through Genesis 20, and why he puts sin so many of the details of Abraham's sin.
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot for us to learn from it, to the warnings to heed.
SPEAKER_02: But in looking at his sin and the enormity of it, we see increasingly the abundance of God's grace.
SPEAKER_02: He is patient over and over in our persistent failings.
SPEAKER_02: He is gracious beyond measure, even though we learn more and more of the awful nature of our sin.
SPEAKER_02: And if Abimelech is generous and gracious to Abraham, how much more is our God gracious and generous to us?
SPEAKER_02: I want to come back to verse six for a moment, like I said I would.
SPEAKER_02: We see that God is actually gracious to Abimelech, not just in his patience and in providing a way for his sin to be covered.
SPEAKER_02: It's really significant that God says there in verse six that it's he who stopped Abimelech from sinning.
SPEAKER_02: Let one of the ways we respond today be thank you, Lord, for the times that you've stopped me from sinning.
SPEAKER_02: Lead me not into temptation.
SPEAKER_02: God is not just gracious for intervening here for the sake of Abraham and Sarah's safety, and it's not just that God graciously stops Abimelech from sinning.
SPEAKER_02: It's not just that God is lavish in his kindness towards Abraham and Sarah through Abimelech.
SPEAKER_02: It's crucial that he intervened in this way to secure the promise.
SPEAKER_02: I mentioned before how catastrophic it would have been if Abimelech had slept with Sarah.
SPEAKER_02: The promise wouldn't have been secure.
SPEAKER_02: And so that's why God stopped Abimelech from sinning.
SPEAKER_02: And that's why what Abimelech says to Sarah in verse 16 is so important too.
SPEAKER_02: In doing this, we've no doubt that the child of promise is indeed the promised child.
SPEAKER_02: No questions arise as to whether God has fulfilled his promise to Abraham in giving him his son by Sarah.
SPEAKER_02: God preserves Abraham, he preserves Sarah, and He preserves the promise, he secures the promise despite Abraham nearly throwing it all away.
SPEAKER_02: And God preserves the Christian too.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't treat us as our sins deserve, because he is faithful to his promises.
SPEAKER_02: He's the persistently faithful God who preserves us despite ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: We learn this, yes, in how God preserves Abraham here, but even more so in that when he secures the promise of Abraham's son, that's part of his promise of the true son, Jesus, who was promised all the way back in Genesis 3.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus came from the line of that son who was promised to Abraham through Isaac, who is to be will be born next week.
SPEAKER_02: Well, not literally, but in the next chapter when we look at Genesis 21 next week.
SPEAKER_02: God's fulfilling and securing the promise of Jesus, of the true Son.
SPEAKER_02: Knowing Abraham's God is to know his faithful character.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't change.
SPEAKER_02: He hasn't changed since Abraham's day, and he acts the same way to preserve us and secure every promise to the Christian.
SPEAKER_02: Despite Abraham's repeated failure, God preserves him.
SPEAKER_02: Despite your repeated and habitual sin, God preserves you.
SPEAKER_02: And we don't presume upon God's grace.
SPEAKER_02: The consequences of sin are still dreadful to you and to those around us, like we see in Genesis 20.
SPEAKER_02: The gospel is tainted before others when we sin and show our hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_02: As Jesus says to the woman at the well, go and sin no more.
SPEAKER_02: But don't think that when you sin again, even if there's every reason to think, I've blown it again.
SPEAKER_02: Don't think that you've messed up too much this time or that God won't forgive you.
SPEAKER_02: See here that He is gracious beyond what you can imagine.
SPEAKER_02: That He doesn't just forgive you of your sin, making you clean again, but He restores you and is abundantly kind and generous.
SPEAKER_02: Beyond how Abimelech was generous to Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm confident of that because of that true son who came from Abraham and Isaac's line.
SPEAKER_02: That true son Jesus is the one who has secured our salvation.
SPEAKER_02: He's the one through whom God preserves us.
SPEAKER_02: The power and glory of the cross and the resurrection means that the times when we repeatedly fail like Abraham, we are sure of his abundant grace.
SPEAKER_02: This is actually what Abraham believed.
SPEAKER_02: He trusted God to provide a way like this.
SPEAKER_02: He trusted God to provide a savior for him, one who would bear the consequences of him breaking the covenant, even repeatedly, who would bear the wrath of his sin.
SPEAKER_02: When you fail, even when you sin in the same way again, know our God, know his abundant grace, know him who forgives and restores you, who is kind and generous beyond measure, and see Christ, the one who secures the Christians eternal life with him despite ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, please visit our website, found in Dublin below.