If you want to take your Bibles, we'll be in Genesis chapter 20 this morning. The question I want to ask as we get started is, how does God deal with sinners? Specifically, how does God deal with sinners who do not yet trust him for salvation? That's a crucial question when we consider the nature and the character of God. Now, until the last few weeks, most of our sermons for the last few months have focused on Abraham and his life.
He's the main character in Genesis chapters 12 through 25, the main human character. But the last two sermons we had out of Genesis, as we came into chapter 19, the focus shifted off of Abraham temporarily, and we looked at Lot and his tragic life. But now in chapter 20, the focus turns back towards Abraham.
But the drama of chapter 20 is not centered on Abraham himself, rather, the drama is centered on how God deals with this pagan king, Abimelech of Gerar. How does God deal with this man, this unbelieving sinner? So verses 1 and 2 of Genesis chapter 20 say this. 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, the king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah. So as we begin chapter 20, it's almost a repeat of the story in Genesis chapter 12, where then Abram and Sarai, now Abraham and Sarah, at that point in chapter 12, they sojourned down in Egypt, and they said, hey, she, Abraham said, she's my sister.
And Pharaoh took Sarah to himself, added her to his harem as a wife. It's also a preview of what's going to happen in chapter 26 when Abraham's son Isaac and his wife Rebekah sojourn in this same land, the land that's called in chapter 26 the land of the Philistines, and interact with another man named Abimelech, probably the son or grandson of this Abimelech. That name Abimelech, the etymology of the name just means my father is king.
So it was probably like a throne name that passed on from father to son. And the same kind of situation is going to happen where they aren't forthcoming with the nature of their relationship because Isaac is afraid of what would happen to him. So here, Abraham and Sarah, they traveled to Gerar, which is a city.
These kings, most often, not always, but usually kings in the Old Testament are kings of city states. They're not kings of what we would consider nations. That doesn't happen until several hundred years later, but they're kings over cities.
And so Abimelech is the king of Gerar, which is just south and east of modern Gaza in a region that would come to be inhabited by the Philistines. At this point, it is remarkable. I mean, it was remarkable 25 years earlier when they were in Egypt.
Sarah's 65 years old and Abraham's like, yeah, she's really pretty. She might get me killed. Here, she's 90 and the same thing is happening.
She's still apparently very attractive and he's concerned for his life. If you remember in chapter 18, God had just reiterated his promise to Abraham and to Sarah that they were going to have a son. And at that point, God puts a timestamp on it.
He says, within a year, I will come back and your wife, Sarah, will have a child. And this is in between that promise and the fulfillment of the promise in the next chapter. That's important for the drama of this story.
She's probably pregnant, and if not, she's going to very soon be pregnant. And yet when they sojourn in Gerar, Abraham is willing to let go of his wife and not focus on the promises of God or on protecting his wife. But instead, he's concerned with taking care of his own hide, saving his own skin.
This story does not reflect well on Abraham. Thankfully, Abraham is not the hero of the Bible. Abraham is not the model that we look to to find all of the answers to all of our questions.
And this story does reflect well on the faithfulness of God, the faithfulness of God to not only Abraham, he is faithful to Abraham in this story, but he's also faithful in his dealings with a man named Abimelech. We're going to consider in this story four characteristics of God's dealings with sinners. The first is that God holds sinners accountable.
We see that in verses three through five. So Abimelech's just taken Sarah to himself, brought her into his harem. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman 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? Didn't 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 in the innocence of my hands.
I have done this. So God warns Abimelech that he has sinned by taking Abraham's wife to himself. And he is now under the sentence of death.
Abimelech protests. He pleads his ignorance and his innocence. God acknowledges his ignorance, but that does not absolve him of guilt.
That's an important principle. It shifts greater blame to Abraham for the deception. We'll touch on that later.
But God's message is clear. Ignorance does not equal innocence. Abimelech remains guilty of violating God's standard, regardless of whether he actually knows that what he's doing is against God's standard.
If he had had relationships, relations with, if he had approached, as the text says, Sarah, it would have been adultery, whether he knew she was Sarah, Abraham's wife or not. And there's an analogy to that principle in the New Testament when often the New Testament letters are written to address particular problems in churches and Jude and Paul especially will criticize believers for falling prey to false teaching. They're not the ones perpetrating the false teaching.
They're not the ones who are saying things that are untrue, but they are held responsible. They are held guilty. They are criticized for believing things that aren't true.
Paul makes a similar distinction in the New Testament between Adam and Eve. Adam knows what God had said. Adam is not deceived when he takes of the fruit in Genesis chapter three.
He's not deceived by what the serpent is saying. He's just openly rebelling against God. That holds a different level of responsibility than Eve, who was deceived and in sin, but even though she was deceived, she's still guilty of sin.
So ignorance or being deceived can keep your conscience clean. It can make you feel like you're doing okay, like you haven't done anything wrong, but your conscience, as important as it is, is not the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong. It's not the ultimate standard.
If you're counting on your conscience alone to keep you right with God, you're in a bad place. In first Corinthians chapter four and verse four, the apostle Paul himself says, I've got nothing on my conscience that could condemn me, but that does not make me just. God is the only real true judge.
No one can stand before God on our own merits. God holds sinners accountable. So, so here, even though a Bimalek thinks he hasn't done anything wrong, God says, yes, you have.
And you're under the sentence of death for it, but God sovereignly chooses to extend mercy though he's under no obligation to do so. God often intervenes on behalf of sinners, even restraining them from their sin. Verse six, here we see this principle.
God mercifully restrained sinners. God said to him, to a Bimalek in a 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. God sometimes mercifully restrained sinners as we see here in verse six.
And he doesn't argue with what a Bimalek simply declares. Instead, God says, I know you acted in your integrity and I kept you from sinning against me. That's an interesting phrase.
Can God really keep someone from sinning? That statement challenges the very common notion. Not that, I mean, most people aren't using philosophical language like this, but an idea that is pervasive in our society and even in churches is the idea of absolute or libertarian free will. The idea that we can make any choice we want whenever we want.
You'll often hear even pastors or Christian apologists argue that the reason evil exists in this world is that in the beginning, God gave human beings this absolute free will and that this was necessary for God to do in order to make love possible, but the downside is that it means he can't control our actions. He can't control our choices. And so according to this view, when Adam and Eve sinned, God could do nothing about it.
When you sin, God can do nothing about it. That's just the price of freedom, the risk of love. But is that what the Bible teaches? It's not.
Here, God explicitly tells Abimelech, I prevented you from sinning. While God does often allow us to make foolish choices, sinful choices, wicked choices, rebellious choices. He, as the sovereign creator and Lord of the universe, retains the right to restrain sin.
Every choice you make or I make, or anyone makes, they don't all please God. If they're in rebellion against him, they don't please him. But you can only make that choice if he allows you to.
God holds ultimate rights over us in a way that does not violate our own responsibility and our true volition. We do make real choices. But God retains the right to restrain sin.
He will ultimately judge all sin, but even now he actively prevents the world from descending into the complete depravity that it could. The Bible teaches that humans make real choices and that we are responsible for those choices, but we are not choosing from an infinite buffet of options. Especially this side of the fall, our will is actually bound by sin.
Jesus says, whoever practices sin is a slave to sin. We cannot desire righteousness on our own, nor can we replace sinful inclinations with righteous and holy and God honoring ones apart from his divine intervention. To repent and turn to God requires an act of his grace.
We are spiritually blind, unable to grasp his mercy and obey him without his help. In Abimelech's case, God intervenes to prevent a grave sin against Sarah and against Abraham and against God himself. God intervenes on Abimelech's behalf.
In fact, Abimelech would have been sinning against himself. We were just reading with the kids in 1 Corinthians 6 last night. And in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul says that he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.
So God is preventing Abimelech from sinning against himself, against Abimelech's own body. But when God intervenes in this way, it demands a response. When God preserves us from sin, he expects us to acknowledge his grace and to respond accordingly.
And so that's the third thing we see is that God expects obedience from sinners. In verse 7, 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 God comes to Abimelech and says, I'm about to punish you for this sin. And Abimelech had responded, wait, wait, I didn't know. And God says, I know you didn't know.
And I protected you from sinning, but now I'm placing a choice in front of you. And here is Abimelech's choice. He can return Sarah, ask Abraham to pray for him and live.
Or on the other hand, he can ignore this warning and die. And not just he's going to die, but his household is going to die. That's a very stark warning.
That's pretty blunt and straightforward on God's part. It's also not a unique warning in the Bible at all. This is the exact same choice that Moses laid before the people of Israel at the end of the book of Deuteronomy in Deuteronomy chapter 30 and verse 19.
So after they're about the people of Israel are about to enter the promised land and Moses has, he's not going into the promised land with them. So he stands up and he gives them a series of speeches, basically re-gives the law. That's what Deuteronomy means.
Deuteronomos, it's the second giving of the law. And he comes to the end of that. And he says, I have set before you the choice of life or death.
It's Deuteronomy 30 in verse 19. And then the man who takes over for Moses is Joshua and he leads the people into the promised land. And when it comes to the end of his life, he sets the same choice before the people of Israel.
He says to them, choose you this day, whom you will serve. Will you serve the gods your father served across the river or back in Egypt, or are you going to serve the true God, the one true God? And he says, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. This choice runs throughout the scripture.
The prophets reiterate it. Jesus lays the choice before us as well. Choose the way of life, the narrow road, the hard road that leads to life or choose the easy road, the broad road that leads to destruction.
You can repent of your sins, trust in God, receive his salvation and walk in his ways, or you can continue in your rebellion. But if you choose rebellion, what scripture over and over tells us is this, your sin will find you out. You will be punished both in this life, but more importantly, in the life to come.
The wages of sin is death. So which will you choose? Consider the urging of Paul in second Corinthians six, two, he says, behold, now is the favorable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation.
I don't know where everybody in this room stands spiritually. Like I can't see into your heart. I can't see most of your life.
Right? Like we see each other on Sunday, maybe a couple other times throughout the week, but I don't see most of your life, but God does your life is not hidden from God and his judgment is what matters. Where do you stand with him? Have you repented of your sins? Have you acknowledged the truth of what he says and his judgment about your sins, that you deserve death? Have you repented of those sins then and received his grace, accepted what Christ did for you on the cross on your behalf? Are you submitting everything to him? Are you trying to hold something back? Is Christianity just a Sunday morning thing to you and the rest of your life belongs, that's, that's my time. God, God claims all of it.
He, he says everything about you belongs to him and you must then willfully surrender it. He demands complete allegiance and total obedience. Just as God called the Bimelech to choose, just as Moses and Joshua called Israel to choose and just as Paul called the Corinthian church to choose.
So too, the choice is before each of us today. Choose this day whom you will serve. Now is the appointed time.
Now is the day to say, Lord, I will honor you. I will worship you. I will receive salvation in Christ.
I will turn from sin and follow you. And if you submit to him, then the final point really is good news. And the final point is this, God keeps his word to sinners.
We see that in verses eight through 18. So Bimelech rose early in the morning and called all his servants and told them these things. And the men were very much afraid.
And a Bimelech 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 a Bimelech said to Abraham, what did you see that you did this thing? And 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, besides she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father, though, not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife from her.
This is a long time ago prior to the law where this was all banned. And God caused me to wander from my father's house. And I said to her, this is the kindness you must do to me at every place to which we come, you must say of me, he is my brother, then a Bimelech took sheep and oxen male servants and female servants and gave them to Abraham and returned Sarah, his wife to him.
And a Bimelech 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 healed.
God healed a Bimelech and also healed his wife and his female slaves so that they bore children. For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of a Bimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. So Bimelech calls Abraham before him and rebukes him harshly and fairly.
He has every right to say, what have you done? Why did, what did we ever do to you to deserve this Abraham? Like they welcomed him into his land. And, and instead he's repaid them by putting them in a really horrible position by failing to be honest. Is this supposed to be Abraham's role in the nations to bring God's judgment on them? No, his job is to bring God's blessing in you.
Will all the nations of the earth be blessed? He's a prophet. He's supposed to speak the word of the Lord to those around him. And again, as the recipient of God's promise, he's supposed to bring God's blessings to the nations.
But again, Abraham was not focused on that. Abraham was just focused on saving his own skin. I think that was a lesson for Christians today.
To consider the consequences of self-preserving behavior, whether we're focused on protecting our reputation or hiding our faith so we don't offend people or shrinking back from sharing the truth when it might be inconvenient for us. It might have consequences that are negative for us. When we prioritize our own safety, we often risk putting stumbling blocks between unbelievers and Christ.
And this is exactly what Abraham does here. His concern for himself leads him not only to wrong his wife, but to hinder Abimelech's opportunity to have a right relationship with God. He just assumes, oh, there's no fear of God in this place.
They'll kill me. I've got to act to preserve myself. Instead of coming as an authoritative prophet of God and just speaking the word of the Lord to these people.
We already know from previous stories, Abraham's pretty powerful in this place. He has no reason to be afraid. God has preserved him and protected him time and again, and yet he's worried about protecting himself.
And Abraham's excuse takes us right back to the garden. Once again, we see his weak spine and his failure to protect his wife, the repetition of Adam's sin in Genesis 3. When God asked Adam, what have you done? Adam deflected, blaming Eve and God. Well, this woman that you gave me.
Now Abraham follows suit. Well, you don't fear God, Abimelech. And I know she's beautiful.
And you know, technically this isn't a lie. Abimelech had the right to be angry. To me, this is probably like the hardest part for Abimelech is God has told him to return the man's wife, but then to ask Abraham to pray for him.
And if I'm Abimelech, I'm going like, I'm more righteous than him. Why do I need him to pray for me? Yeah. Here's what happens.
Abimelech in obedience to God's command in verse seven, not only returns Sarah, but then more than that, he gives him sheep and oxen and male and female servants, and then he returns her and with her a thousand pieces of silver as a vindication of her chasteness. Despite Abraham's sin, he remains God's chosen representative to the nations. And so in God's mercy, he overcomes Abraham's sin and uses him in bringing about blessing to Abimelech again.
That's, I think a lesson for Christians, an encouraging one. Even if you have blown it in how you represented Christ to others, the apostle Paul says in second Corinthians five, that Christians are ambassadors for Christ, sometimes we're all bad ambassadors, but here God uses Abraham who's doing a terrible job of being an ambassador for Christ, ambassador for the true God, and God still blesses Abimelech through him in response to Abimelech's obedience, Abraham prays and God answers his prayer. Now, in one sense, does God owe Abimelech anything? No, he's, he's given him his life.
Is he obligated to reopen the wombs of Abimelech's wife and female servants? In one sense, again, no, God's not in any man's debt, but Acts 17 says that God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything. We can't do anything that makes it so that God has to pay us back. We can't put God in our debt.
And yet in his grace and in keeping with his own character, God keeps his word. He remains faithful to his promises, not because we deserve it, but because he will always be true to himself. And in that sense, God is in debt to his own honor.
When he makes promises, we can be certain that he will keep his word, offering blessings to those who trust in him, even though they, even though we do not deserve it. This is incredibly important because we're all sinners. None of us is born walking with God, trusting in God, believing in Christ for salvation.
We are all desperately dependent upon the merciful promises of God offered in the gospel, the promises of salvation. What does God promise to repentant sinners? My mind was drawn as I was thinking about this too, the end of Peter's sermon in Acts chapter two. This is shortly after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.
And Peter stands up on the day of Pentecost and he preaches to the gathered crowd, many of whom were there to witness the crucifixion of Christ. And they've come back to Jerusalem a short time later for Pentecost. And he says to them, you're all guilty of the blood of the Messiah.
You are sinners and you deserve God's judgment. That's in short, the message that Peter preaches there. He's in a sense, sticking the finger in their face saying, you deserve to die.
Just like God does with the Bimelech in Genesis 20 and verse 37. Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and all the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off.
Everyone whom the Lord, our God calls to himself with many other words. He bore witness and continue to exhort them saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation. So those who received the word were baptized and they were added that day about 3000 souls.
God promises salvation to those who trust in him. Even those who literally were there and guilty of the blood of Christ were welcome to be saved by trusting in that same blood spilled on their behalf. I think the story of Genesis chapter 20 isn't here to show us what a joke Abraham could be.
It certainly shows us that, but I think more importantly, it highlights to us God's faithfulness towards his promises to sinners. The passage reveals again, four characteristics of God's dealing with sinners first, that he holds us accountable. Second, that he also intervenes restraining us from being as sinful as we could be, and he offers.
The opportunity for and demands a response. He, he demands that we repent and turn from our sin. We can't sit on the fence forever about Jesus.
God calls for a response, repentance, agreeing with God about your sin and turning away from it, embracing the gift of salvation in Christ. And that's a salvation that will transform you from the inside out. 2 Corinthians 5, 17 says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. This is God's promise to every sinner who trusts in Christ.
The same God who healed the Bimelech's family when sinful Abraham prayed for him now promises that for every sinner who trusts in Christ has a perfect high priest to intercede for them. Jesus Christ himself intercedes for sinners who repent of their sins and trust in him. Hebrews chapter seven says that Christ ever lives.
He stands at the right hand of the father ever living to make intercession for the saints, praying for us on our behalf. He stands there and says, they are covered by my blood. They're united to me by faith.
They are saved. And the father gladly welcomes all such sinners into his family, giving them the right John one 12 says to be called children of God. So God is righteous.
He will judge all sin and all sinners. But if you trust in Christ, your sins already been judged. Jesus absorbed the wrath you deserved on the cross and gives you a place in the father's family.
He gives the gift of the Holy spirit of a new nature of everlasting life, life that begins right now, but carries on into eternity, that is God's promise to repent and centers. And so then the question that sits before us, that Genesis 20 poses to us is, will you receive that gift of life? Will you obey his call or will you reject it and face his wrath? There's only one right response. It's to trust Christ.
It's to trust Christ.
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