The Promise In Peril

Take your Bibles this morning and turn to Genesis chapter 20. Genesis chapter 20. You follow along as I begin reading in verse 1. 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 bimlic 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 and god said to him in the dream yes i know that you've 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 brought on me and my kingdom a great sin? You've 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 that they bore children. For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.

Let's pray. God of heaven, now as we come to your word, we pray that you would be pleased to open it to us. Father, we know this is not just a story of what happened a long time ago, But as you said in your word, these things were written in ages past for us upon whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. For those of us who belong to Christ, you have said this is meant for you.

And so I pray that we would see this in the right way, that we would understand what you want to teach us in the story of our father in the faith, Abraham. Help us now to do that. Help us to listen. Help us to learn. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.

The last 25 years have been a story that almost no one would have believed, even if they would have walked every step of the way with you. And it's not like this 25-year odyssey started when you graduated at 18, or maybe even 21 or 25 for that matter. The story starts when you're 75. You are already established and flourishing, although you and your wife have no children.

But then out of nowhere, this God, this one who reveals himself as the creator and the one true God, this God calls you to follow him. He calls you to leave everything and go to a land he will yet show you. But he also makes promises, promises of a land, promises of an honored name, of protection and blessing of becoming a channel of blessing to all the nations and most of all he promises to you a child.

These last 25 years have brought you into conflict with the ruler of Egypt You won a military campaign against a Mesopotamian confederation of four kings rescuing the captives from five cities and then you witnessed the supernatural destruction of the very same cities and their inhabitants that you'd rescued. You've also had a family issue. Your nephew Lot has been a thorn in your side, and now he's impoverished. and that plan with the surrogate mother oh man was that ever bad news it's been 25 years of growing in faith in your god a faith that's been tested a number of times you left your home on the basis of those promises but you flinched when you made it into egypt it was a faith this it was faith this trust in god's promises that fueled your victory against the Mesopotamian kings.

Using Hagar as a surrogate to produce the child that God promised was a weakening of your trust, of your faith. In fact, the real test of your faith is the promise of a child. God made that promise when you were 75 years old. Imagine that. And then you've been waiting month after month after month for 25 years to see if God would keep that promise. God made it official 10 years into the journey when he made that covenant with you.

Making the covenant guaranteed the promise, counting your descendants as numerous as the stars, and you believed every bit of it without hesitation. and then 14 years later when you'd reached the ripe old age of 99 God appeared again and renewed the covenant now promising even kings would come from you and you believed it and then later that very same year God appeared to you one more time and promised that within the next 12 months your wife would have a son. You are absolutely giddy with excitement. At last, my son's going to arrive.

You believe that you can conquer the world with that news. Come what may, you say, I serve a great God who keeps his promises and at last my son, my son will arrive. God is faithful. Well with that filling your heart you suddenly realize that the livestock need to be moved to a different location And so the order goes out to all the servants and their families to start the moving process So Abraham, Sarah, and the whole entourage that goes with them head south to an oasis on the extreme south side of Canaan.

It's an oasis between Kadesh and the Egyptian defensive wall at shore. right along the road by the way that Hagar had traveled some years before they're in Philistine territory now and Abraham and Sarah make a trip to the royal city of Gerar but once again the old fear grips Abraham's heart and he lies about Sarah again and again the ruler of the area Abimelech takes Sarah into his harem. Now, after all that, we're saying, what? Again?

Are you kidding me, Abraham? You're doing that again? When are you going to learn your lesson? Well, now the first thing we need to understand here is the stubborn nature of sin. Before we start jumping down Abraham's throat and saying, you did it again. You're telling the old story again.

She's my sister. You're doing that again. What is wrong with you? Well, look at your life over the last week. Could someone look at you and say, What? You did that again?

What's wrong with you? Right? How would you like to have your story recorded in the Bible for centuries of people to read it? Yeah. So before we start getting too judgmental of Abraham here, You just remember the stubborn nature of sin. And remember how comfortable you become with sin.

So that when tough times come, you naturally do this. Right? The problem with sin is we get comfortable in it. And there are certain sins that we just, that when the pressure's on, we just almost naturally fall back into it. Well, that's his problem here. Is that an excuse for Abraham?

No, it's not. But even with all that in mind, what do we find once more? Let me say it again, and I think this is the theme of Abraham's life. The theme of Abraham's life is his faith. and the testing of it. And one more time we see that Abraham sins because he lacks faith. Because he fails to believe the promises of God.

Now, in my pastoral heart is this desire that you understand from Abraham two things. And that is this. Number one, that we live by faith in the promises of God. All of life, every day, is a life of faith in the promises of God. Abraham stands out as God's poster boy, if you will, about faith. And the second thing my pastor heart wants you to learn is this.

When you don't have faith, sin inevitably fills the void. right you see abraham once more walks more by human wisdom than he does the promises of god you see he had it all figured out didn't he he had it all figured out there is no fear of god in this place got that all figured out he knew what was this and so he made this decision based on what he saw, based on what he heard, based on what he thought, but not based on faith. Do you understand what's going on here? He thinks he has an accurate perception of the situation.

And his wisdom says, if you say, if you claim Sarah as your wife, you're a dead man. And so he's making his decision based on what he sees, based on what he hears, based on what he thinks. It looks like a wise choice. But it's not based on faith. It's not based on the promises of God. He does not make that decision based on the promises of God.

You say, what promises? Remember in chapter 12, the whole litany of promises, a couple of which were this. I will bless those who bless you. I will curse those who curse you. In other words, God promises honor and protection. Anybody who curses you, Again, that means more than just throwing some words at them.

Anybody who tries to harm you I will harm them But I will bless anyone who blesses you In other words there honor and protection And remember he also said you going to be a channel of blessing to the nations Now always remember this. And I would love for you to walk away from the book of Genesis, particularly the chapters 12 through 25, with this in your head. The lack of faith equals the growth of sin.

The lack of faith equals the growth of sin. When faith does not grow, sin blossoms. Okay? What's the sin that we see? Just look at this bloom of sin that we see in this chapter. There's fear of man.

Once more, he's afraid of man. It's incompatible with trusting God. There's lying. Thinking about himself over others. Putting others in danger. The loss of his wife.

The loss of blessing on others. Instead of blessing, affliction comes to others. But the worst thing here is simply this. He puts the promise in danger. He trades away the promise for personal safety. The promise of a son.

He trades it for personal safety. What do you mean? he puts it in in peril well think about it if she is now in Abimelech's harem and she gets pregnant who's going to be thought of as the father Abimelech what happens to the promise to Abraham it's done and besides that all her descendants from then on would be Philistines they wouldn't be the descendants of Abraham they'd be part of the royal family of Gerar not the descendants of Abraham the first thing we need to do here as we look at this text is recognize the sin of faithlessness recognize the sin of faithlessness when we don't believe the promises of God it's not a minor thing it's major in and of itself and it leads to the blooming of other sins. You say, wait a minute.

Does your sin keep God from accomplishing his purposes Does God refuse to keep his promises if you fail Is that what happens here Or maybe he can keep his promises because you fail Is that what the lesson is? Is that what happens? No, it doesn't, does it? Our failure does not compromise God. Now to a human perspective, it looks like he put the promise in peril, doesn't it?

But not from God's. So one thing we have to recognize is not just the sin of faithlessness. We need to recognize the faithfulness of God. Look at the faithfulness of God through this. After he takes Sarah, Abimelech has a dream where God speaks to him. and essentially says, Abimelech, you're dead meat. That's what he says.

I love the way that it's in our text. Abimelech, you're a dead man. What? What are you talking about? I'm a dead man. Yeah, because you're guilty of covetousness.

You wanted another man's wife. And he says, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I'm innocent. I didn't know he was married. I didn't know she was married to him.

I didn't do this out of out of adulterous motives. And then God says, you know what? I'm aware of your innocence. In fact, and I'm using my sanctified imagination here. In fact, I'm the one who produced all that paperwork so you didn't have time to get to Sarah. Right?

Because He says, I'm the one who prevented you from even touching Sarah. That's God's providence. I don't know what happened. You know, maybe he had a bunch of royal paperwork to do, and so he didn't have time to get to the new woman in his harem. But God somehow prevented him from getting that far. And then he goes and says to him, return her to Abraham.

He'll pray for you so that the curse is removed from you. the curse of you dying and then you look at the end of the story all the wombs in his household have been closed so there were no babies and he going to remove that curse as well Now Abimelech after he wakes up calls the royal council together He calls the royal council together. And here's what's interesting. Do you know what you find there?

Abraham was wrong. Because they exhibit a fear of God. Abraham had sized up the situation wrongly. Just look at that. Verse 8, 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.

Notice this as well. 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? Isn't that interesting? You have a pagan king talking about what? Sin.

That's fascinating to me. That is fascinating to me. The fact that Abraham sizes up the situation and gets it wrong. There is a fear of God in this place. There's evidence of that among these pagans. Now how that's possible, I don't know.

But in some way, when they're confronted with God, they are afraid. And he even talks about Abraham sinning against them and him. And again, by the way, notice that a pagan king rebukes God's man. I think that's a horrible place to be. I mean, it's a good place to be if God uses it to get your attention. but how my god must not be honored when the when a pagan rebukes me right but that's what happens to abraham abraham has to explain his sin now and he experiences the humbling of confessing his sin he goes into an explanation and you know what right now don't get hung up on the fact that sarah is his half-sister.

All right? Let's not even get hung up on that. See, this is what we do. We take the things that are just incidental to the whole story, and we want to make a big thing out of it. I don't know. God had not legislated on that yet.

400 years ago. Later, he's going to say, don't marry your sister. At this point, he hasn't said anything about that. So, that's all we're going to say about it. I'm not going to try to defend Abraham. I'm not going to try to explain how he could marry his sister.

I don't know all that. And the Bible doesn't tell us that. The point is, this is his wife. The important thing to see here is that Abraham deceives by using half-truths. at least we can walk away with this much. It doesn't matter if you tell half the truth. If you intend to deceive, you're lying.

Alright? You're lying. And by the way, do you see the pressure he puts on his dear wife? Do you see the pressure that he puts on her? Where he says in verse 13, 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 in every place to which we come. Say me, say, he is my brother.

In other words, he's saying to her, you know what? If you really love me, this is what you'll say. I mean, boy, just the thing that this man of God went through. Well, so he sinned. Abraham sins. He confesses it.

It's all out in the open. By the way, it's all in the open for you to read thousands of years later. Right? And then Abimelech goes to the process of restoring the family's reputation. He gives Abraham the free run of the country. You can go wherever you want.

He gives them, again, all kinds of wealth. And notice, he vindicates the name of Sarah. Now, I'm not sure how that worked, but that gift of the thousand pieces of silver was a testimony to her innocence. That nothing had happened and that she was his wife. And so there's vindication for them in his actions at that point. So they vindicated everything cleared away and then notice that Abraham prays in what happens to Abimelech and his country There blessing Abraham becomes the channel of blessing.

And notice, he becomes the channel of blessing to a Gentile people. A blessing to the nations. You can see how God is building the story of Abraham and his people being a blessing to the nations before we get to the ultimate blessing of the ultimate seed of Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ. The question is, can you trust God? You say, what a stupid question.

Of course you can trust God. Who in this whole congregation wouldn't say that you can't trust God? That's not the point. We all can say it. But do we? Right?

Of course we say it. But do we trust God? Does this story tell you anything about the faithfulness of God? Absolutely it does. God kept His promise of protecting Abraham even though Abraham was unfaithful. Even though Abraham was unfaithful.

And I want you to notice something, and this is what's really interesting to me, is that God protects Abraham even when the harm aimed towards him is unintentional. It's unintentional, right? But Abimelech says, I'm innocent of the charge. And God says, I know you are. But what? Unless that guy prays for you, you're still dead. you ever think about that this is how faithful God is even when the harm coming to his man Abraham is unintentional God's still going to keep his promise of protecting him you see even though it's unintentional so God is really going to keep his promise he's going to protect him do you think God's going to keep his promises to you do you think he'll keep his promises to you even when you may blow it do you think he keep his promises Does he say no I not going to do it now You blew it No And you know what else happens here Again the promise of God Abraham had the marvelous opportunity to be a channel of blessing to these people.

But he did not trust God and he lost a greater opportunity to be that channel. He eventually was the channel of blessing. but how great would it have been if he'd walked into that country with faith right how much more of a blessing he could have been at the heart of it all is a faith that believes this i think at the bottom line of every act of faith is this is god good is god good because when he tells you to do certain things the situation says that's pretty chancy but god says but i'm i'm promising you this do you believe that god's good yesterday in the last session of this training event my friend team tim keeter was speaking they They pulled us from all over. Tim is essentially a rocket scientist from Huntsville, Alabama.

He's involved in developing weapons and missiles and all that kind of stuff. He's really kind of an interesting guy. He's a young guy. He's 45 years old. He was one of the teachers, and I count him as a good friend. But he told the story yesterday.

His last session was How to Handle Suffering, The Grace of God and My Cancer. He's 45. He has this really rare form of thyroid cancer. And he related the story of how they've been walking through that. The jury's still out. He's not going to know until the 19th of June whether everything's clear or not yet.

He's got three children. His oldest is in college. and he's got a 13, his daughter is in college. He's got a 16-year-old son and a 13-year-old son. And the thing that Tim kept saying through the whole thing, this is one of those workshops where everybody's crying, right? All the way through this thing he said what got me through and what getting me through right now is this the character of God I know God is good.

Even if something happens to me, even if I die, I know that God is good. And that's what's carried him through. you see at the bottom line you're asking the question is God good when he makes that command is God good when he tells me to do difficult things is God good when he tells me to live by faith is he good yeah that's the bottom line Abraham had to remember that God is good there's one more thing to see I think in this passage not only recognize the sin of your faithlessness, not only do we recognize the faithfulness of God, but recognize the grace of God in his faithfulness. Recognize the grace of God in his faithfulness.

Here's something important to see. Abraham's faith was not the only thing put to the test here, was it? It wasn't just Abraham's faith. The covenant that God made with Abraham, the covenant itself, is put to the test in this incident. How so? Well, God proves faithful to fulfill His promises even though His covenant partner failed.

God was faithful to fulfill His promises even though His covenant partner failed. Because Abraham fails, does God say, fine, if that's the way you're going to be next time I'm not going to protect you and you know what forget about the child forget about the whole descendant thing I'm done is that what God does? uh uh that is grace that's grace do you fail as a result do you fail believing the promises of god and does god then say to you you know all those promises i made you in christ the deal's off is that what he does once you think about it Is that what He does? We take this for granted, I think.

God's made promises in Christ, has He not? And it's not because of you that He keeps His promises. It's because of Christ. And that is a more solid footing for us than our performance. It's grace. God made those promises in Christ and he will keep them to you even when you fail God will be faithful in keeping his promises not only does God remain faithful to his covenant but God proves faithful to his covenant partner he does not cast away his flawed saint but you know what he does to him he restores him to his purpose isn't that fascinating now you'd expect as many of us do expect even now God's going to show up with a big stick and he's going to start beating us man what are you going to when are you going to get it whack whack whack right when are you going to get it man but you know what he does sometimes he does whack us don get me wrong The Bible makes that clear Sometimes he disciplines us But for what reason Because he loves you.

It is all of grace. And he remains faithful to his covenant partner by putting him back, restoring him to the place that he was supposed to occupy as being the one through whom blessing would come. He's the one who has to pray for them. Did it not strike you as strange that Abraham sins. Abimelech sins unintentionally. Abraham sins very intentionally.

Abimelech sins unintentionally. Abimelech is in trouble and God says to him, unless that guy over there prays for you, you're dead. What? That doesn't make any sense. That's grace. Because what grace does is takes the failures and transforms them.

Now, at this point, we don't see a transformation. But in the next two chapters, you're going to see that grace doesn't mean Abraham just gets sloppy about obeying God. His faith grows so that the ultimate test finally comes. The ultimate test of his faith And he obeys So you see God grace is such that when we unfaithful he going to be faithful to transform us so that we are what he intends us to be You see, it's all of his grace.

That's what's happening with Abraham. That's what God does with us. now when you walk away from this chapter then you ought to walk away with hope you ought to walk away with hope greater hope than even Abraham had because our hope is centered on the revelation of Jesus Christ and the gospel for you see it's because of Christ that he's going to remain faithful to this covenant it's because of Christ that he'll remain faithful to you I don't know about you, but I get a lot of hope when I read of God's saints in the past failing. Isn't it interesting that God's instruments are never superheroes?

They fail. But then what does that cause us to do? We start looking at the one who does not fail There hope here because there grace that expresses itself in faithfulness even when we're faithless. Does that mean then that we should sin so that grace abounds all the more? No. No.

It means I'm going to say, oh God, help me to be faithful because you're faithful and because you're gracious. you love me that much you're faithful to me that much will God help me to love and to serve you Father we're thankful for your word this revelation of yourself I pray now that we would take this to heart we would recognize that when we're faithless we sin but that we would see that in Christ You are faithful and You are gracious. Lord, use that to help us to serve You. Grant it for Your glory, we pray.

In Jesus' name, Amen.