Let's be turning to Genesis chapter
20. Now we're told in verse 1, And Abraham journeyed from thence
toward the south country, and dwelled between Kadesh and Shur,
and sojourned in Gerar. And Gerar means lodging. And
it was a town of the Philistines. It was a place where the Philistines
were. And we're never told why Abraham left the place where
he was. He had been dwelling in Mamre now for a lot of years. And we're not told why he left
Mamre. The only thing that we know is
that it was immediately after the Lord had destroyed Sodom
and Gomorrah. This was right after the Lord
had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for the iniquity, the wickedness
of the people there and the Sodomites there. And we know it was immediate
because it's the next chapter when Isaac is born. And so this
had to have come right on the heels of that destruction. And we're not told this specifically,
but But we have to wonder, is it related to that? Because while
the Lord never directed Abraham to leave Mamre. We're not told
that. The Lord said to Abraham, get up from here and go somewhere
else. And we don't know if Abraham
just saw this destruction and he saw similar practices or the
same practices being done to a degree near him. Or maybe he
saw some stragglers who had escaped the destruction coming out who
he thought might be the same type of people. And some have
even said that perhaps it was related to Lot who had committed
incest with his daughters on that heinous deed. And that perhaps
people were saying to him, what is this? Is this your religion?
Is this your faith? Is this what you guys believe?
That a man who professes to believe like you would do such a wicked
thing? So we're not told, but it does
say that Abraham's journey took him downward now. He traveled
toward the south country. And I don't know if it's intended
this way, but his heading south certainly foretells of what happens
here in this chapter, because Abraham himself comes into sin
once again. And in verse 2, it says what
that familiar sin is. Abraham said of Sarah, his wife,
she is my sister. And Abimelech, who was the king
there, said, all right. She's a pretty woman. I'll take
her for myself. And that's what he did. He sent
and took Sarah. And it seems kind of brusque,
just decided he liked her. I'm the king. I'm taking her.
And so he does that. He takes Sarah. into his house. And I say it's familiar because
this is exactly what Abraham did when he went down into Egypt.
He did this same sin. He said, Sarah's my sister. And Sarah said, Abraham is my
brother. And we're told this in Genesis
12, 13. He said, say I pray thee, thou art my sister. And so Pharaoh eventually took
her. Now, he was courting. Abraham
for the hand of Sarah. He was giving Abraham cattle
and sheep and things and men servants and maid servants and
he was trying to win him over and win Sarah over in that way
but he takes her into his house and then Pharaoh's plagued and
then when it's found out what's going on, Pharaoh came back to
Abraham and said, behold thy wife, take her. take her and
go thy way." So in other words, Pharaoh was angry and he banished
Abraham from Egypt. He sent him out of the land completely,
but he got to keep all the gifts that he had given to him, and
that's likely where they picked up Hagar. Actually, that's probably
where Hagar came. She was an Egyptian, and they
picked her up somewhere on their way into Egypt or out of it.
Now he's doing the same sin again. And the only thing that delivered
Sarah was the interposition of God. God came in and God intervened
and God delivered Sarah out of the household of this King Abimelech
of Gerar. And so what we see here in this
chapter, in chapter 20, is some honesty. We see some honesty of the Holy
Spirit that is very telling of what we are by nature. Abraham
is a highly esteemed man in our faith. We look to Abraham and
we think Abraham's really great. And he's looked to by a lot of
people. In fact, Abraham is called in
scripture the father of them that believe. He's the father
of all that believe. You that are of faith are patterned
after this man. You that are of faith. Abraham
was of faith and were patterned or we see our faith patterned
in Abraham. And we come to the Lord just
like Abraham did. Abraham believed God and it was
counted to him for righteousness, for righteousness. And that's
our hope, that's our confidence. This is the word of God. We come
by faith, believing that God justifies us perfectly, justly,
righteously, not for our works, but for Christ's sake. He's our
Savior. He's our Deliverer. He's our
God. He's our all. And so what's so
grievous about Abraham's sin? And as you meditate on this chapter,
and I think there's a lot here more than even what I bring out
this morning, but there are some things to take note of regarding
our own sin. regarding our own sin. There's
some things that we can meditate on in regards to what we are
and who the Lord is. And one thing that the Lord teaches
his people here is that we're all sinners, capable of falling
into sin, even grievous sin, sin that is shameful. And Abraham
is certainly one of the first that we see of men who believe
God who fell grievously, but he's not the last. He's not the
last. We see it in David. We see it
in Peter. We see it in our brethren, just
how grievous we can fall in sin. And so what does the Lord teach
us about sin in this chapter? Well, one thing, God exposes
it as sin by confronting Abimelech. He actually shows us that this
is sinful in his speaking to Abimelech. So let's look at verses
three through seven. But God came to Abimelech in
a dream by night and said to him, behold, thou art but a dead
man. for the woman which thou hast
taken, for she is a man's wife. But Abimelech had not come near
her, and he said, Lord, wilt thou slay also a righteous nation? Said he not unto me, she is my
sister? And she, even she herself, said,
he is my brother. In the integrity of my heart
and innocency of my hands have I done this. And God said unto
him in a dream, yea, I know that thou didst this in the integrity
of thy heart. For I also withheld thee from
sinning against me. Therefore suffered I thee not
to touch her. He's saying, I prevented you.
You're not the righteous one. I am righteous, and I prevented
you from doing this wicked thing. Now, therefore, restore the man
his wife, for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and
thou shalt live. And if thou restore her not,
know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou and all that are thine. And so the Lord is showing us
here that this is serious. This is very serious, what he's
done, this adultery that he's about to commit. And the Lord
shows us that this is wrong, that this is sinful when he's
speaking to this king here. And this man's deserving of death
because he had another man's wife. That's what we see here. But does this excuse Abraham? Does this excuse Abraham's behavior
even though the Lord came to Abimelech? Is Abraham justified
in what he has done? No. No, he's not. And there's
unbelief. What we see here is there's unbelief
in Abraham's heart. Abraham is walking in unbelief. He's not trusting the Lord in
his journeyings. So why did he do this again?
You know, since Egypt, We see with Abraham, he's supped with
the Lord. He's had blessed fellowship with
the Lord. He's sat down and eaten with the Lord and his angels.
When the Lord came to him, he heard the promises of God repeated
to him over and over again. and over and over again. He kept
hearing the gospel, the promises of the covenant of God's grace
toward his people, specifically toward Abraham. And the Lord
brought him into confidence. The Lord spoke to him as a friend
speaks to a friend. And he told them what he was
going to do to Sodom, how that he was going to destroy it for
their iniquity. And in doing that, he brought
Abraham closer to him. Abraham began to supplicate the
Lord. He began to intercede for the
righteous, even to deliver Sodom for the righteous sake. And while
Sodom was destroyed because there wasn't even ten people found
there, the Lord did take care to deliver a lot out of that
destruction. He didn't destroy the righteous
with the wicked. He did save lot. And so we see all these blessed
things of fellowship here, and it's possible that Abraham left
Mamre to get as far away from that area as possible, judging
the behaviors, the practices of these men to be wicked. to
be sinful and wicked, and he may have said, I don't want to
be anywhere near this place. I'm getting out of here. Let's
pack up. Kids, we're moving out. And he pulled everybody, his
household, away. However, we see that he could
not escape his own sin. He was fleeing. unrighteousness
and wickedness, but he couldn't escape the sin of his own heart. And that's what we see of our
sin. Like Paul, we're made to see
this law, that when I would do good, evil is right there with
me. I yet have this old man of flesh. And I have thoughts of sin and
wickedness and vileness and corruption, and I see it in myself. We see
that pattern in Paul, who confessed that he was a sin, and as he's
writing his letters, he's confessing that he's more and more sinful,
till at last he's the chief of sinners. Because as we grow in
grace, we see more and more, even as the Lord takes things
out of our hands and removes sin, yet we see more and more
the corruption of our own heart. We see how desperate we are for
the grace of God. And he's made precious to us
in that he doesn't cast us off, but he's very gracious and very
kind. And what we do see in here, let
me say it now and I'll say it again later, we see the immutable,
the unchanging grace of God for his child. Not because we've
earned it, not because we're worthy, but because God himself
will be gracious to his people in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
that's the comfort that we have here in this chapter, even while
we see the sin of Abraham. And so the first thing we see
with Abraham is that God told Abraham, and this is what pronounces
this as sinful, God told Abraham, she's going to bear you a son,
and his name shall be Isaac. This is the seed of the covenant
through whom the Messiah will come. And he told him that, and
yet here he goes down to Gerar and he says, she's my sister.
And what happens? She gets swept away by this king. And Abraham seems, I can't say
he's indifferent to it, but he brought this upon himself that
the woman who's supposed to bear the seed, the promised seed,
has been taken captive now. And there's nothing Abraham can
do about it. What happened to the promise?
Why didn't he trust the Lord? The Lord said, you're going to
have this seed, Isaac. And now he goes into Gerar and
gets this situation by his own sin and unbelief. And that's
what sin does. Sin causes us to forget the costs,
to put them aside, and sin causes us to forget the promises. forget what the Lord has promised
us and and we see just how corrupt and vile and evil sin is. It shows that we don't know what
happened to Abraham here. It doesn't even say whether Abraham
what he was thinking. I'm sure he was upset about it
but But we're not told what Abraham did as a result of this. And
that's what sin does. When we're tempted and drawn
away with the sin, you forget the costs, you put them out of
your mind, and you forget the promises of God. And you put
them out of your mind so you can go and do the things that
you would do. And that's what we see, the evil
and wretchedness of this corrupt flesh. And another thing is,
if this happens with Abraham, and we're patterned after Abraham,
then it's true of us. We do the same thing that Abraham
does. It's true of our own sin and
our own evil works. Now the second thing with Abraham
is that he's returning to an old sin. He's committed this
sin before. He's saying Sarah is my sister
and he's done this and we haven't seen this since Egypt and how
long ago was that? It had been something like 20-25
years since he left Egypt. 20-25 years And we haven't seen this sin
since that time. Since that time, he's built altars
to the Lord. He vanquished the king of the
north, Chedar Laomer, and he beat those kings. He delivered
Lot. He was met by Melchizedek, who interposed between him and
the son of the king of Sodom, King Bera, I think his name is,
which means son of evil. And Melchizedek came right in
there and gave him the bread of heaven. He interposed himself
so that Abraham was strengthened. And then the king of Sodom spoke
to him, and Abraham, being strengthened, said, no, I don't want your riches.
I'm not going to be made rich by you. I don't need what you
have. I have something more precious, more precious, and the Lord. And God visited him many times.
And every time God visited Abraham, He declared the gospel to him.
He declared the promises, the covenant promises to him and
rejoiced his heart with that truth, with that blessed news
of what God had done for Abraham. And so what happens now? Well,
he's put into circumstances that brings out that evil in his heart,
of that wicked nature, of his evil, of this fleshly fallen
nature. And what caused him to fall the
first time? Maybe those circumstances hadn't happened. Well, they hadn't
happened in a long time. But here it happens again, and
he falls right back into committing that same sin, that same sin
that he had committed before that we thought was put away
20, 25 years ago. And so for one, this makes me
tremble from my own heart, because I know that that same evil nature
is there. Lord, save me. Lord, keep me. And second, I want to be more
gracious and more piteous to those that are greater than me
when they fall in sin. Because we all can think of someone,
at least, that we esteemed highly and yet fell in sin. And it was
shameful. And it grieves us. People disappoint
us. People disappoint us. And I think
about that all the time as your pastor. I don't want to disappoint
you. I don't want to fall into sin
because I know how it grieves the heart of the people of God
when someone that they love, a brother in Christ, disappoints
them. And I get that. It does weigh
on me and I know it weighs on your hearts. Because you love
your brethren and you love the Lord. And then third, We don't
know when things are all going to come together to put us in
that spot and press us and bring us to see our weakness in that
hour and to see our inability in ourselves, to see just how
weak we are and how desperately we need the grace of God to deliver
us, especially when we thought things were gone and put away.
I thought I dealt with that. And here it is. Raising its head
again in my thoughts and heart. And it reminds me of what the
Lord said when he said, Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to
have thee, that he might sift you like wheat. But I've prayed
for you that your faith not fail. And we look at that and we think,
well, it looked like his faith did fail. No, it didn't. The
Lord kept him. He didn't go off. The Lord gave
him repentance and the Lord delivered him. But Peter did fall into
sin, but the Lord delivered him. And Peter then knew what the
Lord was saying because at first Peter denied it. When the Lord
said, you're gonna deny me three times, he said, that's impossible. That'll never happen to me. I don't know where you're getting
that from, but I'm going to stand with you. Everyone else is going
to leave you, but not me, Lord. I'll stay with you." And the
Lord showed him, no, no, the strength is not in you. The strength
is in me. Peter, I believe Peter, because
Luke, we're told, Luke said, I went and interviewed people,
and I got these things. And Luke is the one that recorded
that. And I'm sure Peter said to him,
you make sure you put that in. You let them see what I am, that
those my brethren, when they sin, that they not despair. Because
we see the grace of God, the unchangeable grace of God to
keep us. and to deliver us out of sin
when we should be cast off for our works. And then our Lord,
he does this for his children to make us to know the infirmity
of our flesh, not to give us an excuse for sinning, but the
Lord told, he told Paul, he said, my grace is sufficient for you.
And so we will be brought to see our weaknesses, not to give
us any liberty to sin or to use as a cloak of sin, but the Lord
does let us see our weakness. He lets us see our infirmity.
He makes us to know the evil of sin, just how deadly, how
wicked, how awful sin is, how hurtful and destructive sin is. And to know, to let us know the
great death that he's delivered us from, that Christ would be
made precious to us. Because we know he died for me. I'm the sinner. He's there on
that cross for my sins and he makes every one of his children
know That's why Christ went to that cross not for any sins of
his own but because sin is so evil so deadly so vile so destructive
that it took the Son of God to come in the flesh to lay down
his life as a Sacrifice for the sins of his people because we
can't save ourselves That's what the Lord makes us to know And
he makes us to know we see this throughout scripture. In Deuteronomy
8, verse 2 and 3, our Lord told Israel, and thou shalt remember
all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these 40 years in
the wilderness to humble thee and to prove thee, to know what
was in thine heart, to see all that ugliness that's in our heart
by nature, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or no.
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee
with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers
know, that he might make thee know that man doth not live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of the Lord doth man live. And so that's what our Lord is
teaching every one of you. Whom he loves, whom he's called,
When He's gathered here together to hear His Word, that's what
He's teaching us. As we go through life, He's making
us, He's humbling us that He might exalt us. Right? And not
we exalting ourselves and being puffed up and arrogant and thinking
of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. The Lord does
that for His people and it's grace. It's His grace. And so
he makes us to confess with John the Baptist, he must increase
and I must decrease. And we're made willing in the
day of his power for that to happen. And Paul, like Paul,
we are always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord
Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest
in our body. If you want others to see Christ,
it's going to be at the expense of your flesh and your life. You're going to be withered.
But he gives that desire and that willingness in his people
to lay down for Christ. But that doesn't come naturally.
That's of the spirit. That's of his stripping. And
he leads us through narrow paths to strip us, right? Those narrow
paths that are tight and there's thorns and thistles and things
that strip and rip off this flesh and take off these grave clothes
that we be conformed to the image of Christ. And it all comes down
narrow to Him. And that's who we're brought
to stand face to face with is Christ our Savior. To behold
Him and Him alone. That comes with the dying of
the flesh, which he works in us. We don't work that in ourselves,
he works that in us by his grace. Paul said, he gave us the sentence
of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves,
but in God, which raiseth the dead. And so we're gonna die,
and we die daily that we might be raised from the dead by the
power and glory of our God. He does that for his people,
and so, The Lord reveals what's in our heart through pressing
circumstances, through trials and difficulties, not that He
tempts us, but He's shown us, He's humbling us, and He's bringing
us to the end in ourselves that we would cry out to Him, Lord,
save me. Save me, Lord. I see what I am, and I need You
to save me entirely, because I cannot save myself. And he
makes us to know this. Now, Abimelech had asked Abraham
why he would do such an awful thing in saying Sarah was his
sister. And Abraham explained it this
way. He tells us that this sinful
plan was hatched way back when. He says in verse 13, Genesis
20, 13, it came to pass when God caused me to wander from
my father's house that I said unto her, this is thy kindness
which thou shalt show unto me. At every place, whither we shall
come, say of me, he is my brother. In other words, they brought
this work, they hatched this plan when they were still in
Ur of the Chaldees, that land of idolatry, that land of wickedness
there. And what it's saying is this
is an old work. This is something he came up
with in his flesh to help him out in times of need. So he could trust God to do the
mighty works to save him, to save his soul, and to bless him
in the covenant. But when it came to the things
of this world, he didn't know if God would save his body and
protect him. and keep him alive. And so, that's
something very strikingly that we saw in Lot too, wasn't it?
Lot did the same thing. Lot said, oh no, I ain't going
to that mountain. Let me go to Zoar first. And
he went to Zoar before he went onward to that mountain. And
generally, we have a pretty low opinion of Lot. We know he's
a believer, we know he's a child of God, but we don't think very
highly of Lot. I mean, we do think highly of
Abraham, and yet we see the same sin in Abraham, and God showing
us that he's no respecter of persons. There's none of us here
that can boast or exalt ourselves over our brethren, because the
greatest man and the lowest man were guilty of the same sin.
And that's true. That says what we are by nature,
the greatest and the lowest. of us is guilty of sin and corruption. And we need the grace of God
to save us, every one of us, every one of us. Now, the thing
that delivered Sarah from Abimelech wasn't Abraham's integrity. Abraham
didn't get this dream and he didn't go in there and say, hey,
buddy, I made a mistake. She's my wife. Can I have her
back? No, Abraham didn't do it. The
Lord did it. The Lord saved and delivered Sarah. This came because
God interposed with Abimelech in a dream, and he turned the
king's heart. As the waters of a river, as
a river turneth, so the Lord turneth the heart of the king
whithersoever he pleases. And that's what he did. He turned
Abimelech's heart. And this is what the Lord has
done for every one of us. He interposed the blood of Christ.
He interceded for us. He came in and delivered us by
his blood. He delivered us from the sin
and the captivity of our corruption, sin, and death. And so what we
see of the corruption in Abraham, the Lord is saying, this is in
you. And just as I delivered Sarah and delivered her back
into the arms of Abraham, that's what I've done. I've delivered
you from death. and I've delivered you into the
arms of my Son, of Christ, our Savior, our Mediator. And so
the Lord is showing us that Christ, and Christ alone is perfect.
He's bringing us down to see our sin, and Abraham here, that
we might see the glory of Christ, and see just how great and wonderful
Christ is. You know, when you look at Christ,
And we see his ministry in the flesh. He never sinned, and he
was put into every circumstance, every trial that we go through
with the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride
of life. Christ endured every single thing and was faithful. When he was hungry, starving
for 40 days, and the devil came and tempted him, he didn't once
sin against the Father. He glorified the Father in all
things. And when Pharisee came to him at night, and when a woman,
a Samaritan, spoke to him at the well with silly questions
and not understanding and just showing their ignorance, Christ
answered them kindly, and he spoke the truth to them in every
way. When someone was sick, he healed
them. He healed them, what was it,
the 10 lepers? And only one of them came back
and thanked him. But he healed all ten of them. The nine that
were Jews and the one Samaritan came back and he thanked him. And then when his disciples were
in danger, Christ willingly went with those men, those soldiers
there, that his disciples would go free. And then, in spite of
the fact that they all forsook Him and Peter denied Him, what
did the Lord do? He willingly went to the cross
and laid down His life, bearing their sins, their sins of forsaking
Him and denying Him and all the other things that they did. He
bore those sins and put them away by the sacrifice of Himself
to the Father. So Christ did that. And what
the Lord is showing us is He's our Savior. He's our salvation. We're sinners, but I've given
you a perfect, complete, full, sovereign salvation that you
might look to me and rest in me and believe me and trust me
and keep your eyes on me, ever looking to me because Christ
is our salvation. And so this in here, it was grievous
and it was repeated But the Lord interposed for Abraham he interposed
for Sarah and he sent them away safely He didn't even even the
King Abimelech didn't even banish him from the land. He said Here
she is go live where you want to live in land this you can
do that and Abimelech what this chapter shows us is the immutable
grace of our God to save his children and He does not change. That's why you sons of Jacob
are not destroyed. That's why we're saved and kept,
because the Lord doesn't change. He is gracious and kind and loving
for Christ's sake. And Abimelech, he reproved Abraham,
he reproved Sarah. You can read this chapter again
later today. And we can only wonder what he
thought of Abraham, but God said he's a prophet. I don't know
what the opinion of Abimelech was of Abraham, after this but
God said he's a prophet and he's gonna pray for you and then you'll
be healed and that's that's what happened and our Lord never stops
seeing his people in Christ Abraham's never spoken ill of in here by
Abimelech he is because we see that we're sinners but the Lord
is continually kind to Abimelech. And what do we read in Numbers
23, 21? He hath not beheld iniquity in
Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel. The Lord his God is
with him, and the shadow of a king is among them. And so the Lord
is saying, there is no condemnation for you that are in Christ. You
need him, and I need him. And he calls his people to Christ,
to believe him, to trust him. Not to go off and to think that
we can save ourselves. Our salvation is in Christ and
we're going to be led by Christ and kept by Christ and kept looking
to Christ wholly because that's where the Lord saves his people.
That's where the Lord is gracious and blesses his people in Christ
Jesus alone. Amen.