Now let's turn to Genesis chapter 20 for
the exposition, expositional reading, I should say, the
reading of the passage that will be expounded
in a few moments.
Genesis chapter 20.
One of the advantages of expository preaching is
that we have to preach on the apparently
good chapters as well as the apparently strange
chapters, and this is one of the strange
ones.
So we have to handle it, or try
to at least.
So let's read for our scripture reading the
18 verses of Genesis chapter 20.
Now Abraham journeyed from there toward the land
of the Negev and settled between Kadesh and
Shur.
Then he sojourned in Gerar.
Gerar, incidentally, is in Philistia, so this is
the first contact of the elect people of
God with the Philistines, or the Philistines, and
that's very significant in itself.
And Abraham said of Sarah, his wife, she
is my sister.
So Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took
Sarah.
But God came to Abimelech in a dream
of the night and said to him, behold,
you are a dead man.
That sounds almost like our language today, doesn't
it?
You're dead.
You're a dead man because of the woman
whom you have taken, for she is married.
Now just an aside to those of you
who are men, the Hebrew text reads literally,
for she is lorded over by a lord.
It's not a nice way to speak of
marriage.
Lorded over by a lord.
That's literal.
Use it any way you see fit, men.
For protection.
Now Abimelech had not come near her, and
he said, Lord, wilt thou slay a nation,
even though blameless?
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 and the
innocence of my hands, I have done this.
Then God said to him in the dream,
yes, I know that in the integrity of
your heart you have done this, and I
also kept you from sinning against me.
Therefore I did not let you touch her.
Now therefore restore the man's wife, for he
is a prophet, and he will pray for
you and you will live.
But if you do not restore 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 all these
things in their hearing, and the men were
greatly frightened.
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 on my kingdom a
great sin?
You have done to me things that ought
not to be done.
And Abimelech said to Abraham, what have you
encountered that you have done this thing?
And Abraham said, because I thought, surely there
is no fear of God in this place,
and they will kill me because of my
wife.
Besides, she actually is my sister, the daughter
of my father, but not the daughter of
my mother, and she became my wife.
So Sarah and Abraham had the same father,
but different mothers.
She was his half-sister.
And it came about when God, incidentally this
word God here is the word Elohim, but
the verb that is used is a verb
that is used of that which is normally
bad, and it's used in a number that
is rather different.
I cannot go into the details, it's not
necessary.
It's possible that this should be translated gods,
and so Abraham even stoops to speak of
the deity in the terms of the heathen.
And it came about when gods caused me
to wander from my father's house.
We'll leave it as God, but the other
possibility remains.
In that case it would be even more
culpable that he speaks as he does.
But I said to her, this is the
kindness which you will show to me.
Everywhere we go, say of me, he is
my brother.
Abimelech then took sheep and oxen and male
and female servants and gave them to Abraham
and restored his wife Sarah to him.
And Abimelech said, behold, my land is before
you settle wherever you please.
And to Sarah he said, behold, I have
given your brother a thousand pieces of silver.
Behold, it is your vindication before all who
are with you, and before all men you
are cleared.
In order that I will not, I won't
have time to say anything about this much
in the message, let me say about verse
16 that there is a difference of opinion
about the meaning of this verse.
It is possible that this is regarded by
Abimelech as a kind of atonement.
That is, he pays the money in the
light of the fact that he has wronged
Sarah.
On the other hand, it is possible that
he is being sarcastic because he says, behold,
I have given your brother, not your husband,
your brother a thousand pieces of silver.
In other words, he's using the terms that
she used in a sarcastic way, reminding her
that she said that Abraham was her brother.
In that case, it might be that the
thousand pieces of silver, which is for a
covering of the eyes, literally, your vindication, that
what he means is take the thousand pieces
of silver and buy yourself a good hat
or veil, and buy a veil for the
rest of the women who serve you so
that others will know that you truly are
a married woman.
In that case, he would be rather sarcastic
in his language to her, and it's possible
that that's the way that that should be
taken, but we cannot be sure.
Verse 17, And Abraham prayed to God, and
God healed Abimelech and his wife and his
maids, so that they bore children.
For the Lord had closed fast all the
wombs of the household of Abimelech because of
Sarah, Abraham's wife.
May God bless this reading of his word.
Our subject for this morning in the exposition
of Genesis chapter 20 is the patriarch practicing
deceit.
I know that the first time that you
read Genesis chapter 20, after having read the
preceding 19 chapters, the impression that you get
is, how is it possible for a man
such as Abraham to practice the same form
of deceit that he has practiced previously?
Was the father of the faithful a phlegm
-phlegm artist after all, a pathological liar, a
phony, a faker, a Machiavellian patriarch's clothing, a
jackdaw in peacock's feathers, or to use Bunyan's
word, a saint abroad and a devil at
home?
We know enough of the Bible, of course,
to know that the answer is no, he
was not these things.
But how can we then explain Genesis chapter
20, which some evangelical commentators have called one
of the most difficult chapters in the Bible
to understand?
After all, we remember that the Holy Spirit
has worked in initial movements in Abraham's life.
He has made some early faltering steps, but
then he has made some advances.
But how can we explain this relapse into
faithless scheming, and this relapse into faithless scheming
for the second time?
And not only faithless scheming the second time,
but it's the same kind of scheming, the
very same scheming that he practiced previously, twenty
years ago.
In the meantime, he has been justified or
announced as justified in the Bible.
He's been told, of course, that he's the
father of one in whom all the families
of the earth shall be blessed.
He's just been told that his wife, Sarah,
is to be the mother of the seed,
and now he gives her into the hands
of the Philistine king.
It's very difficult to understand, if we look
at it from the human standpoint.
Now, without trying to answer that at the
moment, I think we can say that Genesis
chapter 20 illustrates several important truths, and if
we gather these truths together, we'll have some
answer to the question of Genesis chapter 20
as a whole.
In the first place, we learn it's hard
even for patriarchs to lay aside besetting sin.
We live in days frequently in which, in
evangelical circles, it is regarded as normal for
Christians to live almost a sinless life.
We even have people suggesting that it is
possible for believers to live sinless lives.
And if that is not specifically stated, it
is commonly taught in evangelical circles that there
is a plane of life to which we
may attain, and once we attain to that
plane of life, then things go rather easily.
Thomas Brooks was one of the Puritans, and
he did not believe that.
He said of David, his heart was more
often out of tune than his harp.
And another Puritan said, a sheep may fall
into the ditch, but it is the swine
that wallows in it.
And I think there is a great deal
of truth in that, because believers are individuals
who may fall into the ditch at any
time, and in the same ditch, as Abraham
does here.
But the difference between a believer and an
unbeliever is not that the believer does not
fall into the ditch, but the believer, the
unbeliever does.
The difference is that the unbeliever does wallow
in the ditch.
He loves his sin.
He likes to persist in it.
He is perfectly happy in persisting in it.
But the believer is a person who falls
into the ditch and becomes very unhappy because
of having fallen into the ditch.
Now that's one lesson that I think we
need to learn.
That is that even patriarchs find it difficult
to lay aside besetting sin.
Now this sin, as we shall see, was
a besetting sin for Abraham and Sarah.
Another thing that we learn here is that
character is not the ground of our acceptance
before God.
And it is well for us to remember
that, because occasionally we forget.
We tend to think sometimes that the reason
that Abraham was the man that he was,
and the reason that he had the position
that he had, was because of some merit
in his own personal life.
But that is not true.
Character is not the ground of our acceptance
before God.
The mercy that God shows us does not
come from anything that we may have earned
by the kind of life that we have
lived.
A few weeks back, Carolyn Custis, who often
selects the material that we put on the
right hand side of the inner part of
our bulletin, put in a little section from
Mr. Spurgeon on the text, I Will Remember
My Covenant, from Genesis chapter 9 and verse
15.
You may have remembered reading it.
But Spurgeon writes something like this, Mark the
form of the promise, and I will remember
my covenant.
God does not say, and when you shall
look upon the bow, and you shall remember
my covenant, then I will not destroy the
earth.
But it is gloriously put, not upon our
memory, which is fickle and frail, but upon
God's memory, which is infinite and immutable.
The bow shall be in the cloud, and
I will look upon it, that I may
remember the everlasting covenant.
Oh, it is not my remembering God, it
is God's remembering me, which is the ground
of my safety.
It is not my laying hold of his
covenant, but his covenant's laying hold on me.
Glory be to God.
The whole of the bulwarks of salvation are
secured by divine power, and even the minor
towers, which we may imagine might have been
left to man, are guarded by almighty strength.
Even the remembrance of the covenant is not
left to our memories, for we might forget.
But our Lord cannot forget the saints whom
he has graven on the palms of his
hands.
It is with us as with Israel in
Egypt.
The blood was upon the lintel and the
two side posts, but the Lord did not
say, when you see the blood, I will
pass over you, but when I see the
blood, I will pass over you.
My looking to Jesus brings me joy and
peace, but it is God's looking to Jesus
which secures my salvation, and that of all
his elect, since it is impossible for our
God to look at Christ, our bleeding surety,
and then to be angry with us for
sins already punished in him.
No, it is not left with us even
to be saved by remembering the covenant.
There is no Lindsay Woolsey here.
Not a single thread of the creature mars
the fabric.
I confess I had to look up Lindsay
Woolsey, and afterwards several people came and said,
well, that was a very common expression, which
only shows there are many things I don't
know.
But I looked it up, and Lindsay Woolsey
was a textile material of mixed wool and
flax, and now it's a dress material of
coarse, inferior wool woven on a cotton warp.
I'm reading that from the Oxford Dictionary.
Now Spurgeon says, there is no Lindsay Woolsey
here.
Not a single thread of the creature mars
the fabric.
It is not of man, neither by man,
but of the Lord alone.
We should remember the covenant, and we shall
do it through divine grace, but the hinge
of our safety does not hang there.
It is God's remembering us, not our remembering
him.
And hence, because it is God remembering us,
the covenant is an everlasting covenant.
So we are not accepted on the basis
of our character.
We are accepted on the basis of the
merits of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us never forget that, and when the
time comes for you to pass into the
presence of the Lord, you pass into the
presence of the Lord clinging to the merits
of the cross of Jesus Christ.
Don't enter heaven talking about what a great
member of Believer's Chapel you have been, or
any of the other things that you may
have done.
The only thing, the only thing upon which
you can rest for eternity is the blood
that was shed for sinners, such as you
and I are.
William R.
Newell was a great Bible teacher of a
generation past.
He wasn't so far back that I didn't
hear him.
I heard Mr. Newell, and in one of
his books or one of his messages, he
tells the story of some meetings he was
holding in St. Louis in the noon hours,
and businessmen were attending.
One of the meetings, a businessman came up
to him.
He said, a keen appearing businessman, and said
to him, you're speaking to the most ungodly
man in St. Louis.
Mr. Newell said, why praise God.
He said, do you mean to say you're
glad that I'm the most ungodly man here?
He said, no, but I'm certainly glad to
find a man that acknowledges that he's a
sinner.
Mr. Newell, I've been coming to these meetings
for four weeks.
I did not sleep last night.
I've had little sleep for three weeks.
I've prayed, I've read the Bible, I've waited
here today to have you tell me what
I need to do.
Mr. Newell said, let's turn to the Bible.
And he turned to Romans chapter 4 and
verse 5.
To him that worketh not, but believeth on
him that justifieth the ungodly.
The man interjected, that's exactly what I am.
But what do I have to do?
He said, why it's to him that worketh
not, but believeth on him that justifieth the
ungodly.
He said he suddenly leaped to his feet
and extended his hand to Mr. Newell and
said, Mr. Newell, I accept that proposition.
And he went off without another word.
And next day at the meeting, he was
introduced by Mr. Newell to the audience.
And the man stood up and said, I'm
a businessman, as you know.
I know a good proposition.
And I found one yesterday that so filled
me with joy that I could not sleep
awake all night.
This is interesting.
He couldn't sleep beforehand and he couldn't sleep
after.
But in the meantime, he had come to
salvation.
And I want you to know, if you
have insomnia, it's much better to have insomnia
over a good thing than a bad thing.
And it certainly is better to have insomnia
over being saved than insomnia over being lost.
Character is not the ground of our acceptance
before the Lord.
Now one third thing, and I won't say
much about this because it's so obvious, I
hope.
The Abrahamic promises are unconditional.
And man tries to get in the way
of the fulfillment of them constantly.
And Abraham is stumbling along, getting in God's
way, but God is accomplishing his promises through
Abram and through his wife Sarah.
There's a great deal of suspense here because
you see in the preceding seventeenth chapter, God
has said the child, the seed is going
to come through Sarah.
And now here in this chapter, we find
Abram or Abraham giving Sarah over into the
hands of the king of Gerar.
And so there would be a great deal
of suspense what is going to happen if
Sarah is to be the mother of the
seed.
The chances are that even at this moment,
through the supernatural conception of the Holy Spirit,
that Isaac is within her because he is
to be born within the year.
Well, let's look now at the passage and
we'll hasten through it as much as we
can to try to get you out reasonably
early.
The first seven verses record for us Abimelech's
taking of Sarah as his wife.
We read, Now Abram journeyed from there toward
the land of the Negev.
He had been up in the northern part
of the southern part of the land and
now he moves to the south.
It is not said why he went.
It may be that pasture was needed.
It's possible hostility on the part of his
neighbors was the cause.
It may have been because of what happened
at Sodom, for he had been at the
Oaks of Mamre, not too far away, and
was able to see the destruction there.
We do not really know the reason why
he moved.
It's possible that directed by the Holy Spirit,
he was constantly reminded that the land as
it was then was not his ultimate dwelling
place.
He was a sojourner in the land and
would be until the fulfillment of the Abrahamic
promises.
When he comes down finally into Philistia to
Gerar and there it is necessary for him
again, he thinks, to say that Sarah is
his sister and not his wife.
He had deep suspicions of the king of
Gerar whose name was Abimelech.
Incidentally Abimelech is a dynastic name.
It was not his real name, but it
was a name like Pharaoh or Czar or
Caesar.
It was a title.
Now Abram here is guilty obviously of unjustifiable
equivocation and distrust of the providence of God.
If it were really of the leading of
the Lord that he should go to Gerar,
then knowing that God has already promised him
that from Sarah shall come the seed and
that from him shall come the seed, he
should not have leaned upon scheming when he
came into the presence of this Philistine king.
Now why Abimelech took a liking to Sarah,
we cannot be absolutely sure about.
But it's possible he wanted to gain an
allowance with Abraham, for Abraham was a very
wealthy man by now.
Or it may just have been that he
was fascinated by the beauty of this 90
-year-old woman.
Now that is a problem to us today
because we don't live the length of life
that they live.
But remember, Abram lived to be 175 years
of age, and so consequently all ages I
guess might be halved.
And so if she was 90, she really
is a woman in her 40s, according to
our way of reckoning.
Abimelech was fascinated by the beauty of Sarah.
There's something amazing about this.
It may have been she was rejuvenated because
she is going to have a child.
I know I can kind of sense in
this audience right now a great swelling, rising,
silent prayer from the ladies 35 and over.
Oh Sarah, tell me thy secret.
But anyway, he was fascinated and took her
when he learned that she was Abraham's sister
into his harem.
Now Abraham had stretched the truth.
Someone has said the trouble with stretching the
truth is it's apt to snap back.
And it did in this case.
It's also well to remember that in matters
of spiritual things, the judgment should never be
left to our own wits.
That was Abram's difficulty.
He really thought that he might get out
of this by being wise.
We never do reach in our Christian experience
the place where we can dispense with the
guidance of God.
Unfortunately, very often we do.
We think we've had such great experience as
Christians, therefore we know this.
And in the circumstances of life, we tend
to rely upon our own wisdom.
But in Scripture we are taught that all
through our Christian experience, all of our decisions
are to be made through our personal relationship
with the Lord.
We never get to the place where we
do not need daily guidance from the Holy
Spirit.
Moment by moment guidance from the Holy Spirit.
When we repeat a sin, of course, the
danger is to lie down in the mud
and refuse to get up.
And that's the other side of the matter.
But always, every time, in every circumstance of
life, the appeal to the Lord is proper.
That was one of Abram's mistakes, of course.
Well, after Abimelech had taken Sarah into his
harem, God, who is going to fulfill his
promises, finds it necessary to work.
And so he came to Abimelech in a
dream.
Dreams were often used, as you know, by
Elohim for pagans.
Dreams were means by which God communicated to
Pharaoh.
It was by a dream that he communicated
with Nebuchadnezzar.
Abimelech evidently is a person who has a
rather full view of the existence of God
and of the nature of God.
In fact, Martin Luther said that Abimelech was
a believer.
There is no evidence for that.
But nevertheless, he was a man who had
an understanding of the nature and existence of
God, at least to some extent.
But as a result of this, he contracted
from God a lethal infirmity.
Now, we are inclined to think that what
this means in this little conversation the Lord
has with him is that Abimelech is not
really to be blamed for what happened.
That's only relatively true.
When he says integrity, that's only a relative
kind of integrity because Abimelech is a man
who is already married.
We read that later on in verse 17.
He already had a wife and so he
was dishonoring the marriage bond by taking Sarah
into his harem.
And furthermore, so far as we know, Sarah
was not taken with her full ascent.
Now sure, she said, Abram's my brother.
But nevertheless, it was a ruse.
And if the facts had been laid out,
she never would have chosen this particular form
of action.
In addition, if Sarah was such a beautiful
woman, would it not have been natural for
Abimelech to say, why is such a beautiful
woman not married after all of these years?
There is no indication he made any inquiry
to speak of at all.
And so consequently, we are not to think
of the integrity of Abimelech as being an
absolute one.
It was only a relative one.
But God nevertheless acted in mercy toward him
for he said, I've kept you from sinning
against me, that is with reference to Sarah.
Therefore, I did not let you touch her.
But in the fact that he requires Abram
to pray for him, Abram, Abraham the prophet,
is evidence of the fact that he was
responsible even though relatively ignorant of the consequences
of the things that he was doing.
Now in the seventh verse, after that little
conversation, the Lord says, restore the man's wife
for he is a prophet and he will
pray for you and you will live.
But if you do not restore her, know
that you shall surely die and all who
are yours.
The sin of Abraham was no doubt aggravated
by his position.
We should not incidentally think of the term
prophet in the sense that we do today.
He was the prophet.
But Abimelech and others would have had a
little different conception of a prophet.
They would have thought of a prophet as
being something like a magician.
And so when Abram did what he did,
it was not quite the reproach on the
name of God that someone who understood prophecy
would see.
But for us, as we look at it
now, we say, well, what a reproach this
is to the name of God that this
prophet of God, and he was that, should
give his wife over into the hands of
this heathen king.
Now following this little dream and the interview
with the Lord, the text now turns to
a study of the restoration of Sarah to
Abraham.
And it's a remarkable expression of humility that
comes out of Abimelech.
But then he was very fearful because of
what had happened.
So Abimelech arose early in the morning and
called all his servants and told all these
things in their hearing and the men were
greatly frightened.
He was terrorized by the word of God.
So he calls his servants, confesses his fault,
tells the whole story before them, announces the
amends that he's going to make, and the
servants were greatly frightened, which suggests that they
too had some sense of the fear of
God.
And so it was natural to call for
Abraham.
And Abraham is called for.
And when Abraham comes into the presence of
Abimelech, three questions are asked which humiliate Abraham
as he lays the blame at his feet.
This humiliation of Abraham is the kind of
thing that we experience when we do not
pay attention to the word of God.
There's a great deal of difference, incidentally, between
humiliation and humility.
Humility can never be humiliated.
To be humiliated means to be lured in
condition.
I know that some of you are thinking,
well, in the case of the Lord Jesus
Christ, was he not the object of an
act of humiliation when he came from heaven
and came down here and took to himself
an additional nature, a human nature?
Well, yes, we do speak of the humiliation
of our Lord Jesus Christ, but that word
has no reference to our Lord's personal character.
When we read of the humiliation of the
Lord Jesus, we mean simply he was in
the form of God, and he came here
and then was, as a result of the
incarnation, in the form of a servant.
That is not a luring of his personal
condition, but when we use the term humiliation
normally, we mean it's a luring of condition
in the sense of being mortified, and that
is what Abraham must experience as a result
of his sin.
And so he comes into Abimelech's presence, and
Abimelech asks him three questions that were very,
very humiliating.
What have you done to us, he said.
And then he said, and how have I
sinned against you that you have brought on
me and on my kingdom a great sin?
You see, he recognizes that it is a
sin.
You have done to me things that you
ought not to have done.
And then he adds the third question.
What have you encountered that you have done
this thing?
Isn't it interesting, too, that this wriggling that
we engage in as believers, Abraham, that's what
he's done, he's just wriggled because he was
in a difficult situation and appealed to something
that he thought would get him out of
it, is something that the Lord Jesus Christ
never does.
There was never any element of fear, of
cunning, of diplomacy in our Lord in any
shape or form.
He was never suspicious of anyone, nor did
he ever trust anyone except his Father.
Consequently, he was never vindictive, and he was
never humiliated.
It's only possible to be humiliated when we
are serving our pride.
Most of us know what that is.
We know what it is to serve pride,
and we know also what it is to
be humiliated.
Well, Abraham answers with a threefold reply himself,
and the three pleas are a pattern of
mistaken choice.
They really tell us a great deal about
this patriarch and his failure to follow the
will of God.
First of all, he's faulty in the recitation
of the facts.
He says in verse 11, because I thought
surely there is no fear of God in
this place and they will kill me because
of my wife.
That was faulty.
That didn't turn out to be true, and
so consequently that idea was fallible.
In addition, there is a fallibility in his
values.
Besides, she actually is my sister, the daughter
of my father, but not the daughter of
my mother, and she became my wife.
Now, of course, that's a verbal untruth.
True in one sense, false in another.
Untruth comes so easy for us, does it
not?
We can constantly lie.
That's what we do.
We lie by the things we don't say,
and often lie by the things that we
do say, and even put them into sentences
that are, we can try to rationalize as
being true.
How wonderful it is to meet a person
who is frank and open and truthful.
And finally, he is fallible in his motives
too.
Notice the 13th verse, and it came about
when the gods caused me to wander from
my father's house that I said to her,
this is the kindness which you will show
to me.
Everywhere we go, say of me, he is
my brother.
Now mind you, take a look at that
sentence carefully, and you will see that this
pattern of telling people that Sarah was his
sister and not his wife is something that
goes all the way back to Ur of
the Chaldees.
It goes back to the time when God
caused him to wander from his father's house.
As they left Ur of the Chaldees, he
anticipated he was going to have difficulty as
he had this beautiful woman by his side.
And he knew he would be out in
territory that was strange to him, and he
knew the characteristics of the men of that
time.
If they saw a beautiful woman and you
were helpless, they would take the woman and
often slay the man.
And so he made a little compact with
Sarah right in the beginning, God having called
them out of Ur of the Chaldees to
go into this land.
Mind you, after the great revelation that God
had given to him, he makes this little
agreement with her, one of his schemes, in
order to save his neck.
Isn't it striking that after this manifestation of
God to him, he can stoop so low.
And so all through the years, he has
been doing this.
Now we have two records in the Word
that are two occasions on which this was
done.
It's possible that there are many others that
are not recorded in the Bible.
So Abram and Sarah both are afflicted with
a besetting sin, deceit, lies.
It's no wonder that one of their grandsons
should be Jacob.
It runs in the family.
And of course it runs in the human
family.
So it was really cowardice.
Now, having been found out and having been
humiliated, Abimelech takes the noble position and so
he gives offerings.
And even invites Abram to stay in the
land and pick the place that he wants.
He gives Sarah a thousand pieces of silver
as a kind of an atonement, or else
a kind of twitting of her, sarcastically telling
her to buy a veil so that others
won't make the mistake that he has made.
And finally, we read in the last two
verses of this chapter, and this too closes
on a rather noble note because you would
rather think that Abram was not on praying
ground, to use the kind of language that
we use today.
He was surely not on praying ground if
one prays only if he's in a kind
of total fellowship with the Father.
But fortunately the Bible doesn't teach that.
Being a prophet, and since one of the
offices of the prophet is to pray, he
prays.
And he prays to God and God answers
his prayer and heals Abimelech and his wife
and his maids so that they bore children
for the Lord had closed fast all of
their wombs.
Did you notice the change of name for
God?
All through this chapter it has been God,
Elohim, the term that is fitting for the
heathen as well as for the saints, but
now the covenant-keeping God for the Lord,
Yahweh.
That is so fitting because you see it
is Yahweh who is fulfilling his covenant.
It is he who is preserving Sarah from
any problems so that the seed shall surely
come through which all the families of the
earth shall be blessed.
And so it is just an indication of
the faithfulness of God and how even when
we get in the way of the Lord,
he is going to fulfill his word.
Let me close by suggesting just a few
things to try to tie up some of
the things with which I began the message.
It is clear that Abram is not a
phlegm phlegm artist.
What he really is is a man of
like passions with you and me.
He's the object of grace, but he's a
sinner.
And it's hard even for saints to lay
aside besetting sin.
When you read this chapter, did you say
to yourself, I just cannot understand how Abraham
could do it?
Did you think that?
Do you know what led you to think
that?
Self-deception.
That's what led you to think it.
Because if you can look at this chapter
and you can honestly say, I cannot understand
how Abram could do it, you're deceived.
Because if you look inside your heart, providing
you don't love yourself too much, you'll never
say such a thing.
Because it's obvious.
If you know your heart and know what
it's really like, you'll understand exactly how Abram
could do this.
And the chances are you'll understand how he
could do it from the time he left
the War of the Chaldees to the present
time.
Because you'll recognize that in the human heart,
even the heart of the believing Christian, there
is besetting sin.
In fact, if you were able to see
my heart and I were able to see
your heart, we would see our own besetting
sins.
And they do not leave us, unfortunately.
Now when we speak of sanctification in the
Bible, we do not mean that a person
reaches the state in this life where he
is not troubled by besetting sins.
In fact, while we're in this life, we
shall be troubled by besetting sins.
When the Bible speaks of sanctification, it means
simply that there is a growth in grace.
That there is a measurable or observable to
the Lord, observable plane of life in which
there is advance.
But it does not mean that at any
point in this line of advance, the Christian
does not fall into the ditch.
It also means that when he falls, he's
very unhappy.
He doesn't wallow in his sin.
He cries for deliverance.
Because that's the attitude of a Christian believer.
It is Peter after he falls who goes
out and weeps bitterly.
It is Judas who after his sin commits
suicide.
All the difference in the world between the
two.
Do not for one moment think that when
we talk about the perseverance of the saints,
we mean that once a person has been
converted, then everything is on the rise and
there is no besetting sin any longer.
That's very confusing.
Very untrue.
One of the things that has afflicted evangelicalism
has been the tendency to teach that once
a person has been converted, it is possible
to attain a measure of spiritual life in
which things are relatively smooth sailing.
The two great errors result from this.
The idea that there is such a standard
of life at which you're never exposed to
failure and humiliation because of sin leads on
the one hand to pride and arrogance.
And Christians full of pride and arrogance abound
in our evangelical churches.
And then on the other hand, those simple
hearted souls told frequently by preachers who stand
behind the pulpit that there is such a
thing as a victorious life, a plane of
life to which you can attain and therefore
everything is going to be wonderful thereafter.
And they honestly listen to that and then
look at their lives and see the besetting
sin that is there and the difficulties that
abound and the result is despair and defeat.
And it's not long before some of them
are making their ways to those who want
to counsel them.
If you'll take a good look at Abraham,
you'll discover that the Bible, when it speaks
of the perseverance of the saints, means that
those who have been truly converted do not
apostatize from the faith.
But God preserves them in the faith, in
the midst of their own particular besetting sin.
Now I don't want you to go out
and say, well that was a very comforting
sermon to me because I have besetting sins
and therefore I'm going to be perfectly all
right.
Now I don't have to worry about that,
I'm just like everybody else.
Well you'll just be humiliated like Abraham was.
You'll be humiliated over and over again too.
And of course, the Christian believer who recognizes
his besetting sin, it's that one that he
should get down upon his knees and pray
about.
Things do happen over and over again.
I read an account not long ago of
a woman in Denver, Colorado, who was out
on a street corner and a mongrel dog
came and bit her on the ankle.
And she was bitten rather badly and so
they took her to the hospital, which was
just a few blocks away.
And after they had attended to her, she
came back walking home and she went by
the same corner and the same mongrel dog
came out and bit her on the other
ankle.
It's an illustration of the fact that things
do happen over and over again.
God forgives, fortunately.
He never asks us to do what he
himself will not do.
We're told to forgive a brother who wrongs
us until seventy times seven and we may
be sure that God's forgiveness is as great
as that which he expects from his children.
One of the commentators, one of the great
preachers, Joseph Parker, has said about this, I'm
glad that Abraham made such a fool of
himself.
Had he been without flaw, blemish, perfect and
invincible in faith and complete in the sanctification
of his character, he should have awed me
by his supernatural respectability.
So, my dear Christian friend, what I am
exhorting you to be this morning is not
arrogant and proud or despairing, but to recognize
that when God begins a work in you,
he will perform that work.
But you should not expect that you cannot
fall into the ditch.
Your responsibility and also your privilege is to
call upon the Lord in the ditch and
have him deliver you and ask him to
make you a better servant of his.
Bumper sticker theology is not very good.
There is a bumper sticker that has been
over the past few years seen.
A Christian is not perfect, he is forgiven.
That is good theology.
A Christian is not perfect, he is forgiven.
Now, of course he's forgiven because of the
merits of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Here on the eve of the fulfillment of
the promise, Abraham has imperiled the covenant hope.
Not even he can boast before the Lord.
Acceptance is not on the ground of personal
merit, it's on the ground of the merits
of Jesus Christ.
What's the root of Abram's problem?
Well, I guess if we were to sum
it all up, we would say the root
of Abram's problem was unbelief in the ability
of God to fulfill his covenant promises.
That's really what it comes down to, doesn't
it?
He really felt when he went into Gerar
that God was not able to keep that
king from Sarah, his wife.
And consequently he schemed in order to avoid
what he thought was coming.
Abram had a real faith, but it was
partial faith.
It was inadequate faith.
It's what the Bible speaks of when it
says little faith.
But this chapter is an eloquent commentary on
the mercy of God, how merciful he is,
and how patient he is.
And it's a great chapter for legalists.
It's a great chapter for those who misunderstand
the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.
And it's a great chapter for those who
are caught up in movements like the Keswick
movement which give false hope and lead to
despair in the lives of Christians.
If you look at the life of the
great example of faith, you'll discover that he
was a man of like passions with us.
And may God enable us to find the
same remedy that he found for the problems
of his life.
F.
B.
Meyer entitles the chapter on this, A Bit
of the Old Nature.
That pretty well explains it.
A bit of the old nature.
May God deliver you Christians from the humiliation
of having God expose your sin, that easily
besetting sin.
It wouldn't hurt us all a bit if
we went home and got down upon our
knees and asked God to deliver us from
the besetting sins that hinder usefulness in the
Christian life.
If you're here today and you've never believed
in the Lord Jesus Christ, we remind you
that according to the Word of God you
are lost in your sin.
You are, according to Holy Scripture, heading for
the lake of fire.
And consequently, your condemnation is definite and just.
And there is no way of escape except
through the provision made by the merits of
the Lord Jesus in his sacrifice upon the
cross.
There is no salvation in good works.
There is no salvation in church membership.
There is no salvation in the ordinances which
the church practices as believers.
There is no salvation in education.
No salvation in any other thing than the
finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
May God help you through the Holy Spirit
to see your lost condition.
May he bring you conviction.
Conviction of your sin and condemnation.
And may he also impress you so much
with your precarious position that you become as
frightened as Abimelech servants and flee to the
cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, claiming the
merits which the Lord Jesus himself has.
It would be a terrible thing to leave
this audience having heard that Christ died for
sinners and not take advantage of the remedy.
May God help you to respond.
I could never bring conviction to you.
No one else could bring conviction to you.
Only the Holy Spirit can bring conviction.
May he do it.
May you respond.
May you come to know what it is
to have everlasting life.
And then may you learn to grow in
grace and in the knowledge of the Lord
Jesus and allow him to complete his work
of sanctification in you.
Remember this.
He that hath begun a good work in
you will perform it until the day of
Jesus Christ.
So take hope, Christians.
The day is coming when you shall be
what you should be, but not until then.
Let's stand for the benediction.
We are grateful to thee, Lord, for the
illustrations of the Christian life that come from
the experiences of the patriarchs.
As we think of these great, noble men,
we reflect upon our own condition.
O God, enable us to learn from the
experiences that they had and enable us to
avoid the pitfalls which are so numerous about
us.
Give us a trust in thee and in
thy word that delivers us from scheming.
May grace, mercy, and peace go with us.
For Jesus' sake, amen.