Genesis 20 Discussion

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And welcome back to a chapter of day.
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Keeps the devil away.
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I'm Pastor Pleck, joined by none other than Pastor Holland Craig, and we're talking about Genesis chapter 20 today.
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Holland, what did you think about Genesis 20?
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It is quite a contrary viewpoint from Genesis 19, that's for sure.
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Yep.
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Big, intense raining fire and sulfur, and now down to this kind of odd situation with Abraham and his wife that's uh a repeat of a previous situation.
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Yeah, and it's wild too that I feel like sexual morality was not something they quite conquered in the teens of Genesis.
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Correct.
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It's been a problem uh all throughout Genesis, continues to be a problem all throughout the Bible.
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You know, so you so if you wonder why we're having a problem with the tape, don't never say, let's go back to the good old days when people were wholly impure, because that was never a time.
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But it's uh it's really awesome and interesting how God intervenes in the situation.
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Yeah.
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And uh with with people, you know, not only intervenes for Abraham and Sarah's sake, but also even for, you know, the these kind of outsiders and uh Gentile rulers, right?
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Let's talk about the marriage dynamic of Abraham and Sarah.
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Like, listen, Sarah, I love you.
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But wherever we go, let's not pretend you're let's not tell anyone you're my wife.
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Let's just go with the sister line.
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That way no one will kill me.
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Now, I don't know what they'll do to you, but I'm sure they'll bless me because you are hot.
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Now, the other thing that's wild, she's like 90.
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Right.
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Like let's call it late, late 70s, 80s.
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Yeah, not quite 90s.
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Not quite 90s.
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But she's like 75, 80 at this point, whenever she kind of hangs out at drawer, and you gotta go, what?
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Like, listen, maybe she just had some great uh skincare.
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And she was skincare, good jeans, great exercise, a lot of exercise.
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She ate right, she had a lot of fish, I'm sure.
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Like, I uh it was wild to me that like I mean, I don't know how many women in their late 70s, early 80s that I'm just like, man, there's nothing I can do.
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You must be mine.
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Yeah, but uh, you know, it's different times back then.
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Could have been a lot of plastic surgery.
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I just, you know, used to really God didn't put that in there.
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I don't know.
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To me, I thought that was wild.
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I was like sort of shocked by that.
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Uh that she's late 70s, she's not a spring chicken, uh, and yet God has already promised to Abraham, even though he is very old, uh, that uh the promise will come through Sarah.
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Now, the other thing about Sarah, because she's already done the thing with uh um Ishmael, right?
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Right.
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And so this, this Ishmael and Hagar are still with the family, but it's not like Abraham is worried about Sarah being thrown into the harem.
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Like he's, I mean, it's not like he's a small, like there aren't very many women.
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It's like the only one.
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It's like he is so worried that she is so beautiful that there's nothing this king will do but like I must kill you for your 75-year-old wife.
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Right.
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Like that is that is bonkers to me.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Um what I what stands out to me about this though is the you know, it's the repeat episode.
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Yep.
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Um, and just the reality that we tend to commit the same sins over and over again, right?
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And so, like you see it in Abraham, and some I remember when, you know, when I first read this, I I read it and I was like, didn't I already read this before?
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And I had to go back and check, you know, um, the first first time I'm kind of going through Genesis.
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It was Pharaoh the first time, and this time it's Abimelech, which means Abimelech, you guys know, is uh Malek is is king, Abby is father, so it's my father is king, uh, which is an interesting, yeah, whatever.
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It's just the name of the king.
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Yeah, and you know, I was like, didn't I read?
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And I was like, man, why would they include the same story two times?
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And I was like, oh, he did the same thing two times, and it's just like a reminder of, you know, what we have we have these sin patterns and cycles and um things that we go back to.
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And Abraham, you know, Abimelech is shown to be more righteous than Abraham here, and that he's, you know, he uh he doesn't want to do what's what's gonna be, you know, um uh wrong in God's eyes, and he he chooses to act in integrity and purity, he says.
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And you know, like it's just crazy to see this king acting in a more righteous way than Abraham, and Abraham, even though he's like God's chosen man, going back to the same sin again and again again.
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It it's it is wild, and this is why I'm wondering like what was the relationship between Abraham and Sarah?
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Were there some things from childhood that they just hadn't worked out yet?
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That he's just always trying to like, man, I just hope somebody just comes and takes her away so I can start all over.
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Like, I I don't know what it is, right?
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Like, I mean, if you've been promised by God, like you literally had angels show up and say to you with God, like God and two angels show up to you.
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Right.
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Like two chapters earlier, and they say, Hey, you're gonna have a son through Sarah, and then Sarah laughs and she said, No, you Sarah laughs.
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She's like, No, I didn't laugh.
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Like that, that whole conversation just before this, and then he's like, Hey, I'm kind of nervous about getting killed by the king of this country because you're so beautiful.
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Why don't you go to his harem?
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And she's like, Okay, like somewhere along the lines, they either forgot the conversation they just had with God, right?
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Literally, Abraham watches the smoldering fire of Sodom and Gomorrah and still does not act in the fear of the Lord.
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And in the prom, he had a promise of God where God puts him in a trance.
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He watches a smoking firepot go through the pieces, and he's still for like it's like he has this promise of offspring through Sarah.
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And for some reason, he cannot lean into the promise of God.
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Right.
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And then, you know, the peak of all the irony in it, he does it because his assessment is there's no fear of God in the people here.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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And then come to find out the people there actually do have a fear of God, and Abraham's the one who doesn't have the fear of God.
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Yeah.
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Because he's so willing to give up his wife.
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He's so uh and and I think this is the consequence for Abraham was you have to wait longer for your son.
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Because we have to make sure that no one thinks it could have been like Abimelech got her pregnant.
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We have to be at least far enough away from that where nobody could go back in the history books and say, you remember when uh, you know, uh she was 80 or 75 or whatever, and she did that little stint, that's where that kid came from.
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Like that's that to me is wild.
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Now, what else is interesting is and I think this is God's promise, right?
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He like, why wouldn't God talk to Abraham?
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Like, why is he not communicating?
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Why is he communicating with everybody except Abraham?
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Like he only tells Abraham the good stuff, and he gives him plenty of good stuff.
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But when it comes to warning, like, I will kill you, uh, Abimelech, if you do not give the wife.
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Like, he could be like, hey, Abraham, it's really gonna ruin the plan if you give your wife when he makes the call to give his wife away.
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Why doesn't God step in there?
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That would have been a great, we wouldn't even have to have like a whole awkward conversation with Abimelech.
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Why not?
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Like, what do you what do you think is going on?
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What's God's perspective of all that?
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I don't know.
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My only thought would be he's giving Abraham a chance to repent and go, like, this is a bad idea.
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And and then he has the pagan call out Abraham, and so that his, you know, like you have the person who is godless, no fear of God, is calling him to have a fear of God.
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And I think that's why it's so powerful for us is how many times um does a non-Christian world sometimes do more godly things to us and say, like, why are you not acting in accordance with the God that you say you believe in?
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Yeah, I, you know, I hesitate to say, here's what God was doing there, because it's not stated.
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But at the same time, you you know, I see similarities to like the story of Jonah, the prophet, who's running from God, and while the Gentile sailors or the, you know, wicked Ninevites are actually repenting um while Jonah is, you know, fleeing from God.
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And you see something similar here, um, where you go, okay, had God just stopped Abraham right there and spoken to him, like you said, well then um that may have been a missed opportunity, you know, for how God was going to work among, you know, Abimelech and and the people there.
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And so I just see like the providence of God in using man's failures and sins to expand redemption to even more people.
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Yeah.
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And you know what also I sort of love about this is I wonder if God chose Abraham because he wasn't exactly the brightest bulb on the tree.
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Because he was, yeah, isn't it?
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He's an absolute wreck.
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And he's like, I'm gonna choose that guy, and he's gonna keep doing the wrong thing, but my promises will still stand strong, even though he screws it up over and over again.
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Which I like the the the humor and wit of Abimelech when he says, Sarah, behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver.
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It is a sign of your innocence in the eyes of all who are with you, and before everyone you are vindicated.
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Which that was kindness of Abimelech.
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Like, I really appreciate that about him.
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Even he's been completely uh disrespected by Abraham, saying, like, there's no fear of God in this place.
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You guys are all heathens, which is I mean, like, who says that?
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Yeah.
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Like, even at like 3,000 years ago, 4,000 years ago, who says that?
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Anyway.
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Yeah, and well, I mean, you look at verses like um six and seven, and it's just amazing how God works through this.
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You know, he's he he says to Abimelech, it was I who kept you from sinning against me.
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Therefore, I did not let you touch her.
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God, you know, sometimes we uh I don't know, we forget how how many times that, you know, when when we have like, man, I had a great day and I did it.
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We we forget how often God may be keeping us back from sin, that apart from his grace, we would have just gone off and done what our flesh wanted to do.
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God kept him from sinning.
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Um, and then uh says, give return the man's wife, so he he's a prophet, so that he'll pray for you and you shall live.
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Wow.
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Um, and so like God is just working this whole thing out to expand redemption, expand um his glory throughout people who maybe, you know, otherwise uh would have never known the power of God and the grace of God.
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Yeah, let's go on that prayer thing for a second.
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Uh, because I love this.
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Why I uh one of the questions I like to ask people is like, why do we pray?
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If God already knows what we need, if God is already sovereign over the whole thing, why do we pray?
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And I think right here, you see it with Job uh when he when God tells him to pray for his friends and it'll heal him.
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You see it with Elijah when God tells him to pray and it'll rain and and not rain.
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You see it here with uh Abraham, pray for Abimelech and he will heal him and his family and the whole household because they he had made them barren.
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God uses his people to activate his will through their prayer.
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Yeah, God does not just ordain the ends, he also ordains the means.
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And I love the fact that he loves to use us.
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And I think this is where you could, and I think sometimes we undervalue prayer because we're like, if God's gonna do whatever he's gonna do anyway, why am I praying?
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Because it might be that God activates his will through your prayers, and you can you can legitimately say, I prayed and things changed because God used your prayer to do the changing.
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And so I don't ever want to have anyone say, like, I God's gonna do whatever he's gonna do anyway, and then you rob yourself, and then you rob God of the glory he might get from you and from everyone else for your experiencing God working through you.
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Right.
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And and God, you know, even though Abraham just totally sinned, God still used him.
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He used his prayer to bring about that healing.
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And a bit, and so like you just see the grace of God all over this, the grace of God toward Abraham, the grace of God toward Abimelech protecting him, the grace of God toward Sarah, protecting her from Abraham's sin and foolishness, the grace of God toward um all of the um, toward Abimelech's wife, um the female servants, um, opening their wombs that they can bear children.
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Like the grace of God to everyone involved in this is just amazing.
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I think one of the things that reading this in hindsight, when we have perfect knowledge of the whole thing, we can see where Abraham is short-sighted, we can see where Sarah is short-sighted, uh, and we can kind of like, guys, just trust the Lord.
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And then in our own lives, when we're pushed up against something, if we really believe that God was intricately involved so much so he would cause dreams to happen in the people around us so that we would not um, so that the darkness would not win.
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What if we really believe that and we started acting in accordance with that?
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Right, it would transform our lives.
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And I think that's the problem I think a lot of us have is that we don't believe God is in the business of interacting with us.
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And we sort of, we just sort of like punt that to the Old Testament or with Jesus and the Bible, and that doesn't happen today.
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What I'm saying to you is if the same God who intervened in Abraham's life is the same God who's intervening in your life, convicting you of sin, Holy Spirit empowering you, using your prayers.
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Uh, when you pray for missionaries, when you pray for your family, when you pray for uh that person in your in your family that might be lost or a prodigal son, or you know, they're out there somewhere, and you're like, God, please would you speak to them?
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God uses those prayers.
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And so please be a person of prayer and then also a person who trusts.
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Amen.
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Any other thoughts on that?
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Just amen and amen.
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Amen, amen.
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Hey, we'll see you tomorrow on a jacket.