God’s Faithfulness Despite Abraham’s Unbelief
(Genesis 20:1-21:7)
The death bed conversions of evil men bother us. I am thinking of the thief on the cross? Charles Tex Watson of the Manson gang. In 1969 he murdered Sharon Tate, 81/2 months pregnant. He is serving a life sentence in a California prison with no hope of parole. Yet, he came to Christ powerfully.
God sent Jonah to preach repentance to the Ninevites.
Ted Bundy died convinced that he had been forgiven at Christ’s expense.
Today’s sermon is about God’s outrageous mercy and grace. God glorifies his grace and faithfulness by being gracious to a man who does not deserve it—Abraham.
A. The Setting
To understand Abraham we must constantly remember God’s big picture and how Abraham fits into it. God’s relationship with humanity began on the sixth day of creation. God created man and then declared why he created him.
(Genesis 1:27–28) "27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”"
God created man in his image.
His image is his glory.
He commanded Adam and Eve to multiply and fill the earth with his image, i.e. his glory.
He also commanded Adam to rule the earth. That meant servant rule, the kind of rule displayed at the cross, the kind of authority that stands because it is slain.
Adam sinned and forfeited the opportunity to fulfill the reason for his creation.
God started over with Noah, but like Adam, Noah also quickly sinned. Because God has not given up on his initial plan he replaced both Adam and Noah with Abraham.
At age seventy five God, for reasons hidden from us, chose Abram out of all the unbelievers in the world and revealed himself to him. He revealed himself to Abraham in order to make him the father of a great nation that would someday fill the earth with God’s image and likeness, his glory, and rule it as servant leaders.
(Genesis 12:1–3) "1 “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”"
Despite the fact that he is seventy five and his wife is barren, Abraham shows remarkable faith. He believes God’s promise. He journeys to an unknown land, trusting God completely.
However, he takes Lot with him!
After a few years in Canaan, a famine occurs. Looking for food Abraham goes down to Egypt. Forgetting God’s promises to protect him, he lies to Pharaoh about Sarah. Nevertheless, God shows himself faithful to his promises. He intervenes on behalf of unbelieving Abraham. He afflicts Pharaoh and his household with great plagues. Reluctantly, pharaoh enriches Abram, and our hero returns to Canaan better off than when he left. God showed himself faithful to his promises even though Abraham was not.
Next Abram and Lot divide. Lot begins his migration towards Sodom, his heart condition making it clear that he will not be the Son through whom God’s promises will come.
When the five kings of the North conquer Sodom, and Lot is taken, Abram pursues with a small army and, because God is with him, conquers the five kings. On his return Melchizedek comes out to bless him confirming God’s original blessing in Genesis 12.
In Genesis 15 expands the promises. Abraham’s descendants will not just be a great nation, but they will be like the sand on the seashore and like the stars in the sky. (i.e. They will fill the earth with God’s glory). Abram believes God, and God credits it to him as righteousness. God “cuts” a covenant with Abram, but only God passes through the split carcasses.
Them, in chapter 16, when Abraham is eighty five, despite these lavish promises and God’s past faithfulness, once again Abram lapses into unbelief. He gives up on God’s promise of a son through Sarah, sleeps with Hagar, and produces Ishmael.
God is not pleased.
Now fourteen years have passed. Abram is 99. In Genesis 17 God returns to him, and again repeats the promises, and tells him that within a year Sarah will give birth to a son. Abraham resists. “Oh that Ishmael might live before you.” God commands Abraham to indicate his faith in God’s covenant by circumcising both himself and all the males in his household. Because Abram believes God, he complies.
A few days later, on their way to Sodom, God and two angels visit Abram. God befriends Abram. He tells him that he plans to destroy Sodom. Abram intercedes for his nephew Lot. God destroys Sodom but saves Lot. Lot’s ensuing reluctance to flee Sodom, and subsequent incest with his daughters, completes the idea that he is utterly disqualified to be the son through whom the promises will come.
Now, with the promise of a miracle child within the year, and Sarah not yet pregnant, Abram again capitulates into monstrous unbelief. Yet, as he has done so many times in the past God is faithful despite Abraham’s unbelief.
In summary, Abraham is like us. He is a mixture of faith and unbelief. Sometimes he stalwartly obeys God. At other times he capitulates to unbelief.
B. The Story
(Proverbs 26:11) "11 Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly."
Abraham is a shepherd. He must continually move his flocks to areas where there is grass. His home-base has been Mamre, a few miles outside of Hebron. This story finds him about 35 miles to the SW, in the land of the Philistines, looking for forage and water for his flocks.
Gerar is a small Philistine town, and Abimelech is its king. Abimelech is a title, not a name. It means ‘The divine king is my father.” He is an unbeliever. He is not an heir to God’s promises. But he is the local chief. He is the king of Gerar, and Abraham fears him.
1. Abraham’s Unbelief
This should surprise us. Twenty years previously Abraham feared the Pharaoh, but we were not surprised. Pharaoh was the ancient world’s most powerful man, but the king of Gerar is another story. He is the petty king of a small Philistine village. In addition, God has given Abraham tremendous success over much more imposing foes. Remember how he went after the five kings of the North to rescue Lot. He and only 300 men against the armies of five kings, and God gave him success. So why does he fear this local Philistine Lord?
This text explains the reasons for his fear. His wife, Sarah, was beautiful. He lived in a lawless age. When a a powerful man saw a beautiful woman, he just took her. If a husband or other male protector was in the way, he just murdered him.
When. 25 years prior, God called Abraham to leave Ur of the Chaldees for an unknown destination, Abraham knew he would be travelling through bandit infested, lawless lands. Therefore, he made a deal with Sarah. Here is how he explained it to Abimelech.
10 And Abimelech said to Abraham, “What did you see, that you did this thing?”
11 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.’ 12 Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. 13 And when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, ‘This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, “He is my brother.”
None of this completely explains Abraham’s fear. We also need to reckon with the reality of spiritual warfare. The Devil knows that the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham will be his undoing. He also knows that, in this instance, capitulation to fear will derail all of God’s promises to Abraham. So, he and all of demons attack our esteemed friend. In light of Abraham’s past, this seems to be the only rational explanation for the extent of Abraham’s sinful unbelief.
Abraham fears Abimelech more than he fears God. He believes that Abimelech, not God, has power over him. Here is the root of all fear. It is a collapse of faith in either God’s sovereignty, God’s goodness, or both. In fact, fear is a misdirection of faith. The faith that should have God as its object gets directed to someone or something else. In other words, ungodly fear is a result of placing our faith in someone or something other than God. It is a byproduct of idolatry.
Control is always the natural response to fear.
Disobedience always follows unbelief. Abraham disobeys God. He lies. He tells Abimelech that Sarah is his sister. It was a partial truth. She was in fact his half sister. They had the same father but different mothers. Nevertheless it was a lie. Abraham used a partial truth to deceive Abimelech.
In light of God’s promises, Abraham’s unbelief is especially serious. Had Abimelech slept with Sarah, two things would have happened. First, she might have gotten pregnant by Abimelech, and that would have voided God’s promises to Abraham.
Or second, if she was already unknowingly pregnant by Abraham, or ready to get pregnant by Abraham a few weeks later, sleeping with Abimelech would cast doubt on the paternity of the child. Who is the real father? No one would be able to say. In either case, the disobedience that follows unbelief is getting ready to void the promises of God—promises for which Abraham has waited 25 years.
Abraham knows all of this, yet he commits this monstrous sin anyway, and that brings us to the grace of God.
2. God Intervenes
Despite Abraham’s unfaithfulness God shows himself faithful. Ultimately, that is the point of this story. This story is about God’s Amazing Grace. God has promised to bless Abraham. The promises were not based upon Abraham’s performance. Remember, God cut a covenant with Abraham, but only God passed through the carcasses. God has promised to make Abraham into a great nation. That requires a son by Sarah, and God is not about to let Abraham’s “weasel-like” unbelief short circuit his commitments.
3 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.”
4 Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, “Lord, will you kill an innocent people? 5 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.”
6 Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her. 7 Now then, return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.”
God intervenes. He appears to Abimelech in a dream. He doesn’t come to him as a lamb. He comes to him as a Lion. He threatens Abimelech.
Vs 3 “You are a dead man because of that woman you have taken.”
Vs 7 “If you do not return her…you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.”
Vs 18 “For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife."
Abimelech is a bit put out by Abraham. We can’t blame him. After all, he is innocent. Abraham deceived him, but now, to Abimelech’s chagrin, God takes Abraham’s side. God keeps Abimelech from sinning against him.
(Proverbs 22:14) "14 The mouth of forbidden women is a deep pit; he with whom the Lord is angry will fall into it."
(Ecclesiastes 7:26) "26 And I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her."
So, God intervenes on Abraham’s behalf because he is gracious and merciful. But, he also intervenes on behalf of Abimelech because he is gracious and merciful.
C. Lessons
1. Fear is a Symptom of Idolatry
Fear is a symptom of Idolatry. It is either an expression of faith in something besides God. Or, it says something has become too important. i.e. my fear is a symptom that I cannot live without ______, or I cannot be happy unless I get ______.
Fear always motivates control.
Anxiety is just another name for fear.
Demon’s drive fear.
2. Faith precedes Obedience
Unbelief always morphs into disobedience. Faith always morphs into obedience. Because Abraham believed he left Ur of the Chaldees not knowing where he was going. Because he believed he circumcised himself and his entire household. Because he believed he pursued five armies with only 300 men.
But when he lapsed into unbelief he lied to Pharaoh about Sarah. When his faith failed he gave into Sarah and conceived Ishmael through Hagar. When he failed to believe he lied to Abimelech about Sarah.
Like each of us, Abraham is a mixed bag. He is both saint and sinner. God loves him and cares for him, not because he performs, but despite the absence of performance. As we will see, God is gracious towards Abraham in order to produce obedience.
3. Our Obedience is a response to God’s Faithfulness
God is not faithful because we obey. Abraham’s story makes that clear. God’s faithfulness is designed to provoke obedience.
In a few weeks we will watch Abraham give God super-human, extravagant obedience. God will ask him to offer up, the miracle son, Isaac. Without a word he will obey. He will get up the next morning, take Isaac and go to Moriah to offer him up. Why will Abraham do this? Because of this story, and all of God’s other acts of grace and kindness. Through his sin and God’s grace Abraham will come to know God. He will learn to trust God. Here is how the author of Hebrews describes Abraham’s faith.