Clough Genesis Lesson 58

The Moabites & Ammonites; Abraham pawns Sarah off again – Genesis 19:23-20:18

We have been studying in the Genesis series a number of events and a number of chapters and because we’ve been one Sunday removed from the exegesis, since last Sunday we dealt with a topical thing, we want to go back and review a little bit of where we’ve come. Remember in the first 11 chapters of Genesis we dealt with the foundation, basically last year in which we showed that these 11 chapters of early Genesis are the foundation on which we build all the rest of the Scriptures, that if this foundation is weak, if it cannot be trusted, if it is in some major way is wrong, as contemporary philosophy would have us believe, then of course you can throw the rest of the Bible out in the ashcan with Genesis 1-11.

However, we showed in a detailed way that this is not the case, that Genesis 1-11 is historically valid and we studied these four events: the creation, the fall, the flood and the covenant, from which we obtain many basic doctrines: the doctrine of what God is like, the doctrine of the design of man, the doctrine of nature, we studied the doctrine of suffering in connection with the origin of evil and we studied the doctrine of judgment/salvation in connection with the flood. Then we’ve been studying in these chapters the call of Abraham and with that call we’ve been studying the doctrine of election, justification and faith. That’s the whole Abraham series; remember that we studied Genesis 12-14 and in Genesis 12-14 we mentioned that this was the call of Abraham, so these chapters dealt with the calling, how God sovereignly picked out Abraham and brought him to himself, out of a culture of the time in Ur and across thousands of miles of very adverse terrain.

Then in Genesis 15 we studied the doctrine of justification, how God justified Abraham. God justified him because Abraham looked fully to God to provide the new life that was promised in the Scripture, promised by God up to that point. And then we’ve recently been working with the glorification of Abraham or the vindication of Abraham in Genesis 16, in this block 16-21. Now these chapters can be divided into sections. Genesis 16-17 deals with a mistake of Abraham that can be chalked up to various sinful attitudes on his part and then we see how God, after chapter 16 supplied his needs by supplying the covenant of circumcision. Then in Genesis 18-19 we dealt with Sodom and Gomorrah, and that’s the chapter we’re just finishing up today, showing as kind of an interim or a radical different look at what God’s attitude is to the world at large. Whereas the Abraham stories show God’s attitude toward His elect seed, this shows God’s attitude to the world itself. And then Genesis 20-21 we repeat, and I put this chart up here, it’s interesting that the theme of chapters 16-17 are repeated in chapters 20-21; chapter 16, Abraham violates God’s will, chapter 20 he does it the same way he did in chapter 16. Chapter 17 God comes in, supplies his needs; chapter 21, God comes in and supplies his need. So the lesson is repeated for us and with this we’ll turn to Genesis 19:30.

This finishes the Lot episode, the Sodom and Gomorrah thing; some of you saw John Huston’s movie on TV last night, the creepy way that the movie producer indicated the evil of Sodom. So we find this is a valid historical picture of the world, picked up by Scripture and repeated several times. In Genesis 19:30 Lot goes up of Zoar, that’s the city that he fled to and if you remember verses 17 and 19, the angel, when he told Lot to get out of the cities of the plain he said go to the mountain because you’re going to be safe in the mountain. No, said Lot, I don’t want to go to the mountain, I’m used to easy living here and it’s a little too uncomfortable to go out living in a cave in the mountains, so you just let me go to Zoar, it’s a nice little city, not too much sin in it like the other cities and maybe I can be at rest. Well, as always happens when we propose something to God, thinking that our plan is better than His, we are more pious than He is, then it turns out that we always wind up doing exactly in the end what He wanted us to do in the first place, the only difference being that we wasted a lot of time getting around to doing what we ought to have done in the first place.

So we find in Genesis 19:30, not really surprisingly, we find him dwelling in the cave. Now the angel had told him to go here because this was the only place Lot, a compromising believer could exist, and the angel knew this but Lot didn’t. It says, “[And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him,] for he feared to dwell in Zoar,” we can only surmise why he feared, the Bible doesn’t really tell us; it just tells us in fact he feared. We could suggest one reason he feared, when he saw the tremendous cataclysm of destruction in Sodom and Gomorrah that maybe he feared that God would do the same thing to Zoar; after all, it wasn’t too many miles removed from the site of destruction. If you had been that close to a nuclear explosion I think you might have second thoughts too about staying in the area. So that might have been one reason for Lot’s hesitation to stay in Zoar, but I don’t think so, not by the way his girls, his daughters act in the subsequent verses.

I suspect there’s another reason; the tip is given in verse 31, where the daughters say: “[And the first-born said unto the younger], Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come unto us after the manner of all the earth.” Well, these girls are essentially saying there’s no husband candidates around, there is no men who will marry us. Now we know there were plenty of men around at that time; there were men both in Zoar and in Abraham’s camp. But the only problem was that these girls were trapped because they were the daughters of Lot; they were so socially identified with their compromising father that they were unacceptable to the men of Zoar and likewise they would be unacceptable to the men in Abraham’s camp. And what you’ve got here in these closing verses of Genesis 19 and it’s a vivid picture which we want to impart to you is here’s the picture of the compromising believer, the man who starts out trying to have the best of both possible worlds, trying to have the richness and the wealth of his business and trying to yet at the same time enjoy the benefits of the kingdom of God. He turns out in the final analysis to lose his business in the cataclysmic destruction of Sodom and at the same time being unacceptable for fellowship with other believers. So now, starting out with the best of both possible worlds, they wind up with the worst of both possible worlds, thus the destiny of compromisers.

Today in our own evangelical circles we see compromisers; we see men compromising on dozens of key issues; compromising on the issue, for example, of inerrancy, the idea that the Bible can be inerrant in religious and spiritual matters but it’s not inerrant in matters of science and history; strange state of affairs, as though there are two different kinds of truth, one scientific and historical and the other religious. That’s one compromise and like Lot these people are going to dwell in the cave because your liberal does not have any respect for someone who believes the Bible is the standard of religion and not a standard of history. And the fundamentalist and the conservative have no respect for someone who believes the same way. So like Lot, these people will shortly find themselves dwelling in caves. And then we find others, we find some new evangelicals and some other church men in South America messing with something called liberation theology in which we marry the doctrine of Marxism to Christianity, thereby proclaiming the state to be the Savior. And we see this is a compromise; this is acceptable neither to the atheist Marxist and it’s not certainly acceptable to the Bible-believing Christian, so like Lot they too will be shortly living in caves.

Let’s look at what life in a cave is like; in Genesis 19:31 the daughters, isolated socially, appear to say, or at least they think that this is the only way, the only way is through incest, to produce a seed. Now lest we come down too hard on these girls let’s remember their background. First of all they are girls, and as girls they have a feminine nesting instinct. Women are built that way in the Scriptures, contrary to feminist propaganda, women are built to inherently recognize their role as mothers and wives, and therefore as the progenitors of the next generation. And therefore the woman, far more than the man, tends to be the conservative in this matter, the matter of preserving the seed alive and keeping her home going, even when the man may act irresponsibly, drift off, do some crazy thing, it’s oftentimes the woman who constantly holds the home together. So the girls are motivated out of a righteous concern basically.

But the problem these two girls have is their home and their upbringing and their spiritual training. We know that Lot couldn’t have given them too good a spiritual training; after all, if you were Lot’s daughter how would you like to be just expended on the steps in a gang rape, which Lot suggested of his daughters in the previous verses in this chapter. The daughters did not have that close a relationship with their father and they knew it and therefore there was animosity, there was not really a good healthy father/daughter relationship here. So therefore they thought of using their father, just as their father thought of using them a short while ago and their picture of using him follows the picture of Lot’s cowardly faith. There’s no real family model, and so the girls in setting up their future are going to set it up on a human viewpoint basis.

Whenever you read in the Old Testament, and this is something basic and I’ve got to explain this because otherwise we miss the point of the story, whenever you read in the Old Testament this concern for a child and bearing children it’s not just that everybody likes to have babies, though you might think so looking at our nursery. The point here is that people have more serious implications; they want to design the future. That’s the issue here, who determines the future, and if you determine the future, to determine the future you’ve got to determine it through the generation that you’re going to raise for the future and you do that by raising children yourself and training them yourself, shaping the future in your own children in your own home; that’s designing the future. And so it is a concern for the future and they’re going to design it and the only problem with it is they design a godly goal by an ungodly means and wind up producing a spurious future generation.

For it says, Genesis 19:32-33, how they got their father drunk, committed incest of some sort, and then finally it says in verse 35-36 how they both became pregnant, they conceived. [32, “Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. [33] And they made their father drink wine that night: and the first-born went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. [34] And it came to pass on the next day, that the first-born said unto the younger, Behold I lay last night with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and to thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. [35] And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. [36] Thus were both of the daughters of Lot with child by their father. [37] And the first-born bore a son, and called his name Moab: the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day. [38] And the younger, she also bore a son, and called his name Ban-ammi: the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day.”]

The plan appeared to work and it produced in verse 37 two peoples of history. This is the origin… remember “Genesis” means origins and this is the origin of two peoples, long since intermingled but as late as 1978 they have left their name on history, they have left their name in the headlines. One of those peoples, Ammon, the Ammonites, exist today in your newspapers in the name Amman, King Hussein’s capital of the country of Jordan. It preserves this tribal name and identity. These two people lived southeast of the Dead Sea. It was an area near Sodom and Gomorrah; they went there shortly after, probably had children, raised families and became quite a tribe. Between the Arnon River and the Zered River Moab, the word ab is father, mo here means from, it means from daddy, remembering that here we have incest and here is Ammon, meaning people, my people. So Ammon and Moab had quite a history.

This repeats something we noticed before; the Jews were the starters of the Arabs; Ishmael went down here and began the Arab tribes. Many Arab tribes come from Ishmael. Today ardent orthodox Muslims still claim their identity as the grandsons of Ishmael. So Israel, every time Israel got out of fellowship with the Lord and wanted to design its future autonomously and independent of God’s Word, all Israel ever did by doing so was to set up spurious people, peoples who down through the centuries would act nothing except a thorn in the side of the Jew.

Let’s look at some of the history that came out of this incestuous union. Turn to Numbers 22; in the book of Numbers there are many incidents but we are looking just at one episode, we won’t have time to go into all the details but let me show you some of the broad outlines of Moab. In Numbers 22-25 we have a very famous incident which shows the character, morally, of these people. Numbers 22:1, “the children of Israel set forward, and pitched in the plains of Moab on this side of the Jordan by Jericho.” In other words, Moses had failed his southern penetration, he had been defeated one time, actually not because of his fault but because of the carnality of the people, and came around her to the southeast, across the Zered River, and started an east penetration that would finally creep up the east side of the Dead Sea and come in from the east side at Jericho. This was the story of the book of Numbers and it’s the story of the book of Joshua; it’s a famous eastern penetration. Incidentally, armies still do it; in 1967 when Jordan tried to attack Israel they did so using exactly the same route of invasion, the reason being the terrain hasn’t changed and infantry basically operates the same as infantry always has operated in the Middle East; quite a stable approach.

Well, as they started to move up here they came to the area of Moab and that’s where the incident of Numbers 22 takes place. Numbers 22:2, “And Balak, the son of Zippor, saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites. [3] And Moab was very much afraid of the people,” so verse 5, “He sent messengers, therefore, unto Baalim….” Baalim was the famous prophet who was hired to damn Israel; the idea was that if you could buy off somebody who had divine power and get them to curse your enemy, sort of like witchcraft, then you would be in a position of strength. And of course, very humorously God in Numbers 22-25 spoke to Baalim, but He didn’t speak to Baalim the way Baalim thought, He spoke to Baalim through his ass and this is the answer to people who think that God can’t speak to the human race inerrantly; if God can speak through an ass then God can speak through a man, and therefore God can speak inerrantly; God has no problem, it’s far more of a problem to speak verbal information through an ass than it was through a man and God later on, of course, used many asses to speak to the human race.

In Numbers 22 we have the Baalim incident; that was the first one that marked the religious orientation of Moab; that’s the key in all of this. It wasn’t that these were bad people; it wasn’t that these were people that we morally look down upon. It was more, and the Bible insists on this, that these people had as part of their heritage a latent idolatry and apostasy. For example, the first time in the Bible the word “Baal” is used it’s used in connection with the people of Moab.

The next incident occurs in the next book, Deuteronomy 2 and it shows the paradox of Israel. After these two girls incestuously produce the future, the future went on to assault, retard, resist, harass, Israel for centuries. And in Deuteronomy 2:9, when they’re moving through the area we find a clear command. It says, “Jehovah said to me,” that is to Moses, “Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle; for I will not give thee of their land for a possession, because I have given it [Ar] unto the children of Lot for a possession.” So God protects these people; even though they are creeps God still keeps them surviving in history, and that’s because of His grace to Abraham. Hadn’t God said Abraham’s seed I will bless? So now look, we’ve got a spurious seed, a seed that really doesn’t fulfill God’s will, yet they share part of that Abrahamic blessing; they are preserved.

And then we come on down to the end of the book of Deuteronomy and all this hassle between Moab and Israel finally resulted in a ban; Deuteronomy 23:3; this ban forever kept Moabites out of the congregation of Israel, at least to the tenth generation. And it was put there because of this intense religious degeneration in these peoples character. Some people never do learn and this is something that those of you who study history ought to understand from the Scriptures, it’s not prejudice; it’s just an observation in the human race. There are pockets of humanity on the face of this earth that have never put two and two together and get four. For example, take North Africa. For a long, long time Christianity, it’s partly Christianity’s fault, had a most vigorous position in North Africa; great theologians came from North Africa, Augustine and so on. North Africa rejected Jesus Christ and today North Africa doesn’t have but a dozen Christians or so; all the countries, whether it’s Algeria, whether you go across to Libya, whether it’s northern Egypt, it doesn’t make any difference; it is actually spiritually barren from one side of Africa to the other across the northern part. We’re not talking about any black civilization; we’re talking about the Arab situation there in the north part of Africa on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. And in this situation we find great apostasy, and great instability, and we will continue to find spiritual apostasy and instability because those people are basically… they’ve chosen their slot in history and now they’re acting it out.

So in Deuteronomy 23:3 you have a Scripture that can’t understood apart from the continuity of apostasy in history. “An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation [shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD forever],” in other words, they did not hold to the HEW criterion on discrimination. Here in verse 3 is a godly discrimination, a discrimination against spiritual idiots; we don’t want those people around us, we don’t want to live next to them and we don’t want to associate with them and we don’t want to have business dealings with them, period. And that’s what the ban is all about. Now lest it seem unduly harsh and people say oh, this is a terrible thing, the book of Ruth was written. And the book of Ruth was about a Moabitess, a Moabite woman and that’s the whole argument of the book of Ruth; how could Ruth be accepted into the Davidic household, where after all she (Ruth) is one of the great-grandmothers of Jesus Christ. How could this Moabite woman, coming under the ban of verse 3, become a participant, not only in Israel but in the Messianic lineage of Israel? And the answer that the book of Ruth gives us is because Ruth converted; Ruth changed her faith; Ruth turned from the inherent idolatry of the Moabite civilization and turned to Yahwehism, her express belief in the Jehovah of the Old Testament and Him and Him alone. Therefore any Ammonite or Moabite could come into the congregation if they converted.

Just remember that, you can’t built a country, you can’t build a group with a whole bunch of different values. We’ve said this time and time and time again, but Americans, we’re all prone to forget this because we have this very sentimental idea of America as a melting pot of all different kinds of people. Well, for a while that worked because the all different kinds of peoples that were coming to our melting pot held basically to a western European idea of Christian values. And in recent years that’s not been the case and therefore we’re having a fracturing take place and it’s going to be one awful thing because we haven’t seen the worst yet; either the heathen values will be proclaimed in the land as they are increasingly being proclaimed in the land as the law or Christian ethics will be proclaimed in the land as the law but one or the other will win out; you cannot have both and yet we have evangelical Christians by the ton saying well I’ll just live my Christian life privately and I won’t get involved in the world system and I won’t articulate my values out into my local community. Yes, and you’ll wind up living in Sodom and Gomorrah if you do. And this is where Christians, in the coming generations, the younger people, the Christians cannot be like their parents. The parents might have gotten away with being quiet private Christians, the silent majority, so to speak, but that’s not true in this day. Now it’s the question of people opening their mouths and taking action; now it’s the case of the imperial Christian, moving out into society and demanding that the Word of God be the standard; that it will be the Word and it will not be paganism. That’s required or we are destroyed.

These are principles that we get out of something like the ban, and the ban was necessary because of the spurious seed that these girls produced in their carnality. Once again the lesson; what does carnality produce? Nothing worthwhile; not only nothing worthwhile but an absolute positive irritant to the plan of God, hence when we look at Moab and Ammon, we could go on but we don’t have time, we could go on through the Old Testament prophets, one after another takes up the problem of the Moabites and the Ammonites; they are always coming over here and sticking their nose in Israel’s business. How did it all start? Because some little genius thought they could design the future apart from the Word of God; had great plans of what they were going to autonomously do all by themselves and this is what they produced. So next time you see carnality, next time you think of your own life or someone else’s, next time you just entertain this notion of living in the best of both possible worlds, think of Lot in the cave.

Let’s turn back to Genesis 20 and go on with Abraham. That’s the end in this section, by the end of chapter 19, that’s the end of the Lot interlude and we’ve learned quite a bit of how God looks there. Now in the episode of Genesis 20 you have to set it back in the way in which Genesis is written. That’s why I showed you a while ago the chart showing how these chapters linked together. You’ll notice we’re coming on chapter 21; in chapter 21 is when long-last the promised seed comes into existence. Here’s the birth of Yitzhak; once the birth of Yitzhak occurs, Satan can’t cut off the plan of God other than by physical destruction of this child. Before the child is born, however, Satan does have one last chance to gum up the operation and that last chance is to contaminate the womb that will bring the promised seed. That one last chance will be introducing a sperm and have Sarah conceive the wrong seed and precisely what does chapter 20 lead us to? Exactly that thing, an attempt to destroy and contaminate the womb of Sarah so she can’t produce the seed she’s about to produce. Remember the time; all of these chapters that we’ve studied take place within a year because back in Genesis 17-18 the promise was that she would give birth to Isaac within a year and since we know of the pregnancy period that leaves only three months for all these events to take place. That means that chapter 20, which takes place here, chapter 20 must be very close to the time that Sarah is about to conceive. So the pressure is on and Satan knows it; if he can only stop the Messianic line from carrying on into the future here would be the time to do it and lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened.

To visualize the story with Abraham going into the Negev we want to look at what this terrain looks like and hopefully thereby you can visualize a little bit better for yourselves this story, letting it penetrate your imagination a little bit. Here is a map of the Sinai area and the only important thing to note here is that Abraham is now moving down these business pathways. Particularly for the men here today we don’t want to forget Abraham is not just a Sunday School character, Abraham is an upper class successful businessman. God did not pick some sort of a ne’er do well to start the kingdom of God with; He picked a successful capitalist businessman and that was how the kingdom of God began and we’re not ashamed to say he was a capitalist, unlike some of our Marxist friends that vomit every time the word is mentioned. So Abraham, the capitalist, came down this road; every point of the story he is somewhere along this major highway and that major highway is still there today in the highlands with a route of trade. That’s why I mention Abraham being a capitalist; he was in the ranching business, he had to be somewhere he could sell his produce. That’s why every single story takes place along that road. We know from ancient history that road was a main trade route. So visualize Abraham as a businessman.

And he comes down this road, this is a blow up of the area along the coast, and he diverts, he comes down here to Beersheva and then he moves over to the coast. Now why did he move over to the coast? The text doesn’t tell us but if you look at the terrain I’ll show you why I think he came over to the coast; along these cities, Ashkelon, still there today, Gaza of the famous Gaza strip, still there today, and there’s a little place called Gerar, also still there today. The terrain in the Negev, where he was, looks like this and in the June heat this is what happens to the forage and the pasturage, nothing there. So it’s obvious that this story must have taken place in the summertime and Abraham was simply moving his ranching business over into land where there was water and near the coast you can see the imminent change. Simply it’s closer to the Mediterranean, there’s water there, there’s wells there, and there’s obviously higher rainfall.

So we read in Genesis 20:1, of Abraham going south and moving over to the area in Gerar. Gerar, it says he “sojourned” there. [“And Abraham journeyed from there toward the Negev, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar.”] That means it was only a temporary location for his ranching business; it was not the place where he finally settled.

Now he begins to pull the same stunt with his wife that he tried before in Genesis 12. You remember before in Genesis 12 he comes down, Sarah is a queen by the way, she’s not just any woman, this woman has queenly bearing, she has an entourage with her that communicates to everyone socially speaking that this woman is all upper class, she is an upper class lady and she is the one who is passed off as his sister and finally in Genesis 12 she wound up in Pharaoh’s harem, which was a disaster. That was Abraham’s solution to his problem; it didn’t work, and so God had to condemn and contaminate Pharaoh in order to get Pharaoh to realize hey, you got something wrong here bud, you’d better straighten things out and it was Pharaoh who finally put two and two together and realized that he had the wrong woman in his harem and got rid of her. Now he tries to do the same thing with another king, Abimelech.

Genesis 20:2, “And Abraham said of Sarah, his wife, She is my sister: and Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah.” “Take” means to take her into his harem; it does not mean that at this point there were any sexual relations involved; it simply means that he took her into the harem. Abimelech was a Philistine and this, of course, is going to clash with anybody that knows traditional chronology of ancient history, the Philistines weren’t supposed to have invaded this area until the 10^th century, they are known in classical history as the sea peoples that supposedly were under the Ramesseside dynasty invaded the north part of Egypt. We have to, as Bible-believing Christian, looking at history from our point of view, we have to say you’re wrong; the sea peoples cannot be the Philistines because the Philistines preceded this time by over a thousand years. The time of this passage is close to 2000 BC; there’s something radically wrong if we’re saying the Philistines just showed up in 1000. The Philistines are here, they are here in a large enough sense that you’ve got a king over them. So whoever the Philistines were, and we know they came out of the eastern Mediterranean because Deuteronomy 2 says so, they came out of the eastern Mediterranean, they’re related in some way to Mizraim, they are not Greeks; they are somehow related to the Egyptians. They came out of the eastern Mediterranean, formed a colony and came under this King Abimelech. Abimelech, if you look at the word carefully, A-b-i is “my father,” and the rest of it is “melech,” “is king,” “my father is king” and most historians believe that the word Abimelech is not his proper name; it is his title, like the word Pharaoh. We’re never given the real Pharaoh’s name in the Bible, we’re just given Pharaoh. There were dozens of Pharaoh’s and so there were dozens of Abimelechs. Abimelech is simply the title. So he passes her off and she is absorbed into his harem as just another queen.

Genesis 20:3, “God comes to Abimelech in a dream by night,” I told you back in chapter 19 there is a theme that if you’re an alert student of the text you want to pick up here and it’s basic and it’s crucial. We have people all the time and I discussed with enough people that I think this is a good sample, I think probably in a congregation this size this morning, probably 30% to 40% at least would view the Old Testament as only that which pertains to Jews, that the Old Testament doesn’t have any contact with non-Jews, that the Old Testament is not written for all men, it’s only written basically for Jews. Well here in verse 3 you have the same kind of thing you saw back in chapter 19 where God interacts with non-Jews outside the covenant nation. Here, yes it’s because of the Jewish program, but nevertheless, it is within a non-Jew that God speaks. And God holds non-Jews and people who do not have the Bible in the Old Testament, He holds them responsible for His moral law and He does reveal and talk to them and here in a dream He does so. And He threatens Abimelech and He says you have taken this woman and you’re a dead man, showing that God has judging abilities. [“But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman whom thou has taken; for she is a man’s wife.”]

Some of you have taken comparative courses in religion; the professor probably told you that the God of Israel back in the ancient times was conceived to be a God who only worked in an area and then there would be the gods of Canaan, and then would be the gods of the Philistines and there’ll be the gods of Egypt, and each god would operate over his geographical domain, he had kind of a private backyard but he didn’t go in anybody else’s backyard. Well, what do you do with verse 3; here you’ve got the God of Israel operating inside the backyard of the gods of the Philistines. So this blows that theory out kind of; the God of the Scriptures is a universal deity.

And so Abimelech says to her, now this is a humorous thing that goes on here and I’ll try to show you where God kind of plays games with Abimelech in this dream. Verse 4-6, it’s funny and yet it’s very poignant because it points out to us this problem we have of self-righteousness. Notice how in verse 4 Abimelech responds to the accusation you’ve got the wrong woman in your harem, and notice what Abimelech responds. He says, “Lord, will you slay a righteous nation?” He claims righteousness for himself and his tribe. God doesn’t claim righteousness for Abimelech and his tribe but Abimelech does, and then to justify the claim of verse 4 he says I acted in innocence, she said she was his brother.. [5, “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.”] In other words, verses 4-5, Abimelech’s defense is God, it’s very simple, God you can’t judge me, I am a moral person.

Now that’s oftentimes the objection that is raised to the preaching of the gospel. Why does God condemn moral people; I can see why God might condemn the gross individual, usually indicated and defined to be somebody that does something you can’t stand. That’s the gross individual. But nevertheless, why does God judge the nice people, why doesn’t He just judge the clods? Well, because sin is universal, that’s why. Now watch the neat way God disarms this boy. He has this claim that I am moral and I do not merit God’s judgment. Well, God has a very interesting comeback.

God says in Genesis 20:6… notice by the way the language at the end of verse 5, see where it says “the integrity of my heart, the innocency of my hands or whatever some of you with the modern translations have, your translator ought to have in verse 6 repeated the same phraseology, at least part of it, where it says “the integrity of thy heart,” God repeats it and unfortunately, at least in the King James, it doesn’t come across with the sarcasm the Hebrew does. [“And God said unto him in a dream, Yea, I know that thou did this in the integrity of thy heart; for I also withheld thee from sinning against Me: therefore allowed I thee not to touch her.”] In the Hebrew what it says is “and I too know,” so let’s look at the first part of the clause, “Yes I know that, I also know that Abimelech, that you did it in the integrity of your heart,” and then it’s not “for,” it’s “and I also withheld you from sinning against Me.” You see the claim in verse 6 is “I also withheld,” Abimelech claims moral credit as a non-Christian, he claims moral credit because he successfully avoided evil. This becomes a moral credit thing that he then holds up to God and says God you can’t judge me, look what I did, I did a good work, I did not have sex with this woman that I brought into my harem, and I brought her in under innocent pretense, so therefore I claim moral credit. God says no you don’t, because you’re withholding was due to me.

Do you see what verse 6 is saying? I know you did it but you know who it was that was withholding it; I withheld you and before we finish this morning I’ll show you how God withheld. Then at the end, if that wasn’t clear enough, at the end of verse 6 there’s a “because” phrase, there’s a purpose clause, “For this reason I did not permit you to touch her.” So it’s quite obvious by the end of verse 6 who gets the moral credit; the credit goes to God, not the moral person and from which we get what theologians call the doctrine of common grace, that is, grace that is executed toward the non-Christian moral person which acts to suppress evil. So here’s the evil and all the potential welling up; common grace does this: it comes in here and restrains. Now application, right here, of a simple truth of perspective on people: the next time you are tempted to look down your nose at some person that you think is worse than you are, oh, did you see what so and so did, in that tone of voice, you know how it is; just understand that so and so is just like you are; they’re made of the same stuff, they have the same depraved nature you do; the only difference is that so and so had an opportunity that gave them more freedom to exercise their sin nature than you have had so far to exercise your sin nature. So there but for the grace of God you go. That’s the point and that’s the application of common grace. God, not the moral person, gets the credit for good; relative good or human good is really a product of common grace after all, so we can’t even claim that as meritorious when we come to stand before God in His judgment.

Now Genesis 20:7, the instructions to Abimelech, after we’ve removed any hope of personal credit, now we go on to an obligation and the obligation is this: “Now therefore, restore that man his wife; for he is a nabi, a prophet.” Interestingly, this is the first use of the word “prophet” in the Bible and interestingly equally is that in verse 7 you notice it is not a man who forecasts the future. We always like to think of prophecy as that which looks forward in time and that sometimes is correct, but the basic idea of prophecy, as indicated in this primary use of the word, a prophet is an agent of God who declares judgment and salvation. A prophet is an agent of God, specially commissioned, he doesn’t have to be of any lineage, of any race, he’s a man who is commissioned to act as an announcer for God and his sentences. For example, when you proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to a non-Christian neighbor or friend you are acting prophetically; you are acting as a prophet because you’re proclaiming a judgment and salvation. And so here, “he is a prophet, and he has got to be the one that prays for you,” you notice what the prophet does in verse 7, he doesn’t even preach here; the prophet here prays, intercessory prayer.

There’s something awesome about this kind of praying; this is the second time we’ve run across this in the Sunday morning services. I wonder if it disturbs you. Do you notice how God uses prayer, intercessory prayer as His means of saving people from wrath? It’s as though God says I refuse, in fact one of you hit in the feedback card, and the feedback card said would God still have judged Sodom and Gomorrah had Abraham not prayed and the answer is… well, in this case God didn’t find any righteous people, but had Abraham not prayed they wouldn’t have had a Chinaman’s chance. They wouldn’t have had any kind of chance, no chance whatsoever and the reason for no chance is because there was no intercessory prayer. That’s how serious God takes intercessory prayer; now we don’t like that, we would prefer to think that oh God is a sovereign God and whatever is going to happen is going to happen. Do you know why we like to think that? It’s not because we’re theologically acute; it’s because we’re lazy and it’s easier to let God do the whole thing than to say that I bear such a responsible position in the chain of cause/effect that if I don’t pray something different is going to happen.

Now you remember that when you work with your prayer worksheets and part two deals with this country and 1 Timothy 2 talks about this country. This country is about ready to enter another international crisis. Those of you who remember very vividly the days of 1962 with the Cuban missile crisis, we’ve got another one on our hands and the Russians this time, the big difference is they’ve got all the cards in their hands. In 1962 we had Strategic Air Command in the air; we had air defense commands sitting with its fighter planes on the runways with nuclear weapons in them, ready to go. We had the planes cruising off shore looking for submarines and everything was at the highest level of alertness. And we had the power and Khrushchev finally said I back off, and the Russians lost the gamble. Today they don’t have to gamble; today the nitwits of our country have so thoroughly disarmed us that we have no credibility; we’re sending rattletraps called B-52’s where, if they manage to get down the runway and get into the air where are they going to go. You see, we’re about to learn something and it’s a tragedy that in America we have to go through this; we’ve gone through it in the 30s before World War II and we’re going to have to go through it all over again. We do not understand the realities of power in a depraved world. The realities of the sword of state that must always be sharp and ready to be used. We always take down our guard because everybody else thinks like we do. Oh no they don’t. Nuclear warfare, say the Americans, is unthinkable; why we wouldn’t have nuclear war, nobody would be that stupid. Oh no, the Russians think they can have nuclear war and they can get away with it. Now what do you do against an enemy like that; there’s only one course, either disarm and become their doormat or you pit weapon against weapon and challenge them all the way down to where the rubber meets the road, right with your hand on the button. I think those of you who have been around Lubbock Bible Church know pretty well where the Bible would guide us in that kind of a situation.

So this is the old story, you have to learn the hard way and we have to pray, as the believing remnant of our country, intercessory prayer, and therefore we have Abraham in verse 7, the prophet who prays. Now Abimelech and his kingdom, that small little colony of Philistines, are totally contingent in their future. They become totally contingent upon Abraham, totally dependent.

Genesis 20:8, [“Therefore Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his servants, and told all these things in their ears: and the men were very much afraid.”] Abimelech briefs his men; verse 9 he comes to Abraham and he asks him, what on earth have you done? [9, “Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said unto him, What hast thou done unto us? And what have I offended thee, that thou hast brought on me, and on my kingdom a great sin? Thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done. [10] And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What did you have in view, that thou hast done this thing.”] Which shows in verse 9 and 10, incidentally another case, so familiar by now, of a believer losing his testimony before the kings of this earth. Remember he already lost his testimony before Pharaoh; now he loses it before another king, but just to encourage us all, if this happens to you and you blow it some time and you feel like crawling in a hole and wish the world would go away, don’t sit there and cry about it. God doesn’t ask you to sit and cry about spilt milk; you shake the dust off, get up and move on; that’s the way Abraham did it. You trust the Lord with your mistakes of the past; all you’re concerned with is learning so next time you can do it better. That’s all! Don’t worry about the mistakes of the past, you haven’t got time to worry about your mistakes of the past. You’ve got too much to do now and in the future, so forget the past and trust in the Lord.

Abraham had to here, and to show you how God can cover up mistakes, that’s the end of this story; marvelous end to this whole mess, a believer all fouled up, made the wrong decision, got his wife in a harem, God gets his wife back out of the harem but then grace upon grace. “God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.” Watch what happens.

He gives the excuse in verses 11-12 and tells you about the history of it all. We’ve been through that. [“And Abraham said, Because I thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife’s sake. [12] And ye indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. [13] And 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 to which we shall come, say of me, He is my brother.”]

But what I want you to look at is verse 14-16. Look what he does; God worked so upon Abimelech that Abraham received vast wealth. Again, men, think in terms of a businessman when you read verse 14. We’re not talking about just a Sunday School lesson; this guy is a rancher. Now translate the data of verse 14 into business language. “Abimelech took sheep, and oxen,” now what are the sheep and the oxen? Those are his major produce; we would say those are his capital. Then it says he gave him “menservants, and women-servants, and gave them unto Abraham, [and restored him Sarah, his wife].” well, what are these? The menservants and womenservants? There is employees, he’s giving him help; maybe help was as hard to come by then as it is now; a lot of people fussing about jobs and nobody wants to work. Well, probably they had the same thing here and he was short of help and Abimelech said hey, I’ve got some people that know what work is, let me give you some. So now he’s got capital, he’s got employees, and then what else, he’s got his wife, his helper, verse 15, he adds to all that blessing land, which we would translate in business terms as opportunities for investment, new markets, new areas to make money, that’s what he’s giving Abraham, all this. Does Abraham earn this? Does Abraham deserve this? Not at all, it’s all grace. See, that’s how God treats us, graciously.

Now for the hard verse, verse 16, I’m not going to be dogmatic about verse 16, I’ve studied a long time with this, it’s a very difficult verse, very hard to master the language. I want to show you the problem in verse 16, then I’m going to show you my solution and where I think it fits into this grace theme. It’s something that he does for Abraham’s wife; the question is, what does he do to his wife. “And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver:” everything’s clear up to that point. But now from that point on it is not clear what is going on here. Different translations record this differently because honest translators can differ. In the King James it says, “behold, he” whatever “he” is, “he is to thee a covering of the eyes, unto all that are with thee, and with all others: thus she was reproved.” The problem is that the verb “reproved” can also mean vindicate or judge, it can mean a bad sense, reprove, corrected her, but it can mean a good sense in that she was compensated. So we’ve got ambiguity in the verb; that’s the first problem.

The second problem is we don’t know what “the covering of the eyes is”; “the covering of the eyes” can be two possible things. The “covering of the eyes” can refer first to what we call expiatory gifts, some would call it a bribe but it’s a little more sophisticated than a bribe. Incidentally, by the way, that is a quirk of Biblical ethics that shock men, I know, every once in a while I say this but I continue to say it because the Bible says it, and that is that there is no biblical injunction against offering bribes. All the biblical injunctions are against accepting bribes but you never find a prohibition in the Bible against offering bribes, and I suggest and I’ve suggested it before, that is an escape device that has been conveniently used by Christians suffering persecution to bribe the guards, give them their cartons of cigarettes, let them turn the other way so we can smuggle Bibles through, or so we can take care of Christians that are in crisis situations. I think this is a little moral loophole that God has given for situations in life.

But nevertheless, the covering can mean an expiatory gift, or it can mean her husband’s. Now if it means her husband, what he’s doing is reproving here and he’s saying look lady, your protection doesn’t come from putting on this role deal, that every time you get into a bad situation you are passing yourself off as your husband’s sister. Now your protection is your husband, look, he’s a nabi, he’s a prophet, he says my whole kingdom is condemned until your husband prays. So your husband is “the covering of the eyes,” covering the eyes meaning veil, that which protects you. Now that would be one possibility and it seems like the King James tends to go that way because in verse 16 it says, “behold, he is to thee a covering of the eyes.” Well, the only problem with that is that when you look in the near context, the expression, “covering the eyes” does not have the meaning of a husband.

Turn to Genesis 32:20; we’re trying to look in a place nearby, by the same author where he uses the same expression so our interpretation is objective. This is the incident involving Jacob and Esau, and in verse 20 it says, “And say ye moreover, Behold, the servant Jacob, is behind us. For he said, I will appease him with the present….” that means to cover his eyes, it’s a Hebrew expression, “I will cover his eyes” with a friendly little bribe, meaning look the other way baby and here’s a payment to turn your eyes. Frankly that’s the language and that’s exactly what it means. That’s what’s neat about the Old Testament, it’s real life.

Now back to Genesis 20:16. If that’s what it means we’ve got to re-do verse 16; it’s talking here about an expiatory gift and the word then would not be he’s reproving Sarah, he’s paying her back to forget the memory of what he did to her, bringing her into this harem. He says I’ve done you a wrong woman and I want this to be a compensatory gift to you; a covering of your eyes so you won’t remember what I did. We don’t know the spirit in which it was given, it could have been a thoroughly pagan spirit; he thought he might just be buying salvation, or buying good works or something; we don’t know what the motive was, we’re just talking about the act.

So now let’s put it together and see what we get out of verse 16: “And unto Sarah,” notice it doesn’t says I gave you a thousand pieces of silver, it says “I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver,” but he talks to her when he says it. Why does he talk to the wife when he gave her husband the money? Well, I think the answer is in the explanation, “behold, he” it should not be he, it should be “it,” that is the bribe, the price that I’ve given, “that shall be to you for a covering of your eyes and for all that are with you,” that’s all the maidens that came into the harem with her, the whole company, “and thus she was compensated” I would read it.

Now let’s put this in a proper setting so at least all the ladies can understand what’s happened here. Here’s how God provided in a very interesting and personal way. Those of you who have been living the Christian life for some time know how God answers your prayers in a far more personally tailored way than you could ever explain to some non-Christian. This is unbelievable, to see how God provides in a very personal way. Now what was Sarah about to have? A child. What you’ve got here is a God-given baby shower; a thousand pieces of silver to provide for the child that is to be born. See how God thinks of everything. All verses 14-15 has to do with her husband’s business, but notice in verse 16 the wealth is in terms of convertible currency that they can use to go out and purchase things for that boy, because after all, who is the boy but the promised seed, the seed of the future who will be the king, who will be the man who reigns, one of the great patriarchs. So even before he’s born God provides; even through the foolishness of her husband God provides. Now isn’t that good protection? Here her husband isn’t even the good spiritual leader he ought to be in the situation and God still blesses her, He provides for this.

And that’s not the last time God provided for a famous baby. Since we’re heading for Christmas it doesn’t require too much memory to recall that God gave to Mary and Joseph the money that they needed to go down to Egypt and come back again. How? How did they get the money, the poor family of Joseph and Mary, to take Jesus thousands of miles across the desert and stay in Egypt for a while and then come back? The gifts of the three men from the east. What did they give? They gave their wealth to Joseph and Mary, and what did Joseph and Mary do with it? Protected Jesus and provided for Him. God provides for the unborn child and here’s another one of those tender, specific instances in Scripture where God thinks of the woman. And Sarah, when she saw verse 14-15, oh yeah, husband gets it all, husband screws up, husband gets blessed and here I am, the one that does all the dishes, nobody ever thinks of me and all the rest of it. And yet God says relax, and he turns, Abimelech turns to her, God has him turn to her and talk to her about the money he gave to her husband.

And then we find the conclusion of the story in the power of Abraham as a nabi, as the praying prophet. Genesis 20:17, “So Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants; and they bore children. [18] “For the LORD had completely closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because” of Abraham? No, “because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.” Why? Because she’s the object of the promise at that point. She is the conveyor of life, the fountain of life. The fountain of life has to be protected; the woman has to be protected, she is the life of the future and therefore look what God does to protect the woman.

Do you know why I’m emphasizing this protection theme? Because Sarah is used as a model for Christian women in 1 Peter 3. In 1 Peter 3 Christian women are told to submit to their husbands, and even when their husbands are non-Christian. Oh, but if I did that I wouldn’t be protected. Isn’t it interesting that of all the woman of the Old Testament that are mentioned in the 1 Peter 3 passage, who is mentioned but this woman, Sarah, the woman who is the recipient of all these obvious protections.

Then finally notice in verse 17 something else; along with the women in verse 17-18 do you notice who else is healed? Notice it says the wife, it says his maidservants, it says God closed fast the wombs, He obviously interfered in the sexual processes, but then it says “God healed Abimelech,” now connect that with the fact that God, back in verse 6 said I “withheld you” and didn’t permit you to touch her. I would infer from this that in some way God sexually impaired Abimelech so he couldn’t have relations with any woman in his harem during this period. That’s how he was held, so when Abimelech was coming up with all this garbage about oh, what a nice moral person I am God, I left her alone, and God says friend, you had to! So you see, God gets the credit; always God gets the credit. And what have we found in chapter 20? We’ve found that it makes a difference what side of the fence you’re on. If you’re on God’s side you can’t help but get blessed. If you compromise like Lot, you can’t help but lose. Expressed in another way, God is a mighty fortress, so let’s sing hymn……