God Came to Abimelech
Notes
Transcript
Call to Worship
Call to Worship
Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
Or ever You had formed the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
You turn man to destruction,
And say, “Return, O children of men.”
For a thousand years in Your sight
Are like yesterday when it is past,
And like a watch in the night.
You carry them away like a flood;
They are like a sleep.
In the morning they are like grass which grows up:
In the morning it flourishes and grows up;
In the evening it is cut down and withers.
For we have been consumed by Your anger,
And by Your wrath we are terrified.
You have set our iniquities before You,
Our secret sins in the light of Your countenance.
For all our days have passed away in Your wrath;
We finish our years like a sigh.
The days of our lives are seventy years;
And if by reason of strength they are eighty years,
Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow;
For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Who knows the power of Your anger?
For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath.
So teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Return, O Lord!
How long?
And have compassion on Your servants.
Oh, satisfy us early with Your mercy,
That we may rejoice and be glad all our days!
Make us glad according to the days in which You have afflicted us,
The years in which we have seen evil.
Let Your work appear to Your servants,
And Your glory to their children.
And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,
And establish the work of our hands for us;
Yes, establish the work of our hands.
Intro
Intro
Last week we concluded the saga of Sodom and Gomorrah
It’s destruction and the legacy of Lot.
This week, we are going to encounter a similar event to what has already happened
back in Chapter 12 with Pharaoh.
Body
Body
And Abraham journeyed from there to the South, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur, and stayed in Gerar. Now Abraham said of Sarah his wife, “She is my sister.” And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah.
Abraham journey South after the destruction of Sodom.
Perhaps he was ashamed of the behavior of Lot and the abominations committed with his daughters
Perhaps the stench of destruction of the Cities of the plain was too much, so he left for a time.
Maybe it was a famine, as was his cause or leaving to Egypt back in Chapter 12.
We don’t know why, but he did.
Once again, Abraham refers to his wife Sarah as “his sister” and she is to refer to him as “her brother”
The Lord rebuked Abram the first time through Pharaoh.
right after promising to make him into a great nation.
This time is right after God elaborated on his promise to give him a seed through his wife Sarah and that she would be expecting within the year.
Sometimes faithful men struggle with certain sins, including lacking faith.
Abimelech might be the name taken by a Philistine king
There are multiple Abimelechs in Scripture, including another similar situation with Issac and Rachel
David also encounters an Abimelech figure who is a King of the philistines about 1000 years later.
Could be a titular name like Pharoah to refer to the kings of egypt.
Or maybe a very common royal family name like all the King Louis of France.
Either way, this is very likely NOT the same Abimelech encountered later on in Genesis and definitely not the same one David interacts with.
But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, “Indeed you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man’s wife.”
But Abimelech had not come near her; and he said, “Lord, will You slay a righteous nation also? Did he not say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she, even she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ In the integrity of my heart and innocence of my hands I have done this.”
And God said to him in a dream, “Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart. For I also withheld 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 shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.”
God from time to time gives dreams to gentile Kings and rulers.
Pharoah with Joseph
Nebuchadnezzar with Daniel
Even Pilate’s wife has a dream about Jesus being innocent.
Here Abimelech is visited by God in a dream, warning him that he is in sin and that certain death awaits.
“For she is a man’s wife”
Even adultery was a serious offense to this pagan King.
“But Abimelech had not come near her”
“Lord, will you slay a righteous nation also?”
Interesting wording, since God had just destroyed the wicked cities around Sodom and Gomorrah
Abimelech is professing his nation’s innocence.
“Didn’t he say ‘she is my sister’?” and she said ‘he is my brother’
“In the integrity of my heart and innocence of my hands I have done this”
Interesting. This is a Canaanite King.
God says he is a dead man because of his sin of taking Sarah as a wife.
From reading the end of this chapter, we see that Abimelech already has at least one wife.
God does not find him guilty for taking an additional wife, but for taking a married woman
And not just any man’s wife, but a prophet’s wife.
Once again, God is protecting Abraham and the promise he made.
So Abimelech rose early in the morning, called all his servants, and told all these things in their hearing; and the men were very much afraid. And Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, “What have you done to us? How have I offended you, that you have brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? You have done deeds to me that ought not to be done.” Then Abimelech said to Abraham, “What did you have in view, that you have done this thing?”
And Abraham said, “Because I thought, surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will kill me on account of my wife. But indeed she is truly my sister. She is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, that I said to her, ‘This is your kindness that you should do for me: in every place, wherever we go, say of me, “He is my brother.” ’ ”
Then Abimelech took sheep, oxen, and male and female servants, and gave them to Abraham; and he restored Sarah his wife to him. And Abimelech said, “See, my land is before you; dwell where it pleases you.” Then to Sarah he said, “Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver; indeed this vindicates you before all who are with you and before everybody.” Thus she was rebuked.
So Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his female servants. Then they bore children; for the Lord had closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.
Conclusion/Application
Conclusion/Application
So what is the main take away?
This is a similar incident to what happened earlier with Pharaoh, so what more is there for us?
Ignorance is not an excuse for sin.
Abimelech was going to die for his sin, even with him having a perfect excuse.
God, however, showed grace to abimelech for Abraham’s sake, and prevented him from sinning.
Usually, God’s restraint on sinners goes unnoticed.
If God was not restraining sin, earth would be a hell of a lot worse.
So we should thank God for his restraint of sin in our own lives, and in the world in general.
But more importantly, God does not overlook our sins of ignorance.
His mercy and grace are sufficient to cover sins we commit in ignorance, but once those sins have been revealed to us for what they truly are, we have an obligation to repent of them.
In 2nd Kings 22 and 23, We see King Josiah, who took the throne at 8, discovered the book of the Law that had been lost for generations.
Josiah was a good king, serving the Lord, but he did not know how far off he was because the Law of God had been lost.
When the book of the Law is discovered, they read it.
When it is heard how Israel will be destroyed for doing all the things they were doing, Josiah tears his robe and weeps.
Because of this, God shows mercy to Josiah and the Kingdom of Judah during his reign.
As a result of the discovery of God’s law, Josiah makes many reforms in his Kingdom
These reforms help us to see how wicked Judah had become, and how much wickedness even godly King Josiah was tolerating.
2 Kings 23:3–8 “Then the king stood by a pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to follow the Lord and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people took a stand for the covenant. And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, the priests of the second order, and the doorkeepers, to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the articles that were made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. Then he removed the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense on the high places in the cities of Judah and in the places all around Jerusalem, and those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun, to the moon, to the constellations, and to all the host of heaven. And he brought out the wooden image from the house of the Lord, to the…”
2 Kings 23:10–14 “And he defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire to Molech. Then he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the Lord, by the chamber of Nathan-Melech, the officer who was in the court; and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. The altars that were on the roof, the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, the king broke down and pulverized there, and threw their dust into the Brook Kidron. Then the king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, which were on the south of the Mount of Corruption, which Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the people of Ammon. And he broke in pieces the sacred pillars…”
2 Kings 23:19–25 “Now Josiah also took away all the shrines of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the Lord to anger; and he did to them according to all the deeds he had done in Bethel. He executed all the priests of the high places who were there, on the altars, and burned men’s bones on them; and he returned to Jerusalem. Then the king commanded all the people, saying, “Keep the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.” Such a Passover surely had never been held since the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this Passover was held before the Lord in Jerusalem. Moreover Josiah put away those who consulted mediums and spiritists, the household gods and idols, all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might perform the words of the law which were written in…”
There are many things we have forgotten.
Things are fathers in the faith failed to pass down.
Don’t think that we have everything figured out; look at history, look at scripture.
This is not the case.
In Acts and the Epistles, we see that even some of the Apostles committed sins of ignorance regarding dietary laws and circumcision, among other things.
They had to be rebuked.
If they continued in those sins after being made aware, it would not have been good for their souls.
The gospel of grace was almost absent from church teachings for hundreds of years until the Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.
What false teachings have crept into the church today?
We need to return to the teachings of Scripture
Any modern teachings or dogmas that contradict Scripture need to be repented of.
Once you are made aware of a sin you were committing in ignorance, you threaten the salvation of your soul if you continue in that sin, now with full knowledge.
Hebrews 10:26–27 “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.”
