Genesis 20-21 - Beginning To See God’s Faithfulness In Our Fallenness
Main Idea: Realize the depths of God’s love for you, and live in reconciled relationships with others.
Though you fall, God can protect and restore you. (Genesis 20:1-18)
Though you fall, God can bless you. (Genesis 21:1-7)
Though you fall, God can give you new purpose. (Genesis 21:8-21)
Though you fall, God can mend relationships. (21:22-34)
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)
Today, we are going to be seeing from Genesis 20 and 21 a beginning to see God's faithfulness in our fallenness. Beginning to see God's faithfulness in our fallenness.
You see, Abraham was called by God to go to the land of Canaan, to have a child with his wife, Sarah, and have descendants and a nation in the land.
Somewhere around 24, 25 years have passed since that initial call to come to Canaan, and Abraham and Sarah still don't have a child, he doesn't own any land in Canaan, and in fact, he actually married another woman, Sarah's slave, and he had a son
named Ishmael with her. Obviously, not a great start to seeing God's promises fulfilled.
However, God has consistently shown himself to be forgiving, gracious, just, and a rescuer in times that Abraham and Sarah have endangered themselves and the promises of God. Despite their falls, God was faithful.
And the same is true for you and I today. No matter what you've done, no matter where you've been, how you failed, God loves you. He has a plan for you and he wants to bless you.
And today we're going to see this central truth that we can realize the depths of God's love for us and live in reconciled relationships with others.
Today, Abraham's going to repeat almost every failure that he has had up to this point, but we see in chapters 20 and 21 in particular, God's incredible faithfulness, despite the fallenness of Abraham.
And I don't know what all of y'all's weeks have entailed.
As I think back over the last seven days, I can think of plenty of times that I lost my temper, that I was unkind, times when I did things without praying or consulting, hey, God, should I do this? Should I approach this this way?
I'm so thankful that even into my sins and my failures, there is a God who loves me and who works even in my inability and my brokenness. And he's that same God that wants to work in you today. Let's pray.
And then we're gonna look today at four truths about God's love for us and the difference it can make in our lives and our relationships. Dear Jesus, thank you.
Thank you for the gift of your forgiveness, Lord, the gift of reconciliation to God that is made possible through your sacrifice. God, we come to you this morning, not because we have it all together, but because we are in desperate need of you.
We are broken people. But God, these broken people are the ones that you have called to be a light for you in this world. You have called us to be your hands and your feet.
You have called us to the mission that you have. So, Lord, how in the world can we serve, can we love, can we give, can we be a blessing to others within our own evil?
It is only through the work of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit, Lord, that transforms us from enemies and strangers and wicked people, Lord, into children of God, adopted, loved, eternally forgiven, and empowered by your own presence.
God, we ask today that you would help us to see your good plans for us, and may you be exalted in your church.
Lord, we ask that if there's someone here today that has not accepted you as Savior, that today would be the day that they choose to, if you will, lay down their arms and come open-handed to you, asking for your forgiveness and your redemption.
We love you, God, and we pray all of this in the name of Jesus. Amen. First truth that I want us to see today about God's love for us is that though we fall, God can protect and restore us.
And we see this outlined in chapter 20. Gonna read through the story, and then we'll look at a few highlights.
From there, from where Abraham was, overlooking the plane of Sodom and Gomorrah, where we saw last week in Genesis 19, from there Abraham traveled to the region of the Negev and settled between Kadesh and Shur.
This doesn't mean anything to you guys yet. He goes basically to the furthest south portion of the land of Canaan. So the last time that we saw him go this far south, he went all the way down into Egypt and got into all sorts of trouble there.
It says, while he was staying in Jerar, Abraham said about his wife Sarah, she is my sister.
Okay, you guys remember when he did this before, he got scared that people would see how attractive his then 74-year-old wife, now 99-year-old wife was, and they would kill Abraham and bring Sarah into their own harem.
So Abraham perpetuates this lie once again, and King Abimelek of Jerar had Sarah brought to him. Okay, we know shockingly little about Jerar, King Abimelek.
This is brand new information, but from the context clues, as we've been reading through this story, we assume that this is going to be a wicked evil person, just like the king, the pharaoh of Egypt was a wicked person.
That seems to be a pretty safe guess. Not only that, but he is a king in a Canaanite area. This was a place that was known for its wickedness.
And you can read through the Book of Leviticus, where God says, listen, I don't want you to be like all of the other nations that were in the land of Canaan before you.
I don't want you participating in idolatry and sexual immorality and child sacrifice and all of these things. I don't want you to be like these people.
So as we enter verse two, we should be nervous that now Sarah has taken, or that Abimelech has taken Sarah into his harem. But verse three, we come across something very interesting, but God came to Abimelech in a dream by night.
Okay, this is one of the first times that we've interacted with this in scripture, that God is interacting with a person. Other people that receive this are like Solomon, right before he receives wisdom and riches from God.
You have what God does with Abraham in making the covenant where God walks through. And he says, I am going to bless you in incredible ways. Here, God is talking to this Canaanite king.
He says, you are about to die because of the woman you have taken, for she is a married woman. Now, Abimelech had not approached her. This is Bible terms for, had not engaged in adult interaction with this lady.
And he says, Lord, would you destroy a nation even though it is innocent? Okay, do you remember the last time that a person was encouraging God, don't destroy an innocent nation? Who was it?
Abraham, yep, in chapter 18, at the end of the chapter, as Abraham says, God, you wouldn't destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, would you? Would you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? And here Abimelech is praying for his nation.
And he says, would you destroy it even though it's innocent? He says, didn't he himself say to me, she is my sister. And she herself said, he is my brother.
I did this with a clear conscience and clean hands. He says, I didn't know anything about this.
OK, now we've got a very weird interaction because these, this group of people, the Canaanites, the people that would be assumed to be wicked and evil, they are talking with God. They are operating in integrity and clean hands.
And the people that should be the people of God are lying and doing evil. Verse number six, Then God said to him in the dream, Yes, I know that you did this with a clear conscience. I have also kept you from sinning against me.
Therefore, I have not let you touch her. Abimelech might not have known how all the circumstances were working out.
I assume from all of the context here, there were times when Abimelech was going to do something, and God sovereignly said, No, I'm going to send this thing your way. I'm going to send a distraction here. I'm going to send a headache here.
He says, I haven't let you sin against me. Verse number seven, God says, Now return the man's wife, for he is a prophet. Now a prophet, normally when we think of prophecy, we think, if you will, foretelling the future.
Most of the time in scripture, the prophets that we read about were the fourth tellers. That is those that declared what God had already said. This was Abraham's role.
He was supposed to tell other people about who God was, about what God did.
And instead of telling Abimelech or, you know, any of the people there in Jerar about the Lord, Abraham's out there not foretelling God's word, but instead trying to, if you will, undermine God's promises because he's scared.
God says, he, Abraham, is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not return her, know that you will certainly die, you and all who are yours.
I'm thankful that God both has, number one, an incredible respect for marriage.
And here, especially between Abraham and Sarah, that the violation of the marriage covenant and the knowing, the knowledge of having taken someone else's spouse is evil and wrong in the sight of God.
I'm also thankful for God's mercy, that he could have just, you know, brought plagues, brought death, brought all of this trouble onto these Canaanite people, but God is loving and merciful, and he wanted to give them opportunity to repent and to
turn from their own ways. Verse number eight, early in the morning, Abimelek got up, called all his servants together, and personally told them all these things.
This is supposed to remind you in the chapter previous with Sodom and Gomorrah, where Lot and his family, like they've been interacting, they've been interacting with the angels all night, and early in the morning, they get up and the angels have to
like shoe them out. And Lot was totally unsuccessful in convincing his sons-in-law to come out. In fact, they thought he was joking that God's judgment had come to the place. And here Abimelek, he calls all his servants together.
He personally told them all these things, and the men were terrified. Here's someone that has a believable walk and interaction with the Lord. Verse number nine, Then Abimelek called Abraham in and said to him, What have you done to us?
How did I sin against you that you have brought such enormous guilt on me and on my kingdom? You have done things to me that should never be done. He says, You tricked me and you didn't trick me just like in a fun prank kind of way.
The things you did are going to get us destroyed. Why in the world did you do this? Abimelek also asked Abraham, verse number 10, What made you do this?
Or perhaps if you have a more formal translation, you'll see this. What did you see in us that you did this? Abraham replied, I thought there's absolutely no fear of God in this place.
They will kill me because of my wife. I want to take just a very short aside. Here Abimelek says, What did you see?
What actual empirical evidence was there of our wickedness that you behaved in this way? And Abraham said, I thought. Paul would tell us in 1st Corinthians 13 that love does not think evil of others.
A loving, God-like relationship with other people means that we assume the best of others, of their intentions, of their motives, and of their actions. Well that sometimes means that we are disappointed and get burned, certainly.
But that's the way that Jesus calls us to live. Abraham replied, I thought there's absolutely no fear of God in this place. They will kill me because of my wife.
And as we talked about in the first time Abraham did this in Egypt, instead of him saying, I will lay down my wife for my wife, he says, I will lay down my wife for my life. This is not how Jesus models marriage for us.
Even as Paul would tell us in Ephesians chapter five, he says, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.
If you're a husband in the room today, our call is to lay down our lives for our wives, that we operate in a way that is understanding and kind and looking out for their best interests. Our wives are not there to serve us.
We are there to serve them, to provide for them, to give security and to give love and appreciation. Abraham continues, besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father, though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.
Another random side note, it's also not entirely clear from some of the genealogies given. If Abraham's actually telling the truth even here, or if he's still operating in fear of a Bimelech, like bringing retribution for what he'd done.
He could be being honest, and at the end of Genesis 11, you can kind of look at the family genealogy, and there's one name that might have ended up being kind of changed to Sarai, that she would have had a nickname at one point that then she's
referenced as Sarai the rest of the way through, but that has nothing to do with what we're going over right now. Abraham's like, oops, sorry, but also he was kind of a half-truth, and if you have to half-truth your statements with other people, you
are not dealing honestly or kindly or good with others. Chapter 20, verse 13, So when God had me wander from my father's house, I said to her, show your loyalty to me wherever we go, and say about me, he's my brother.
Men, don't tell your wives to lie. This is bad.
One thing that's actually, we've been going over the book of 1 Peter in our Tabernacle Talk Bible Study Podcast, and we just went through 1 Peter 3, the beginning portion, where Peter says this to wives in the Roman Empire that were in a lot of
danger a lot of times if their husband was not a Christian, and they were trying to convince him to be a Christian. And he tells those women undergoing really difficult circumstances this. He tells them, you can win over your husbands without a word.
They can be won to the word without a word by your lifestyle, by the way that you live. And he even says, I don't want you guys to focus on like winning him to Jesus by dressing beautiful and having your hair done.
I want you to dress beautifully on the inside, that who you are is such a testament and a light to the veracity of this Christian faith that you hold. And he says, the holy women of old, that's how they dressed.
And he actually mentions Sarah and Abraham. He says, this is how Sarah interacted with Abraham. It says, calling him Lord, that she listened to what Abraham said, even sometimes when it came to her own detriment.
As Peter's going through everything in 1 Peter 3, he's saying, God will protect you as you continue to follow him, even in your difficult circumstances.
And this is one of those where Sarah multiple times has been given away by Abraham, and yet God is looking out for her and caring for her. Some of you have been in circumstances where you've been in abusive relationships.
Some of you have been in these moments where others have been consistently doing you wrong. And aren't you thankful that God has brought you now to the place where you are?
That he has preserved you each and every moment, even through the sins and failures and evil of others. Verse number 14, Then Abimelek took flocks and herds and male and female slaves, gave them to Abraham and returned his wife Sarah to him.
Abimelek said, Look, my land is before you, settle wherever you want. And he said to Sarah, Look, I am giving your brother 1000 pieces of silver. It is a verification of your honor to all who are with you.
You are fully vindicated. Then Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelek, his wife and his female slaves so that they could bear children.
For the Lord had completely closed all of the wounds in Abimelek's household on account of Sarah, Abraham's wife. The one thing that I want to mention here that blew my mind, this is the first time that Abraham is mentioned as having prayed to God.
Like we've been going since chapter 12, and he's had times where he's talking with God. Most of the time when God comes to him, this is one of the first times that it ever says Abraham prays to God.
And I find it very interesting the prayer that he prays, because the entire time over the last 24, 25 years that Abraham has been in the land of Canaan, the consistent heartbreak for him and his family was, we're barren, we don't have a child.
And here God uses Abraham to bless others in a way that God hadn't yet blessed Abraham.
I wonder for us, if God wants to use you to help someone get to a spot that perhaps you haven't even arrived there yet, you haven't been blessed in that way yet, but God might use you as a channel of blessing to others.
And this is jumping out of order. But the very beginning of chapter 21, after Abraham prays for Abimelech and all of the people in his kingdom, to be able to have kids again, God gives Abraham and Sarah Isaac.
Decades after they've been praying and begging God, God answers and he comes through. But he answers the prayer request for Abraham and Sarah after they are used to be a blessing to someone else.
Are you willing to wait for a yes to some of God's, your prayer request to God, until after you've been a blessing to others? Or are you trying to hold out on blessing others until God blesses you?
Today, though you fall, God can protect and restore you.
Sarah here was again placed in a dangerous position because of Abraham's lack of faith in God's protection, but in her submission to God, he protected her and the promise that Abraham again endangered. Sometimes, it's not that you're falling.
Sometimes, it's other people's failures. But I want you to realize that your sins and the sins of others don't stop God from being able to protect and to restore you.
Just as he restored Abimelech and his kingdom, he restored Abraham and Sarah again, so he can restore you. Abimelech, though a Canaanite king, had a walk with God where he did what God asked. He heard from God and he was protected by God from sin.
Just because you're not the chosen one or the person everyone thinks is very spiritual doesn't mean that you can't walk close to God and hear from him.
Here, the person that was the chosen one, Abraham, he's wandering far away from God in his words and his actions.
And the person that would be viewed as, oh, that's a Canaanite king, he's not one of God's people, he heard from God and prayed with him. He was kept by God from sinning. And that's the relationship I want to have from God.
I want to hear the voice of my father. I want to obey what he asks me. I want him to keep me from evil.
Even every single night, I pray the Lord's Prayer with my kiddos. And that line in there, don't lead us into temptation, but keep us away from the evil one. And here that happened in the life of Abimelek.
Abraham's life, his wife, his future child and God's promises to him, they were all protected by God despite his incessant failures. Contrary to all odds, Abraham was protected and kept safe.
Whatever God wants you to have in your life, he will keep and protect. The late pastor Tim Keller said, if we knew what God knows, we would ask exactly for what he gives. If we knew what God knows, we would ask for exactly what he gives.
Let that be a comfort to us, that we can lose nothing that God wants for us, and all we can lose is what God knows is not for our good and for his glory. What a comfort that is.
And today, even as we reflect on Abraham and his prayer, are you consistently praying to God?
In the storyline of your life, how often would, and Mary prayed, and Bryon prayed, and Ron prayed, how often would that come up in a biography and an account of our life? Do we trust that what he has given us and what he will give us is enough?
Are we thankful for what God has provided? Not only though we fall, can God protect and restore us, but secondly, today from chapter 21 verses 1 through 7, though we fall, God can bless us.
Verse number 1, the Lord came to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. I'm thankful that every promise that God makes to us is certain. In him, all the promises of God are yes and amen.
Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the appointed time that God had told him. Even as we saw in chapter 17 and chapter 18 that God said in about a year's time, you and Sarah are going to have a son.
Abraham named his son who was born to him, the one Sarah bore to him, Isaac. And if you'll remember the account, when God told Abraham, you're going to have a son in a year, what did Abraham do?
He laughed and actually he fell on his face laughing so hard. I laugh a lot. I tend to think I'm a pretty jovial person.
I can't remember the last time I literally fell on the ground or fell on my face laughing. Abraham thought this was hysterical. There's no way that this could take place.
When Sarah was eavesdropping on the conversation between God and Abraham and the couple of angels, she hears, I'm going to give Sarah a son in about a year. And she laughs and God says, why did Sarah laugh? She goes, I didn't laugh.
And he says, no, you did laugh. And now every time that they saw their little baby boy, they said, ah, there goes laughter. And what a sweet thing that God often turns what we have doubted that he is able to do.
And we see our doubts walking around. For some of you, you've had loved ones who have encountered addiction, and maybe the doubts that you have had about God's ability to restore, and you see laughter walking around.
For some of you, you prayed for kids, you prayed for healing for a loved one, and maybe you doubted, and you get to see laughter running around.
What a thought that God is not hampered by our inability to believe, but he does far and above beyond anything that we can ask or imagine according to his power.
Verse number four, when his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him as God had commanded him. And we spent a lot of time on that in, I believe it was chapter 17. This is the sign of the covenant.
This says, this is one of God's people. And Abraham does this with Isaac. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
Sarah said, God has made me laugh. He has made me Yitzchak, Isaac. And everyone who hears will Yitzchak with me.
She also said, who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children, yet I have born a son for him in his old age. What a wonderful comfort. Though we fall, God can bless us.
God's blessings rarely come in our timing, but they outnumber anything that we can count. And they remind us of his promises. Isaiah chapter 40 says this, Do you not know?
Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the whole earth. He never becomes faint or weary.
There is no limit to his understanding. He gives strength to the faint and strengthens the powerless. Youths may become faint and weary, and young men stumble and fall, but those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not become weary. They will walk and not faint.
Today, are you thanking God for what he has given, for the prayer requests that he has answered? If all you had tomorrow was what you thanked God for today, what would you have?
And can I tell you, having this mindset of thankfulness for God's answers to prayer, of thankfulness for everything that God has given to us, it changes the way you interact with people.
When you're thankful for the spouse that you have, that they're alive, perhaps they've got their health or that they're still with you despite poor health, it makes it a little harder to have a begrudging, angry attitude with the other person where
you're bitter when you're thankful for them. Same with your kids. I'm thankful that though my house at times like isn't perfect and there's little things we've got to work on, I'm thankful for a roof over my head.
I went without a car stereo for two years because it had died on me actually on my birthday two years ago. And then finally this week, we got a new one put in.
But every time that I turn on my car and I can actually like listen to music or hear the radio or something, I'm like, God, thank you. Having a heart attitude of gratitude can make a magnificent difference.
You want to fight some anger in your life, have some gratitude. You want to fight some feelings of loneliness, start thanking God for every person that he has in your life.
You want to start working on your relationship with someone else, thank God, and thank the other person for all the things that you are grateful for in that relationship. Thank you that you're there for me.
Thank you for not leaving or, if you will, ghosting me. Thank you for this task and this that you do.
As we are grateful for what God has given, as we remember God's promises and we express our gratitude, what joy there is in that, we can experience this laughter, that's Yitzhak, that though we have fallen, God can bless us.
And certainly, this is the most true aspect of this, is in our salvation with Jesus, that though, as Paul would tell us, all have sinned, all have fallen, and come short of the glory of God, yet God gives, He commends, He shows, He illustrates His
love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And the wages of sin is death. Our fall means that we are condemned and we are apart, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
And we who are forgiven, who have turned in faith to Jesus, turned from sin, repented of going our own way, of having us as the ones in charge of our life, to turning in faith to Jesus, and accepting His Lordship and His payment for our sin, we are
those that are abundantly blessed. We have the Spirit, we have the Word, we have His people, we have a home in heaven that's awaiting us. We have purpose in this life.
We have been equipped with spiritual gifts that we are to use in service and care for others. Though we have fallen, God can bless us. Third today, though you fall, God can give you new purpose.
We see this in verses 8-21 of chapter 21. The child, Isaac, he grew and was weaned, and normally you'd have a big to do when your child no longer needed mom's milk, but now could eat solids and you threw a big party.
And Abraham held a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son, here it's referencing Ishmael, Hagar's son with Abraham, saw Ishmael mocking the one Hagar, the Egyptian, had borne to Abraham.
This word mocking every other time, kind of from this point on, that it's used in scripture, beforehand is kind of the same like joking, laughter thing that you would see with Isaac's name.
From this point on in scripture, it takes kind of a sinister twist. It is a intent to do harm.
You actually see it in the Children of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai, where it says that they, as they begin to engage in idolatry, that they get up to, and it's this word, it's play, it's mocking, it's joking, it's almost a jovialness at others'
expense, and very often throughout the rest of scripture, carries with it a connotation of abuse. So here you have this one, and Ishmael would have been probably about 13 or 14 years old at this point to this young kid, and he's taking advantage of
him in some way. And so Sarah says to Abraham, drive out this slave with her son, for the son of this slave will not be a co-heir with my son, Isaac. Here, Sarah reiterates her very same failures of hatred and abuse and using of other people.
The only reason that Hagar had a son with Abraham was because of Sarah's choice. And here, Sarah, instead of owning up to her responsibility, she just says, okay, well, get them out of here.
And she does not identify Hagar as Abraham's wife, though that was what she was at the moment, that they had gotten married. And that's mentioned, I believe, in chapter 14 or 15. Instead, she identifies her as a slave.
She wants to demean and insult her. I want to ask you, who are the people that you demean and insult with your language?
Sarah could have talked about Hagar and Ishmael in any one of a number of ways, but she chose to describe them in the terms that were most denigrating.
Let us be those that build up and encourage other people, that speak well of others, not those that tear down. Verse number 11, this was very distressing to Abraham because of his son. He loved Ishmael.
Even as we saw back in chapter 17, as God's making the covenant with Abraham and saying, I'm going to send the Messiah your ultimate blessing, the blessing for all the nations of the world, Jesus Christ is going to come through the line of Isaac.
And Abraham says, God, if only you'd accept Ishmael as that person. And God said, no, I'm going to bless Ishmael because he's your son, but I'm going to choose that ultimate blessing through the line of Isaac. Abraham loved Ishmael.
But God said to Abraham, do not be distressed about the boy and about your slave.
Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her, because your offspring will be traced through Isaac, and I will also make a nation of the slave son because he is your offspring.
God reiterates his promises to Abraham to say, I'm not going to leave Ishmael alone. He is not going to suffer. In fact, I'm going to make him just as great.
He is going to have just as much blessing on his life because of his relationship with you. Verse 14, early in the morning, Abraham got up, took bread and a water skin, put them on Hagar's shoulders, and sent her and the boy away.
She left and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. If you remember, Hagar is originally from the land of Egypt. So she has been now away from her homeland for at least 14, 15 years since Abraham and Sarah left Egypt.
And now she's wandering, she's kind of near the south of what would eventually be the land of Judah. It says, when the water in the skin was gone, she left the boy under one of the bushes and went and sat at the distance about a bow shot away.
For she said, I can't bear to watch the boy die. Well, she sat at the distance, she wept loudly. Here Hagar thought that it was all over, that there was nowhere that she could go.
Here she's now out of water for her and her son, and all hope's gone. And she awaits death both for her boy and for herself. But God heard the boy crying.
I'm thankful for the truth in Scripture, both in Psalms and Revelation, where God says that he has your tears and my tears, if you will, kept in a vial, kept in a bottle, that he knows every tear that you cry.
And there is no moment of pain or anger or suffering or hurt that you go through that your heavenly father is not aware of. And though everyone in your life forsake you, I'm thankful that God has said he will never leave you or forsake you.
And with the presence of Emmanuel, God with us, we can find ourselves here as Hagar did, that God hears us. The angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, what's wrong, Hagar?
Don't be afraid for God has heard the boy crying from the place where he is. Get up, help the boy up, and grasp his hand, for I will make him a great nation. Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well.
And so she went and filled the water skin and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy, and he grew. He settled in the wilderness and became an archer.
He settled in the wilderness of Peran, and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
And here this person that was thought to be down and out and away from the blessing of God, God saw him in that moment where he was, and he was cared and loved for. For us today, though we fall, God can give us new purpose.
Hagar was not defined by her failed marriage with Abraham. She was not defined by her employer, Sarah. She was not defined by her geographic location far away from home.
She was defined by the God who saw her, who heard her, who cared for her when no other person did. Today, your identity is not found in your possessions, in your relationships, in your employment.
Your identity is found in the cross of Jesus Christ, that you are loved and pursued. You are wanted by the King of all creation. Let that affect how you live.
You have new purpose. And then I noticed here, Hagar discovered God's purpose and blessing through active obedience in his word, not just through passive hoping, where God told her get up, go.
And it was as she followed that, that she saw the well, she saw God's provision in her life. Are you just hoping that God will open the next door for you, or are you taking active steps of obedience in his word to be able to see what he has?
For every person, there are steps of obedience that we can take in God's plan for you.
I don't know every step that God would have for you, but certainly for every person, the first step is the step of salvation, that we would repent of our sins and turn to Jesus in faith, asking him to be our savior.
Scripture says when we do that, we are born again, we are entered into the family of God, never to be taken out. If you have never accepted Christ as your savior, today can be the day that you choose that.
For every person, God wants you to be baptized, to follow the example of Jesus in 2000 years of Christian believers in being baptized. If you've never been baptized, want to encourage you, talk to me after service.
I've got a couple of resources that I would love to get to you, but you are to take that step.
Maybe your step of obedience is that you might need to join the church, to say, I want to actively be a part of what God is doing here with these people, and I want to make myself, if you will, accountable to the church, that they're looking out for
me in my walk with the Lord, and I'm looking out for others. Maybe your step of obedience is that you need to be discipled, or you need to begin discipling someone else, leading others in the relationship with Jesus that you have, or learning with
someone else what that discipleship relationship, what that following of Jesus looks like for you. Though we fall, God can give us new purpose. And then lastly today, though we fall, God can mend relationships.
At that time, Abimelech, he's back again. Accompanied by Fiechel, the commander of his army, said to Abraham, God is with you in everything you do.
Which as we've been looking through the life of Abraham is like, well, yeah, that's basically the only reason Abraham's still alive and has his stuff is because God is with him.
He says, swear to me by God here and now that you will not break an agreement with me or with my children and descendants, as I have been loyal to you, so you will be loyal to me and to the country where you are a resident alien.
Abimelech's already been taken advantage of by Abraham once before, and he says, let's write up an agreement. You know, let's make a covenant.
And that way, if you, if you will, if you trick me again, if you're doing wrong by me again, there will be consequences as a result of it. That's why he comes with the commander of his army. And Abraham said, I swear it.
I'm not going to make that mistake again. But Abraham complained to Abimelech because of the well that Abimelech's servants had seized. Abimelech replied, I don't know who did this thing.
You didn't report anything to me. So I hadn't heard about it until today.
So Abraham goes, OK, if we're like being honest with one another, if we're, you know, calling each other to account on some stuff, me and my people, we dug a well for our, you know, for our sheep, our oxen, and your guys stole the well.
And Abimelech goes, whoa, so sorry. First, I've heard about it. I'll get this set right.
I think how many times in our life have we interacted with people in this way, that we're holding some grudges against other people, but they have no idea because we haven't brought it up, even as Abraham here does with Abimelech.
And he says, oh, OK, well, listen, you got a problem with me. I had a problem with you. Let us be those that bring it into the light so that others would know, so that there can be genuine relationship and love between each other.
Certainly within our church, within your family, within your job. If you have a problem with someone, there's a proverb that Solomon wrote that says this, open rebuke is better than secret love.
That if you in, though it may be awkward, you bring something to the other person and you say, hey, here's this problem that I have with you. Like, let's make this right.
That that is better than if you secretly love a person, but you're holding grudges against them. So Abraham here takes flocks and herds and he gives them to Abimelech and the two of them made a covenant.
Abraham separated seven eulams from the flock and Abimelech said to Abraham, why have you separated these seven eulams? He replied, you are to accept the seven eulams from me, so that this act will serve as my witness that I dug this well.
Basically, he says, here's my like contract, here's purchase price, all of that. Says I want it to be known that I dug this well and that this is my place.
Therefore, that place was called Beersheba, the well of the seven, because it was there that the two of them took an oath.
So you can, I believe if I remember correctly, even if you go to Israel today, you can still find Beersheba, that location that's called the well of the seven, or the seven lambs.
And the reason it's called the well of the seven is because of these seven lambs that Abraham gave to Abimelech.
After they'd made a covenant at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, left and returned to the land of the Philistines.
Abraham planted a tamersk tree in Beersheba and there he called on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God. Here Abraham gets back to the things that in his closest moments with the Lord, he's worshiping and he's praising God.
And Abraham lived as an alien in the land of the Philistines for many days. He's a foreigner, he's a resident alien. He's one that did not own land.
Thankful that though we fall, God can mend relationships. Abimelech, knowing Abraham's past treachery, he sets a relational boundary.
Abraham, having encountered struggles with Abimelech's men, brings up a struggle he had a problem with, but had not told Abimelech about. Knowing the struggles they had in the past and in the present, both men were able to reconcile.
Today, who are you angry at or who do you have problems with that you haven't talked to? When Jesus had a problem with our sin, he came down to earth and died for us.
Who do you have a bad relationship with because they don't know what is or isn't acceptable for a relationship with you because you haven't set the boundaries?
You are not called to live in perpetual anger or frustration with other people instead, as we read in St. Corinthians chapter five.
Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.
That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and has committed the message of reconciliation to us. We are reconciled people who are called to reconcile with others.
Today, will we realize the depths of God's love for us and live in reconciled relationships with others? Because all of us fall. We don't deal truthfully with other people.
We've got problems with others. We don't treat others well, and yet God protects and restores us. He forgives our sins.
He blesses us. He allows us to experience reconciled relationships, and He gives us new purpose. God loves us so much.
How in the world can we not pass on that love and that reconciliation to others? Jesus gives the accounts in scripture of a man that owed a king somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million dollars by today's reckoning.
And the king there in that story, the man comes and he's to be called to account for his 20 million dollar debt, and he says, just give me a little more time and I will pay it all back. And it says the king forgave him all of the debt.
And then it says that that man forgiven 20 million dollars of debt, he went outside, he saw another servant of the king who owed him 20 bucks. And it says he started throttling him and saying, give me all your money.
I won't let you out of prison until you paid the last cent.
And it says when the king heard about it, he threw the man who's dead he had forgiven into prison because he had not dealt gracefully and mercifully and forgivingly with others, even though he had experienced such incredible forgiveness.
Today, if we've been loved and forgiven, how can we not pass that on to others? Today, realize God's love for you and live in reconciled relationship with others.
