Genesis 20:14-18 Bible Study | Episode #282

November 8, 2022

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Genesis 20:14-18 Bible Study | Episode #282

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Alive, Applying God's Word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him.

And to know his will, that you might glorify him, and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus'. Good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Churches. Morning Bible study. We are in Genesis chapter 20 for one more day, and then we'll be moving on to Genesis chapter 22.

That is a good a good week. We've made it through a chapter of Genesis and we are. We're headed toward Isaac being born and the promise being fulfilled. And that'll be next week. Looking forward to that. We are at the end of chapter 20. We've been dealing with this king name of, and as you read, you, as you read through this first you realize that he's a man of God.

Because he actually hears from God. God speaks to him. And he's and that means not that he's a righteous man in the sense of a good man. He does good things. He messes up. What that means is that he is a righteous man because he trust he trusts God.

He he places his faith in God. And that is, that makes. That makes him righteous, not on his own merit, but it makes him righteous on on the merit that comes from faith that comes from trusting God. And that is the ultimate way to please God. It is really the only way to please God.

It's to trust him. And Anna Bik is a man of faith and God speaks to him. Now, he speaks to him in dreams. But he does speak to Bik and bi hears God. And when he hears God, he acts. That he spoke to him in a dream and said you're under a curse. You have married, you've taken a woman that's not yours as your wife.

And that's not a good. And then he wakes up and he deals with the situation. He he's straightforward. He said I've done this. I've been completely above board in what I've done, and I have maybe I've messed up. Maybe I slipped up. Maybe I've done wrong, but it was not because I didn't know I it is not because I was trying to do wrong.

I was trying to do Right. And, as an attorney, that is that is a that is an important principal. In the law, if you commit a crime in the law one of the things and there are a few crimes that are not are not, do not require what we call men's rail, which is which in which means requires an intent.

That, that is the idea of you have to have intent to commit a crime. You have to have considered it and decided that you were gonna do it. There are some strict liability. Crimes out there. That you you could commit if you do it, it's a crime, even if you didn't mean to do it.

Those crimes, generally speaking of very few what's required is that you had intent. And so that's what makes this, as far as Ben's concerned, that's what makes this an issue. Now you go why would God pronounce judgment of death on a bilac in this situation if he did not intend.

Remember that to break the law in any part is to break the whole law. And we're under the curse of death no matter what. We've been under the curse of death since we were conceived in our, in, in our mother's womb. We carry that curse due to the sin nature that is passed on to us from our parents.

We, we have a sin nature. And that sin nature is ultimately that sin nature is. Ultimately it is. It leads to death, the wages of sin. Romans tells us this. Romans chapter eight, Wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. When God revealed to a bi the situation that he found himself in, he was really revealing to a bi.

He's revealing to a bi where he was falling short in the law. And, God does that, that's what makes God that's what makes God who he is. He doesn't reveal to us all of what we call sin. You gotta remember there's individual acts of sin and then there. There is the state of sin that we live in and we use the same word to describe it.

And we don't even change any, we don't even change it at all. Our state of sin and then the sin or multiple things or acts that we do are sinful. And those acts that we do that are sinful often. Don't even have intent behind them. They're just acts of sin. They're things that are quite clearly wrong.

We didn't even know they were wrong. And they're wrong. And Aick is a perfect figure in the Old Testament to show us that That sin is so easily entangled in us because of our sin nature. It's so easily available to us. We just, we stumble Our whole life is just fumbling around in sin, struggling to figure out how to walk with God, struggling how to figure out how to have the life that God wants us to have struggling just to be be godly people before him and.

What's cool about God is he is, he understands that we're in a state of sin and he's paid for it. He's handled that state of sin. He's handled that state of sin through Jesus Christ. So as far as he's concerned we're no longer sinners. We're we're redeemed. As far as he's concerned, he's placed all our sin on Jesus and.

And he's not in the business of condemning us over it. He's in the business of changing us over it. That's why he went to a beak in a drain. He said he went to a be and said, Listen, this is gonna kill you. This thing that has happened in your life, this thing that you didn't even know about.

It's gonna destroy you. And you've got to, you've got to you've got to get this fixed. And a bile goes, God I didn't know that. And notice this is another reason we can see that. A bile amount of faith. He acts on what God told him. He trusts the dream God gave him. He trusts the vision's.

God opened his eyes too. He trusted what God gave him understanding of and he act. And he even went to Abraham, said, What is this you've done to me? And Abraham said I, truth is, I've been doing this the whole time and I didn't know whether you were gonna be godly or not.

In fact, I just quite assuredly. I just assumed you wouldn't be. And who knew that you heard from God and Dreams and I, we've been doing this and Sarah actually is my sister. I'm not, I. Totally lying about that. I just didn't tell you the whole truth. And a lot of times when you say I didn't lie if you withheld knowledge from somebody that was critical in a situation, and made them think something that was not.

That is not who, that way you allowed them to think something that's who not that way. And that was critical to them and to their future and to their life. You deceived them. You can call it. I didn't do a, I didn't tell them a lie. You can say that. But what you have done is you have deceived them and Abraham had deceived him.

Abraham had deceived him and a bi. Was going to suffer the consequences of that deception. It was going to, it was gonna affect a bilac very negatively for his life. And the bile was a little bit upset about it. And Abraham, you can see a conciliatory tone from him.

He was not. Once he realizes that a Vim x, a man who hears God and who trusts God. He says, we've just been doing this all our life. And, that's, that goes to the whole principle of when you say, we've just always done it this way, that doesn't mean it's God's way.

If you say this is how my family operates. Is that because somebody in your. Heard from God and God told him to operate that way, Or is that just because y'all have been operating on your sin nature for as long as anybody can remember? To ask God and to speak to God in such a way as to say we're just, this is the way it's always been.

Your sin nature is the way it's always been too. You've been walking in death and your whole family for generations past millennia past. Has been walking in death too. But we don't want to continue in that, do we? We don't want to continue in the death that we were walking in. We wanna walk in life, don't we?

Don't we want to continue to walk in the goodness of life. Don't we want to continue to walk in hope that comes from only him? Sure, we do. And so we wanna allow God to change our hearts. We wanna allow God to change the way we see things. We wanna see. The world from God's perspective and not our own.

And anytime you say that this is the way it's always been, sometimes you just put yourself in that position of seeing it from your own perspective. So what did it have been lik do lik gave Sarah back. And not only that, he had to for it. He's someone I really love this the end of the passage as much as I love anything.

Cause ABIM Lake says, Abim Lake's whole intent at the start was to align him. With Abraham because he saw the qualities of God that were in Abraham. And so many times when we mess up or we slip or we fall and. And then we realize it's a fall. It's a good thing to, to seek forgiveness and a tone for it.

And you say Jesus is a tone for my sin. I don't have to do that. I know, but remember, this is more than just about your relationship with God. This is your, about your relationship with other people. Remember though that's all the law of love. And Abe comes and says, he says he took sheep, verse 14 and oxen.

He took some of his servants, male and female, and he gave them to Abraham and he restored to. Sarah, his wife to him, meaning he brought Sarah back and he brought gifts and he got brought gifts of people which is strength. And he got brought gifts of sheep and oxen. He came and he said, I was wrong in this.

You may have been wrong in this in the way you presented it, but I was wrong and I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm gonna make right what I did wrong. And oftentimes in, in our lives, we want the other side to admit that they were wrong. Look, let's not hold people to a standard that is hard for us to do.

It's very difficult for us to admit we're wrong. And by the way, What satisfaction do you gain by somebody else admitting that they were wrong? What? And really I lo love for people, some people that I've dealt with in life to admit that they were wrong. But what satisfaction do you gain? Do you get a new, a newfound insight into the world that all of a sudden now you've, it's been confirmed to you that they did you wrong?

No. No you don't. You knew they did wrong. By them admitting it, is it helping you to confirm? That you did wrong. And by the way, people say it justifies, it really doesn't, You're not justified. You are only justified by faith. If you're trying to be justified by any other means you're barking up the wrong tree, you're running down the wrong trail.

You're headed in the wrong direction. You're not you're not justified ever except by faith. So if you're trying to be justified in a situation I can tell you this. That that somebody telling you that they're. Doesn't necessarily mean that you were right. Did you hear me?

Just because somebody says they were wrong doesn't just necessarily say that you were right. There's a strong likelihood that you were wrong too. There's a strong Hear me today. There's a strong likelihood that you were wrong too. Somebody else being, be admitting they're wrong and making amends for it does not justify.

And it doesn't necessarily and for sure if that's your requirement. I'm glad God doesn't try doesn't necessarily need me to justify my be justified before him by my actions. I'm glad he justifies me by my faith. And Lac was Ave was wrong and he wants to amend, make amends for it.

And so he brings these gifts to Abraham and Avi said, See, my land is before you dwell where it pleases you notice his whole intent was to build a relationship with Abraham. He continues in that intent, even though he messed up. He continues in the intent. He says, I want you to be a part of my life.

I want you to be a part of what I'm doing. I want you to be a part of. Of my dominion of my domain. I want you to, I want you to be continue to be in my life and I was wrong. And I wanna make sure that I do right by you, even if you didn't do right by me. Can. That that even makes AEC even more attractive to us.

It makes you more appealing as a figure in the Bible, because he comes to Abraham and says, I wanna do right by you. You may have had a part to play in this, but I was wrong and I wanna make my part right. Wow. What I, what a. Powerful testimony that is for this king who lived not too far from Sodom and Gamara.

A just king in the midst of a sea of evil. What a what a powerful testimony that is then to Sarah. He said, Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. A thousand pieces of silver. That's the blood price. By the way. Silver is the price of blood and it's it is it a symbol of the grace of God.

Jesus was bought with 30 pieces of silver. Silver is always. An atonement. It is always a payment, and it always deals with human life, and it deals with the payment of human life. And he says, Look I'm gonna give a gift to Abraham on your behalf of a thousand pieces of silver.

I, I should not have done this, and I, and anything that I've done wrong, I want. I wanna make amends for. I think this is a great testimony of love. It's a great testimony of forgiveness and it's a great testimony of a man who is right in his heart about what he was doing even though he may have done it the wrong way.

Even though he may have by the law done something that was wicked, he didn't know he was doing wicked. He didn't understand that. And, don't hold people to standards that you can't hold yourself to for your whole life. The truth is some people don't know what's right and wrong, and the truth is some people.

Hadn't been revealed the truth like you have and to hold them to a higher standard than you hold yourself would be just totally wicked. And I would say to you look at somebody and look at them in the midst of their struggles and their troubles and don't hold them to the standard of knowledge and revelation that you have.

Don't hold them to the standard of blessing that you've lived in. I got to live. In a household with with a man and a woman who knew God and who walked with God. They didn't do it perfectly by any means, but they dogone sure did it. And I got to grow up in church, and I got to be around great men and women who who knew, God, I got to be taught God's word.

Should I hold everyone to a, the same standard that I I understand to be right, that I run into in the world? Absolutely not. I can't, Oh, I I can't demand them to walk in and know things that nobody's ever shown them. That would be, that that's, it's almost it's neurotic.

It's almost crazy to think that. Now, do we do that? Sure, we do, but I try to hold people to the standard. Of love that the New Testament wants me to hold them too. I try, we, we have to hold them and say maybe they didn't know and maybe what they did was even really bad.

But, a little instruction, a little love and a little direction. Will may fix this. Remember, That love can cover up that sin. It can. It can. It can overcome it, and it can fix it. But if we walk around pies that people are not living up to our standard we don't live up to God's standard.

And it's one of those things you gotta accept somebody when they say, I've made a mistake, I've done wrong and I want, I wanna apologize for it, and I wanna fix it, and I wanna make amends for it. Sometimes in order for you to receive the full blessing of God and to really walk as God has walked in forgiveness.

To be as he is you've got to suck it up and release them from that bondage of sin and and loosen the chains of pain and the chains of condemnation on them just like you want done for yourself. And so he says he vindicates you before all who are with you and before everybody. Indeed.

He says I'm saying to the whole world by giving this, that you are not wrong at all, That nothing's wrong with you, that you are still a woman a righteous and holy woman. And thus she was and the new King James Transla. Translates to rebuke, but the word actually stands for justified.

The word means justified. So what he is saying is you're okay. You I'm saying to you I was the wrong one. You're not, and you've not done nothing wrong. Abraham, notice what happens. What does Abraham do? He does what God. Told a bi that he would do because he is a righteous man. Abraham's a righteous man also.

He was wrong. He deceived in this situation and he's a righteous man. So Abraham as a prophet, as a man who speaks to God, prayed to God. Abraham prayed to God and God healed a bime, his wife and his female servants. Then they bore children for the Lord had closed up all the wounds of the house of a Bik because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.

God had closed up the blessings that he had been, that a bik had walked in because of the situation that had happened. And that happens for a season sometimes. Sometimes that things are shutting off for. That doors that used to be open are beginning to close. And you know what that's the time to evaluate your life.

Maybe God's taken you through a wilderness experience to learn to trust him more. Maybe God is showing you something new and different as far as where he wants you to go and what he wants you to do with your life. Or maybe you're walking in something that you shouldn't be walking in. And as you set it aside and Avik when he realized what had happened he came to Abraham and he had wronged Abraham.

And Abraham had wronged Kim, and he made things right with Abraham. And Abraham prayed to God and God. Gave back to a bik the same blessings that he had before. And boy, that's a great story of redemption, isn't it? This is chapter 20 is probably one of those chapters in the Bible that we just run through and we don't even pay a whole lot of attention to Ga Glad that I've got to spend a week on this and and be able to really dig down deep into it because it is the revelation of a man who.

Who was a godly man in the midst of a sea of evil. And he messed up. And we get to walk through this whole story and see redemption and re and see restoration and see full recovery. And that is available to you today. Redemption. Is just a trusting in God away from your life and restoration is just around the corner when we trust God and a fullness and a fullness of life is available to you.

And it's available through one man and one man only. And his name is Jesus Christ. And I would say to you if you've not trusted him, Trust him. Trust him. He is a God who is true to everything he's ever said and done. He is a God who's known you before he knit you in your mother's womb. He loves you. He cares about you, and he wants to see you have the fullness of life.

That Abraham and a Bik and Sarah had and he wants to begin the process of recovery and begin the process of hope in your life. And you say what is required of me to believe I the one God sin? And that's Jesus to trust in Jesus. If you'll trusting Jesus. Things will begin to open for you and your life will be more than you could ever imagine.

And I would say to you today, I would urge you, I'd encourage you with all that I am, I would encourage you to trust Jesus and to chase after him. And all things will be made new for you in Jesus may.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.