Sermon Tone Analysis

Abraham

The binding call of God

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!!! Announcements

!!! Bible presented

!!! Doxology:     Hymn 331           /“Majesty”/

The organ will start playing without this Hymn being announced.

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Call to worship

!!!!!! Bible Verse

Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care.

Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.

(Psalm 95:6-8)

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The Lord’s Prayer

!!!!!! Blessing

Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ through the powerful working of the Holy Spirit.

!!! Hymn No 106:                            /“How greatly blessed” /

!!! /(tune 472, 4 verses)/

!!! Prayer of Adoration and Invocation

!!! Scripture Reading                     /Romans 11:25-32/

!!! Prayer of Confession

!!! Declaration of pardoning

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

(Matthew 11:28-29)

!!! Hymn:                                            /Psalm 32 (Tune 602, 5 verses)/

!!! Offering and Dedication

While the offering is taken up, remaining seated all sing:

!!! Hymn 364:                                    /“Almighty Lord of all created things”/

!!! Prayer for others

!!! Scripture Reading                     /Genesis 20:1-18/

!!! Sermon                                          /Abraham: The binding call of God/

!!!!!! Introduction

My dear brethren,

To preach the Word of God is not always easy.

To preach the Word in an expository series, is more often than not very difficult.

Every now and then you have to try to explain and proclaim the Word of God from chapters in the Bible you would under normal circumstances skip and leave for a later stage.

Preaching from Genesis 20 is such a chapter.

Because we, in this series, focus on the life of Abraham, I have deliberately left out chapter 19, which more or less deals with Lot and his family and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

What makes this chapter so difficult to preach?

Is it the grammar of this chapter, or are the great truths imbedded in it too hard to understand?  No!

It is the embarrassment it presents to a Christian; it is the fact that God’s elect children can sometimes fall so low that in the eyes of the onlooker, that it becomes awkward to defend grace.

Further, the embarrassment we may find ourselves in, lies in the fact that we see ourselves mirrored in the lives of those fallen in sin.

Now, we’d rather not talk about it.

It’s like having a brother in prison:  he remains your brother, but you’d rather not talk about him.

But the biggest problem we have is that, according to human argument, there must be a limit to the grace and forgiveness.

According to human argument, there must by necessity be in the end a total falling from grace:  God cannot be so gracious as to forgive a person when he has fallen too low!

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The wicked with the righteous?

In the previous chapter we find Abraham the priest, interceding for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

More so, Abraham interceded for Lot and his household, living in the ungodly city.

One of the grounds on which Abraham pleaded is found in Genesis 18:25

Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.

Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

(Genesis 18:25)

In chapter 20 we find a similar thought.

Abimelech, the ungodly king, pleaded with God on the same ground:

Now Abimelech had not gone near her, so he said, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation?

(Genesis 20:4)

The only problem now is that Abraham is not innocent.

In a human way of speaking Abraham is not righteous.

The plea Abraham had before God now has become his charge:  if God does not treat the righteous and the wicked alike, it implies that were there the unrighteous and the wicked are found together, God would have all the right to treat them alike.

And this is exactly where Abraham found himself.

Abraham shifted away from Mamre and eventually found himself on the edge of Philistine territory.

The king there was Abimelech.

He was an ungodly king.

Now Abraham looked at Sarah and they put to work a treaty they had made long ago:

This is how you can show your love to me: Everywhere we go, say of me, He is my brother.

(Genesis 20:13)

He pretended Sarah was his sister.

In part that was true, but in part it was a lie.

The moment he got married to Sarah, she became his wife.

The sister-thing stopped there.

Facts can be and often are used in such a way as to convey falsehood.

Statistics are sometimes employed in this way: You have your head in the freezer and your feet in the oven, but, on the average, you are comfortable.

The fact that he was willing to give her away as his sister is witness to the fact that this arrangement was purely one of convenience.

She was his wife and God honoured that by promising him and her that He will give them a son.

Now, look at the series of events:  God had revealed to them that only in one year He would visit them by opening the womb of Sarah and give them a son along the line of promise, along the line of the covenant.

And now this!  Then he believed God, and his faith was accredited to him as righteousness.

Strange as it may seem, Abimelech stood head and shoulders above Abraham in this passage.

We must admit that there is no sin into which the Christian cannot fall in times of disobedience and unbelief.

At such times, unbelievers may put the Christian to shame by their integrity and morality (cf.

I Corinthians 5:1ff).

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The wonder of God’s grace

The wonder of this passage is not the fact that Abraham could relapse so far in his Christian growth and maturity.

From my own experience I am ashamed to admit that this is entirely believable.

While the faithlessness of Abraham comes as no surprise, the faithfulness of God to Abraham at this time of failure is amazing.

This must have left Abimelech shaking his head.

How could Abraham be a man of God at the same time he was a liar?

Abimelech, however, was not given any opportunity to take punitive action in spite of the problems Abraham’s disobedience had brought upon the king’s household.

Abraham was the source of Abimelech’s suffering, it was true, but he was also the solution.

Abimelech and Abraham both found themselves in a very awkward position.

Why have you done this, Abraham?, Abimelech demanded.

Listen to the answer:

Abraham replied, “I said to myself, ‘There is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.’

(Genesis 20:11)

Three reasons are stated for Abraham’s deception, but none of them satisfactorily explain his actions.

First, Abraham acted out of fear.

He feared that because of Sarah’s beauty he would be killed, and she would be taken as a wife by violence.

This fear was based upon a faulty theological premise: God is only able to act when men are willing to obey.

God could save Abraham only in a place where He was known and feared by men.

The inference is that where ungodly men are, God’s hand is shortened and unable to save.

If Sarah was thought to be unable to have children, her becoming a part of the king’s harem might not be taken so seriously.