Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. Tonight is study #9 of Genesis, chapter 20. I am going to read Genesis 20:7-14:

Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou, and all that are thine. Therefore Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his servants, and told all these things in their ears: and the men were sore afraid. 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. And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What sawest thou, that thou hast done this thing? 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. And yet indeed she is 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 unto her, This is thy kindness which thou shalt shew unto me; at every place whither we shall come, say of me, He is my brother. And Abimelech took sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and womenservants, and gave them unto Abraham, and restored him Sarah his wife.

I will stop reading there. Again, due to the context or setting God established here, we have seen that Sarah is a type of the elect that are in captivity to sin and to Satan. This was clearly seen back in Genesis 12 when Sarai was taken by Pharaoh, another type of Satan, but it is also in view here regarding Abimelech, King of Gerar, in the land of the Philistines. He is also a type of Satan and God protected Sarah and did not allow Abimelech to “touch” her, just as God protected His elect while they were still unsaved and living in the world as children of wrath even as others. God did not allow Satan to bring ultimate harm to them by destroying them prior to His work in making us recipients of the grace of God through salvation.

God had affirmed in verse 6 that Abimelech had not touched Sarah or come near her, but God also said that He withheld him from sinning against God. We talked about how God restrained sin over the course of history, up until the time of the end. In 2Thessalonians, chapter 2 the Lord spoke of the Holy Spirit “withholding” until He is taken out of the way, which would also identify with the Lord restraining sin in the midst of the congregations over the course of the church age, just as He had restrained sin among the nations of the world. But at the time of the end, the Holy Spirit came out of the way and iniquity multiplied within the world’s churches. It multiplied in a different way than it multiplied in the world. In the case of the churches, it had to do with the lack of sound doctrine. We see the evidence of the lack of restraint upon men’s hearts within the churches and congregations, as they are not being held back from pursuing their sinful lusts and desires in doctrinal matters. Now they can go after the things that always excited them, like speaking in tongues and falling over backwards. They can go after charismatic gospels to their hearts’ content because the Holy Spirit is no longer restraining them; they can just develop a gospel and doctrines that are very inclusive, where women can teach as well as men, and so forth. Whatever they have wanted to do, they have done over the course of time since 1988. But, again, there was some leanings in those directions prior to that time as God made preparation for the loosing of Satan in 1988. Then it was like a “flood gate” that had been opened and all the water gushed out. This is the case in the churches.

It was also the case outside the churches, as the Holy Spirit had previously restrained sin in the natural world in people that did not have anything to do with the churches. Likewise, God lifted His hand of restraint there, too. I think we have looked enough at these things.

Again, it says in Genesis 20:7:

Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou, and all that are thine.

Then we read in verse 14 that Abimelech restored Abraham his wife. God had commanded him to restore her, and he did. Again, Abimelech is a figure of Satan, so it is as though God came to Satan and said, “Loosen my captives. Loosen those I predestinated to salvation before the world was, whose sins were paid for at the foundation of the world. I command you to loosen them.” Of course, Satan must respond. He could not hold them when the will of God was that they be loosed.

This loosing of captives is connected to the cross. When Christ went to the cross in 33 A.D., God selected that year a few weeks later to send forth the Holy Spirit the first time to evangelize the earth through the church age. Why was this done then? God orchestrated events so that when Christ went to the cross, Satan was bound so Jesus could plunder his house. The Bible says that you must first bind the strong man and then plunder his house. This had to do with the saving of God’s elect. Not only was Satan defenseless against God’s will to save the “144,000,” which represent all those saved over the 1,955 years of the church age, but Satan was also powerless to prevent God from saving the great multitude outside the churches during the (about) 17 years of the Latter Rain period during the last part of the Great Tribulation.

What a difference in the duration of time: 1,955 years versus about 17 years. God represents those saved during the church age as “144,000,” but we do not know exactly how many were saved – perhaps, five or 10 million. However, it was not as many as one might think, considering that it took place over almost two millenniums and considering the number of churches in the world. It was far less than we would imagine. Then there was the “little season” of about 17 years in which the Bible says there was a great multitude of people saved. The number in Revelation, chapter 9 indicates a number at, possibly, 200 million, which could be the number of people saved throughout time. (We cannot be dogmatic about this number.) However, it was a far greater number of people that were saved during the Latter Rain period of not quite 17 full years. Of course, the world population was far greater than ever before in earth’s history and the electronic medium made it possible to reach the entire world in a short period of time. So, yes, it was an incredible salvation program that God developed, carried out and completed by the date of May 21, 2011.

As I mentioned before, since this was the second time Sarah had been taken, but now Abram’s name was changed to Abraham, which means “father of many nations.” The second time Sarah was restored points to the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit when the great multitude became saved. This is in view with God’s command: “Restore the man his wife.” Abraham is the “man,” her husband, and he spiritually represents the Lord Jesus Christ who has an elect bride. The elect bride would be everyone saved throughout history, but the majority of those that comprise the elect “lady,” as she is called in 2John, were found during our time in these last days leading up to May 21, 2011. ** Again, the word “restore” is used in the sense of Sarah being taken captive and then restored. We read some very instructive Scripture in 2Timothy 2:24-27:

And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.

The Hebrew word translated as “restore” in our verse is found in 1Samuel 30, where it has to do with David. The Amalekites had carried away his wives, the wives of his men and their goods. David went to rescue them. It says in 1Samuel 30:18-19:

And David recovered all that the Amalekites had carried away: and David rescued his two wives. And there was nothing lacking to them, neither small nor great, neither sons nor daughters, neither spoil, nor any thing that they had taken to them: David recovered all.

The word translated as “recovered” in verse 19 is the same word translated as “restore.” Previously, they had their wives and their things. The Amalekites were like pirates that came and took these things, so David recovered them or restored what they once had. Then it said in 1Samuel 30:20:

And David took all the flocks and the herds, which they drave before those other cattle, and said, This is David’s spoil.

The idea is that Satan had taken mankind captive. God originally had mankind; man was created good and in God’s own image, and we were created to serve God. Man did serve God for a very short time, but then Satan came along and deceived Eve (and Adam also ate of the forbidden fruit) and mankind was taken captive to sin and to Satan. And God’s salvation program was a program of “recovery” or of “restoring” the captives, as God went about to obtain a people for Himself. This is the reason we read in Psalm 23:1-3:

JEHOVAH is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

The Hebrew word translated as “restoreth” is the same word translated as “restore” in our verse in Genesis 20. And this does have to do with the soul because God’s program of salvation first involved saving the soul of a sinner. Before salvation, we were in captivity and dead in our souls, so God would save the soul. He would “restore” it by bringing it to life and, in that way, we become the bride of Christ. But, again, Jesus had already chosen us, which has to do with being betrothed to Him; He had already obligated Himself and given His pledge of marriage by taking the sins of His people upon Himself and dying for us at the foundation of the world. There was an obligation or duty to follow through with the marriage. In other words, there is no way that Christ could have died for an individual and paid for his sins and then failed to seek him out and restore him, thereby making him His bride.

In this process, what could not be known by Satan was which of these sinners did God intend to save. He did not know. The elect did not know. Just think about when you were a little child. Did you know that God would save you one day? I look back at my life and even when I was a young child and then a teenager and then a young man in my twenties, I did not read the Bible and I did not go to church. At that time, the church age was in effect, so it was wrong for me not to go to church. I did not even think about God – there was no indication that I was one of God’s elect. That is where the spiritual picture painted in Genesis 20 “breaks down” because Sarah knew that she was married to Abraham, but she said she was his sister, implying that she did not have a marriage relationship with him. In that profession, we can understand that the spiritual picture is of God’s elect that were out in the world, not knowing that we were God’s elect and the bride of Christ until He restored our souls and recovered us out of captivity. Then we began to become acquainted with the Word of God, the Bible. Some of God’s elect may have been in the churches, but were not saved for a time, and knew God’s Word to some degree. But then when God saved us, we came to know the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word in an intimate way we had not known before. This is all in view with this command: “Restore the man his wife.” Or, it was like God’s command to Pharaoh when He brought plagues upon Egypt: “Let my people go.” As was the case with Pharaoh, he hardened his heart and he refused to let them go, so God plagued Egypt and brought them to their knees by destroying the nation; later He destroyed Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, for the sake of His people.

Again, it says in Genesis 20:7:

Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou, and all that are thine.

This was a similar threat to what happened to Egypt, although God did not carry out the destruction in this case because the threat was enough for Abimelech and the people of Gerar. Again, in an historical parable, not everything lines up perfectly, but the threat brings the idea to mind regarding God forcing Satan to release His captives. It says in Isaiah 14:14: ** **I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

This was Satan’s longstanding desire and it was fulfilled during the 23 years of the Great Tribulation, from 1988 to 2011. Then it says in Isaiah 14:15-17:

Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?

You see, the last thing Satan wanted to do was to open up his house, the kingdom of darkness, where his prisoners were kept and to release them. God forced him. The Lord Jesus Christ forced him when He went to the cross. There was a judgment upon Satan – it was the time of his binding. God arranged things to work this out at that specific point in time. Yes – it is true that Christ died for the sins of His people at the foundation of the world, but God made arrangement for Satan’s binding to take place in 33 A.D. and not at the beginning of the world. How could Satan have deceived Eve if he had already been bound? God allowed him room to roam freely throughout the Old Testament history, up until the time of the cross. Then God bound him. The Lord could have bound Satan at any point, but He had determined that it would be at the time when the Lord Jesus Christ finished His demonstration at the cross. Then Satan would be bound, and his house would be ransacked. The Lord Jesus Christ would release the captives that were His during the church age. So, too, at the time of the Great Tribulation, Christ released the final captives from the nations of the world. It was not that Satan was willing to let God’s people go, but He was forced to do so, just as the threat of death upon Abimelech forced him to release his captive. He would not have released Sarah, but God threatened him with death.

We will also see a little later that God did something interesting in shutting up the wombs of the wife and maidservants of Abimelech, so they were not bearing children.

We have come to the end of our time in this Bible study, but we will continue in our study of this historical parable that points to God’s magnificent salvation program when we get together for our next Bible study.