Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. Tonight is study #12 of Genesis, chapter 20. I am going to read Genesis 20:10-13:

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.

We have been moving along and seeing how certain statements fit God’s Gospel program, in spiritual harmony with the whole Bible. Abimelech had asked Abraham, “What sawest thou, that thou hast done this thing? So, Abraham and Sarah were traveling, and they entered the land of the Philistines that was under the rule of Abimelech, but they were afraid to say the truth that Sarah was Abraham’s sister, but she was also his wife. They were afraid, as it says in verse 11: “Surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife’s sake.” Abraham had looked around and concluded that if he spoke the truth in this place the Philistines would kill him and take Sarah because they did not fear God. Was that an accurate assessment? It was probably a very accurate assessment.

It is just like today. Think of your own situation in the town, city and country where you live. Is the fear of God in that place? Can you determine that? Well, yes, you can determine it, based on the behaviors, conversations and beliefs of the people around you. We can determine that there is no fear of God today in our city, state, country or world. We can make that declaration safely – there is no fear of God. God’s people do fear the Lord, and we recognize when others do not fear the Lord.

Therefore, I think we can say that Abraham was correct in his understanding that in that place there was no fear of God, historically. He feared for the danger that someone would kill him and take Sarah. He feared for himself and for his wife. We can understand the fear of certain places. For example, where you live there are probably several locations you would fear to travel through, due to your understanding of the history of the place or the crime rate, and so forth. You have a pretty good feel for places that you know you would want to be careful of, and by Abraham’s assessment, Gerar was one of those places. He thought the fear of God was not there and they would slay him for his wife’s sake, historically.

And, yet, we want to find the spiritual meaning of this statement. We know it is the condition of the world today, as it says of mankind in general, in Romans 3:18:

There is no fear of God before their eyes.

This is evident and obvious today when men do whatever seems right in their own eyes, and they could not care less what the Bible says – whether it is the Sunday Sabbath or the command not to divorce. It could be stealing, killing, cursing, hating, or a thousand other things the Bible tells man not to do, but mankind pays no attention. That reveals there is no fear of God before their eyes because when you fear God, you fear His commandments. An individual that truly fears the Lord desires to do the will of God. We want to obey Him, and we are afraid when we disobey. That is the difference between an elect child of God and the natural-minded person of the world that has no such fear. They may fear some consequences of sin, like going to jail or shame and embarrassment before their peers or others in the world, but they do not fear to transgress the commands of God because of what God may do. They do not consider Him. God is not in all their thoughts, as the Bible tells us. This does not mean that God is in some of their thoughts, but God is not in any of their thoughts. The true God of the Bible is not considered as they think sinful thoughts, speak sinful things or become actively involved in sinful deeds. It is not the way of the world.

Historically, this is true of Abimelech’s kingdom and, spiritually, it is true of Satan’s kingdom. There is no fear of God in the kingdom of darkness or in the nations of this world. The unsaved people of the world are citizens of the kingdom of Satan.

Again, it says in Genesis 20:11:

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.

This did not happen to Abraham, but it was his fear that they would slay him for his wife’s sake. And that is a very interesting way of stating it – they would kill him for the sake of his wife. Remember, we have understood that Abraham and Sarah, as a married couple, are a picture of Christ and His spiritual bride, which is comprised of the whole company of the elect or the eternal church. We must be careful to make a distinction between the eternal church and the corporate church because God has given up the corporate church, which is something He would never do to His eternal church that consists of everyone He has saved. It says in Ephesians 5:23-25:

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

Did Christ die for the corporate churches? Did He die for all the people that call themselves Presbyterians or Baptists or Catholics? No – the majority of professed Christians that populated the churches during the church age were never saved. Today, we have a corporate church world that numbers as many as two billion people. They have remained in the churches, but God has completed the separation of the wheat and tares. All the wheat have come out of the churches and the tares were left behind, and this tells us that Christ never gave Himself for them by paying for their sins, even though there is a statement in 2Peter 2:1 that says, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.” That is not the same thing as Christ having died for their sins in the atonement. From the verse itself, you can see that it is referring to false prophets and false teachers that bring in damnable heresies, so everything about this verse is “screaming” that they are unsaved. We know that if Christ truly died for their sins, they would be saved. Christ died and paid for the sins of His people at the foundation of the world and then later He demonstrated His atoning work by dying on the cross in 33 A.D. At that time, the Lord established the New Testament church age and, in that sense, He “bought” the corporate church, the outward representation of His kingdom to the inhabitants of the earth, even though He did not die for all those that would populate the corporate churches. He died for the sins of specific individuals whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. These people are the eternal church and they are the ones Christ gave Himself for in the atonement.

Or, we could look at Jonah, chapter 1 where God brought a storm against the ship that Jonah was in, and the Lord controlled circumstances to bring about a situation where the mariners were left with no option but to throw Jonah overboard, just as the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. God brought it to pass and He arranged circumstances that caused Christ to be taken by the Jews and turned over to the Roman authorities to be crucified. Then the people demanded He be crucified, leaving Pilot no choice but to wash his hands of the matter and deliver Him up for crucifixion. This is the spiritual undercurrent of Jonah 1:13-16:

Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto JEHOVAH, and said, We beseech thee, O JEHOVAH, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O JEHOVAH, hast done as it pleased thee. So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging. Then the men feared JEHOVAH exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the JEHOVAH, and made vows.

The sea was tempestuous against them, pointing to the wrath of God against sin and sinners, but once Jonah was cast into the sea, it became calm and ceased from its raging, indicating that the wrath of God had been satisfied. The Law’s demand against the sinners for their sins had been paid and all was well between the mariners and God. They point to the elect of God. You see, God died for the elect’s sake as He gave Himself for His bride, the eternal church. And Jonah, as it were, died for the mariners’ sake: “let us not perish for this man’s life.” The offering of Jonah was in their stead.

Likewise, in John 11 the leaders of Israel gathered together because Christ had just raised Lazarus from the dead and they were afraid that all men would believe on Him because of His wondrous miracles. Who could deny that Lazarus had been dead because he had been in the grave four days. So the leaders convened a counsel, as it says in John 11:48-51:

If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation. And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation;

Spiritually, it was not pointing to the political nation of Israel or the physical Jews, but to spiritual Israel or the “nations of them which are saved,” as it says in Revelation 21. Then it goes on to say in John 11:52:

And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.

It was for all the nations of the elect. It was expedient that one man should die, and not all the nations, meaning the kingdom of God’s elect, the whole company of the elect, that may number as many as 200 million. We live only because one man died – Christ die for our sins. This is what is in view in the statement when Abraham said, “Surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife’s sake.” It is what happened in the demonstration that Christ showed forth – that He was slain for the sake of His spiritual bride. That is why He went to the cross.

Let us move on to Genesis 20:12-13:

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.

We already talked about this and we are aware of the spiritual truth that Christ is our husband, and Christ is our brother. When He was told in the Gospel account that His mother and brethren stood without, He responded, “Who is my mother, or my brethren? For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.” So, He is our spiritual spouse, as well as our spiritual brother.

But the question we have not answered is this: Why did Abraham keep it secret that Sarah was his wife, from a spiritual standpoint? Why would God keep it secret that He is the bridegroom or husband of the elect? As far as Sarah is concerned, she kept it secret, too, and that is where the spiritual picture breaks down because Sarah was fully aware that she was married to Abraham. And, yet, she was taken into captivity, which points to the elect that had their sins paid for by Christ at the foundation of the world, but for a time in our lives we were children of wrath, even as others, and unaware of our spiritual marriage to Christ. So, spiritually, we can only understand that Sarah kept it quiet because the elect (before being saved) did not know or understand that they are Christ’s bride. The fact that she did know means we cannot carry over the spiritual picture.

But then came the time of revelation when God came to Abimelech. Abimelech called Abraham and Abraham admitted she was his wife. And it was the fact that she was married to Abraham that she was restored to him and delivered from captivity. That would tie in to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, especially during the Latter Rain. We do not have time to get in to this, but in our next study we will talk about the revelation of the marriage relationship and how it has to do with deliverance.