Genesis 21:22-34 KJV
22 And it came to pass at that time, that Abimelech and Phichol the chief captain of his host spake unto Abraham, saying, God is with thee in all that thou doest:
23 Now therefore swear unto me here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son's son: but according to the kindness that I have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me, and to the land wherein thou hast sojourned.
24 And Abraham said, I will swear.
25 And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water, which Abimelech's servants had violently taken away.
26 And Abimelech said, I wot not who hath done this thing; neither didst thou tell me, neither yet heard I of it, but to day.
27 And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech; and both of them made a covenant.
28 And Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves.
29 And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What mean these seven ewe lambs which thou hast set by themselves?
30 And he said, For these seven ewe lambs shalt thou take of my hand, that they may be a witness unto me, that I have digged this well.
31 Wherefore he called that place Beersheba; because there they sware both of them.
32 Thus they made a covenant at Beersheba: then Abimelech rose up, and Phichol the chief captain of his host, and they returned into the land of the Philistines.
33 And Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.
34 And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines' land many days.
Welcome to KJV Cafe. Thanks for taking time out of your day to listen. Each episode of the Cafe is dedicated to studying the Bible verse by verse from Genesis through Revelation. Your host here at the Cafe is Bible teacher, Clark Covington. Looks like the coffee is hot and ready, so let's get started. Amen, glory to God. Welcome to the program. This is the Cafe, Pastor Clark Covington, here with another episode of KJV Cafe. Your Bible teacher here today as we get into God's Word, and here we are in Genesis 21, and we are looking at verses 22 through 34, okay? And so yesterday we spoke about this idea of aligning with God's will. Today we're going to look more at that, and then also to the idea of doing God's will. The idea of publicly praising God, you know, that's another one here, and of course this issue at the well, which maybe we'll tackle that first. So let's start here at verse 22, and it came to pass at that time, and it said what time, okay? So verse 21 is the idea that Ishmael has been expelled with Hagar. They go off and live in the wilderness. They've been expelled by Sarah, but God says yes, Abraham let it happen. So God went to, or Abraham went to God for advice on what to do. That by the way is the way a father should always live. Ask God, God, what should I do? In easy times, God, what should I do? You know, it's Saturday morning, and you got the day off. How about God? What would you have me do? It's, you know, an earthquake, and everyone's terrified, and you're in the corner and the house is shaking. God, what do I do? Okay? In times of great turmoil and times of great peace, seek the Lord. So God said, don't worry, you know, in just typical God fashion, he's such a God of love and of mercy. He's so awesome that God responds with Abraham, here's what you're going to do. You're let him go, but I'm going to bless him. So don't worry. Okay? So that's just who God is. He's so good. He, he comforts Abraham along with instruction. By the way, God's in the details, I heard this preached years ago that oftentimes, like, we feel like if God's leading us somewhere, and it's like this abstract thing that we can't quite figure out, and that's oftentimes not God because God's in the details. Like God says, this is, you will do this, this and that, you know, God is in the details. Okay? He's very specific. So if the Holy Spirit is leading you in something, the Holy Spirit's going to identify that thing. I heard that actually really discussed and preached in the context of repentance. Like if you're going to repent, if you pray and say, God, please help, free, please help me understand what sin I have in my life that's unconfessed before you, that's creating a divide between us. Right? The scripture says, you know, that we have to wash our hands and all that stuff to get close to God, you know, spiritually speaking, that we need to repent and get right and so forth. So not just for salvation, turning from our sin, except in Christ's Savior, but for sanctification. Well, you know, the Holy Spirit, I believe will convict you like, let's say you're very prideful, right? The Holy Spirit's going to say, it's pride. You know, you're going to know that it's not going to be audible, it's like to come out like a word you'd hear in your ear, but it may come to mind. You may look up and there's a billboard that says, you know, get rid of your pride. I don't know. God has his ways. Amen. And their his ways are perfect. I read testimonies, you know, of a man wanted to get something from a bakery and he didn't have any money and he opened up his pocket and there was a gospel track about bread of life. And, you know, God has his ways, okay? But the Holy Spirit's specific, whether it's through repentance, that's why when I pray, I ask the Lord, try to most every day, Lord, show me anything in my life that is not pleasing to you. It's a David that said, search my heart, Lord, right? And so God specific, okay? So God was specific with Abraham here and Abraham, then let's Ishmael go or send some off, if you will. And then then, right, it says sometime after that, right? What do we have? A bim lecken, five call, pitch all, feet, I don't know, PH, I, C, H, O, L, feet, all. I don't know. Chief captain of his hopes, host, which would be host means army, spake unto Abraham, saying God is with thee in all that thou do us. So the king of Garar or the king of the Philistine area there came with his head or chief of the army, his commander, and he came and said Abraham, God is with thee in all that thou do us. Think about starting off addressing someone in that light. Not only is it a compliment, but it's an acknowledgement, right? You have a powerful king, you have a, you know, the mighty general. And here they're saying, look, Abraham, God's with you in all that you do, okay? Now therefore swear unto me here by God that thou will not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son's sons, but according to the kindness that I have done under thee, thou shalt do unto me and to the land which wherein thou has sojourned, okay? So he's looking for peace for his family and for the land, okay? No, no wars, no conflicts. He realizes he cannot, he's no match for God, okay? Good, good place to be. By the way, you also see in this pattern, there's so much here. You see in this passage, the fear of the Lord, right? There's the fear of the Lord and Abimelek, Abimelek, everyone say it, he's got the fear of the Lord in him. Like he's scared of God. That's how we are to be. That should be our disposition, amen? You know, you don't want to get into the, you don't want to get in the way of God's people. Like for example, God blesses those that bless Israel and curses those that curse Israel. I believe that's still true today. Don't get in the way of God's people. And you know, those that call are called in the ministry. You've heard this before, don't mess, don't mess, be very careful with that situation too when you're dealing with people in the ministry because God is a God of all power. Verse 24, Abraham said, I will swear, Abraham finds this agreeable, right? So, okay, I'll swear, okay. But I love the next verse and Abraham reproved Abimelek because of a well of water, which Abimelek's servants had violently taken away. We'll tackle that when we get back from this break, so stay tuned. You're listening to KJV Cafe. We encourage you to look us up on your favorite podcast app and subscribe to our channel on YouTube. Now let's get back to some more in depth Bible study. So this is a fascinating area here because look at the biblical kind of order. You have, you know, Abraham agreeing to swear or or agree to have this covenant or treaty with the king of the Philistines, Abimelek. And then immediately Abraham brings up this well of water that Abimelek's servants had violently taken away, okay? And here, you know, verse 26, Abimelek said, I want not, who have done this thing, neither did this now. Tell me neither yet, I heard eye of it, but today, here, Abimelek does the same thing he did when God told him to give Sarah back. He said, I had no idea. I'm ignorant. What I have no clue, you know, same thing, okay? So, so the scripture in some, I guess, ways or uses of the language, they use a word to describe this as frequent, frequent, a tive or like he's often claiming ignorance, okay? So whether he was ignorant, whether it was not, Abraham, this is serious to him. He agrees to swear, but immediately brings up this well of water. Well wells of water back then were very significant. You're talking about a area that has a very predictable rainy season. You have the early in the latter rain, you could read about it in scripture and you could read about when those seasons are and you could see even today, those seasons still exist. And you have the early rain and the latter rain, I think the latter rain ends around March and the early rain begins in November. And this dictates a lot of the agriculture there, a lot of the access to water there. So wells in this otherwise dry land are very significant. It's not like there was a Walmart they could go to and buy bottled water, you know? That didn't exist. You know, so the well would have been not only a resource for survival, but also probably a resource for economic game and certainly power, right? If you're going to use my well, then you have to follow the thus and such rule. And so Abraham rebukes or excuse me, reproves a bimalec. Can I tell you three things that's God's teaching here through this interaction? One, God ordained this. Okay. So God, I believe put the fear in a bimalec's heart that he had to come there and make that covenant. Okay. Secondly, God put the idea on Abraham's mind while a bimalec was giving his introduction and so forth and asking for this treaty to bring up the well, right? So God sovereign, that's one theme he's teaching. Another theme would be that as we follow God, he creates these moments that look serendipitous. They look almost just coincidental, but it gives Abraham a time to bring up something that maybe he didn't feel like he was going to go to the castle, the king's castle, whatever his house, his area or his deputies and bring up, but he said, Hey, I've got the king right here. Let me mention this. So God creates these moments, a bimalec is reprimanded or reproved. God hates a false witness and he hates violence. And so we see here, verse 25, Abraham approved a bimalec because of the well of water, which a bimalec servants had violently taken away. And so we see violence. Okay. God hates that. He doesn't want that. Okay. And a false witness, somebody, somebody, whether it was a bimalec, the king or one of the servants said, this is our well when it wasn't, okay? And so these two lessons are very important. And I will tell you that when you deal with a false accusation, okay, and violence, it is how I'm trying to think of the word or describe it. And if you've been in that situation, you know what it's like. It's horrific, you know, it is demoralizing. It's in a way it can be terrifying in a way when you look at it, you realize that you need a higher power to take up for you, right? I'm trying to think of it as simple example, but like, let's say you didn't do anything wrong, but it looked like you had, let's say you were taking a test and a classroom and a student said a half ago to the bathroom and they put their test on your desk and the teacher walks in at the same time and looks at you and says, why are you cheating? And he said, I didn't. They just put my thing on my desk and the student that put the test on your desk says, no, I didn't. You know, they took it from me. Now you look guilty, though you're not, you're being falsely accused and, you know, you're terrified of what's going to happen. You're going to get kicked out of school, you're going to fail the class, you're ashamed, you didn't do anything wrong. At that time, you need a higher power to intervene, right? Like your word versus their word isn't going to work too well in the society we live in, where people in the cancel culture and all these other things, right? So we have God for the believer, Abraham had God. This matter with the well, hey, it, it was dealt out, but now Abraham brings it up, okay? And this is even more significant because there is going to be a part of this treaty deals with the well there in Beersheba with deals with the name of that land, even today, the deals with the, the grove that God, that Abraham plants, the prayer garden he creates for the Lord, it deals with what's going to happen next, essentially. So when we deal with a situation that, and frankly, I've been in one where you like literally have done nothing wrong and you're falsely accused, you have to go to God. And God in his poetic way resolves it. Here you have a bimalek with, I mean, in negotiation, he has no leverage, right? Like he went there, he hasn't, he, he is in the, the point of begging Abraham for peace. And Abraham says, by the way, that well, let me just go ahead and mention that. Okay. You know, by the way, when people claim ignorance to things, like you're the leader, okay? The buck stops with you. So that's another thing, but God worked it out. And he preserved this area in Beersheba and this name and so forth through, I believe, that happened previously with the other well being violently taken. And so we see that God can take a negative thing, even someone being violent and providing a false witness, which the Bible says God hates. Even through that God can take a negative thing and turn it into a great positive, but we must go to him and petition to God and ask God to deliver us from this false witness, from this bad situation, amen? And by the way, when we live for God, it's much more likely that it would be a false witness, right? Because if we're living in the world, who knows what sin gets in our hearts and our minds and so forth, or what crowd we're around that, that does something. But when we're living for God and we're separated and so forth, as Abraham was, our hands are clean. Amen. God knows. All right. We'll pick up here in the next episode. Tune in then. Thank you for listening. Take care. God bless and amen. Thanks for spending time with us today at the cafe. We would love to hear from you. You can email Brother Clark directly at Clark@EnduringPromise.org. See you again tomorrow, same time, same place.
