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. Welcome to the Cafe, Pastor Clark Covington. Here with another episode of KJV Cafe. So glad you're joining us here today. It's a beautiful day at the Cafe. Sun is shining through the window. I'm sure the birds are chirping somewhere out there. The leaves, I guess, are starting to change color. Amen. Got a coffee today. And I had to freeze oat milk recently because that's what old people do. We freeze oat milk. Ah, and it steams a lot better when it's thawing out. You know, I steam it. I have a steaming thing, a steaming wand on the machine that I use to make coffee. And it's very thick. So hey, there you go. If you don't know anything else, now you know that if you freeze the oat milk, it steams even better. Ah, man, I'm a coffee nerd and I could go on and on for way too long about coffee, but I won't. I'll just let you know it's a good day today and I pray that you're having a good day. I thank you for joining us here. If you're new to the program, we're a verse by verse Bible study from Genesis to Revelation. And I'm studying Revelation, man. So I'm ready, you know. We only got like 65 and a half books to go or 64 and a half books to get to that 66 book, but I'm ready. I'm ready when it comes, you know. But it's exciting time here because there's so much we can learn and God's word throughout it. If you haven't already, we have three podcasts right now. A this one, which is a daily 15 minute Bible study. Then we have KJV Cafe weekend edition, which is a 30 minute more like a message. And then we have a one hour weekly truck driver's hours on, I can't believe it. We're on week 11. Check out the truck driver's hour. You can look that up on your favorite podcast app. It should be on there. If not, go to kjv cafe.com and you can click a link in the menu there and it's links to it. And that's a one hour podcast that deals with both preaching and encouraging words. And we talk about gospel tracks and evangelism and all that good stuff because God's business is the salvation business. Amen. So there's nothing better than being in God's business, which is actually what we're talking about here today at the cafe. Genesis 21 is thematically, as I can see it, okay? Didn't read this elsewhere. Just kind of sum this up on my own. Genesis 21, if you have your Bibles and you opened up there, or you can just take my word for it either way, as three themes. Sarah gives birth to Isaac, theme one. Ishmael is expelled because he's seen mocking Isaac, theme two. And we've done those two themes in detail, I believe, I'd like to think. Theme three, there is a treaty, a peace treaty, a covenant, if you will. And I don't know if covenant's too strong of a word, but there is a swearing together between a bimalek and Abraham. We believe this is the same of bimalek that had taken Sarah as a wife, not knowing that she was married to Abraham, not knowing that Abraham was God's prophet and God's man and so forth. And so we've got these three themes and this is the third theme that we're diving into. I'm going to try here in two, three, four parts to knock this theme out. And then as you turn over to the next chapter, that's when we see God calling Abraham testing Abraham, if you will, to sacrifice Isaac, right? And so it's moving very quickly and of course that's such a touching and powerful chapter in Genesis 22. But we can learn a lot from Genesis 21 as we get into the third part here of God's man, Abraham. And this coming together to swear upon a deal, basically a bimalek is scared. And what we'll do, we'll take a break and I'm going to read a big chunk of Scripture, not a big chunk, but I'm going to read 22 through 34. So that's the rest of chapter 21. I'll read that when we come back from this break and we'll look at some really interesting themes that come from this, from this passage of Scripture that deal with Abraham following God and the blessings that follow following God. 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. Alright, so let's read this here, Genesis 21, starting at verse 22. And it came to pass at that time that a bimalek and phi, phi tall, the chief captain of his host at host means army. So chief captain of his army, lord is often called the lord of hosts, which means lord of armies. Spake unto Abraham, saying God is with thee in all that thou doest. Now therefore swearing to me here by God that thou will 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 land wherein thou has sojourned. And Abraham said, I will swear. And Abraham reproved a bimalek because of a well of water, which a bimalek's servants had violently taken away. And the bimalek said, I want not who hath done this thing. Neither did his thou tell me, neither yet I heard of it, but today. And Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them unto a bimalek, and both of them made a covenant. I guess I can use that word covenant because in the Bible in verse 27. And Abraham set seven u-lams of the flock by themselves. And a bimalek said unto Abraham, what mean these seven u-lams which thou has set by themselves? And he said, for these seven u-lams shall thou take of my hand, that they may be a witness unto me, that I have digged this well. Wherefore he called that place Beersheba, because there they swear both of them. And thus they made a covenant at Beersheba. Then a bimalek rose up and phychal the chief captain of his host, and they returned into the land of the Philistines. And Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba and called there on the name of the Lord the everlasting God. And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines land many days. Look, this chapter, not a thing, this chapter in the latter section of this chapter verses 22 through 34 is chalked with biblical lessons. I mean just absolutely loaded with them. But let's start at the beginning here of this area. Again, to touch on this idea and repetition I think is a good way to learn. So if I've repeated these things in previous episodes, it's okay. A bimalek, that title means king or father, right. And it was not just to one person, but Philistine leaders in general, right. And so in Genesis 26, for example, we see a mention of a bimalek. And we see, and there was famine in the land beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham and Isaac. And Isaac went unto a bimalek king of the Philistines under Garar. Okay, so Isaac's going to this a bimalek in Genesis 26. I'm thinking that's a different a bimalek. It's very interesting to research that, but from the little bit that I saw about it is a different a bimalek. We see it again in 1 Samuel 21 10 is another example. 1 Samuel, I'm going to look it up here for you for the bimalek mention. Yep, and David arose and fled that day for fear of Saul and went to Asish, the king of Gath, and then if we go to Psalm 34, let's see here. This, I believe, is when David plays mad, right. He plays mad and this Psalm 34 mentions how the Lord blessed him and delivered him out of these afflictions, because he was before the king of the Philistines. Remember the Philistines were the enemy of David in the Israelites. You remember David, he killed Goliath, the Philistine. Okay, and so this wasn't friendly and there was an a bimalek at that time, and that obviously was different than the bimalek here. So that's the title we have, right? And then this phychol character is Ph.I.C.H.O.L. Phychol, have you want to say, sometimes referred to as mouth of all or a great, great person, most likely the Philistine prime minister or commander. We see as much here in Genesis 21 verse 22, it says, and it came to pass at that time, that a bimalek and phychol, the chief captain of his host. So the chief captain of his host, host means army. So we have kind of this prime minister, head leader, an arvenacular. It might be, you know, supreme commander, chief general, whatever it may be, but it's the head of the army and a bimalek coming to Abraham. And so what does this signify? Some kind of military treaty, right? Some kind of diplomatic effort. This is more than just a wellness check, if you will, amen. There's something going on here. And we see that Abraham receives them. And one reason I believe Abraham receives them is because of bimalek he believed God. I mean, think about from a bimalek's point of view. He's doing the right thing. A lot of times we look at this and say, what's this guy up to? What's going on here? Like, what's the context? And we're going to get a little bit deeper into that. But if you just take a surface level, you know what? A bimalek sees that God is with Abraham, and so he then aligns himself with the man of God. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I mean, from his point of view, from a bimalek's point of view, he saw God himself in that terrible dream, reprimanding him for taking Sarah as a wife. He saw God himself move as a bimalek restores Sarah to Abraham, gives Abraham gifts. And now all of a sudden his home is fertile again because God had taken away childbirth from his household, which is not good when you're dealing with legacy. You're dealing with a kingdom and you need a kingly line. Bimalek mentions legacy right here. Look at 1st 23, now therefore swearing to me here by God that that will not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son's son. Obviously on his mind, the legacy, amen? And God took that away, and God restored that all because of this individual Abraham. And so a bimalek rightly identifies Abraham as this prophet that God called him a prophet and says, "We need to get out there and align ourselves with him." When I was studying for this, I saw a commentarian note that a bimalek might have seen or known of Abraham taking his 300-some men and rescuing the sodomites, including Lot, from the invaders. The other idea was that Abraham was like a neighbor or neighborhood, his people, his clan, his group, that was growing stronger and stronger. And so a bimalek sees this and he wants to make it covenant. So he doesn't understand the whole story. I don't think anybody does at this time. Of course Abraham had been given the promise that God was going to make a great mighty nation out of him. But what he saw was enough that it was almost like the king of Garar here, and that would be Philistines, and you look at Palestine, Gaza, and so forth in modern-day terms. This person's going to Abraham almost like a country. Like Abraham, you are the nation of Abraham, and I want peace with you for my sake and my son's sake and my son's son's sake. And so what can we, you know, briefly, as we wrap up this episode and get much deeper into this in the next episode, what can we take from this? You know, it's good to align ourselves with the ways of God, the things of God, and the people of God. And I've hardly ever heard that mentioned because I know we are to, first and foremost, answer to God and not put people on a pedestal and so forth. But if someone is living for God, it's not a bad thing to go ahead and make sure you're on good terms with them. You know, of course, we're called to forgive and to love and so forth. But hey, I mean, if you're going to associate with someone, associate with the godly, right, get on the good side with the godly, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with aligning with God's people so that you have peace in your land because you know or in your heart or in your household, however you want to put it, because you know that God is peace. And that his people are blessed with peace. Now, oftentimes they face persecution and conflict, but God provides peace. He promises it in his word. As we prayed to him, we're given a piece that surpasses all understanding. And so we should take from this the idea. It is good to align with God and his people. And beyond whatever the reason, let's not forget the blessings that come from being close to God, even close to those that are close to God. They're incredible. I'm sure many are saved from being close to those that are close to God. Okay, tune in next time as we get deeper into this passage. 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. [BLANK_AUDIO]
