Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #38 of Genesis, chapter 21.  We are going to read Genesis 21:27-32:

And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech; and both of them made a covenant. And Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves. And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What mean these seven ewe lambs which thou hast set by themselves? 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. Wherefore he called that place Beersheba; because there they sware both of them. 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.

We have been looking at the deeper spiritual picture.  Abimelech represents Satan and Abraham can represent God, and they made a covenant together, and we are trying to see (from the rest of the Bible) if there had been a covenant made between God and Satan.

Remember, we also saw that the word “covenant” is synonymous with the Law of God, because God spoke of the Ten Commandments as the covenant.  This is the reason that the ark that contained the Ten Commandments became known as the “ark of the covenant” or “ark of the law.”

We were discussing that God is a Spirit and Satan and the all the angels that fell with him are also spirit beings.  We saw in Psalm 138:2 that God, being Spirit, has placed Himself under His own Law.  God is a Spirit and in subjection to the Law of God.  So, God really entered in to a covenant within the Godhead to keep the Law.  Likewise, it is evident that God made a covenant (a law) with the angels, because we know there are still angels in heaven, and we also know there are angels that fell from heaven.  It says in Revelation 12:7-9:

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

The angels were cast out of heaven after losing this battle.  This has to do with Christ being victorious at the cross and binding Satan, and so forth.  But maybe that does not make it clear enough.  As far as pictures of Satan, Pharaoh is a picture of Satan in Exodus 9:27:

And Pharaoh sent, and called for Moses and Aaron, and said unto them, I have sinned this time: JEHOVAH is righteous, and I and my people are wicked.

It also says in Exodus 10:16-17:

Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron in haste; and he said, I have sinned against JEHOVAH your God, and against you. Now therefore forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and intreat JEHOVAH your God, that he may take away from me this death only.

So, here are a couple of places where we see Pharaoh saying he has sinned.  And since we know that he is a type and figure of Satan, what would we do with this information if we were going, verse by verse, through Exodus?  We would look at it and say that it spiritually points to Satan as having sinned.  And we know that Satan has sinned along these lines, as we read in Isaiah 14 where he refused to open the house of his prisoners.  Historically, God commanded Pharaoh to let His people go.  Spiritually, it is a command to Satan himself who (through various times and seasons in history) was holding God’s chosen people captive.  So, God issued forth the command to let them go, but Satan refused.  Therefore, God forcefully delivered His people out of captivity to sin and to Satan.  That would be the spiritual picture. 

So, that command of God to let His people go ties in with the Gospel and the sending forth of the Gospel to save His elect people.  So, too, Abraham’s digging of the well is a picture of the well of salvation.  And then we must “scratch our heads” and ask, “Why is God making a covenant with Satan about this well?”  Abraham even provided seven ewe lambs, and they both swore and made a covenant; that is, there was a Law God made concerning the “well of salvation,” His salvation program.  There was a Law made for Satan, as God is the maker of the Law, not Satan.  When God commands, “Let my people go,” Satan should have let them go. 

Payment had been made for the well.  The seven ewe lambs were like a payment, so King Abimelech would recognize and honor the agreement that Abraham had done all the work to dig the well – it was his well and it belonged to him.  I am trying to touch upon it, but as I mentioned earlier this is a very difficult passage, but this seems to be part of the spiritual picture here.

Now we also know there is another individual that typifies Satan.  In fact, he typifies Satan so much that Satan indwelled him for a time.  I am speaking of Judas, one of the twelve.  After Judas realized what he had done, it says in Matthew 27:4:

Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.

Remember Satan had entered into Judas and then he betrayed the Lord.  He had received pieces of silver in payment, but he threw them down in the treasury and went and hanged himself.  Yes – the man Judas sinned, but so did Satan.  God further uses Judas as a picture of Satan by calling him “the son of perdition,” in John 17:12.  Jesus said that he had lost none of His except “the son of perdition,” and this is the exact term used for the devil in 2Thessalonians 2 that took his seat as the man of sin in the temple showing himself that he is God.

So, these are a couple of types of Satan that admit they have sinned, but I think the Bible is more specific in 2Peter 2:4:

For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;

God says it plainly here, does He not?  It says that God spared not the angels that sinned.  These angelic, spirit beings sinned.  It does not say what the sin was, but they sinned.  They did wrong, but the good angels that remain in heaven did not sin – they did not fall.  So, we are curious about the sin they did.  If we know what the sin was, then we can know what Law Satan was under, and that would help us understand the covenant between God and Satan, as depicted by the covenant between Abraham and Abimelech. 

It says in 1John 3:8:

He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.

Here, the Lord tells us that the devil sins, and then He tells us when the devil sinned – it was from the beginning.  So, the devil did sin and that is the reason the Lord cast him down to hell.  He sinned from the beginning.  That would lead us back to the creation, as we turn back to Genesis 1:1:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The Lord spent six days creating, and then the seventh day He rested.  This was the beginning of this world or this creation.  It was not long after the world was created that there was an incident in the Garden of Eden.  We cannot help but think that this is when the devil sinned by deceiving Adam and Eve.  We can know this for certain if we go to John 8:44:

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Here, again, we see the Lord Jesus Christ is telling us about Satan’s sin.  Murder is a sin.  Also, we see that he abides not in the truth and is a liar; he speaks a lie, and to lie is a sin.  And we know when the sin took place.  It was not at the foundation of the world in eternity past, but it was after this creation was created and after man was created upon it.  We know this because Jesus said that Satan was a murderer from the beginning.  To be called a murdered, you must have wrongly killed a man.  As far as we can understand, it could not be the killing of an animal.  The command, “Thou shalt not to kill,” has to do with not killing our fellow man.  Satan did “kill” man.  He slew Adam and Eve.  There was no death prior to the point when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree.  God had warned, “…in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

Let us go back to Genesis 3:1-4:

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which JEHOVAH God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

There is that horrible, ugly lie of the devil.  Again, the Lord speaks of the devil in John 8:44: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth.”   Jesus is truth.  God is truth and the Word of God is truth.  Satan did not abide in God’s Word, the Law of God.  Remember, the Law is spiritual.  The Law is the entire Bible, the Word of God.  The Bible is the covenant, so when it says that Satan abode not in the truth, we can understand that he abode not in the covenant or Law of God.  He violated it.  He transgressed and that is the reason, Jesus said, “When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.”  Satan was the inventor of the lie.  There had never been a lie before this.  Yes – God allowed this to happen.  God could have restrained all the angels and kept them “good,” or He could have restrained man and kept him “good,” but He allowed these things to unfold to set into motion His salvation and judgment program that would take place over the history of the world.  It was all by the wisdom of God.  Everything that happened has served to glorify God.

But the devil broke the covenant when he abode not in the truth.  He left the truth.  He left the Word or Law of God and transgressed.  He did something that had never been done before.  He did it through a lie and with that lie, he “killed” Adam and Eve.  After the devil said, “Ye shall not surely die,” he went on to say, in Genesis 3:5:

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

The tree was referred to as the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and Satan was playing off that fact.  Then it says in Genesis 3:6-7:

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

The woes and miseries began there and would go on through the rest of the history of the world from the moment Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate of the fruit that God had told them not to eat.  There was not anything special about that fruit, but God simply singled out a tree and gave it the exotic name of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”  as a testing program to see if mankind would obey Him.  They failed the test because Satan entered into the picture and came with the original “lie” and with that lie he slew them.  In the day they ate, they did die in their soul existence and corruption came into their bodies, guaranteeing that their physical bodies would eventually die.  Then they would be dead in both body and soul, annihilated forever and ceasing to exist.  That is what death is, and it is only by the grace and mercy of God that He intervened to rescue a small portion  of mankind by saving them through the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

But Satan was a murderer from the beginning and we see the “scene of the crime” right here in Genesis 3.  That is when he sinned and broke the Law of God.  We do not read anywhere (that I am aware of) where God specifically spoke to the angels and said, “Thou shalt not lie,” and “Thou shalt not kill,” but based on the fact that Christ called the devil a murderer and a liar and was said to have sinned means that the spirit beings were under the same Laws as man and God.  Again, God has magnified His Law above all His name.  

I guess we could look at it this way: if God gives a Law and the Word of God endures forever (and Christ is the Word from everlasting past), it is not as if the Law came into existence with this creation.  It has always been the good and perfect Word of God, and God’s love has always been truth.  God has always been a truthful God.  His Word has always been true.  Everything He has said has always been holy, good and absolute truth from eternity past.   Therefore, all that are within His kingdom must obey and be in subjection to the same Law(s) that God has placed Himself under, and all the kingdom of God is under that Law.  We should not think that God just came up with these Laws for mankind.  They are a reflection of His eternal Being.  They reveal His wonderful attributes and characteristics of holy perfection and absolute righteousness and goodness.  You see, this is the very nature of God – His Law or Word has always manifested these things.  But in this world, God moved holy prophets of old to write down His Words and give us this book that records His glorious Law in all its perfection and beauty.  It is quite an amazing thing that we have this book, the Bible.  It is as though God summarized Himself and put it in a book.  And we have it to learn about this Holy God.

Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study, we will come back to Genesis 21 and see what else we can learn as we go through this chapter.