Gen: 20-Abraham & Abimelech

For some strange reason Abraham decided to leave the region where he was after the destruction of Sodom and he moved closer to Egypt. Once again both him and Sarah repeated their previous mistake. Once again, Abraham goes toward Egypt and introduces Sarah as sister to the king Abimelech.

Now Abraham moved on from there into the region of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur. For a while he stayed in Gerar, ² and there Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” Then Abimelek king of Gerar sent for Sarah and took her.

You would think by now Abraham would have learned his lesson or would have grown enough in faith where he would not do this. How many times do we fall into same sin over & over again .  Here is what paul says in letter to Corinthians 1 10:12

¹² So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall

Here was Abraham  who was saved by God when he went down to Egypt, he was given the best land and was blessed , he defeated 5 kings and saved his nephew LOT, he had communion with Jesus in form of Malchizedek , he saw the destruction of Sodom yet he falls into the sin. You may think he would never make that mistake again but he repeated it. So many times we fall into same trap, we have been born again, we go to church, bible study etc and we feel we are firm in our faith and bang something hits us and we fall into same trap as Abraham. We once again start doubting or fear creeps in, worry takes over our life . It is when we are standing firm, we need to be extra careful that temptation does not sneak into our life and we may not make same mistake Abraham made.

³ But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, “Indeed you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man’s wife.”⁴ But Abimelech had not come near her; and he said, “Lord, will You slay a righteous nation also? ⁵ Did he not say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she, even she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ In the integrity of my heart and innocence of my hands I have done this.”⁶ And God said to him in a dream, “Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart. For I also withheld you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her.

For the first time in scripture word integrity is used and it is used for Abimelech. When the king took Sarah in his Harem, he did not know she was Abraham’s wife and in order for to keep him from sinning, God had made him impotent. When it says, ” INDEED YOU ARE A DEAD MAN” he had lost sexual desire not only him but all men in his kingdom as we will see later. Integrity is certainly lacking in our world today. Definition of integrity is “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.” in today’s society , moral person is hard to find in public life. All kind of behavior is excused under the umbrella of freedom & personal rights. As we can see in this verse integrity can save you from sinning. Let your YES be YES and your NO be NO. Once you start compromising your values, there is no stopping. Job was a man of Integrity . We need more people in our churches and government who have morals and who place high value on integrity. God stopped king from sinning because in of his integrity. If you walk with Integrity, not only will it stop you from sinning but it is a blessing to your children ( prov  20:7) and integrity provides guidance & direction ( prov 11:3).

⁷ Now therefore, restore the man’s wife; for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.”

First time in bible the word “prophet” is used. Abraham is introduced as prophet for the first time. Now if there is any such thing as bad timing , this is it. I would think, God would be angry , upset or embarrassed of Abraham but instead God tells Abimelech, man who lied to you , deceived you , put his wife in danger and almost bought a curse on your nation is a prophet, my messenger. When God makes a promises or gives a blessing , he does not take it back. His gifts ( spiritual or otherwise) are unconditional. We do not receive blessing, salvation , redemption of our sins because we are good but because HE is good. Most of the religions in word and sadly lot of Pastors & Evangelist preach karma. Oh they will tell you, give your tithes & God will return it 10 folds. Today you help so & so and surely when you are in trouble, God will send you help, this is false teaching. We are to give tithes because it belongs to God not because he will return it and God does not bless us because we helped someone in need but he blesses us regardless of our behavior. We should help others because that is the commandment . Perhaps you have seen people who have stumbled, fallen and strayed away from the word of God and wondered how will God forgive him or use him again , the fact remains a gift of God is without repentance( romans 11:29). God will use sinners like me and you.Satan is very good at using this against us. So many people fall into thinking , ” God can’t use me” . God will not use me because I have failed so miserably; I messed it up so badly but remember that is the voice of the enemy. Since we did not earn the gifts ( salvation) we can not lose it either. If you are waiting to be perfect so God can use you, get off from the sideline and like Samuel say ” here I am use me” . Remember this story whenever you think , you are not smart enough, you are not Holy  enough, you are not strong enough, you are not brave enough, whatever the excuse enemy puts in your mind not to serve the Gospel. God will use us despite our shortcomings.  Jesus knew peter was going to deny him 3 times still he said “you are the rock I am going to build my church on”.

⁸ So Abimelech rose early in the morning, called all his servants, and told all these things in their hearing; and the men were very much afraid. ⁹ And Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, “What have you done to us? How have I offended you, that you have brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? You have done deeds to me that ought not to be done.” ¹⁰ Then Abimelech said to Abraham, “What did you have in view, that you have done this thing?”¹¹ And Abraham said, “Because I thought, surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will kill me on account of my wife. ¹² But indeed she is truly my sister. She is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. ¹³ And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, that I said to her, ‘This is your kindness that you should do for me: in every place, wherever we go, say of me, “He is my brother.”

Does this not sum up all our problems in our personal life & church?  When Abimelech asked Abraham why did you do this?  Abraham said ““Because I thought, ” he did not say , I prayed about it and this is what God told me but rather a solution that came from his own intellect. So many times we do not go to God until problem becomes unsolvable. Lot of our decisions are made just like Abraham  and we find unbelievers rebuke us for our behavior as Abimelech is doing here.  Abraham was not lying but he was not telling the truth. I find we fall into same trap in our daily life. Let us be careful  as half truth is a whole lie. This solution was well thought out by Abraham from the minute he left his father’s home . We need to be careful , we don’t fall into sin but rather we walk into sin one step at time like Abraham . Just be aware of the trap of ” I THOUGHT”

¹⁴ Then Abimelech took sheep, oxen, and male and female servants, and gave them to Abraham; and he restored Sarah his wife to him. ¹⁵ And Abimelech said, “See, my land is before you; dwell where it pleases you.” ¹⁶ Then to Sarah he said, “Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver; indeed this vindicates you^[a] before all who are with you and before everybody.” Thus she was rebuked.

Abimelech gave these gifts to Abraham not because he was impressed by him but rather to his God. When we give our gifts to church or ministry, we are giving it to God. He also does not blame Sarah for this situation but solely Abraham.

¹⁷ So Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his female servants. Then they bore children; ¹⁸ for the Lord had closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

In Matthew 5 : 44 , Jesus says pray for your enemies. Here we see Abraham could not preach to Abimelech . He had ruined his witness and he had lost respect in eyes of Abimelech. We may have people like that in our lives. We may have lost their respect or no matter what we do, we are not going to be able to share or preach to them but one thing we can always do is pray for them and we can bless them through our prayers. Here we see God blesses Abimelech after Abraham prays for him. I urge to pray for people who you may dislike or even those who have done harm to you, hurt you. It is impossible to continue to hate someone or be angry at someone if you praying for them. Anger will disappear when you pray blessings, healing prosperity on them. As we read God opened up the wombs of all in nation because of prayer.

May God add his blessing to his words. I pray holy spirit speaks to you through this  word and you may  be blessed by this word. Please continue to pray for me as we go through the scripture.