Abraham and Abimelech

"And Abraham journeyed from there to the South, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur, and stayed in Gerar. Now Abraham said of Sarah his wife, 'She is my sister.' And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. 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.' But Abimelech had not come near her; and he said, 'Lord, will You slay a righteous nation also? 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.' 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. 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." (Genesis 20:1-7)

Once again Abraham is trying to pass his wife off as his sister; putting her at risk in order to protect himself, which he has rationalized, I imagine, for a second time, that by protecting himself he is also protecting Sarah, for if he were to die she might not survive herself in a culture that is not particularly caring of women. While he might have a point, still this is no less than sin against God because he is not trusting in God's protection of him and Sarah, even though God has promised that Sarah is to conceive soon. Abraham's sin also creates a situation in which another person might be led to sin against God: Abimelech. This is often the case with any one sin…it creates a potential for many more sins to follow.

However, Abraham should be a model of great hope for all of us who ourselves have stumbled in the same sin more than once. If God does not despair of Abraham after this second time at the same sin, we hope that He will not despair of us as quickly either. In fact, we know that He is longsuffering towards our weaknesses and fears; yet, even God's patience has a limit on it, as His Word tells us, and so we are not to 'presume' that we shall ALWAYS have it….especially when He has provided all that we need to escape such sin, if we truly want to escape it.

Abimelech is the king of Gerar in the land of the Philistines, thus Abimelech must be a Philistine; and yet when God speaks to him in a dream, Abimelech heeds the warning and does all that he is instructed to do by the Lord and is spared rather than destroyed. Sodom and Gomorrah and the other cites of the Valley of Siddim were just recently destroyed by God; apparently that fact is well-known by this king of Gerar, his town being somewhat southwest of that area of God's wrath. Abimelech understood that God destroyed those cities because they were not righteous, and now asks God if He will also destroy a righteous nation as well and then proceeds to plead his case honestly before the Lord. This is rather amazing that a Philistine king heeds God in a dream; we would not necessarily expect him to do so. Perhaps, it was the recent destruction of those plains cities that made Abimelech more amenable to listen to God.

It is highly possible that such destruction left such an aftermath of ill effects on the neighboring lands that this is Abraham's reason for journeying into the wilderness of Shur, located on the Sinai Penninsula. Or it could perhaps be that he is aware of the disgrace of his nephew Lot's situation and wishes to remove himself and his family from that association? We are not told why Abraham chose to leave, but I favor the aftermath of the wrath of God; seeing as how those cities are now buried under the Dead Sea in Israel, just how great might the after-effects have been of such destruction?  Was there some amount of ash that managed to make its way to the fertile green fields that Abraham needed to feed his herds, similar to what was experienced in distant towns when Mt. Saint Helens blew? We just don't know for sure.

What is also encouraging about this passage is that God withheld Abimelech from sinning against him; He prevented Abimelech from fulfilling a sexual union with Sarah. (Sarah is nearly 100 years old and the King of Gerar lusts after her! How beautiful she must have been, truly!)

I am reminded of the Lord's prayer in which Jesus instructs us to ask the Father to daily "deliver us from evil." He did so for Abimelech who had not even asked it; how much more will He keep us from sin, if we would but turn to Him rather than to our own resources or strength of will?

Finally, we see again that God calls Abraham His prophet. Two aspects of what the title "prophet of God" entails are clearly identified in this passage as God tells Abimlech that Abraham will pray and thus be able to reverse the curse of death over Abimelech allowing him to live: 1) intercessory prayer (caring enough about others, such as Abraham did for his nephew Lot, to take the time to go to God on their behalf in prayer) and 2) miracles (in this case a physical healing that restored life where death had already been pronounced.) The miracles don't come from the prophet, they come from the Lord, and are a sign that the prophet is, in fact, walking in obedience to God and should be listened to and heeded as one who speaks the Word of God. Without the miracles, Jesus told his followers, they should not heed Him either:

"If I do not the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him." (John 10:37-38)

No wonder that the enemy has worked so hard to discredit the signs and wonders; if the works of God are no longer trusted as being a sign that the worker is from God, it makes it much easier for the church to be led around by false prophets and false teachers, those whom signs do not follow. Signs make people uncomfortable; the enemy caters to that by making them much more comfortable in the churches today…..very comfortable as they are being destroyed bit by bit with powerless false teaching, head knowledge that puffs up but does not bring life, only death.