Genesis 20 (ESV)
From there Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negeb and lived between Kadesh and Shur; and he sojourned in Gerar. And 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, behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife. Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Did he not himself say to me, she is my sister? And she herself said, he is my brother. In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this. Then God said to him in the dream, yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her. Now then, return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours. So Abimelech rose early in the morning and called all his servants and told them all these things. And the men were very much afraid. Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, what have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you, that you have brought on me and my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done. And Abimelech said to Abraham, what did you see, that you did this thing? Abraham said, I did it because I thought, there is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife. Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. And when God caused me to wander from my father's house, I said to her, this is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, he is my brother. Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and male servants and female servants, and gave them to Abraham, and returned Sarah his wife to him. And Abimelech said, behold, my land is before you; dwell where it pleases you. To Sarah he said, behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. It is a sign of your innocence in the eyes of all who are with you, and before everyone you are vindicated. Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.
I find this passage encouraging because it reminds us and shows us that even God's most chosen and beloved people can sometimes go wrong in the same kinds of ways all throughout their life. And I find that encouraging because I think that is true of most Christian people today who struggle with a particular issue.
In this passage, we see Abram and Sarah doing exactly the same thing they did when they sojourned or traveled through Egypt. So just like in Egypt in Genesis 12, Abram passes off Sarah as his sister rather than his wife. Moses who wrote this wants us to feel the sense of deja vu. Even the patriarchs, these great heroes of the faith, show the same cycle of old fears and flaws and failures actually before God.
In this passage, we see that God's promise is on the line. Now, God had promised that Sarah would conceive Isaac, and this would happen within really probably weeks from when this passage happens. So if Abimelech sleeps with her now, then the covenant seed which God had promised is being compromised. Again, there's this threat against everything that God had promised to Abraham, you know, to make him into a great nation, to give him land and to bless all the world through him and his offspring, which ultimately points to Jesus, is again being threatened.
And so here, God acts rather amazingly and he zealously safeguards his redemptive plan. He appears to Abimelech in a dream and Abimelech actually responds to God saying, you know, I'll obey. I'm not going to have this woman as my wife, even though I've acted innocently in this story. And so God graciously spares Abimelech by giving him this dream and by confronting him with what was about to become a sinful action.
Also in this passage, we see that Abraham is called by God a prophet. Now, Abraham is clearly not the ideal prophet. He's this kind of faltering, saved person. He obeys God, but his old sins are still besetting. You know, there is still this pattern of deceit that is part of his life. But yet God calls him a prophet. He is still God's chosen intercessor, the person who would pray for Abimelech and God would listen to his prayers on behalf of Abimelech. And so there's this kind of prophetic ministry that starts here. Even in the midst of human weakness, God can still set aside people to pray for and intercede for other people.
Now, why does this matter to us? Well, I think primarily there's an application here about the fact that we all have these besetting sins. In this story, Abram is again driven by fear. He gives these half-truths years after the first time he's chosen this strategy to protect himself and not to be enslaved or hurt by Abimelech. We all know the well-worn paths of our own sins, whether they are people-pleasing sins or sins of perfectionism or sins of self-sufficiency or whatever they might be.
We actually need more than our willpower to overcome these things. We need God's direct intervention to change us. And that's exactly what the gospel does. We are given the story of grace where Jesus died for us even in the midst of us and while we were still enemies of God, Christ came for us. And so we are set free from these things by the power not that lives within us, but the power that is given to live within us. It's not our own willpower that overcomes our sin. It's actually God's power within us through the Holy Spirit that helps us overcome our sin.
God's grace is bigger than our own besetting sins. He knows us beforehand already. He knows what are the things we struggle with, and he saves us anyway. God doesn't scrap the plan with Abraham. Rather, he steps in. He protects Sarah, in this case, through providing a dream for Abimelech and his household. He protects Abimelech through Abraham's prayer. God is still going to achieve what he's going to achieve, even though we are broken people in need of a savior.
And then finally, this does point us to our need for a great intercessor. Even though in this story we see this pagan king being spared because of Abraham's prayer, we are spared because of Jesus's prayer for us. He's even now interceding before God the Father for us, saying, look at what I have already done for these people. Please forgive their sins. We have this flawless prophet. Abram was a flawed person, but Jesus is flawless and he prays for us even now. And because of that, we are ultimately set free.
So here in Genesis 20 kind of almost in the middle of the book of Genesis we see this deja vu moment, this rerun of Abram's old lie. And it shows us that we can stumble into these familiar grooves and patterns of sin. But this chapter also shows us God's sovereign grace. God intervenes. He preserves his promise. He ultimately preserves it all the way through to Jesus himself. He labels Abram a prophet and he blesses a foreign king—a hint of this blessing for all nations through Abraham that will ultimately be fulfilled in Jesus.
And in our life, our sins might grieve us, but they cannot outmaneuver God, who is the one who will keep his covenant.
Let me pray.
Dear Lord, we confess that we often fall into the same patterns of sin again and again. We pray for your Holy Spirit to root these things out of us and to change our hearts from within. Thank you that even now, Lord Jesus, you are praying and interceding for us before God our Father. And we pray this in your mighty name. Amen.