Genesis 20

¹ From there Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negeb and lived between Kadesh and Shur; and he sojourned in Gerar. ² And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, “She is my sister.” And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. ³ 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.” ⁴ Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, “Lord, will you kill an innocent people? ⁵ 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.” ⁶ 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. ⁷ 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.” ⁸ 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. ⁹ 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.” ¹⁰ And Abimelech said to Abraham, “What did you see, that you did this thing?” ¹¹ 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.’ ¹² Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. ¹³ 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.”’” ¹⁴ Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and male servants and female servants, and gave them to Abraham, and returned Sarah his wife to him. ¹⁵ And Abimelech said, “Behold, my land is before you; dwell where it pleases you.” ¹⁶ 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.” ¹⁷ Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. ¹⁸ For the Lordhad closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

In Umberto Eco’s novel, Focault’s Pendulum, the narrator makes the following observation about the importance of fathers:

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us.  We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.[1]

I thought of that this week when reflecting on Genesis 20. In this chapter, Father Abraham does indeed teach us when he was most certainly not trying to. And, yes, Genesis 20 does represent a most “odd moment.” Sadly, what Abraham teaches us here is what not to do…but this too is teaching. In fact, I would like to argue that Genesis 20 is not a bad chapter at all for us to reflect on as we walk into a new year. On the basis of Abraham’s foolish behavior, then, let us make certain commitments for the coming year.

Let us commit to being led by trust and not driven by fear in this coming year.

One of the most evident realities in this chapter is that Abraham had an excess of fear and a deficiency of trust. He feared more than he trusted. When we fear more than we trust, we act imprudently and unwisely. The role of fear in this sad scene is evident in Abraham’s response to Abimelech’s demand for an explanation.

⁹ 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.” ¹⁰ And Abimelech said to Abraham, “What did you see, that you did this thing?” ¹¹ 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.’ ¹² Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. ¹³ 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.”’”

Let us remember that this is the second time Abraham has done this. The first happened in Genesis 12.

¹⁰ Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. ¹¹ When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, ¹² and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. ¹³ Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.” ¹⁴ When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. ¹⁵ And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. ¹⁶ And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels. ¹⁷ But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. ¹⁸ So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? ¹⁹ Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.” ²⁰ And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.

Notice the repeated phrase: “they will kill me.” As in Egypt, so in Gerar: fear.  Fear makes us do foolish things. Fear is crippling. “Where fear is present, wisdom cannot be,” said the church father Lactantius. Lloyd Cassel Douglas said, “If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost.” We can see all of this in Abraham: a lack of wisdom and the percolation of fear through all of his thinking.

Fear makes us irrational. Fear oftentimes is irrational. Phobialist.com catalogues names and definitions of fears.  Here are some of the stranger and funnier ones:

• Alektorophobia- Fear of chickens.
• Ambulophobia- Fear of walking.
• Anthrophobia or Anthophobia- Fear of flowers.
• Bogyphobia- Fear of bogeys or the bogeyman.
• Batrachophobia- Fear of amphibians, such as frogs, newts, salamanders
• Bromidrosiphobia or Bromidrophobia- Fear of body smells.
• Cacophobia- Fear of ugliness.
• Chaetophobia- Fear of hair.
• Coulrophobia- Fear of clowns.
• Ecclesiophobia- Fear of church.
• Ergophobia- Fear of work.
• Lachanophobia- Fear of vegetables.
• Myrmecophobia- Fear of ants.
• Octophobia – Fear of the figure 8.
• Soceraphobia- Fear of parents-in-law.
• Zemmiphobia- Fear of the great mole rat.

We laugh at these because many of them are so very odd. We may laugh at them as well in order to tell ourselves that at least our own fears are not that strange, that our fears at least make sense. In reality, however, when it comes to trusting that God will be with you when He said He would be with you all of our fears end up as absurd as those on that list. They certainly lead us into absurdity, as we see in this episode.

Fear drives us like a taskmaster. Trust leads us like a shepherd. Fear is behind us, pushing us. Trust is ahead of us calling us forward. Abraham was driven by the taskmaster of fear, so he acted out foolishly and wrongly. He should have trusted. He should have known that fear has no place in the child of God’s relationship with God. In fact, the presence of fear and the absence of trust is usually a sign that something is wrong with one’s relationship with God and, in fact, there is a clue in our text that something is indeed wrong. We find this clue in verse 13:

¹³ 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.”’

There it is! There is the problem: “And when God caused me to wander from my father’s house…” We may have here evidence that deep down Abraham blamed God for his trials. I hasten to add that Abraham shows great faith at other times. But here and in Egypt—that is, in situations in which his faith is put to the test and his life his on the line—he flinches. Here he may do more than flinch. Here he may actually blame God.

Fear flies on wings of doubt, but it also flies on wings of blame. When deep down you blame God for putting you in a precarious situation or a scary situation or a dangerous situation, you open the door for fear to enter.

A high view of God brings trust.

A low view of God brings fear.

At this point—I certainly do not say at every point—in Abraham’s journey, he has a low view of God. He seems to blame God. But to trust God is to refuse to allow fear a place at the table.

In 1 John 4, John put it beautifully and poignantly:

¹⁸ There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

Fear and love cannot abide in the same house. I do not say that the Christian will never be assaulted by or caught off guard by fear. That would be a naïve view, indeed. I simply argue that the Christian will not allow fear to drive him or her. He or she will dash it at the foot of the cross. He or she will allow it to be eclipsed by the perfect love of Jesus Christ, for “perfect love casts our fear.”

Church: let us commit to being led by trust and not driven by fear in this coming year.

Let us commit to speaking truth without parsing our words in self-interest in this coming year.

Father Abraham teaches us another lesson here and it has to do with how we speak, how we use words.

¹¹ 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.’ ¹² Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.

“A half truth is a whole lie,” as the saying goes. We learn that Sarah actually is a sister, a half-sister. That is strange and uncomfortable, but it is what it is. Regardless, that fact, while technically true, was clearly used by Abraham with deceptive intent, for it did not negate the bigger point: Sarah was his wife!

Have you ever had somebody parse their words with you, use words in a way that are technically true but nonetheless deceptive and used in the service of a lie? Or have you done this? Have you ever tried to ease your conscience with the fact that, after all, what you said was technically true when, in reality, you knew that you were using those words to cover up something you did not want revealed? That is what it means to parse one’s words. It is a semantic game, and Abraham was playing it with Abimelech.

Abraham should simply have told the truth. So should we. Let us be driven by the words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:

³⁷ Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.

Yes, “anything more than this”—parsing, shading, overly-nuancing, subtly-qualifying, etc.—“comes from evil.”

Think back over the last year. Did lying ever help you in the long-term, in any meaningful sense? Did lying build your character? Were you better for having told that lie? Were you closer to God as a result of it? No. You were not. Heed the warning of Abraham: to lied in an effort to avoid danger is to court even greater danger!

Church: let us commit to speaking truth without parsing our words in self-interest in this coming year.

Let us commit to leading others to God and not doing anything that would hurt their relationship with Him in this coming year.

There is one final lesson in our text. It is the most significant lesson and the most painful. Simply put, Abraham acted with callous disregard for Abimelech’s soul. Abraham was more concerned about himself than about Abimelech’s relationship with the Lord God. See the danger that Abraham put Abimelech in:

³ 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.” ⁴ Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, “Lord, will you kill an innocent people? ⁵ 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.” ⁶ 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. ⁷ 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.”

¹⁴ Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and male servants and female servants, and gave them to Abraham, and returned Sarah his wife to him. ¹⁵ And Abimelech said, “Behold, my land is before you; dwell where it pleases you.” ¹⁶ 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.” ¹⁷ Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. ¹⁸ For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

Because of Abraham’s deception Abimelech is led to a point where God says to him, “You are a dead man.” Can you imagine hearing those words from God?

Abimelech appeals to God’s justice and argues his own innocence. The Lord acknowledges Abimelech’s innocence and that He had kept Abimelech from approaching Sarah, but the fact remained that Abraham’s wife was residing in his house, which was unacceptable. This put Abimelech in a position of great danger indeed. God tells Abimelech to get Sarah back to Abraham quickly and then informs him, amazingly, that his hope will hinge on Abraham interceding for him in prayer! Abraham, the erring child of God, is still a child of God. This is significant.

It is only when Abimelech returns Sarah and gives Abraham animals and servants and land and money that we learn just how precarious Abimelech’s situation was.

¹⁷ Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. ¹⁸ For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

Amazing! As a result of Abimelech’s actions—which themselves were the result of his trusting Abraham’s deceptive words—God “closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech.” From this astonishing revelation we can deduce two things:

• Sin has disastrous consequences, even if entered into unknowingly.
• The child of God should never want to have any part of leading another person into sin.

Once again: as in Egypt so in Gerar. Abraham should have had more concern over Abimelech’s standing before God than over his own safety. He saved himself for the briefest of moments and, in the process, imperiled Abimelech and his entire family.

I ask you: do you ever consider the effects of your actions on the souls of others? Do you ever ask yourself whether or not this or that act or course of action would draw others closer to or further from God? Does the eternal fate of those in the arena of your own behavior factor into whether or not you behave or do not behave in a certain way?

The follower of Jesus follows the God who gave Himself on the cross so that others might be saved. God Himself is concerned about the eternal destinies and right standing of the human race, so much so that He tasted death in order to make a way for lost humanity to come home.

How can we follow this God and act with callous disregard for the souls of those around us?

Let us remember: we never act in a vacuum. Our actions bear fruit not only in our own lives but in the lives of those around us.

Church: let us commit to leading others to God and not doing anything that would hurt their relationship with Him in this coming year.

If we follow these steps and learn from the poor example of Abraham in Genesis 20, we will be a blessing and not a curse.

Let us trust and not fear.

Let us speak truth.

Let us care for the souls of others.

Which is simply to say this: let us follow King Jesus and do as He does.

 

[1] Umberto Eco.  Focault’s Pendulum. (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1989), p.49.