Genesis chapter 20

The first thing that struck me here was that Sarah must have been one beautiful woman.  Here she is, 90 years old and is obviously attractive enough to be taken into the harem of Abimelech.  Not only that, but the king sent for her - he had obviously heard of her from others and her beauty must have been renown.  Either that or he really liked older women! The second thing was Abraham pulling the same trick as he did with Pharaoh a few chapters back and then thirdly, God was right there the whole time.  He saw what Abraham had done and he protected Sarah, and Abimelech and his court, by appearing to Abimelech in a dream to tell him not to sleep with Sarah as she was already married.

Here we have Abraham lying again to save his skin, fearing for his life and getting Sarah to tell everyone she is his sister, not his wife.  Yes, technically she was his sister, well his half sister since they had the same father but different mothers, but just imagine what nearly happened to Sarah - taken as a wife by Abimelech and put into his harem along with all his other wives.  All because Abraham thought that he would be killed if people found out he was Sarah's husband as she was a beautiful and desirable woman and they would want her for themselves.

It shows a lack of trust in God, a reliance on Abraham's own scheming to get him out of a tricky situation.  How many of us today can say we wouldn't have done the same thing, or even that we don't do something similar by lying by omission, pretending to be someone we're not, or by trying to get out of trouble, harm, debt, marital difficulties  and so on by working everything out ourselves and ignoring God?  It’s a case of faith, or the lack of it here and I love the way the bible is so honest about this, because here you have one of the heroes of the Old Testament, someone who is used as an example of a man of faith in the book of Hebrews yet here he is, lying by omission and giving his own wife away to another man in an attempt to save his life.  It is not the first time he has done this either, as he pulled the same trick with Pharaoh not long before this.

A similar example is David committing adultery with Bathsheba and arranging to have her husband, Uriah, killed to avoid  being found out.  He is described as a man after God's own heart, despite doing these dreadful things.

I reckon this all shows how great God is,  just how much he loves each one of us, and yet how little faith we can all demonstrate at times.  God abhors sin in any shape or form, and will punish us accordingly for it, yet he will forgive us when we truly repent and turn to Him.  He will cast the remembrance of the sin away from him as far as the east is from the west and remember it no more, which is why men like Abraham and David are remembered as great men of faith and not men who really messed up big time.  It is also why each one of us can be remembered as men and women of faith, even when we mess up as we surely have done and will do again, because life isn’t about keeping a set of rules and regulations for fear of punishment, but it is about getting your heart right with God, of truly accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, the only Son of God, and about being filled with the Holy Spirit who will then help us, teach us, guide us, and change us from within to become the men and women of faith that God designed us to be.