“And God went in to Abimelek in a dream by night saying to him, ‘Behold, you are dead over the woman you took for she is married to a husband.’”

(Genesis 20:3)

Just as God did before, once again he protects the purity of Sarah. God ensures that the woman who will be the vessel of his promised child will have that child with her husband, Abraham, and not through a surrogate, whether Egyptian or Canaanite. Once again, the God of heaven demonstrates that he is the great shepherd over his people, protecting them from the harm that would come from the logical end of Abraham’s sin.

A question might be asked as to why Sarah submitted to her husband. She certainly saw the folly of his initial sin and to see it repeated seems a bit odd. Some may suggest that she was trusting in God’s deliverance. One also may suggest that she could have shared Abraham’s fears and thus entered into his sin willingly. We have already seen the sin of Sarah when she tried to take God’s promise into her own hands by giving her servant Hagar to Abraham as a wife. The child, Ishmael, came into the world as a result of this sin and the world has seen no end of grief as a result of these Ishmaelite children, those we now know as Arabian Muslims. How our sins so often come and haunt us.

Anyway, Abimelek (many of our Bibles wrongly transliterate his name as “Abimelech”) tries to take Sarah as a wife, likely because of Abraham’s wealth and wanting to build an alliance and thus secure Abraham’s allegiance. This was a common practice in ancient times, yet Sarah is not simply a sister, but indeed is the wife of Abraham. In this, all bets are off and God intervenes.

Loved ones, the God we worship today is the same God who protected Sarah. Now, sometimes he chooses not to protect his own in the way he protected Sarah, but he has promised to protect nonetheless and to carry each of us through whatever trial or trauma that we may face in this fallen world. God is a good God and though we often have to walk through hellish experiences in this life, we should be comforted in knowing that his hand always remains on us. Be at peace, his hand will guide and protect still today.