Faith.In.Life

All I Have To Do Is Dream

Genesis 20 stands in between Gen 12 where Abraham first offered up his wife as his sister as well as Genesis 26 where Isaac will offer his wife, Rebekah as his sister as well.  Some scholars will suggest that this is the same story reiterated three times, but in each instance we are given unique details different then the previous story.  Thus, to me, it has always suggested that the sins of the father will be revisited on the sins of the son and we, in fact, don’t really learn from our mistakes.

Genesis 20 is unique though in the way that God interacts with this foreign King Abimelech.  This is incredibly interesting because largely God appears to his own people like Abraham and Israel through his dreams.  Very rarely does God in Scripture show up to foreign kings in dreams that they can understand.  I can think of the dream Joseph interpreted for Pharaoh that saved Israel and Egypt from the upcoming famine, but in that case Pharaoh did not understand the dream, but Jospeh as a child of God does. Yet, here, God seems to speak so incredibly clearly to Abimelech where we read in Gen 20:3-7

3 But that night God came to Abimelech in a dream and told him, “You are a dead man, for that woman you have taken is already married!” 

4 But Abimelech had not slept with her yet, so he said, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation? 5 Didn’t Abraham tell me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘Yes, he is my brother.’ I acted in complete innocence! My hands are clean.” 

6 In the dream God responded, “Yes, I know you are innocent. That’s why I kept you from sinning against me, and why I did not let you touch her. 7 Now return the woman to her husband, and he will pray for you, for he is a prophet. Then you will live. But if you don’t return her to him, you can be sure that you and all your people will die.” 

And in God speaking to Abimelech, we have a few unique take aways as proposed by one commentary:

(a) God speaks to one who stands outside the community of faith (cf. 31:24; Num 22:20), indeed God engages in dialogue with him. Abimelech’s response (vv. 4–5) occasions a positive response in God (vv. 6–7), which opens up the possibilities for life rather than death.

(b) Similar to Abraham in 18:22–33, Abimelech acts in a situation of perceived injustice. He not only pleads with God, but sharply questions God and flatly states his innocence. He places his action in the context of his general loyalty to interhuman relationships. He refuses to acquiesce in the face of a divine decision or resign himself to the announced fate of death. He expects his innocence to be acknowledged if justice is to be served. His question in v. 4 appears like Abraham’s in 18:25: “Lord, will you destroy an innocent peopleindicate the events have affected more than Abimelech as an individual. God then acknowledges Abimelech’s innocence.

(c) Verse 6 states that God has been so active in his life that Abimelech was prevented from touching Sarah (we learn from v. 17). Because God states this reason, the claim is incontestable.

(d) Abimelech ultimately is spared by Abraham’s intervention - Abimelech ultimately receives God’s blessing initially given to Abraham - in other words the foreigner is blessed by Abraham’s blessing.

(e) Throughout it all, Abraham still seems to continue to distrust God’s promise of a child - or if nothing else has somehow convinced himself that a child would come through a different medium than God’s plan - whether Abraham is seeking to have Sarah be impregnated by another man, or is simply trying to somehow force God’s hand.

(f) As Abraham’s initial blessing is shared with Abimelech, so also is it shared with an entire nation.  We are told at the end of chapter 20 that:

 17 Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his female servants, so they could have children. 18 For the Lord had caused all the women to be infertile because of what happened with Abraham’s wife, Sarah. 

While one’s fertility or lack there of was almost always associated with one’s sinfulness contrasted to a dieties ability to heal and bring life out of a death, in this case YHWH is solidified as the agent of both life and death.  Not only was God just in his decree (even though it is established that Abelemech is innocent), but equally God is the one who gives and takes away - can both kill and destroy - but equally make an entire nation fertile once more.  

I find these words actually quite timely.  Right now so many of us here in the west should be truly mortified by the war going on in the middle east.  Its hard to even speak to the situation given teh inhumane treatment of life and the overall disdain both Israel and Palestine, especially Hamas, have for one another.  In this tale that seems to be as old as time where we see Isaac’s and Ishmael’s religious heirs wage holy war against one another in what seems to be never ending, but continually novel ways of doing so in what no mind should be able to imagine.  And yet, through what we have read so far in Genesis is first that a blessing was passed on through Hagar and Ishmael, we equally see Abraham’s own doubt and sin that is also passed on to Isaac.  And yet, through it all , God is the one who able to reign his supreme justice in ways that are first violent yet just through the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, while equally showing his grace and mercy where his justice could have been rightly executed through King Abelemech and the nation he oversees.  

Through it all, God is supremely in control even when we as people seem to not just lose our minds, but do things that should very much even question the existence of God.  

And the amazing part, is that God is still working even amongst Islam; a religion that has primarily been seen as Israel’s and (somehow) the west’s enemy.  That is, even right now there is surprising testimony about how Muslims are turning to not just the God of Israel, but specifically Christianity through dreams and visions.  To think thatGod is still doing what he did with Abimelech to show his divine initiative through a dream then is still the same God that is showing his children (as Islam claims to be equally children of Abraham through Ishmael) his love  through Jesus Christ so that the blessing originally offered to Abraham will continually be offered to even the foreigner and even those we might perceive to be our enemies.  

And to be quite honest, I believe this is commonly one of the biggest misunderstandings of the TULIP understanding of Unconditional Election in that God choses.  We are presented two very different narratives about what could happen to King Abimelech - one being destruction, and the other being fertility and even election.  It would seem that God’s blessing and call offers a way out of the first situation, that is the way of destruction, through Abraham in an ongoing fashion.  This is where I will sometimes say that we are children of wrath by our very nature, and therefore agents of God’s destruction, but through Abraham’s one seed we might receive the blessing of everlasting life that would in a sense change outcomes.  Our culture has somehow turned this on its head, and suggested that the Calvin God is one of condemnation, but that is hardly the case.  Calvin represented teh God of the Bible, who even though we are all agents made for destruction because of our sin, God might see it fit to reveal His son through even say a dream, to drastically change our path - and this is nothing that we do, but is a gift of God, that God does on our behalf, and is even willing to lay down his life through Jesus Christ for we, his enemies.  In other words, we all, in one way or another, are like King Abimelech, and need to have a vision of the God of life over death so that we might go from a destiny of condemnation, death, and destruction, to then being predestined in Christ Jesus for life, fertility, and joy abundant.