King Abimelech Genesis 20

Did you know that God is speaking to you today?

Yes, it’s true. God speaks to you, to me, and to all of us in so many different ways. Can you think of any?

Maybe you will say, “God speaks to me at church. When the minister preaches or the elder reads, then God is speaking to me through them. And God also speaks to me directly through the Bible.”

That’s true. Now can you think of any more ways? Think about when someone dies. Then God is telling us that we too must die someday. Or if we become sick, and then get better, God is telling us that He does not want us to die yet, but to seek Him while we still have time given to us. Thunderstorms tell us that God is still the powerful King over everything. And—don’t forget — we have a conscience right inside us that is from God.

Do you know what your conscience is? It is something that God gave you to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right. That is God speaking inside of you. Maybe you want to take a piece of candy that’s not yours. Something inside you says, “No, I really shouldn’t take it. It’s stealing.” That voice is your conscience. We should listen to this voice speaking to us every time, because if we don’t, it will stop telling us the right thing to do.

God spoke to many people in Bible times in dreams. You have dreams, too, don’t you? Sometimes they are very funny or very strange. They can be scary, too! It’s hard to understand why we would dream such horrible things. But the dreams we have are just made up in our mind. In Bible days dreams were often given by God as a message. God seldom does this any more today because He has so many other ways to tell us of His will, of which the most important is the Bible.

In this story we will meet a king named Abimelech. One day God spoke to him in a dream. The king had just taken a woman, and God told him in a dream, “The woman whom you have just taken is already married to someone else.”

That was a surprise to the king! You will remember the woman whom he had taken when I tell you her name. Her name was Sarah. And you will remember that she already was Abraham’s wife.

But do you know what Abraham had done? He told the king that Sarah was only his sister, not that she was his wife! And Sarah had agreed with him! Abraham was so afraid that the king would kill him so that hecould marry Sarah. That is why Abraham told him she was his sister.

Now you can see why king Abimelech was quite worried when God told him in the dream that he had taken someone else’s wife. Now he could see why God had been punishing his family with sickness. So he explained the problem to God.

God told the king that even though he hadn’t tried to steal Abraham’s wife, he would have to give Sarah back to her husband. If he didn’t, the king and his family would die.

So Abimelech called Abraham and gave Sarah back to him. He also gave him many sheep, oxen, and servants as a gift. He told Abraham that he could live wherever he wanted in the country. That was kind of the king, wasn’t it?

Maybe you have a good memory. Maybe you are thinking, “I thought Abraham had lied about Sarah before. I wonder why he sinned the same sin again.”

God tells us this story so that we can see that God’s people are not perfect. They are sinners, just like all of us. They have to pray to God all the time to keep them from sin. At those moments Abraham’s faith in God was very weak. Out of weakness, he lied to try to save his life. I’m sure that many times he felt very bad that he had not trusted God like he should have done. We all must ask God to show us our sinful heart, too, and to teach us to trust Him with our whole heart.

HOW DO YOU KNOW THERE IS A GOD?

How do you know there is a God? was the pertinent question put to a navy man at Southsea. “How do you know you have a mother?” was his equally pertinent reply. “Why, she brought me up, and has been very kind to me,” was the answer.

“In the same way I know there is a God, for He has been wondrously kind to me,” was his ready rejoinder.

“Nevertheless He left not Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17).

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