Deliberate Choice - Abraham & Sarah

In Genesis 15: 1-6 we see how God promised Abram for a son. Vs. 6 is beautiful where it says “Then Abram believed in the Lord, and HE reckoned it to him as righteousness.” The moment Abram believed in the promises of God – it was God who reckoned Abram’s faith in Him as righteousness.

But when we move on to Chapter 16, while the promise of God to Abram for an heir remains unfulfilled, Sarai and Abram schemed to obtain the heir God had promised to give them, by resorting to a culturally acceptable custom of their day, but which involved a failure to trust God.

"It was a serious matter for a man to be childless in the ancient world, for it left him without an heir. But it was even more disastrous for a woman: to have none and it was seen as a humiliating failure in their culture. So throughout the ancient East polygamy was resorted to as a means of avoiding childlessness. But wealthier wives preferred the practice of substitute motherhood, whereby they allowed their husbands to 'go in to' their maids. The mistress could then feel that her maid's child was her own and exert some control over it in a way that she could not if her husband simply took a second wife." Hagar was Sarai's personal servant ("maid"), not a slave girl.

So the gesture of Sarai giving her maid to her husband in order to have a child to her is culturally OK for them and the most appropriate thing to do for a rich barren woman. Otherwise the husband will remarry someone to have a legitimate heir and the first wife will not have any control over the child or her mother!

BUT what is legitimate and culturally acceptable or right is NOT necessarily right in the eyes of God!

What was the problem? Abram and Sarai sinned against God and that sin caused massive consequences in human history to date.

What was their sin?

1. Listening to man’s word rather than believing in God’s word.

Gen 16:2 – from believing in God’s word (Gen 15:6) now Abram started listening to Sarai’s advice. God’s promise was clear in 15: 4 – “your very own son shall be your heir”. Abram believed in God’s word and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. But they expected God to fulfill His promises in their time line according to their desires and expectation. So, when that did not happened Sarai tried to outsmart God. She gave Abram an alternate advice.

This is also our problem most of the time too! We believe in God and His word but at the same time we listen to what people say and eventually do according to the counsel of man. Some how we think man knows more than God based on their experience and to maintain a good reputation and relationship with man -we chose not to offend them and listen to their words rather than waiting for God’s promise.

2. Rushing the fulfillment of God’s promise through human means and efforts are reckoned as disobedience in the eyes of God.

If God promised something, HE knows how to fulfill them without any help from man. Now Sarai wasn’t an evil woman. She would have assumed that God will give an heir to her husband but it was not happening through her and she has passed the age of conceiving so she thought ‘she can assist God’ to fulfill HIS promise – and that was a disastrous mistake!

Today we need to understand that our God is all sovereign, all powerful and HE is independent of any created being to fulfill HIS promises. Isaiah 55:8-9 – HIS ways are always higher than ours. We are so limited in our understanding that we should just humbly believe in HIS promises even though when we don’t understand what is happening around us. If HE promises, HE will somehow fulfill it in HIS times and in HIS ways.

Sarai and Abram’s mistake has left behind disastrous effect to humankind. Only if Sarai could have kept quiet and waited for the promise of God – our whole human history will be different today.

3. Faith means complete trust in God.

In Chapter 15 Abram trusted the unseen God, but in chapter 16 when the wife made a so call sensible offer he immediately trusted in the idea of his wife which was the most right thing to do in every human sense and in their culture because Abram was a very rich man with a huge wealth.

Trusting is God’s promise is simply higher than trusting in human traditions and cultures. We too often want to do what is right culturally and in the sight of man. This story teaches us that what culturally right may not necessarily be right in the eyes of God.