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To Sarah he said, “I am giving your brother a thousand shekels of silver. This is to cover the offense against you before all who are with you; you are completely vindicated.”

(Gen 20: 16)

So, Abimelech offers Abraham as Sarah’s brother a gift of a thousand shekels. By giving her such a large gift, he was vindicating her before everybody to show that she was a guest and not part of his harem. The Hebrew word translated “vindicates” actually mean to cover the eyes which I just thought was very interesting. This gift is going to cover their eyes, so they don't think that Sarah did anything wrong. If that story isn't strange enough there's you will never believe what happens next. 

“Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelek, his wife and his female slaves so they could have children again, for the Lord had kept all the women in Abimelek’s household from conceiving because of Abraham’s wife Sarah”.

Abraham the fearful and inconsistent man at the beginning of the passage becomes Abraham the intercessor at the end of the passage. Interceding with God that all things should be put back on a sure footing in Abimelech’s household again, and God answered that prayer. As a result, God healed Abimelech his wife his female servants and then they were able to bare children again. The way he prevented Abimelech and Sarah having sexual relations is that he made Abimelech sick, but it seems it had an effect on Abimelech’s whole court and household. They all got sick and when God healed them, after which they were able to bear children which indicates it was some kind of a sexual or fertility-based illness.

The sum of this story is clear enough, when Abraham again failed and practised deception God intervened to protect Sarah’s and Abimelech’s purity and preserve God’s promise.

I want to close not in by making a couple of observation based on this passage. Number one failure will never negate Gods promise, even repeated failure does not negate gods promise. The sin of humanity does not prevent the promises of God from being fulfilled. Even repeated failure does not nullify the promises of God. God saved Abraham because he said he would have a son by Sarah, and he intervened to see that nothing would interfere with that promise. Abraham's repeated failure did not negate gods promise to him and this incident shows God’s faithfulness to Abraham compared to Abraham’s unfaithfulness to God. Abraham learned that the Lord would maintain his covenant and fulfil his prominence promises in spite of the opposition and interference caused by some massive individual sins.

Just like God promises to us of eternal life and no sin can ever interfere with that, even repeated failure does not negate the promise of God. He gives us Salvation freely by trusting in his son Jesus Christ and our character or our conduct is grounds for acceptance before God. The blood of Christ and the atoning work of Christ which is applied by faith is how we stand before God and no success or failure on our part can interfere with that. Having said that I don't mean to suggest that that gives you a licence to do what you want so I need to add a second statement and that is repeated failure has consequences. Repeated failure does not negate the promise of God but failure does have consequences. We shall look at those consequence in the final part of our examination of chapter 20 next time.