Abraham's mistreatment of Sarah and the mistreatment of Muslim women today

Grace Bible Church

Robert R. McLaughlin Bible Ministries

The TREE OF LIFE is a weekly teaching summary.

The Tree of Life for week ending 10/21/01.

In our current study we have been noting the trouble in the Middle East and where real problem is.  We have seen that the real war is all a part of the Angelic Conflict.  In this study we have seen the background to the Muslim religion and why the problems and conflicts continue and the central role that Israel plays.

Many may not realize it but 5/6 of the Bible is about Israel, from Gen 12 to Acts 2 and some of the New Testament right to Rev 6-19.  The key point that we need to understand is that God is not through with Israel.

There are three pagan religious systems in the East that condemn and criticize Christianity as well as Judaism.
Buddhism in China.
Hinduism in India.
Then there is Islam.
These religions are found in areas of the word that may be modernizing but not westernizing because that would be manifested by freedom, especially freedom of religion.

This is a struggle for the direction and control of human earth.  This is why our study has been aimed at learning of the real author who is Satan and the evil of Islam.

EZE 33:1 "And the word of the Lord came to me saying, Son of man, speak to the sons of your people, and say to them, If I bring a sword upon a land, and the people of the land take one man from among them and make him their watchman; and he sees the sword coming upon the land, and he blows on the trumpet and warns the people, then he who hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, and a sword comes and takes him away, his blood will be on his {own} head.  He heard the sound of the trumpet, but did not take warning; his blood will be on himself. But had he taken warning, he would have delivered his life.  But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman's hand.  Now as for you, son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel; so you will hear a message from My mouth, and give them warning from Me."

A prepared Pastor Teacher, as a watchman, must give the warning when he sees the sword coming.  While our country was viciously attacked the violence is also found elsewhere around the world.  In Sudan where 2 Million black people have been slaughtered.  On the island of East Timor where the Muslims have killed over 300,000 Catholics.  Christians are being slaughtered, enslaved, persecuted, more today than other time in the last 2,000 years?  Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran all contain the terrorists that have vowed their intolerance toward the United States.  The point is again, to not be blinded and to know our enemy.

In Mat 16, the Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven.

MAT 16:2-4 "But He answered and said to them, When it is evening, you say, {It will be} fair weather, for the sky is red.  And in the morning, {There will be} a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening. Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot {discern} the signs of the times?"

Our Lord was saying that the Jews of that day were blind to the signs of their time.  Christianity has been totally ignorant of what Islam has been doing in the past and it important to understand because if we know their past we can understand what their goal for the future is.

Many Muslims are good people and the problem is not the Muslim people but it is the spirit behind the religion which is satanic and pagan.
Muslims are loving people but the Islamic religion is not.  

Islam is not a religion of love and not a religion of peace.

Allah is not another name for God.

The Jesus Christ of the Muslim is not the same Jesus Christ of the Christians.

The Quran is not the Holy Book, the Bible is.

The religion does fulfill what the Bible said in GEN 16:11 "The angel of the Lord said to her further, Behold, (hagar) you are with child, And you shall bear a son; And you shall call his name Ishmael, Because the Lord has given heed to your affliction.  And he will be a wild ass of a man, His hand will be against everyone, And everyone's hand will be against him; And he will live to the east of all his brothers."

Hagar's son Ishmael will be totally undisciplined, a law unto himself, he will reject the rights of others, and be guilty of inordinate competition.  He will never accept anyone's authority.  His children, who are the beginning of an Arab nation, will continue to this day to be just as wild, just as lawless and just as arrogant.

Our study over the past several weeks has covered the origins of Islam and we have tied that study to Gen 12 and Abram, in GEN 12:14 "And it came about when Abram came into Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful."

At this time Egypt had a lot of wheat, they had just won a civil war when they defeated the southern kingdom and they were celebrating.  The Hebrew phrase for "the woman" is "eth-ha'ishshah" and means "what a woman!"

The Hebrew word for beautiful used here is "meodh ki-yaphah" and means extremely beautiful. 

Sarah lived to be 127 and every year she became more beautiful because her doctrinal intake and the application of it increased.  There is nothing wrong with a woman being beautiful and there is nothing wrong with displaying that beauty in the sense of being dressed and using make-up and being well groomed.  Sarah's magnificent feminine beauty and glamour was never criticized as being worldly, unspiritual, or dishonoring to the Lord.  She did some things that were dishonoring to the Lord but being beautiful was not one of them.  Beauty becomes a problem when it is accompanied by arrogance and vanity, this was not the case with Sarah.  When doctrine resides in any woman's soul, she is beautiful, there is no such thing as an ugly woman with doctrine in the soul.

There is a very important factor found in this verse, beautiful women, like all ladies, must be protected either by their right man or by doctrine in their soul.  An honorable mature believer, which Abram is not, would have protected Sarah.  But Abram in Egypt, has no love, honor, integrity or courage, Sarah is a beautiful woman un-protected. 

GEN 12:15 "And Pharaoh's officials [his princes] saw her and praised her to Pharaoh; and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house."

The word for praise is the piel imperfect of halal which is where we get the word hallelujah from.  When the Bible says that a woman was beautiful, you can bet she was extremely beautiful.  The sad commentary on Abram here is that she was not invited, she was taken, the verb "was taken" is the pual imperfect from laqach which is wattuqqach which says that she was seized or taken forcibly.  Sarah is now being taken away from Abram, she is being stolen from him.

It is interesting that this is the way that some of Abram's descendants treat women even up unto this day.  In the Muslim religion, the religion of Islam, women are treated the same way.  This is what the Quran and the Islam religion teaches.

They teach that women have a deficiency in intelligence, and religion.  The following is a quote from the Muslim religion: "Once Allah's Apostle went out to offer the prayer of 'Id-al-Adha or the Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, O women! Give alms, because as I have seen, the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you women. They asked, Why is it so, O Allah's Apostle? Why is it that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were women?  He replied, Because you curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you.  A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you."
This is the attitude promoted in the Quran and the Hadith.
 
The Islam religion teaches that it takes two women to equal one man.  "The women asked, O Allah's Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?  He said, Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man? They replied in the affirmative.  He said, This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses? The women replied in the affirmative. He said, This is the deficiency in her religion and many go to hell. The Prophet said: I was shown the Hell-fire and that the majority of its dwellers were women who were ungrateful. It was asked, Do they disbelieve in Allah? or are they ungrateful to Allah?  He replied, They are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favors and the good charitable deeds done to them.  If you have always been good and benevolent to one of them and then she sees something in you not of her liking, she will say, I have never received any good from you."
Hadith Sahih Bukhari 1.28, Sahih Bukhari 2.541 
 
In the Muslim religion, prayers are said to be annulled by women, monkeys or dogs passing in front of the man while he is praying. "The things which annul the prayers were mentioned before me. They said, Prayer is annulled by a dog, a donkey and a woman if they pass in front of the praying people."
Sahih Bukhari 1.490, also Sahih Bukhari 1.493
 
That is just a part of this evil religion that our nation is now having to deal with.
 
But we must remember that Our Lord Jesus Christ controls history and these are exciting times to be alive and to be in the Plan of God and watch it unfold.

In our passage Abram is trying to solve problems in the energy of the flesh and when we do that, we simply complicate our lives and add to the problem.  Abram tried to solve his problems by leaving Canaan, the promise land, and going to the Negev, the place of apathy and indifference toward doctrine, resulting in neglect and eventually going down to Egypt, a symbol of the cosmic system.  We are given a warning in 2JO 1:8 to not enter into our own spiritual Negev when John says,  "Watch yourselves, that you might not lose what we have accomplished [your momentum and your spiritual growth],"

Neglect of doctrine means rejection of doctrine and the danger is that what is neglected today is rejected tomorrow.

GEN 12:16 "Therefore he treated Abram well for her sake; and gave him sheep and oxen and donkeys and male and female servants and female donkeys and camels."

The Pharaoh, Wahkare Achthoes III was simply enriching the brother of his newest bride.  The least he could do was to prosper the brother of his new bride.
In that group of female servants that was given to Abram because of Sarah is a woman called Hagar.

Later in GEN 14:23, Abram refuses a tremendous amount of wealth because it involved compromise but there he refused it as a mature believer.

The difference lies in the fact that doctrine actually makes a man out of a wimp whereas reversionism makes a wimp out of a man, and at this point it is wimpy Abram.
Sarah, however is going to do the only thing that she can do, trust God.
In GEN 12:17 "But the Lord struck Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife."

Pharaoh did not know that he had taken Abram's wife into his harem but Jesus Christ, the supreme court judge of heaven, did know it and the principle becomes quite obvious; ignorance is never an excuse for anything.
Pharaoh's volition was involved in taken Sarah even though his cognizance was not involved and the point is that God holds us responsible for our volition, whether it is cognizant or ignorant.  This means that a sin of ignorance is not excusable.
Since Sarah is included in the Abrahamic covenant as the wife of Abram, logistical grace demands her protection.

The beneficiary of the covenant is Abram but Sarah is also a part of it and until the promise is fulfilled nothing can happen to Abram and nothing can happen to Sarah.