“She’s my sister,” Abraham told Abimelek. Apparently Sarah was a knockout! And Abraham was sure the men would want her. “There is no fear of God among these people,” Abraham reasoned to himself. “They’ll kill me to get her.” So he lied to save his hide.

Ironically, it was the fear of God that got Abraham his wife back. King Abimelek did indeed notice Sarah’s beauty and took Abraham’s “sister” to be his wife. But God showed up in a dream to Abimelek and said, “You’re dead, Abimelek, because you’ve taken a married woman to be your wife! […] If you do not return the man’s wife, you will surely die, you and all who belong to you.” ^{Gen 20:2-11} Abimelek and his men were greatly frightened and immediately complied.

One of the lessons here seems to be that God can easily take care of making sure people fear Him. In this instance all it took was a dream.

So why do we, like Abraham, feel we have to fudge on our morals because certain people don’t fear Him? We might not lie about our wife being our sister. But we might keep silent when we should have spoken up. Maybe we go along with something we shouldn’t have. Or fail to take a stand where we should have.

Why not rather take our stand by bringing up the fear of God? “No, I can’t inflate the price on the invoice because God would consider that lying.” “Friend, this is gossip and slander, and God won’t be pleased about this. We need to stop.”

Let’s take Joseph’s approach instead: “I fear God.” ^{Gen 42:18}