Objection: The LORD Stopped Sarah from Having Children (Genesis 16:2)
This “unbearable” objection (actually quoted to me by an anti-healing person) blames God for leaving Sarah (named Sarai at the time) childless. Consider the situation and the immediate context:
Genesis 15:4:
And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.
Genesis 16:2: (This is the verse in question)
And Sarai [later renamed Sarah] said unto Abram [later renamed Abraham], Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened unto the voice of Sarai.
I don’t know how anyone could take Sarai’s advice as proof that God keeps people childless on purpose. There is no indication that this is even a true statement. Yes, it is true that Sarai said it, but what Sarai said was not true, although it is truly quoted in the Bible! Listen to the rest of her advice – it ran totally counter to the promise of God, and it created problems that last to this day! Abram and Sarai were in unbelief at the time. Abram had believed God, but then he and Sarai conspired to help God fulfill His plan because of impatience and doubt. Sarai joins Eve and Job’s wife among the list of wives in the Bible who gave their husbands bad advice.
The only sense in which Sarai could claim that “the Lord had restrained her” was that He had not yet performed the miracle that would enable her to conceive. However, that did not prove that it was God’s will for her to remain childless – His will was exactly the opposite!
Sarai should have understood what is obvious to any reader of Genesis. The Lord was not her problem; He was her solution. The Lord made her able to have a child in her old age. Sarai just didn’t believe it yet. Taking her unbelief as doctrine is a mistake similar to the one made by taking certain of Job’s statements as doctrine, an issue that is covered elsewhere.