Chapter 4
Sarah
It was by faith that even Sarah was able to have a child, though she was barren and was too old. She believed that God would keep his promise.
— Hebrews 11:17 NCV
The story of Sarah’s faith is, in many ways, a love story. Sarah’s faith in God was invariably entwined with her love for her husband, Abraham. Her name was originally Sarai, meaning princess. My own daughter is named after her. Together, Abraham and Sarah became the father and mother of the Jewish race. As such, Sarah remains one of the most important female figures in world history.
The Bible also tells us that Sarah was a woman of remarkable beauty. She was so stunning, in fact, that she drew the attention and affections of both pharaohs and peasants alike (see Genesis 12:10-20). Hebrew folk lore ranks her right up there next to Eve, who was regarded as the most attractive and perfect woman who ever lived. (Of course, none of them had ever met my wife, Ashley, so it’s really not a fair judgment.)
The Bible says that “beauty is a fading flower” (Isaiah 28:1 KJV). Yet, for Sarah, just the opposite seemed to be true. She was apparently “aged to perfection,” as they say, because she only grew more radiant with each passing year. Even at the age of ninety, Abraham was afraid that kings and princes would fall in love with her bewildering beauty—and he was right on at least two occasions! But more important than her unsurpassed place in history or her unparallel beauty, was her personal faith in God.
Sarah is one of only two women mentioned in Hebrews 11 as examples of faith. However, Sarah probably never expected to be counted among the “Heroes of Hebrews.” Her journey of faith was a long, unpredictable rollercoaster of highs and lows—sometimes there seemed to be more lows than highs. So to put Sarah’s story of faith in the proper context, we have to go back to the beginning. Sarah’s faith-journey begins with an...
1. Extended Pilgrimage
Abraham (who was then known as Abram) and Sarai were living together with Abraham’s family in the city of Ur, in Babylonia. And after Abraham’s brother died, Sarai and Abraham helped raise their nephew, Lot, and lived with Abram’s father, Terah. But one fateful day, God spoke to Abraham. He said, “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1 NCV).
Neither Abraham nor Sarah knew where God was calling them to, but they knew where he was calling them from! After the flood, Noah, his sons and their wives repopulated the Middle East. But within a few short generations they had become a godless society once again. Actually, they became a polytheistic society—that is, a culture that believed in many gods. Shem, Ham and Japeth (Noah’s sons) all had enough children to form their own nation. They disregarded God’s command to spread out over all the earth and, instead, built a giant ziggurat—known as the Tower of Babel—as a symbol of their unity and independence. God, of course, destroyed the tower and scattered the people, confusing their language and forcing them to spread out from there over the whole world.
The city of Ur, by the time of Abraham and Sarah, was dedicated to Nannar, the mood god. Its inhabitants were idol worshippers who had forgotten the one true God—the God of Noah. The Lord called Abraham and Sarah out of that land to be pilgrims in search of something better—in search of God himself. And so, they packed up their belongings, left their relatives and their father’s house, and headed out into the great unknown.
It took a lot of faith to do what they did. Even more so, I think, for Sarah than for Abraham. Think about it. The Bible says that God appeared and spoke to Abraham, not to Sarah! All Sarah had known her entire life was heathenism and idolatry. She’d never heard of this God. What would you do if your husband or wife came home one day after fifty-some years of marriage and when you asked them how their day was, they said, “Well, honey, God appeared to me today and said we need to pack up all our stuff and hit the road!”
You might respond with, “What!? Where are we going!?”
“I don’t know,” your spouse shrugs. “I guess God will just tell us when we get there.”
It sounds crazy. And it probably sounded no less crazy to Sarah. But she loved her husband very much and she was willing to trust him on this. She really didn’t know God, but she was willing to step out on faith.
Faith is like that, you know—stepping into the unknown. Not one of us has ever seen God. We’ve never seen Jesus face to face. Never met an apostle. Never held an original manuscript from the Bible. Never touched the Holy Spirit. Yet, God has called each one of us to a better life—eternal life. We never quite know, when we first answer that call, where we’ll end up. But it’s the journey that matters—getting to know the God who spoke the universe into existence, experiencing his grace and love in unimaginable ways, and knowing that someday—some glad morning when this life is over—we will no longer be pilgrims. We will make our home in “a better country—a heavenly country” (Hebrews 11:16 NCV). Along that pilgrimage, nevertheless, Sarah’s faith began to blossom when God gave her an...
2. Eternal Promise
Before sending them off to Lord-knows-where, God made Abraham a promise. He said, “I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you, and I will place a curse on those who harm you. And all the people on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:2-3 NCV). This promise is actually an everlasting covenant that extends throughout all of Scripture and to every epoch of time.
And this promise eventually found its fulfillment in the nation of Israel. Abraham and Sarah would become the parents of the Hebrew people, and those people would inherit the “Promised Land,” the land of Canaan—which is better known today as Palestine. Although it took several generations and even a period of time as slaves in Egypt, God kept his promise. Abraham and Sarah’s descendents multiplied, were led by Moses and Joshua into the Promised Land, and eventually became a mighty nation.
But the national fulfillment of this promise was only the beginning. Ultimately God’s promise would not be fulfilled until the arrival of Jesus Christ. It is only through Jesus that “all the people of the earth” can be blessed. Paul explains the spiritual importance of this promise to all believers, saying:
The Scriptures say the same thing about Abraham: “Abraham believed God, and God accepted Abraham’s faith, and that faith made him right with God.”
So you should know that the true children of Abraham are those who have faith. The Scriptures, telling what would happen in the future, said that God would make the non-Jewish people right through their faith. This Good News was told to Abraham beforehand, as the Scripture says: “All nations will be blessed through you.” (Galatians 3:6-8 NCV)
You see, through faith in Jesus we are all a part of the same spiritual family as Abraham and Sarah—we’ve been grafted into God’s “family tree,” as it were. “In other words,” Paul goes on to say, “it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring” (Romans 9:8 NIV). So, it doesn’t matter whether you were born Jew, Gentile, Asian, European or American—we are all children of Abraham and Sarah through faith in Jesus Christ. God never discriminates based on race or region. Rather, the family of God is made up of people “from every nation, tribe, people, and language of the earth” (Revelation 7:9 NCV). God doesn’t have two distinct plans for Jews and Christians; rather, we are all born again into God’s family through our faith in Jesus. Obviously, this promise was of eternal importance.
But what was probably foremost on Sarah’s mind, was the immediate fulfillment of God’s promise. If God was going to make Abraham into a “great nation,” that meant that Sarah was going to have a baby! God clarified that part of the promise later, when he said, “Regarding Sarai, your wife—her name will no longer be Sarai. From now on her name will be Sarah. And I will bless her and give you a son from her! Yes, I will bless her richly, and she will become the mother of many nations. Kings of nations will be among her descendants” (Genesis 17:15-16 NLT).
You’ve got to understand, Sarah was about sixty-five years old now and up until this point she had never been able to have children. The promise of a little baby gave Sarah such hope and joy. Abraham no doubt noticed a certain sparkle in her eye that wasn’t there before. This promise fanned the flame of faith within Sarah’s heart, but it wouldn’t be long before Sarah’s faith experienced some growing pains through an...
3. Enduring Patience
Twenty-five years would pass between the time God first promised Sarah a son and the time she finally got pregnant. In the meantime, Sarah faced some serious struggles. She seemed to doubt whether or not God would keep his promise (for obvious reasons), so she took matters into her own hands.
After twelve years of failed pregnancy tests, Sarah said to Abraham, “Look, the LORD has not allowed me to have children, so have sexual relations with my slave girl. If she has a child, maybe I can have my own family through her” (Genesis 16:2 MSG). And Abraham did just what Sarah suggested.
The slave girl’s name was Hagar. She and Abraham did have a son, but things didn’t go quite the way Sarah thought they would. She ended up being hateful and resentful of Hagar and her son Ishmael. She eventually demanded that Abraham send them both away—kicking them out of the house and onto the street. Though I’m sure Sarah saw things going differently in her mind, this lack of faith and patience on her part has led to thousands of years of fighting and feuding between the descendant of Ishmael (Arabs) and the descendant of Isaac (Israelis).
Now, it may be hard for us to imagine recruiting a servant to sleep with your spouse, but that just demonstrates how badly Sarah wanted to be a mother! We can all identify with her there, can’t we? It might not be motherhood, but we’ve all wanted something at some point in life that we just couldn’t wait for—marriage, children, sex, a bigger house, a new car, a better job, whatever it may be. We may pray about it, but many times God’s answer is—Wait! There are all sorts of excuses not to wait though, aren’t there? After all, “God can’t steer a parked car, can he?” We even invent Bible verses to make us feel better about doing things our own way: “God helps those who help themselves” (1 Opinions 1:23).
Some of the worst mistakes of my life were made because I was just too impatient to wait for a “green light” from God. What about you? Can you identify? Sarah wasn’t a bad person and what she wanted was good, but she hadn’t yet developed the kind of faith that was willing to wait for God’s timing. Whenever you’re facing a big decision (or even a little one), don’t rush things—pray about it, trust God, and don’t move until you’re certain that this God’s will!
Finally, after thirteen more years without a baby carriage, Sarah realized faith’s...
4. Endless Power
The Bible says, “The LORD kept his word and did for Sarah exactly what he had promised. She became pregnant, and she gave birth to a son for Abraham in his old age” (Genesis 21:1-2 NLT). I can only imagine the joy and excitement Sarah felt as she held Isaac in her arms for the first time. Tears of delight mingled with loving laughter. Sarah praised God, saying, “God has brought me laughter! All who hear about this shall rejoice with me” (Genesis 21:6 TLB). You can almost see the weight being lifted from Sarah’s heart—all those years of anger and bitterness melting away as she gazes at the tiny little hand wrapped around her forefinger. Finally, she can laugh again. Finally, she can celebrate new life. Finally, she understands the love and goodness of God.
Faith is powerful. “Faith sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, touches the intangible, and accomplishes the impossible.” But faith is only as good as the one in whom it is placed. Faith is only powerful if it’s vested in an all-powerful God.
Paul reminds us that “With God’s power working in us, God can do much, much more than anything we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20 NCV), and “I can do all things through Christ, because he gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13 NCV).
Jesus said plainly, “All things are possible for the one who believes” (Mark 9:23 NCV), and “With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26 NKJV). In other words, if something is God’s will for your life and you pursue it with a heart of faith, then nothing in heaven or hell can prevent it!
• Human wisdom says, I’m not able—God says, I am able (2 Cor.9:8)
• We think, It’s not worth it—God says, It will be worth it (Rom.8:28)
• You fear, I can’t manage—God says, I will supply all your needs (Phil.4:19)
• We say, I can’t go on—God says, My grace is sufficient (2 Cor.12:9)
• We feel, I’m all alone—God says, I will never leave you (Heb.13:5)
• We believe, It’s impossible—God says, All things are possible (Luke 18:27)
Sarah’s life and faith radiate this truth. Despite all her mistakes and misgivings, God still accomplished the impossible through her. He kept his promise to Sarah, and we can rest assured that he will always keep his promises.
Invitation:
One of those promises is that he will accept everyone who comes to him in faith and he will make them one of his own children. If you want to do that this morning...
