The membership of this church is almost two-thirds female. That would be reason enough for us to have a series of sermons on the lessons that women can teach us. But that is not the only reason I have planned a three-part series of messages around the theme, Designing Women.
I have planned this series because it is time for us, in this year of emphasis on Christian leadership, to consider the unique and special gifts that women have to give to the whole church, as well as the unique and special issues that some of the women of the Bible raise for us.
And so I would not want anyone to think that these sermons, today and for the next two weeks, are sermons on feminism. They are not sermons built on the theme of women’ s rights. They are not even what some people call “women’s liberation" sermons, though there is a place for that. No, they are human liberation sermons. They are stories from the Scripture which feature women at their heart, but which address all of us. They are messages for the whole church.
I am bringing these messages to a church which ought not to have to be convinced any longer that women have capabilities for leadership and for insight. If you are relatively new to this church, it would be good for you to know that Takoma Park Baptist Church was one of the first congregations in the city, I may even say in the nation, so to recognize the spiritual gifts and leadership skills of women as to make it possible for a woman to attain any of the offices or positions in the church’s life. And that includes the ordained positions. We ought no longer to have to be convinced of the gifts and skills of women.
No, what I shall be doing today and for the next two weeks is to draw deep from the reservoir of Scripture and see what three designing women, purposeful women, can teach us. While there are numerous stories I could have drawn from, for these three weeks I am going to work with the designing women mentioned in Hebrews, Chapter 11.
Now the 11th chapter of Hebrews, you will remember, is the roll call of faith. The heroes of faith are called out, one by one, as example of those who lived by commitment to the purposes of God and who worked toward something greater and finer than they could expect to experience in their own lifetimes. The basic intention of the author of Hebrews in this 11th chapter is to encourage us to follow the summons of faith and to point toward the ultimate example of faith, its pioneer and its perfecter, Jesus Christ. The Book of Hebrews, this chapter of Hebrews, is obsessed with the possibilities in a faith-filled life.
Most of the faith-filled examples he mentions are men. But not all. Not all. Scattered through this chapter are three very special women. All of them are heroines of faith, but they are also all quite different.
One of them, the one we’ll work with today, is a genuine part of the people of God. In fact, she is the mother of the people of God. Sarah, wife of Abraham, seen for centuries as one to honor and esteem, but, as we are going to see, not without flaws, and certainly not without some lessons to learn about integrity and character and faith.
The second is one who was not a part of the people of God. In fact she was a part of the people who oppressed God’s people. And as the daughter of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, she represents that privileged class who somehow always seem to get their own way and who have it easy and who appear not to have a care in the world. But Pharaoh’ s daughter, mentioned in Hebrews 11, not exactly as a heroine of faith but as a part of the faith journey of Moses, will also teach us about character and leadership and integrity and purpose. A true designing woman.
And then on the last of these Sundays we are really going to get startled by the kind of person Hebrews includes as a genuine article, a true original, a designing woman of the first order, but one who was not only outside the people of God, but also outside the bounds of nice people. One who was an outcast, one who broke the moral law. Rahab the prostitute, doing a booming business in the ancient city of Jericho, practicing the world’s oldest profession in one of the world’s oldest cities, but still seen as a heroine of faith, a designing woman.
I think we are going to profit from these ladies. I suspect we are going to discover that it was pretty costly for them to have achieved nomination to the Faith Hall of Fame. And I believe we are going to learn about leadership from these three very different designing women.
Now by all means please resist any temptation you may feel to try to identify anyone of the women I’ll be dealing with these three weeks with anyone of the characters in the television show called Designing Women. That’s not my intent. Do not try to see who is Julia or Suzanne or Mary Jo or, my personal favorite, Charlene, who is my favorite because she acknowledges herself to be a Southern Baptist! I’m not trying to match up these characters at all. And yet, there is a reason I chose the name Designing Women, and that is that both the characters on the TV show and the women in these scriptures are women who, even though they may live in what is called a "man’s world," still know that, under God, they must make decisions, they must settle disputes, they must exercise leadership, they must be doers of the Word and not hearers only.
And so: I give you the ladies, God bless ’em!
The first of our designing women is Sarah. A part of her story is found in Chapters 16 and 21 of the Book of Genesis. You have already heard some of this just a few weeks ago, on Mother’s Day, but then we centered on Hagar, the outcast mother and her devalued child. You’ll remember that the basic thrust of that message was, "Every mother’s child matters". Today we center on Sarah, the designing woman who just about defeated her own purpose.
We are often our own worst enemies. Nobody does us in like we do ourselves in. Some of us just defeat our own purposes every time we set out to do something. And nothing is more disappointing, more frustrating than this. We defeat our own purposes.
I have a friend who from time to time will call me to tell me some great item of news. That’s his purpose, to inform me about something that has happened to people we both know. But in the process of trying to tell me this item of news, he will jet off into the stratosphere on so many extra little items that he will forget to tell me the main thing. He will defeat his own purpose.
Something like this: Hey, I’ve got something to tell you about Ken. Guess who he’s working for now?! Well, this past Sunday this big long limousine pulled up to our church, and parked right in the space our ushers were saving for my wife’s family, because, you see, they were going to be late getting here from all the way over in Virginia, and I told the ushers they ought to save a spot, but you know how it is with ushers, they won’t call a meeting, and when they do I don’t know about it, and, hey, do you have several different usher boards in your church?
If I were to interrupt long about then and say, "Uh, Ken; you were going to say something about Ken," then my friend would either say, "Oh yeah, what was it about him?" or would more likely cut it off with, "Gotta run, nice talking to you.’
What did he do? He defeated his own purpose. The thing he set out to do he lost sight of altogether. The purpose he had in mind was literally drowned in a sea of side issues. We are often our own worst enemies. We defeat our own purposes.
Last Sunday, as Jennifer Johnson spoke and mentioned the fact that she knows that often what she wants she wants now, and that sometimes it’s hard to wait on God’s timing, I thought of the old story about the fellow whose constant prayer was, "Lord, I want the gift of patience, and I want it right now!" That, I submit, is defeating your own purposes.
Or again, the fellow who was voted as the most humble person in his community, but when they told him that he had been voted most humble, he wanted to know if he was going to get a medal to wear!
We are, I say, our own worst enemies. Too many times we defeat our own purposes. We know what we want to do, we have an idea of the direction we ought to be setting out in, but we end up shooting ourselves in the foot, destroying our best intentions, defeating our own purposes.
Sarai, wife of Abram, a little later known better as Sarah, wife of Abraham, was a designing woman who just about defeated her own purposes. She knew what her destiny was all about; and she thought she had believed God when He had promised that she and her husband would become the parents of a great and wonderful nation. Sarah, had she waited and trusted God; had she listened to her own purpose, would have done well. But instead Sarah took things into her own hands, Sarah laid unholy hands on her own destiny, and just about defeated her own purpose.
I
Sarah and Abraham were old. Too old, the oddsmakers would have said, to bring children into the world. Yet had not God said, you shall be the parents of a great and mighty nation, as plentiful as the grains of sand on the seashore? Now, pray tell, how can anyone become the mother of a nation if she does not even have one little runny-nosed kid of her own?
And so Sarah decided to take matters into her own hands. Sarah made the decision that she knew God’s business better than God did. And Sarah urged on her husband another woman, the servant woman Hagar, and insisted that Abraham father a child by Hagar.
Mind you, it was not that Sarah did not know what she was doing. She made a clear and deliberate decision. "Abraham, I cannot, at my age, possibly have any children. Go to my maid Hagar and have a child by her.”
Friends, it will not work when you try to achieve God’s purposes or, for that matter, your own, by some means other than God’s means. It will not work to achieve your purpose, however noble, however wonderful, with an unworthy method. You cannot serve a moral purpose with an immoral strategy; you will have defeated your own purpose.
I know of a church which sought to build up its children’s’ Sunday School, and that’s a worthy purpose. But the method they chose ended up totally defeating the purpose, because it was an unworthy method. They ran a transportation program for children, and they attracted those children by offering prizes. Ride our church bus, and you may be sitting in the seat under which a candy bar is taped, and you’ll be the winner this week. Ride our church bus for ten weeks, and you’ll have a chance to win a brand new ten-speed bicycle. And the kids came and they rode and they burrowed under the bus seats and they claimed those prizes, and when the ten weeks were allover, the child that won the bicycle won it by stuffing the drawing box and another child that had tom up other kids’ attendance slips stole the bike from the first child!
We defeat our own purposes when we see God’s purposes but employ Satan’s methods to get there.
II
But now what interests me here too is that when we do lose sight of our purposes, when we do forget what it is at the core God wants us to be and to do, it isn’t long before we are torn up with guilt and conflict, and then we lose sight of our purposes because we start lashing out at everyone and every thing in our way. The result of not waiting on God’s timing, the result of not using God’s methods, is not only that we don’t get where we want to go, but we also defeat our own purposes by getting all caught up in guilt and anger and recriminations and accusations.
Listen to this miserable, unhappy, troubled situation. Does this sound like anybody you know? Sarah had said to Abraham, “Here, enjoy yourself with Hagar; maybe this great and wonderful nation will get its start that way."
And the text says, " ... he went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she (that is, Hagar) saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress Sarah ". There’s one relationship messed up; the purpose is being defeated and eroded when that happens.
And then "Sarah said to Abraham, ’May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my maid to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!" There’s another relationship going sour; Sarah is saying, “Abraham, this is all your fault; if you hadn’t done what I told you to do …”
And then the crowning blow, the final and destructive end: Sarah sends Hagar out into the wilderness, expecting that she and her child will die. Sarah, who had brought her husband and her maidservant together in the name of creating a new nation, reads her feelings and tries to undo what she has done by destroying innocent lives.
The Scottish poet was right, "Ch what a tangled web we weave, when first we purpose to deceive!"
The result of not waiting on God’s timing, the result of not taking the high road and using God’s ways, the result of trying to force God’s purpose for us is that we defeat that purpose by getting caught up, hung up, in anger and guilt, shame and blame, and we undo even the little good we might have done. Sarah, designing woman, tries to cover her tracks and recover her dignity, but she breaks too many other lives in the process. That’s what happens when you lose your way; you break other people’s lives, and it’s not worth it. It is, in a word, defeating your own purpose.
III
But now, watch. It’s fifteen years later, a new chapter in Sarah’s life. We might have expected that she would have matured. We might have anticipated that she would have grown. We would hope that Sarah would have matured and changed and rediscovered a way to attend to her purpose without losing it.
And, after all, it is a whole new time in Sarah’s life. She and Abraham are, as Chapter 21 opens, the proud parents of a fine young son, Isaac. The dream is coming true after all. God’s promises have proved trustworthy. In her old age, well after any woman would have expected this gift, Sarah has received her own child and the promise of God to give her and her generations a great future is on its way. This ought to be the time in which Mother Sarah can sit back and enjoy the fruits of her labors and the working out of her purpose.
But one day something gets to her. Her tiny boy Isaac is befriended by Ishmael, the son of the slave woman Hagar – the son she caused to· be born, the child she would have destroyed fifteen years ago but for the Lord’ s mercies. Now Sarah feels in herself a jealous rage, and once again, playing out all the score of fifteen years ago, she orders Hagar and her child out into the wilderness to die.
Wouldn’t you think she would have learned? Wouldn’t you imagine she might have grown? Wouldn’t you have hoped that she might have found a better way to handle her frustrations? But I tell you, we are our own greatest enemies if we do not learn from our mistakes! And we will defeat our own purposes, even when things are going well, if we choose not to learn from the mistakes we’ve made in the past.
Oh, believe me, I see this designing, plotting, scheming woman in a whole lot of us. I see too much of Sarah in me, to tell the truth. I make the same mistake over and over and over again, even when I know it’s self-defeating, even when I can see that my own purposes are being destroyed. But somehow I can’t break the pattern.
I may as well be a little confessional here. Maybe it will help you to learn about my own struggles with self-defeating habits. I know what my purpose is; I know that a significant part of my purpose as a person, as a Christian, and as a pastor is to share the good news of the Gospel with waiting, hungry souls. I am sure there is no doubt about that, is there? No question about what my purpose here is.
And not only do I know that I need to be visiting and getting out there among you and sharing with you; not only do I know that for myself, but every now and again some of you remind me of that purpose. Some of you push at me to do what must be done and to fulfill that aspect of my purpose. And I hear you, I hear you.
But what happens? What becomes of that purpose? Each morning I set up my list of things to do and people to see, and I plan to leave the church office by something like 2:00 pm and get to that visiting. And what happens? About three times out of every five days, I get caught up in doing something else, and I rationalize that visiting away. Oh, it will wait. It will keep. She’ll be there tomorrow. He doesn’t expect to see me today. And over and over again, I defeat my own purpose by repeating old habits, falling into old patterns, refusing to learn from the mistakes of yesterday how I could live today.
Oh, yes, I’m Sarah. And I’d guess most of us are. We defeat our own purposes not so much with ill will, not so much with bad intentions, not so much with stupidity or with blindness, but with nothing more than repeating old mistakes because they are comfortable. And we’d rather do a comfortable nothing than stretch ourselves to learn something new that would work!
Do you know what? I cannot do any better by way of summarizing this whole dilemma this morning than to quote the great apostle Paul, many years later, who cried out in his Roman letter, "I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do." What a dilemma! Defeating our own purposes, unable to do what we really know we want to do, unable to be what we know we really want to be.
Oh, but Paul goes on. Listen to him. Hear him this morning. "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. For God has done what I could not do, sending His own son …”
I’m trying to say this morning that if you are the designing woman Sarah, who defeats your own purposes by going outside the boundaries and using Satan’s methods for God’s ends, then you need to receive a Christ who will give you a new heart and a new mind and who will teach you to trust God and to wait for God.
I’m trying to say this morning that if you are the designing woman Sarah, who defeats your own purposes by getting all caught up in anger and shame and guilt and accusation …if you lose your way because there are others to blame and others to punish, then you need to receive a Christ who whose love on the Cross absorbs all that blame, soaks up all that guilt, and leaves you with nothing but purity of heart.
And I’m trying to say this morning that if you’ve lost sight of that purpose you once knew, if it is receding into the dim and fading background, as you just make the same old mistakes over and over and over again, then you need to receive Christ, who will give you a new way, who makes all things new, who makes even this designing woman Sarah into a heroine of faith.
For it is finally said of Sarah, "By faith Sarah considered God faithful who had promised."
