Children’s story: Do you love your mommy? She loves you too. In fact, I don’t think she could imagine a life without you. Without you, she’d be very sad. Back in the Old Testament there’s the story of a woman who couldn’t have a little boy or girl. She didn’t think she’d EVER become a mommy. And she got really OLD and began to cry because she didn’t have a little boy or girl like you to hold and take care of. Her name was Sarah.
But then, one day God spoke to SARAH and said that, even though she was old, He was going to make sure that she WOULD have a baby. A baby boy. And she laughed, and laughed, and laughed. In fact, she named her little boy Isaac which means “laughter.”
PRAYER
I have to admit to you, I almost decided not to preach on Sarah. In fact, nobody seems to really like this story. The Children’s Book I was holding as I “read” to the kids doesn’t have that story (It has 101 stories, but not that one). Another preacher who would ordinarily preach the same text with me decided he didn’t want to preach this story. And, I almost didn’t either. At first glance, there didn't seem to be that much to say about her... particularly when it came to her "faith."
But then I reread the text. Hebrews 11:11 “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.”
God commended Sarah for her faith! She was important to God, and He wanted women everywhere to admire her… just like He did. In fact, Sarah is the most mentioned woman in the Bible (her name shows up 57 times). But, the problem for most people is that Sarah’s doesn’t seem impressive. And most folks don’t think about Sarah’s faith. They might remember that she was 90 years old when she gave birth. They might remember that she laughed when God said she’d have a child. They might even remember that she was a beautiful woman and Abraham had her tell men that she was his sister so they wouldn’t kill him to get her. But that’s about it!
However, here God tells us “By Faith Sarah…” did something very impressive. So what exactly did she do? Well it says “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised”
Really? That’s not the way I remember the story! I remember Sarah hearing she’s about to have a child… and she laughs, and God seems to rebuke her for laughing!!! That doesn’t sound like a woman who considered God faithful. That doesn’t sound like a woman who believed God’s gonna give her a child.
Well, let’s backtrack a little bit. About 25 years before Sarah gave birth to Isaac, God sat down with Abram (later Abraham) and said to him “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation…” Genesis 12:1-2
God’s going to make of Abram a great nation! That’s a GREAT promise… but there was only one problem.
Abram and Sarai didn’t have any kids. You can’t become a great nation, if you don’t have any kids. But here God was saying you GO where I tell you to go and I’ll take care of making you into a great nation. Implied in that statement was this idea: I’ll make sure you have child! Now, at that time Abram was 75 and Sarai was 65…
Now, fast-forward a few years. Abram is about 85 and Sarai is about 75. And Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?… you have given me no offspring...”
And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: “This man (Eliezer) shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them…. So shall your offspring be.” And (Abram) believed the LORD, and (God) counted it to him as righteousness. Genesis 15:2-6
OK (PAUSE)
But then a couple MORE years drag by, and there’s still no child. So Sarai gets impatient, and she comes up with a brilliant idea. “Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. Genesis 16:2
I read another preacher’s comment on this, and it’s well worth repeating: “Abraham is referred to in the Bible as a man of great faith, but in accepting Sarah’s advice to sleep with Hagar he must have been a few cheeseburgers shy of a happy meal in all this” (Aaron Burgess)
It was a bad idea, and it backfired big-time. I’m not going to go into the particulars of that story but, suffice it to say, it was a terrible idea! And it was SARAH’S idea. She was tired of waiting on God, so she came up where her own solution. Why would a woman of great faith even suggest something like that? I don’t know.
And then, about 15 years later God shows up and says that Sarah will have child… and she laughs!!!!! Now, I hate to say it, but that doesn’t sound like a woman who considered God faithful in His promises. So, what’s going on here?
Well, where do we learn about Sarah’s decisions on this issue? In the Bible. Who gave us the Bible? God did. So here we have God telling us all about Sarah’s short-comings. We get to see all her warts and blemishes on public display, and yet God still praised her for her FAITH!!! It’s obvious God’s trying to tell us something here… but what?
Well, I believe God is trying to tell us that great faith does NOT mean you won’t have doubts. Let me repeat that: great faith does NOT mean you won’t have doubts. Abraham had doubts; we read here that Sarah had doubts; Jacob (who God renamed Israel) had doubts; Moses had doubts; Joshua had doubts; David had doubts; Esther had doubts. In fact, practically every individual in the 11th chapter of Hebrews (the chapter of the heroes of Faith) … they all had doubts.
In Psalms 13:1 David wrote “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” And Jeremiah wrote: Why do you forget us forever, why do you forsake us for so many days? Lamentations 5:20
People of faith DO DOUBT!!!
But they don’t stay there. They don’t remain in doubt. Eventually, they make a choice to believe in spite of what they see and experience. Someone once said “Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye, and deny it” (Garrison Keillor). Or, as someone else noted that Faith puts God between us and “reality.”
My point is – it’s not unusual for people of faith to experience doubt. But somewhere along the line, if you’re going to be a person of faith, you have got to decide to trust God. It doesn’t matter how much you may have doubted up to that point, when you make that decision to TRUST God, and lay aside the doubts, THAT’S when your walk of faith truly begins!
But how do I get to that point of faith? How do I get to the point where I TRUST God? (IT IS HARD!!!)
ILLUS: D.L. Moody once said, “I prayed for faith and thought that someday it would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith didn’t seem to come. Then, one day I read in Romans that “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” I had up to this time, closed my Bible and prayed for faith. Now I opened my Bible and began to study – and faith has been growing ever since.”
FAITH CAME BY HEARING!
And I think that is how Sarah became a woman of faith - she HEARD God! And once she heard HIM… her doubts began to fade. Genesis 18 tells us “Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?" Then the LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son." Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, "I did not laugh." But he said, "Yes, you did laugh." Genesis 18:12-15
Now, I don’t think God was offended by her laughter. According to one expert who studies (of all things) laughter: “One of the remarkable things about laughter is that IT OCCURS UNCONSCIOUSLY. You don’t decide to do it. We don’t consciously produce laughter. That’s why it’s very hard to laugh on command or to fake laughter.” (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3077386/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/big-mystery-why-do-we-laugh/#.XZQqTkZKhPY)
And I suspect that’s what happened with Sarah. She wasn’t mocking God. It’s just that – after all those years – she struggled with her feelings of doubt. But now – Sarah heard God… speak! And she heard 3 things:
1st She heard that God had heard her laugh. She’d been in the tent. She didn’t think he could hear her. But she forgot that He was God. She could have been 3 miles away and He’d have still heard her because God knew her inward thoughts. She thought she could hide her feelings from Him… but she couldn’t.
2nd - For the 1st time SHE had personally heard GOD’S promise. Up until this time God had only spoken that promise to Abraham, but now SHE heard the promise. She had heard God say: “I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah WILL have a son.”
And 3rd, God said something she’d probably never thought about before. God said “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” Is anything too hard for God? You know, people who struggle in their faith struggle with that. They’re faced with problems and obstacles they can’t handle, and they wonder (and worry) that God doesn’t care, or that He just isn’t up to the challenge, and it never crosses their minds that God might really care, and that He just might be BIG ENOUGH to do what they need.
But sooner or later, you’ve got to make that decision. You’ve got to PERSONALLY come to the point where you’ve decided that you’re going to trust God.
God asks this question (“Is anything too hard for me?”) several times in Scripture. One of those times is in Isaiah 50:2 where God asks Israel “Was my arm too short to ransom you? Do I lack the strength to rescue you?”
LLUS: Imagine a 5-ft-tall woman trying to reach something on the top cabinet. She tries standing on a chair, but even then, she can’t quite reach. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE! But she’s got this 7-foot-tall basketball playing son, and she turns to him and she says, “Would you reach that for me? I can’t do it… but YOU can.”
That’s what faith is all about. It’s coming to the point where we recognize that YOU can’t do it but GOD CAN!!!! God’s arm is NOT TOO SHORT to help you!
Ephesians 3:20 says it this way: “(God) is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us”
And, I believe, that’s what changed in Sarah - she HEARD God and she believed Him and ultimately she said: “God has brought ME laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” (Genesis 21:6) She gave birth to the child that God HAD promised.
Now, you’d think that would be the end of the story. You’d think the birth of Isaac – according to the promise – would be the last laugh … but it wasn’t. As Paul Harvey used to say - THIS is the rest of the story. Believe it or not, Apostle Paul tells us that when Sarah gave birth to Isaac, Isaac’s birth was a reflection of our salvation.
Galatians 4 tells us “Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman (Hagar) and one by a free woman (Sarah). But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born THROUGH PROMISE… Now you… like Isaac, are children of promise.” Galatians 4:22-23 & 28
Now, I’m not going into a big explanation of that whole passage. The point is, Sarah couldn’t do ANYTHING to get pregnant. She and Abraham had tried over and over again, for years… and nothing happened.
In the same way, the Bible teaches that NONE of us can do anything to be saved. You can do anything and everything you want to do, over and over again for years and nothing will happen, because you can’t earn, work for by your way into heaven by your good works. The ONLY WAY Sarah got pregnant was because God had made a PROMISE. She was wayyyy too old get pregnant any other way. And the ONLY WAY you and I have a hope of salvation is because God has made a PROMISE – you are wayyy too sinful to be saved any other way.
Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us it’s “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the GIFT of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” In other words you can’t do anything that will earn salvation. It’s a GIFT OF GOD. It’s something God that has promised us.
All God asks is that we accept His gift on His terms – 1) Believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that Jesus is the only way you’ll be saved; 2) Acknowledge that you’ve sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, and that you need to repent of that sin and determine not to live like that anymore; 3) Confess that Jesus will now be your Lord and Master – that He’ll own everything you have and everything you are; 4) Allow yourself to be buried in the waters of Christian baptism, and rise up a new creation in Christ.
Footnote: In some NIV Bibles the passage of Hebrews 11:11 begins "By faith, Abraham..." Every other version I consulted however renders it "By faith, Sarah..." I'm suspecting someone else had a problem with Sarah being presented as having faith.
