Sarah: When God Seems Silent
Genesis 16
I’ve told you before the story of John Claypool who in his book The Light Within You tells of his young daughter who was diagnosed with Leukemia and was in a tremendous amount of pain. One night in the hospital she asked him, “Daddy, when will my pain go away.” And John said, “Honey, we’re doing everything we can to get rid of it.” And his daughter asked, “Daddy have you asked God when my leukemia will go away. Have you asked him daddy? What did God say?”
And Claypool writes that he didn’t know what to say to her. “What do you say to a little girl when God seems as if he is not listening. What do you say,” he writes, “when the heavens seem silent.”
Some of the hardest things to handle are the times in our lives when God seems like he is a million miles away and is not answering our prayers. God promised in his word to always be there but it seems as if he giving us the silent treatment. Where are you God when I hurt? Job wrote in the Old Testament, ‘I go east, but he is not there. I go west but I cannot find him. I do not see him in the north for he is hidden. I turn to the south, but I cannot find him.” (Job 23:8).
Maybe right now you have a situation in your life and you are wondering where God is. Maybe it’s a disease you deal with and you are wondering if God notices. Maybe it’s a rebellious child and you’ve asked God to help; but your child just dives deeper into rebellion. Maybe you’ve been abused and the pain is deep and it just won’t go away and you wonder if God even cares. Maybe you have a decision that you need to make but there is no clear picture as to what you should do. And God is not helping you see what you should do. He’s silent.
Sarah was a woman in the Bible who became frustrated with God’s silence when she could not get pregnant. She wanted desperately to have a child but it just wasn’t happening. Open your Bibles up to Genesis 16 and let’s look at Sarah’s story and the draw some lessons for our lives about how we should react when it appears that God is silent.
I. SARAH’S STORY
Genesis 16:1, “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife had borne him no children.” Sarai or Sarah was barren. She could not give birth to a child which in those days was considered a curse. Sarah was about 75 years old and so the chances of her having a baby were pretty slim.
Years ago, Isaiah Moore, a professor at the College of Scriptures in Louisville, Kentucky decided that he would remarry when he was widowed for the fifth time at age 89. Wayne Smith, the renowned preacher from Lexington, Kentucky asked Isaiah why he was marrying again at his age. Isaiah quipped, “Well, Wayne, I’ve always wanted to have a son.” And Wayne said, “Brother Moore, you ought to be the president of the Optimist Club.”
At 75 years of age there was little optimism in Sarah’s mind that she was going to have a child. I think the even more frustrating thing for Sarah was that 10 years before this God had come to her husband Abraham and promised him that they would have son. The Bible says that God took Abraham outside and had him look at the heavens and told him that his offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. (Genesis 15:5).
The problem was that God had made this promise some 10 years earlier and Sarah was yet to conceive a child. She was growing older and it was looking like an impossibility she would get pregnant. God had been silent for 10 years and you can imagine how impatient Sarah and Abraham must have been. God we want a child so bad! Where are you? When is your promise going to come to fruition God?
One of the toughest things to do in life is to wait on God like Sarah had too. Someone once said that God is never in a hurry, but yet he is never late. Dealing with God’s timing takes a certain knowledge of who God is. God’s view of time is quite different than ours. The Bible says that for God a thousands years is like a day. In other words, for an eternal God a thousand years is really not that long of time. Where as 10 years must have seemed like an eternity to Sarah, it was just a few seconds to God.
A 4-year-old boy was traveling with his mother & constantly asking the same question over & over again? "When are we going to get there? When are we going to get there?" Finally, the mother got so irritated that she said, "We still have 90 more miles to go. So don’t ask me again when we’re going to get there." Well, the boy was silent for a long time. Then he timidly asked, "Mom, will I still be four when we get there?"
To a small child, a 4 hour car ride seems like an eternity. But to an adult a four hour car ride is not so long because an adult has experienced time. To God a few years on earth seems like a few seconds because he has experienced eternity. And we sometimes appear to him like the child constantly nagging from the back seat, God when is this going to happen. When God? When?
Well, because of Sarah’s impatience with God’s silence she convinces her husband Abraham to go along with a crazy and downright sinful plan.
II. SARAH’S SOLUTION
Second half of verse 1 says, “She (Sarah) had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abraham, ‘The Lord has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.”
“Abraham agreed to what Sarah said. So after Abraham had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarah his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar and she conceived.” (Genesis 16:1-4).
Sarah could not wait on God so she tried to help matters along. She was so impatient that she comes up with a terrible solution. You know desperation often makes us do stupid things. Sarah gives her husband permission to sleep with her maidservant. Abraham agrees and Hagar the servant becomes pregnant. Customs in those days allowed a woman to do exactly what Sarah did. A barren wife often offered her servant as a substitute and as a result, any child born of the union became a legal heir.
Sarah did what most of us would do. She took action when God appeared silent. Because hey the Bible says, “God helps those who help themselves.” No it doesn’t. Instead the Bible says, “Wait patiently for the Lord.” Sarah was tired of God’s silence, “he’s kept me from having children,” she said, “so I am going to do something about it.” She could no longer stand the stigma of being barren and so she devises a plan to make the disgrace disappear. Sarah decides to forgo God’s ways and she will make her own way.
But she soon finds out the folly of her way. Little does she know that her efforts will only fuel bitter relationships and heartache. Sarah begins to resent her maidservant and her husband. Verse 5, “Then Sarah said to Abraham, ‘You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant she despises me.”
Abraham is referred to in the Bible as a man of great faith, but he must have been a few cheeseburgers shy of a happy meal during all this. Guys let me give you some advice. If your wife comes to you like Sarah did in a moment of lapse judgment and says its okay to sleep with another woman, don’t believe her. Ladies do you understand why Sarah was upset with Abraham? I think she wanted Abraham to say, “No honey, if you and I can’t have a child together, we won’t have one.”
Abraham failed to take charge and he let Sarah carry out this miserable and foolish plan. Abraham ends up telling Sarah to do whatever she wants with Hagar. And Verse 6 says that Sarah, “Mistreated Hagar so she fled from her.” Isn’t that often how it happens, we blow it and others feel our frustrations.
Hagar refused to put up with Sarah’s mistreatment and flees to the desert. She would eventually return and give birth to a son named Ishmael. Ishmael was the father of the Arab race. And the Jews and Arabs are still fighting today. Sarah’s plan ended in disaster. The world is still reaping the consequences of her decision as we speak. But God was silent, Sarah took action, and it all fell apart.
III. LESSONS TO BE LEARN FROM SARAH – WHEN GOD IS SILENT
There are a few things we can learn from Sarah about what to do when God seems silent.
First WHEN GOD SEEMS SILENT: DO EXPECT IT TO BE DIFFICULT. Those ten years that Sarah had to wait on a child probably seemed like an eternity to her. It was so hard for her to wait on God. She knew he had said she would give birth but it was driving her nuts to wait. It ‘s difficult to wait on God.
I don’t want to mislead you. Dealing with God can sometimes be a pain in the rear end. It is not easy to follow God. Corrie Ten Boom was imprisoned and tortured in a Nazi Death Camp for years and she wrote, “God, if this is the way you treat your friends, its no wonder you don’t have very many.”
Do you know why God is sometimes silent when we go through difficulties? It is because he is testing our faith. God often uses trials and difficulties to mature our faith.
Harold Wilke was born with no arms and one time when he was a preschooler he was struggling to get his shirt over his head and shoulders. He said, “I was grunting and sweating and my mother just stood there and watched.” A relative turned to his mother and said, “Ida, why don’t you help the child?” His mother responded through gritted teeth, “I am helping him.”
Sometimes God stands by in silence and does nothing because it actually helps us mature. James 1:2 says, “Count it such joy when you experience trials because those trials come so that you may develop patience with God. If you are in the midst of a trial allow yourself to ask God for help and he gives freely help to those who ask.”
God’s silence may have been a test to see if Sarah and Abraham were going to be faithful and trust God’s promises. How else do we really know that we trust God unless that trust is tested from time to time?
Lesson Two is this: WHEN GOD SEEMS SILENT DON’T GET AHEAD OF HIM. When we go against God’s timing and get ahead of him as Sarah did we can almost bet that the result will be disastrous. Teenagers do not want to wait until marriage to have sex and the result is unwanted pregnancy and disease. A young married couple doesn’t want to wait to save to have the nice house so they go into deep debt to buy a house that’s too big, too soon for their budget and they end up filing bankruptcy. Getting ahead of God can be disastrous.
Sarah did it her way and in her time and she ended up creating a conflict that still exists to this day between the Arab and Jews. She had a surrogate plan to replace God’s plan and it all fell apart. Someone once said that the worst thing we can say to God is, “God what do you think of this idea?” Judi Hefner pointed out to me a church sign that read, “If you want to make God laugh, just show him your plans.”
Ron Hutchcraft calls what Sarah did “backwards planning.” That’s when we make plans and arrangements before we check with God.
God said to the Israelites in Isaiah 30:1 "Woe to those who carry out plans that are not mine, forming an alliance, but not by My Spirit, heaping sin upon sin.’" God says, "You’re making plans without consulting Me. You’re figuring out ways to get it done that are not My ways of getting it done. And, as a result, you’re just guaranteeing disaster for yourself.”
Someone once said that spiritual ends are never achieved through carnal means. Sometimes the best way to determine God’s will for our lives is to do nothing but simply wait and allow things to play out. That is often hard to do; but it is the wisest thing we can do. Considers these verse in the book of Psalms about waiting.
Psalm 27:14, “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.” Psalm 38:15 “I wait for you, O LORD; you will answer, O Lord my God.” Psalm 130:5, “I wait for the LORD , my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.”
Do you know what we should do while we wait on God? Pray. A key discipline in the Christian life for making sure we don’t get ahead of God is prayer. Prayer is a way of communicating with God and acknowledging that we are trying to follow him. Prayer is the key to not getting ahead of God. Prayer helps us make sure we are not backwards planning. Anne Benefeld says, “Only time spent with God can bring us into God’s rhythm.”
That is why Proverbs 3:6 says, "In all your ways acknowledge God, and He will direct your paths." That says, to pray and God will direct you. Too many of us direct our paths and then ask God to walk along with us. Here God I’m going this way. That’s not how it works. You know its funny but we do not read in the Bible that Sarah prayed about her barrenness, perhaps that is why she got ahead of God. She was not in rhythm with God’s timing.
Thirdly, WHEN GOD IS SILENT. DON’T TRY TO UNDERSTAND HIM. Sarah’s main mistake is that she assumed that she understood God. She even said, “The Lord has prevented me from having children.” She mistook God’s silence as meaning she wasn’t having a child. She was wrong in her understanding.
We should never try to understand or interpret what God is doing because we will never fully understand his ways. Last weekend I spoke at a conference and talked about this church and was asked to describe what God was doing here and I said, “I really don’t know.” It’s hard to explain what God is doing.
Someone once said that God’s heavenly plan sometimes makes no earthly sense. In Isaiah 55:8 God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my way, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.” In other words, don’t try to understand my ways they are beyond your comprehension.
And you know we may never truly understand God’s plan for us completely. It may be that we don’t understand God’s plan until we are dead and in heaven. God never promises us that we will understand fully what he is doing. He just asks us to trust. The apostle Paul was imprisoned and tortured; hated and rejected. But somehow he was able to write in Romans 8:28, “In all things God works for the good of those who love him.” Paul just trusted that God was working things out for good.
In her book, The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom wrote about an incident in World War II that taught her to trust that God knows what he is doing. She and her sister, Betsy, had been sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp by the Nazis. The barracks they were assigned were not only over-crowded, but flea- infested. As Corrie lay in the dry straw she had made for a bed, not only was she suffocated by human bodies, but fleas bit away at her skin and she got so frustrated and complained to God. “God why these fleas? Haven’t I gone through enough God! I can take anything but fleas. You’ve got to be joking God.”
It was there in Ravensbruck that Corrie and her sister Betsy started a Bible Study in their barracks for Jewish women. It was illegal to study the Bible in those prison camps and if the guards came into the barracks and found them, death was certain. But to Corrie’s surprise the Bible Studies grew and grew and no guard ever interrupted, never came into the barracks. After weeks and weeks of the Bible Studies, Corrie and her sister finally found out why the guards never came into their barracks. One of them overheard a guard say, “We don’t go in there because of the fleas.” She could not understand the reason for the fleas at first but it all made sense to her now. God had worked it all out for good.
Folks, you never know how God is orchestrating his plans and his will in your life. He is behind the scenes making it all work out for good And we just have to trust he knows what he is doing even when he is silent.
These words were found on a wall in Cologne Germany were Jews had been hiding from the Nazi’s. “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when I don’t feel it. And I believe in God even when he is silent.”
You know what happened to Sarah? God worked it out for her good. She eventually gave birth to a son. A wonderful son named Isaac whom she and her husband Abraham would love. Isaac would be a main character in the Bible and a man of God. You see Sarah, God did have a plan for you. He was watching over you all the time. His promises are true. If you would’ve only waited until the right time.
God has a plan for each of us. He loves us, the question is do we love him and are we going to trust?
