Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?
I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall?
Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough? I am so excited about this Bible wonders we have today, because I sure have been wondering. God really has given me something to wonder about. And today's continuation of Ephesians 6, we're going to talk about the breastplate of Sarai.
Or you might think of her as Sarah. And what might that have to do with the breastplate of righteousness? Well, I think you're going to find as we get into this, by the way, all the things I'm going to describe, the notes, the things that are talked about in the Talmud and the Midrash, as well as the Hebrew and all those things, are all in the show notes.
So, if you have questions or you want to continue reading on Sarah and Abraham and those kind of things, it's all available there at the show notes on this podcast. So, when you look at the word breastplate that's talked about in Ephesians 6, you know, after you put on the belt of truth, it says, you know, put on the breastplate. And so, as I went to study that word, the beautiful thing is that we can see exactly what Paul meant in Hebrew, because he was quoting out of Isaiah 59, 17, where, you know, they talk about the breastplate of righteousness. And so, we can get that word there for breastplate. And when you look at that word in Hebrew, it starts out with three letters that are Sarahi's name.
So, that's where we get that idea. And we'll get to the next two letters that are after Sarahi's name and how they fit into this in a bit. But I just want to think about what this is, because when you talk about Sarahi's name, you might know that it meant princess. But if you really study Sarah, because as I began to think about what these letters mean, because the first letter is a shin that would start like the word shalom, and it means to oxidize something. And then the second letter is a reish, which is the first letter in the word rach, which means spirit to a great extent, but it also means the head. And so, we got an oxidation here of this. And then the last letter is a yud, which means the hand of God.
And also, kind of would indicate a blessing, like something's being handed out here. Well, when you look at the life of Sarahi or Sarah, it really is a phenomenal study. The Midrash and the Talmud teach that Sarahi was really, really a picture of a Proverbs 31 woman. I mean, she had a tent where she worked constantly with her hands, making clothes for the poor. And she and Abraham went about the countryside with this phenomenal hospitality. You may know that even the idea of Abraham's tent means hospitality. And one of the cool things that they teach, of course I don't know how true it is, but it's kind of neat that the tradition of the Midrash says that Abraham had this palm tree in the midst of his garden.
And when somebody would come, one of the wayfarers that would come to visit them because they took care of the poor or anybody, they actually had a whole, according to the Midrash, they had a whole series of places that helped people on their journeys. And as people would come into Abraham's garden, they would sit underneath this palm tree. And the palm tree was miraculous in that if it knew that the wayfarer was an idol worshiper, the branches would kind of go up like a palm tree would and just point towards the sky so they wouldn't shade the person down there at all. And if the person was God-fearing, if they weren't an idol worshiper, then the palm branches would come down and shade them. And thus you get the idea of possibly why the Jews were using palm branches when they were greeting their Messiah.
Sort of a beautiful thing that we see there. But the idea was that Abraham had such hospitality that if the branches would go up to the sky and not cover the person in shade, that would be the person that Abraham would go after. And he would come over and begin to witness to them why there was one God. And it is reported in the Midrash that as Abraham would convert these people that would come to his home, the branches of the miraculous palm tree would then cover them. And thus we get so much the idea of this hospitality of Abraham and Sarah and the idea of loving your enemies.
Right? It's just a beautiful picture. Of course, this is Hebrew tradition and you can find it in, again, my show notes where you can find that. I didn't make this stuff up. It all comes right straight out of the Midrash.
The articles that I learn these from are all footnoted with all the places in the Midrash and the Talmud that you would find these stories. So with that in mind, you think that, again, it's also taught that since Sarah would often work long into night hours making these clothes for the poor and stuff, she would keep her candle lit all the time and the Hebrew tradition is that God actually provided a cloud over her tent that they called the Shekinah that would light her tent so that she would have light in order to do these good works for the poor and for the people that would come there to sojourn. So now think about that kind of breastplate that we are the bride of Christ, all right?
So it's kind of interesting that these three letters would point back to this woman that from the Jewish tradition, Sarah was the first of the four matriarchs and the first of the seven prophetesses and so she is a huge deal from a Jewish standpoint. And so when Paul was writing about this armor, he understood this aspect of this breastplate of righteousness, that to be right with God would mean to be right with your brother and your sister and that just like the breastplate in Aaron's robe had the twelve tribes of Israel on it because he was supposed to keep in mind his brothers at all times, have them right over his heart. Well, Sarah's breastplate that we learned about in Isaiah that would be righteous would be right with God, but when you're right with God, he's going to provide a light over your tent so that you can be even more of a Proverbs 31 woman. As the bride of Christ, that's really a picture of what we are and the breastplate that we wear.
Now, as promised, there are still two more letters in the word breastplate after you spell out the name Sarai and those letters are above, which means something that's coming down from heaven, and then a nun, in fact, a final nun, which some Jews would call the nail. And so the nun is often thought of as a seed of faith. So when Jesus told the parable of the sower that he was sowing these seeds, well, these seeds were faith. When you think of faith, you can't help but think of Abraham and Sarah. So this idea of coming down from God are these faith seeds. And when you read more and more about the life of Abraham and Sarah, that's what they were doing all over the hillside of Canaan is they were planting these faith seeds. And so it's an interesting thing that, yes, it's described as a coat of mail or armor, but it's very interesting that the Jews teach that the shield of Abraham that he used up against the kings came after his nephew. They called it the shield of Abraham was God himself. Well, our righteousness is Jesus's blood is God himself. But in that righteousness, you see this phenomenal hospitality and this phenomenal love for not only God, but for your neighbor.
