Sarah's failings might make her seem an improbable candidate for the Bible's Hall of Faith. That is, until you see how her faith came to fulfillment. Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah continues his series. Ordinary people, extraordinary faith, with a look at how that fulfillment came about.
Listen now as David introduces the conclusion of his message. waiting for God's promise. And thank you so much for joining us. We are studying the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, and the hall of faith. Today we are finishing up our discussion of the life of Sarah.
The woman who trusted God for a child and did not see the fulfillment of her trust until she was way past the age of childbearing. And Sarah's story is one of a woman who started out in unbelief and came to faith in terms of the promise of God. It's a really interesting story for all of us as we make our journey from here to heaven, walking with the Lord by faith. We'll get to the discussion of Sarah and finish up our talk about her in just a moment. But first, I do hope you're taking advantage of the opportunity during the month of November to get your copy of the book, Where to Go in the Bible.
This handy little book will help you. Find passages of Scripture that you need. for the answers to the questions that you hear. It is not a book to read so much as it is a book to use. It will help you.
As you deal with your own questions and with the questions that you field from other people. It is yours for a gift of any amount at Turning Point. When you ask for this resource, we'll send it to you right away. Once again, the title of the resource is Where to Go in the Bible When. When you order this book, when you ask for it, and send your gift, you will be a recipient of this wonderful tool to help you in your Christian walk.
Here's part two. Yeah. waiting for God's promise, the life of Sarah. Good. I read a story about a CEO who had taken on a new job, and the outgoing CEO came to him and he said, Sometimes, son, you're going to make wrong choices.
I mean, you will, you will mess up. And when that happens, I have prepared three envelopes for you. I left them in the top drawer of my desk where you're going to be seated. The first time you mess up, open letter number one. The second time, open up letter number two, and the third time, open up letter number three.
For the first few months, everything goes fine, and then the new CEO makes his first mistake. He goes to the drawer, opens up envelope number one, and the message reads. Blame it on me.
So he does. This is the old CEO's fault. He made these mistakes. I inherited these problems from my predecessor. Everybody says, okay, and it works out.
Well, he goes back to work and he works a little bit longer, and pretty soon he makes a second mistake.
So he goes to the drawer and he opens up envelope number two. And this time he reads, blame it on the board. And he does. I mean, it's the board's fault. These sorry guys.
Were inherited. They came from the old regime. They're the problem. And everybody says, yeah, that makes sense. And things go on for a while, okay, and then he makes his third big mistake.
And he goes to the drawer and he opens up envelope number three, and the message reads. Prepare three envelopes. Ultimately, it comes to that, doesn't it? You can't just keep blaming people the rest of your life. Sarah was full of blame for her husband.
And I would imagine he blamed her, and that together they just blamed each other. We see her impatience, her insubordination, her intolerance. and her infidelity. Notice in Genesis chapter 17. When Abraham was 99 and Sarah was 89, the Lord again spoke to Abram and reaffirmed that he was going to give them a son.
And this time he made it very clear that this son was going to be born to his wife, Sarah. No surrogate mother here. Genesis 17, 1 and 15 through 19, when Abraham was 99 years old, then God said to Abraham, As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but you shall call her name Sarah. And I will bless her, and also give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations, kings of peoples shall be from her.
And Abraham fell on his face, and he laughed. And he said in his heart, Shall a child be born to a man who is 100 years old? And shall Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child? And Abraham said to God, Oh, that Ishmael might live before you. In other words, Lord, this ain't going to happen.
You can claim Ishmael as the answer to your promise, and I'll be all right with it. He said, Lord, let Ishmael stand. And God said, no. Sarah, your wife, will bear you a son. And you shall call his name Isaac, and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant and with his descendants after him.
A little bit later, according to the story, Abraham was outside, and the Bible says he was under the mammary trees. And the Lord appeared to him. Mm. Genesis 18 says that The Lord said to Abram, I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah, your wife, will have a son. Parentheses, Sarah was listening in the tent door, which was behind him.
Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age, and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my Lord being old also? And the LORD said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old? Is anything too hard with the LORD? At the appointed time, I will come and return to you according to the time of life, and Sarah will have a son.
But Sarah denied it, saying, I didn't laugh, for she was afraid. And he said, No, but you did laugh.
Now Imagine this with me for a moment. Abraham's outdoors and he comes in. And Sarah says to him, Abraham, where have you been? And he says, well, I've been outside having my morning devotions. And Sarah said, How was it?
And Abraham says, It was great. In fact, I had this conversation with God, and He told me something really amazing. She said, What was it? And he blurted out like only a man could. Baby, you're gonna have a baby.
And I'd like to have heard what Sarah said to that. On a scale of one to ten, Sarah's faith at that moment would be about a zero. But here she is with all of her failures, and she's enshrined in the hall of faith. What a picture of God's grace and patience that is. God is greater than our sin, He is greater than our doubts.
And Isn't it a good thing that when we are faithless, he remains faithful, he cannot deny himself? 2 Timothy 2.13. Isn't it incredible, Romans 3.3? For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect?
1 Thessalonians 5:24 says, He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it. How many of you will join your pastor with an amen that it's a good thing? God's faithfulness to us is not based on our faithfulness to Him. Isn't that true? Amen.
He's faithful no matter what, because it is impossible for him to be anything other than faithful. And even though Sarah and Abraham wavered on occasion early on in their faith, they came to a settled conclusion that God was true and his promise was reliable. And God Continue to be faithful to them. Even when They did not act out of faithfulness to him.
So, as you can see, Sarah's kind of an interesting candidate for the Hall of Faith. But let's take another look at this now. Let's look at the fulfillment of Sarah's faith. We've seen the failure of it. In light of the stories we have just read, How surprised we are when we come to the New Testament and read these words from Hebrews 11, 11 and 12.
By faith. Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead, were born as many as the stars of the sky and multitude, innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore. And the author of Hebrews is not the only one of the New Testament writers who commends Sarah. In fact, Peter writes about her when he's teaching in one of his letters about godliness, and he talks about the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.
It's very precious in the sight of God, he writes. For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. whose daughters you are, if you do good. and are not afraid with any terror. And the Bible says in Genesis chapter 21 that the Lord visited Sarah as he had said.
And the Lord did for Sarah as he had spoken. For Sarah received and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the set time of which God had spoken to him. Go back and read that verse with me and notice how wonderful this passage is. And the LORD visited Sarah, As he had said. And the Lord did for Sarah.
as he had spoken. For Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age. At the set time of which God had spoken to him. Three times in that verse, we are reminded that what happened to Sarah was because of the word of God. because of what God said.
The scene that took place when Isaac was born. must have been pure joy. What a wonderful picture and glorious thought. Here is God's promise finally being fulfilled after all these years of waiting. When the child was born, they called him Isaac.
Do you know what Isaac means? It means laughter. That's what the word means. It's kind of an interesting word, isn't it, for a hundred-year-old father and a ninety-year-old mother. They have a baby and call him laughter.
Yeah, yeah. There was laughter everywhere. I mean, the old man and his wife laughed and continued to laugh as they held little laughter in their arms. And baby Isaac cooed and laughed, and everyone in the family chuckled out loud, and heaven smiled, and grace came down, and Abraham and his people, God had kept his word, they had obeyed, and laughter showed up on time. And I'm sure that Sarah's heart was singing words like this little poem.
His wisdom is sublime. His heart profoundly kind. God never is before his time and never is behind. He's always on time. God's time.
And so you look at Sarah and her faith, and you see that it conquered the impossibility. Hebrews 11 says, when she was past age, And him is good as dead. Impossible, but not with God. For Luke says, things which are impossible to men are possible with God. He's God.
I mean, he created Abraham and Sarah in the first place. Sarah's faith conquered improbability. Romans says it this way. And not being weak in faith, Abraham did not consider his own body already dead, since he was about a hundred years old. And the deadness of Sarah's womb he did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God.
For 25 years, Abraham and Sarah, in spite of their moments of Failure believed God and they had no evidence at all. to prove that it was going to happen. Their faith was sustained and they did not become weak in faith so that they gave up on what God had promised. Sarah had her moments, as we have learned. Every time she had a birthday and she realized she was one year older, the more impossible this promise seemed to her.
But Hebrews 11:11 says, By faith, Sarah herself received strength. to conceive seed, and she bore a child. She conquered impossibility, improbability, and she conquered inadequacy. Do you know that From the time that we're introduced to Sarah in the Bible, almost continually, every time she's mentioned. this whole issue of her not having any babies.
is in the story. She is mentioned the first time in Genesis 11:29. Let me read to you Genesis 11:30. But Sarah was barren and she had no child. You say, well, why would that be such a big thing?
Why would you put that up front about anybody? Because in the Old Testament, that was a big thing. If you didn't have children in the Old Testament, it was viewed to be a curse from God. That God had not blessed you with a child, therefore, you could not be in God's grace. One of the reasons you have so much angst in all the stories of barrenness, especially in the Old Testament, is about that.
That somehow God hasn't smiled on them. In our culture today, we don't sense that. We don't believe that. I mean, we do believe that children are a blessing from God, but we don't hold a stigma against those who are childless and say there's something wrong with your faith. This never happened, not in our culture, not in my time.
But in the Old Testament, that's the way it was. And that explains why when Abraham married Sarah and she didn't give him any children, that she was frustrated, she was disappointed, she hurt, she felt inadequate. And when seen through the eyes of faith, Now we see her On the other side of God's promise. And not only is she the mother of Isaac, but through Isaac, she's the mother of all who believe and the ultimate generation from which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ came. Sir's faith conquered inconsistency.
We've already learned that. We've learned about wavering. How many of you understand what it means to waver in your faith? I mean, I've wavered. I waver sometimes.
I know what God has said. I believe what God has said, but sometimes if you're not careful, how many of you know wavering often comes as a byproduct of fatigue? Have you ever noticed that? You know, somebody said your body and your soul live so close together they catch each other's diseases. That's true.
When you're fatigued, when you're tired, sometimes it's hard to believe God.
Sometimes our faith wavers. But the Bible says that Sarah and Abraham. Let their faith stay strong. Timothy George. Tells a story in one of his books.
He says, When I was a student, I learned preaching from Dr. Gardner Taylor, a pastor in New York City. I'll never forget the lectures he gave on preaching, and one time he told us a story. about when he was preaching in Louisiana during the Depression. He said electricity was just coming into that part of the country, and he was out in a rural black church that had one little light bulb hanging down from the ceiling to light up the whole sanctuary.
He was preaching away, and in the middle of his sermon, all of a sudden, the electricity went out. And the building went pitch black, and Dr. Taylor didn't know what to say. Being a young preacher, he'd never experienced that before. He stumbled around until one of the elderly deacons who was sitting in the back of the church cried out.
Preach on, preacher. We can still see Jesus in the dark.
Sometimes that's the only time we can really see him, isn't it? In the dark. And the good news of the gospel is that whether we can see him in the dark or not, he can always see us. He never ever goes back on his promise. And Sarah's faith conquered her infidelity.
Once again, it's interesting when you put the Hebrews passages together with the Romans passage, you see Abraham and Sarah together. Romans says Abraham fully convinced that what God had promised, he was able to perform. Hebrews says Sarah judged him faithful as he had promised. The thing that happened on account of Sarah's faith, as well as on account of Abraham's faith. It was a marvelous miracle on the part of God.
Someone has taught us, and I believe this is a true teaching. That next to suffering We learn more as Christians about walking with God through waiting. than through any other thing. Isn't that true? When God gives us a promise and we have to wait, And we have to struggle with our own humanity and our own frailty, and we're believing God, and we know that God has promised.
But we haven't seen it yet. We grow in our faith. We learn to trust God. We learn that you can see Jesus in the dark. Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher from Britain, once said, I have thumbed through my Bible many times every year.
I have never yet thumbed through a broken promise. God never breaks his promises.
So, what we learn from the story of Sarah is That we live many of our days as Christians. In a time of waiting for the promise to be. The Bible says. In my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again and receive you unto myself. That's a promise. But that promise was made a long time ago, many, many more years than 24. And still It hasn't come. But I believe.
that it will come. And in my moments when I might waver about that, I am strengthened in my faith as I read the Word of God and I read the promises of God. And I remember that in all the record of God's doings with His creatures, He has never once broken any promises. And he's not about to let me be the first one. Philip Yancey is one of my favorite writers.
He writes things nobody else does, in ways nobody else does. And every time he writes a book, I find it and I read it. always ministers to my heart. Don't know this man very well, but I love him because of his writing. In one place in one of his books called The Jesus I Never Knew.
He wrote these words He said, Two days have earned names on the church's calendar: Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Yet in a real sense, All of us live on Saturday. The day with no name. What the disciples experienced in a small scale, three days of grief over one man who had died on a cross. We now live through in a cosmic scale.
Human history grinds on between the time of the promise and fulfillment. Can we trust that God can make something holy and beautiful and good out of a world that includes Bosnia, Rwanda, inner ghettos, jam prisons? In the richest nation on earth. It's Saturday on planet Earth. Will Sunday ever come?
That dark Friday can only be called good because of what happened on Easter. A day which gives a tantalizing clue to the riddle of the universe. Easter opened up a crack in a universe winding down toward entropy and decay, sealing the promise that someday God will enlarge the miracle of Easter. The cosmic scale. It's a good thing to remember, said Yancey, that in the cosmic drama we live out our days on Saturday.
The in-between day with no name. He said, I know a woman whose grandmother lies buried under a 150-year-old oak tree in the cemetery of an Episcopal church in Rio, Louisiana. And in accordance with the grandmother's instructions, only one word is carved on the tombstone. And here's the word. Waiting.
Yeah. Waiting. waiting for the fulfillment of the promise. Given on Friday, fulfilled on Sunday. How many of you know we're living in Saturday?
But Sunday's coming, isn't it? The old sermon that was given by a famous preacher was Friday, but Sunday's coming. And I want to say, no, it's not Friday, it's Saturday. It's Saturday and Sunday's coming. The promise has been made.
The fulfillment is certain. Living on Saturday between Friday and Sunday is hard. It was hard for Abraham and for Sarah. Their Saturday lasted 25 years. But I want you to know that what God has promised, He will do.
What he has said. He will complete. Exactly as he said it will be, it will be. And he has said that if we put our faith in him, And what he did through his Son Jesus Christ on the cross, of whom Isaac became an example. we can have life everlasting.
I believe that truth. I've committed my life to it. I know as surely as I stand here that what God has promised, He will do. Yeah. The sky will break open, and Jesus will return, and those who have put their trust in Him will be caught up together to be with Him in the air.
And the Bible says, And so shall we ever be with the Lord. And I've made my reservation because I believe the promise. You say, How do you believe the promise that Jesus is coming back? How do you really believe it? You commit yourself to it and you trust Jesus Christ as your Savior and you become a Christian.
Don't tell me you believe it if you haven't accepted it. You might believe that it's true, but if you don't believe it personally for yourself, you don't believe. Belief is not just head knowledge about some truth. Belief is a commitment to that truth for your life. betting your eternity on the fact that it's true.
And if you've never done that. What a great time to say, you know, I finally got this figured out. I believe what God has promised. I believe what he did on the cross through his Son Jesus. And I believe for me, now is the time to put my faith in him.
Every one of us who have ever put their trust in Christ came to a moment like that. A moment of faith. And I want to encourage you to do it today. Amen. Amen.
Well, we are a little more than halfway through our discussion of Hebrews chapter 11. What a wonderful study. You know, I've always loved the study of the people in the Bible. This is the only chapter I know where so many different people are found Described and discussed, and that's why I love chapter 11 of Hebrews. It is a wonderful reminder to us that God's people, when they trust Him, can do great and mighty things.
It's a testimony to all of us. The Bible says these are the witnesses that witness to us to go on in our faith. And they give testimony to the fact that God is faithful. during the month of November. We're making available to everyone who sends a gift at Turning Point, a copy of the book Where to Go in the Bible.
A 270-page book that will help you find what you're looking for when you have questions about the scripture. Ask for your copy when you send your gift today, and thank you for listening. See you next time. The message you just heard originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr. David Jeremiah, the senior pastor.
If you're growing because of this ministry, we'd love to hear from you at Turning Point PO Box 3838 San Diego, California 92163 by visiting our website at davidjeremiah.org slash radio or calling 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's newly updated scripture reference guide, Where to Go in the Bible When. It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also view over 1,200 of Dr. Jeremiah's sermons on any screen, anytime you like, on our Turning Point Plus streaming service for a monthly gift of any amount.
Visit TurningPointPlus.org for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series Ordinary People: Extraordinary Faith on Turning Point.
