Sarah

sarah's story begins with the genealogy of her father terah recorded in genesis 11. now these are the descendants of terror terror was the father of abram nehor and haran and haran was the father of lot haran died before his father terah in the land of his birth in ur of the chaldeans abram and nehor took wives the name of abram's wife wasari and the name of nahor's wife was milka she was the daughter of haran the father of milka and iska now sarah e was barren she had no child evidently though abram is listed first haran was actually the oldest son and he must have married young and died young because after having three children two daughters named milka and disca and a son named lot heron died and his father tara ended up raising his grandchildren in that day it was not uncommon for families to enter mary so in due course abram's brother nehor eventually married his niece milka his brother haran's daughter and abram also married within their family but we don't find out until later in sarah's story that her father was abram's father tara as abram would finally admit to the king abimelech she is indeed my sister the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother and she became my wife she was born sarai about 4 000 years ago into a wealthy family living in the city of orr in the ancient land of the chaldeans south of babylonia today that area covers iraq and east syria and southeast turkey one day for undisclosed reasons tara decided to move his extended family to a place called haran in ancient mesopotamia very likely located near the modern village of haran and azerbaijan today and the prevailing sumerian religions were polytheistic so that means the surrounding people groups worshipped about 2100 different deities and many of them were associated with specific cities or states within that region the chaldeans in particular worshipped the sun and the moon and the planets and it was commonplace for families to have household shrines for their idols and tara was no different the bible records that he and his household worshipped idols the game changer for sarah e came in genesis 12 when almighty god spoke to abram shortly thereafter she found herself packing up and living the life of a bedouin headed towards an unnamed land god would eventually show them which would one day be filled with abram's descendants but god's promises were long and coming abram and sarah e grew wealthier and wealthier for sure but they were also growing older and older with no descendants abram probably first thought his nephew lot would be his heir but early in their travels lot decided to break ties with abram and then abram settled his hopes on a trusted servant but god made it clear the servant was not the plan all along the way abram and sorry also knew there was another lever they could pull to make things happen it was in the sumerian law written by the ruler of ur namu the city of war later embedded in the code of hammurabi sumerian law scaled punishments graded social status dealt with judgments contracts wages marriage sex and property laws it also provided a clause for barren wives if a wife could not produce an heir she could give her husband one of her enslaved girls as a surrogate the baby the captive girl produced would in every way be considered the wife's child and so the truth here is that faith in god requires resisting cultural and social pressures and for many years abram and sarah quietly confidently believed against all odds that god would bless them as the lord had promised and they remained both faithful to their marriage and faithful to god they did resist those cultural and social pressures but things changed sarah e would have felt the increasing pressure from her culture as she grew older but for years she'd resisted so what changed now sarah e abram's wife bore him no children she had an egyptian slave girl whose name was hagar and sarah he said to abram you see that the lord has prevented me from bearing children go into my slave girl it may be that i shall obtain children by her and abram listened to the voice of sarah e sarah had evidently said to herself the lord promised my husband a son through whom god means to fulfill all god's promises yet god never said the son would come through me god has actually prevented me from having children maybe the lord intends to fulfill this promise some other way but sarah e didn't want god to leave her totally out of the picture she reasoned that through hagar she could be built up because hagar's children would be legally sarah's children giving sarah e the honor of motherhood in the extended household's eyes and in her community's eyes at large and in which abram held a prominent position so let's slow down a minute and think about what sarah e must have believed she believed god and abram had a relationship she believed god had great things in mind for her husband but she also believed god was preventing her from being part of those great things she believed she wasn't going to be part of the equation have you ever felt that way because i know i have you're the expendable one not important to god's plan or even the plan god has for your beloved ones and abram had actually given her plenty of reason to think this way twice he had asked her to risk her life to save his life the first time happened during a famine so they went down to egypt to shelter and abram said to his wife sarai i know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance and when the egyptians see you they will say this is his wife and then they will kill me but they'll let you live so say you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you and that my life may be spared on your fear not faith was driving abram when he drew his wife sarai into deception he hadn't left her with much choice if she spoke up now it would jeopardize their safety but to go along was to tacitly agree to adultery at best and divorce at worst sarai must have trusted in god though the bible doesn't describe how she felt what's implied is that sarah e found herself cornered in a situation in which she tried to honor her husband the best she knew how believing in faith that god would protect her and god did you know later there came an interesting passage that comes in the books of moses numbers 30. you can look it up if you like verses 5 and 15 that talk about when a husband or a father overrides the woman's vow then the lord will forgive the woman and hold the husband or the father accountable and that must have happened here as abram overrode his wife's vow of faithfulness to him in marriage god forgave her but god held abram accountable eventually even though he was angry pharaoh allowed abram to keep all that pharaoh had given him so long as they left immediately and it may have seemed to abram that he could get away with sin with impunity and god would just rescue him but what looked like a reward would later bring grief not only to abram but to sabrae and ultimately to the nation of israel one of abram's newly acquired slaves was a beautiful young girl named hagar who would feature tragically later in their marriage all the newly acquired wealth caused strife between abram's herdsmen and lots herdsmen as soon as they were back in canaan and all this time impressionable lot had been observing his uncle abram man of god man of the promise and this is what lot learned wealth is more important than people look out for your own self it doesn't matter what happens to the other person lot would remember that when it was time to choose between the scrubby highlands or the lush lowlands that the other person doesn't count just look out for your own lot learned that it's okay to compromise your integrity if it makes you rich he would remember that when he was living in sodom lot learned that when the chips are down it's okay to send your women out to the wolves if it will save your own skin because that's just exactly what he did with his own daughters everything lot learned from abram in egypt would bring grief sorrow and suffering to abram and his descendants for centuries to come and it spread out into lot and lots life and it founded two nations of people who would end up being enemies with israel what you and i do really matters we are always teaching with our life what it means to belong to god and incredibly it happened again this time soon after god destroyed the cities of the plain abram pulled up stakes and as he led his caravan to each new place he relapsed into his old ways of fear and self-protection pretending sarai was his sister predictably abimelech a powerful king of gerar took sarah as his wife it went very badly though god did restore both abrams and abimelech's fortunes in the end but the truth here is that faith in god requires faithfulness to god and to others twice abram had let other men take his wife sarai and he had even accepted bride prices for her basically thrown her under the bus because he believed and apparently she also believed that he was important to god's plan while she was expendable this was an old repeated sin by fearing his situation instead of fearing and having faith in god abram's thinking about everything else unraveled he thought the worst of abimelech he didn't respect his wife and he didn't honor his marriage after what had happened in egypt and even worse with abimelech abram should have asked for sari's forgiveness he should have committed to the truth of their relationship no matter what he should have promised to trust god from here on out he should have honored the one flesh god had made them to be but he didn't the bible never records abram doing any of those things but there is a lesson for you and me repentance protects us from something far worse happening down the line and there were many bad decisions to come abram had given sari no reason to believe she was important to god's plan and sarah e loved her husband think of the genuine and costly sacrifice it was for her to do what she did maybe sarah was really looking to be built up in abram's eyes abram had only one wife and he seemed content with her but to give him the son of his heart's desire sarah e was willing to sacrifice that relationship and in all sincerity she was quite prepared to go through with it cost her what it may she proposed it and it took courage it took resolve to give up what is a wife's most precious possession the right to have her husband's soul affection and hagar was young presumably she was a virgin to ensure that the child was abrams and no others hagar was healthy very likely she was beautiful or at least pretty so the child would also be beautiful and it would have been a great place for abram to say stop no sarah e our marriage is sacred you are part of the plan i don't know how god's going to do it but god will do it because not only do you mean the world to me having a child with anyone else would be unthinkable but abram didn't say that and that actually says a lot to me about their relationship a lot of distance a lot of unsaid conversations and a lot of unshared emotions so how did this perfect plan work out terrible when you and i deal with real life in the daily things of life in our own way the results are going to bring up all the broken emotions and broken behavior that fallen people naturally fall into all sarah e's relationships got worse hagar's contempt sarah lost honor rather than gained honor by the very process that was supposed to build her up the blame game of course she blamed this all on abram and that's what had been broken in the first place abram's lack of honor for his own wife and his willingness to get hold of god's promises through this self-doing instead of faith irresponsibility and callousness instead of bringing repentance and peace abram handed the crisis back off to sarah e and venting rage a distant husband a contemptuous slave a plan that had gone terribly wrong sarah e was only too willing to vent her anger and disappointment on hagar and the whole household was now in an uproar but each of them could have said we were only trying to do god's will each one was sure the others were all to blame and none was willing to face the sin in his or her own heart all this because of trying to help god when it seemed the lord wasn't doing anything or that time would run out for god or for them before it could all be accomplished and we learned something very important faith in god requires trusting god trusting god's word and god's timing and god's ways god's character god's faithfulness and trustworthiness god's love trusting god sarah e and abram were believers they knew god's word they believed it they were living by god's word in the big outward ways but their thinking their mindset was way off their theology was way off they did not leave room for god to work in miraculous ways for the lord to display god's glory and the promises god had made they looked to conventional means to get god's plan underway and they were in desperate need of being transformed together and that is exactly what god had in mind when the lord came to visit them 13 years later in god's visit the lord renamed sarai and abram as for sarah e your wife you shall not call her sarah ye but sarah shall be her name i will bless her and moreover i will give you a son by her i will bless her and she shall give rise to nations kings of peoples shall come from her now one meaning of sarah's old name sarai is contentious which may speak volumes about the home life of abram and sari the apostle peter said she became a model for all women to follow when she became sarah which means princess when she became sarah she lost her contentious spirit and she learned to develop a gentle and quiet spirit which in god's side is very precious and the lord also employed the very same language in god's promise to sarah as god had used with abram they were one flesh nations and kings would come from them both together husband and wife this is god's way and had been from the very beginning abraham and sarah were both vitally important and their relationship was vitally important to god and to god's purposes god also as much for abraham's sake as for sarah made a special point of honoring sarah as fully equal in their marriage and in god's purposes the angels of the lord and the lord said to abraham where's your wife sarah and he said there in the tent then one said i will surely return to you in due season and your wife sarah shall have a son and sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him when sarah laughed secretly god called her out but not so much as to humiliate her or to chastise her but rather to let her know and to let abraham know that god heard sarah god heard her inward thoughts god knew the matters of her heart whereas abraham had always had a secure relationship with god sarah had felt left out and unnecessary even prevented by god from being included in the great covenant and promises given to abraham but sarah's heart mattered to god for god was going to transform her laugh of disbelieving pain into laughter filled with joy as she held the child of promise isaac in her arms now sarah said god has brought laughter for me everyone who hears will laugh with me and she said who would ever have said to abraham that sarah would nurse children yet i have borne him a son in his old age the lord values and honors every person who puts their faith in god now much has been made of the apostle peter's example of sarah in the christian testament here's a rendition of first peter 3 5-6 by a greek scholar who has taken into account all the unearthed inscriptions in papyri of the last 50 years super important in this way too once upon a time the holy women who fixed their hopes on god adorned themselves they supported their own husbands in the way that sarah paid attention to abraham calling him sir you are her children if you do the right thing and you are not afraid of intimidation the greek word here for support or submit is hupakuo it means to attend to to listen to to answer to respond to in some contexts it can also mean to heed or conform to and also to obey the context for peter's instruction was to women married to unbelieving men and to their response in christ to their husbands to be as witnesses for christ's love and grace sarah became a supreme example of this mission-minded love faithfulness and grace because even though she was married to a believing man he had not respected her or honored her for most of their marriage and he had not included her in the purposes god had for them both sarah's grace after the lord's revelation over importance and inclusion of god's plan became peter's illustration and portrayal of hope to the unequal marriages he was writing about in his letter our culture and law does not look to god but to earth for answers often living out our faith will look foolish and impractical through the eyes of our culture but faith in god requires resisting cultural and social pressures often fear is what drives us to be faithless fear that is translated into these self-protective ways often faith will require us to live out integrity and fidelity even though that feels unsafe trusting that god will prevail and be glorified in the end because faith in god requires faithfulness to god and to others in fact faith in god simply requires trusting god god's word god's timing god's ways god's character god's attributes who god is god's love and faithfulness requires trusting god and finally sarah ian abram both learned that the lord values and honors every person who puts their faith in god and that's how they became sarah and abraham oh god thank you for sarah's story for saying to people like me who have felt like we don't matter that you're for some people but you're not for us that our pain is unseen and unheard and doesn't matter that we're not included in the great purposes you have for other people that we actually do matter to you that you do love us that you have a great purpose for each of us that you are loving and trustworthy and that we can trust you oh lord we pray this to the praise of your grace [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Grace and Peace Joanne

Views: 124

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Jesus, Jesus Christ, Christ, Jesus Messiah, Messiah, Bible study, biblical teaching, Bible, Scripture, scriptural teaching, archaeology, archaeological, women, women of the Bible, biblical women, scriptural women, women in the Scriptures, women in Scripture, feminist, feminism, egalitarian, equalitarian, exegesis, exegetical teaching, expository teaching, Sarai, Sarah, Hagar, Abraham, Pharaoh, Abimilech, Ur, Gerar, Chaldeans, Chaldees, Sumeria, Mesopotamia, Code of Hammurabi, Ur-Nammu, Terah, Nahor, Haran

Id: 25jzbj2KTv8

Length: 21min 54sec (1314 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 06 2021