Famous Failures - Sarah

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Sarah felt like a failure. Unlike the other characters we have looked at over the past few weeks who really didn’t recognize the fact they had failed in one way or another until after the fact, until they had to face the consequences of their actions, Sarah begins this feeling like a failure even before she really is.

Sarah goes 90+ years without having a child. In her society, in her culture, at that time, that is a failure. It’s a failure because there really weren’t many options for women at that time and it was a disgrace. It was even shameful for the fact that she could not produce a son for her husband, Abraham, someone to work alongside of him. So she felt throughout her whole life as if she was a failure. But Sarah’s failure was not the fact that she didn’t have a child. Sarah’s failure was that she failed to believe God’s promise and even laughed at the idea.

For the past few weeks, we have been trying to learn from the failures of famous characters in scripture and so, this week, we want to learn from Sarah and her doubting her lack of confidence in God’s promise and trying to apply that to our life and how God talks Sarah through that, then God can teach us as well. The overarching message that we’ve been trying to get across is that whether you’re someone famous from scripture or just regular folks like you and I, we all fall short and we all fail in one way or the other and yet God continues to love us and God continues to use us according to His plan.

Well, let’s get to know Sarah just a little bit, shall we? There’s not a whole lot that scripture really tells us about Sarah. We know that she’s part of the dynamic duo of Abram and Sarai. That was their original names. Halfway along the way, God changed their names to Abraham and to Sarah. Both Sarai and Sarah mean the same thing. They mean “princess.” We find out from scripture, though, that Sarah was quite a looker. She was a good‑looking gal. It says more than once that she was a very beautiful woman. Abraham talks about the fact that she’s a very pretty woman, very attractive, and that actually gets them in trouble a couple of times. Now you may or may not recall that Abraham gets nervous sometimes that someone’s going to take his life so they can have Sarah to be their wife. It happened once in Egypt. They went into Egypt and so Abraham says to Sarah before they go in, “Look, you’re really good looking. You’re very pretty. When we get in there, they’ll probably take one look at you and they’ll kill me so the Pharaoh can take you into his harem and be one of his wives. So this is what I want you to do, Honey. When we go in there, I want you to say, “‘Oh no, he’s not my husband. He’s my brother.’”

Now scripture doesn’t tell us the details of that conversation but I have to believe it didn’t go well. But at any rate, she agrees to it and God never lets anything happen to Sarah through that and Pharaoh gives her back to Abraham. But as if he didn’t learn through the first time, he did it a second time and the second time we find out something that I thought was rather startling about Abraham and Sarah. This time it happens with King of Abimelech. Same scenario, they’re going in. Abraham says, “You know, listen, you’re very pretty. They’re probably going to kill me if they think you’re my wife. Tell them you’re my sister.” She does. All kinds of bad things happen to Abimelech. He figures it out. He comes up to Abraham and confronts him, “Why did you tell me she was your sister when indeed she is your wife?” Listen to what Abraham says in response, “Abraham replied, ‘I said to myself, there is surely no fear of God in this place and they will kill me because of my wife.’” But here’s the interesting fact, “‘Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father though not of my mother.’” I didn’t know that before. I passed right by it. Same dad, different moms. You know, back then, they had several wives and so Abraham’s father had separate wives and so same dad, different mom. They’re brother and sister.

Now God kind of took care of that in the book of Leviticus. He said, “Don’t do that anymore. That’s not good.” But back at that time, Abraham and Sarah were brother and sister. We know something else about Sarah and that is the fact that she lived to be 127 years old. Now the fact that she lived to be 127 really isn’t all that interesting. They lived a long time back then. What is interesting is that she is the only female who is listed in scripture that states her age at the time of her death. You remember, it says Adam lived to be 900 and some odd years old and then he died. Noah lived to be so many years old and he died. Abraham lived to be so many years. There’s only one woman who’s mentioned in all of scripture that said she lived to be 127 years old and that is Sarah. It gives you an idea of the importance of the role of Sarah in God’s plan of salvation.

But the one distinguishing mark about Sarah, the thing that really shaped all of her adulthood was the fact that she went childless until she was 90 years old. It’s really hard for you and I to really wrap our minds around and understand the full impact for a woman at this time and in this culture not to have any children. There were no other options for women at this time other than to raise a family, to take care of that family and to take care of their husband. There are economic issues as well. You had children to work alongside of your husband and that was part of your wellbeing. It was part of your status. Beyond that, who is going to take care of you in your old age if you didn’t have children there? Who would care for you when, all of a sudden, you became ill and decrepit? So there are all kinds of implications to not having children. And above all of that is the humiliation, the embarrassment, the shame. It was even thought of at that time if you weren’t having kids, somehow God was punishing you. You must have done something wrong.

So put yourself in Sarah’s shoes. She grows up. She’s 12, 13. She’s a very pretty young girl. She goes into her teenage years. Her prospects, frankly, for a husband are good. It’s going to be easy for her family to give her away in marriage. She probably has it all planned out in her head. She gets a pretty good catch. She gets Abram. Things are looking good. He’s pretty well off and he keeps to being sort of on the move. Life is going to be wonderful. They’re going to raise a big family, have lots of kids. And then, all of a sudden, the first year of marriage goes by and the second, and the fifth, and the tenth. It really shaped Sarah’s adult life. You see it through a lot of her actions and the way that she interacts with people, the way she interacted with her handmaid, Hagar, the way she interacted with Abraham. There was lots of anger, lots of resentment. Frankly, Sarah felt like somehow she was a failure because she didn’t have kids. But Sarah’s failure is not that she didn’t have children. In fact, that was part of God’s plan that she wouldn’t have children until she was in her 90’s. Sarah’s failure is she just refused to believe that God’s promise was for her. She had no confidence in God’s Word to the point that when the Lord is talking to Abraham and He says, “A year from now, I’m going to come back and you’re going to have a bouncing baby boy.” And she’s standing in the doorway of the tent and she says, “Sure we are. Take a look at him, he’s 100. Take a look at me, I’m 90. Get real. It’s not going to happen.” To her, it was laughable. And I think it goes deeper than that. Why would she want to set herself up for another disappointment, for another year to go by only to be disappointed again?

Even consider the fact that they went so long in their marriage with no children that when Abraham was 75 years old, God pulls them out and He says, “Abraham, I’m going to make a great nation out of you.” He says, “Take a look at the stars in the sky. Count them if you can. So shall your descendants be.” So Sarah at that point says, “Yes, finally, God’s going to answer my prayer. Yes, now it’s going to happen. We’ve gone all these years with no kids but now that he’s 75, yep, now we’re going to start having kids. A great nation. Come on, Abe, let’s get going. We have a lot of people to populate here. We have a tribe to make. Let’s start having babies.” And then, all of a sudden, it didn’t happen again.

And then God makes the promise again and it didn’t happen again. Twenty‑five plus years since God made that promise to Abraham is when they’re sitting around the fire and the Lord says, “Next year, you’ll have a son.” I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to believe that Sarah just couldn’t fathom it, couldn’t believe it. It’s not going to happen. It’s not so much that God couldn’t, just God wouldn’t. God wouldn’t. Why set herself up for disappointment? She failed to believe in God’s promise. She failed to have any confidence that God’s Word applied to her.

Now friends, when you’re going through some valleys in life, how easy is it for you to have any confidence in God’s promises? When you’re really going through some struggles, when life is not treating you very well, when things seem to be falling apart, how much confidence do you have in the promises and in the Word of God? You know it to be true. You’ve read it. You’ve probably even comforted other people with those very promises when they’ve gone through tough times but when you’re going through the struggle, when you’re going through the tough times, how much confidence do you have in God’s Word? When you’ve lost your job and you’ve expended all of the unemployment and you hear that God says, “I have a plan for you,” and you say, “But I’m not seeing the plan, God,” how much confidence do you have in that? When the relationship ends, when the marriage is over and you’re sitting at home alone one evening and God says, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you,” “Then why do I feel so empty inside, God? Why does it feel like it’s just me, myself and I?”

When the kids are going off on the deep end and they are making terrible choices, life-altering choices, and God says, “All things work together for the good of those who love Him,” and you look up at God and you say, “You tell me what’s good out of that. You tell me how you’re going to do something with this mess.”

Maybe when all of them happen at once, you’ve been there. You have multiple things falling apart in your life and God says, “Never will I give you more than what you can handle,” and you say to God, “I can’t handle it now. What do you mean? I can’t handle it now.” When you’re going through those valleys in life and those struggles, how much confidence do you have in God’s promises?

I just wonder if Sarah’s failure, at times, isn’t our failure? It’s not that we don’t believe God can; it’s just that God won’t. And we start to believe that God’s not listening, that God doesn’t care and maybe He’s even not there. Could Sarah’s failure be your failure?

Sarah learned from her failure and so can we. There were some things that God wanted to teach through that failure, through that lack of faith and those are the very things I believe God wants to teach us as well, to teach us for when we’re going through those rough times and we’re going through those valleys. There are three very important things He taught Sarah and I believe He wants to teach us as well.

The first thing is this: Total and complete dependence upon Him. One thing that He was going to teach Sarah was total and complete dependence upon Him. Why would God wait until she was in her 90’s to give her a baby? Why wait until she’s past the age of giving birth to children? To instill in her a complete dependence on Him. No matter what Sarah did, no matter what Abraham did, it simply wasn’t going to make it happen. She tried, did she not? Remember her thing with Hagar? That was her handmaiden. She said to him, “You know, this promise is going to come true so I guess God needs my help. So listen, Abraham, you take my handmaiden. She’ll become your wife now and that’s where this great nation will come from.” God says, “That’s not what I said.” Until she had exhausted all of the possibilities, tried all that she could, then God said, “No.” Total dependence on Him.

Is God calling you to just turn your life over to Him? Have total dependence on Him? If you’re going through one of those rocky times right now, if you’re going through one of those valleys, maybe what God is trying to teach is that you need to just turn your life over to Him. You see, it happens when you’ve exhausted all of your options, when you’ve done as much as you can because you’re going to work feverishly because, after all, “God helps those who help themselves.” The only problem is that’s nowhere in scripture. It’s not there. But does He finally get you to the point where you say, “You know what, I have to leave this to you.” And put yourself totally dependent upon His care and His promise.

The second thing God wants to teach you is that He has a plan. And I guarantee you that His plan is a lot bigger than your plan. That’s certainly the case with Sarah. God’s plan was huge. Sarah didn’t have a clue about that. Sarah wanted a baby. That’s it. That’s what she wanted, preferably a boy. That’s about as far as it went for Sarah. She wanted to have kids but God’s plan was much larger than that. God’s plan wasn’t just for Sarah to have a child. God’s plan was to raise up a nation, God’s plan for His plan of salvation for all people at all times.

Let’s take a look at the New Testament. We look at the book of Galatians and God’s Word says this, “The scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham all nations will be blessed through you.” When God called Abraham out of his homeland and brought him into the land of Canaan and He told him that He was going to make a great nation out of him and He said, “And all people will be blessed through you,” you see, this was God’s plan of salvation. It wasn’t just that Abraham and Sarah would have a child but that God would raise up a mighty nation from that child and from that nation, He would bring forth His Son and, through His Son, he would bring redemption to the entire world. Sarah was concerned about her life. God was concerned about eternity. This is the beginning of God’s whole plan of salvation and I dare say that Abraham and Sarah didn’t have a clue. They only saw a sliver. God has a plan. And it’s a much bigger plan that you can even imagine.

And God has a plan for you. And I guarantee you that His plan is much bigger than you and it’s much bigger than what you can imagine. You’re looking at a sliver of the plan. You’re going through a rough time in life. You’re struggling through something. You just want the pain to stop. You want the struggle to end and to be over, the situation to be resolved but God is looking at all of history and God has a bigger plan than one you can imagine.

You have no idea of the lives you influence, the people who you touch on a daily basis. You have no idea how you fit into God’s overall plan, for God is looking at all of history. The challenge, my friends, is to be faithful and to say, “You know what, I don’t know what the whole plan is but I know it’s bigger than me. I know it’s larger than just me because it’s not all about me. It’s about God and God’s plan.” God has a plan for you.

The last thing that God wants to teach us is that we need to believe the impossible. Certainly, He wanted to teach Sarah that nothing is too hard for the Lord, that nothing is beyond Him because Abraham and Sarah aren’t going to have kids on their own. That’s impossible at their age. But with God, all things are possible.

Didn’t He do the same thing in the New Testament with Elizabeth? She was past childbearing age. She gave birth to John the Baptist. Didn’t He do the same thing with Mary and she gave birth to Jesus even though she was a virgin? Isn’t that basically what He was telling the disciples in the gospel read a few moments ago? “What’s impossible for men it is possible for God.” You’re talking about our very salvation here. You see, we have to believe that the impossible is possible because that’s what salvation is about. The disciples said to Jesus, “Who then can be saved?” After Jesus answers them, they say, “That’s impossible. Nobody’s going to make it into the kingdom. Nobody’s going to make it there.” And Jesus says this, “With man, you’re right. It’s impossible. With God, all things are possible.”

It’s impossible, my friends, for you to go to heaven. It’s impossible for you to stop sinning. It’s impossible for you to make up for the things you’ve done. You cannot take back the words you’ve spoken. You cannot undo the actions that you’ve done in your life. It’s impossible for you to go to heaven because heaven is for perfect people and you don’t qualify and neither do I. But with God, all things are possible because we would say it’s impossible for the man, Jesus, to stand before us as both fully human and fully God. We would say it’s impossible that as He hangs upon the cross, it takes all of your sin and all of your guilt and He pays the price instead of you. We’d say that’s impossible, that we bury Him in a tomb and, three days later, He walks out alive. But with God, all things are possible.

So it’s impossible that you’ll spend an eternity in heaven. But with God, it’s a guarantee. You see, God wants to teach us that nothing’s impossible for Him and that, at any moment and any time, He can step into your life and what you didn’t think was even in the realm of possibility can be a reality. God can step in and what you thought was the worst possible thing, He turns around and He uses it for good.

When we’re in our lowest points in life, God wants us to know there’s nothing which is too hard for Him. Sarah learned that and God wants us to learn that. Sarah had a lack of confidence in God, didn’t believe His promises were for her. But she came to faith and she did believe it. The book of Hebrews tells us it counts her as one who, in faith, gave birth to Isaac. God calls us to be faithful. God calls us that even through the valleys of life, in those rough times, God says, “I want you to have total dependence on me. I want you to know that I have a bigger plan.” He says, “I want you to know the impossible can be possible.”

He wants you to know that His promises and that His Word are true and, most importantly, they’re true for you. Amen.

Copyright 2009 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church