Well, if you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Hebrews, chapter 11. We've been out of the book for a little while over the holidays, and we're returning now to this classic chapter on the Hall of Faith. That is, the writer brings before us those who have had in the past, and even in his past, saving faith in the Messiah for the saving of their souls. And tonight we turn to the story of Abraham, but most especially his wife, Sarah, as Abraham is often called the father of all who believe.
So we might say, Sarah is the mother of all the faithful, and we're going to learn some things about saving faith through her faith this evening. Let me invite you to consider God's holy word from Hebrews, chapter 11, verses 11 and 12. By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead, we're born descendants as many as the stars of heaven, and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.
Amen. This is God's word, and he, right in our hearts, let's look to him in prayer. Father Grant, your word would be a lamp to our feet, a light to our path. Thank you that salvation is by grace through faith, and not by works, and it's the gift of God who grant us that saving faith in Christ that Sarah and Abraham had, as they look to your promise of the Messiah and to your faithfulness to them.
So mature us, strengthen us, help us, we need you, we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. Well, it has been a little bit of time since we've been in the book of Hebrews, and it might pay off just a little bit to orient you, again, to where we are in this chapter. We're seeing that faith is expressed in the beginning and the middle and the end of the Christian life.
Why do I say that? Well, back at verse 4, we learned about Enoch who, well, there you see the beginning of faith. I'm sorry, Abel worshipped God. I said Enoch, I'm not able.
He said his heart on God. He drew near to God, and he believed God when he offered an acceptable sacrifice to God through the shed blood of the lamb. You remember he offered a blood offering of a lamb. And so he offered a substitute in death, and he was received as righteous in the eyes of the Lord.
He was accepted. And then in verses 5 and 6, we saw the middle of the Christian life, so to speak. But once you've come to God, then you walk with God. People came to God.
Enoch, we learned walked with God. It says by faith Enoch walked with God. God was a friend to him. He was a friend of God, and God even spared him death and took him to his home with God in heaven, giving him the reward of seeking God.
And then we saw in verse 7, we saw the end of the Christian life. So speaking Noah, we saw him spared from God's judgment of the flood that came upon all mankind because of their violence and evil. For God wiped that generation off the face of the earth. We heard that passage this morning even because the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and the thoughts of his heart were only evil all the time.
The Lord determined to cleanse the earth of wicked mankind, but Noah was graced in the eyes of the Lord. He was favored by the Lord. He didn't deserve it. It was a free gift.
And so God gave him instructions. He called to build the ark and the ark was an arch of salvation for him. As he entered into it, he was spared. And so we then saw most recently in verses 8 through 10 the faith of Abraham.
By faith Abraham went out for God. That is God called him and he obeyed. He left his father's house. He left his family.
He left his household. And he went to the place that God would show him, a place far away. And when he got there, he lived like a pilgrim in a foreign land. He lived in tents.
That is, he didn't actually settle down, build a house and act like it was his permanent home. No, he wasn't really looking for say Jerusalem in Israel on the far side of our world. He was looking for the new Jerusalem. That heavenly dwelling built by God, the new heavens and the new earth and the new Jerusalem.
And now we come to Sarah. And the writer again says, all these had saving faith. And so Sarah likewise. And we get two lessons here from Sarah.
First, faith trusts God's power. And secondly, faith trusts God's promise. What do you think of those two things? Faith trusts God's power to accomplish what man is impotent to achieve.
Verse 11, by faith Sarah herself received power to conceive. And when she was past the age, said she considered him faithful who had promised. So through faith, God's power overcame the impossible and gave her this promise child. And so the writer invites us to consider Sarah.
And I want to do that this evening. And I will say that by way of passing that the text is actually, it's a difficult text to translate. Some translations like the NIV take Abraham as the subject of the sentence because the expression power to conceive is power to lay down seed. And they take that to be the main part of the conception of the child.
So expression could be understood as the power to lay down a foundation of offspring, the power to lay down descendants and taking Isaac to be the promised seed who comes through. Sarah, that's how the ESV takes it, the NAS and so on. So we want to consider Sarah as the writer invites us to do. And I want you to consider her story and the marvelous thing it is that Hebrews tells us she had faith because it can be a little hard to see when you look at the story of Sarah.
She enters the picture not merely because of her role in burying Abraham's son. That would be a less than biblical view of what a woman and what a wife is for. There's a bigger picture going on in the life of Sarah. Women exist not merely to bear the children of men.
But this is the first time that Sarah has mentioned that he was 11, but it's not the first mention of her story. When Abraham, the writer had spoken to us of, when Abraham was called to go, go to a land that I will show you, he wasn't called to go alone. He was called to go with, God had provided for him a helper suitable for him. One like him get different than him and Eve for Adam so to speak, who was yoked to him in life, to walk with him in life on companionship and mutual help and friendship.
And she was called to help him serve the Lord. And so yes, the Lord called Abraham to go, but in doing so, he called Sarah. You could probably imagine, I suppose we could at least imagine what that conversation must have been like when Abraham came home to his house in Ur of Mesopotamia, where he lived among family, where they were wealthy, where they had settled down in the middle years of life. You can imagine the conversation.
Sarah, he says, we need to leave. We need to pack up and we need to go. What do you say? Well, why?
Because God called us to go. God's called us to go and he made a promise to us and then she may have said, but where are we going? And he would have said, I don't know. He didn't tell me.
He didn't say. He just said, go where I show you. I don't really know where we're going. She may have thought, this is going to be interesting.
And then she says, of course, count me in. I mean, we know that because she goes with him. She leaves kindred. She leaves country.
She leaves home to go live and attend as a pilgrim in a foreign land. And you may as well recall some of her life stories we rehearse a bit in here. Then Abraham was not exactly the best of husbands. In his fear living among foreign leaders, Abraham hid the fact of his marriage to her and offered her to others as his sister.
Not exactly a model of protective love. But her life is a godly example for all women, whether in a difficult marriage, and I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to live with a man like that. Or not. First Peter, chapter three, says of her.
You might look at this sometime. He says, Peter says, do not let your adorning be external, the braining of hair and the putting out of gold jewelry or the clothing you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which is in God's sight very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands as Sarah, obey Abraham, calling them Lord. And you are her children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.
Now that's a wonderful testimony to the godliness of Sarah who was ultimately attractive and she was a beautiful woman, but not because of all the outward adornance. Because of her spirit and her coming alongside her husband as the Lord had commanded her when she married him. Where did she get the power to live this kind of godly life in the fear or in the face of things unknown and a foolish husband? Where did she get the power to be faithful in the face of unknowns, fearful things of a foolish husband?
She got it through faith in God. But you also remember in the scripture that the emphasis in Genesis is her longing, but also her grief and her doubt. God had promised to Abraham not only a place but a people, descendants, even a son. Yet Sarah was barren.
The Lord had closed her womb and tried as they might for decades of marriage. Sarah remained childless and in the culture of course that valued offspring to people instructed to be fruitful and multiply her grief. It would have been long and painful. When Abraham complained to the Lord, the heir of my house is the son of my servant, not the son of my flesh.
Surely Sarah felt that anguish too. When God promised he would have his own child, surely she hoped that she would. When that promised child still had not come, even years later, you can imagine it was through tears that she told Abraham as she did. Abraham, why don't you try to have a child with Hagar, the handmade, then seem to be working out for us.
She believed God promised her husband a child, yet she despaired of it actually being through her. Then Ishmael was born to Hagar. They didn't end well. Her sorrow, Sarah's was aggravated by Hagar's arrogance.
Then you remember in chapter 17 and 18 of Genesis, along comes the Lord to visit them in their tent. He says, when I return next year, Sarah will have a son. In Genesis 17, beginning of verse 16, God says this, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her.
She shall become nations. Kings of peoples shall come from her. The neighbor hand fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, child, we were born to a man who was 100 years old. Sarah, who is nine years old, bear a child.
And then it's in chapter 18 that God repeats the promise in her hearing. Sarah was listening at the tent door and it says in chapter 18 verse 11, following Abraham and Sarah were old. It advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah.
So Sarah laughed to herself saying, you know, it struck me in looking at this. I've always known Sarah laughed at God's promise. I didn't remember that Abraham before her had laughed at the promise. But Sarah herself laughed to herself saying, after I am worn out, my Lord is old, shall I have pleasure?
And the Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh and say, shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? And so Sarah laughs and in the story, the Lord confronts her for her laughter. And then she lies to the Lord about laughing because she was afraid and he calls her out for lying to him.
And that's all the story goes. And there's not a mention in the story in an explicit way of her faith. Abraham, I mean, Hebrews tells us she believed, yet Genesis gives the impression that she was unbelieving and thought this is a thing that could never happen. She knows her history.
She knows she's barren. She knows her age. She's past the age of childbearing. She's been through menopause.
She knows her husband. She says he's old. He's worn out. She laughs at the thought of the two of them being intimate that way and they're being offspring.
And Genesis leaves us with her laugh and lie and doubt. But Hebrews says she had faith. Now, how can it say that? Well, as another pointed this out to me, read between the lines.
They had a son. Baby Isaac didn't come because of the divine snort, you know, dropped him out of the sky. You can imagine the conversation. Abraham looks at her with that look in his eye and Sarah looks back at him and says, really?
Old man, Abraham says, well, you know, whatever your husband might dream to say, you know, babe, the Lord says we ought to have a go. And she says, well, come on. And they have a go. And the Lord provides Isaac at 99 and 90 against nature, against barrenness, against menopause, against his body being as good as dead.
And they conceive. She read in between the lines, most have agreed with the Lord. Well, let's see if God's promise is true. He said it.
Let's see what happens as she acted on his word. And God brought life out of what appeared to be death. What man cannot accomplish. God can achieve just as he fashioned the first woman from the rib of a man.
So he gave Isaac to a couple of geriatrics and he sent his son into the womb of the Virgin Mary. And God who achieves all his holy will against all human impotence. So how should we apply that to ourselves? Well, first of all, let's be careful.
This is not a blanket promise given to her that all who are barren will have biological children and that at a late age. Sharing the faith of Sarah doesn't mean sharing every promise made to her as if they were for ourselves, to be sure her example invites us to look to the Lord for healing and for miracles. As does the God, the example of Hannah, whose womb the Lord had closed and then an answer to tears and prayers, whose womb the Lord opened and gave her a Samuel. These are examples to us to encourage us to trust the Lord, the Lord of power.
But there are examples and not promises to us. We all still have to pray, Lord, if it be your will, may it be so. We all still have to learn in many ways to be content in God's providence. If God says no, or God says, well, not yet.
So be careful. Don't make the promise to her a promise to yourself in this way. But let's do believe in this God and his power. After all he has given every Christian a demonstration of his power and human impotence in our own experience.
Hebrews 2 says, when we were dead in our transgressions and sins, God made us alive together with Christ. When we were dead, incapable, we could, dead people can do nothing. God made us alive in Christ. We were helpless.
He did for us what we couldn't do for ourselves. This is how we continue the Christian life, especially when we feel the pains and sorrows of life. We're exhausted. When we don't know what to do, when we're at our wits and how do we go on?
The Apostle Paul tells us, well, you remember him, he had a thorn in the flesh three times he pleaded with the Lord to take it away. But the Lord said to me, he says, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness. Paul was brought to weakness to learn the power of God. Therefore, he says, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
But at the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for when I am weak, then I am strong. Do you see? Sarah teaches us when we have no answers, we have no solutions, no humanly achievable outs when I'm weak, when I'm impotent, when I'm helpless, when I have nowhere else to turn, then the Lord delights to show up to do what only he can do in his power in human weakness. So that's the first thing, saving faith, trust God's power to accomplish what we're ourselves impotent to achieve.
The second thing I want you to see is faith, trust God's faithfulness to fulfill what he has promised, verse 12. Therefore from one man, and him as good as Dad, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by this he sure. So they had a promise, they trusted God to fulfill his promise, and God did what he said he would do. As God always does.
The promise was given to Abraham 25 years before the, we might say the beginning of its fulfillment. It was about 75 when God brought him outside and said look toward heaven and number the stars if you're able to number them. So shall your offspring be. And he was about 100 years old when Isaac was finally born.
And Abraham then lived to see Isaac grow up, the only son between he and Sarah, and Abraham lived to see the twins born Jacob and Esau. But he didn't live to see descendants as many as the stars of heaven or as innumerable as the grains of sand by the seashore. He didn't live in this world to see that. But was God faithful to his promise to Abraham?
Absolutely. Because from Abraham and Sarah came Isaac and then Jacob and then Joseph and Moses and Israel and the Messiah and from the Messiah Jesus Christ, the seed or offspring of Abraham, people are ransomed from God or for God from every tribe and tongue and language and nation. And the saints in heaven will be as innumerable as the stars in the sky and the saints of the seashore. And so when you look at the cross what do we see?
We see God's faithfulness. God's faithfulness to his promise to Abraham. And if you belong to Christ, you are, Galatians 3 says, Abraham's seed airs according to promise. You belong to Christ through faith.
You are the spiritual descendants of your forefather by faith or in faith, Abraham. And so though he didn't live to see the fulfillment of the promise, God did what he said he would do. And so let's think about that just a little bit here. God always does what he says he will do and faith looks to him to do it.
That is, faith isn't telling God what he should do and then waiting for him to do your will. God's not as we often say the genie in the bottle and if you just rub his belly the right way, you know, you'll get through some magic formula. What you want, faith isn't naming and claiming it in God's name. It's not for lack of faith that Christians get sick and die.
We're all bound to die in this world, let's Jesus, Jesus returns. We have no promise of immortal life in this world but in the life to come. So some illness or some injury is going to take us home to heaven and no amount of faith will override God's holy providence. So faith isn't naming it and claiming it.
It's not for lack of faith that poor Christians are poor. We have no promise of earthly treasure. It may be our sin or our foolishness that makes us poor or keeps us poor. It may be another person's sin, they're injustice, they're greed.
It may be circumstantial economic depression. It may be because we're young and just starting out in life and we haven't saved anything. It may be because we're old and we've outlived our savings. There are all kinds of reasons why Christians are poor and we have no promise in this world that if we just ask, God will make us rich.
Now faith is not belief in God's power to do for us all that we ask for. Faith is believing in God's power to do for us all that he's promised to us. What is he promised? Well, I mentioned money.
What does he promise? Keep your chapter 13 verse 5. Keep your life free from the love of money. Be content with what you have.
For God has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. God can give you contentment as you trust His promise that He will never leave you and never forsake you. As you trust Him to be always looking out for you, whether rich or poor, you can be content. This is the meaning of Paul's famous statement in Philippians chapter 4 verse 13.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. He doesn't mean that through faith in Christ, you know, he can leap tall buildings in a single bound or that he can hit 10 free throws in overtime for the win or that he can run over NFL line backers on the way to a touchdown as a professional football player. All that is nonsense. That's not what the Apostle Paul means when he says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
The very next verse is, I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. What's the secret? I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
So genuine saving faith, trust God's power at work, as God has promised. So a couple of applications believe his promises for yourself. Jesus says, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life. What you will eat, what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.
It's not life more important than food and the body more than clothing. Look at the birds of the air, he says, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of much more value than they? So Jesus says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things, all the things that you need to serve him, all these things will be added to you.
But then let us also believe God's promises for his church. Redeemer brothers and sisters was built on the promise of God. We started with a handful of families. In the earliest day, there were weeks of worship with less than 20 people in the room.
How have we grown? Not by man. Not by man's achievement. Not by man's competence.
Not by man's strength or power. We're absolutely impotent. All I have up here are words. And the words that have any powerful effect aren't my words.
They're God's words. We've grown and we've grown by God's power and through the preaching of Christ crucified. Because Christ is the power of God. And Christ is the wisdom of God.
And the foolishness of God is wiser than man and the weakness of God is stronger than man. So we believe Jesus. We try to help my unbelief. We believe Jesus and we support the work and worship of the church.
We give money to church plans and missionaries. We give our time, talent and treasure to each other as the body of Christ because we trust Jesus when he says, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against her. We thank our hope on the one who raised Jesus from the dead by his power just as he promised. And yes, there are days of human fickelness, days of human weakness, failure to believe.
But that doesn't stop God from doing what God has promised he will do. We say with the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 2, now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or imagine. According to his power at work within us, to him be glory of the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen.
Let us be a people that put our hope in his power, his faithfulness, his accomplishing of what he has said he will do. May the Lord help us to do so. Let's pray. Father, grant that we would be more like your son Jesus who always believed you, trusted in you.
And by your power at work in him and through him, even as a man upon the earth, you accomplish the salvation of innumerable people, more than the grains of sand on the seashore. Oh, continue that work among us even here in Siloam and here in Redeemer. Help us to rest ourselves in your care. In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen. Amen. Let's stand together and sing.