The Hope of Sarah

The Hope of Sarah

Genesis 17:15-16

Great Women of the Bible

Good morning and Welcome to worship today! We have all survived our Thanksgiving feast and festivities, Black Friday is behind us, and now we are working toward Christmas! Amen. It is now time to have the tree up and the lights up, right!

And, as we work toward Christmas, I wanted to share our Christmas Eve schedule with you for this year. For the first time in a long time, We are not going to have simultaneous worship services on Christmas Eve. We will have three opportunities for you to worship, giving some of you the opportunity to experience both Common Ground’s Christmas Eve service and our Sanctuary Service. So, we will have worship opportunities at 5:00 here in the Sanctuary, 6:00 in Common Ground, and again at 7:00 here in the Sanctuary. I am looking forward to being able to sit and worship in Common Ground but I am also looking forward to being able to experience the different musical worship offerings here in the sanctuary at 5:00 and 7:00.

But, before we get there; today, we enter Advent, the season of preparation for our Lord’s arrival. This is a season where we prepare not only for the arrival of the 6 lbs. 8oz baby Jesus in a manger with the shepherds and wise men and Mary and Joseph, but also the arrival of King Jesus, our Lord and Savior, anew in our lives. This is a season of renewal and awakening. This is a season of awe and wonder. This is a time of waiting for our Lord’s arrival, our Lord’s return, the Advent of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And, this year, our church wide Advent Theme is - All I Want for Christmas…

I know, two thoughts come to your mind as you hear that phrase. Some of you immediately think of Maria Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You… But others of you immediately think of something else…

2 Front Teeth Video

I know, some of you are thinking about that really wishing you still had your two front teeth… but that’s a different point all together.

This theme of “All I want for Christmas” has been around for generations, whether it’s the love song of Maria Carey or the Two Front teeth, or maybe it’s that we’ve wanted our loved one home from the war, or we’ve wanted a new car or house, or maybe we’ve wanted to reconcile with family. I think we really have all thought – All I want for Christmas is…______________.

All I Want for Christmas is…. slide

But this year for Advent we want this theme to be something a little more lasting, something that leads us more toward being who we were created to be. So, this year, we are encouraging each of us to consider, “All I want for Christmas… is Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. Following our themes of each Advent Week’s candle, we are going to be looking at what it means to find hope, and peace, and joy, and love as we consider the Great Women of the Bible. This week, we will look at the hope of Sarah, next week the peace of Leah and Rachel, then the joy of Elizabeth and finally the Love of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. But, today, we talk about Sarah.

The Hope of Sarah

Who was Sarah? Sarah is the Matriarch of the Jewish faith, the wife of Abraham and the mother of Isaac, the father of Jacob who became known as Israel. So, Sarah was the Grandmother of Israel.

There are so many passages to choose from when we look at Sarah, but today’s Scripture will come to us from Genesis 17. We are going to read a little of this passage, but then I want to back up and share a little more of Sarah’s story. So, to get started, turn with me Genesis 17:15-16:

Genesis 17:15-16

Then God said to Abraham, “Regarding Sarai, your wife—her name will no longer be Sarai. From now on her name will be Sarah. And I will bless her and give you a son from her! Yes, I will bless her richly, and she will become the mother of many nations. Kings of nations will be among her descendants.”

[Prayer]

The Hope of Sarah

What is in a name? I remember when we named our children. We wanted to know what their name meant. It was as though their name might define their destiny. I mean, ‘Yettie’ sounds like a cute name, but who wants to name their child ‘loser.’ Or, name your son Gilad, only to discover you named them ‘Camel.’ Right. It would be even worse if you found out you named them dumb or dim-witted, right.

So, in all our research, Renee and I had decided on a perfect name for Evan. We had settled on… Evan which means “God is Good”… so that’s a good name to start with, then, we were going to add a family name. Leonard – Both Renee and I had grandparents with that name, so it was great! Right! I mean, it means – “Brave as a Lion!” How much better can you get than, “God is Good – Braver than a Lion,” for a name! Then, Renee observed the fact that she isn’t being targeted for any Woman’s Basket Ball Teams and I wasn’t top on the list for the High Jump… so, our son probably wasn’t going to be a tall man, and then with the initials E. L. F. He might be harassed as the Elf.

You see how much work went into naming our children. And that’s just one of our kids.

Just in case you are wondering, Reagan means Warrior and Garrin means Guardian or protector.

Names are important.

So, what is the point about all these names? There was a reason that God changed the name of Sarai to Sarah.

There’s a lot of argument about the meaning of Sarai. It seems that in some cultures the word Sarai meant “to be Contentious” or “to Mock.” Another culture says the meaning was like, “my little princess.” But God wanted to clarify something. Sarai was to be the mother of a nation, of an entire people group. She was to be a Princess, so her name was changed to the name “Sarah” meaning Princess, so that all would know that she was the mother to a future king.

But, the story of Princess Sarah being the mother of Isaac isn’t her entire story. Maybe we would wish it was. Sarah’s story starts long before becoming the Princess. It starts as she and Abram – who would become Abraham, leave their homeland following God. It starts with the realization that she and her husband would be the mother and father of a great nation as they follow and worship the God most High – Adonai – YHWH. And this is where the theme of HOPE comes in.

Abram and Sarai knew that God had a great plan for their life. Sarai knew she was to be a mother because of God’s promise. But somewhere, sometime, doubt crept in.

Do you ever doubt God’s promise?

Do you ever question what you know is God’s plan for your life?

Do you ever have misgivings that what you know to be true may or may not come to fruition?

I think we all do at times. I think we all doubt because we can’t always see what God sees, and often that doubt, those questions, those misgivings will at times lead to a loss of hope.

As we look at Sarai’s story, we see that she had lost hope. I mean, I can’t blame her. She was 80 years old and still had not born a child. I know God’s a God of miracles, but anyone in here age 80 think they are going to wake up tomorrow pregnant?

So, Sarai lost hope. She gave up on God. She didn’t believe God’s word, so she reverted back to the ancient Babylonian code of Hammurabi that stated that a wife who hadn’t bore a child was to give her husband a surrogate with which to have a child.

You know, hope is an interesting thing isn’t it. Hope can drive us to do amazing things, but when we lose hope, it can cause us to make drastic changes.

There was once a picturesque little town or village in a New England valley. A stream flowed through the valley, green trees and hillsides around the town would have made it seem like a scene from a Thomas Kinkade painting. Then, something changed. A Hydroelectric dam was to be built across the valley, forming a new lake for all to enjoy and providing electricity for the surrounding region. The only problem, the people in the small town in the valley were to be relocated because the town itself would be submerged when the dam was finished. During the time between the decision to build the dam and its completion, the community changed. Where the streets were once lined with lush green yards, white picket fences, and beautiful homes…

by the time the dam was built and the people were relocated, the community had become an eyesore. Picket Fences were broken, trash lined the streets, yards were unkept.

Why did this happen? The answer is simple. As one resident said, “Where there is no faith in the future, there is no work in the present.” They had lost hope for the future, and it translated into the present.

Another example of how hope motivates us can be found in Victor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl argued that the “loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect on man.” As a result of his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp, Frankl contended that when a man no longer possesses a motive for living, no future to look toward, he curls up in a corner and dies. He wrote, “Any attempt to restore a man’s inner strength in camp,” had first to succeed in showing him some future goal.” They had to have hope.

I look around at all that is happening in the world and I see people loosing hope. The Tripledemic of Covid, Flu, and RSV has people losing hope. The current economic condition has people losing hope. Governmental policies have people losing hope. Illness and injury have people losing hope. Denominational politics has people losing hope. I can go on and on with why so many are losing hope.

And yes, I can see why Sarai may have lost hope and given up. But here is what today’s verse reminds us. Sarai gave up hope in God, But God did not give up hope in Sarai. God is not only a God of miracles, but Our God is also a God who is making all things new. When God changed her name from Sarai to Sarah, God was showing her that He had not given up hope in her. Our God does not lose hope. Our God does not ‘give up hope.’

Our God restores hope!

2000 years ago, Hope was born anew in this world. Hope was restored! In a time when the known world was living under Pax Romana – the ‘Peace of Rome’ that was dealt out with massacres and crucifixions, a spark was kindled. A little hope of what could be, was made known in a distant relative of Sarah named Mary, a little girl from Nazareth.

God is a God of hope, and God never gives up hope in you and me. This Advent, we are surrounded by people who may be saying, “All I want for Christmas is Hope!” We are surrounded by hopeless people in search of something to place their hope in. You and I have that hopeful message they need. We have the story of Hope being born anew. We have the message of Hope in something, in someone who does not change!

Have you placed your hope in the Lord?

Have you shared that hope with others?