12 Extraordinary Women, Week 5
Notes
Transcript
Hoping Against Hope
Hoping Against Hope
There are times in the biblical account when Sarah comes off as a bit … harsh. She was the wife of the great patriarch Abraham, so we tend to think of her with a degree of dignity and honor. But reading the biblical account of her life, it is impossible not to notice that she sometimes behaved badly. She could throw fits and tantrums. She knew how to be manipulative. And she was even known to get mean. At one time or another, she exemplified almost every trait associated with the typical harsh, mean spirited, rude woman. She could be impatient, temperamental, conniving, cantankerous, cruel, flighty, pouty, jealous, erratic, unreasonable, a whiner, a complainer, or a nag. By no means was she always the perfect model of godly grace and meekness.
In fact, there are hints that she may have been something of a pampered beauty; a classic prima donna. The name given to her at birth, Sarai, means “my princess.” (Her name was not changed to Sarah until she was ninety years old, according to Genesis 17:15).
15 And God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.
Scripture remarks repeatedly about how stunningly attractive she was. Wherever she went, she instantly received favor and privilege because of her good looks. That kind of thing can spoil the best of women.
By the way, the biblical account of Sarah’s life doesn’t really even begin until she was already sixty-five years old. Amazingly, even at that age, her physical beauty was so remarkable that Abraham regularly assumed other powerful men would want her for their harems. And he was right. First a pharaoh, then a king, not realizing she was Abraham’s wife, had designs on obtaining her as a wife. To this day, Sarah is remembered for her legendary beauty. A famous Moslem tradition teaches that Sarah resembled Eve. (That is especially significant in light of another Moslem tradition, which says Allah gave Eve two-thirds of all beauty, and then divided what remained of beauty among all other women.) But it’s not necessary to embellish Sarah’s glamour with fables. From the biblical account alone, it is clear that she was an extraordinarily beautiful woman.
From the time she became Abraham’s wife, Sarah desired one thing above all others, and that was to have children. But she was barren throughout her normal childbearing years. In fact, that is practically the first thing Scripture mentions about her. After recording that Abraham took her as a wife in Genesis 11:29, verse 30 says, “But Sarai was barren; she had no child” (NKJV).
30 Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.
She was obviously tortured by her childlessness. Every recorded episode of ill temper or strife in her household was related to her frustrations about her own barrenness. It ate at her. She spent years in the grip of frustration and depression because of it. She desperately wanted to be a mother, but she finally concluded that God Himself was restraining her from having children (Gen. 16:2).
2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.
So badly did she want her husband to have an heir that she concocted a scheme that was immoral, unrighteous, and utterly foolish. She rashly persuaded Abraham to father a child by her own housemaid.
Predictably, the consequences of such a carnal ploy nearly tore her life apart and seemed to leave a lasting scar on her personality. Her bitterness seethed for thirteen years, and she finally insisted that Abraham throw the other woman out, along with the child he had fathered by her.
Sarah’s faults are obvious enough. She was certainly fallen. Her faith, at times, grew weak. Her own heart sometimes led her astray. Those shortcomings were conspicuous and undeniable. If those things were all we knew about Sarah, we might be tempted to picture her as something of a battle-ax—a harsh, severe woman, relentlessly self-centered and temperamental. She wasn’t always the kind of person who naturally evokes our sympathy and understanding.
Fortunately, there was much more to Sarah than that. She had important strengths as well as glaring weaknesses. Scripture actually commends her for her faith and steadfastness. The apostle Peter pointed to her as the very model of how every wife should submit to her husband’s headship. Although there were those terrible flashes of petulance and even cruelty (reminders that Sarah was an embattled, fleshly creature like us), Sarah’s life on the whole is actually characterized by humility, meekness, hospitality, faithfulness, deep affection for her husband, sincere love toward God, and hope that never died.
A study in contrasts and contradictions, Sarah was indeed one extraordinary woman. Although she gave birth to only one son and didn’t become a mother at all until she was well past the normal age of fertility, she is the principal matriarch in Hebrew history. Although her enduring faithfulness to her husband was one of the most exemplary aspects of her character, the most notorious blunder of her life involved an act of gross unfaithfulness. She sometimes vacillated, but she ultimately persevered against unbelievable obstacles, and the steadfastness of her faith became the central feature of her legacy. In fact, the New Testament enshrines her in the Hall of Faith: “because she judged Him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11:11 NKJV).
Hebrews 11:11 (ESV)
11 By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.
The full spectacle of Sarah’s amazing faith doesn’t really become apparent until we contemplate the many seemingly insurmountable obstacles to that faith.
Background
Background
Sarah was half-sister to her husband, Abraham. In Genesis 20:12, Abraham describes for King Abimelech his relationship with his wife: “She is truly my sister. She is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife” (NKJV).
12 Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.
Terah was father to both of them, Sarah being ten years younger than Abraham (Gen. 17:17). We’re not told the names of either of their mothers.
17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”
Incidentally, that kind of half-sibling marital relationship was not deemed incestuous in Abraham’s time. Abraham’s brother, Nahor, married a niece; and both Isaac and Jacob married cousins. Such marriages to close relatives were not the least bit unusual or scandalous in the patriarchal era—nor in previous times extending all the way back to creation. Obviously, since Adam and Eve were the only humans God originally created, it would have been absolutely essential in the beginning for some of Adam’s offspring to wed their own siblings.
Scripture made no prohibition against marriages between close relatives until well after Abraham’s time. No doubt one of the main reasons the Lord ultimately forbid the practice was because of the accumulation of genetic mutations in the human gene pool. When you begin with two genetically perfect creatures, there is no risk of any hereditary defects. Only gradually did the dangers associated with inbreeding arise. Therefore, no legal prohibition against incest even existed until the time of Moses. Then Leviticus 18:6–18 and 20:17–21 explicitly forbade several kinds of incest, including marriage between half-siblings. But the patriarchs should not be evaluated by laws that were only handed down many generations later. It was no sin for Abraham to take Sarah as his wife.
Scripture says virtually nothing about their early years of marriage. In fact, all we know about that era in their lives is the bitter truth that perpetually grated on Sarah’s own consciousness: “Sarai was barren; she had no child” (Gen. 11:30 NKJV).
That one statement sums up everything Scripture has to say about the first sixty-five years of Sarah’s life! It is no wonder if she occasionally exhibited flashes of frustration and resentment.
Notice that the biblical account of Abraham’s life likewise doesn’t really begin until he was seventy-five. All we are told is that he had been born and raised in Sumeria, lower Mesopotamia, near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. (That’s close to the head of the Persian Gulf in a region that is part of present-day Iraq.) Abraham’s hometown was a famous urban center known as Ur of the Chaldeans.
Ur was the heart of a sophisticated pagan culture.. Sarah and Abraham would have lived there during the very height of its power and affluence. The city government was a superstitious theocracy supposedly under the Babylonian moon god. (This was the same culture that built the famous ziggurats, those massive terraced towers upon which pagan temples were set.)
Abraham, of course, was a worshiper of YHWH. His knowledge of the true God was probably passed down to him by way of his ancestors. After all, Abraham was only a ninth-generation descendent from Shem, son of Noah.
It is obvious that the world cultures of Abraham’s time were highly paganized. Going back even before the tower of Babel episode, love for the truth had obviously been in sharp decline for many generations. By the time Abraham came on the scene, idolatrous worship thoroughly dominated every world culture.
But there was still a scattered remnant of true believers. It is entirely likely that dispersed here and there among the world’s population were faithful families who still knew and worshiped YHWH, having maintained their faith across the generations from Noah’s time. For example, judging from details given in the book of Job, including the length of Job’s life span, Job was probably a close contemporary of Abraham’s. Job and his friends (lousy counselors though they were) had a thorough familiarity with the God of their ancestors. They lived in the land of Uz. The precise location of Uz is not certain, but it was clearly in the Middle East (Jer. 25:20)—yet not in the vicinity of Ur of the Chaldeans, where Abraham’s family lived. So the remnant who still worshiped YHWH were not confined to any single location or limited to any one family.
20 and all the mixed tribes among them; all the kings of the land of Uz and all the kings of the land of the Philistines (Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod);
In fact, in the biblical account of Abraham’s life, we are also introduced to Melchizedek (Gen. 14:18) who represented an order of itinerant priests who knew the one true God and served Him.
18 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.)
Abraham met Melchizedek somewhere in the Dead Sea region. Clearly, a few diverse remnants of faithful YHWH worship did still exist in Abraham’s time.
The Lord’s purpose in choosing and calling Abraham was to make him the father of a great nation that would be His witness to the world. That nation, Israel, would be formally covenanted with YHWH. Through them, the truth would be kept alive and preserved in perpetuity. Scripture says “the oracles of God” were committed to them (Rom. 3:2 NKJV).
2 Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.
In other words, from the nation that came out of Abraham, prophets would arise. Through them the Scriptures would be given to the world. God would dwell in their midst and set His sanctuary among them. By their lineage a Deliverer, the Messiah, would arise. And in Him, all the nations of the world would be blessed (Gen. 18:18).
18 seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?
Sarah obviously had a key role to play in this plan. Abraham could never become the patriarch of a great nation if she did not first become mother to his offspring. She was surely aware of the Lord’s promises to Abraham. She certainly would have longed to see those promises fulfilled. As long as she remained childless, however, the sense that everything somehow hinged on her must have pressed on her like a great burden on her shoulders.
John F. MacArthur Jr., Twelve Extraordinary Women: How God Shaped Women of the Bible and What He Wants to Do with You (Nashville, TN: Nelson Books, 2005), 27–32.