12 Extraordinary Women, Week 6
Notes
Transcript
Alright, to answer the question from last week, did Abraham have any more children the answer is yes. We know he had Ishmael by Hagar, Isaac with Sarah, and after Isaac he fathered six other sons with Keturah (his second wife) after the death of Sarah (Genesis 24:19).
1 Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah.
2 She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.
Now, to get on with this weeks session of Sarah’s journey to the promised land.
Her Journey to the Promised Land
Her Journey to the Promised Land
1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
God spoke to Abram, but the family as a whole had to move with him. Now, some people don’t mind picking up everything and moving BUT think of everything one would have to take. Notice that Abraham, Sarah, Tarah, and all the family were happily settled. Now, they are being asked to roll up the rugs, pack up the bedding, put away all the cookware, take the tent down, roll up the canvas, number and place all the poles, and pack it all up on animals or wagons.
Now, keep in mind their belongings were nothing like we have now, but still… they were being asked to uproot and become nomads who changed their area of residence seasonally within a larger domain which is its home territory. They went after food, after grass for their animals, and traveled wherever and whenever needed. Now, God is asking Abram and Sarai to pick up everything they own and move out of the home territory, what is familiar to them, and (BY FAITH) go where God sends. The life of a nomad would be hard for anyone at sixty-five. And yet there is no sign whatsoever that she was reluctant or unwilling to go with Abraham to a land neither of them had ever seen.
Scripture recounts the first leg of the move from Ur of the Chaldeans, it appears that Abraham’s father, Terah, was still acting as head of the extended family. “Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there.” (Gen. 11:31 ESV). Clearly, Terah was still in charge. Scripture portrays him as the leader of the journey, with Abraham, Sarah, and Lot in tow.
31 Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there.
But the first long leg of the journey stalled at Haran, about 650 miles northwest, roughly following the course of the Euphrates. Perhaps Terah was too old to travel anymore. We don’t know how long Abraham and Sarah remained in Haran. But they did not get moving again until Terah died, and that was evidently some time. Scripture says Terah was more than two hundred years old when he died, and Abraham was seventy-five when he finally left Haran for the promised land.
Leaving Haran after burying his father, Abraham still had quite a large caravan. Scripture tells us, “Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. That account suggests the final leg of the journey to Canaan was direct and uninterrupted. It was some 350 miles on foot (making the total journey from Ur more than a thousand miles). With a large caravan, moving a reasonable distance of eight to ten miles in a typical day, the trip from Haran to Canaan would have required only about six or seven weeks. Abraham seems not to have stopped until he reached Bethel, a fertile area with abundant springs.
Abraham’s first act upon arrival there was the building of a stone altar. At that time, the Lord also appeared to Abraham. He expanded His original promises to Abraham, now adding that He would give all the surrounding land to Abraham’s descendants. Although Abraham and Sarah remained nomads and vagabonds for the remainder of their days, this place and its altar remained their anchor.
But circumstances quickly forced Abraham to keep moving south. “Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.” (Gen. 12:10 ESV).
10 Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.
It was there, for the first time, that Abraham tried to pass Sarah off as his sister. He did this out of fear that if Pharaoh knew she was his wife, he would kill Abraham in order to have Sarah. Abraham’s great faith wavered somewhat at this point. He succumbed to the fear of men. Had he simply trusted God, God would have protected Sarah (as He did in the end anyway).
But Scripture says that before they even entered Egypt, Abraham discussed with Sarah the dangers this place posed for a man with a beautiful wife. “When the Egyptians see you … they will say, ‘This is his wife’; and they will kill me, but they will let you live,” he told her (Gen. 12:12 NKJV).
12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live.
And so at Abraham’s suggestion, she agreed to pose as his sister (v. 13). Abraham’s motives were selfish and cowardly, and the scheme reflected a serious weakness in his faith. But Sarah’s devotion to her husband is nonetheless commendable, and God honored her for it.
Stewards of Pharaoh saw her, pointed her out to Pharaoh, and brought her to his house. Scripture says Pharaoh showed favor to “brother” Abraham for Sarah’s sake, lavishing him with livestock, apparently in anticipation of requesting her hand in marriage (v. 16). Meanwhile, by God’s providence, Pharaoh did not violate her (v. 19). And to see that he did not, the Lord troubled Pharaoh’s house with “great plagues” (v. 17 NKJV).
Somehow Pharaoh discovered the reason for the plagues, and he confronted Abraham with the deception, expelling the patriarch and his wife from Egypt (Gen. 12:19–20).
19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.”
20 And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.
Nonetheless, Pharaoh, preoccupied with more pressing things, did no harm to either of them, and when Abraham left Egypt, Pharaoh’s favor toward Sarah had made Abraham a very wealthy man (Gen. 13:2).
2 Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold.
He and Sarah returned to Bethel, “to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord.” (13:4 ESV).
4 to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord.
The Lord himself would be their dwelling place from that point forward. Together, they “went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents … for he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” (Heb. 11:9–10 ESV).
9 By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
10 For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
That is as good a summary as any of the earthly life Sarah inherited when she stepped out in faith to follow her husband: earthly inconvenience, mitigated by the promise of eternal blessing.
Looking Forward to the Promised Blessing
Looking Forward to the Promised Blessing
Remember, Abraham and Sarah both came from an urban environment. They were not, as is commonly supposed, lifetime nomads or Bedouins who simply wandered all their lives because that is all they knew. Bear in mind that they did not start wandering until Abraham was already in his mid-seventies and Sarah was only a decade behind that. Life on the road was not something Sarah was accustomed to; it was something she had to learn to embrace.
What energized Sarah’s willingness to leave all familiar surroundings, sever ties with her family, and commit to a life of rootless wandering?
Notice the nature of the vast promise God had made to Abraham: “I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:2–3 NKJV). That is the first recorded hint of the Abrahamic Covenant, a formal pledge God made to Abraham and to his offspring forever. God’s promise was unconditional and literally unlimited in the scope of its blessings. God would bless Abraham, make him a blessing, and make him a vehicle through which blessing would come to the whole world (Gal. 3:9–14). The promised blessing even had eternal implications. Sarah understood that promise. According to Scripture, she believed it.
We know without question, from a New Testament perspective, that God’s covenant with Abraham was an affirmation of the very same messianic promise God had already made to Eve in the garden when He declared that her seed would crush the head of the serpent. Just as Christ was the Seed of the woman who overthrows the serpent, He is also the Seed of Abraham by whom all the world will be blessed. Paul wrote, “Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘And to your Seed,’ who is Christ” (Gal. 3:16 NKJV). This same promise is the central theme that extends all through Scripture, from Genesis 3 to its final fulfillment in the closing chapters of Revelation.
Abraham was the human channel through which the world would see the outpouring of God’s redemptive plan. He understood that. Sarah understood and also embraced it. “She judged Him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11:11 NKJV).
But despite her faith, she knew from a human perspective that her long years of childlessness already loomed large as a threat to the fulfillment of God’s pledge. Sarah must have constantly pondered these things, and as time went by, the weight of her burden only increased.
Yet God kept giving her reasons to hope. In Genesis 15:7–21, YHWH restated and expanded His promise to Abraham, then formally ratified the covenant.
7 And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”
8 But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?”
9 He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
10 And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half.
11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.
13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.
14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.
16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,
19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites,
20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim,
21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”
It is significant that verse 12 says a deep sleep fell on Abraham; then the Lord single-handedly carried out the covenant ceremony. (Incidentally, the Hebrew word used in verse 12 is the same word describing the “deep sleep” that Adam fell into when the Lord took his rib to make Eve.) This detail about Abraham’s sleep is given to stress the covenant was completely unconditional. The covenant was a unilateral promise from God to Abraham about what He, YHWH, would do. It made no demands of Abraham or Sarah whatsoever. It was a completely one-sided covenant.
If Sarah had simply realized that truth and embraced it, her whole burden would have been instantly lifted.
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), 33-38.