Have Faith That He Is Faithful

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Through the example of Sarah we see the worst in ourselves, unbelief in spite of God's grace, and the best in God, his faithfulness remains.

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Introduction:

Today we pause to acknowledge the special women in our lives. Women who speak truth into who we are and who we become. I pause today to acknowledge the women who have shaped who I have become but also to give thanks to God for the many women who shape the lives of my children including each and every woman in this church family who invest their time, love and patience into their lives. As we sing through the words of our prayer chorus this morning maybe you want to come to this place of prayer to thank God for those women in your life or to pray for them where you are, to go to them in this place and to ask them to pray with you or to pray for them. Or maybe you want to spend time with God this morning asking him to give you faith to trust in something that you can’t believe. That he will bring healing, that he will bring peace, that he will bring restoration to lives, to bodies, to families, to this world. But to spend these moments in prayerful contemplation of what having faith like Sarah would mean and trusting that no matter your age that God can and still will use you to change the world.

On this day in the year we pause to spend just 24 short hours doing something that we should probably do far more often throughout the year, to thank God for the women in our lives. To celebrate them, to thank them, to remember, to cherish, to praise them for the ways that they impact our lives everyday. While the day is called Mother’s Day and so we often focus on our own biological mothers this day is truly about celebrating so many more women than that. The mothers, step mothers, foster mothers, wives, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbours, congregation members who have played such a huge role in our lives. As I look back on this day every year I am amazed by the many women who have and still do impact my life and the lessons that I learned from them. From my own mom during the many challenging times in her life I learned the value of staying positive, keeping your faith and focusing above when everything seems to be falling apart around you. From my stepmom Kelly I learned the lesson of perseverance in the face of overwhelming obstacles as she has overcome many surgeries and hip replacements but continues to move forward the best that she can. From my 96 year old Grandma I learned about the power of forgiveness and the love of God when she forgave me for some unbelievably hurtful words I shared in anger as a much younger person. From Colleen I learn everyday what it means to be a godly, loving, patient, merciful, gracious parent, spouse, boss and pastor. From my sister Jenn I learned the lesson of selflessness as she gave up many social opportunities in her early teens to help to raise my brothers and I after my mom left and later left university putting her dreams on hold in order to help my mom through a tough situation. From my mother in law Mary I have learned the true definition of strength and faith as she has lived with MS over these last 15+ years. From Ellie and Gail and Eleanor and so many women in my life I have learned the value of an encouraging word as they have built me up and strengthened me to keep going at moments when I have found myself at my lowest. And yet the women of impact in our lives are at times people that we have not met in person yet who help shape our understanding of what it means to be a person. Women like Mother Teresa who among the many profound life changing things she said shared these words, “Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe must more in His love than in your own weakness.” Or the former first lady of the United Stated of America Michelle Obama who said, “Success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.” And women like the many we find throughout the Scriptures in stories of heroism, passion and faith like Mary the mother of Jesus, Hannah and the subject of our passages of Scripture today, Sarah.

Sarah struggled to believe:

Sarah who for much of the time that we read about her in the Bible seems to be just a part of the larger story centred on her husband, Abraham. Abraham as you will know is the Patriarch of the people of God, it was to him that God made the initial promise that he would become a mighty nation. At the age of 75, Abraham was called out from his hometown to follow God’s leading in his life in Genesis chapter 12. In , God promises him even though he does not have any children to that point that he will have descendants that will out number the stars. And then again in Genesis chapter 17 we read that at the age of 100 he questions God about how this will happen and God again commits. To this point though all of the conversation, the point of the story, all that has gone on is a commitment from God to Abraham. This is a lot of talking about a man on Mother’s Day. But it is at this moment where Sarah begins to play a more prominent role in the story because these passages tell us that the promise becomes less about a far off possibility and more about a coming realization. So naturally Sarah’s place in this story is about to grow but it is not because she was a Mother of that great nation that we pause to look at her life but because of what we can learn about ourselves and about God in the telling of her story that is such an impact today. The first is a commentary on us as people, on the way that we see the world and even how we view the promises of God through human eyes. As we read earlier in Genesis chapter 18 Abraham is sitting with the three guests but really with the Lord and sharing in a meal. Sarah standing in the opening to the tent is listening in on the conversation when she overhears the promise that God had already made to Abraham in chapter 17 that he clearly did not tell her. “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.” And hearing this Sarah’s response is the same as Abraham’s response was when he heard the news, laughter. Laughter maybe because they thought it was all some joke or maybe laughter because the alternative was to cry. This at times is our response isn’t it, to laugh because we don’t want our emotions to come out in tears or something else. Tears and/or laughter because here is a woman who is barren, unable to have children. Knowing this she had given over one of her maid servants to her husband to produce children for him. She was physically unable to do this and so to believe that this would happen would be humanly impossible. Even more than that she laughed because as she said “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?” Based on what we read Sarah was 90 years old. Let’s let that settle in for a minute, 90 years old. Everything that we have learned about the makeup of the human body tells us that this is impossible, that she was well beyond the age where this could safely happen for her. Where would she get the energy from? How would she take care of a child at that age? I am only 35 and while I love my kids they are exhausting. There are nights where when they go to bed I fall asleep on the couch shortly after because I am done. If I know it at my age we know that they knew that they were well passed the age of being able to conceive even without the benefit of modern science to prove it to them. So Sarah laughed. But while she might have laughed at first in the response of the guest at the table she came to realize that this wasn’t just any guest and any promise. That the one who was sitting there was God because he knew what she had whispered to herself. In his words she knew that the voice she was hearing was from God, the one true God and yet there is no indication at that time that Sarah takes those words and believes. That they caused her to believe in her mind that she would become a mother. And while we can look at her example in these moments and wonder why. Looking at all that has happened before this moment and wonder why she would question. The ways that God has provided for them since they made the decision to believe in his words to Abraham, the places they have come through. We can question why Sarah didn’t believe in him and why she didn’t trust in those moments. But deep down we all know why she didn’t believe in that moment because that is the way we are as people. The Bible is filled with many other stories of people who are faced with God or a message from God and have had trouble believing even with evidence all around them. We see it in the story of Gideon found in the book of Judges. He puts God to the test when God puts a calling on His life. We see it in the religious leaders of Jesus’ time as they stood face to face with the Incarnate God and still couldn’t see Him. We see it in the stories of those closest to him following His resurrection. First the women at the tomb, then the disciples in the room and most famously in Thomas who was the last of the group to have his doubts confirmed for him.

We struggle to believe:

And we see it in the world that we live in today. A world with the evidence of God’s presence in it everyday and yet we as people don’t believe. We see a universe, a planet and human existence that are a scientific impossibility or improbability and yet we are here. We see lives being changed, addictions being overcome, relationships being repaired, incurable diseases being miraculously beaten. But still there are many people in our world who will say that these things are coincidence or hard work, the result of human effort or good fortune. We as Christians find ourselves in these awful situations and we pray to God yet there is part of us that does it as a last chance, a hail Mary trying to throw up a hope and a prayer. We come before God in times of sickness for ourselves or those we love and we ask Him for comfort or strength and maybe we get around to asking Him for healing but we do it more out of a desire to do the right things more than a firm belief within ourselves that it is actually truly possible because our minds tell us it can’t be done even though the Bible reminds us that “with God all things are possible” from Matthew chapter 19. We are desperate in a search for a job or a relationship but only after we have checked out every online resource and spoken to all of our friends and family do we turn to God for assistance in making these things happen. We do all of this even though we are reminded in the Bible in Matthew chapter 7 that we are to ask, seek and knock for what we need because our father wants to give good gifts to us. We struggle through situations of financial instability, adjusting to a new country or culture, trying to learn a language, find a place to live, seeking a new direction for our lives or our ministries here as a church family. We look around at the world we live in that seems to always be on the verge of something awful happening environmentally, politically or socially. We see the blatant racism of many in this world, the willingness of leaders to push us to the brink of global war, the seemingly never ending string of natural disasters and we wonder whether there is really a reason to believe that God is alive and well in this world right now. We struggle to believe even though we are reminded in that just like the people of his day, God has a plan to bring hope to our futures and that he will never leave us or forsake us as he promised to Joshua in the days of uncertainty leading to him succeeding Moses in bringing the people of Israel into the Promised Land. There are reminders all around and yet at times we don’t believe. We don’t believe that the God who created the universe can solve our problem or can intervene in our situation or we don’t want to bother him with our little issue. Or we look at things from our own earthly perspective and because they aren’t happening when we want them to or how we want them to we struggle to believe that they are possible, that sometimes the answer isn’t yes or no but wait. And it is in those moments that we can learn our greatest lessons from the story of Sarah because it is in the moment where we left her caught in her unbelief laughing and challenged by God that her example changes.

Sarah’s faith came from God’s faithfulness:

With the words of “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Sarah is put into a moment of realizing what she has done, so she tries to lie, but then we see in her story that she has moved from human belief to heavenly faith. To put her trust in the fact that there is nothing impossible for God. Sarah is left maybe not believing in her mind but hoping with all her heart that God will come through. And in our passage from Chapter 21: 1-7 we read that she did get pregnant and she did have that baby and she says “God has brought me laughter and everyone who hears will laugh with me”. It is believed that Isaac’s name means laughter, that in the end she was able to see her unbelief and to not just acknowledge it but to embrace it because of the impact that it had on her life. She didn’t believe and that was ok because God didn’t need her to believe in what she could do or what her body was capable of in order to carry out his will for her life and for his people. speaks into this when it says, “If we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.” And the writer of Hebrews shares about Sarah in chapter 11:11 when they tells us that, ”by faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised”. God didn’t need Sarah to believe in what she could see or what she could learn or what she could know, he needed her to have faith in what is unseen with the human eye, too amazing for the human mind to learn and so otherworldly that we could never fully grasp it with our minds. He needed her to have faith that He was a God of kept promises. That he was not going to go back on what he had committed to Abraham and he was not going to go back on what he had promised the year earlier even though she didn’t believe it was possible. And yet as she received the news she was pregnant, as she felt the baby grow and move in her womb, as she went through the pains of childbirth and as she held that child in her arms for the first time the reality set in that she was living in a world of unbelievable, impossible realities because of the will of God for her. Now I am sure she wished it had happened when she was in her 20s, 30s, 40s or even 50s but it was not in God’s timing for those stages of her life it was in His perfect timing in her 90s when it happened. And so her faith needed to be met with her patience, perseverance and a willingness to submit to the will of God whatever that might mean.

Our faith is strengthened by God’s faithfulness:

A hopeful, patient, persistent, submissive faith that we need to have today because in reading Sarah’s story we can see glimpses of our own story and of our own reality. That God isn’t asking us to understand or to believe with our minds but to have faith that the world can change, that we can change, that our situations can change. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr once said that faith is “taking the first step even when you don’t see the full staircase”. Trusting and hoping that there are more steps in the darkness, that when our foot goes down there will be something there to catch you, catch me and stop us from falling. That is not just simply belief because belief is tied to your head, an examination of evidence leading to a state of mind or conviction. It is faith, holding onto something when proof isn’t available. We are called like Sarah to a reminder that God is at work even when we don’t see it, know it or believe it. That God has plans in place that we can never imagine and that even when all seems lost and hopeless that God is the God of the impossible. So whatever it is that you are facing have faith that he can find a way through, over, around or under when the world and our own understanding says it isn’t possible. That there will be healing from disease in this life or full restoration in the next. That he can provide us with the job that brings about financial stability or he will place people or services in our lives like our community and family services or immigration and refugee services in our path to help us manage the load while we wait if we reach out. That he can provide for us that one person who will share the good and the bad with us but at the same time he will provide us throughout our lives many different companions in the form of parents, brothers, sisters, friends and this church family to bring us through the difficult times of our lives and rejoice with us in the amazing moments as well. That he is not just an absent, far off King watching without intervening in what is going on, we can have faith that he sees what we are going through, that he knows the hearts of those who are filled with hate, that while he didn’t elect those leaders that he can carry out His sovereign will through them even if they don’t believe. That he is faithful to His promises. That he is coming again, that he has prepared a place for us, that he does want to give us hope and a future, that he will never leave us or forsake us, that he does want to share in our burdens and that he can do the impossible. We can have faith that this is true because we have experienced it in our own lives, because we have heard it in the stories of others and because we have witnessed it through the women in our lives who we celebrate today. Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, friends, members of this church family, women we know intimately and women we only know through the words they have written or spoken in their lives. Women who show us the power of patience, perseverance, love, grace, submission, mercy and of faith. Women like Sarah who when all belief had long since passed and all she could do was laugh at the thought was given the greatest gift for her faith, the gift of the faithfulness of God. (prayer)