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MEET YOUR MOTHER
INTRODUCTION
Story of Hagar and Sarah
The Woman who never Laughed
I would like to tell you the story of the woman who never laughed.
I. Setting: There once was a beautiful princess and a father of many.
Her name was Sarah.
His name was Abraham.
Sarah means princess.
Abraham means the “father of many.”
A beautiful princess and the father of many were married and lived happily ever after—well, not exactly.
After Sarah and Abraham were married, the Lord appeared to Abraham.
He gave them a promise.
The Lord was going to make Abraham and Sarah into a great nation.
He was going to bless them.
He was going to make his name great.
This couple would be so blessed that they wouldn’t know what to do with it.
The blessing would extend to all the nations of the world.
The tribes from rural India to the tribes of Boston, Massachusetts, would be blessed through the lineage of Sarah and Abraham.
II.
Conflict: The beautiful princess is barren.
Abraham was not surprised—after all, his name meant the “father of many.”
It made sense that the “father of many” would be the “father of many.”
But for Sarah, this was overwhelming news.
Sarah had no children of her own.
She could not have children.
She was barren.
Sarah spent her whole life longing for a child.
She lived many sad years believing that she would never have a child.
But, the Lord delivers the impossible promise of a barren woman having a child.
In Sarah’s day, kids were an integral part of life.
In the ancient world, things were a little different.
People lived in close-knit communities.
Whole families—brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and great-grandparents—lived in tents and traveled together as they cared for each other and their animals.
It was the way of life.
When a baby was born, there was a celebration because that meant there was another set of hands to help out on the farm.
There would be one more person to share the workload.
In our culture, we work to provide income for our children.
In Sarah’s culture, children were inherently the income.
Children held a special place in the ancient world.
Not only was this reality a strain on her family, but it was also an enormous source of shame for her emotionally.
Many believed that barrenness was a curse from God. Sarah wondered if she was cursed by God.
All her friends had growing families.
Sarah watched by in despair.
Every day she was reminded that the thing she longed for most would be the thing she could never have.
Shame follows us everywhere.
It keeps us up at night.
It keeps us in bed in the morning.
We know what it’s like to carry this kind of shame.
This was Sarah’s plan.
She gave Abraham her slave, Hagar.
Hagar became pregnant and gave birth to a boy named Ishmael.
His name means “may God hear.”
Sarah tried to be happy.
She tried to laugh.
She just couldn’t.
She knew something was not right.
While culturally acceptable and even expected, she thought back to the promises the Lord told her husband—it would be through them that the promised son would be delivered.
Sarah’s lack of hope drove her to do something against what God had promised.
Would God still follow through on His promise?
At this point in the story, Sarah is 89.
Abraham is 99.
Abraham was sitting outside under a tree and doing what most 99-year-olds do—sitting, waiting, thinking.
As he was dozing off, he remembered when the Lord called him out of a life of idolatry and promised that he would make them into a great nation.
That made him think back to the time he met the Pharaoh and almost lost Sarah.
Oh, and how could he forget his wild nephew Lot?
All of a sudden, he was startled awake by the presence of three men standing in front of him.
Abraham was a good host.
He jumped up and offered them a place to rest.
Abraham bolted into the tent.
He asked Sarah to prepare a meal for these weary travelers.
Sarah fixed a beautiful meal.
It wasn’t customary for Sarah as the wife to be with the men, so she had stayed in the tent while Abraham made sure to care for his special guests.
“They said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?”
And he said, “She is in the tent.”
As the words slipped off his tongue, he thought to himself, “Strange, I haven’t introduced them to Sarah.
Wait, how did they know I had a wife?
How did they know her name was Sarah?”
In that moment, it clicked—the Lord was in their midst.
The Lord said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah, your wife, shall have a son.”
Sarah’s ear perked up as she listened “at the tent door behind him.”
“Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years.
The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah.”
So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?”
In that moment, those feelings of heartache and shame filled her body.
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?
At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.”
The woman who had never laughed, for the first time laughed.
And this would not be the last.
The woman who never laughed could now laugh.
God overcame Sarah’s barrenness and performed a miracle.
It is how God has been doing things since the beginning.
In , God looks at a barren cosmos and, though it is a formless void, speaks and creates life.
After Sarah, God would continue the line of promise through barren women.
So the story is of two sons’ and two mothers - Ismael the son of a slave woman, Hagar; Issac the son og a free woman, Sarah.
Basically Paul see’s two pictures in this story, a picture of spiritual slavery, and a picture of spiritual freedom.
By sleeping with Hagar, Abraham was choosing to rely on his own capabilities.
He was opting to “work” and gain his son.
He was acting in faith: but the faith he had was in himself, and his own “savior”.
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