Through Faith and By Faith - Hebrews 11

Looking at the achievements of faith from the perspective of persuasion and credence. Part Five - Sarah

Author: Randy Pritts

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Part of the SoGreatSalvationSeries

Today's Text:

"Through faith also Sara.." v11

We continue along in the author's attempt to build up his "babe in the word of truth" messianic converts. His call to drawn near/hold fast/not waver/not trodden under foot the glorious grace found in our Lord Jesus while under this trial of faith and persecution, rings true and clear and is well supported by each previous "good report" listed in this "hall of faith".

To turn faith and go back to the covenant they were once under is to go back under the shadows of types and precursors and explanatory legalisms and temporal atonements that have little but symbolic effects upon the heart the soul and the mind. To turn back is to is to go back to a conditional system of faith dependent upon their obedience (which they can't keep) for double measure temporal blessing or double measure temporal curse, that keeps failing God as evidenced by their near continuous disobedience and captive/dispersed curse, to worship at a Temple that the Spirit of God has long since left. Similar could be said of us Gentiles should we turn back, going back to the self exalting faiths of a sick sick world, made up faiths, all relative (none that stand out from the rest). Simply we could say to turn back and or cower, to not hold fast and advance the faith forward, is to move against the faith and proves the lack of substance to support that faith, to short circuit and cut off that faith before it ever has the chance to receive the promises the Lord of that faith has given to inherit in full.

And so today, speaking of promises and how to obtain, we come to the worthy and much needed report of Sarah promised "a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her" kjv@Genesis:17:16. Her profile and story is a lesson in courageous faith and stands out its' own right apart from Abraham's; she is after all her own person. But it is also really cool to place the two faiths back together as one faith and the life they shared together drawing toward God and to each other, obtaining the greater promise of faith as one couple "bone of bone, flesh of flesh".

"...herself received strength to conceive seed..." v11

God works on us as a nation/people/group. God works on as us as couples. God works on us as completely separate individuals. Each facet of HIS work upon us is very important. To that fact we must add that God doesn't perform these works at the snap of the finger, it is always a slow methodical process. From the time conception was promised to the time conception was received there is a process being placed on Sarah of about twenty five years. Sarah was already past her child bearing years, it would have been miraculous day one when the promise was given. But yet it was not the miracle God was late working on, it was Sarah and Sarah's faith that took God all of this time. "Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed".

There is a lot of people in this modern age that easily misinterpret this. It is not faith producing the conception, faith cannot physically produce the ability for a ninety year old woman to conceive and bare, it is God that produces the power and ability, faith only receives. Picture this as the difference between a group of women over there trying to believe themselves and one another more and more hard as they can into bearing children and a single woman over yonder placing all her heart and trust upon God. And it is not only for the physical change to open up the womb, it is the strength and the courage and mental and physical fortitude of a ninety year old woman to make it nine months as only a twenty year old should, and then to parent a child her remaining years; that's the real trick.

So why did it take God twenty some years to make this change and build this strength? To tell you the truth, given the task at hand and knowing my own faith and heart, I'm surprised that it only took twenty years, it's taken me forty five years to go only half as far. It could also be said that maybe she had to wait for her husband's faith here and there to catch up her's at times just as he at times had to wait now and then for hers.

"...because she judged him faithful who had promised..."

You'll recall that it wasn't just Abram that had heard God's voice. When the promise was made the first time, she over heard it, from over by the tent the Lord and Abram could hear a pleasant squeak of a giggle (I doubt that it was a snort of a laugh, that only seems to happen to me). It's not a giggle of disbelief mind you, it is more like a tickle, the momentary escape in one's mind into the allowance of there being the slightest possibility. Maybe that moment could be pointed to as the birth of her faith in God's promise, that quick little glimpse of even a remote possibility. From there, the imagination can begin to wonder what the possibility of having a child in your arms would look like? She hadn't allowed herself that hope for quite some time, now the hope of it is growing. This being the Lord, is there anything too hard for the Lord? It is not me (Sarai speaking) that came up with this, no, the Lord just now promised it to my husband without batting an eye, just as if it was the surest thing ever to happen. Now faith is beginning to get Sarah somewhere "because she judged him faithful who had promised".

In the Hebrew, her name Sarai "my princes" is being changed to Sarah "princes of all". But the faith building required for this princes, it is just starting and is nowhere near completed.

Let's tap out for a moment here and get ourselves reoriented with the author's surroundings. What would this have to do with these timid and fearful converts? Is it saying that they can do anything for God if they only believe strong enough in it? No, it is saying God can do anything that HE has promised to them if they are willing to undergo HIS faith building and strengthening process. It is the Lord being faithful to keep HIS promise, us being faithful to God by undergoing the process that leads to the eventual fulfillment promised. The birth of which might begin as a glimmer of hope, but methodically proceeds to much more substantive faith that actively engages with the here and now (no matter what that here and now may appear to us to be).

What this means to these converts and to us is that the hope in a promise is only the beginning of a long journey, one step at a time through a now completely foreign land, and that you are now the pilgrim. There might be those of you here with Sarah at this beginning stage. There might be those of you that have moved along with her to the Hebron stage or at Mamre. Fewer still will be in Egypt, every stage that you go has obstacles and challenges, both individually and together as a couple, each place meant to stretch you beyond your present strength a little further and further. This is nothing new, it has happened saint after saint. You don't back off now, just because a person or two or a town or a nation give you a bit of confrontation.

And as we will soon find out, just like Sarah, we will each make crucial mistakes along the way. Corrections to the way we plan and think will have to be made, but then (and only then) will come the fulfillment of God's promise as hoped. Until then a slow steady path towards the evidence of things regarding it yet unseen.

"Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead..." v12

The promise made to Sarah and Abraham eventually was fulfilled and there are as many children born through them as there are stars in the sky. How they got to that though is the story of faith that really should be told. Clearly it is not just the faith of an old woman wanting to have a child at her breast and in her arms; that is only the hope that got her faith in God ignited. It is the growing of her faith through thick and thin, walking hand in hand with her man of faith through a bloody and sinful and weary land, pulling up stakes to their mobile canvass household several times, her husband called far off to fight against tribal and war lord kings to rescue his kin, a time or two him chasing after the Lord pleading "if forty righteous be found...if twenty...if ten, a time or two fighting off the unwanted marital advances of a hostile king because of the cowardly request of her soulmate to not make his marriage to her known.

Perhaps to us she is best known for acquiesce, handing her maidservant over to a ill thought out self manufactured plan of birthing God's promised child, then for rage having to send the maidservant off, then bring her maid with child back, then sending both out one final time. Easy on the eyes it is for us to read through this 13 year portion of her life and judge her feelings and thought, but hard for us to read through unwritten years of tears and pain laying underneath hoping to one day bless her man with nascent son but it not having happened yet; the blame that she places squarely upon herself. This is what she had convinced herself in her lowest state would be right and she acted upon that as anyone of us would do and have done and do even now to this very day.

Perhaps she felt the need to sacrifice of her own self and her womanly pride to get this done for her ten year elder husband. Perhaps she thought herself at odds with God and that is why HE was unwilling still to do this. You know how the mind plays its' tricks. I've heard it said that she was being impatient, then became jealous, then just plain bitter. I choose to look at her a much more beneficial way, that corrections to our course are always being made, that is often our best intended mistakes in love and life that force upon us the highest quality of faith improvement.

The object here is neither to blame nor excuse her for what she had done, just as it is not to blame nor excuse Abraham for going along with it. They both did as it seemed right at the time in their own eyes.

The thing that we best had get into our minds is that it was God that was faithful, even when they were not so much. It is easy for us to get the raw feelings/the instinct at hand/the things we think that a smarter person than us would do all twisted up into wad of string knotted and crimped tight, confuse it with the plan of purposes of God and take a running dive down into the depths of it. Part of the process involved that strengthens us is the cessation of our own tied up effort long enough to get our barrings straight and follow God back out of it to get back on course. No saint is above this.

If not for the faithfulness of God we all would be caged up like rubber cores surrounded by a mile of string, encased in cow hide stitched together by gut thread, throne at the batters bat and sent off to the third deck and where never again to be seen. Instead, at least in this case, the faithfulness of God led this tremendous husband and tremendous wife both individually and as a team and soon a people to some tremendous and substantively faithful things...

...might so it lead us!

Comment Board: ThroughFaithAndByFaith05

Tags: Faith, Sarah, Pilgrimage, Abraham, Promise, Childbirth, Isaac, ,

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