Sermon Central
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Recover Your Faith Series
Contributed by John Dobbs on Sep 15, 2023 (message contributor)
Summary: Today we are going to look at two people who laughed, but it was not a joke - it was a promise that was humanly impossible.
RECOVER YOUR FAITH
Genesis 18:9-15 Genesis 21:1-7
Introduction
A sense of humor is a good thing. (Bulletin Bloopers)
Proverbs 15:13, 15 A happy heart makes the face cheerful… The cheerful heart has a continual feast.
Proverbs 17:22 A cheerful heart is good medicine…
Today we are going to look at two people who laughed, but it was not a joke - it was a promise that was humanly impossible.
“Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked him. “There, in the tent,” he said.
Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”
Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him.
Abraham and Sarah were already very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?”
Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’
Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”
Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”
But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.”
In our text today three visitors came to see Abraham and Sarah. In keeping with their traditions of hospitality, they offered refreshment, food, rest. Abraham asked Sarah to make some bread. While they ate, they had a talk (Genesis 18:9-15). Some say angels / Title given in vs 15 is ‘the Lord’ (Yahweh) (vs 15). Wiersbe: “The three strangers were the Lord Jesus Christ and two of His angels.” Divine appointment!
Although Abraham is the ‘Father of the Faithful’, we do have a lot to learn from Sarah - who laughed to hear God’s plan.
I want to encourage you that sometimes the future looks impossible, even uncertain, but when our faith takes a hit, we can recover by being focused on our God who can do anything. Sarah Faced Three Challenges to Her Faith that we face today also.
1. God’s promises didn’t come WHEN she thought they would.
It was 25 years prior that the promises from God were first made to Abram in Genesis 12. They began their journey when Sarah was 65 yrs old. The promises of God depended on having children. Her biological clock was ticking. They have been faithful followers - believing even when they struggled to believe.
When the visitors come to see Sarah, she is 90. Guthrie: “God waited until it was humanly impossible for the child of the covenant to be born in order to show that covenant people are created not by human effort but by divine and sovereign grace.” God’s timing is not always our expected timing.
2. God’s Promises weren’t answered by her own attempts!
They had other plans! Abram proposed non-direct heir. Sarai proposed a surrogate child through Hagar. Neither of these plans was acceptable to God - who had his own plan in mind. In Chapter 17 God changed their names:
-He changed Abram’s name to Abraham. He changed it from “exalted father” to “father of a multitude” (17:5).
-He changed Sarai’s name to Sarah: both names mean “Princess” - and she receives a promise from God (17:16 “I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”)
3. God’s Promises Arrived after the Impossibility.
Sarah is to be the mother of the special son promised to Abraham. For this to happen at her advanced age, she will need a miracle from the Lord, and that is what He provides. The blessing for Abraham and Sarah reaches into the future and includes kings and royalty among their descendants. Sarah does indeed give birth to a son in her old age.
Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.
Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God commanded him.
Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.”
And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”
Abraham laughed in 17:17 (Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?”)
