Title: Mother of All Nations
Contents
[Sarah: Mother of all Nations] Hebrews 11:10-6 2006.12.17 Sunday Evening Worship
1) The fathers of faith The common thing that Enoch, Noah, and Abraham had in common was that they believed in the promise. Promises are, by their very nature, things that will happen in the future. Therefore, even when a promise is received, it is not immediately fulfilled. Promises are sometimes fulfilled. Some promises are made in one day, some take 10 years, some 30 years, and some promises are made over generations. Therefore, in essence, receiving a promise requires patience to look at it.
2) Today’s text verse 13 also says, “All these people died by faith and did not receive the promise, but they saw it from afar and welcomed it, and lived on the earth as foreigners and strangers.” Through the image of Abraham, Sarah, and all the ancestors who received God's promise and believed that it would come true and walked as his people in hope, the book of Hebrews makes us realize the grace of God as the promised people.
1. First, we look at the words that evaluate Sarah's obedience as faith.
1) Hebrews 11:8. “Abraham obeyed when he was called, and when he went to the land he would receive as an inheritance,” Sarah was with him. At that time, when Sarah was 65 years old, she showed obedience to her husband, Abraham's decision. Aren't you at the age you want to rest, settle down, and enjoy after you have tasted everything in life at that age? However, it must have been difficult for a woman to agree easily with the idea that she had to leave everything behind and become a stranger on the road again. However, Sarah believed in God who appeared to her husband and was convinced that the decision her husband made was the right thing to do, and she willingly followed.
2) Sarah relied on God to overcome her impossibility. Verse 11. At that time, Sarah was very old and gave birth, but she received the strength to conceive from God. Such people's faith was God-centered, not putting the source of their faith in themselves, but placing the source of their faith in the one who made the promise, “who knows that the one who promised is faithful.”
3) Faith turns the impossible into possible. Water is turned into wine, mulberry trees are uprooted and planted in the sea, and mountains are lifted and moved. Zerubbabel had this experience. “O great mountain, you shall become a plain before Zerubbabel.” So the mountain became a plain, and the temple was built there. The book of Zechariah calls this the work of faith in obedience to the Word.
2. Sarah's life journey was a picture of a man with many flaws.
1) Sarah's original name is Sarai. He is Abraham's half-brother. So, because of her beautiful appearance, she was angered by her in Egypt and being taken away by the lustful kings of the Gentiles to Abimelech. Of course, it is not wrong to say that he is a half-sister, but at the time Abraham was married, so he was a wife and not a sister, so this is a lie. Abraham showed the weak side of trying to escape the crisis with this lie. And Sarah didn't say a word to that. So, in the end, Sarah even went into the concubine of the king of Egypt. But on the last night, God subdues the king of Egypt and rescues Sarah from there.
2) Sarah followed God when he called. In that respect, he was a person who received the same promise as Abraham. But he was impatient. Seeing that she would not have the offspring that God had promised her to grow old, she sent Hagar her maid to her husband. I wondered if I could see my husband's son even in Hagar's body. As a result, Ishmael was born. Sarah is a person who has received God's promise. However, he did not wait long for that promise due to his impatience. When God gives Isaac back as a promise, “Ishmael is not the son of the promise. Isaac's promise will be his offspring.” So he answers the word of God with a smile. Laughter So his son's name was Isaac, which means laughter. What does Sarah's smile mean? Could it have meant a lack of confidence in the promise? When Sarah finally gives birth to Isaac, he drives out Ishmael and Hagar. Watching them harass and drive them away, we are surprised to see Sarah, who is the mother of faith, the mother of all nations, and Abraham as well, but she is a wretched person and a person just like us.
3) Heroes of the world are like gods with great abilities, and they do everything like a god. So, if you look at old myths, people express those heroes as gods. People like Hercules in Greek mythology. However, the Bible honestly describes people's faults and errors, even if they were the ancestors of faith.
Even after receiving God's call, Abraham made mistakes, fell, overcame the crisis with lies, and was incompetent, so he called his wife his sister. So is Sarah. Unable to wait patiently for God's promise, he becomes impatient and makes the mistake of sending Hagar to Abraham. And they persecute him and Ishmael. In fact, Sarah was a woman full of mistakes. Still, God did not take away the promise He had given them.
3. It is the Lord who covers our many faults.
1) Sarah was like that, so was Abraham, and Noah, the father of faith, was also full of transgressions. After the flood, he grew grapes and made wine from it, drank and got drunk, and then he slept naked and took a nap before his sons found out about the shameful appearance. Enoch also suffered the most difficult test of his life, his son Methuselah. The image of the ancestors of that strong faith is humanly fragile and fragile. God covers those faults. The reason why our weak lives are called the advancement of righteous faith is because you do not see our weakness, but our determination to obey and obey his call.
2) Yes. God gives us promises and sees whether we receive them by faith. Because the promise will come true in the future, even if you do not see it now, he sees whether you have the confidence to receive it, keep it, and fulfill it. And he calls it faith. Faith is the fulfillment of promises.
3) What is the blessing of Sarah who followed the Lord with this kind of faith? Sarah, he was like the dead at that time, but because of him, his descendants grew up like the stars in the sky, like the countless sands on the shore. So Sarah's name is the blessed man, mother of all nations. The children born from Sarah's body are called children of promise. If this is the child of the womb, Ishmael became the father of the Gentiles without promise, and Isaac became the father of the promised father Israel.
in conclusion
1) God called Abraham and Sarah, weak people who had many blemishes and weaknesses even in human eyes, gave them a promise, and made them the fathers of faith. So we have hope. Since our ancestors of faith are just weak people like us, don't we also have hope?
2) So, saints, let's look to God's promises. In any case, let us go forth confidently in trusting in Jesus our Lord. I believe that the blessings of Abraham and Sarah will be plentiful for those who trust in the Lord.