Woman Wednesday

This week, we'll be taking a look at Sarah, wife of Abraham.

A little perspective on this review. I was named after Sarah of the Bible with my parents dropping the 'h' to make it unique because they knew they had one unique kid on their hands. :-) Reading this chapter was bittersweet. I hope you'll see why...

I like the way John MacArthur starts the chapter with "let's be honest..." It actually made me laugh as he admitted that reading the biblical account of Sarah can make her come off like a shrew and yet she is revered as the wife of the great patriarch Abraham. In his opening paragraph, he used no less than 20 adjectives/phrases that describes Sarah's weaknesses and sins. So why was I laughing? Because my parents were right in naming me after Sarah. :-)

Thankfully, MacArthur does not spend the rest of the chapter fleshing out Sarah's weaknesses and sins. MacArthur does an excellent job of describing the environment and culture Sarah was a part of and interacted with. For length purposes here, I will focus primarily here on Sarah and the promise of descendants to Abraham.

The first thing we read about Sarah after Abraham took her as a wife was this statement "But Sarai was barren. She had no child" (Genesis 11:30). That may seem like a small statement but think about it. Our first impression of Sarah is a look into reality for her, but it can come across as depressing. But I know and trust that Scripture is the infallible and the trustworthy word of God so it must be there for a reason and as Macarthur writes about Sarah at 75 and still childless,

"If God had planned to make her the mother of Abraham's heir, why had he not done so by now? It was natural for her to think God was deliberately withholding children from her. As a matter of fact, He was. When His time came for the promise to be fulfilled, no one would be able to deny that this indeed was God's doing. His plan all along was for Sarah to have her first child in her old age, after every prospect of a natural fulfillment of the prophecy was exhausted and after every earthly reason for hope was completely dead. Thus YHWH would put His power on display." (pg. 38, author's emphasis)

Perhaps Sarah was losing hope and saw how her body was aging and how Abraham was aging since he was 10 years older than her. It's easy to lose hope when we focus on ourselves. One of the quotes I keep in my journal is from Dr. Tony Evans in a message I heard once. "One of the reasons we lose hope is because the only person we're concerned about is ourselves." That's so true.

When we are losing hope, we need to look above and gaze upon God and His character that never changes and is unlike any other being in all the universe. As Sarah learned later when God did bless her with a son, Isaac, God is faithful to His promises. God was kind to Sarah, even when she was not kind to Hagar. God placed Sarah as one of the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11, even though she exercised faithlessness when she used Hagar to bear children.

Thus we see in Sarah's life, not just a picture of someone struggling with an unmet desire, but God in His goodness and faithfulness to His promises in His perfect timing.

Toodles!