Role Models

In society these days, we all have, you know, most people have someone they look up to. And unfortunately, not always the best people. It's common nowadays for young people to look up to athletes or entertainers. Some people, if they put a little more thought into it, might look up to politicians or sometimes even historical figures. And actually, being a history teacher, there are some historical figures that I've had as role models. I've looked up the theory of Roosevelt quite a bit, and Winston Churchill is one that many of us look at as somewhat of a hero.

Sometimes it's fictional characters that we look to. And I'm not sure if that's... Fictional characters can be people without thoughts. So in some ways they can be good, but it's sad because it's better to look at real people. I was thinking when I was probably 14, one of my biggest role models probably was Spider-Man. And that's not necessarily the way we want it for young people. But ideally, a person's parents are their role models. That's the way you want it to be. And as I think about it, really, parents set an example, and they are role models one way or the other.

As they said, you're always setting an example. The question is, is it going to be a good example or a bad example? And as Christians, we look to the Bible for role models, or we certainly should. And when we think about either an example for good or for bad, there are plenty of cases of both in the Bible. For instance, if you know the story of Haman, who in the book of Esther wanted to exterminate all the Jews, he's a classic example of someone who was violent and evil.

Nabal, in David's story, was an example of someone just being stubborn and kind of stupid, whereas his wife Abigail was a great role model for courage intact. It's easy to find vignettes to demonstrate various traits, Job for patience. Daniel is famous for both his diligence and his courage. And of course, speaking of courage, King David, before he was ever king, was courageous enough to kill a lion and bear with his bare hands and then take on Goliath. So, as I said, there are a lot of people we can look to, and there are some that the Bible gives us enough of their life story that we can draw a number of lessons from.

Now, I just mentioned some of those, but I'm not going to examine the lives of any of the people I just mentioned, because our tendency is to look to people that we identify with. Someone would think, yeah, I really like him, and so I'll choose him or her as my role model. And I've done that. As I said, David is one I've looked to. And I've always had an affinity for the story of Gideon. I think it's partly because I like military history, and he went off and fought these battles.

But did you know that there's one place in the Bible where it specifically tells us of two people that we should look to as role models? Or it says, the Bible says, look to these people. And I want to start off in Scripture here in Isaiah 51. We'll read Isaiah 51, verses 1 and 2. So I was thinking of the subject I wanted to cover today, and this verse popped into my mind because I think it's a little bit unique in Scripture. Isaiah 51 says, listen to me, you know who follow after righteousness? We want that to be us, following after righteousness.

You know who seek the eternal. So if we want to seek God, if we want to follow after righteousness, it tells us to do this. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the hole of the pit from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you. For I called him alone, and blessed him and increased him. Now, I like the poetic language.

Look to the rock you were carved out of. Look to the hole of the pit from which you were dug. And I like the way of saying, look to where you came from, and look at them as role models. Now, we tend to cite Abraham's example a lot of times, and justly so. He's a role model for faith and patience. He's known as the father of the faithful.

He's called the friend of God. But I think it's interesting that God, here in Isaiah 51, didn't say, look to Abraham. He said, look to Abraham and to Sarah. Sarah is held up also as a role model. And if Abraham is the father of the faithful, I think we can make a case of saying that Sarah is the mother of the faithful.

She's a role model on her own. And so, I want to look to her today. I'd like to look at the life of Sarah, and draw many lessons from her life that I think are valuable to us as Christians. And that's something I'd like to do every now and then, just examine the life of a person in the Bible, and see lessons both good and bad. And I made a note here, or a note to myself here, to mention that I don't want anyone to think that this is a sermon just for women.

I didn't have that in mind when I wrote it. You know, just in the same way that women can look to men as role models and learn from their lives, men can look to great women and learn lessons from them as well. And I think we see that in the Bible, and of course, you know, many of us can probably think of women in our lives we've learned a great deal from. You know, I certainly could say that even in my own life, from my mother and grandmother and others.

So, let's, as I said, let's look to our ancestor Sarah, and see what we can learn from her life. Now, one of the first things I want to do is go a bit further in making the case that Sarah was a special person. We're going to go back to Genesis, Genesis 17. Because Sarah wasn't just the woman who just happened to get pregnant by Abraham. She was chosen by God.

She had a special role. God wanted her to be the mother of Isaac, to whom the promises were given to. It's hard to say promises, promise to. But you know what I mean. But in Genesis 17, verse 17, here God was talking about Abraham and Sarah having a son, and Abraham fell on his face and laughed. And I like that he fell down laughing, and he said, in his heart, Shall a child be born to a man, a hundred years old?

And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child? And Abraham proposed an alternative. He said to God, Or let Ishmael live before you. Say, I've got a son. Make the promises through him. But God said, no. Sarah, your wife, shall bear you a son.

And you'll call his name Isaac, and I'll establish an everlasting covenant with him. So God wanted it to be Sarah. Now, I think it's interesting. This is the chapter where we can also read the account that God changed Abraham's name. It had been... well, actually, let's go back and read it in verse 4. So, that's for me, behold, my covenant is with you.

You shall be the father of many nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram. Abram meant father. So his name meant father, which was interesting coincidence, because most of his life he was not a father. But now God says, that's not enough. Your name shall be Abraham, which means father of a multitude. So not just father, but father of many. For I've made you a father of many nations. I'll make you exceedingly fruitful, and make nations of you and kings come from you. But God did not stop with Abraham.

The mother of many nations also merited a name change. Let's look in verse 15. God said to Abraham, and as for Sarai, your wife... I say Sarai, I think that's how it's pronounced. That's the way it's spelled. But we shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her, and also give you a son by her, and bless her.

She shall be a mother of nations. Kings of people will come from her. I was curious, as I said, we know the difference of the names of Abram's name changed to Abraham. I checked my Hebrew lexicon to see what the difference meant there. And it turns out Sarai and Sarah are both derived from the same root word, which means chief or head person.

But the subtle change from Sarai to Sarah, Sarah means queen or princess. And I thought that was interesting. So not just a chief or head person, but a queen, a princess. And he said, you know, she'll be the mother of kings. A royal family would come from her.

And we know in a monarchy, most monarchies determine that the family line passes to the oldest male legitimate child. It doesn't go to an illegitimate child. And we've been hearing about that, of course, in Britain, because we know Prince Charles is next in line for the throne after the queen, and then his son William. And now we've learned that Kate is pregnant, and whatever child she has would be the next in line.

But in years past, there have been battles and wars fought when illegitimate children, children born to mistresses or whatever, wanted to claim the throne. But, you know, others fought against that. Now, is that the only reason that God said, no, it has to be Sarah? Because, you know, Hagar was a concubine? Well, I don't... I think there's something to that, but I don't think that God was being bound by man's law.

It's that he wanted Abraham and Sarah to be considered together. I think it's a classic embodiment of the way Jesus Christ described marriage. We don't have to turn there, but remember in Matthew 19, there was a question of whose wife someone would be in the kingdom, and, you know, and... No, it was a question about divorce. Sorry, I'm not turning there reading the Scripture, but Jesus Christ said, you know, God made them at the beginning male and female, and for this reason a man should leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh.

But it's not just the physical union, but it's the two shall become one. God intended marriage for a man and a woman to both form a new identity. Not, of course, that they stopped being individual people, and you still have your own identity, but something new was created when a man and woman come together.

And I think God looks at that, and deems that as something special. He blesses that union. And when we read through the chapters of Genesis that deal with Abraham and Sarah, you see God usually is addressing them both together as far as what's going to happen, as we just saw in Genesis 17. He changed both of them, their names, because they were going to have a son to whom the promise would come.

That reminds me of another scripture. We're nearby. We're going to go to Genesis, Chapter 5.

I put this in almost as an aside, but I thought it was intriguing. The first time it was pointed out to me was when I was in college. And many of you are old enough to remember that you well know how morals and things have changed through the years.

Probably 40 or 50 years ago, no woman getting married would have dreamed of not taking her husband's name. Nowadays, it's almost more common than not. But in Genesis, Chapter 5, someone had pointed this out to me in college, where it says, Now, the Old King James renders it a little bit differently than the New. In Genesis 5, in the Old King James, it says, Do any of you have the Old King James in front of you, where it says, I mentioned, in the New King James, it says, And the reason for the difference is, the word is Adam in Hebrew.

And that name can mean either mankind in general, or it can mean a proper name for Adam, the first created person. But for many people, for most of the years in the English language, they've taken this as an indication, endorsing the idea that the man and woman take on the same name, and that when they're married, if they have to take on the same name, at least it's the husband's name. It's not uncommon nowadays for them both to start hyphenating their name.

When we married, Sue never even considered it. She would become Sue Dunkel. They said, if we wanted to hyphenate, it could become Dunkel Ward, and we also do that, which can get a little bit cumbersome. We used to joke about that. I had some friends that I worked at summer camp with, a fellow whose parentage or his ancestry was Polish, and his last name was Paskowitz.

And he had a strong crush on a girl whose last name was Simkowiak. He said, boy, if we got married and hyphenated our names, my name would be Dave Paskowitz Simkowiak. Never considered that. Well, what I'm getting at, you know, you can debate the meaning of this particular scripture, whether it means the woman takes the husband's name.

That's sort of an aside point. But I think it's important to realize that when a husband and wife marry, they form a new identity. They become one, and God looks at them together. I think that's very important, and it's an important lesson for all of us. And that's the way I think we see it most of the time in the Church.

It's funny, last week, actually, I gave the sermon in the morning, it happens. And it was one of the rare occasions when George Grounds, who's the deacon there and always set up, he was there with his son but not his wife, Jan, because she was home sick. And I said, it's just hard to imagine coming here and only being one of them. And it's similar here, and now we have horrible one-burners. He stands up here to lead sons, and without Kitty there, it's like half a man.

That's not an end to the new thought. But it's, you know, you talk about your better half, and I hope most of you think of it that way. That, you know, you become a unit, your lives are together, and that's the way God intended it to be. And I think that's what Abraham and Sarah were. Now, it's interesting, I went through a lot of times discussing that, but now I want to shift gears a little bit, though, and still consider some of Sarah's individual traits.

Because, as I said, God said Abraham and Sarah as a role model. And they faced many difficult challenges, accomplished a lot of things. But if you'll turn to Genesis 13, I want to point out one challenge that Sarah and Abraham both did not have, and that is of dealing with poverty. They had rather the opposite. In Genesis 13, verse 2, and Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. They had a lot of money, had a lot of stuff. We go down to verse 5, says, Lot also, who went with Abram, had flocks and herds and tents.

Now the land was not able to support them, that they might dwell together, where their possessions were so great, they could not dwell together. And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen's of Lot's livestock. So this indicates they had herdsmen. Now, in their day, it was probably servants who were bound to them in some legal arrangement. It would be, we could have created today, though, to having many employees, people who work for you. You know, they both had what you could consider a large operation.

So Sarah had at least one personal servant, because we learned about Haebar a little bit later, and we'll talk about her later. But just think of Abram's business, or Abram's possessions, was like a fairly decent-sized business enterprise, with perhaps several employees. So you could ask the question, how likely is it that Sarah had nothing to do with that business?

Did she just sit on her tent all day and sit on a couch and watch Oprah and eat M&Ms? Probably not, because they didn't have cable TV yet. Not mention Oprah with some... I thought I'd get more chuckles on that one, but... Now, I don't find that believable, especially since Sarah's held up as an example for righteousness, then she couldn't have been lazy, and she probably wasn't incompetent. Now, we might wonder, what did she do?

And the Scripture doesn't tell us exactly. It certainly doesn't in Genesis. But I thought, is there a place in Scripture that would tell us what a woman who was competent and was a good example would be doing? And I thought of Proverbs 31. Let's go to Proverbs 31, and we'll continue what it says. Now, we're going to be coming back to Genesis, so if you want to stick a marker or a finger there, we're going to go back and forth a fair bit. But if we go to Proverbs 31, I thought, let's consider what it says about the virtuous woman with Sarah in the back of our mind as we read it.

Of course, the account begins in verse 10. So Proverbs 31 and verse 10 says, Who can find a virtuous woman? Or, the New King James says, a virtuous wife. Her worth is far above movies. Now, Sarah certainly fits that description.

She was very valuable. God insisted on her being the mother of Isaac. And, as we'll read later, kings and rulers wanted to have her in their household. So, she certainly had a high value. In verse 11 it says, The heart of her husband safely trusts her, so he will have no lack of gain. That's interesting. That means, you know, that the woman is virtuous, the husband trusts her with his stuff. He trusts her, he's not worried about losing, you know, having a financial loss because of her.

So, I'm guessing Sarah had access to the money, into the livestock, and all their source of wealth. Now, we can say, what does she do with it? Well, let's go on in verse 12. It says, She does him good and not evil all the days of her life. In verse 13, she seeks will and flex, and willingly works with her hands. That's interesting. Let's skip down a few verses, because in verse 19, it says, She stretches out her hands to the distaff, her hand holds the spindle. Those were devices back then for spinning thread and making cloth.

Apparently, that's what a woman of that day, who was a virtuous woman and worthwhile, spent time making cloth. Of course, they didn't have Walmart to go buy ready-made clothes, so they were making cloth and making clothing and things like that. Do we think Sarah might have been involved in that? I suspect maybe, and since they were wealthy, they had a lot of livestock. Just think of this, and this is my imagination on speculating here, so I'll admit that. Please don't go and say that I said I know this is what Sarah did. But I suspect she might have taken a hand in the livestock to do some selective breeding, to maybe pick out the sheep with the very best wool, and try to develop a higher quality, so that she could work with that, because she could.

Most people wouldn't have that option. And they might have had, trying to think, I know in Ohio, sometimes I see farms raising alpacas. I don't know if alpacas could live there, but they do those for the wool, and certain types of goats. So, I see that with Sarah maybe not just being a run-of-the-mill, okay, I'm going to work cloth, but maybe being involved with the livestock also, and generating the very best, and of course maybe trading to increase their wealth, not just to squander it. Now, they've said that's speculating, but why not?

She had access to the best, and she had time on her hands. I suspect she did put her talents to good use. Now, it also says that she brings in food from afar to provide for her household in verse 15. Now, here I'm speculating on the making cloth, but as far as food, we do know a little bit about that.

Let's go back to Genesis chapter 18. Interesting story here, and you might not have focused on this part of it, because admittedly it's not the most important part of the story, but it's worth noting. Genesis chapter 18 says, Then the eternal appeared to him, that is, to Abraham, by the terebin, trees, and mammary, as he was sitting in his tent in the heat of the day.

So he, that is, to Abraham, lifted up his eyes and looked. Behold, three men were standing by him. Now, we know from the context of the story that what looked like three men were actually the word, the one who would become Jesus Christ, and two angels. And Abraham apparently recognized them, and knew who they were, because it says, When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, bowed himself to the ground. And he said, My Lord, if I found favor in your sight, don't pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet. Rest yourselves under the tree, and I'll bring you a morsel of bread, that you may refresh your hearts, and that you may pass by him as much as you've come to your servant.

And they said, Do as you've said. Now, I know that I think this is some of the classic understatement that I know at least Jewish comedians are famous for. Abraham wasn't Jewish, but the Jews came from him. He said, Let me bring you a morsel of bread. That sounds like maybe a piece. And we'll see, the kind of meal he prepares for them was a lot more than just a morsel. But he said, He hurried into the tent to Sarah.

Notice he knew where she was, and, you know, he doesn't say he had to wake her up, or, you know, have her put on her shoes and clothes, or whatever. He hurried in and said, Quickly, make ready three measures of fine meal, and knead it and make cakes.

And then he ran to the herd, and took a tender and a good calf, and gave it to a young man, and he hastened to prepare it. So he took butter and milk in the calf that he'd prepared, and set it before them, that is, you know, God and the angels, and he stood by them under the tree as they ate. That's interesting. So, Abraham served as the waiter and the matrede. But it says, when he wanted the best food made for God himself visiting him, he had Sarah do the cooking.

Now, I'm not sure. This indicates that either Sarah normally made the cakes. Now, notice, Abraham didn't cook the calf himself. He gave it to a servant to prepare. So, you know, having servants prepare food for them wasn't out of the ordinary, but Sarah herself is the one that needed the cakes and made them. So, as I said, probably either that was her normal practice, or she was the best at it. But either way, she's the one that cooked for, you know, the Word, the Son of God, who came to them.

So, as I said, she was practiced. She knew how to cook. And it wasn't, you know, too good to do it when they were visitors.

Now, I want to go back to 4 Proverbs 31, but before we do that, there's another part of the story that I don't want to overlook. It's so important. It's worth spending a fair bit of time with. And they're writing their next verse. As they were eating, he said, where is Sarah, your wife? That's in verse 9. And Abraham said, well, she's here in the tent. And he said, I'll certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah, your wife shall have a summon. Sarah was listening in the tent door which was behind him. Now, it's interesting. Okay, where's Sarah? Well, she's right here. And Sarah was there listening. Now, I've heard some people characterize this thing. Oh, typical woman. She's snooping. She's eavesdropping. But I think there's another way to look at that, that doesn't put Sarah in such a bad light. I don't think she was necessarily eavesdropping. Let's look at another story in the New Testament of something similar. We'll go to Luke chapter 10. Luke 10 will begin in verse 38.

I think this might be a better characterization of what Sarah was doing. Now, this is when Jesus Christ, of course, is traveling with his disciples. And in verse 38 it says, It happened as they went that he entered a certain village, and a certain woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. So she invited him there as a guest. She had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to come and help me. But Jesus answered, and this is a famous quote, he said, Martha, Martha, you're worried about many things. One thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.

So Jesus is pointing out, it's like, okay, it's good to serve and all that, the hustle and bustle, but Mary's chosen something good. She's sitting here listening, and that's too important. You can do the dishes later. That's okay. So you've got the Son of God here teaching. Mary recognized that, and she was sitting right there listening, and he said that was the best thing. In my mind, that's exactly what Sarah was doing. She'd prepared the meal, but then she said, I'll let the servants do the dishes, or I'll do them later. I want to sit here and listen. She was doing what Mary did. That doesn't sound like eavesdropping or being a busybody. It sounds like choosing the right thing. And of course, after you read that, you say, if we ask ourselves, well, what would we do in such a situation? Well, after reading that, we'd say, well, I'd be sitting there listening. I want to be like Mary, not like Martha. And this isn't to say that Martha is bad. I can't help thinking. Whenever I read this account, I had a friend in college whose name was Martha, and I haven't met very many people by that name. And I had another friend, a good friend of mine, whenever he saw her, he'd always look at her and say, Martha, Martha. And I think she'd probably get tired of that. I'm sure other people did it. But, you know, as I said, we might say, well, of course, I'm going to be like Mary and not like Martha. But for myself, I have to stop and say, well, come on, Frank, would you really? My natural tendency is to want to be busy doing things. And that's why I say it was a lot easier for me to be a deacon than to be an elder, because being up moving and doing things just comes naturally. Sitting and listening doesn't come as naturally. So sometimes we have to force ourselves to choose what's important at that particular time. And as I said, being up and serving is not a bad thing, but we have to balance and choose the best of both.

Now, let's go back to Proverbs chapter 31, so we haven't finished all that we have there. Proverbs 31, and I'll say, I'd like to think that Sarah exemplified all the traits that we can read here. And I think she probably did several. There are some that we could discount. There's a scripture that says that the virtuous woman considers and buys a field. Well, Sarah, we know, never bought a field because she and Abraham were not allowed to own any of the land there in the Promised Land. They had to travel as pilgrims. So she didn't do that. But as I said, when it talks about handling the disc staff and the spindle, she probably did that. That makes sense to me. And perhaps sold the highest quality cloth or bought and traded with people in the land.

I want to pick up in verse 19. Yes, she stretches out of hands of the disc staff and spindle. One of my points there is also that she would not have been idle. And that's a good example for us. I'm feeling, as I said, Abraham didn't have to wonder where Sarah was. And, you know, was she sitting there doing nothing? So that's how he knew she could have her make the cakes? Or maybe it was more the case of, if you want something done, choose a busy person to ask to do it, because they'll get it done. And there, I look at the lesson for us. We want to be like this virtuous woman who's busy, engaged in worthwhile tasks. And there, I look at myself and say, hmm, you know, I try to keep busy and do worthwhile tasks, but I also probably spend more time sitting in front of the TV than is best for me. And there, again, a balance. You know, you have to have some recreation and some rest, or else you'll go crazy. But you want to have the right balance. Let's look at verse 23. Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land. Her husband is known, and he has a place among the elders. Now, I'm going to come back here quickly, so you might want to keep a hand in Proverbs 31, but I want to go back to Genesis 23. To note, was Abraham known in the land and respected among the elders? We can see a particular case where he knew that he was. Genesis 23, beginning in verse 3.

He says, The sons of Heth answered Abraham, saying, So Abraham was respected in the gates, and probably a lot of gates, because he traveled around. Now, of course, I purposely started in verse 3 rather than started at the beginning of the chapter to say, The reason Abraham needed to buy a place for burial is, this is the chapter that tells us Sarah had just reached the end of her life. But I think that's all the more important. I wanted to address that second, because the sons of Heth obviously had great respect for Abraham. They called him a mighty prince. But I wonder, well, first of all, I'd say, perhaps he wouldn't have been so respected if they said, Yeah, he's rich and all that, but boy, his wife is a real shrew, and she wears a penis in the family. Probably not. I suspect that the sons of Heth joined Abraham in grieving, because they respected Sarah too. Let's say if she was trading and made the best of cloth, perhaps she was well known, and they were saying, hey, we'll give you the best place, because we're sad that such a great woman has died among us. That's a little bit of speculation, but I think there's something to be said for that. I'm going to come right back here, so we'll keep a hand in Genesis, but if you want to look back at Proverbs 31, you can see I've got my Bible like this. Proverbs 31, verse 28, we saw that her husband is known in the gates. In verse 28, it says, her children rise up and call her blessed. Her husband also, and he praises her. So her children call her blessed, her husband praises her. We see here in Genesis 23, which I didn't read, but in verse 2, it says, Sarah died in Kurgoth Arba, which is in the land of Canaan, and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. He mourned and wrecked. Now, I tried to do some calculation, because she died at 127 years old. We don't know for sure how old they were when they got married, but in the late 20s, it was an unreasonable time to get married. I thought, they might have been married for as much as a hundred years or a little more. And it's interesting, when Sarah died, Abraham didn't go, well, I'm glad to have a break and be by myself. Now, he mourned and wrecked. As I said, they'd become one identity. And he was, he was, he mourned greatly at losing that other half of himself. You know, he called her blessed and praised. And if we look, I turned away from there, I wanted to look in Genesis chapter 24. How did her only son feel about her? Genesis 24, and verse, well, actually Genesis 24 is the account of when Abraham decides he needs to get a wife for Isaac.

It's interesting, Isaac, by this time, we guess, was about 37 years old, so it was about time he found a wife. And of course, the servant is sent back to get a wife from among Abraham's relatives, because they wanted to marry someone of the same ethnicity. And the servant found Rebecca and had that prayer, and God inspired her to draw water for the camel. It's a long one of my favorite stories, but I'm going to come to the end when she finally comes back. Because in verse 67, it says, Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent. He brought her to a very special place, Sarah's tent. And he took Rebecca, and she became his wife. He loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death. I see a couple of things there. One, Isaac is finally comforted, meaning he'd been in mourning, and it had been in public display. And who knows how long this lasted? You know, Rebecca didn't show up there overnight. There was a long story. So Isaac missed his mother. He mourned for her. Now, I've heard some people in offhand comments say, is that kind of weird that he took her into his mother's tent? Well, to me, it's the opposite. I think it was his way of showing his new wife the greatest respect that he could. To say, I'm going to give you something that was my mother's. Her respected place. And I thought, well, to me that was an example. I thought, there's no way really to put that in modern terms, but I thought of one case that I share something from my own life, and Sue's, because my mother died when I was relatively young. I was 22 when she passed. And my sister and I were going sorting her things out. And she had a special prized possession, a music box, that my uncle, her brother, had bought for her in Japan when he was over there in the service. And, you know, it was kind of unique. Nowadays, you can find things that look as nice pretty often, but this was special. She always kept it on her dresser. And so, you know, when we were going through her things, I said, I'm going to take that. And I decided right then, I'm going to give that to my wife. I had no idea who my wife was going to be at that time, and I didn't know it would be years later. But I put it in a box and put it away. And it was years and years past before I took it out and looked at it again. But I got it out before Sue and I's wedding, and I cleaned it up, because it had been in that box a long time. And on our wedding night, I said, I've got something special for you. And, you know, I gave it to her because that was my mother's, and something special. And, you know, Sue kind of teared up. And, you know, so when I read about Isaac taking Rebecca to his mother's tent, I see it as probably something similar to that. And she probably, I think, saw it as this mark of high regard that she was, you know, taking the place as the matron of the family now. And it also says Sarah was highly respected. He didn't just get rid of the tent or say, well, it doesn't matter where you go. Sarah's place was so important that that's where he wanted his wife to go.

A couple other things. Oh, I forgot. I thought I was done with Proverbs 31, but there's another scripture I wanted to read. One more, Proverbs 31. Read and begin in verse 29 as we wrap up what it says. It says here, talking about the virtuous woman, Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all. Charm is deceitful. Beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the eternal, she shall be praised. Give her the fruit of her hands and let her only works praise her indicates. Now, we know, and we're going to explore a little bit more later, about how much Sarah did fear God, and she had faith. I think she worshipped him and was obedient, and that's why she was held up there in Isaiah 51 as an example. But here, in Proverbs, it's saying, that's what's important, it's not your good looks. I think it's interesting that Sarah, though, had both. Sarah did obey God, and she was an example of being God-fearing, but she was also, what we could call in the modern vernacular, she was a real knockout. She was so good-looking, that Abraham was afraid people would kill him to get to her. Let's look back in Genesis 12.

Genesis 12, starting in verse 11. Here, of course, they've been traveling through the Promised Land, and there's a famine, so they go down to Egypt. Genesis 12, 11, it came to pass, when it was close to entering Egypt, that he, that is Abraham, said to Sarai his wife, Indeed, I know you're a woman of a beautiful countenance. Now, of course, any husband has to say that to his wife, but it wasn't just Abraham, if you look down to verse 14, so it was when Abraham came into Egypt that the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful. They looked at Sarai and said, wow, look at that! You know, she's, you know, I don't know, considering Egypt is famous for Cleopatra, and these women that are famous in history for being some of the most beautiful women ever, Sarai probably deserves to be right up there in that rank, as one of the most beautiful women ever. And, of course, the same thing would happen again in Genesis 20. But what I want to point out, though, is that that's not what Sarai is known for. Let's move to the New Testament, to 1 Peter, 1 Peter 3.

1 Peter 3, I want to read verse 6, because here Peter is citing Sarai as an example. And, in matter of fact, in 1 Peter, let's go ahead of verse 6. Let's look in verse 3. 1 Peter 3, verse 3, is addressing women. He says, Don't let your adorable man be nearly outward, arranging of the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel, but let it be the hidden person of the heart. So he's saying, don't worry about your outward looks. Not that you shouldn't take care of yourself, but he's saying what's inside is the most important. And he says in verse 5, In this manner, and former times, holy women who trusted in God also adorn themselves, meaning adoring themselves with their character, being submissive to their husband, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid of any terror. So Peter is citing Sarah as a woman who didn't, her primary trait wasn't her good looks, it was being, fearing God and doing good, and being submissive to her husband. So he said, if women do good, they'll be like Sarah. That was her legacy, even though she was perhaps one of the most beautiful women ever. I find that intriguing, that Sarah can be known for her character, rather than her beauty, even though her beauty was that astounding.

Now, what lessons do we learn from that? It's not like we have a choice of how we look anyways. But it crossed my mind, I guess, especially working with the teenagers in the summer camps and such, you see a lot of good-looking young girls, and sometimes good-looking young guys, who know they're good-looking, and sort of use that to their advantage. I've seen especially with teenage girls, where if they realize the effect they have on young boys, they can use that to get whatever they want. But that's not what we're advised to do. There's nothing wrong with being good-looking, but as Sarah, we should not get by on just good looks, but rather exercise the character. That's what matters the most. And it's interesting, there's no record that Sarah ever, like, undermined Abraham, or tried to take charge, or, you know, anything like that. So, as I said, we don't have any teenagers here for me to give that message to, but I think that'd be one of the best things to bring out of that example. It's fine to be good-looking, but don't rely on that. Do something else also.

Now, I want to change gears here. We've been looking at some of Sarah's traits in general.

But I want to narrow down now and talk about her religious faith. I began making the case that if Abraham was the father of the faithful, maybe we should call Sarah the mother of the faithful. Now, the question is, did she really exercise that much faith? You know, some people would say, nah, you know, she just did what she was told to do. She lived in a male-dominated society where the man told the woman what to do and they had to do it. Now, I would say, I don't agree with that.

And I think she would have had room to put up a fight against Abraham, especially the things that they did. It wasn't just everyday living. She went along and cooperated fully, and what some people might have seen crazy. I think, imagine for you women, if your husband walked in and said, Hey, honey, I've been talking to God, and he says we should pack up all our stuff and leave here and wander around homeless in a land, you know, hundreds of miles away. You know, they'd probably say, See you later, I'm staying here.

But, maybe Sarah didn't have to just take Abraham's word for it, and I could speculate here. Remember that other earlier story where she was listening in the tent door. Perhaps she was with an ear shot many of the times that God spoke to Abraham. God might have intended it to be that way. And if so, then, when it said Abraham, you know, listened to God and Abraham believed him, and it was accounted to him for righteousness, the same would apply for Sarah. If Sarah believed, it should be accounted to her for righteousness. But in any event, even if she didn't hear God directly, she must have believed that God had talked to Abraham, and she followed. One of the reasons I want to say that is because I think she would have had opportunities to not have to wander if she was just being forced to do it. Let's look in Genesis, Chapter 20.

Because when we look at the story of Abraham, probably we think his greatest lapse, or his greatest failing, was the time when he lied about Sarah being his wife, because he was afraid the men would kill him. And Sarah went along with that, and that's another issue. But it's interesting how Abraham had gone about it. In Genesis 20, it's a story of how during the land, the king of Bimillak sees Sarah and says, oh, I want to bring her into the harem. And later, God speaks to Abimillak and has her released. But Abimillak asked Abraham, what in the world were you thinking that you did this? But see, in verse 13, Abraham's explaining. So Abraham says, It came to pass when God caused me to wander from my father's house. But I said to her, that is to Sarah, This is your kindness that you should do for me. And every place, wherever we go, say, He's my brother. But Abraham presents this, saying, He went to Sarah and said, If you want to do me a favor, a kindness, this is what I want you to do. Let's back up and look in verse 12. We'll see that same sentiment expressed. In chapter 12, beginning in verse 12. The first time this happens, we're about to go into Egypt. And Abraham's talking to Sarah, and he says, and we read the verse before that, where he says, You're very beautiful. He says, Therefore, what happened in the Egyptian see you, that they'll say, Well, this is his wife, and they'll kill me, but they'll let you live. Please, say that you are my sister, that it may be well for me, for your sake, and I may live. Use the word, please. Now, that might seem like a small thing, but I've learned, you know, in earlier jobs, I've worked in customer service, answering phones, working at a sales calendar, and that simple word can mean a lot. And it's not usually used by people who just force their will on people, or just give orders and make them obey. So, Abraham, I think, at Sarah, didn't have that kind of a relationship. He asked her, please, and she believed and trusted in him. And we could think of that... Maybe imagine if things were different. Say she didn't believe and trust in him. Well, here was a great opportunity for her to get out of this. If he had dragged her out there and she didn't want to go, imagine Abraham says, well, if they find out you're my wife, they'll kill me. Well, she could have said, hey, I'm not his sister, I'm his wife, please kill him, so I don't have to wander around here. She didn't do that. She cooperated because she wanted to be one with Abraham. And in the other case, maybe she was taken into Pharaoh's household. Pharaoh's household was probably pretty good. She could have said, I want to stay here. I don't want to wander around and live in a tent anymore. Maybe she could have expressed that. Now, I'm speculating a little bit here, but what I want to point out is that I think Sarah was going along with Abraham because she believed in the promises God gave them. She wasn't being forced. I think she was exercising faith as well.

And, you know, it wouldn't have been easy for her. I guess look at my own personal life again to see what I think is a little bit of an example, because before Sue and I married, she lived her whole life in one town. She grew up in Florence, Kentucky, lived there, had a good relationship with her family, had friends. And then, of course, she married me and moved 100 miles away, which wasn't all that bad. But then a few years later, almost two years, well, I think about a year and a half or so ago, things were happening in the church. There was a little bit of trouble. A lot of ministers had left, and I got that phone call from the home office basically offering to hire us into the ministry. And Sue heard, you know, she heard half of the conversation, and before I even ended it, tears started coming out of her eyes. Because she thought, if we do this, we're going to have to pick up and move. We don't know where we're going to be. I might be a lot further from my family. It was tough, and it wasn't that she didn't want to serve. It's just, I don't think it's sexist to say that women like to have a settled lifestyle and be in their home, and them do, too. Imagine what it was like for Sarah when Abraham got a call from God that said, pack up all your stuff and go. She'd lived in Mesopotamia all her life, you know, 65 years. So, for her to say, okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to believe in this, I think she had to exercise faith the same way that Abraham did.

And before I move on, because I should mention, because I've been talking about the story about when she was taken, as though the power was completely hers. But I don't want to overlook the fact that when it came down to it, it was God that delivered both Abraham and Sarah from the predicament that they both got themselves into. And they told this half-truth, I think thinking that everyone would leave them alone, what they didn't expect is that the leader of the land would say, well, great, I'm going to take her for mine. And in both cases, when she was taken into Pharaoh's household, and when Abimelech took her, God intervened and saved them. And basically came and told the leader, hey, you can't have her, she belongs to him. And they chastised Abraham and had to sort things out. My point there is that God can deliver all of us from the problems we can get ourselves into. Sometimes he left us suffer a little bit. I imagine, what was Abraham thinking when they took Sarah away? And what was she thinking? And there I wonder, at the very worst, we can accuse her of making the same mistake that Abraham did. But I would also say she loved Abraham enough if she believed, okay, if I don't go along with the story, they're going to kill him. She was willing then to make the sacrifice of being separated from her lawful husband the rest of her life, rather than having killed in front of her. So even there, she was making a sacrifice. If we don't believe that, we could say at least she didn't have any greater of a sin or a shortcoming than Abraham did. And God forgave them both of that. Thankfully, God is merciful and He forgives us when we make mistakes.

As we saw, Sarah was designated by God that she would be the mother of the promised child. Let's put it in Galatians 4.

I still want to wrap up saying that I believe Sarah was a woman of great faith. We can see that in a couple of scriptures in the New Testament. Galatians 4 and verse 22, the apostle Paul makes an allegory between Sarah, the mother of Isaac, and Hagar, the mother of Ishmael. And he says, it's written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond woman, the other by a free woman. Though he who was of the bond woman was born according to the flesh, he of the free woman, through promise. These things are symbolic. So he makes this allegory, he's making the symbolism, but it's important to note that Sarah is the free woman. She had free will and exercised choice.

And that's where faith has to come in. If you don't have choices, then there's no exercise of faith. Sarah participated in this, and she did exercise faith, which we'll see if we go to Genesis, or not Genesis, Hebrews, chapter 11. It's made even more clear. Hebrews 11, and we'll read verse 11.

Hebrews 11, 11 says, By faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him faithful, who was promised. So Sarah was exercising faith. Abraham did also, but she exercised the faith for this to happen. And as I said, there's an account in Genesis 15 where God makes promises to Abraham, and it says, When Abraham believed it was accounted to him for righteousness, well, we read here that Sarah also believed.

So it must have been accounted to her for righteousness, and she was able to act on it. She got pregnant, carried the baby for nine months, gave birth. That's not an easy thing to do when you're young. It's certainly not easy to do when you're 90 years old. At least, I'm guessing. I don't have to do it at any time. And I'm very grateful for that, having watched it happen. But as I said, I think that accounts for why in Isaiah 51 God said, Look to the rock from which you were hewn.

Look to the hole of the pit you were dug, from which you were dug. Look to Abraham and to Sarah. And so, looking to them, we should believe what God says, and then act on it. Have it accounted to us for righteousness. I can mention this in the side. Some people said, Well, did Sarah really have that much faith? Because there's that story in Genesis 18 where they fixed the meal. And then God said, Hey, where's Sarah? Well, she's in the tent. She was listening. And I said, Well, I'm going to come back at the time of life, meaning in about nine months, and she'll have a son.

And it says, Sarah laughed within herself. I'm not going to read that. We've read it before. And God said, Well, why did she laugh? And she said, Well, I didn't laugh. And she was telling the truth. She didn't laugh out loud. It was in her mind. But God can read minds.

And he said, No, you did laugh. And nothing's too hard for God. Now, does that mean she didn't have faith? She didn't really believe him? I don't think not. Because also what we've also read. In this chapter before that, God had promised Abraham that he'd have a son. And as we read the scripture, it says, Abraham fell on his face laughing.

And in modern language, we say, He fell down laughing. So, He didn't just laugh within himself. Abraham fell down laughing. He said, What are you talking about? I'm 100 years old. I'm going to have a kid. And God said, Yes, you will. And we're going to name him Isaac, which means laughter. So, God enjoyed the joke. He thought it was amusing, too. He didn't say, Well, you have no faith.

Our liking it once again. I can do this more freely because Sue's not here, even though she knew I was going to tell some of these stories. The doctors had told us that we wouldn't be able to get pregnant. And so here she turned 40 years old, which isn't the same as being 90, but nowadays it's getting closer.

And she started having these symptoms. And we started saying, Hmm, your stomach's upset a lot in the morning. So, maybe we better go buy one of those tests. And she took it and had to stay. As she sat there looking at it and the blue line appeared, or whatever it was, she started laughing. She said, Are you kidding me now?

But it wasn't a lack of aid. I imagine Sarah thinking, Are you kidding now? And maybe we go through that sometimes. Have you ever prayed to God and said, God, I've got myself an amass. And I don't know how you're going to get me out of this, but I'm asking you to. And I don't think he looks at it and says, Well, you're, you know, there's no laughing matter. Sometimes you just have to laugh and say, I can't do this. But God, I'm going to ask you to.

Please, I don't know how you'll do it. I think God laughs at our situations, and He laughed then, probably as well. So looking back, what it said in Hebrews 11 indicates that having the faith to conceive and have Isaac might have been Sarah's greatest test of faith. But we know Abraham had one greater test. And you read about it, and I'm not going to go to that story, but the story is famous where God now tells Abraham, Okay, you have a son, take him over to that mountain and sacrifice him.

And Abraham, it says he got up the next morning and laughed. Now, it's interesting. We don't know for sure how old Isaac was when that happened. Now, there's been different speculation. And actually, some people came up to me last week when I mentioned this, because most people, I've said, speculate that Isaac was probably around a young teenager, maybe a little older. He was young, he was old enough to hike and even carry the wood when he went up to the mountain. So he wasn't, you know, bathed in an infant.

Somebody pointed out that they read, I guess, Josephus says he was 37 years old. And if that's the case, Josephus says that this happened after Sarah had died. I haven't heard too many people say they think that's true. I suspect that it was when he was probably in his teens or early twenties. And that makes me question, if Sarah wasn't dead, which, you know, I suspect she was still alive, did she know?

You know, God came to Abraham, it doesn't say Sarah was listening to 10th. I've often wondered, what did Sarah think about all this? You know, Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham fully believed that Isaac would be resurrected. It says that, you know, he counted God faithful to bring him back to life. So in Abraham's mind, Isaac was as good as sacrificed, but also as good as resurrected. So there I wonder, as I said, did he tell Sarah about it? I look at myself and I think, well, if I had to do something like that, and since I knew he'd be resurrected, I would wait. I tell Sue, hey, guess what happened while we were away?

No, but everything's fine. But either, you know, even so, if Sarah didn't know why they were leaving, say Isaac was pretty young, if she's anything like my wife, she'd say, you're going to take him what? You know, several days journey, you know, without me, that would be a bit of an act of faith. But if she did know, then she shared as much faith as Abraham did. And it's interesting to speculate, as I said, we have no way of knowing, and my guess is that she didn't know. But either way, you know, she was not a hindrance and maybe even participated in that.

So we've seen many things so far that show us, you know, Sarah was a good role model of righteousness. She did well. But we also see she wasn't without fault. She made mistakes. And we've already seen what was probably Abraham's greatest failing was when he feared for his life and lied about Sarah. But Sarah had another big mistake. Let's go to Genesis 16.

I don't think I've really painted a picture of Sarah as being perfect, which is good. I wanted it to paint her as a person like us who was flawed, but a person that we should strive to be like, and that she overcame most of her flaws.

But we don't want to whitewash some of her mistakes, and this one might have been her biggest. She had a lapse of faith about 10 years in to this project. Genesis 16, this is before the name change. Now, Sarah, Abraham's wife, had born no children, and she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar.

So Sarah, I said to Abram, well, female, the eternal has restrained me from bearing children. Please go into my maid. Perhaps I shall obtain children by her. Abraham heeded the voice of Sarai. So, I said, okay, that's what we've got to do. And I said earlier, Abraham had a lapse, and Sarah went along with it. Here, Sarah was the one that had the main failing, and Abraham went along with it. So we went into Hagar. And she took her maid, the Egyptian, gave her to her husband, Abram, to be his wife. So he took her as the second wife.

It wasn't committing fornication, per se, but we don't believe God intended men to have more than one wife. And after Abraham had dwelt, this was after they dwelt 10 years in the land of Canaan. So, remember, God had told him, go out to Canaan, I'm going to give you errors, you'll become a multitude.

They're saying, well, it hasn't happened yet, and maybe we need to find another way. They weren't patient enough. And he went into Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she'd conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes. In other words, Hagar looked at Sarah and thought, huh, up till now, we didn't know who the problem was with.

I'm guessing here, but now we know Abraham can have children. Sarah's the one that can't. And Hagar started looking down on Sarah. Maybe for a variety of reasons, but it might have been partly saying, hey, I can do something that you can't. Why should I be the maidservant and you'd be in charge? And so she started basically not treating Sarah properly. And Sarah, I came to Abram in verse 5 and said, My wrong be upon you.

I gave my maid into your embrace. And when she saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes. The Lord judged between you and me. I was curious about that passage of Scripture, because here in the New King James and the Old King James says it similarly, saying, My wrong be upon you. And several other translations say that basically Sarah came to Abram and said, I'm miserable or I'm suffering and it's your fault.

Now, I think in this Sarah was also, she'd forgotten whose idea this was in the first place. But Abraham stopped and said, hey, you know, he said, your maid is in your hand. She's still your maid. Do it to her as you please. So Sarah, I dealt harshly with her and Hagar fled from her presence. So Sarah had started this whole thing. Now she's harsh with Hagar and Hagar runs away. Now, I don't want to read through the whole story. We know that God sent an angel to Hagar to talk to her and tell her, no, you need to come back and we're going to sort this thing out.

And she did. They came back. Hagar had the son. And we don't have an account of what happened between Hagar and Sarah. But we know somehow they learned to live together. And I wonder about that. Did Sarah apologize or Hagar, did they both work it out? My guess is that there must have been some type of reconciliation. This was a godly household of people who feared God. They understood the need for repentance and change. So they must have worked this out. But in any event, however old they reconciled, it didn't remove the results of the sin. Hagar still had this different relationship with Abraham and now had a son.

And Ishmael was growing up there. And that's a lesson for all of us because now Sarah had to adjust and had to cope. And we know she did. We don't know exactly how. But we do know that we have similar circumstances in our lives. We sometimes sin and we know God will forgive us. But He doesn't always remove the result of the sin. Sometimes we have a physical reminder. In some cases, for some people, it is a child. Often it's an injury. We may do a sin and we injure ourselves and God forgives us, but He doesn't necessarily heal the injury that we do. Or we lose possessions and we're just out those possessions. God forgives us the sin, but we have to deal with the results.

And that's an important thing for us to remember. We can see Sarah recovered. She became the mother of the faithful, later gave birth to Isaac. Despite the sin and the reminder and having to cope with that, maybe it made her a stronger person. Maybe it prepared her to be a better mother than she would have been. The important lesson for us is whatever results we have of our sins, after we repent, we do have to continue.

We have to deal with them and do what's right. Now, that's one thing we can say about Sarah. She might have made a mistake, but doubting if or when God would fulfill His promises was not her normal pattern.

Throughout most of her life story, we see that she did believe God. She was faithful and trusting. And she was industrious and, you know, I believe exemplified many of those traits in Proverbs 31.

So, we've seen a lot from the life of Sarah. But, I thought of this as I was thinking about how to wrap this up, because we've already read about her death and being buried, so I can't wrap it up there. But, one thing you might have noticed is that I've jumped around a lot. I've been looking at themes and incidents rather than just starting at the beginning and reading through. And that's something that could be worthwhile because her life is worth reading from beginning to end. You know, her story starts in Genesis 12, runs through 23, and Sarah's or Abraham's end goes a few more chapters. But, if you're looking for something to give reading to and study, that's not a bad one. It's worth reading about, reading those chapters without just focusing on Abraham. But, think about what was Sarah's role and give that thought. And, as you do, keep in mind that scripture that I read from Isaiah. I'd like to end by reading it one more time, and you don't have to turn there. But, God said, listen, you who follow after righteousness, you who seek the eternal, look to the rocks from which you were human. Look to the hole of the pit from which you were dug. Look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who bore you. We can find a good example in Sarah, I believe, mother of the faithful.