Faithbook #3

As we continue our study of Faith’s Hall of Fame from Hebrews 11, today we are looking at the incredible faith of a woman named Sarah. As she believed the promise of God, may we all follow her Godly example.

Transcript

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Well good Friday everyone. This is Randy Helms. I want to welcome you to the Old Pastor New Fire Podcast Speaking of Old. Someone described being old as a person being worth a fortune. They said old folks are worth a fortune, silver in their hair, gold in their teeth, stones in their kidneys, lead in their feet, and gas in their stomachs. All of you old folks today that are tuning into the podcast, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Somebody in their old age said I've become a lot more sociable with the passing of years. Some might even call me a frivolous old gal. She said I'm seeing five gentlemen as soon as I wake up. Will Power helps me get out of bed and then I go see John. Then Charlie Horse comes along and when he is here he takes a lot of my time and attention. When he leaves, Arthur Rydus shows up and stays the rest of the day. He doesn't like to stay in one place very long, so he takes me from joint to joint and after such a busy day. I'm really tired and glad to go to bed with Ben Gay. What a life. Well, as I said, I welcome all of you. I welcome our new cities that have joined us this past week. Listeners in Jonesboro, Tennessee, Johnson City, Tennessee, Greensboro, North Carolina, Export, Pennsylvania, Frankfurt, Germany. Oh, I'm so glad to have all of you, and I want to thank those of you that have clicked on that support button and are making it possible to get this podcast out to over forty-four cities and two countries now. And if you're able, we would also appreciate your monthly support by just clicking on that. Well, I hope you've got your Bible. Maybe if you're driving or traveling and you can't look at it right now, I'm going to read a lot of scripture today. We're in Hebrews eleven. I call it Faith Book, God's Faith Chapter, the Faith Hall of Fame. So far we've looked at two men that lived by faith, uh and Enoch. The next one in your Bible there would be Noah. But we've already covered a couple of men. I'm going to skip ahead and pick up a lady right now that lived by faith, and we'll come back and do Noah, Abraham a little bit later on. But today I want us to look at Sarah. Hebrews eleven. Go down to verse eleven. It 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 had promised. She had faith. She believed God was going to give her that child. Therefore from one man and him as good as dead, her husband was old too, were born as many as the stars of the sky and the multitude, innumerable as the sand, which is by the seashore. Now I want us to go back and look at the story of Sarah. There we see her living by faith, but let's look at the actual account of her life. Go back to Genesis fifteen. Now you may remember that Abraham and Sarah had no children, and yet there was a great desire in their hearts to have a child. Genesis fifteen, look in verse two. But Abram said, Lord, God, what will you give me seeing I go childless? God made a promise to him that they would have a child. In verse four it says, Behold the word of the Lord came to him, saying, This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir. In verse five, then he brought him outside and said, Look now toward heaven, count the stars if you're able to number them. And he said to him, So shall your descendants be. But in the next chapter, chapter sixteen, Sarah realized she's getting some age on her. She gets tired of waiting for a child. So she decides to take matters in her own hands. And let me tell you, friends, any time you do that you're heading straight for trouble. Look in chapter sixteen, beginning in verse one. Now Sarah, Abram's wife, had borne him no children, and she had an Egyptian maid servant whose name was Hagar. So Sarah said to Abram, See now the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please go into my maid. Perhaps I shall obtain children by her. And Abram heeded the voice of Sarah. Then Sarah, Abram's wife, took Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan. So he went into Hagar and she conceived, and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes. Let me tell you, things always go wrong whenever we decide God can't keep his word, and we have to do for him what we don't have faith to believe he can do. So Hagar conceived, and she chided Sarah because Sarah couldn't have any children, and Sarah got tired of being made fun of. She became very jealous of Hagar. Sarah dealt harshly with her, and so Hagar ran away. In doing so she was violating a law which forbid a slave woman from leaving the services of her master. God sent an angel out there in the wilderness to Hagar. The angel told her to go back to Sarah. Well she obeyed and returned, a beautiful picture of submissiveness. The angel also told her that she was going to have a son. Look in chapter sixteen now, verse eleven. And the angel of the Lord said to her, Behold you are with child. The angel's talking to Hagar, the maid, and you shall bear a son, you shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man. His hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against him, and he shall dwell in the presence of all of his brethren. Wow. Now I want you to notice she went back, and when Abraham was eighty six years old, Sarah's maid Hagar had Ishmael. Now look in chapter fifteen. Let's start reading in verse number one. When Abram was ninety nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am almighty God, walk before me and be blameless, and I will make my covenant between me and you and will multiply you exceedingly. Then Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold my covenant is with you. You shall be a father of many nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be called Abraham, for I've made you a father of many nations. Look down in verse fifteen. Then God said to Abraham, As for Sarah your wife, you shall not call her name Sarah SARAI, but Sarah SARAH shall be her name. And I will bless her and also give you a son by her. Then I'll bless her, and she'll be a mother of nations, kings of people shall be from her. And Abraham fell on his face and laughed. He said in his heart, Shall a boy shall a child be born to a man who's a hundred years old, and shall Sarah, who's ninety years old, bear a child? And Abraham said to God all that Ishmael might live before you. God said no. Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful and multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I'll make him a great nation, but my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year. Then he finished talking with him, and God went up from Abram. Now Sarah means queen, which explains why God went on to say in the next verse, she shall be a mother of nations, kings of people shall come from her. Now go over to chapter eighteen. Let's look at verses one through ten to start with. Then the Lord appeared to him by the Terabh trees of Mamre as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day. So he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold three men were standing by him, and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and he bowed himself to the ground and said, My Lord, if I have now found favour in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Please let a water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree, and I'll bring a morsel of bread that you may refresh your hearts. After that you may pass by inasmuch as you have come to your servant. They said, Do as you have said. So Abraham hurried into the tent where Sarah was, and said, Quickly, make ready three measures of fine meal needed and make cakes, and Abraham ran to the herd, took a tender good calf, gave it to a young man, he hastened to prepare it. So he took butter and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and set it before them, and he stood by them under the tree as they ate. Then they said to him, Where is Sarah your wife? He said, She's here in the tent. He said, I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son. Now this is so funny. Sarah was listening in the tent door which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age. Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself when she heard that. She said, After I have grown old shall I have pleasure, my Lord being old also? The Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I surely bear a child since I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. But Sarah denied it, say, I did not laugh, for she was afraid. Well, all right. Let me just ask you something. Do you have a problem tonight? Do you have a problem this afternoon? Well you need to quit calling everybody and complaining about how bad things are. Get off Facebook, quit complaining, quit pouting and panicking about how you're going to get out of this hole you've gotten yourself into. You just need to get alone with God, open your Bible and start reading until a promise jumps off that page and burns into your heart. Claim that promise no matter what. Why chapter nineteen we see the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah Look in chapter twenty, verse number one. And Abraham journeyed from there to the south and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur and stayed in Jurar Chapter twenty verse one. Boy she was such a pu beautiful lady. Men were still fighting over her when she was in her eighties. She was a gorgeous geriatric. And ladies, if that wasn't enough, she was even able to travel well. How many of you look your best after spending days in a car traveling on your family vacation? How many of you would be willing to enter the Miss America pageant after traveling cross country with a car load of kids in a car where the air conditioner doesn't work? Well, Sarah traveled through the dusty deserts of Egypt under a scorching sun for months and was more beautiful when she got there than she was when she left. As a matter of fact, it caught Abraham off guard. He says, Wow, you're breathtaking, you're so beautiful. We're gonna have to lie and tell everybody you're my sister, or they're gonna kill me just to get you. Now look in chapter twenty one verse one And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had spoken. For Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore to him Isaac. Then Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Now Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him, and Sarah said, God has made me laugh, and all who hear will laugh with me. She also said, Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? I have borne him a son in his old age. Now in verse eight we see Hagar the maid and Ishmael her son, they leave. Verse eight, so the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the same day that Isaac was weaned, and we're going to get into the departure of Hagar and Ishmael. Now I want you mothers to imagine something. What if you went to the doctor and he told you that you're gonna you're gonna have a baby, and you give birth to that baby twenty five years later. I know what some of you are thinking, boy, nine months seems like twenty five years, Randy. Well in the case of Abraham and Sarah, God had told them they were gonna have a baby. And yet it was twenty five years later when she finally delivered that baby. Furthermore, God gave Sarah a heavenly ultrasound, and told her it was going to be a baby boy twenty four years before she was pregnant. For twenty five years Abraham and Sarah tried to have a child, prayed for a child, dreamed about a child, waited for a child. I can imagine every time they came to a Walgreens they stopped and bought a home pregnancy test to see if she was pregnant. Finally one day after twenty four plus years, she came running out of that tent shouting, Abe honey, it's blue, it's blue. I'm pregnant. Boy, I'd love to have been there when that baby boy was born. I can hear Abraham while Sarah's in labor. Breathe deep, Sarah, breathe deep. Hold it, honey, hallelujah. What a beautiful picture that must have been. A one hundred year old father and a ninety year old mother with a miracle baby cuddled in their arms. Now you know the birth of Isaac is in many ways a picture of the miracle birth that we receive, the new birth whenever we get saved. Well, the birth of Isaac was a miracle. And I'm telling you our new birth, born again, our salvation is a miracle. Paul in writing to the church at Rome tells us in Romans four nineteen, and being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead when he was a hundred years old, neither the deadness of Sarah's womb. See, Abraham's body was dead. He was past the ability to produce seed. She was past the ability of producing an egg and carrying a child. This was a miracle. Folks, our new birth is a miracle. There's absolutely nothing we can do ourselves to make it happen. And if God had not intervened, there would be no birth. The Bible says we were dead in our trespasses and sins, but God, who is rich in mercy, gave us life. But God I love those two words, but God. He intervened and a miracle birth took place. Can you just imagine the excitement around Abraham and Sarah's house? They laughed and named him Laughter, Isaac. When a person is born again, it's a time of happiness and rejoicing. The Bible says there's joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents. Isaac was circumcised when he was eight days old. Eight in your Bible means new beginnings. He was being set apart and dedicated. And that's what our baptism services are. We're setting that person apart, new life, new birth, bearing the old, resurrecting the new to walk in newness of life, bearing the old sins, coming alive in Christ Jesus. By the way, when you get saved, the new birth, you're still going to have problems in your life. Don't let anybody tell you it's always going to be a bed of roses. There are some preachers out there preaching heresy and false doctrine that tell you if you're saved and you have problems in your life, it means that you're out of the will of God, that you don't have enough faith. No, the Bible says it rains on the just and the unjust. Just because you have problems in your life does not mean that there's sin in your life. Don't you think she faced the same kind of hurts and heartaches that you face? Don't you think that Sarah faced sickness and suffering just like you faced? Don't you think that she was fearful of the unknown? Don't you think that not being able to have a child when it was seen as a mark of God's divine judgment and disfavor, that broke her heart? Don't you think that she and Abraham had their fusses and their fights those times when you could hear them at the other end of the camp? When Abraham gave her an ultimatum and then slammed the door of the tent and went to sleep somewhere else? Don't you think his affair with Hagar ripped Sarah up inside? What about later on when she thought she was going to lose her only child just because her husband said he'd heard the voice of God and was to take that child, Isaac, up to the mountain and sacrifice him as an offering to the Lord? Can you imagine what she was feeling? Do you think she faced the same kind of things we face today? Sure she did. How did she make it through all those trials? How did she make it through those temptations? I'll tell you, she had placed her faith in God, and it was his faithfulness that saw her through all of those tough times and a thousand others that we don't even know about. Sarah simply received the truth that you and I read about in 1 Corinthians 10 13, where the Bible says no temptation. That means no test, no trial, no tough time has overtaken you, except such as is common to man. But God is faithful. Did you hear that? God is faithful, but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able. But with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it. Now there's something very important you need to understand. Ishmael, Hagar's child, became the father of the Ishmaelites. They fought the descendants of Isaac, Sarah's child. His descendants, the children of Israel, the Jewish people. So Ishmael's descendants fought Sarah's descendants. And from the Ishmaelites came. The Arabs. From the Arabs came a man named Muhammad who had a series of perverted demonic dreams that developed into the evil religion that you and I know today as Islam. And so all of the heartache and all of the bloodshed and all of the violence that you and I see and read about and experience today from the followers of Mohammed can be traced back to a woman by the name of Sarah who thought she knew better than God Almighty. She tried to help God out and got the world into a whole lot of trouble. How many of you know that when you try to help God out, you'll end up messing up everything? So here's the point. When you get to where you don't trust God, when you try to help God out, when you get ahead of God you get an Ishmael, a wild man. But when you wait on the Lord, when you trust in the Lord you get an Isaac, the son of the promise. It's not unusual for you to have to wait on the Lord. It's not unusual for God to be silent. As a matter of fact, God's been silent far more than he has spoken. John Phillips said God's silences are as eloquent as his sayings. God speaks, and then he waits for faith to operate. The sad fact about this story is instead of faith triumphing, the flesh triumphed. Mistrusting God led to a great mistake. Charles Spurgeon said, When you can't and I love this, when you can't trace God's hand, you can always trust his heart. That's ultimately what Sarah did. Oh to be sure, she messed up just like we all do. But ultimately, finally, completely she placed her trust in the promise of God. God fulfilled that promise by giving her that son Isaac when she was ninety years old. That's why we read in Hebrews eleven eleven, she judged him faithful who had promised. I read about a young man that was drafted into the army. Shortly after that he wrote his mother the following letter. Dear mom, you know they drafted me into this man's army much against my wishes. They took away my name and gave me a number. They gave me number two hundred ninety eight. And ever since I've been in this man's army, we haven't done anything but march. We march all morning, we march to chow, we march all afternoon, by nighttime I'm so exhausted I can't even sleep. The only thing that kept me going was the idea that when Sunday came I'd get to rest a little bit. But on Saturday the sergeant informed us we'd have to get up two hours earlier on Sunday and make preparation to march to church. We marched to church and sat down. I was just getting ready to take me a little nap when some character got up down front with a songbook in his hand. He said number two hundred ninety eight, are you weak and are you weary? Are you sore and heavy laden? Mom, I stood up and said, I'm number two hundred ninety eight and you're mighty right I am, and I want to say that since I've been in this man's army, you're the first person that has cared enough to ask me how I've been feeling about it. You know what, mother? I've been in the brig ever since. There may be some listening today. You're weary and heavy laden from the recent, present experiences of your life. Your heart is heavy and you're hurting. I think of Hagar out there in the wilderness, but God came and spoke to her, told her to fear not. Genesis twenty one nineteen God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water and she went and filled the bottle with water and gave that child water to drink. God took care of them in the wilderness. But to find yourself one day kicked out of house and home, hardly anything to your name, that can knock the props out from under anybody's world. It could be somebody listening today, just like Hagar. You found yourself slammed to the mat by something you've experienced. It may be you were the target of somebody's resentment and rage or something else. Whatever. There has been a devastating experience. There are those things that devastate us. Such experiences can leave you with a broken heart. Your water bottle is empty today. One day when you get a chance before we close, you ought to sit down and just begin to dig through and discover all of the promises in the Word of God. Let me give you just a few. Hebrews thirteen five, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Romans eight twenty eight, and we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, who are the called according to his purpose. John six thirty seven All that the Father gives me will come to him, and the one who comes to me I will by no means cast out. Jeremiah thirty one thirty four, I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more. Philippians four thirteen, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Second Corinthians twelve nine, my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Wow. You read those promises, you receive those promises, and even when you can't see God moving, when you can't hear God talking, when you don't understand what's going on or why, when things don't make sense, you take God at His Word and you trust the heart of God because even when we are not, God is always faithful. In closing, Reverend EJ Rowlings had often preached on God's love and his presence in the time of trial, and had often reminded his congregations that God's grace was sufficient for all of the circumstances of life, and that there was the assurance that God would never leave them nor forsake them. But there came a time when he found himself being buffeted, tossed to and fro on the waves of despair. He found himself asking the questions, and it seemed there was no one there to answer them. He began to ask, God, why is this happening to me? He even began to wonder, God, do you even really care? And it was in the midst of this experience, when things looked the darkest, when he was feeling forsaken by both God and man, he received a letter. It may have had a US stamp and postmark, but to the preacher to Rawlings, it was sent directly from heaven. The letter was from a preacher friend of his, Reverend AP Guthrie. Guthrie's letter informed him that he had heard of his circumstances, he had been praying for him, but he had also felt led to write him and remind him that though things look hopeless, though he might feel alone and forsaken and surrounded by shadows of doubt and despair, just to remember that quote, standing somewhere in the shadows, you'll find Jesus. The letter was the word from God that Rowlings needed, and soon after that he wrote these words Are there crosses too heavy to carry and burdens too heavy to bear? Are there heartaches and tears and anguish? No one seems to care. Standing somewhere in the shadows you'll find Jesus. He's the friend who always cares and understands. Standing somewhere in the shadows you will find him, and you will know him by the nail prints in his hands. You may be listening to this podcast today with a broken heart because of things that have happened to you and what you're going through. But here's a great truth for you to draw from God is near. Just say that out loud with me wherever you are. God is near. Yes, friends, standing somewhere in the shadows, you will find Jesus. God bless you.