Sarah’s response was less than favorable to God’s restatement of the promise of a child. This devotional reading examines how Sarah’s response to the proclamation compared to Abraham’s.
Nuggets
- Sarah shouldn’t have been in the tent.
- Sarah shouldn’t have laughed at the promise.
- Sarah not only laughed, but she also denied that she laughed.
Sarah played an important role in the covenant between God and Abraham. She was the mother of the promised child.
Sometimes, we don’t think about how much it probably was Sarah’s covenant, also. Part of that reason is because God never really talks to her.
Even when God came to talk with Abraham in Genesis 18, Sarah didn’t perform the normal hospitality duties of the wife. When God finally says three words to Sarah, they were a mild rebuke.
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Devotions in the Abraham the Patriarch series
Hiding in the Tent
“‘Where is Sarah, your wife?’ the visitors asked. ‘She’s inside the tent,’ Abraham replied” (Gen. 18: 9 NLT)
Sarah shouldn’t have been in the tent.
I don’t know enough about hospitality practices in Abraham’s time. When I googled it, it said that Sarah would have been expected to welcome and serve guests.
So, why was she eavesdropping in the tent?
If we look at the three Visitors as strangers, we might think it off that the One would ask where Sarah was. Wouldn’t a total stranger who was benefiting from your hospitality ask if all your family was well? Of course, he would ask after the wife.
Same may think it was strange when we know it was God asking.
Yes, God is all knowing and all-seeing. But He isn’t a dictator. He asks us to join in the conversation. He allows us to truly converse with Him.
God knows me well enough to know that talking it through clarifies things for me. Who better to talk it through with than the One in control?
This shows that God was approaching Abraham as a friend. He didn’t have to stop there that day. He didn’t have to answer the questions Abraham asked when He was leaving.
God came to visit His friend Abraham — just as He is our friend.
What? Did you think Jesus was the only One Who is our friend? God and Jesus are both our friends.
- “Inside the Tent of Meeting, the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Afterward Moses would return to the camp, but the young man who assisted him, Joshua son of Nun, would remain behind in the Tent of Meeting” (Ex. 33: 11 NLT).
- “I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me” (Jn. 15: 15 NLT).
We know that God wants to have an intimate relationship with us.
God knew Sarah better than she knew Him. He knew she was going to doubt His promise. He knew her faith was weaker.
God used Sarah anyway.
A Timeline to Fulfill the Promise
“‘Then one of them said, ‘I will return to you about this time next year, and your wife, Sarah, will have a son!’ Sarah was listening to this conversation from the tent. Abraham and Sarah were both very old by this time, and Sarah was long past the age of having children. So she laughed silently to herself and said, ‘How could a worn-out woman like me enjoy such pleasure, especially when my master — my husband — is also so old?’” (Gen. 18: 10-12 NLT)
Sarah shouldn’t have laughed at the promise.
This isn’t the first time God told Abraham that Sarah was going to give him a son. “Then the Lord said to him, “No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own who will be your heir” (Gen. 15: 4 NLT).
This was the first time God out it on the calendar.
Why does God tell us when some things are going to happen and other times not? Either way, He is testing our faith.
Why does God tell us that He will answer our prayers in some impossible way? So that, when it happens in just that way, we can say that it was only God Who did it and did it the way He promised.
When God doesn’t tell us how or when He will answer our prayers, He is expecting us to see His hand in it when it does happen.
At first, we think we can’t come down hard on Sarah for laughing. That was Abraham’s response, too. “Then Abraham bowed down to the ground, but he laughed to himself in disbelief” (Gen. 17: 17 NLT).
Well, yes, we can. Abraham believed when he was called on it. Sarah denied.
Leale talked about our faith being paralyzed by fear. Abraham wasn’t, but Sarah was. Compare both of their responses.
- “So Abraham said to God, ‘May Ishmael live under your special blessing!’” (Gen. 17: 18 NLT).
- “Sarah was afraid, so she denied it, saying, ‘I didn’t laugh.’ But the Lord said, ‘No, you did laugh’” (Gen. 18: 15 NLT).
Resource
Yes, Abraham laughed because he knew it was impossible, so he offered Ishmael as a second choice. I don’t think that Abraham thought the rest of the covenant couldn’t happen.
As Leale said, Abraham’s paralyzation was momentary. Sarah’s was a bit longer.
I think God expects us to question Him a little — through faith — when He promises to do the impossible. If we didn’t, we may be telling Him that we thought it was possible naturally.
How can we be worshiping the God of the Impossible if we just go, “Oh, okay,” when he says he is going to have old people become parents, or a virgin become a mother — or untested people like us — regardless of our age — do whatever He is calling us to do?
We have to acknowledge that something is happening only because God is powerful enough to make it happen. “I have no idea how You are going to pull this off, but then, You know a lot more than I do and can do anything You want.”
A Sin Leading to Another Sin — Once Again
“Then the Lord said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh? Why did she say, “Can an old woman like me have a baby?” Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return about this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.’ Sarah was afraid, so she denied it, saying, ‘I didn’t laugh.’ But the Lord said, ‘No, you did laugh’” (Gen. 18: 13-15 NLT)
Sarah not only laughed, but she also denied that she laughed.
Maybe it was a knee-jerk reaction. Probably not.
In essence, Sarah was calling God a liar because He was speaking the truth. God knows what is on our minds, so we can’t hide anything from Him.
Maybe worse yet, Sarah may not have thought the promise would really come to fruition. Then, here sits God says, “Hey, it’s now on the calendar. There is no way out.”
Aren’t there times that we think even the promise we asked for is nice and shiny – until it is on the calendar. We are forced to think about all the diapers we will have to change, runny noses we will have to wipe, terrible two tantrums to teenage rebellion that the only way we are going to get through is to just deal.
Cue incredulity. All the sudden it doesn’t look. So shiny. How do we do a 180o and still save face?
That may have been a part of Sarah’s response.
We can’t forget the fact that Abraham and Sarah have been waiting so long. It will be 25 years since God first told Abraham that he would have descendants.
1885 BC — Abram called at age 75 (Gen. 12: 1-3)
1875 BC — God promises an 85-year-old Abram that he will have a son (Gen. 15)
1861 BC — God reestablished His covenant with Abram (Gen. 17)
1860 BC — Isaac born (Genesis 35: 28)
Resource
That’s a long time.
Aren’t there times when we want some kind of confirmation that God is going to keep His promise regardless of how long it is taking and how impossible it is? Oh, yeah.
While I was writing this, Honest by Leanne Crawford came on. It seemed to fit here.
Related Links
Leanna Crawford
Look at God’s response. “Yes, you did” lie. That was pretty mild.
I think what this probably tells us is that Sarah’s faith wasn’t as rock solid as Abraham’s, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have faith.
It was more than that, though, wasn’t it? We talked about Leale saying part of Abraham’s response was adoration and joy. The Homilist said Sarah’s response was incredulity.
Resources
In other words, Abraham’s response was worship. Sarah’s was a sin.
Sarah may have thought she was being sensible in not betting the bank on an impossible promise. God doesn’t want to hear that. He wants obedient acceptance.
This is another instance of one sin leading to another. We have to be careful.
Making the Connections #1
Let’s take a minute to check the score card. Dod’s told us what to look at.
- Sarah was impulsive in yielding her wifely rights in her plan to get a son.
- She was even seemingly generous in her conduct towards Hagar – at first.
- She couldn’t follow through when she got the result she wanted.
- Sarah isn’t fulfilling her duties as hostess.
- She thought she knew more than God.
- She didn’t truly believe in God’s promise.
Yeah. I doubt we would call Srah blameless. God still used Sarah to be mom to Isaac and great, great … great grammy to Jesus.
But then, we may see ourselves in Sarah. Dods thought so. He wrote, “Does not our faith, like Sarah’s, vary in proportion as the promise to be believed is unpractical?”
Resource
Guilty. We like the idea of the promise. We like the reward of the promise.
We don’t like the work of the promise. We don’t like what we think we have to give up.
Making the Connections #2
“I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me” (Jn. 15: 15 NLT)
Okay, we have to chase a rabbit for a second. I have never heard John 15: 15 translated as slaves before. Usually, it is translated as servants.
I really have problems with Jesus calling the Apostles slaves. They were students in my book. I thought that was what disciple meant.
“No longer do I call you avadim [slaves], because the eved [slave] does not have da’as [wisdom] of what his Adon [Master] is doing. But you I have called chaverim [friends], because all things which I heard from HaAv [Father] of me, of all these things I gave you da’as. [SHEMOT 33:11]” Jn. 15: 15 OJB).
We have to dig further. The Jewish Virtual Library had a large explanation. It reads,
“The Hebrew term for slave, ‘eved (pl. ‘avadim), is a direct derivation from the verb ʿbd, ‘to work’; thus, the slave’ is only a worker or servant. The eved differs from the hired worker (sakhir) in three respects: he receives no wages for his work; he is a member of his master’s household (cf. Gen. 24:2; Lev. 22:11 …); and his master exercises patria potestas over him; for example, the master may choose a wife for the slave and retains ownership of her (Ex. 21:4) and he has proprietary rights in him ….”
Resource
Talk about confusion. It says an eved is a slave who is only a servant, but it differs from the hired worker.
Let’s pull out the Scripture verses first.
- “One day Abraham said to his oldest servant [eved zekan – old slave], the man in charge of his household, “Take an oath by putting your hand under my thigh” (Gen. 24: 2 NLT).
- “However, if the priest buys a slave [nefesh with his kesef – soul with his money] for himself, the slave may eat from the sacred offerings. And if his slaves have children, they also may share his food” (Lev. 22: 11 NLT).
- “If his master gave him [Hebrew slave who was a thief or a pauper – eved Ivri] a wife while he was a slave and they had sons or daughters, then only the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master” (Ex. 21: 4 NLT).
- “Inside the Tent of Meeting, the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Afterward Moses would return to the camp, but the young man who assisted him, Joshua son of Nun, would remain behind in the Tent of Meeting” (Ex. 33: 11 NLT).
Okay, At least it got the friend part right. Let’s summarize the rest of what the Jewish Virtual Library said.
- Only Hebrews who had stolen something and was unable to make restitution could be forced to be a slave.
- The only other way a Hebrew could become a slave is voluntarily giving himself into bondage, usually to satisfy debts.
- Slaves who were Hebrew were to be freed in the Year of Jubilee (the seventh year), but this wasn’t implemented into practice.
- There was to be no difference between a paupers who had been redeemed by a stranger and a hired laborer (Lev. 25: 4- 53).
When reading the article, it led me to Exodus 21. 8. It didn’t really inform what we were looking for, but I saw one interesting tidbit. In the Orthodox Jewish Bible, it defined redeemed as, “… [i.e., let her freedom be purchased] …” (Ex. 21: 8 OJB).
We are redeemed from the slavery of sin.
Well, on second thought, that is the only thing that I read that would make the term slave logical when applied to the Apostles.
Doesn’t that just turn things around! I have always considered the students – Apostles – were graduating and would be taking over the ministry.
No, it didn’t have anything about Jesus passing the ministry baton to His followers.
It had to do with their spiritual condition. They were no longer slaves to sin, so they could be the Messiah’s friends.
How Do We Apply This?
- Trust God even when it stretches what we know is possible.
- Laugh with joy instead of disbelief.
- Wait for God’s fullness of time to perform His promise.
Resources
Father God. So many times, we react wrong when You make or remake a promise to us. We either doubt You or we doubt Your word. Forgive us, Lord. Grow our faith until we react in obedient acceptance. Amen.
What do you think?
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