“Bible promises: Sarah’s promise”
Genesis 18:14
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
It was a promise he wanted to keep.
For two decades, Alan Naiman worked for the Department of Health and Social Services in the state of Washington. When his salary of $67,000 or so dollars wasn’t quite enough, he picked up an odd job or two, sometimes working as many as three different jobs at the same time!
And he was frugal. When his tennis shoes got a hole in them, he patched them up with his handy roll of duct tape. He bought his clothes at Costco, took his friends out to eat at cheap fast food restaurants, shopped at the deli at closing time to get the best prices, and was thrilled when he was finally eligible for senior discounts. His car was nice enough, but not a lot to be proud of. Meanwhile, he was also scrimping, saving, and investing whatever money he had left.
Since really no one knew what he was up to, when he died of cancer at the age of 63, everyone was a bit surprised when he donated $11 million dollars to a number of Seattle-area charities, like the Pediatric Interim Care Center and Childhaven and Treehouse Foster Care.
Why did he do it? One, because he had a physically disabled older brother. Two, because he saw how unfair life could be for children. And three, because he had a heart full of compassion.
In the words of one recipient, “We are so grateful to Alan, not only for his legacy, but also for the life he devoted to children.”
It was a promise he wanted to keep.
There are a lot of ways to describe a promise. One said it’s like a fisherman holding onto a rod and reel. Though he can’t see the fish before he lands it in the net, he can feel the tug of that fish when it grabs his hook.
And in the same way, while you may not be able to see the promise with your eyes, you can feel the tug of that promise. All you have to do is hold on.
Or think of a quarterback and his receiver. In most cases, the ball is out of the quarterback’s hand before the receiver even finishes the route he’s running. And if either of them--the quarterback or the receiver--doubts the run or the timing of the throw, the pass will be incomplete, or at the worst, intercepted.
Ultimately, after the quarterback calls the play, all the receiver needs to do is to trust the play and to run the route.
And all you have to do is to trust the promise.
In the words of Charles Spurgeon, “In the same way the sun never grows weary of shining, nor a stream of flowing, it is God’s nature to keep His promises. Therefore, when in doubt, go immediately to His throne and say, ‘Do as You have promised.’”
The Bible is full of promises! Paul wrote to the Romans: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).
Isaiah wrote, “You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in You” (Isaiah 26:3).
And Jesus said in Matthew chapter 11: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
But of all the promises we find in the Bible from its beginning to its end, one of the strangest and most remarkable of all was spoken to a man named Abraham and to his wife, Sarah.
I’ll read the words of Genesis chapter 18: “And the Lord appeared to him, (that’s Abraham), by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, ‘O Lord, if I have found favor in Your sight, do not pass by Your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on--since You have come to Your servant.’ So they said, ‘Do as you have said’” (Genesis 18:1-5).
It was the hottest part of the day, the Bible said. It was so hot, poor old Abraham couldn’t work. He could hardly even sleep. So there he sat in the shade of his tent, as waves of heat rippled across the horizon.
And notice, his name isn’t Abram; it’s Abraham.
You see, twenty-five years before, he was merely Abram, a name that meant, “exalted father.” but when God called Him to follow Him, He changed his name to Abraham, “father of many.”
But how could he be the father of many when he wasn’t even the father of one?! Sure there was Ishmael, the son of his servant girl Hagar. But that wasn’t part of God’s plan. So where was his child, the one God promised would come?
And if you think it was hard for Abraham, it was even worse for his wife, Sarah!
Oh, she was beautiful. Stunning, actually. If you know the story, her’s was a face that almost cost the lives of a king and a pharaoh!
And when she and Abraham first married, she fully expected to be not only a loving wife, but a loving mother! She was dying to be a mother--to have a child to hold, to shape, to nurture. And while all the women around her were having one child after another, every night she desperately prayed for just one of her own.
She was sixty-five when God first made that promise. But weeks turned to months that turned to years. And now she was a full ninety years old!
Maybe Abraham misunderstood! Maybe there was something she had done wrong! Finally, not knowing what else to do, she gave up hope in herself and in God. And she knew she would never have a son after all.
Which surprised her, and even shocked her, when those three mysterious men showed up at the entrance to their tent. “O Lord,” Abraham said, “if I have found favor in Your sight, do not pass by Your servant” (Genesis 18:3).
“O Lord,” he said. Who could this possibly be? And who were those two men standing so silently by His side?
And as any good middle-eastern man would do, he prepared a feast. Verse 6: “And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, ‘Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it, and make cakes.’ And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man, who prepared it quickly. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree while they ate” (Genesis 18:6-8).
And along with that meal came a promise. Verse 10: “The Lord said, ‘I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.’ And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.”
So what did Sarah do when she heard the news? What would you do if you were ninety years old, and someone told you that you were about to have a son?
She laughed! Somewhere down deep it started and, as hard as she tried, she just couldn’t hold it in anymore. Impossible, she thought. Can’t happen. There is no possible way!
Funny thing--she wasn’t the only one who laughed! If you’d glance back at Genesis chapter 17, you see that Abraham laughed too. It says, “Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, ‘Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’” (Genesis 17:17).
But do you know what they found out right about nine months later? Nothing is impossible with God.
It’s been said that one of the most important questions we could ever ask, and one of the most challenging, is this: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”
If the answer is, “Yes, there are some things that God cannot do,” then God is not God, and we live in a closed universe where the things we learn are all there is to know. And when time comes to an end, there is nothing but darkness and death.
But if the answer is, “No, nothing is impossible with God,” then we live in a world that’s full of possibility, hopefulness, and surprise. And we have taken the leap of faith.
As the Lord Himself said in Genesis chapter 18: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14).
Do those words sound familiar? They should, for they’re the same words that an angel named Gabriel once said to a young woman named Mary.
Remember? It happened in a little town called Nazareth in Galilee. The Bible says that he came to her and said, “Don’t be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus” (Luke 1:30-31).
“How can this be,” she asked, “since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34).
And in the quiet embrace of time and eternity, Gabriel answered, “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).
It was 1939 and George Dantzig was a doctoral candidate at the University of California- Berkeley. And one day, as he arrived late for a graduate-level statistics class, he slipped into his seat and noticed two problems written on the board. He assumed they were homework, so he copied them down.
A few days later, he apologized to his professor, Jerzy Neyman, that the problems seemed a little harder than usual, and asked if he could have just a little more time. Neyman told him he could just throw it on his desk when he was done.
Six weeks later, on a Sunday morning, Dantzig was awakened by someone banging on his door. It was his professor who rushed in, holding papers in his hand. He said, “I've just written an introduction to one of your papers. Read it so I can send it out right away for publication!”
For a minute, he had no idea what his prof was talking about, until he finally realized that those two problems that were written on the board weren’t homework assignments. They were two famous unsolved problems. And he had solved them!
Later he said, “If I had known that the problems were not homework, but were, in fact, two famous unsolved problems in statistics, I probably would not have thought positively, would have become discouraged, and would never have solved them.”
We too are surrounded by impossibilities of all kinds--impossible circumstances, impossible relationships, and impossible hopes and dreams.
But we believe in a God not of the impossible, but possible. As He once said to an old man named Abraham and his wife, Sarah, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14).
There’s one more thing to ask. We know Sarah laughed and Abraham did too. But we wonder, does God sometimes laugh too?”
Maybe He does, for it says in the words of Psalm 2: “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together” (Psalm 2:1-2). Then it says, “But He who sits in the heavens laughs” (Psalm 2:4).
And not only does God laugh, even the angels laugh too. For as Jesus said in the book of Luke: “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent” (Luke 15:7).
And there’s more! Lots more! Who would have thought that the meek would inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5), that the foolish would teach the wise (I Corinthians 3:19), that a little child would lead (Isaiah 11:6), that those who lose their lives will find them (Matthew 10:39), that the first will be last and the last will be first (Matthew 20:16), that a virgin could give birth (Isaiah 7:14), that a King is born poor and in a stable (Matthew 2:2), that a crucified Savior is both Lord and God (Matthew 27:54), and that the dead come back to life (Luke 24:5)?
As the prophet Jeremiah once wrote: “O Lord God! You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and Your outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for You” (Jeremiah 32:17).
Sometimes, dear Lord, we see only the incomprehensible and the impossible. Help us, by Your grace, to find our hope and help in You, for Jesus’ sake. Amen