Sarah (the wife of Abraham)
When God’s promise is delayed
“Now behold, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Please go into my maid; perhaps I will obtain children through her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.” Gen 16:2
Scripture for further reading and study:
I don’t know if it is true in every marriage, but I think women are often quicker to want to figure things out. We see something that needs to be done, and we want to get it done right away. Or maybe we’ve had dreams of the future–even good dreams from God (like Joseph) and we try to make them happen on our own. (Prov 25:27).
We see something that should happen. We see a need in the church. We see a friend that needs to be reached. We see a good thing that God wants done and we want it done now. But rather than wait, and trust that God is working all things out for his glory. That God has a plan. That the “iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” ** Instead, we try to rush forward and make it happen ourselves.
Sarah heard God’s heart: “I’m going to give you a son.” Descendants, “more than the stars of the heavens.” (See Genesis 15:4-6) She knew this was God’s desire, and she received it. She even was willing to sacrifice something so precious to her to make it happen. I can’t imagine that it was a joy to her to offer Hagar to her husband. No, she really wanted to fulfill this desire in God‘s heart. In one sense, it is a good thing and a good desire that she has. She has heard God’s will, and she says, “Amen, God wants us to have a child.” But in Sarah’s mind, it’s completely outside the realm of possibility that God could mean her having this child. That could not be what God is talking about. Because she is old, with a womb, “as good as dead.” Romans tells us (Romans 4:19; also Hebrews 11:11: So instead of trusting God, she tries to make it happen herself, by her own plan, in her own timing. And of course, it’s a disaster. We can’t make God’s plans happen in our own strength. Even the best plans of men, apart from God, are worthless. Her quickness to make God’s purpose happen apart from God caused trouble that has stayed with God’s people even til now. (Constant conflict between Jews, Muslims, and Christians)
We can’t help but think of another one of God’s servants who did this the right way. Joseph also received dreams and visions. He saw that one day his parents and brothers would bow to him. He saw that—And yet, he was in a pit, and then a slave, and then in prison. Psalms tells us how the word of the Lord tried him (Psalm 105:19). How his soul must have been tormented those years. God has given him a promise, and it’s not happening. Nobody is bowing to him. He is stuck in a deep, dark circumstance. Yet, rather than try to work his way out or make a bargain with the cupbearer to help him out if he interprets his dream, he waits for God’s perfect timing. And at just the right time, God raises him up. And as Joseph says later, if he’d done it earlier, Joseph wouldn’t have been there at just the right time to save God’s people (Genesis 45:5, 50:20.
As wives, we see things we want to change in our husbands. We see things we want to change in the church, and we just wish our husband would speak up faster or get involved sooner. We wish they would call that brother, or pester that church leader, or respond back to the person who did something wrong. And in our desire for something to happen faster, often we take things into our own hands. There is a deep lesson to learn here from Sarah.
Do you know what we see in God’s servants throughout scripture? They learned how to wait.
David, 13 years hiding from Saul, years hidden away on the pastures. Moses, 40 years in a desert. Joseph, with years of dreams that tried him. These were all men who were, without a doubt, called by God. Like Abraham, God spoke to them, led them by faith, gave them dreams and promises. Yet each one waited many years before those promises came to pass.
And even Sarah herself. I wonder … for how many years did they believe Ishmael was the promised child? The next recorded time that God speaks comes 13 years later, when Abraham is 99 years old. And Abraham’s response is, “Oh that Ishmael would live before you!” (Genesis 17:15-22) For 13 years, it seems the thought has been that this must be the promised child. Yet there is so much strife and fighting and sadness with Ishmael. Division. Hatred. A house divided.
Friends, if God has promised you something, for your marriage, for your husband, for your church…stay on your knees, remind him of his promise—over and over again. Hold the scriptures before Him and beg and plead and say, “But God this is in your heart to do!” But we can’t try to make it happen ourselves.
When God does choose to move, it will be beautiful. “Count the stars, if you can number them…” he tells Abraham. No, we can’t number the stars. Even now, with the greatest of technology, we really have no idea of how great and how awesome this universe truly is. What God has promised, really truly is “Better than we can ask or imagine (Eph 3:20).
But you know what’s special? In Hebrews 11, God says of Sarah, “By faith, even Sarah herself received the ability to conceive, …since she considered him faithful who had promised.” (Hebrews 11:11) Genesis doesn’t tell this part of the story, but somewhere amidst all that doubt and failure, God gave Sarah true faith to believe he really was able to bring the promised child through her. She, Sarah, was going to have a child. Given by God. That would be the beginning of descendants, “As great as the stars of heaven in number and innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore” (11:12). And sisters, for us, this should be hopeful.
We may have failed. We may have made a mess of trying to fix our marriages, our churches, and our children, on our own. But is there a true word or promise that God gave you, in the midst of that mess?
Is there something you can hold onto as you wait? This isn’t a manufactured faith. These aren’t promises we invent or scriptures we give ourselves. But had God spoken a rhema word? Something that seems too good to be true? That makes “laughter” rise in our hearts. “When the Lord turned the captivity captive, we were like them that dreamed. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy…” the Psalmist tells us. (Psalm 126:1) And you almost sense that in Sarah. A laughter of faith. A “Can it be!? Can this really be?”
And in God’s timing, in God’s way, Issac, (whose name means, “laughter”) is born, 9 months later, just as God had promised.
One further note: We are using this story to direct us to the Lord, but our life is not Sarah’s life, and sometimes, we feel we receive a promise from God, but it never materializes. John the Baptist knew Jesus was the Messiah, but he thought he would come with power and destroy the Romans and break him out of jail. He knew the promises from scripture that Jesus was going to come with power and put an end to Satan, but like so many others, he missed the fact that there was another coming, when Jesus would appear as a lamb, as a suffering servant, to take away the sins of the world and bring in the gentiles. At one point, John’s confused … why is this happening? Is Jesus really the Christ? He sends word to the Lord. And Jesus replies essentially, “Yes, I am the Messiah…. I’m doing all these things. Blessed is his who is not offended at me.” Sisters, if God has spoken a living word to you; if you felt something would be restored, and it never happened. Or healed, and healing never came. It can be crushing. Did God fail us? Did we hear him rightly? Is he really who he says he is? Oh, dear sister, he is. He is who he says he is. There is more to the story. More we don’t know. Maybe won’t know, until he comes. Until that day, can we still trust him by faith? Can we hear his gentle words, “I am He … blessed is his that is not offended at me.” We can be offended. We have reason to be hurt. But oh what a blessed thing to trust our Lord. To know he has the whole story, he knows what he’s doing, and to lay aside our offense at him.
**This phrase from Genesis 15:16 is worth a study. God wanted to give Israel this land, He also wanted to wipe out their Amorites for their evil, but it would be another 400 years until this was accomplished. In the meantime, Israel went down into Egypt, fell into slavery, and remained in slavery. Why did God allow 400 years of slavery? Why does he connect it to the evil of these people? God’s ways and workings are often beyond our understanding, but it’s helpful to remember that often, God is working 1000 things behind the scenes, and we may only be aware of 2 of them. There are so often things God wants to do, even for his own people, but he still must wait on something else to happen, or until something is worked out in us, before he can bring it to pass.
Other thoughts for further meditation and discussion:
- What does it look like to receive a promise from God? Both in the scriptures and in your own life today?
- Why may God “wait” to bring about a promise?
- Ponder or discuss a time in your own life when you took something into your own hands and it just became a mess
- How can we respond if a promise is delayed, or never happens as we thought it would?
Find more from this series, Wives from the Word, here
