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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/joseph-baker/sarahs-faith/
Turn again please to the book of Genesis and chapter 17. Very nice to be here in Ankeny with the assembly here and for the conference. Nice to hear some of the brothers that I don't get the opportunity to hear too often.
The last time I was in Ankeny there was no assembly here. So it's going back some time. And there was a fairly tall servant of the Lord, you might see him around, and we were all there at this campground and he came up to a few of us and he said, when are you all coming back to Ankeny?
And well remember now there was nothing here. So I kind of wisecracked, I said, at your conference. And I kept my word. I kept my word, even though it was said in maybe some mockery. Genesis chapter 17, hopefully this will, it seems, fit in a little bit with what we've been thinking about today.
We're going to read at verse 15. And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her and give thee a son also of her.
Yea, I will bless her and she shall be a mother of nations. Kings of people shall be of her. And over to chapter 18 and verse 1. And the Lord appeared unto him, that's Abraham, in the plains of Mamre, and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day.
And drop down verse 9. And they said unto him, Where is Sarai thy wife? And he said, Behold in the tent. And he said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life. And lo, Sarai thy wife shall have a son.
And Sarai heard it in the tent door which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarai were old and well stricken in age, and it ceased to be with Sarai after the manner of women. Therefore Sarai laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?
And the Lord said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarai laugh, saying, Shall I of surety bear a child, which am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return unto thee according to the time of life, and Sarai shall have a son.
Then Sarai denied, saying, I laugh not, for she was afraid. And he said, Nay, but thou didst laugh. And one final reading, chapter 21, and verse 1. And the Lord visited Sarai as he had said, and the Lord did unto Sarai as he had spoken.
For Sarai conceived and bare 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 that was born unto him, whom Sarai bared to him, Isaac.
And verse 6,. And Sarai said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me. And she said, Who would have said unto Abraham that Sarai should have given children suck? For I have born him a son in his old age.
And that's all we'll read. Again, I hope what I have on my mind will fit in with what we've heard. Abraham has been given a good touch today. I want to think about Sarah, in part because at this time of the afternoon, the men are all going to go for a little snooze after the pasta or check the score of the game.
I'm sure it's going the way you want it to go. And maybe the ladies will tune in. Sarah, we've already remarked, Brother Gordon and Brother William remarked on the faith of Abraham. Have you ever stopped to consider the faith of Sarah?
The God of glory never appeared to her. She never got the news. And here she is, she and her husband ready for the geriatric ward in the hospital in Ur of the Chaldees. And Abraham comes in and he says, God's promised and we're going forth.
And just all the way through the story that we've kind of taken two trips around now just to trace the faith of Sarah. We've already heard it from Hebrews chapter 11. The writer there doesn't forget Sarah.
She's highlighted as a woman of faith. What got me on this was really, in a way, it seemed like the Lord was gentle with Sarah with her unbelief. I'm thinking of that time in chapter 18 when she laughs.
And the Lord did rebuke her. Why did you laugh? I did not laugh. You did laugh. But you come to the New Testament and there's that man and he's going to the temple and he's going to have a son. It's going to be John the Baptist.
And he basically laughs. He doubts. And what happened to him? Well, he couldn't speak, right? It seemed like it was pretty severe. And so it just got my mind thinking, the same God after all. And yet Sarah seems to be treated in a way with kid gloves.
And here's Zacharias and he's getting a... Why the difference? Why the difference? Why was Sarah laughing? And I'm not saying she wasn't rebuked, but maybe just a little bit more gentle. And I'll just tell you through this meditation what I've come to appreciate.
First of all, I just want to go through the story. I want you to think of Sarah as a spouse. So she, as we talked about, our brothers have mentioned it both times. She's remarked as being beautiful as they go down to Egypt.
And you go and trace the story. She's about 65 years old and she's still called beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that the king of Egypt, Abraham worries, would want to have her as his wife. And as a spouse to Abraham and whatever she would have experienced there back in Ur of the Chaldees, now she has...
Her husband has had the Lord appear to him, given him a promise. Abraham in the book of Genesis is really the answer to what Adam was supposed to be. In fact, as our brother William mentioned, 2 ,000 years have passed since Adam till Abraham.
So just to put it maybe in plain language, when we come to Genesis 12, we are closer to Calvary than to Eden. I don't know if that surprises you. Genesis 12 in my Bible is about three, four pages from Genesis 3.
But actually in the course of history, we are closer to Calvary than the Garden of Eden. 2 ,000 years and now God has chosen another man, Abraham. And he is the answer to what Adam was supposed to be.
Adam was given a land and he was told to have dominion and he was told to have a seed. Now Abraham is going to be given a land. He will be told to have dominion and he will be promised a seed. And these two are put together for those who are reading the book of Genesis.
And here's Sarah. Her husband is called by God and she happily, as far as we can tell in the record, leaves that comfortable, I think, more secure life to go live in tents in the wilderness. As a spouse, she knew what it was like to be let down by her husband.
Maybe there's some sisters here and you say, if I could, I couldn't say amen to Frank, but I almost said amen to you. Yeah. Yeah. I think my own wife might say amen if she could hear it too. Imagine being called by God.
God has taken up interest in one man, through that man, to bless the world. And here's their first test with that world. In Egypt, I know he never should have been there. And Abraham, he was free to choose a wife.
But God is going to teach Abraham, as one commentator put it, God is going to teach Abraham, you might be free to choose a wife, but you cannot choose what wife means. No, you can't. You can't just change the meaning of wife to make it mean sister when it's convenient for you.
No, you can't choose what wife means. And there's Sarah. And I think maybe we Sunday school-ize it a little bit when we think of what that looked like when she was sent to Pharaoh's harem. I don't think it was as innocent as maybe we think here in 2025.
I don't think it was very nice and Abraham and Sarah every night, they're coming back on the easy chair in Egypt, spending the nights together. No, I think when he made that decision. And imagine being Sarah through this all.
Imagine being let down like this by a man, your husband, who was called of God. You know, we rightly, and I'm going to come to it next, not just Sarah, the spouse, but Sarah, the schemer. We've been thinking a little bit about that scheme.
We rightly, when it comes to that with Hagar, right? Many preachers would, and as I said, rightly would put a lot of blame in Sarah. I wonder, where did Sarah learn? That you can just switch pieces. Was she responsible?
Did she learn that in Genesis chapter 17 and 16? Or was it during a trip to Egypt when godly Abraham decided to switch pieces? Who brought Egypt into the home? Now, that's a challenge, I think, okay? That's a straight challenge to those of us who are given the responsibility to be heads of the home, because sometimes other things happen downstream.
But really, really, it all started with us, and so she's let down as a spouse. As a schemer, then later, a number of years have passed. Sarah is still barren. The promise of a child has not just been so specific.
Later, it's going to get specific in Isaac, right? We know that. But God's going to tell Abraham that your children are going to be as the stars of the sky and as the sand of the sea, right? And I don't know if you've ever had the opportunity to take a trip to a place where there's no light pollution.
I assume, traveling in the wilderness here, I don't think there would have been too many LED lights, right? And could you imagine, there's Sarah and Abraham, and all the disappointments of Egypt are behind, and there they are every night.
And it's pitch black, and maybe just a roaring fire, and they look up. And it's a star-studded sky. Your descendants will be as the stars of the sky. And Sarah, she's not waiting a few months, a few years.
Nearly a decade has passed, and nothing's happened. There's no child. And it's gone from improbable to impossible. Of course, that's what the Lord wanted, as we heard. The Lord had bigger things in mind than just giving Sarah a baby.
The Lord was going to teach lessons all the way down to us about new birth, so it had to be impossible, right? Oh, but Sarah doesn't know that. And just imagine what it must have felt like every morning to wake up, look at the sands as you're walking through the wilderness, look at the stars, no child.
And imagine now, as a woman, to come to the place where maybe the promise of God is not the fault of Abraham, but it's my fault. And so she concocts a scheme. She says, Abraham, God is going to give you a child.
The trouble is me. I'm barren. So why don't you go and have a child with Hagar, which she got during that trip south? And here's a scheme, and it's all made, as far as I can tell in reading the account there in Genesis 16, this whole scheme happened in the quiet tent in the middle of the wilderness.
And I think if you turn on channel, whatever it is here, you'll see the effects of that scheme today. You know, sometimes we think, we think that the big things that are going to have big effects are going to happen in the White House meeting, whoever Mr. Trump brings in next.
You'd hardly think that somebody, a husband and wife having a conversation in their tent would have downstream effects. I wonder how many downstream effects there have been in my own assembly and in assemblies that I might know a little bit about just because of discussions happening in a tent or maybe a 3 ,000 square foot house.
Just little discussions between husband and wife and the downstream effects that have reached 2025. Yeah, sometimes, sometimes we put too much weight on that, which is very obvious and public and not maybe as much weight because Sarah, she's going to come up with this scheme now.
And the descendants will be Ishmael and Isaac. And again, if you don't know what I'm talking about, again, you can just turn on the news and see the conflict that is existing today. This is very relevant.
Genesis chapters 12 through 22 today as a result of this scheme. And so she schemes. And I don't know, again, as I'm approaching this now, we've already heard a little bit today of our response upward to God for revival, et cetera.
But as I'm looking down at the Lord, looking at this woman, Sarah, you would think that the Lord would just say, okay, Sarah, this is clearly not going to happen. So it's not going to work out with Hagar.
But no, just like that. One plus one equals three. Again, there's a big lesson that's going to be taught. The flesh can produce something really quick. That's the lesson. That's Galatians where you have the flesh versus the spirit and the flesh and a fleshly plan and it all coming together.
And it's Abraham and Hagar. And immediately, immediately, she has a child and almost maybe Sarah sitting there and she's thinking, it might be me, but here I'll offer this young Egyptian slave girl and I'm hoping in my heart that it's not, I'm not the problem.
So as this whole interaction takes place, hopefully she's not pregnant, but no, she is. Imagine how that must have felt when it's almost as if the spotlight's coming on you as if, Sarah, you are the problem because here comes a child, Ishmael.
And this whole interaction, if you read some of the Jewish commentators in the book of Genesis, they say this whole thing, what Sarah did with Hagar, this would have been very common in Ur of the Chaldees.
She's just bringing in what she knew. And again, I don't have to apply all of that. Some of it's been applied already today. The things of the flesh. Again, maybe I'll just mention it. What God was going to do was he was going to use Abraham and Sarah, yes, to give them a child and the nation of Israel, everything that would come from that, but also to illustrate a huge principle, new birth.
Right. And I think it is the case that sometimes we look at things that happen among the saints and among believers. Sometimes I know you can't blame every problem on it. I just tell you the story. I was talking with a brother over in another part of the Midwest and some of these memes were going around.
I don't know if some of you young guys see some of these memes. I'm okay with some of them. Kind of funny. But I'll be honest. I looked at one and it was just blatant mockery. It was just straight up mockery of a respected servant of God.
It was intended to openly make fun of him. And I showed this brother that I was preaching with, I showed him it. And after maybe exchanging an awkward laugh, we looked at it and we both got quiet and he said to me, you know, I wonder if we have people among us who don't have the vital thing at all, Ishmael flesh, it's very easy to produce, but there's something real about an Isaac and true new birth, which is what God was going to teach this couple.
So she's a schemer and, uh, she uses this, um, she uses this assistant in, in Hagar. God's not against using the things that he provides. Someone has said, there's nothing wrong with, with using aids that God provides, but there's everything wrong with using something to shut God out.
That's what she did. Didn't she? She says, we don't need God anymore. And that's why the whole thing with circumcision, God basically came in chapter 17 and he said, Abraham, I know all this time you were thinking that I'm mighty, but I'm all mighty.
I don't need you at all. I need nothing of you. And so I'm going to enact this sign of circum just to remind you that the flesh profits, nothing. And so now we come to chapter 18. My question, five minutes to go.
We made it good. Okay. Sarah's laughing. The Lord appears with those two angelic visitors and has supper there with Abraham. And Sarah is laughing. The Bible says, if you read it carefully, she's not laughing out loud.
It's not the LOL. She's laughing in her, in her heart. And the Lord knows she's laughing in her heart and he calls her out. Why did you laugh? And what hit, what spoke to me in this as to how gentle the Lord was with Sarah was just this proverb that I put over it.
And I'm happy to have help if you have a better explanation. When I read Sarah in Genesis chapter 18, not only was she a spouse and a schemer, but Sarah was sick. You say, I don't think she was sick. You haven't read it very carefully.
She's running around at 90. I doubt you'd be able to do that. I'm struggling to run around at 33 since everyone's probably wondering how old I am. There you go. Cat's out of the bag. No, but this is how she was sick.
Listen to this proverb. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. Sarah had hope. She had hope when she was called away. She had hope of a child, but hope had been deferred.
And the trip to Egypt and then the scheme with Hagar and hope had been deferred over and over. I wonder if there's a sister here or a brother and hope's been deferred. You know, I've talked to some people just last weekend at a different conference and they said, you know, people make it a joke in my home assembly, still single.
And I go to a conference, not intentionally to meet somebody, but I'd rather meet them there. Amen. And when they go home, there's more of the jokes and there's the matchmakers. Oh, man. I hope there's no one here with a spiritual gift of matchmaker.
But anyway, and they said, but I know what it's like to get in a room alone and the heavy, hot tears and it's the next conference. Nothing. Hope deferred. It's real. It's real. I'm not even going to touch this one.
The one that's actually very practically here. What about the actual hope of having a child? Hope deferred. What about the hope that you had that gospel series this year and you thought someone would be saved?
Hope deferred. And it makes the heart sick. Why try? Why do it again? Why have a conference? Why go through all the expense? Hope deferred makes the heart sick. And Sarah here, why is she laughing? Some of you will understand this.
The reason she's laughing is because sometimes it's better to laugh to avoid crying. Hope again. After this whole thing, Hagar's had the child. Here I am with the so-called godly Abraham. I know who he's really like.
I've been on the pathway. And now he comes, the Lord, and he's saying, I'm going to have a child. And to hope now. So she just laughs. She laughs to avoid crying. Maybe you've been there. Maybe you know what it's like.
It's easier to be sarcastic. It's easier to be cynical and to be skeptical than to just actually believe. Maybe God could revive the whole thing. Maybe he could. Maybe you could have conferences like some of you have talked about back in the day.
But you don't know. Better just to be better just to be snarky and skeptical about it. Because to hope, that's Sarah. She's sick. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. But the Lord says to Sarah, no, Sarah, no.
You know what Sarah means? Sarah means princess. Do you know who called her Sarah? The Lord. So this is the Lord's princess. You know, and I have two little girls. And you say, are they daddy's princesses?
Yes, they are. Don't, don't you dare, right? And when you think of daddy's princesses, you think, oh, they're going to be dressed to the nines. And they're going to be kept in kind of a bubble wrap container.
And they're going to be banned from going to conferences till they're 45. And yeah, the last part might be the case. And then there's going to be all kinds of things put around them. You know, the Lord's princess wasn't bubble wrapped.
She was exposed to the brutality of the wilderness and all the circumstances of life. And all kinds of difficulties. She was just, this is the Lord's princess. So maybe, maybe there's a sister here or a brother as well.
And you feel like, man, I once had hope. I once had a dream when it came to my Christian life. But it's just, the years have passed and it's just hard to hope again. And so she's sick. But the Lord reaffirms his commitment, covenant, really, to Sarah.
Sarah, you will have a child. And it's interesting, isn't it? That the time of year comes. There seems to be a gap. You know how long it takes to have a child, don't you? Nine months. But there seems to be a gap there.
It's going to be a whole year. Personally, I think that it was within that three-month period that Sarah began to believe the promise of God. Because the Bible says, in Romans, she conceived in faith.
Right now, she's not in faith. But the Bible says in the book of, she conceived in faith. And when she has the child, this is what she says. I mean, chapter 21, it's just filled with laughter. The boy's name means laughter.
Everyone's laughing. Except now, this is not the sarcastic laugh of doubt and hope deferred. This is now, God has made me laugh. This is touching on what our brother McCandless mentioned. Not maybe the smile in the song, but the laughter.
Do you know what it is to laugh? The joy of the Lord. God has moved. He's done something. And the joy fills the place. And there's tears of joy and laughter in the assembly again. And Sarah's laughing.
She says, God has made me laugh. Maybe there's a believer here. And you know what it's like. Hope deferred again and again. And whatever situation, so many applications could be made. You know, it's not going to always end in sarcasm with you.
It's going to end in laughter, whether this shore or the other shore. One day, one day, the laughter of holy joy. And we see him. And hope will no longer be deferred. The proverb goes on, hope deferred makes the heart sick.
But the desire, when it cometh, is like a tree of life. And that's Isaac. The desire has come. And it's like a tree of life. The 126th Psalm says this. When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with singing.
And so I've really appreciated this. For reasons I won't go into now. But you know, it's easy in the Christian life just to hope deferred. Yeah, but just to see the Lord, how gracious he dealt with Sarah.
You know, I'll just mention this. There's a rather obscure verse. And with this, I'll sit down. Rather obscure verse, 1 Peter chapter 3, exhorting wives and their role in submission. The Apostle Peter says that to look at Sarah, who called Abraham Lord.
I can't wait to talk to some of you what that means. I don't know. What does that mean? I'll have to ask some of these brethren when their wife has called him Lord. You know, it's interesting about that.
I never noticed it until studying this. When does Sarah call Abraham Lord? Genesis 12. Sarah, dear, God's called us to leave Ur. No, at least it doesn't mention it. Genesis 22, God tells me to offer our only Isaac.
No, by the way, big faith there for Sarah. When does she call Abraham Lord? It's right here in Genesis chapter 18. It's right here when she's doubting. She says, shall my Lord have pleasure? Do you know what I love about that?
That's the only time, by the way, you trace it. The only time Sarah in the record of Scripture calls Abraham Lord. It's at the time when it's her biggest mistake, Sarah's laugh. But do you know what the Lord does?
He takes the very time of her biggest blunder, and he minds it to find one thing that pleased him. Now, I'm not saying that to excuse sin. I'm not saying that to diminish her unbelief. I'm saying that to magnify the grace of God that can look at all of our lives filled with all kinds of maybe bitterness, sarcasm, sin.
But maybe there's just one thing that God sifts through, and he finds one piece of gold, and he lifts that up, and he says, Sarah, even in that time of sarcastic doubt, she called her husband Lord. And I'm going to lift that up to every wife right here in Ankeny, Iowa.
And I'm going to let you look at my example, my princess, Sarah. And so just a meditation here. We've thought about Abraham, but a meditation here on the laughter of Sarah. And like our brother McCandless said, may we leave a touch higher in our pitch of song.
May we leave with a smile, and maybe even a holy laughter. God bless us.