Welcome to this week's episode of Trinity Sermons.
This week we're continuing our sermon series, Heroes of Faith, as we take a deep dive into
Hebrews chapter 11 and those who are given to us as examples of faith to look up to.
And this week we're looking at the first woman in our list of heroes and that is Sarah.
So if you were around last week to listen to our sermon on Abraham, you might know that
Sarah is Abraham's wife.
And Sarah's going to show us about a kind of faith that gets us through the hard times,
even if we don't always do it perfectly.
So let's listen in as Rob shares a bit about Sarah's story.
Her first reading is from Genesis chapter 16 verses 1 to 6.
Now Sarah, Abraham's wife, had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave named
Hagar.
So she said to Abraham, the Lord has kept me from having children.
Go sleep with my slave.
Perhaps I can build a family through her.
Abraham agreed to what Sarah said.
So after Abraham had been living in Canaan 10 years, Sarah, his wife, took her Egyptian
slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife.
He slept with Hagar and she conceived.
When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.
And Sarah said to Abraham, you are responsible for the wrong I am suffering.
I put my slave in your arms and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me.
May the Lord judge between you and me.
Your slave is in your hands, Abraham said.
Do with her whatever you think best.
Then Sarah mistreated Hagar.
So she fled from her.
Our second reading today is from Hebrews, Chapter 11, verses 11 and 12.
And by faith, even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was unable to bear children because she
considered him faithful who had made the promise.
And so from this one man, as he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the
stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
This is the words of the Lord.
Pete Rose is the all time hits leader in Major League Baseball.
And yet he was banned from the sport because he was betting on games and you can't have
that.
So he was banned even though he, you know, truly is a Hall of Famer.
Or take for example, Lance Armstrong.
Lance Armstrong won seven Tour de France titles.
And he had all those titles stripped away from him when it was determined that he was
using performance enhancing drugs.
What a controversy.
What a catastrophe.
And then let's get another example, Barry Bonds.
Barry Bonds is of course the all time home run leader in Major League Baseball.
But Barry Bonds has been consistently refused entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame because
of allegations surrounding his use of performance enhancing drugs.
So why am I saying all this?
I guess I'm saying all this because there's a lot of controversy sometimes around these
Hall of Famers.
And people who make it into the Hall of Fame, you know, sometimes we say, you know, some
people who should be in there aren't in there.
And other people who maybe shouldn't be in there are in there.
Now that kind of brings us to what I want to talk to you about today.
Today we're continuing our teaching series.
It's called Heroes of Faith.
If you've been here the past few weeks, you know what we're doing.
We are going through the Bible's Hall of Fame, which is this one chapter found in the book
of Hebrews chapter 11.
And the author of Hebrews kind of enumerates there and inducts into the Hall of Faith several
people who lived exemplary lives of faith.
And we've been looking at these people over the past few weeks, people like Abel and Enoch
and Noah.
And last week we looked at Abraham.
And unfortunately though, today we come to a bit of a controversy.
Today we hit a little bit of a snag because our next inductee is a person who's surrounded
by controversy.
I'm talking about Sarah.
Sarah, of course, is Abram's wife.
Abram, who we talked about last week, he had a wife, her name was Sarah, and she is she
or well, there's a bit of a debate.
Is Sarah, should Sarah be a Hall of Famer, a Hall of Faith-er?
Should she be in Hebrews chapter 11?
On the one hand, she had an impressive career.
She had an impressive career.
She overcame a whole bunch of obstacles.
She had to relocate over and over again.
She faced barrenness in her life and yet she ended up giving birth to the golden child,
the promised child, Isaac.
So yes, maybe she should be in the Hall of Faith, but her critics say, no, no, no.
Sarah does not deserve to be there because she cheated.
She cheated on God's promise.
She kind of bet against God.
She tried to go around the plan that God had and therefore she has no place in the Hall
of Fame.
So today what we are going to do is we're going to look at some of the controversies.
Surrounding Sarah's placement in the Hall of Fame.
And of course, what we're going to try to learn is what it teaches us about living by
faith as we look at her story.
And you can decide for yourself whether you think she deserves to be in there or not.
I want to just let you know, as always, we've got these little sermon notes that you should
have got coming in.
That'll help you kind of track along with sometimes my meandering thought process.
And I also want to let you know that we publish every week questions, questions that are really
related directly to the text that we just read and to the sermon that you're about to
hear.
And if you ever want to access those questions, you can just visit our website and they're
there and you can go and you can kind of dive a little deeper into those.
So let's start by looking at the first controversy with Sarah.
And that is what I want to call the textual controversy.
The textual controversy.
Now, what does that mean?
Well, here is the thing.
Some people believe that Sarah actually was never intended to be in your Bible in the
Hall of Faith.
And that the only reason she is there is because of a bad Bible translation.
That's right.
Here's what I mean.
Okay.
If you read Hebrews 11, 11, which we just read, in say, for example, the NRSV, the New
Revised Standard Version.
It's just a translation, one translation of the Bible.
This is what you read.
By faith, Abraham received power of procreation.
Even though he was too old and Sarah herself was barren because he, Abraham, considered
him, God, faithful who had promised.
Okay.
That's Hebrews 11, 11, NRSV.
Tell me, whose faith is being commended here?
Just shout it out.
It's Abraham's faith, right?
By faith, Abraham did this.
And he was old, yet he considered God faithful who had promised.
So if you read that and a lot of people say, see, this actually isn't about Sarah at all.
This is about Abraham's faith.
He received the power of procreation.
He was the one who kind of put his faith in God.
And plus, another thing people will say is the verses leading up to Hebrews 11, 11 are
all about Abraham.
And then the verses on the other side are all about Abraham.
So Hebrews 11, 11 is probably also meant to be about Abraham.
This is not about Sarah's faith.
This is about Abraham's faith.
But if you read the exact same passage and you just have a different translation of the
Bible, if you read it in the NIV, for example, this is what you get.
And by faith, Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because
she considered him faithful who had promised.
Whose faith is being commended here?
Sarah's faith.
It's the exact same verse.
The exact same verse.
It's just been translated in two different ways.
And so Team Sarah, Team Sarah fires back and they say, look, look, see, in the original
Greek, Sarah's name is in the nominative form, which means that she is actually the subject
of this whole sentence, which means that it's her faith, not Abraham's faith.
It's her faith that is being commended, which means she deserves to be in the hall of faith.
This verse is about her.
She's one of the inductees.
Now, the question is who is right?
It's a really confusing thing.
I thought I would kind of create a little analogy to help us understand.
Imagine your workplace is handing out the awards for the employee of the year.
And this is big gala, this big evening, and the moment comes and your boss steps up to
the podium and he grabs the microphone and he says, I want to announce this year's award
recipient goes to someone who showed dedication, someone who's just been determined and persevered
and demonstrated great contributions to our company.
That's right.
The person who is receiving this year's employee of the year is, and then the microphone crackles
and he kind of mumbles the answer.
And half the people in the room are certain he said Bob.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm pretty sure he said the award goes to Bob.
But the other half of the room was certain they heard him say Susan, right?
Team Bob says, well, actually, let's think about this, right?
Bob has been with the company for years.
And Bob was one this award so many times before.
It's gotta be Bob.
But Team Susan says, no, no, I was listening very carefully.
I was listening.
And the grammar he used, it was clearly Susan's hard work that was being commended.
This is her breakthrough year.
This is exactly what's happening in Hebrews 11, 11.
Did Sarah really win the award or was it Abraham?
It is actually not just a goofy exercise.
It's actually kind of important because if Sarah is the subject, then it highlights the
faith of women in salvation history and that faith is not just about these patriarchs,
by the way, have you noticed that all the heroes so far have been men?
It's not just about the patriarchs of faith, but it's also about matriarchs.
If this is about Abraham again, then actually Sarah's role and the role of women seems to
be diminished a bit into the background.
Well, you gotta do reading.
You gotta do research.
I tried to do a bit this week.
I came across a professor named Harold Greenlee, wrote a research paper on this topic, which
begins, his paper begins with this sentence.
The purpose of this article is to show that the subject of Hebrews 11, 11 is Sarah, not
Abraham.
And then he ends his article by saying this.
It is clear and unequivocal that it is she, not he.
She not he considered God faithful who has made the promise.
So it looks like actually Sarah does deserve her spot in the hall of faith.
It's not a typo.
It's not a mistake.
She was meant to be included.
I just want to say a little side note.
If you're in a Bible study or if you are in a life group, it really pays to have people
sitting around the circle reading different translations of the Bible because what it
surfaces are times when there are some disagreements or uncertainties about what the exact words
mean when you read from different translations.
So there you go.
That's the first controversy, the textual controversy, but I think she passes the test.
Now if only that were the only controversy, but it's not because another reason why people
don't want Sarah in the hall of faith is because of what you might call the shortcut controversy.
In other words, did Sarah take matters into her own hands and instead of waiting faithfully
for God to give her a child, she took a shortcut instead?
Hmm, good question.
Here's what I mean.
Now Sarah had an Egyptian slave girl whose name was Hagar.
And Sarah said to Abram, you see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children.
Go into my slave girl.
It may be that I shall obtain children by her.
So here's the controversy, right?
Critics say, ah, see, Sarah doesn't even have faith.
She doubts God's promise to provide her with a child.
And so she told her husband to go and sleep with her servant instead.
That kind of behavior does not get you into the Bible's hall of faith.
This does not look good for Sarah, does not look good.
But again, we gotta just, maybe there's more going on here than we know.
And the first thing I want us to consider is the context, right?
This context is important.
And here's the thing.
In the ancient Near East, thousands of years ago on the other side of the world, if a wife
was barren, it was actually culturally acceptable to provide a servant as a surrogate.
Okay, this was not seen as immoral.
It was a legal and culturally practiced thing, right?
The law of the land in those days was this code called the law of Hammurabi, or the code
of Hammurabi.
Hammurabi was a Babylonian king.
Anyways, so this was kind of a law that was governing the land at the time.
And in law number 146 of the code of Hammurabi, you read that if a man take a wife and she
give this man a maid servant as wife and she bear him children, then this maid assume equality
with the wife.
Guys, this is all Abraham and Sarah knew, okay?
They were pagans.
They were the first followers, the first generation followers of this Yahweh God.
And they had not figured this out yet.
This was like a work in progress.
So who is this God?
They don't know 100% yet.
They're still figuring this out.
So what Sarah did was she acted appropriately within her societal norms.
Why?
To ensure that God's promise would still be fulfilled.
And that brings me to the second thing I think we have to understand.
Is that up to this point, right, Sarah probably did not know 100% whether she was actually
included in this promise that God had made to Abraham.
I mean, think about it this way.
In Genesis 12, one, when God first makes this promise to Abraham, he says, Abraham, I'm
going to make you into a great nation.
Who is this promise made to?
It's made to Abraham.
There's no mention of Sarah, right?
You is in the masculine, right?
This is spoken to Abraham.
Sarah's not in the conversation.
So Sarah could have thought, maybe I'm not included in this promise.
Oh, but thankfully, a few verses later, a few chapters later, God gets a chance to clarify,
right?
Because he reiterates this promise in Genesis 15.
But does he mention Sarah this time?
Well, actually, no, he still doesn't mention Sarah.
God took Abraham outside and said, look up at the sky, count the stars if you can count
them.
He said to him, so shall your offspring be.
Again, this is a promise to Abraham.
There is no mention of Sarah.
So Sarah, at this point, could easily be thinking, folks, you know, Abraham's going to have
numerous descendants.
Yeah, but I'm not necessarily part of that plan.
So what she did is she offered Hagar, not because she doubted God's promise, but because
she didn't think the promise included her.
It's only in Genesis 17, which, by the way, is after Abraham has already had a child with
Hagar.
It's only by then that God actually makes clear like, no, no, no, sorry, I should have
cleared this up a little earlier.
As for Sarah, no, Sarah, I will bless her, right?
And will surely give you a son by her.
I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations.
It's only here that she learns that the promise given to Abraham is not just that he's going
to be the father of nations, but that she is also going to be the mother of those nations.
So do you know what this means?
This actually means that when Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham, it wasn't a shortcut.
It wasn't a lack of faith.
It was actually an incredible sacrifice.
She was putting Abraham's calling ahead of herself.
She believed God's promise so much that she was willing to let another woman bear the
child so this promise could come true.
She literally was willing to write herself out of the script.
Again, maybe another analogy will help.
Imagine one day you open up the mail and you get this beautiful wedding invitation.
Oh, it's a lovely invitation and you're very excited.
Your friends are getting married.
But then you look more closely and you realize, oh, this wedding invitation actually isn't
to me.
It's for my roommate, which is odd because we're all friends together.
But you don't make a big deal about it.
And then a couple of weeks later, the couple is there and everybody's cheering them on
and they say, we can't wait to see everyone at the wedding.
And you're like, I think they were talking to me, but maybe they were just talking to
everybody else.
And I'm, because they didn't invite me.
So I don't think I'm included.
So it's kind of confusing again, right?
And then, but you support them.
Nonetheless, you buy them a gift for their shower.
You buy them a wedding gift.
You support them all along.
But it is only weeks later that Canada Post finally knocks on the door and says, oh my
goodness, we're so sorry.
We lost this invitation in the mail.
And you realize you were on the guest list all along.
Just bad communication, right?
Sarah's mistake wasn't that she doubted God's plan.
Her mistake was that she assumed she wasn't included in it.
And friends, haven't we done the same?
You probably have a sense, oh yes, I'm sure God has a plan for the world, but surely I'm
not a big part of that plan, right?
God works through other people, right?
He works through people who are more faithful than me, more qualified than me, people who
are more deserving than me.
And just like Sarah, Sarah always had a part in God's plan, but she didn't realize that
sometimes we too struggle to see our place in God's story.
But God's plans include us too.
Here's another controversy surrounding Sarah.
It's the blaming controversy.
People think she doesn't deserve in the Hall of Fame because of her attitude.
Sarah is often slammed for being this blaming, jealous, kind of vindictive, unreasonable
wife.
Why?
Because of what happened shortly after in Genesis 16, five to six.
So at this point, you have to understand that Hagar got pregnant, and surprise, surprise,
it caused all sorts of problems.
Hagar got proud, Sarah got jealous, and this is where the blaming starts, right?
So Sarah and Hagar are kind of fighting with each other, and then Sarah turns to Abram
and she says, you're responsible for this wrong that I'm suffering.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I put my slave in your arms, but it's your fault.
Now people say, well, Sarah, come on, we all know this was your idea.
Don't go trying to blame Abraham, right?
This person doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fiddlers.
She's playing the blame game, pointing her finger at Abraham.
She shouldn't be doing that, or should she?
Should she?
Because again, we have to consider the context in the ancient Mesopotamian world that they
grew, they were living in.
Abraham was the head of the household, and the decisions came down to him.
So yeah, Sarah may have suggested this plan.
Maybe you should sleep with my slave girl, Hagar, but it was Abraham's call.
He was in charge, and Abraham was the one who God had made the promise to anyways, and
so he should have known better.
So yes, Sarah suggested it, but Abraham, he was responsible.
Maybe they were, you know, Abraham, it's interesting, he then just passes the buck back.
He's like, oh, it's not my fault, right?
You deal with it.
This is your thing.
Your slave's in your hands.
You do with her whatever you want, and he kind of abdicates himself out of this responsibility.
No, no, no, it's not me.
No, it's you.
This was your idea.
No, this was your idea.
But you're in charge.
You're not, you know, you can just see the bickering get going.
Again, here's a little parable.
Imagine you're on a road trip.
One person is driving and says, I know the way, but the other person has a map and they're
supposed to check the map, and so the passenger calls out, you know, hey, turn here, but the
driver says, I know better, and they go this way, and a few minutes later, they're completely
off course.
Then the blaming starts, right?
They're like, hey, why didn't you tell me this wasn't the right way?
You were the one driving, right?
I thought you knew where you were going, but you have the map, right?
You told me, no, but you were the one who actually made the turn, blah, blah, blah,
blah.
This is exactly what's happening with Abraham and Sarah.
Sarah suggested the idea with Hagar, but Abraham was the one behind the wheel.
He had the final say.
So you know what?
Is it safe to say they're both to blame?
One author says this.
It's a long quote, but it's a good one.
The thing that shouts loudest here in this story is that there was not an honorable character
in the lot.
All were dishonorable.
Abraham was the worst.
He was pathetic, passive, impotent, and uncaring of either woman, Sarah or Hagar.
Neither woman had any compassion for the other.
Sarah was worse than Hagar, but you get the idea that Hagar would have done the same if
she could.
In other words, to sum it all up, they're both a mess.
If Abraham points the finger at Sarah, then you know what?
There's three fingers pointing right back at him.
Either they both go into the Hall of Fame, I say, or neither one of them goes into the
Hall of Fame.
But you know what?
They're both in.
Because why?
Because this story shows us that faith happens in the messiness of life, in the real life
screw-ups and decisions and squabbles and conflicts and mistakes.
Even when we take a wrong turn in life, God can still reroute us and get us back where
we're supposed to be.
So quick preview, where are we so far?
We've kind of debunked the textual controversy.
We've debunked the shortcut controversy and the blaming controversy, I think, is safe
to say it's not Sarah's fault.
So it's beginning to look like Sarah might just actually deserve a place in the Hall
of Faith, but there's still one more controversy we've got to address, and that is what is
known as the laughter controversy.
And for many people, this is the real reason why they say Sarah does not belong in the
Hall of Faith.
Because why?
Because in Genesis 18, she literally laughs at God, laughs at God's promise.
Here's what we read.
The Lord said to Abraham, your wife Sarah will have a son.
And Sarah, who is listening at the tent entrance behind him, she goes, you gotta be joking
me, and she laughs to herself.
She laughs.
And then the Lord said to Abraham, hey, wait a second, why did Sarah laugh?
But Sarah denied it and said, no, no, no, I didn't laugh.
It's useless, it's crazy.
But anyways, you know, I think people are kind of right to maybe get mad at Sarah for
laughing at God, because as they say, you do not laugh at the word of God.
You do not chuckle at the promises of God.
Shame on you, Sarah.
Shame on you.
Just look at this woman, look at her with disdain and doubt, and she's so defiant.
How on earth could someone like that end up in the Hall of Faith?
It's funny you should ask that, because one chapter earlier, when God makes the same promise
to Abraham, God says, this is my covenant with you.
You're gonna be the father of many nations.
Abraham falls face down, and he laughed to himself.
Oh, will a son be born to a man who is 100 years old?
So hold on a second here, right?
You're saying that when Sarah laughs, that she gets removed from the Hall of Faith, but
when Abraham does it, it's no big deal?
Come on.
It's a double standard, it's not fair, it's not fair.
But I think here's what it does show us.
Sarah's laughter, it's not unique.
It's actually human.
Laughing at God, as weird as it is to say, is often part of the journey of faith.
Because why?
Because God's promises are so big and so amazing that when we hear them, we may think, oh my
gosh, that is completely impossible.
So our first reaction is kind of to laugh it off in disbelief, or even with some kind
of, yeah, that'll never happen, nervous laughter, right?
I call this the yeah right reaction.
You know, imagine telling a 92 year old woman, you are going to run a marathon.
She'd say, yeah right, maybe if I had a time machine, right?
Or imagine telling a guy who just lost his job, a year from now, you're going to own
a thriving business.
He'd say, yeah right, I can't even put groceries on the table right now.
Or what about you?
What about you?
What if God were to say to you, you know, I can restore that broken relationship in
your life.
And you laugh and you say, yeah right, you don't know the kind of damage that's been
done.
Or God tells you, you know, in 2025, I want you to step out and do something new for me.
And you say, yeah right, I am not qualified for that at all.
My question to you is, hey, let's not look at Sarah, let's look at you.
Where are you saying, yeah right?
Right?
To God.
Sarah's story reminds us, look, God's plans don't depend on our ability to believe them
in the moment.
God didn't condemn Sarah for laughing, by the way.
He carried her through her journey until her laughter of doubt became a laughter of joy,
which ended up happening.
Check this out.
Then ultimately in Genesis 21 six, she is holding the newborn baby, the baby that she
laughed at in her arms.
You know what she says?
She says, God has brought me laughter.
And everyone who hears about it is going to laugh with me.
Isn't it amazing that Sarah is able to turn her laughter of doubt into a laughter of joy?
Even the name Isaac, do you know what it means?
Means laughter.
She named her baby laughter, right?
As a reminder to say what once seemed absolutely impossible became a reality.
So guys, Sarah's story, it shows us that God's got the power to turn your laughter of doubt
into a laughter of joy.
And you know what?
You can laugh all you want at God's promises.
And of course the world will laugh at you if you believe in God's promises.
But in the end, we're all going to find ourselves laughing with joy at what God has done.
So Sarah's place in the hall of faith.
Yeah, it's been debated, but her story, I think, silences the critics.
One, yes, some say Hebrews 11, 11 is about Abraham, but this text is clearly talking
about Sarah.
Secondly, what seems like a shortcut was actually a sacrifice that she made for the promise.
Third, yes, she played the blame game, but so did Abraham.
And fourthly, yes, she laughed, but let's be honest, who wouldn't?
And in the end, God turned her laughter of doubt into a laughter of joy.
Sarah was not perfect.
You're not perfect.
She doubted, she blamed, she laughed, she struggled, but God still fulfilled his promise
through her.
And if he can include Sarah, he can include us too.
Because our faith can falter, but God's promises never fail.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Thank you for listening to Trinity Sermons.
This week's sermon was recorded at Trinity Church, Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario
on February 9th, 2025.