"Past faith is no guarantee of future victory---every day we must trust God.

There is a fundamental reality each of us must wrestle with: we cannot live today on yesterday's faith.  Each day brings new challenges and new choices.  Each day we must decide if we will walk in faith or in flesh.  Today we will look at some smudges on the portrait of Sarah's faith.  Although we will see some mistakes, we should be encouraged that the Scriptures do not succumb to the temptation toward hero worship.  God's word paints these portraits of faith in a very honest fashion, complete with mistakes and messes.  Yet it is this honesty which insures these portraits can minister to us today.  For failure is a reality in each of our lives, and seeing the mistakes of these saints of old should encourage us that when we fail we are not alone.  It should also remind us that, once we have failed in an area, we are ever vulnerable to make that mistake again.  We should never be surprised at what shows up in our lives when we choose not to walk by faith.

Questions (Print and Study or just pick up your bible, a pen, and a few sheets of paper and step into the Bible Study Lesson.  Or you can email your responses so we can expound on them)

  Take a few minutes to read through the narrative in Genesis 20.  Clearly Abraham has made the same mistake be made in Egypt (Genesis 12:10-20).  Sadly, he did not lead in the direction of faith.  But what was Sarah's part in this?  Look at Abimelech's response to God in verse 5 and identify Sarah's role.
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Both Abraham and Sarah could plead ignorance the first time, but not this time.  They should have known better.  They should have learned from the earlier mistake.  Abraham led Sarah in the wrong  direction, but her lie shows she was a willing participant as well.  Clearly we see God's grace manifested in His supernatural protection of Abraham and Sarah---God intervened and did not allow Abimelech to touch Sarah.  But this was God's doing, not Abraham's or Sarah's.  Their lies, instead of protecting them, put Sarah in harm's way.  Even when we are faithless, God remains faithful, for He cannot deny who He is (2 Timothy 2:13).

   Now take some time to read Genesis 21:1-8.  Summarize the details of what occurs here, and compare the change in Sarah's laughter from 18:12 to 21:6.

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God did what He promised, and Sarah had her son.  In obedience they named him Isaac, which means "laughter."  Every time they called his name they were reminded of the laughter of unbelief, but the memory was not painful.  In 21:6 we see the laughter of unbelief had been turned to the laughter of joy and delight.  You might say, "God had the last laugh."  There is a point we must notice from the last two passages.  In both we see that Sarah in her pursuit of God had followed the mistakes of her husband.  When he lied (20:2), she lied (20:5).  When he laughed in unbelief (17:17), she laughed in unbelief (18:12).  The failures of those we follow can easily become our own failures if we are not careful.

  Let's look today at one more incident in Sarah's life.  Read Genesis 21:9-13 and record how Sarah responds to Hagar and Ishmael after Isaac's birth.

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It is difficult to interpret Sarah's actions at this point.  In her dealings with Hagar and Ishmael, was she right or wrong?  We have no commentary other than that God told Abraham to take her advice and cast them out.  This does not mean that Sarah was completely right in all that she did.  Clearly, Ishmael was wrong in what he did, and like his mother before him he had voiced his animosity toward Sarah.  But even in this, we see God's instructive reminder of the folly of fleshly effort, for Ishmael was Sarah's idea.

We close out the story of Sarah in Genesis 23 where we are told that she lived one hundred and twenty-seven years.  That means she had thirty-seven years with Isaac.  She saw him grow up, and in him she could catch a glimpse of the promise of the future.  She walked with God.  She made mistakes as all of us do, but she saw God's grace, and she saw growth.  She left behind a legacy of faith for us to follow.

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