Who is Sarah and what does her story tell us about God? The life of Sarah, Abraham’s wife and the mother of Isaac, is rich with meaning for today’s African-American Christian women. In exploring Sarah’s life, we see how God enabled her to make a profound statement about His role in our lives.
Sarah – who was married to Abraham and known as “Sarai” – was the third of the three “wives” of Abraham, his half-sister being the first. God told Abraham that Sarah would have a son, Ishmael, but that God would “come by” her later in her life to bless her with a much more important son. That more important son became known as Isaac. With Isaac, God established a covenant between himself and Abraham and through their descendants: WE will give you everything you want to know about Sarah in the Bible story and much more.
Sarah In The Bible Story
1. In this zone, the villagers were responsible to offer hospitality to strangers.
2. The stranger must be transformed from being a potential threat to becoming an ally by the offer of hospitality.
3. Only the male head of household or a male citizen of a town or village may offer the invitation of hospitality.
4. The invitation may include a time span statement for the period of hospitality, but this can then be extended, if agreeable to both parties, on the renewed invitation of the host.
5. The stranger has the right of refusal, but this could be considered an affront to the honor of the host and could be a cause for immediate hostilities or conflict.
6. Once the invitation is accepted, the roles of the host and the guest are set by the rules of custom. The guest must not ask for anything. The host provides the best he has available, despite what may be modestly offered in the initial offer of hospitality. The guest is expected to reciprocate immediately with news, predictions of good fortune, or expressions of gratitude for what he has been given, and praise of the host’s generosity and honor. The host must not ask personal questions of the guest. These matters can only be volunteered by the guest.
7. The guest remains under the protection of the host until the guest has left the zone of obligation of the host.
This episode provides the background for the New Testament command, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb. 13:2).
Hospitality and generosity are often underappreciated in Christian circles. Yet the Bible pictures the kingdom of heaven as a generous, even extravagant, banquet (Isa. 25:6-9; Matt. 22:2-4). Hospitality fosters good relationships, and Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality provides an early biblical insight to the way relationships and sharing a meal go hand in hand. These strangers reaped a deeper understanding of each other by sharing a meal and an extended encounter. This remains true today. When people break bread together, or enjoy recreation or entertainment, they often grow to understand and appreciate each other better. Better working relationships and more effective communication are often fruits of hospitality.
In Abraham and Sarah’s time, hospitality was almost always offered in the host’s home. Today, this is not always possible, or even desirable, and the hospitality industry has come into being to facilitate and offer hospitality in a wide variety of ways. If you want to offer hospitality and your home is too small or your cooking skills too limited, you might take someone to a restaurant or hotel and enjoy camaraderie and deepening relationships there. Hospitality workers would assist you in offering hospitality. Moreover, hospitality workers have in their own right the opportunity to refresh people, create good relationships, provide shelter, and serve others much as Jesus did when he made wine (John 2:1-11) and washed feet (John 13:3-11). The hospitality industry accounts for 9 percent of the world gross domestic product and employs 98 million people,[2] including many of the less-skilled and immigrant workers who represent a rapidly growing portion of the Christian church.
God said to Eve, “Yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Gen. 3:16). That was part of the burden which sin brought to the woman, and it is interesting that the next major husband and wife relationship in Scripture illustrates a wife’s submission to her husband’s rule. Sarah is commended twice by New Testament writers, once for her faith (Heb. 11:11) and once for her submission to her husband (1 Pet. 3:5, 6). The Apostle Peter went so far as to say she “obeyed Abraham, calling him lord.”
We would not think of asking a wife to call her husband “lord” in our culture, but in that day it was Sarah’s way of expressing her submissiveness. Strangely enough, these two principles, faith and submission, actually go together. Submission for a wife is basically faith that God is working through her husband to accomplish what is best for her. And that is the story of Sarah’s life with Abraham.
Look first at the early seeds of faith. The story began in the city of Ur, a thriving metropolis near the ancient coastline of the Persian Gulf. At least one man was repulsed by the idolatry and sin of Ur, for he had come to know the one true and living God. In fact, God had spoken to him: “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:1-3). Armed with that potent promise, Abraham pulled up stakes, and with his father Terah, his nephew Lot, and his wife Sarah, began the long trek northward around the fertile crescent to the city of Haran.
Moving is no fun, particularly when your moving van is a camel or a donkey, and especially when you don’t even know where you are going! “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going” (Heb. 11:8). That is probably harder on a woman than it is on a man. Sarah is not mentioned in that verse, but her faith is there, every bit as steadfast as Abraham’s. She believed that God would sustain her through the arduous journey and show her husband the place he had chosen for them.
Sarah was not a weak, spineless, overly dependent, empty-headed woman. Her parents called her Sarai, and names had meaning in the ancient biblical world. Hers meant “princess.” It may have described her great beauty, which is referred to twice in the inspired record (Gen. 12:11, 14). It probably described, as well, her cultured upbringing, her fine education, her stately charm, and her gracious manner. When God changed her name to Sarah, he did not remove the princely connotation, but rather added the further dignity of motherhood. She is called in that context “a mother of nations” (Gen. 17:15-16).
Sarah was an intelligent and capable woman. But when she married Abraham she made a decision. She established as her mission in life the task of helping her husband fulfill God’s purposes for him. That was not weakness. It was God’s will for her life: true biblical submission. Some wives have been systematically sabotaging God’s plan for their husbands because they have not been willing to believe God and entrust themselves to His wisdom. They simply will not trust God to work through their husbands to accomplish what is best. They feel they must help God along by trying to dominate their husbands.
It appears as though Abraham’s father refused to go on when they reached Haran. He was an idol worshiper (Josh. 24:2), and the city of Haran suited him fine for the remainder of his days. He delayed God’s purposes for Abraham, but he could not destroy them. At Terah’s death, Abraham, then seventy-five years of age, departed from Haran for the land which God had promised him (Gen. 12:4). It was another move to another unknown place, but by his side was Sarah, woman of submission and faith (Gen. 12:5). The days ahead would see her faith severely tested and her submissiveness sorely tried.
Let’s explore, secondly, the continuing struggles of faith. Faith grows best under attack. The person who prays for God to take away his problems may be asking for a sickly spiritual life. Sometimes our faith falters under the stress, but if we admit the failure and accept God’s forgiveness, even those failures can contribute to our spiritual growth. Abraham and Sarah are both commended for their great faith in Scripture, but their failures are recorded for our instruction and encouragement.
The first attack came shortly after they entered Canaan. There was a famine in the land and Abraham decided to leave the place which God had promised him and flee into Egypt (Gen. 12:10). Had he consulted Sarah, she might have pointed out the foolishness of his decision, but like many men he moved ahead with his plans without considering the hardships he could cause her. Too many men refuse to ask advice from their wives. They think headship gives them the prerogative of doing whatever they please without talking it over with their wives and coming to a mutually acceptable agreement. They are afraid their wives might find cracks in their logic or expose their narrow-minded selfishness. So they barge ahead with their plans and the whole family suffers for it.
As they neared Egypt, Abraham said to his wife, “See now, I know that you are a beautiful woman; and it will come about when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, ‘This is his wife’; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may live on account of you” (Gen. 12:11-13). It was a tribute to Sarah’s beauty that at sixty-five years of age she was still so irresistible that Abraham thought the Egyptians might try to kill him for her. And the beauty was not just in Abraham’s eye. “And it came about when Abram came into Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And Pharaoh’s officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh; and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house” (Gen. 12:14, 15). While Abraham thought the Egyptians might murder him to get his wife, he was sure they would treat him as an honored guest if they thought he were her brother. And he turned out to be right. They gave him many animals and servants for her sake (Gen. 12:16). Now technically, Sarah was Abraham’s sister, his half-sister (Gen. 20:12). Such marriages were not unusual in that day. But what they told the Pharaoh was only a half-truth, and half-truths are lies in God’s economy. He cannot honor sin.
Why did Sarah go along with his sinful scheme? Is not this a case where obedience to God would supersede obedience to one’s husband? I think it is. A wife has no obligation to obey her husband when obedience compromises the clearly revealed will of God (cf. Acts 5:29). Sarah could have justly refused. But it does show how deep her faith and submission really were. Sarah believed God’s promise that Abraham would become the father of a great nation. Since there were no children as yet, she was expendable, but Abraham had to live and have children even if it should be by another woman.
She may also have believed that God would intervene and deliver her before immorality became necessary. That would be quite probable in view of Pharaoh’s large harem. She may likewise have believed that God would reunite her with her husband and rescue both of them from Pharaoh’s power. And because she believed, she submitted. God could have protected them apart from Abraham’s selfish scheme, but Sarah’s faith in God and submission to her husband are still beautifully illustrated in this Old Testament narrative. The true test of a wife’s submission may come when she knows her husband is making a mistake.
It is hard to imagine a man sinking much lower than Abraham did on this occasion. Even the pagan king rebuked him for what he did (Gen. 12:18-20). He failed Sarah sadly, but God was faithful to her. He honored her faith and delivered her. He never forsakes those who trust him. You would think the lesson of God’s sovereign care would have been so indelibly inscribed on Abraham’s soul after this experience that he would never compromise his wife again to protect himself. But he did. About twenty years later he did exactly the same thing with Abimelech, king of Gerar (Gen. 20:1-8). This shows how weak and faithless the faithful can be. There are probably some sins we think we will never commit again, but we must ever be watchful, for that is exactly where Satan will attack us. The amazing thing is that Sarah submitted again on that later occasion, and that God delivered her again, another evidence of her faith and God’s faithfulness.