THE DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH IN THIS CASE: The desired good was contrary to
1. Nature.
2. Experience.
3. Personal worthiness.
II. THE BASIS OF THIS FAITH. Grounded entirely on God’s will. The removal of the difficulty may be
1. The subject of distinct promise.
2. Necessary for obedience to certain commands.
3. The secret purpose of God, which faith leaves Him to fulfil, if so He pleases.
III. THE RESULT OF THIS FAITH.
1. Itself a source of victorious power.
2. Rewarded by God with victorious power. (C. New.)
Sarah’s faith
I. THE PERSON BELIEVING. A woman, weak in sex, may be strong in faith.
1. Many times the word doth not work presently: Sarah laugheth at first, but afterwards believeth. Some that belong to the purposes of grace may stand out for a while against the ways of God, till they are fully convinced; as Sarah laughed till she knew it to be a word not spoken in jest, but a promise made in earnest.
2. Usually before the settling of faith there is a conflict. “Shall I have a child who am old, my lord being old also?” Reason opposeth against the promise. So it is usual when we come to settle the heart in the belief of any promise. Look, as when the fire beginneth to be kindled we see smoke first before flame, so it is here before our comforts be established, we are full of doubts; so that doubtings are a hopeful prognostic--it is a sign men mind their condition.
3. With great indulgence, God hideth the defects of His children and taketh notice of their graces.
II. THE COMMENDATION OF HER FAITH. From the influence of her faith.
1. “She received strength to conceive seed.” Learn hence
(1) That though bringing forth of children be according to the course of nature, yet God hath a great hand in it.
(2) Let us improve it spiritually.
(3) Faith hath a great stroke in making way for blessings. “By faith she received strength to conceive seed.” Means can do nothing without God, and God will do nothing without faith (Mat_13:58).
2. From the effect of this influence--“And was delivered of a child”--I observe hence
(1) Every promise received by faith will surely be seconded with performance.
(2) Faith is the best midwife. By faith Sarah was delivered of a child.
3. From the application of her faith. “When she was past age.” There were two difficulties--she was naturally barren (Gen_11:30) and she was now ninety years of age, and it ceased to be with her “after the manner of woman”; and therefore here lay the excellency of her faith, that she could believe that she should be the mother of a mighty nation. Barren I say she was by natural constitution, and now no better than dead, having so long outlived the natural time of bearing children. Learn hence--That no difficulty or hindrance should cause a disbelief of the promise. The reasons, are two--partly from God, that maketh the promise; partly from faith, that receiveth the promise.
(1) From God’s nature. God is not tied to the order of second causes, much less to the road of common probabilities; He will turn nature upside down rather than not be as good as His word.
(2) From the nature of faith, which is to guide the soul when reason and sense faileth.
III. THE GROUND OF HER FAITH. Because she judged Him faithful that had promised. Hence observe
1. Wherever we put forth faith we must have a promise, otherwise it is but fancy, not faith. It is not a ground of expectation barely what God is able to do, but what God will do. As the two pillars of Solomon’s house were called Jachin and Boaz (1Ki_7:21)--the one signifies “Strength,” and the other “He will establish it.”
2. In closing with the promise, we should chiefly give God the honour of His faithfulness.
(1) Because God valueth this most, He standeth much of His truth. Heaven and earth shall pass away before one jot or tittle of His word shall pass Mat_5:18). The monuments of His power shall be defaced to make good His truth (Psa_138:2). “Thou hast magnified Thy Word above all Thy name.” All other attributes give way to this.
(2) Because this giveth support and relief to the soul in waiting Heb_10:23). “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, for He is faithful that promised.” God hath promised no more than He is able to perform; His word never exceeded His power. (T. Manton, D. D.)
Faith triumphing over difficulties
I. FAITH MAY BE SORELY SHAKEN AND TOSSED AT THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF DIFFICULTIES LYING IN THE WAY OF THE PROMISE, WHICH YET AT LAST IT SHALL OVERCOME. And there be many degrees of its weakness and failure herein. As
1. A mere recoiling, with some disorder in the understanding, unable to apprehend the way and manner of the accomplishment of the promise.
2. It ariseth to a distrust of the event of the promises or their accomplishment, because of the difficulties that lie in the way.
3. When there is for a season an actual prevalency of unbelief. So it was with the apostle Peter, when he denied his Master, who yet was quickly recovered. It is therefore our duty
(1) To watch that our faith be not surprised or shaken by the appearance of difficulties and oppositions.
(2) Not to despond utterly on any degree of its failure, for it is in its nature, by the use of means, to recover its vigour and efficacy.
II. ALTHOUGH GOD ORDINARILY WORKETH BY HIS CONCURRING BLESSING ON THE COURSE OF NATURE, YET HE IS NOT OBLIGED THEREUNTO. Yet
III. IT IS NO DEFECT IN FAITH, NOT TO EXPECT EVENTS AND BLESSINGS ABSOLUTELY ABOVE THE USE OF MEANS UNLESS WE HAVE A PARTICULAR WARRANT FOR IT; as Sarah had in this case.
IV. THE DUTY AND USE OF FAITH ABOUT TEMPORAL MERCIES ARE TO BE REGULATED BY THE GENERAL RULES OF THE WORD, WHERE NO ESPECIAL PROVIDENCE DOTH MAKE APPLICATION OF A PROMISE.
V. The mercy here spoken of, concerning a son unto Abraham by Sarah his wife, WAS ABSOLUTELY DECREED, AND ABSOLUTELY PROMISED; YET GOD INDISPENSABLY REQUIRES FAITH IN THEM FOR THE FULFILLING OF THAT DECREE, and the accomplishment of that promise.
VI. THE FORMAL OBJECT OF FAITH IN THE DIVINE PROMISES IS NOT THE THINGS PROMISED IN THE FIRST PLACE, BUT GOD HIMSELF IN HIS ESSENTIAL EXCELLENCIES OF TRUTH, OR FAITHFULNESS AND POWER.
VII. EVERY PROMISE OF GOD HATH THIS CONSIDERATION TACITLY ANNEXED TO IT, “IS anything too hard for the Lord?” There is no Divine promise, but when it comes unto the trial, as unto our closing with it, no promise of the new covenant, but we apprehend as great a difficulty and improbability of its accomplishment unto us, as Sarah did of this.
VIII. Although the truth, veracity, or faithfulness of God be in a peculiar manner the immediate object of our faith, yet IT TAXES IN THE CONSIDERATION OF ALL OTHER DIVINE EXCELLENCIES FOR ITS ENCOURAGEMENT AND CORROBORATION. (John Owen, D. D.)
Faith counting all things possible:
That which is elsewhere made characteristic of Abraham is in this one place ascribed to Sarah. It may have been in the mind of the apostle to suggest to his readers, at this point of his appeal, the thought that “in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.” Woman, no less than man, needs, and is capable of, the grace of faith. The soul’s life of woman, redeemed and glorified by the gospel, is a life of faith, in every submission, and in every effort, and in every heroism, of the soul’s life of man. “Through faith Sarah also herself”--Sarah in her proper sphere, as Abraham in his--became the inheritor of that privilege of blessing, from which sprang a vast nation, to be the trustee of God’s oracles, and the country, on earth, of Christ Himself. This is that example of faith--and it is instructive to remember it--to which the explicit testimony is attached, “He believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness.” It was not that first exercise of faith, which triumphed over the attractions of home, and reconciled the patriarch Abraham to a life of exile and wandering. It was not that third exercise of faith, which triumphed over the love of offspring, and enabled the father to give back by his own act the precious life of his child into the hand of Him whose very promise that obedience seemed to be defeating. Neither of these self-devotions is connected in the sacred records with the faith that “justifies.” It is the mental act--it is the looking up into that clear night-sky, and responding, in heart, to the Voice which says, “Count those stars--so shall thy seed be”--it is this, the most elementary and the most entirely secret “taking God at His word”--it is that particular state of the mind, which has no action at all in it--which is altogether, and from first to last, mental--just the standing instead of sinking under God’s disclosure and God’s promise--it is this which God looks at. All else is consequence, natural consequence: the obedience which leaves the home--the obedience which sacrifices the son--all this is but the expression in action of the mind’s mind and the soul’s soul.
1. What Abraham believed was a physical impossibility. Over that difficulty his faith triumphed. The impossibility presented to our faith is not physical but spiritual. We have to believe, not in the suspension of what we call “ laws of nature”--in other words, of God’s ordinary methods of procedure in regard to suns and stars, to water and earth, to disease and infection, to life and death--but in certain other things, which, to eyes spiritually enlightened, are at least as difficult. We have to believe in the actual forgiveness of things actually done. We have to believe that that black hateful thing done or said yesterday--even though it had fever in its breath and corruption in its influence--can be, shall be, obliterated in the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s own Son, shed, outpoured, for that very purpose. We have to believe in the power of sanctification through the Eternal Spirit. We have to believe that that bad habit, formed in boyhood, weakly yielded to in manhood, still predominant, can by the grace of God--shall by the grace of God--be vanquished in us, burnt out of us, sothat we shall be more than conquerors through Him that loved us. These are the improbabilities, the impossibilities- not physical perhaps, but worse than physical--worse, because invisible, worse, because entering into a nature more intricate, more sensitive, more suffering, than any most thrilling fibre, most throbbing nerve, of this body--which we Christians, not by guess-work, but by proof--not by wishing or willing, but by receiving and embracing on the authority of God the Creator, God the Redeemer, God the Sanctifier--have to apprehend, to realise, and to live by. This, this is faith.
2. There is one peculiarity in the instance before us, and that is the connection which it indicates between spiritual faith and physical consequence. Other Scriptures tell of the rewards and recompenses of faith in a world out of sight. But this passage says, Because of a faith in Him who had promised, “therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable.” You may say, The promise was of a supernatural birth. The promise was physical. It looked not beyond earth, and the consequences were “in the like material.” God makes not these sharp distinctions between the life that is and the life that shall be. “Godliness,” St. Paul tells us, “hath promise” of both. And though we would not so read that text as though it offered riches and pleasures and honours to the righteous, whose very faith counts all these gifts not only precarious but perilous; still it certainly says that God’s gifts to His own are not all future: there is a reward for His people here; there is a supernatural offspring, there is a birth, not of accident, not of circumstance, not of the self-will, but all of grace, which turns the thing that is into a foretaste and promise of the thing that shall be: there is a love, and there is a happiness, and there is a home, which derives all its lustre from the ideal and antitype of these out of sight: by faith man and woman, born again of water and of the Spirit, receive back, the second time, out of God’s fulness, that which before had been grasped eagerly out of the hand of Nature and of the Fall--and, so receiving, find in each thing a grace and a beauty unseen, unfelt before--find in Faith itself, not the opposite, but the complement, of sight, and enjoy twice over the thing that God created, and the thing that God redeemed and that God sanctifies. (Dean Vaughan.)
Faith, sense, and reason:
It is the nature of faith to believe God upon His bare word, and that against sense in things invisible, and against reason in things incredible. Sense corrects imagination, reason corrects sense, but faith corrects both. (J. Trapp.)
Therefore sprang there even of one
The increase of the Church
I. WHEN GOD IS PLEASED TO INCREASE HIS CHURCH IN NUMBER, IT IS ON VARIOUS ACCOUNTS A MATTER OF REJOICING UNTO ALL BELIEVERS, and a subject of their daily prayers, as that which is frequently promised in the word of truth. This blessing of a numerous posterity is variously set forth, illustrated, and heightened.
1. From the root of it. It was one, one man, that is, Abraham. Unto him alone was the great promise of the blessing Seed now confined. And he, though but one, was heir of all the promises.
2. From the consideration of the state and outward condition of that one, when he became the spring of this numerous posterity: “of him as good as dead.” His body naturally was as useless unto the end of the procreation of such a posterity as if it had been dead.
II. GOD OFTENTIMES BY NATURE WORKS THINGS ABOVE THE POWER OF NATURE IN ITS ORDINARY EFFICACY AND OPERATIONS. So by weak and dead means He often produceth mighty effects. (John Owen, D. D.)
