SARAH - LIFE ("Zoe") GIVING FAITH - Mother's Day 2024
SARAH – Life (“Zoe”) Giving Faith
Mother’s Day Sunday, May 12, 2024, the Year of Our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
This past Tuesday at Bible Study, we covered Hebrews 11. These are the heroes of Faith in the Old Testament who received a good report. Each of the heroes of Faith released their Faith for the supernatural power of the Lord to manifest in the natural in different ways. There are only three women mentioned in Chapter 11, Sarah, Rahab (vs. 31), and women who received their dead raised to life again (vs. 35).
This mother’s day, I am honoring Sarah for she not only birthed the child of promise through whom the seed of Jesus Christ, the son of God, would be born into the world, but she and Abraham together also birthed the “Zoe” the very life of God and became heirs together of the grace of life (“Zoe”).
1 Peter 3: 6-7: Sara… became heirs together (with Abraham) of the grace of life (“Zoe”) …
Heb. 11:11: By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.
“The Greek word for life in 1 Peter 3: 7 is “zoe” the absolute fulness of life, both essential and ethical, which belongs to God. Life real and genuine, active and vigorous, devoted to God, blessed, in the portion even in this world of those who put their trust in Christ. After the resurrection to be consummated by new accessions and to last forever” (Strong’s). Eternal Life through the life (“Zoe”) of God in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 7:14: Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leads unto life “(zoe”), and few there be that find it.
John 10:10: The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy I have come that they may have life (“Zoe”), and that they may have it more abundantly.
1 Jo. 1:2: (For the life (“zoe”) was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life (“zoe”) which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.)
In Galatians 4: 23-31, Paul uses the story of Sarah and Hagar as an allegory. Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. The woman represents two covenants. One covenant is from Mt. Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves. This is Hagar. Hagar stands for Mt. Sinai and corresponds to those who are under the law (religion), because she is in slavery with her children. New Jerusalem, Mt. Zion, Spiritual Israel, the Kingdom of God, the Jerusalem that is above is free. The allegory tells that it was the free woman (Sarah) who gave birth to a child according to the Spirit, while the Bondwoman (Hagar) gave birth to a child according to the flesh.
Gal.4:7: You are no more a servant, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
The fact that Sarah is mentioned four times in the New Testament as well as in Isaiah 51:2 is evidence of her action faith which makes her a partner in faith establishing God’s Kingdom on earth through the birth of His son, Jesus Christ.
Isiah 51:2: Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you for I called him alone and blessing him and increased him.
Then the Prophet Isaiah describes the abundant blessings which God has bestowed upon Zion, the seed of Abraham and Sarah, the mother of not only the nation of Israel, but a mother of nations. The nation continues to reap the blessings of the faith of Abraham and Sarah, and yes even today we receive the Son of the promise which Sarah and Abraham received by faith.
Gal. 3:14: That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
The story of the beautiful and distinguished Sarah; and her husband, “Father of the Faithful,” covers more space in the Genesis account than does that of the entire human race from the creation to their time.
Sarah traveled with her husband along the fertile banks of the Euphrates and on around the Fertile Crescent to the trail south along the Mediterranean. The couple’s caravan was impressive in the beginning and Abraham increased his wealth as he traveled. At Abraham’s word, no less than 318 servants were born in his house and trained to arms, and accompanied him to the rescue of his nephew, Lot.
The beautiful confidence and true affection existing between Sarah and Abraham are reflected in the authority she had over the household during his absence. He recognized her as his equal.
The Bible records she was a “a fair woman to look upon” (Gen. 12:11). Certainly, so much so that two kings desired her for their harems.
Sarah was a princess in bearing and character, as her name signified. From Babylonia, she brought with her the name of Saria, but fourteen years later, at the time of her approaching motherhood, God changed her name from Sarai to Sarah, and her husband’s name from Abrahm to Abraham (Gen. 17: 5, 15).
Sarai – Hebrew “Saray: a head person of any rank or class; principal, ruler, steward.
Sarah – Female noble, lady, princess, queen, noble woman.
It is a beautiful honor that it was the Lord who changed her name.
Genesis 18:1 gives the account of the LORD (Jehovah) appearing to him in the plains of Mamre as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day. Three divine messengers came to tell him that Sarah would give birth to a son. Sarah was listening from her tent and laughed within herself saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also? (18:12).
The LORD’s response was “Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the time appointed, I will return unto you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.
Sarah had surely developed great faith or she could not have become the mother in the bible’s first story of a miracle birth.
Paul in his epistle to the Romans, in speaking on salvation that comes not by law, but through faith, best expresses the miracle of Isaac’s birth.
Ro. 4:18-19: Who against hope, believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall your seed be. And not being weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb.
Hebrews 11:1: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Faith is one of those words too wide, too high, and too deep for the human language to express. It believes the promise though the promise is not yet manifest. It is the absolute knowing there is a God; that His Word is sure; and that which is unseen in the realm of the Spirit is as real as that which we see and feel with our natural senses.
This supernatural impartation of life (“zoe”) restored Sarah’s beauty and youth. A description of her restoration is found in a fragment of Genesis 20 from one of the Dead Sea Scrolls (related to the king by the chief prince, Horkahosh): (The Message of the Scrolls, Simon & Schuster, 1957):
“How… beautiful the look of her face… and how… fine is the hair of her head, how fair indeed are her eyes and how pleasing her nose and all the radiance of her face… how beautiful and how lovely all her whiteness… When the king heard the words of Hokanosh and the words of his two companions, for all three spoke as one man, he desired her exceedingly and he sent at once to bring her to him and he looked upon her and marveled at all her loveliness and took her to him to wife and sought to slay me.”
Josephus informs us that Sarah courageous and unafraid, admitted to her royal admirer that she was the wife of Abraham, consequently Pharoah gave many gifts to Abraham because of the beautiful Sarah. It is to Sarah’s credit that her own fidelity to Abraham secured her escape.
Today, this “Mother of Nations,” of “Life Giving Faith” lives on, some four thousand plus years later, as the woman whose faith together with her husband brought the grace of life “zoe” from God through which the miraculous birth of the Prince of Life “zoe,” (Author of Life “zoe”), Jesus Christ was born through another miraculous birth.
“Zoe” is the same Greek word used for the Book of Life; Water of Life; Tree of Life; Spirit of life; Crown of life; Word of life; Savior of life; promise of life; etc.
As we bless our mother’s today, we have been given this indwelling “grace of life” through the Holy Spirit of Life, let us lift our faith to receive a restoration of this indwelling life.
1 Jo. 5:12: He that has the Son has life, and he that has not the Son of God does not have life.
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Eastgate Ministries Church, 10115 West Hidden Lakes Lane, Richmond, TX
Scripture from N.K.J.V. I entered into the labors of “All the Women of the Bible” (Edith Deen (1905-1994); (The Message of the Scrolls, Simon & Schuster, 1957. Comments and conclusions are my own and not meant to reflect the views of those who I entered into their labors.