Sarah and Her Daughters

Isaiah 51:2
“Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bore you.”

1 Peter 3:6
“Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters you are, as long as you do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.”

I desire to thank God for having had the privilege of preaching in Exeter Hall yesterday to a large congregation from the whole of the second verse of the 51st chapter of Isaiah: “Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bore you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.” On that occasion, I focused on Abraham and tried to highlight the fact that God called him while he was a heathen man, one man, and a lone man—and yet He blessed him, making him the founder of His people, multiplying his seed as the stars and as the sand of the seashore. I devoutly beseech the Lord to accept my testimony to His power and to increase the faith of the many of His servants to whom I spoke on that occasion. His Holy Spirit gave me the word—may He cause His saints to feed upon it!

However, I do not like to do an injustice to anyone, and I feel that I did not speak sufficiently about Sarah in that sermon, though I did not entirely forget her. Let us make up for this omission. If we had Abraham at Exeter Hall yesterday morning, we will have Sarah at the Tabernacle tonight, and perhaps we shall learn a lesson from her holy character as well as from that of her husband. The two lessons combined may go to the perfecting of each other. May our great Teacher, the Holy Spirit, now instruct us!

I. The Blessing of a Godly Marriage

To begin with, let us note what a happy circumstance it is when a godly, gracious man has an equally godly and gracious wife. It is ill when there is a difference, a radical difference, between husband and wife—when one fears God and the other has no regard for Him. What a pain it is to a Christian woman to be yoked with an unbelieving husband! In a case I remember, the husband lived all his life indifferent to Divine things, while the wife was an earnest Christian woman and saw all her children grow up in the ways of the Lord. The father lived unregenerate and died without giving any testimony of a change of heart. When our Sister speaks of him, it is with fearful anguish. She does not know what to say, but leaves the matter in the hands of God, often sighing, “O that by a word or a look I could have been enabled to indulge a hope that my poor husband looked to Jesus at the last.”

The same must be the case for a husband who has an ungodly wife. However much God may bless him in all other respects, there seems to be a great miss there—as if a part of the sun were eclipsed—that part of life, which should be all light, is left in thick darkness. Oh, let those of us who have the happiness of being joined together in the Lord thank and bless God every time we remember each other! Let us pray God that, having such a privilege—that our prayers are not hindered by irreligious partners—we may never hinder our prayers ourselves! God grant that we may give His name great glory because of His choice favor to us in this respect.

Abraham had cause to praise God for Sarah, and Sarah was grateful for Abraham. I have no doubt that Sarah’s character owed much of its excellence to Abraham. I should not wonder, however, if we discover, when all things are revealed, that Abraham owed as much to Sarah! They probably learned from each other. Sometimes the weaker comforted the stronger, and often the stronger sustained the weaker. I should not wonder if a mutual interchange of their several graces tended to make them both rich in the things of God. Perhaps Abraham had not been all that Abraham was if Sarah had not been all that Sarah was.

Our first text bids us, “Look to Sarah,” and we do look at her and thank God if, like Abraham, we are favored with holy consorts, whose amiable tempers and characters tend to make us better servants of God.

II. God Does Not Forget the Lesser Lights

Next, we notice that God does not forget the lesser lights. Abraham shines like a star of the first magnitude, and we do not, at first sight, observe the other star with light so bright and pure, shining with milder radiance but with kindred luster, close at his side. The light of Mamre, which is known under the name of Abraham, resolves itself into a double star when we apply the telescope of reflection and observation. To the common eye, Abraham is the sole character, and ordinary people overlook his faithful spouse, but God does not!

Our God never omits the good who are obscure. You may depend upon it that there is no such difference in the love of God toward different persons as should make Him fix His eyes only upon those that are strong and omit those who are weak. Our eyes spy out the great things, but God’s eyes are such that nothing is great with Him and nothing is little. He is infinite, and therefore nothing bears any comparison to Him. You remember how it is written that He who counts the stars and calls them by name also binds up the broken in heart and heals all their wounds. He who treasures the names of His Apostles also notes the women that followed in their train. He who marks the brave confessors and the bold preachers of the Gospel also remembers those helpers who labor quietly in the Gospel in places of retirement into which the hawk’s eyes of history seldom pry.

Let, therefore, those here present who count themselves to be of the tribe of Benjamin, little in Israel, never be discouraged on that account—for the Lord is too great to despise the little ones! You are not forgotten by God, O you who are overlooked by men! The Lord’s eyes are upon innumerable creeping things in the great sea as well as upon Leviathan—He will observe you. If He sends the deluging showers that make strong the cedars, which are full of sap and adorn the brow of Lebanon, so does He send to each tiny blade of grass its own drop of dew. God forgets not the less in His care for the greater! Sarah was in life covered with the shield of the Almighty as well as Abraham, her husband—in death she rested in the same tomb—in Heaven she has the same joy! In the Book of the Lord, she has the same record!

III. Imitating God’s Example

Next, notice that it would be well for us to imitate God in not forgetting the lesser lights. I do not know that great men are often good examples. I am sorry when, because men have been clever and successful, they are held up to imitation, though their motives and morals have been questionable. I would sooner men were stupid and honest than clever and tricky! It is better to act rightly and fail altogether than to succeed by falsehood and cunning. I would sooner bid my son imitate an honest man who has no talent and whose life is unsuccessful, than point him to the most clever and greatest that ever lived—whose life has become a brilliant success—but whose principles are condemnable.

Learn not from the great but from the good! Be not dazzled by success, but follow the safer light of truth and right! But so it is that men mainly observe that only which is written in big letters. But you know the choicest part of God’s books are printed in small characters. They who would only know the rudiments may spell out the words in large type which are for babes, but those who want to be fully instructed must sit down and read the small print of God, given us in the lives of saints whom most men neglect!

Some of the choicest virtues are not so much seen in the great as in the quiet, obscure life. Many a Christian woman manifests a glory of character that is to be found in no public man. I am sure that many a flower that is “born to blush unseen” and, as we think, to “waste its fragrance on the desert air,” is fairer than the beauties which reign in the conservatory and are the admiration of all! God has ways of producing very choice things on a small scale. As rare pearls and precious stones are never great masses of rock, but always lie within a narrow compass, so too often the fairest and richest virtues are to be found in the humblest individuals.

IV. Faith Reveals Itself in Various Ways

Faith reveals itself in various ways. Faith makes one person this and another that. Faith in Noah makes him a shipbuilder and the second of the world’s great fathers. Faith in Abraham makes him a pilgrim and a stranger. Faith in Moses makes him plague Egypt and feed a nation for 40 years in the wilderness. Faith in David makes him kill a giant, save a kingdom, and ascend a throne. Faith in Samson makes him slay a thousand Philistines, and in Rahab, it makes her save two Israelites.

Faith has many ways of working and it works according to the condition and position of the person in whom it dwells. Sarah does not become Abraham, nor does Abraham become Sarah. Faith in Isaac does not make him the same royal man as Abraham—he is always tame and gentle rather than great and noble—he comes in like a valley between the two great hills of Abraham and Jacob. Isaac is Isaac, and Isaac has such virtue as becomes him whom the Lord loved. And Jacob, too, is Jacob and not his father. He is active, energetic, and farseeing.

God does not, by His grace, lift us out of our place. A man is made gentle, but he is not made a fool. A woman is made brave, but Divine Grace never made her masterful and domineering. Grace does not make the child so self-willed that he disobeys his father—it is something else that does that. Grace does not take away from the father his authority to command the child. It leaves us where we were, in a certain sense, as to our position, and the fruit it bears is congruous to that position. Thus, Sarah is beautified with the virtues that adorn a woman, while Abraham is adorned with all the excellences which are becoming in a godly man. According as the virtue is required, so is it produced. If the circumstances require courage, God makes His servant heroic. If the circumstances require great modesty and prudence, modesty and prudence are given.

Faith is a wonderful magician’s wand! It works marvels, it achieves impossibilities, it grasps the incomprehensible. Faith can be used anywhere—in the highest Heaven touching the ear of God and winning our desire of Him—and in the lowest places of the earth among the poor and fallen, cheering and upraising them. Faith will quench the violence of fire, turn the edge of the sword, snatch the prey from the enemy, and turn the alien to flight. There is nothing which it cannot do.

V. Sarah’s Faith in Action

We are led by our second text to look at the fruit of faith in Sarah. There were two fruits of faith in Sarah—she did well and she was not afraid with any amazement. We will begin with the first. It is said of her that she did well, “whose daughters you are as long as you do well.” She did well as a wife. She was all her husband could desire, and when, at the age of 127 years, she at last fell asleep, it is said that Abraham not only mourned for her, but the old man wept for her most true and genuine tears of sorrow. He wept for the loss of one who had been the life of his house. As a wife, she did well. All the duties that were incumbent upon her as the queen of that traveling company were performed admirably, and we find no fault mentioned concerning her in that respect. She did well as a hostess. It was her duty, as her husband was given to hospitality, to be willing to entertain his guests. The one instance recorded is, no doubt, the representation of her common mode of procedure. Though she was truly a princess, yet she kneaded the dough and prepared the bread for her husband’s guests. They came suddenly, but she had no complaint to make.

She was always ready to lay herself out to perform that which was one of the highest duties of a God-fearing household in those primitive times. She did well also as a mother. We are sure she did, because we find that her son Isaac was such an excellent man—and you may say what you will, but in the hands of God, the mother forms the boy’s character! Perhaps the father unconsciously influences the girls, but the mother has evidently the most influence over the sons. Any of us can bear witness that it is so in our own case. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part, the mother is the queen of the son and he looks up to her with infinite respect if she is at all such as can be respected.

Sarah, by faith, did her work with Isaac well, for from the very first, in his yielding to his father when he was to be offered up as a sacrifice, we see in him evidence of holy obedience and faith in God, which were seldom equaled—and were never surpassed. Besides that, it is written that God said of Abraham, “I know Abraham, that he will command his children and his household after him.” There is one trait in Abraham’s character: wherever he went, he set up an altar unto the Lord. His rule was a tent and an altar. Dear Friends, do you always make these two things go together—a tent and an altar? Where you dwell, is there sure to be family worship? I am afraid that many families neglect it, and often it is so because husband and wife are not agreed about it.

VI. Sarah’s Unshaken Faith

Sarah did well as a believer. When Abraham was called to separate himself from his kindred, Sarah went with him. She adopted the separated life, too, and the same caravan which traveled across the desert with Abraham for its master had Sarah for its mistress. She continued with him, believing in God with perseverance. Though they had no city to dwell in, she continued the roaming life with her husband, looking for “a city which has foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God.” She believed God’s promise with all her heart, for though she laughed once because when the promise neared its realization it overwhelmed her—it was but a slip for the moment. It is written by the Apostle in Hebrews: “Through faith, also, Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.”

It was not by nature, but by faith, that Isaac was born, the child of another sort of laughter than that of doubt—the child according to the promise of God. She was a believing woman, then, and she lived a believing life and so she did well. She did well to her parents, well to her husband, well to her household, well to her guests, well before her God.

Oh, that all professing Christian people had a faith that showed itself in doing well! But never let it be forgotten that though we preach faith, faith, faith, as the great means of salvation, yet we never say that you are saved unless there is a change worked in you and good works are produced in you, for “faith without works is dead, being alone.” Faith saves, but it is the faith which causes men to do well.

VII. Calm and Quiet Trust in God

Finally, let us observe that Sarah’s faith revealed itself in her remarkable calmness. She was not afraid with any amazement. This is the second fruit of her faith. Sarah showed incredible peace and composure even in the most trying situations.

As a wife, as a mother, as a follower of God’s call, Sarah exhibited trust in God’s promises without fear. Whether in the face of challenges or in moments of uncertainty, she remained steadfast. Christian men and women should seek to imitate Sarah in these ways—by trusting in God and remaining calm even amidst fear, uncertainty, or peril.

May we also be true daughters of Sarah, and trust in God, not being afraid with any amazement, knowing that He will carry us through every trial.

God bless you all.

Charles Spurgeon