Following the Man of Faith

Following the Man of Faith

THE LIVES OF SARAH, HAGAR, AND KETURAH

Dr. Janet Walsh

Post Office Box 1099 - Murfreesboro, Tennessee 37133

Copyright 2014 by

Sword of the Lord Publishers

www.SwordoftheLord.com

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (printed, written, photocopied, electronic, audio or otherwise) without prior written permission of the publisher.

All Scripture quotations are from the King James Bible.

Contents

1. Sarai: She Followed Her Husband

2. Sarai: She Obeyed Her Husband

3. Sarai: She Shared in Her Husband's Promises

4. Sarai: Her Lapse of Faith

5. Hagar: From Humble Servant to Wife

6. Sarah: Personal Promises

7. Sarah: She Laughed

8. Sarah: She Shared in the Lie

9. Hagar: God Provided

10. Sarah: God Tested Abraham

11. Sarah: Her Death

12. Keturah: Abraham's Wife After the Death of Sarah

13. Hagar and Sarah—Bond and Free

Bibliography

SARAI

And Abram took Sarai his wife, . . . and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan.

—Gen. 12:5.

1 SHE FOLLOWED HER HUSBAND

In this study of the lives of Sarah, Hagar and Keturah, most of the material will be about Sarah. Much is said about the men in biblical narratives, and comparatively little about the women. Even though that is true, we can learn much about Sarah, Abraham's wife, from the Bible narrative of Abraham's life. Sarah can teach us how we ought to order our lives in the role of a wife. It is interesting to notice that there is more information about Sarah, Abraham's wife, than there is about any other woman in the Bible. We will look at Sarah by studying the narrative of her husband, Abraham.

In Genesis 11 we have a genealogy listing those who lived after the Flood. Following the genealogy of Shem to Abram and adding the numbers of years listed there, we find that Abram was born at least 352 years after the Flood. During that time, the population grew. Mankind built the Tower of Babel; God confused their languages; and people went to settle in other places, putting down roots in various locations around the world. Then there was more growth in their families. The name of Abram's father was Terah. We see his family listed below.

"Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.

"And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.

"And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.

But Sarai was barren; she had no child.—Vss. 27-30.

We are not told the name of Haran's wife; but we are told that Milcah, the daughter of Haran, Abram's brother, became Nahor's wife. We know that Sarai was barren. In addition, we learn that Sarai was the daughter of Abram's father. And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife (20:12).

We learn in Genesis 11 that when God confounded the language of the people at the Tower of Babel, some of the family of Shem went to live in a place that became Ur.

Ur was on the bank of the Euphrates River, close to the Persian Gulf. It became a busy, prosperous city. Archeologists who have conducted excavations there have found beautiful jewelry and art, well-equipped kitchens, and business and legal documents; but the city of Ur was given to idolatry.

Joshua told the people of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods (Josh. 24:2).

Before we read the account in Genesis 11, let us look at the message that Stephen preached to the Jewish leaders in Acts 7. He brings it all together for us.

"And he said, Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia [that's where Ur is found], before he dwelt in Charran,

"And said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee.

"Then came he out of the land of the Chaldæans, and dwelt in Charran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell.

And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child.—Vss. 2-5.

In the Genesis account, we are introduced to Abram's family in chapter 11, as we just saw. Then we learn that the family left Ur.

"And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran [because Haran had already died in Ur] his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.

And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.—Vss. 31, 32.

So they left Ur and went to Haran. Then we learn in the next verses that the Lord had already spoken to Abram before they had gone to Haran and had given him a special message.

"Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee:

"And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:

And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.—12:1-3.

This message had come from God while they were in Ur. God gave Abram four instructions and great promises. Remember that God spoke these words to Abram when they were in the middle of idol worship; but God saw Abram's heart, and He had a plan for his life. God would take Abram out of the idol worship. God told Abram:

1. Leave your country.

2. Leave your relatives. .

3. Leave your family.

4. Go to a land that God will show you.

The promises that God gave Abram were amazing to hear.

1. God would make of him a great nation.

2. God would bless him.

3. God would make his name great.

4. Abram would be a blessing to others.

5. God would bless those who blessed Abram and curse those who cursed him.

6. Through Abram, all the families of the earth would be blessed.

Imagine what the conversation would have been like when Abram told Sarai what God had said to him. Remember as we consider these things that Ur was a metropolitan area. It was a center for trade, and so they could purchase anything they wanted. There were people and shops close at hand. Also remember that multiple gods were worshiped there. Abram told Sarai what he had heard.

Sarai, God spoke to me.

What? God? Which god?

The almighty God, the Creator of the Earth and Heaven, talked to me. He wants us to leave this place.

What? Where are we going?

I don't know.

What? How will we know which way to go?

I don't know.

How will we know when we get where we are supposed to go?

I don't know.

What is it like where we are going?

I don't know.

Is there a Walmart there? This does not make sense, Abram. We just go? When do we stop?

God said I was to go to a land that He would show me. He also told me that I would become a great nation.

A great nation? Abram, we have no children though we've been married awhile. Perhaps we'll never have children!

I know, but that was what He said. He said He would bless me and my name would be great.

Abram, what does all this mean? Your name will be great? Will we really have children? Is that possible?

We must not forget that when God called Abram, He was calling Abram's wife too. We read this passage and see the commands and the exciting promises of God. We read the narrative and find out that Abram obeyed God when God called him. We read that Abram went here and there and did this and that. We read that Abram believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness (15:6). Abram took those commands and promises home and told his wife about them. Did the conversation sound like we just described? Certainly we do not know, but each one of us can imagine ourselves in Sarai's place. What would she do? How would she respond?

Would Sarai be willing to follow her husband's call to obey God; or would she bow up her back and dig in her heels and refuse to leave her home and the busy city life to which she had grown accustomed, where all things were conveniently close at hand? Would Sarai argue that Abram must surely be mistaken? 'Maybe God did not really call you.' Would she insist that he had certainly not heard God speak to him? Was it only a dream that he had because he ate too much of something?

After God spoke to Abram, after he heard the voice of the almighty God of the universe, could he even think to continue to stay where idol worship was rampant all around him? He couldn't do it. He couldn't stay.

God had told Abram to leave that place and leave his family. However, we saw in Genesis 11:31 that Terah, Abram's father, and Lot, his nephew, went also. Could it be that Abram told Terah and Lot about God's commands and promises to him? Could it be that they wanted to go with Abram? They lived in Haran until Terah died. It may be that Terah died there because he was not well enough to keep going. He died at the age of 205. It may even be that the family had not settled there but that Abram lived there a short time until his father's death. In any case, the next verse shows us that Abram left Haran and went into the land of Canaan. So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran (12:4).

In verse 2 we saw that God told Abram that he would be a great nation. We also saw in Genesis 11:30 that Sarai was barren. Genesis 17:17 says that Abraham was one hundred and Sarah was ninety years old when their son, Isaac, was born unto them. We see, then, that Sarai was ten years younger than Abram.

When the promise to become a great nation came to Abram, he was seventy-five years old, which means that Sarai was sixty-five years old at that time. Imagine yourself childless at the age of sixty-five and receiving a promise that your husband would become a great nation. How could such a promise be fulfilled? It was difficult to fathom. It was exciting to think all the families of the earth would be blessed through her husband, but what did it mean?

"And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.

And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land.—12:5, 6.

We do not read anything in this passage of Scripture to indicate that Sarai complained or even questioned her husband. He went and she went with him. The souls that they had gotten surely refers to servants that they had obtained in that place, as well as people who, because of