Dennis Tuuri

Uh, please stand for the reading of God’s word. 1 Peter 3:1-6. “Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they without a word may be won by the conduct of their wives, when they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear. Do not let your adornment be merely outward, arranging the hair, wearing gold or putting on fine apparel. Rather, let it be the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which is very precious in the sight of God.

For in this manner in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your scriptures and we pray that the Holy Spirit would write these words upon our heart and might transform our lives. We thank you, Lord God, for the setting of the preaching of your word, the worship service of the church that does indeed move us from glory to glory. We pray now that we’d have a sense of being before your throne room and of looking at your scriptures to see the message that we must take from this place to reform ourselves in our culture. We thank you Lord God for the Holy Spirit and pray that he would indeed illumine this text to our understanding in Jesus’ name and by his authority we ask these things. Amen.

Please be seated. I’m taking it upon myself to arrange for a monthly psalm singing at the Evans home to have different people from the church learn the four-part harmony that’s recorded on the albums we bought this year. I look forward to how our worship will mature. I know that worship will mature because God’s word has told us that it will.

We’re going to look today at the life of Abraham and its relationship to what we just read in 1 Peter.

I have a responsibility. I think it could be said that there are a couple of things I want to do every Lord’s day in my sermon. One thing I want to do is bring us to a further worship of God. When we read the stories of the Old Testament saints, it’s easy to look upon them as moral lessons for us. And they are that. Sarah is obviously a lesson for wives. But the big lesson of course is that God has used his grace and his means to affect that which we cannot.

So the word of God properly articulated brings us to a fuller worship of the gracious God of those scriptures who has revealed himself to us and continues to reveal himself in history. This worship of God should transform us. We should move from glory to glory. We are to be maturing in our Christian life. Now for that to happen is not primarily an intellectual event. It is primarily a volitional event.

It’s a matter of the will. It’s a matter of our hearts. But it involves our intellect. We don’t throw our mind away. So my job is to talk from these scriptures, the truths of God, and assume that his Holy Spirit is using these scriptures in your life to transform you. But I also want as part of that process to help you remember things that are talked about. That’s why when I talk on the love feast, I tried to give you a fairly simple systematization of what love is according to 1 Corinthians 13.

That’s why I talked last week and tried to make a very complicated portion of scripture—Genesis chapters 4 and 5 and into chapter 6—and articulate from them a big picture item relative to the intermarriage of the two lines, the line from Seth and the line of Cain. For those of you who want more information on that position and want a further articulation of why the sons of God refer to the line of Seth and the daughters of men refers to the line of Cain, I’ve made copies of a six-page article or appendix actually from John Murray’s book. The name of which escapes me at the moment. I think it’s called Principles of Conduct. It’s a book that was recommended to me years ago by Greg Bahnsen as one that really was very influential upon him. It’s a small book and one that he reread continually throughout his Christian life and there’s an appendix in that where he goes through the arguments as to why it does refer to the line of Seth and Cain.

Point is I don’t want you to have heard that last Sunday and then forget about it today. I want us to continue to move on and to try to transform our lives by bringing more unity in the context of our marriages. Another thing to help us remember the first three big stories of Genesis 2-6 is this articulation of the first three commandments that we learned at family camp some years ago from James B. Jordan. And I know that some of you maybe had a hard time understanding what he was saying, but it’s important for you to hear it. I’ve reiterated a number of times. I think it’s a good way, at least to systematize our understanding of what the scriptures teach.

He goes through the first three commandments and talks about the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And if we look at the first three big tests of Genesis, we have the test of Adam which he fails and steals from God. Impatiently grasps for the fruit of rule and authority, knowledge of good and evil—a sin against God the Father ultimately.

And then we have Cain and his big test which he fails by killing his brother—brother murder, fratricide—sin of the second commandment because the worship of icons and idols divides us from each other, because it cuts us off from God and leads to sin against the Son, murder. And then last week we talked about the full story of the Canaanite line finding its seventh generation epitome in the polygamous Lamech with his two wives. And that was really kind of a prelude to the discussion then that the genealogy is really carried on by the sons of Seth, the godly line. History is about the people of God. But those people intermarry with the children of Cain, the daughters of men. And so the third great test for the Canaanite line and then for the Seth line for all of humanity in those two lines was marriage. And in intermarriage with the ungodly line, the Sethites violated the third commandment.

“Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain or emptily upon yourself.” And when we intermarry with those outside of the faith and then are tempted to serve other gods, we violate the third commandment against the Holy Spirit. So we can remember these three commandments, these three big stories from the text we’ve been looking at in Genesis with Adam, with Cain, and then with the ungodly line and the godly line in this way: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; impatience and theft; brother murder; and intermarriage with the ungodly. Very important text.

As I said, that text also—I want you to burn this home in your memories—that text precedes the flood and the proliferation of evil stems from the intermarriage of the godly line with the ungodly line. And so it is today that whether we’re moving toward flood or whether we’re moving toward transformation or reconstruction, what our marriages are about is absolutely critical to what direction the Christian culture and by way of implication the world will go.

Now, I’m going to continue on marriage today and next week we’re going to look at the life of Abram and Sarah. And we’re going to start with Sarah because that’s how God starts in the epistles. He always starts with the requirement of the wife and then moves to the men. I don’t know why that is exactly, but if he does it, that’s what I want to do. So we’re going to start with Sarah and next week we’ll proceed with Abram, although they’ll be kind of mixed up as you can see because they are one person as it were in marriage.

And then after that, in a couple weeks, Elder M. will preach and then I’m going to spend four or five weeks not dealing with marriage directly, but dealing with the gospel accounts of the coming of our Savior in light of Advent season. But I’m going to continue with marriage after that. You know, Gary North has this ongoing economic commentary of the Bible and in a way we’re kind of maybe doing a very—I’m not going to go through the whole Bible maybe—but we want to look at kind of a marriage commentary of the Bible and we’ve looked at Genesis 2 and 3 at some length, set up a pattern that if we’re looking at Genesis 4, 5, and 6, and today we’re going to look at the life of Abraham from the Old Testament particularly in reference to marriage.

Now very important to see the relationship—and I said this last week but I want to say it again. I don’t want anybody here, and some of you will, in spite of what I say, I don’t want anybody here to go away thinking, “Well, that’s my marriage life, and that’s just kind of part of my life. If you’re a guy, and you know, I need more information on my vocation.” Because your marriage is central to your vocation.

Your wife is given as a helpmate for your vocation, your calling. And I’m going to approach it that way with Sarah today. Her job is to assist Abram in his calling. And his calling is to be patient in light of the promise of land and seed that he’d been given by God. To not be slothful about it, but to not be impatient as he saw rule and authority in the land and as he saw the children, the offspring, the seed that God had promised him.

So Sarah’s job is very much tied into Abram’s work. And for you wives today, and for you young women growing up to be wives, probably I want you to think about that. We’re going to talk about the submission of wives to their husbands. And if we put together the fact that the wife’s main job is to be a helpmate for a husband in his vocational calling, then we can say that submission properly understood is the way that helpmate attitude or action works itself out and the means by which your husband is empowered for vocation.

So it’s all of a piece is what I’m saying. Okay? And I want us to—I’ve kind of taken, I’m going to change the outline. We’re going to start actually with 1 Peter 3 and go through that briefly and then use that as a reminder of how we should look at the life of Abram and Sarah. And again, I think that one of my strengths that God has given me is systematizing things. So I’ve tried to give a systematized version of 1 Peter 3:1-6.

Now, I know that most of you have probably spent a great deal of time, most of you wives that is, or at least some time in 1 Peter 3. You’ve probably been directed there more often than any other text you’ve been directed to, except maybe the Proverbs wife. And so what I’m going to say here is nothing new to most women in this church. But maybe this system, this way of systematizing it or consolidating it will help you keep it in your minds as God works to transform you. Okay.

So let’s look at 1 Peter 3. And you can see, actually, first let me do the introduction I said I’m going to do. Let’s leave that in place. In Isaiah 51:1 and 2, we read this: “Listen to me you who follow after righteousness. That’s you, right? You who seek the Lord, look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the hole of the pit from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you.

For I called him alone and blessed him and increased him.” The faithful are to see in some sense Abraham as our father and Sarah as our mother. Scriptures give these two people and the way God and his providence worked with them, developed them, matured them as a model for us to meditate on. And I think that it’s very important that we do that. I think it’s very important that men and women meditate on the life of Abram and Sarah.

And that’s what we’re going to do this week and next week. “Look to Abram your father and to Sarah who bore you.” She’s your mother. The scriptures say. Now a couple of other verses along this same line of the importance of Abram and Sarah. In Matthew 1:1 we read, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ the son of David rather, and the son of Abraham.” So he links immediately our Savior to David and Abraham. Kings will come forth from him, and so this correlation to David. The point is that we’re in our Savior, in union commune with him, and he is the son of Abraham. The text tells us the son of David, the son of Abraham.

In John 8:39 Jesus tells the Pharisees, “If you are Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham.” We got to know the works of Abraham in order to evaluate and see if we’re doing the works of Abraham and if we’re in the faith.

Galatians 4:22 identifies Sarah as a free woman. She is the model for us of the free woman as opposed to the bond woman. Now, what’s being talked about there, of course, is in the midst of their lives, they try to have a child by Abram going into Hagar, Sarah’s servant. So Hagar’s the servant woman and Sarah is the free woman in the connection with that. But if we’re to have an understanding of what free women are like and by implication what free men are like, we look to the life of Sarah and Abraham.

Couple more texts. We read in Hebrews 11 that “by faith Abraham when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance obeyed and he went out not knowing whither he went.” So one of the particular deeds or works of Abraham that we see is faith relative to the land that God had promised to him.

And then in James chapter 2, we read, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?” And then in verse 23, “And the scripture was fulfilled which saith Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God.” So here we have—as Romans as well points out—that Abraham is the father of the faithful because of his belief first of all in obtaining a son Isaac and then his belief in the God of the resurrection by offering his son Isaac as a sacrifice.

So the works that the New Testament refer to for Abraham are works of land and seed. Land and seed. Easy to remember two things like that. And I want us to remember those as we consider in a few minutes Sarah and Abraham and their life. Sarah is also mentioned in the hall of faith so-called in Hebrews 11. We read in verse 11 of Hebrews 11, after verse 8 was Abraham. Verse 11: “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 again seed.”

And Sarah’s belief in the promise of God to her. We remember most of us who know the Old Testament at all. We remember Sarah laughing when God says that she’s going to have a son. “I’m 90, he’s 100. I’m going to have a kid. Sure.” And there seems to be a hint of unbelief in that, not joy, because God reproves her for it. And then she denies it cause she was afraid of God. So it’s easy to look at Sarah at that point and say, well, you know, not too good an example.

But the scriptures correct that attitude in us. It tells us that she had faith and she had strength to bear that seed because of her faith that God had given to her. So the scriptures point out Abram and Sarah as the father and mother of the faithful, our father and mother that we’re to meditate on as we consider our life in the Savior.

So let’s do that. Let’s turn first to 1 Peter 3. Now then by way of introduction, we’ve seen the importance of meditating on this couple and now we see it very explicitly given to women to meditate on Sarah in the context of this extended discussion of what wives are to do.

And what I’ve done on your outline is I’ve simply taken a phrase which sort of summarizes what wives are to be like. We read in verse 1 of 1 Peter 3: “Wives be submissive to your own husbands that even if some do not obey the word without a word may be won by the conduct of their wives when they observe your—and here it is—chaste conduct accompanied by fear.”

Chaste conduct accompanied by fear. That’s a summation, I think, or at least we can look at this as a summation of what wives are to be like. They’re supposed to have chaste conduct accompanied by fear. And then there’s an articulation of these points. And I just break them up here in a way of systematizing what the wife is to understand as her duty. She is to be chaste.

Now, in the text, it says, “Likewise, ye wives.” So it draws us to 1 Peter 2, what preceded this? And in 1 Peter 2, we have the account of our Savior as the example to servants and to those who must submit to their masters and those who must submit to their rulers. Jesus submits to the Father not trusting himself to men ultimately but trusting himself to God.

Now when we read that the wife is to be chaste, the word chaste means holy. It’s the same root word as the word for holy. It means pure and it refers to her devotion and commitment to God and her consecration to God. She like her Savior Jesus Christ is able to submit to a husband—worst case example, an unbelieving husband—because she trusts God. She is wholly committed to God. She is chaste, holy and pure, committed to God the way Jesus was.

Now, just by way of passing comment, 1 Peter 2:3 gives us three examples of submission to an ungodly ruler. The word is used of the Caesars who got their position through assassination, to ungodly masters who beat their servants for no reason, no good reason. And then submission of wives to husbands who are not believers. So in all three cases, Peter uses worst-case examples as the model for submission. And so the wives are submitting to a worst case example. It means that the wives here in this church, you have believing husbands. How much more so should you be in submission to your husbands?

And the key to it is first and foremost being chaste. If you don’t submit as Jesus submitted ultimately to God, working through your husband, husband working through the magistrate and working through the employer, then you’re not really submitting the way Jesus submitted and you’re in violation of the commandment. You’re supposed to be chaste.

Now, we read that another term in this is to trust in God. We read as the text goes on that they observe their—that they observe your behavior. And it says that in former times the holy women who trusted in God adorned themselves with this kind of submission. To trust in God is an attitude of chasteness, holiness, separation, and purity to God. And indeed, they are called the holy women of old.

So by these reiteration of terms, we have an inward attitude that’s required on the part of the submissive wife of holiness set apart to God, faith in God’s word, a life lived in dedication, consecration, to him. But secondly, this consecration will find itself in a particular conduct. You’re supposed to have the right kind of piety based upon a separation to God, but you’re also supposed to have the right kind of adornments.

My house, my house area are bland and can be adorned at this time of year with falling leaves. The word adornment has as its origin the word cosmos, or orderliness. And you know, wives do this. They adorn their houses. They beautify them. That’s what they’re supposed to do. And they beautify themselves. And that isn’t bad. He’s not saying here that there shouldn’t be external order and beauty in the wife. That’s certainly part of what the wife does. If we read the Song of Solomon, there’s a great deal of attention paid to one’s physical appearance.

But the key here is that what’s really the adornment is the interior adornment that results in these attitudes of conduct. She is to be meek and quiet. Says, “Don’t be adorned with these outward adornments only, but rather be the hidden person of the heart. The incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.”

The word gentle there is only used three times. Once here, twice in reference to our Savior and its meekness is what he’s talking about there. He says the meek will inherit the earth. To be meek means to be broken to harness. It doesn’t mean weak. When you read gentle, I’m not happy with that New King James Version translation of meek. You know, it has an aspect of gentleness, but it has an aspect of strength. Our Savior was not, you know, gentle Jesus, meek and mild in the sense of being effeminate or in the sense of being not powerful.

And we said before, the Proverbs woman is a powerful woman, but she’s a powerful woman who is in submission to God, trusting in him, and as a result is broken to his harness. And if God says your husband’s going to be the one directing you, okay? Then she says, “I’m going to trust in God and be directed by my husband. She’s going to be meek, broken to harness the way you’re not a wild bucking bronco. And she’s not a powerless hamstring horse. She is strong and beautiful in her course of duty. And she is strong because she is in submission to the one who is all powerful, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So she’s meek, but she’s quiet. She isn’t a clanging gong or cymbal. She’s meek, broken to harness, and she has a quietness of spirit. And she has obedience. These holy women of old were marked by a gentle and quiet spirit. But it says they adorned themselves in this way, being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah.

And now here’s the great example. Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. Now, the word for obey here means to come under the hearing of it. It means that when she hears what he tells her to do, that’s what she does, usually, or if she thinks it’s wrong, she’ll bring some degree of correction in a respectful way. But the idea of obedience here is connected to the ear and the idea of calling him Lord is connected to the tongue. Okay?

So we’re systematizing here. We’re helping us to remember what this chaste attitude of consecration to God and what the right conduct, the chaste conduct that comes out of that attitude looks like. And it looks like hearing your husband in a respectful way and speaking to your husband in a respectful way, calling him Lord. And the word here is kurios in the Greek. It’s the same word that’s used for the Lord Jesus Christ, Lords and rulers, masters.

Word in the Old Testament was master as well. Now, this is a title that men have on loan from God. Husbands, you know, and if you’re called Lord by your wife, then it brings a responsibility to you to act like the Lord. Right? But wives, what it says is that indeed your husband has that title on loan from God, that he is to be seen as your Lord. And so Sarah is the model in hearing obedience and in speaking obedience relative to her husband. Not just doing what he says, but calling him Lord. In other words, with her speech, not just grudgingly doing what he commands, with her speech honoring him as the head that God has placed him in relationship to her in the context of the family. The same way we’re to honor the king and we’re to honor our employers and the wives are to honor their husbands.

So Sarah has that kind of obedience and she does what’s right. This is part of the submissive attitude of Sarah. And finally, the obedient wife is like Sarah and is his daughter if she has this chaste conduct and has it with a degree of fear but not the wrong kind of fear. Because we read that these husbands observe the chaste conduct of women accompanied by fear. There’s an element of phobos or fear here. It’s the fear or reverence for God who has given her the husband and it is that kind of submission and reverence that calls her to trust in God, to reverence him and fear him and be afraid of her disobedience.

Sarah had that fear. Now, she didn’t always use it correctly, but you remember again the laughter illustration. But she laughs and God says, “You’re going to have a child. Sarah’s going to have a child.” She’s off listening at the tent. She laughs and God knows she laughs. And then God says, “She laughed.” And she says, “No, I didn’t laugh.” And the text says because she feared.

See, she did have the fear of the Lord operating in her being. Now, she should have just said, “Yeah, I laughed,” and should have confessed it and went on. But then, you know, the picture of the Old Testament saints is that they’re saints not by perfection. They’re saints by calling and election and the grace of God. So it shows us their foibles as well as their strengths. So Sarah has this correct fear. But it says that the thing that will destroy a woman’s submission is an improper fear because it says that giving Sarah as the example: “Obeyed Abraham calling him Lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror.”

So it’s the wrong kind of fear being spoke of here. It is a fear that is terrified. And the fear that is terrified is a fear I believe of men. The fear of men terrifies us because we have no assurance that men love us. In fact, we know they don’t. So if we have our fear improperly placed in men instead of a fear of God, then we’re going to be terrified and we’re going to do wrong things.

Now Sarah had reason to be terrified. We’re going to talk next week about Abram’s decision to cause her to deceive both Pharaoh and Abimelech at two critical points in the history of that couple. You know the story. They go down to Egypt because there’s a famine in the land and Abram says, “You’re beautiful. They’re going to desire you.” By the way, she was sixty some years old. She died when she was 120. She was not, you know, we’re now in the genealogies that are shortened. She was at least middle-aged and Pharaoh did indeed greatly desire her beauty and took her into his harem.

Might be a good sermon to talk about a redefinition of what men see as beauty. It’s clear from this example as well as some other historical records that the vision that men have in our culture today of beauty is not typically held—matronly, full-figured, middle-aged women were not seen at this time in history as past their prime. And Abram is the man of God, did not see a woman like that as something past her prime, but as someone who was in her prime. Men, you know, redefine what you think of as beauty relative to that.

But in any event, so Sarah goes down there and Abram knows she’s going to be looked upon as desirable. And so he tells her to deceive Pharaoh. Well, he says, “Tell him that you’re my sister.” Which is true. We find out in Genesis 20 that is true. She is his sister, half-sister. But she doesn’t tell the full truth that she’s married to Abram.

Now we’re going to talk next week about whether Abram should have done that or not. But today, I just want us to focus on Sarah as this model of submission. When she—when she—the only occurrence of Sarah referring to Abram as master as the text just mentioned is in this thing I’ve just mentioned and when the truth is told that she’s going to have a child at the age of 90, at that occurrence, that’s when she actually calls Abram master.

So we could say that specifically the reference here is to her obeying him again relative to the Hebrews text, that she believes that she will have a child with Abram and consents to ongoing relationships with him. But the way the text is read here, these are ongoing actions. These are not point action in the Greek. She calls him Lord throughout her life and she obeys him throughout her life. And she isn’t terrified with terror.

Now, one place that I can think of where she might have been terrified with terror is when he tells her to not give the full disclosure that she’s married to him. And you know, we can talk next week about whether that was right or not on Abram’s part. But the point is it is not clear whether it’s right or not. I don’t think the text makes it real clear. We can discern, but the text doesn’t make it obvious.

So I think that Sarah was right in submitting to her husband because he didn’t tell her to sin. He told her to tell a part of the truth. Sarah obeyed her husband, acknowledging him as her master, the Lord that God had placed over her—the Lord had placed over her—and was not terrified by terror and as a result disobedient to him. She trusted in the one working through her husband and so submitted to him.

So fear must be cast out of the daughters of Sarah. Fear of men and a fear of terror.

Conclusion: Be submissive as Sarah was with an incorruptible beauty which is very precious in the sight of God. This is what submission is. Chaste conduct accompanied by fear—reverence of God, fear of displeasing him and displeasing your husband, chasteness, separation to God, trusting in God the way Jesus trusted as the model for our submission. And then a conduct that is both hearing conduct, hearing obedience, and speaking obedience relative to your speech to your husband. That’s what submission is according to 1 Peter 3. And Sarah is given as the model for our submission in this text.

Let’s go on then to talk a little bit and begin to look at this other part of your outline, the life of Abram and Sarah. And I just want to hit on a couple of things here as we apply this in a broader sense to the example given to us. We want to meditate on the life of Abram and Sarah for a couple of weeks in this church. And this first week, I want you to meditate this week, particularly the wives here, on how you can be daughters of Sarah in a full sense and how you can better serve your husbands than you have to date. How you can go from glory to glory.

I’m not saying you’re disobedient. I’m saying that we’re all maturing and we want a maturation of the beauty and the preciousness of biblical submission as it’s portrayed in the scriptures. And what I want to help us think through here is just some of these events that are critical in the life of Abram. And what I’ve done here—just to explain the sheet—I’ve got basically some big events that happen in the life of Abram and Sarah at the, so I got those articulated by numbers. The numbers that have a dot in front of them, those are events where Sarah is more directly involved than the other ones, okay.

So Abram is born in one and in two he moves with Baron, Sarah and his father Terah and his nephew Lot. She’s with him then and she’s noted as barren. So that’s important for understanding her relationship to him. So the dotted items are the ones that Sarah’s more involved with. And then at the end of each of these items—at the end of number one, for instance—I got in parenthesis 2008. That is the year, with creation being zero, in 2008 is when Abram was born, okay.

Now some of those dates have a question mark at the end of them because we can’t be quite sure of them but the ones without a question mark we can be very sure. Those are the dates. Now at the end of that, after the number in parentheses in line one again, 11b refers to the chapter in Genesis where this event is recorded for us.

So we go through Genesis 11 into the 20s with this overview and I give you dates and I give you the primary events that happen. And we just want to go through these very quickly and then draw a couple of application points to the submission of Sarah.

First, Abraham is born in Ur of the Chaldees in 2008. This is important because Ur of the Chaldees, the Chaldeans, are represented as the place where Babylon is. And later on when the people of God come out of Babylon and are restored to the land after their exile, after the kingdom period, they’re going to be like Abram coming back again. And in fact, Micah refers to that. So it’s a big—what we have again in Genesis, as I’ve said before in some of the other portions of Genesis, are these big patterns being established of return from exile and being called out of the land of idolatry. Okay.

Sarah, by the way, was born in 2018. She was ten years younger than Abram. So maybe when they’re married he’s 30 and she’s 20 something like that. So that’s the difference in age. And then we’re told that he moves with Haran, Sarah, his father Terah, and his nephew Lot to Haran. So the idea here is he goes from the Chaldees to Haran in the north and then down into Canaan. Okay? But God wants us to think of him as coming from the Chaldees to Canaan. Even though there’s this stopover place in Haran, Haran’s going to be a big place again. That’s where Isaac’s going to get his wife from. He’s going to come back to Canaan just the way Abram did.

But significantly in chapter 11, the second half of chapter 11, 11b, we’re told that Sarah is barren. Okay? And we’re told that he’s moving into this land. And right away we’re opened up to the importance of the barrenness of Sarah and the movement of Abram. And then in chapter 12, we’re specifically told that God was calling Abram to come out of the Chaldees to go to a land that he would possess. And he’s told that he’s going to have a lot of children.

Turn to Genesis 12 and we’ll see this. The Lord says to Abram in verse 1 of chapter 12: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house unto a land that I will show 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 them which cursed thee, and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

Now right away, here’s the big deal. Right away, at the beginning, the life of Abraham is marked out for us as a life of two things going on: Land and seed. God promises him land and God promises him seed. And you’ll see I’ve got that reiterated on the outline as you go through the various elements of Abram and Sarah’s life. It talks about that over and over again. God reiterates these promises at particularly important times.

Now it’s interesting that when Abram moves into Canaan, into the promised land, he does so in an interesting pattern. The places he goes to are described for us. It talks about Shechem. It talks about Bethel, which is by Ai. And it talks about him going then into the Negev. Abram makes three journeys into Canaan. And in those three journeys, it’s as if he’s marking the land that God has promised to him. Very important to see this.

If we go to the book of Joshua, Joshua goes to these same places, okay? Jacob goes to these same places. It’s at Shechem that Jacob does away with the idols and buries them. And it’s at Shechem that Joshua will tell the triumphant army of God on the march to put away the idols from themselves at Shechem. You see the correlation going on here? And Ai, of course, is the first place by Bethel where God’s people triumph under their own power—as it were not their own power but the strategic effort—to conquer Ai after the conquering of Joshua.

So there are these pivotal markers placed for us in the life of Abram and then recapitulated in the life of Jacob and then recapitulated in the Joshua conquering of the land. Now the point is this. The point is that God swears by himself. Now this is going to refer a little later than text to chapters 14 and 15. But the text Richard read as part of our absolution this morning was to say that God promises this stuff to Abram. He promises him Canaan, the land. And Abraham believes him.

Abram believes him and goes through the land and marks the positions of outposts. And those outposts are worship sites. He doesn’t build fortifications. He builds altars. And he worships God. He’s marking the territory as God’s territory, the territory which God is going to have control. But folks, it’s going to be a long time before that promise is fulfilled, isn’t it?

He’s told later in Genesis 14 and 15, 430 years of Egyptian domination of who you are. 430 years. The land’s going to take a long time to get. And all that Abram will see will be some typological representations of the victory of God and the belonging of that land to God’s people.

Now you’re Abram’s wife. You’re Sarah. And you’ve got a guy whose vocation, whose calling was to go to possess a land that he would not possess. And in fact, right away, it’s so bad in the Negev in the southern part, he’s got to go to Egypt. He’s got to leave that land. Later on, he comes back in and then God judges Sodom and Gomorrah. And the land is so messed up now, he’s got to leave again.

First time he leaves, he goes to Egypt. That’s the Pharaoh deception. Second time he leaves, he goes down to Gerar where Abimelech, the king. Those are both probably not person names. Those are titles of rulers in these lands. He leaves the land twice. And when he goes down with Abimelech, he’s down there a long time because the land’s pretty messed up. And he dwells with the Philistines in Philistine territory for a long time. And then as I mentioned earlier, in the middle of all that, when he is in the land, Chedorlaomer is the guy who rules the land. So Abram’s dwelling in a land possessed and ruled by another man, not a follower of God.

You’re Abram’s wife and he’s telling you this and you believe him because you’re submissive. What’s your job relative to Abram? Your job is to encourage him in faithfulness. Your job is to hear him with obedience. “My husband, God has communicated do these things to my husband. I obey him and what he tells me to do. And to bless him with your mouth by calling him Lord. I know, I know it looks ridiculous to everybody around us, whoever hears about this thing. I know they’re mocking you, Abram. I know that it’s easy for me to mock you. It’s easy for you to doubt yourself. But God says, you told me, Abram. He says you should have patience. When you knocked off Chedorlaomer, you decided not to knock him off perpetually. You rescued Lot. You knocked off, you defeated the king of Canaan in battle. Why don’t you just keep going?”

She could have been like Lot’s wife, right? “Well, this is tough. We’re never going to get the land. Your next kids aren’t going to get the land. Going to be a long time for this land is possessed. And ultimately, it won’t be until Jesus comes when the possession of the earth is accomplished.” Would have been easier for her to say like Job’s wife, “Curse God and die. This God who promised you this land is unfaithful. Forgive it or go about doing it the right way. Don’t wait for God to give you possession of the land. Knock off Chedorlaomer. You have the strength. Do it now. Grasp at that land.”

Abram doesn’t do that. Abram is patient. He’s not slothful. Hebrews tells us—the text that Richard read—he’s not slothful about the promises. He does things. He goes where God tells him to go. When he’s supposed to rescue his nephew, he rescues him. And that means taking on the king of the forest, he’ll do it. But he’s not going to take on the king of the forest in an attempt to seize authority and power over the land before God grants it to him.

And God tells him, “It’s going to be a long time before you seize all of it, for I’m going to give it to you rather.” And I believe that Sarah strengthens him in this. I believe that Abram’s vocational call was to do this thing and Sarah strengthened him in that. I don’t know if she did or not, but I know that you women, as daughters of Sarah, as you see your husband struggle in terms of their vocation, struggle with the knowledge that the word of God paints this perfect triangle of Christian calling and vocation and that Christians should dominate in terms of technology and business and government in a godly sense, dominate.

They’ve got that all pictured for them every week at this church. And they go to work and they work for some ungodly guy, ungodly woman, or for a little concern that’s going nowhere. Or they hear from their boss and their fellow workers all day long sinful, pagan things. See, they’re like Abram. They’re traveling through the land that God has said, “This is mine. Computer technology is mine. Wall Street is mine. Salem and Washington DC are mine.” But not today. Are that is that going to be manifested?

We can’t be slothful, man. We’ve got to continue to pursue. Well, we got to do it patiently, the way that God told Abram to be patient. He’s the new Adam, you know. He comes out and starts a whole new thing in the promised land. He’s Adam, second Adam, third Adam, fourth Adam, whatever it is—it’s like Noah, it’s Adam again. But he’s patient, unlike Adam. He trusts in God. And his wife Sarah is to be submissive in a beautiful sense of supporting him.

And you women are supposed to be submissive, honoring your husbands in what you hear, what you say to them, calling them Lord and giving them the assurance that what God has promised them will come about—albeit at great time periods and not in the way we think it’s going to be manifested—but the second area that Abram is given is the promise of seed.

And here he gets the seed a little sooner, although ultimately we know the seed points to the Lord Jesus Christ. So Abram is given this promise of seed and he’s got a wife that’s barren. He’s got a wife who is barren for 40 years before they’re even given the promise of the seed. And then he’s got a wife who is barren another 25 years or so after that until she actually has Isaac.

His calling is to have godly children. God says he makes the two one that he might produce a holy seed. And men’s calling is to have godly children. But Abram can’t have children for a long time because his wife is barren. Now later on after Sarah dies, he remarries Keturah and has six sons. Problem wasn’t Abram’s. Problem was Sarah. But Abram suffers under this.

And again, the wife’s responsibility is to be submissive, supportive, honoring him and her hearing of what he has to say about the seed. Honoring him in hearing God and believing with faith, which Sarah did in spite of her laughter, honoring him in speaking her words that “You’re the master. You’re the Lord. Yes. If you want us to, if you think that God has told you this, I support you in this.”

Now Sarah fails here. Sarah takes things into her own hands. She says, “We’re supposed to have children. I can’t have children. You’re supposed to be a great dad. You know, God changed your name from Abram to Abraham, from daddy to big daddy. He changed my name from princess to—”