verse 11 and 12. So it's 11, 11 through 12. It's a wonderful letter to encourage these Christian Jews that were under pressure because of their faith in Christ. None of them had been killed among these that he's writing to yet. He says that later on, but they are outcasts and many of them had lost their jobs and they had been rejected by their families and they were just not held in any kind of reputation or honor. They were treated with disdain. But what is wonderful about this letter is the way that our glorious Savior is presented to them. Like he's saying, OK, yeah, you've got all this reproach in the world and this rejection and being outcast and poor and all these things. But look at the Savior. Look at what you have. Look at who he is. He's better than anything that you had in the shadows before he came. He's far superior to all of that. The intent is to show them what an excellent savior he is so that they all realize how foolish it would be to pull back from full throttled commitment to him. Not just to pull, not just to not go on with him, but to pull back from full throttled commitment, from all out commitment to him. What solid grounds they have. for trusting in Him and relying on Him. Even though people look at them and say, where's your God? How come He doesn't help you? All of the ceremonies they had in the time of the shadows where there were priests with the temple, daily sacrifices, there were feast days. These were beautiful and glorious things. There were prophecies, there were circumcision. And now all of that have been fulfilled by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who Himself became an eternal priest, not a temporary priest, after the order of Melchizedek, a priest as we have seen, and who offered Himself as a sacrifice, not in a tabernacle on earth, but before the presence of God in glory, in order to redeem His people and whoever lives to make intercession for us until He brings us into His perfect Kingdom. He Himself is the sacrifice that takes away our sin. So there is every reason to trust in Him. He is the Savior that God has sent to save His people from their sins. He has gloriously fulfilled all that has been required, and the Father has accepted His offering for our sins. Now He is calling the nations to also come to His salvation, Salvation that is full and free. They don't have to pay anything for it. They come without money and without price. That they might be forgiven, that they might be justified, that they might be reconciled to God. The most expensive thing that could ever be attained is given freely because it was purchased by Jesus, the Son of God. Something that you could never purchase yourself, never pay for yourself. He purchased by his marvelous grace was a great cost to himself, a greater cost than we can ever fathom, because we don't understand the depth of the love between he and the father that that was there, that he came to to bear our sin for us. So after setting forth the perfections of Jesus Christ and this great letter to the Hebrews, about Jesus, our Savior. This letter began to urge those who read it to have faith in the Savior. You know, you need to trust him with a trust that transforms your life. We are in that part of the letter where that is going on. More specifically, we're in chapter 11 where the writer takes examples of real people that lived in the world with all the struggles and the temptations and pressures and weaknesses in their own flesh and everything that we have. They lived in the world in faith. And he shows what faith does in their lives. And we have seen that faith is a wonderful thing. It connects us to the living God. Faith actually did in the lives of these real people who are like us, except they lived a long time ago. We have seen that it was faith in God that brought God into their lives in a real way for blessing. In other words, we live, because of the fall, we live in a distance from God. There's a barrier there with our sin. And faith, when we look up to God with the promises of faith and we believe who He is, then He becomes part of our life in that way. It's part of our whole way of living and thinking and trusting. It is faith that that makes God's people understand that God made the world. That's what it says in the first part of Hebrews 11, that we and all we have are in his hands because he made everything and it causes us to live as those who know that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him. He's not a God who says, well, you seek me and I'm going to listen to you. He says, come to me. and I will receive you. I will provide salvation for you. Come, eat, drink, be filled." It was faith that made Abel and his offering acceptable to God. He trusted in the Lord to make him righteous. That's what it says, that he was righteous. These early brothers that were in the world after the fall, and Abel was righteous. Why? By faith. He trusted God to make him righteous. Cain said, well, why doesn't God accept me? I gave him an offering too. He didn't have faith. He was looking at himself. That's what faith does. Isn't that precious? Faith brings righteousness to you. It makes you right with God. You can't do it. And faith says, God promised to do it. I'll trust Him. And then you have that. You have that blessing forever. It was faith that caused Enoch to walk with God. And then, because he walked with God, he was taken up to glory. He was raised up to heaven without dying. And it was a pledge in the ancient world that God's bringing us all to be with Him one day. And we walk with Him, we trust in Him, and this is what He's promised to do. And of course, now we have even fuller revelation of that with Christ being ascended and telling us that he's going to bring us where he is and we're going to be in glory with him forever. We're going to see the glory that he had with the father from before the world began. All of those things. But if we believe, we too then will be called up to glory at the appointed time and be made immortal. It was faith that caused Noah to pay attention to God's warning. Remember, we looked at that, we said with Noah, the characteristic is that faith receives God's warnings. That's very important. God said, I'm gonna destroy the world. I'm gonna destroy the world because of sin. I'm gonna send a great flood. Noah believed the warning. He had faith, he believed it, and so then he acted according to that. God said, here's my provision for you. Noah took the provision, he built the ark, and then he was saved. And that's what people of faith do. They hear the warning, they hear judgment, and they believe, and they act. So see, this is just so, this is so helpful, this material, it's so practical to us with all of these examples. Noah believed, built the ark, saved his household, and we're all here because of that. we would have been wiped out. It was also faith that caused Abraham to leave his home and his idols to go to the place that God would show him, even though he did not know where. He believed that God would bless him because God said he would and that God would give him an inheritance because God said he would. And even though he came to the land and he never even got any inheritance in this world, he knew God would make it good after he was dead. And he shows very clearly that his faith is it's not just what he got in this world. If it was, he would have been disappointed. He had something better back when he lived in Ur. But here he was had something better because he had God in his promise salvation and he served God. He he was persuaded that God would bring him to a glorious city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God, one that is established with foundations, not one where you wander around and don't have a settled where you come and you dwell with him forever and ever. Now, today we come to verse 11 and 12, where we find out what faith in the Lord did for Abraham's wife, Sarah, and really did this for Abraham, too. But it gave her strength to do what was impossible to bring forth nations, one of which would bring forth the son who would save the world. Let's look at how faith and wonderful faith in God gave her strength to bring forth God's church and the savior of it. Our text is Hebrews 11, again, 11 through 12. So listen as I read it to you. Hebrews 11, 11 through 12, God's holy and infallible word. 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. Therefore, from one man in him as good as dead were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore. And there we end the reading of God's word. Thanks be to God for his holy and infallible word. Now, I just want to make a general comment here as we get into this passage. You look at that and you say, well, OK, we've been looking at how this relates to us. So Sarah is bringing forth the son, the Messiah, that's going to come. There's a promise there that she's going to be she who is barren. She's going to be able to do that. But we're not we don't all do that. Well, there's a sense in which the whole church does do that. But you see, this whole thing applies to us. We receive strength. How? By faith. I can't serve God. I'm dead apart from God's grace. And so I trust in him. and then I'm able to live, and I'm able to bring life to others by God's grace, like children and things like that, to bring forth children that are in God's kingdom rather than out of God's kingdom, and to have ministry to other people. All these things, we do all of this by the grace of God, and we trust in Him, and we look to Him for His work. So let's look at how this then, applies to the whole church and also to us in particular. Let's begin by looking at how faith gave Sarah strength to do what would have been completely impossible for her. What was the impossible thing? Well, I've said it. It was that God had chosen her to bring forth a son who would bring forth the nation, who would bring forth the son who would bring God's salvation to the nations. That's a little bit confusing, but you bring forth a son from which would come a nation that would bring forth the Son, Jesus Christ, that would bring salvation to them and all the world. Now, how could a sinful human being possibly do such a thing? How could Sarah bring forth a son that would bring forth a nation that would bring forth a son that was righteous? Sarah knew, as you must surely know, that we humans have offended God by our sin. That's the reason we have hardship in the world and that we die. We eventually die. God cannot let our rejection of him as God stand on record without being appropriately punished, because it destroys His glory and honor. If we can treat God the way we treat Him, and nothing is done about it, to rectify it, to say, this is wrong, and not just to say it, but to bring penalty and punishment, this is wrong, that has to be clearly known, or God's glory is not upheld. So an appropriate punishment for what we have done is eternity in hell. Nothing less is adequate for those who have rejected the glorious God. Now, do you believe that? Whether you believe that or not, it's true. It doesn't change being true. And the reason you don't believe it is because you don't want to believe it. You don't like it. But that's what is revealed in Scripture, and it explains everything if you accept that. It explains, well, why is there so much suffering in the world? It totally explains that. Why do people die? Why are children born with all kinds of deformities and things like that? It's because we're sinners. Sarah knew that she was a sinner just like we are. How could she then possibly bring forth a son who would save the world? How would that come from her? How would that come from a fallen human race? Of course, the answer is that she certainly could not do that. She was absolutely right. She could not do it. She wasn't like the rich, young ruler that said, oh, I've kept all your commandments from my youth up. She wasn't like that at all. She knew. She was a believer. She had neither the moral goodness to do this, nor the strength to do it. It's impossible for any human being to bring forth such a son by their own strength. God drew attention to how impossible it was for Sarah to do this because they were still in the shadows and Christ had not been revealed as he has to us now, all that he is. And so people would think that, you know, they might not. I mean, we're that way. We're not so in tune with how impossible it is for us to bring forth a righteous person. Just say that's outrageously impossible for someone to be able to bring forth a righteous individual who is in our state. It's just outrageously impossible. But because we're spiritually dull, then we don't realize it so fully, do we? So what did God do to highlight the fact that this is something that is beyond us? Well, He gave us a little bit of help. that Sarah was physically incapable of even just much less a child like this. So she was spiritually incapable of bringing forth a righteous child. That's outrageously unable to do. But she was also unable even to bring forth a child physically. She was a barren woman, and we're told that about her all along the way. She was barren, and she was barren into old age. So she was barren into the time of life when no woman can have a child, whether she was barren or not. So she's sort of doubly unable to do this. God is then showing that he's the one alone who can bring forth the savior of the world to a people who are lost in sin. He is the only one that can do that. He's highlighting that by making her barren because people that are kind of dull and spiritually and they don't understand why you couldn't bring a righteous child in the world. They say, OK, yeah, she's barren and she's too old to have a child. Everybody gets it. This woman is unable. God will have to do this or it won't be done. And so it was when all hope seemed to be lost that God appeared to Abraham and Sarah. In fact, there are two appearings to Abraham that are spoken of in our text. The first appearing was in, I mean, not in our text per se, but in the passage we read in Genesis, the parallel passage. The first appearing was in chapter 17, where the Lord promised to make Abraham the father of many nations through his wife Sarai, as it was, when God changed Sarai's name to Sarah and said, Genesis 17, 16, I will bless her and also give you a son by her. Then I will bless her and she shall be a mother of nations, kings of people shall be from her. We're told that when Abraham heard that, he fell on his face and laughed and said in his heart, shall a child be born to a man who is 100 years old and shall Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child? And so he had a response like that. And then there was a second appearing that came just a short time later that is described in Chapter 18. This time, the Lord appears with two others who are, we understand, to be angels. And they, like the Lord, have taken on the appearance of a man. The one who is said to be the Lord is what we call a pre-incarnate, before he became flesh, appearance of Jesus. An appearance of him before he was conceived with an eternal human body and spirit. Okay, it was just an appearance in that way for, to meet with people in a way that, because we can't see God. He doesn't have a body like we do. He's a spirit. So when he and his companions came the second time, Abraham immediately saved them with the warm eastern greetings and hospitality, you know, give you a morsel of bread. I like the way he says that. He kills a tender calf, you know, out of his, best of his flock and everything. It's just a little morsel of bread, you know. We used to visit some relatives that would do that up in Pictou. They'd say, oh, we're just going to have a little snack. And they'd bring out lobster and all kinds of different things. And we'd have a big feast and dine with them. So the Lord accepted the invitation. So Abraham put his household to work, and everybody was running around preparing the meal and everything, doing different things. And once again, God's purpose in this appearing was to assure Abraham and Sarah that despite the delay, You know, he told them they were going to have a child, and now they were too old to have a child. His promise to bring forth a son by Sarah was just as certain and sure as it ever was. It was incredible. He even announces that it will be within a year's time, within the time that it would take to bring forth a child within that space, Genesis 18, 9 through 10. Then they said to him, where is Sarah your wife? So he said, here in the tent. And he said, I will certainly return to you. I'm going to visit you, you see. according to the time of life. And behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son." Now, this time when Abraham was there, and Sarah was nearby, she was in the tent, and she was listening to the conversation. We're not told whether she was present in the earlier time when God had said this, and Abraham himself laughed when he heard. But Sarah's listening to the conversation, and she heard this about her having a son. And then verse 10 tells us, Sarah was listening in the tent door, which was behind him. Sarah responded to this news then with laughter, like Abraham did. Genesis 18, 11 to 12 gives us a report. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age, and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. Therefore, Sarah laughed within herself, saying, after I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my Lord, talking about Abraham, being old also? No, well, she did not actually laugh out loud, it appears, but she laughed within herself. And it's not surprising. She knew I can't have a baby now. I'm I'm too old. I'm past the age. I'm not capable of having a child. And she knew too that apparently Abraham men, when they are, you know, almost 100 years old, they can lose the ability also to to bring four children. It appears from things the scripture says that this was so of him also. And what she says, it was beyond the ability of them both. The Lord calls her out for laughing. And she didn't laugh out loud. He calls her out. And Genesis 18, 13. And the Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh? saying, shall I surely bear a child since I am old? It's pretty intimidating when you laugh within yourself and somebody says, hey, why are you laughing? And they can't even see you. And God knows our thoughts. And so it's just as if she had said it really loud and said, wow, that's stupid. That can never happen. She didn't say it. But he goes, why did Sarah laugh? She's back there in the tent. And He knew what had happened because He's God. He sees all of your thoughts. He sees your faithless thoughts. He sees your hard thoughts. He sees all of them. He sees the thoughts of yearning for Him. He sees your righteous desires. He sees all those thoughts, too. He sees it all. And He can't hide from God. It's all before His face, open and naked before Him. We read that earlier in Hebrews, you will remember. So. He's after calling her out for laughing, he says something that completely changes the picture. It's wonderful. God is working in Sarah. He completely changes her whole perspective with what he says. He adds to what? Why does Sarah laugh? Verse 14. Is anything. Too hard. For the Lord. Different perspective, isn't it? She's looking at her body. She's looking at Abraham's body. She's looking at their age. She's looking at what they can do. We can't. She's right. They can't. Then she looks. Oh, is anything too hard for the Lord? Creator of the heaven and earth. Of course it isn't. Of course it isn't. God can do anything that He wants to do. It turns her eyes that statement. Is anything too hard for the Lord? Turns her eyes from. Unbelief. To trust and confidence. Sarah's embarrassed now. About her laughter. She has been foolish. She is afraid because she has been disrespectful. To the Lord God. She had forgotten who God is. That's an offense against God to forget. We do it all the time. Does that ever happen to you? Do you sometimes lose sight of God? Or does that never happen to you? It happens, doesn't it? Sarah denies her laughter. She does it because of fear. But Sarah denied it, saying, I did not laugh, for she was afraid. And you know, it's easy to say, Sarah lied. But in a way, it wasn't exactly a lie, because if you laugh within yourself, and somebody says, you laughed, and you say, I didn't laugh. Right. But God says you did laugh. He saw what was going on in there. He knew to him, it's all the same. He knows our words even before they reach our tongue. So the good thing about all this is that now Sarah believes the promise the Lord has done in that event, a great work in Sarah. And now she believes so that she can receive strength to conceive. This is actually something that happens to us as believers all the time. we have promises of God, and we lose heart, and we start to doubt, and we start to question whether, is anything really good gonna come out of this? Is God really gonna come through? Is this really, and God says, I saw that. I saw your doubt. Is there anything too hard for the Lord? He deals with us. Yeah, it's beyond our strength and ability, but not his. He comes, you see to us. This is how he strengthens our faith. He keeps bringing us and stretching us into times where we're going. How is this ever going to work out? And then he reminds us that he's the Lord and then we believe and he likes to do that before he works everything out. He does it before we go to heaven. We believe before we go to glory before we go to heaven. He wants us to believe that way, to believe based on his promise and who he is, because he wants us to know who he is. It's easy to believe afterward, then it's not really faith in sight then. This is the way God works. You can quibble about the way he works and he hears that too. What does he say when you quibble about the way he works? He says, I'm the Lord. That's what he said to Job. Job got pressed to the breaking point, and he was questioning God, like, what are you doing? Like, where are you? Why are you doing it? And God said, look, where were you when I made the world, Job? I'm the Lord. You need to trust me. He shows us how foolish we had been to doubt, and he restores our faith in him again. It's pretty special when that happens, and you've all experienced that, I trust, when the light comes back. You were kind of in the clouds and the gray and the darkness and you were wandering around, doubting and everything. And then the light comes on. God reveals again. Yeah, the Lord can do anything. The Lord is faithful. He will do what he's promised. And then there's a zip in your step again. You're able to walk with God and trust in him. There's something striking here in our text, something that might be overlooked even once you see it. It says that by believing, Sarah received strength to conceive. Verse 11 again, by faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed. She bore a child when she was past age because she judged him faithful who had promised. So wait, faith gave her strength to conceive a child. How did that work? Well, this must not be misunderstood. It does not mean that we can willy nilly, willy nilly believe things into existence. That we can visualize world peace and that will bring world peace. Or that we can just believe that we're going to be rich. and keep believing it, and keep believing it, that we're going to be successful, that we're going to accomplish all this, and then that that will make it happen. Because I have faith, and faith is powerful, and faith brings us things about. Now somebody could read this and say, well, that's what it says. Faith made her strong. That's what it says. But that's not the way it works in the Bible. Her belief consisted in trusting God who had promised. And see, you can't just pull something out and say, I'm going to believe that this will happen. And even add to that, I believe that God can do it. Yeah, He can. And then say, so this is going to happen because I believe it. No, you can't just choose something. It has to be something that God has promised. And sometimes there's things that we may want that He may not do. Neither does this mean that believing was itself what gave her strength. It's not just a psychological change in her in which she realizes it. You know what? I can do this. And that that happens. You know, there's stuff that somebody can lose confidence with something they're perfectly able to do and they're discouraged and stuff. And then they realize they come to realize they have a psychological change in the way they look. And they say, you know, I can do this. And then they're ready to go and do it. And they do it and they go and do it. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking again about not just that now I can do something because I can do it all along, but I just didn't realize it. No, this is something that we could never do. And then God, the reason that we have faith is because we have faith in God. Who can do it? It's faith in God. And so it's different than that. I mean, that's a helpful thing what I was just talking about. If there's something that you actually can do and you think you can't and somebody encourages you and helps you to get going and go and do it. That's a helpful thing. But that's not what we're talking about here. She could not bring forth a child of righteousness. There's no way that she could do that. What it means is that God waited to give Sarah strength to conceive until Sarah and Abraham believed his promises. You see how that how faith gave her strength. Because God was not going to give her that strength to be able to actually bring forth that child until she believed that God was going to do that. And he does that all the time, doesn't he? Like when we talk about salvation, how does that work? How does it work? Somebody's coming along and we preach the gospel to them and we tell them the way of salvation. Does God go ahead and save them before they believe? No, faith brings the blessing. Why? Because they believe the blessing into it? No, because they come to trust God who promised, and then they're saved. But He doesn't save them until they believe. So He operated the same way with Sarah. He waited until He brought her to faith. And then he answered, and so by faith, she received strength from God. It precipitated the strength from God coming to her. So this is something that we can learn about faith. It's God's normal way to wait until we believe to give us promised blessings. Now, I have to put normal in there because You know, it's that's one of the reasons it's so special when Jesus tells parents to bring their little children to him and he will bless them because the kingdom of God belongs to them. And they're not able yet to trust him for the blessing or to understand the blessing. So he says, oh, I'll bless. And so we trust. But but the children are not able yet to to realize that this is what is going on. But you see, we're dull and we often don't see His hand at all when we receive His blessings. And so that's why when we're older and we can understand, then He waits until we believe. Because what happens if God has promised something? I mean, let's just take anything normal like daily bread. And if we if he gives us daily bread all the time, which he actually does, but if he takes it away for a while and then we pray and then he restores it, we give thanks to him. We should have been given thanks all along. And so this is how God enriches our relationship with him by having us wait for things that he has promised so that we are brought to the place where we realize who he is in ways that we wouldn't have realized if we hadn't had to wait. Some of you are waiting. You've been you've been sick for a long time. You're struggling with chronic illness and you're waiting to be delivered. Well, the day will come either in this life or in the day of resurrection when you will be delivered. Like we saw last time with Abraham, this isn't heaven yet. We're not gonna have the, I mean, our bodies are wearing out in this life, and we're all headed in a wearing out direction right now. But ultimately, we're headed to glory. And so this is gonna be answered, and by God waiting, he will bring forth that blessing to our faith. So once she believed, God gave her strength to receive. God revealed his goodness and power. He reveals his goodness and power to us better that way. He does it so that we can know him better, so that we can trust him better, so that we can thank him better, which we cannot do if we don't see that he is the one who strengthens us. If I think I strengthen myself or it just comes naturally. So if you're struggling, it just means you need to call on God. You need to trust in him. You can see in Hebrews how Sarah was brought to focus on the character of God. when she received strength by faith. She came to see that God is faithful. That was what changed. Look at the end of verse 11. And she bore a child when she was past the age because she judged Him faithful who had promised. God wants us to see more and more how faithful He is, how true to His promises, and how mighty He is. His goal is not just to bring us into a better place from childless state to having children, but to bring us to know Him and to discern His hand graciously at work in the world. He waits for us to perceive Him. He waits to fulfill His promises until He knows that we will know Him in receiving that promise. Now let's take a look at what God did for Sarah when she believed. We've seen it. She received strength to conceive when she was past the age. It appears that this was more than a miraculous birth. In other words, The miracle was not that an old woman miraculously had a baby because she believed when God said that she would. That happened, but it was not merely that. It appears that God made Abraham and Sarah actually youthful again. They were not tired old, decrepit parents with a baby. Picture this little old lady, she's got a baby and she's walking along with her cane and has to go to change the diaper with her arthritic hands. They weren't like that. God brought youthfulness to them. They were restored to have bodies that were like the age when you are able to have babies. And it appears that they look different in everything. They're like a couple with a 30-year-old woman and a 40-year-old man, maybe, having a baby. There are two things that demonstrate that this is how it was. First, that Sarah was given a young body and a young appearance is shown by the fact that, once again, Abraham is afraid that a king will want to add Sarah to his harem. So when he goes to see Abimelech chapter 20 after the part that we are reading here, then in Genesis chapter 20, then he's afraid like he was when Sarah was younger and they went down to Egypt. She was so beautiful. She was a lovely woman. And everybody that saw her, if they wanted to have her for their wife, kings would say, oh, bring that woman to me. You know, they would want to have her the way the ancient world was. But that was before she was too old to have children. She was pretty old, but you know, there's a lot of beautiful women that are even too old to have children. But she was now 90 and, you know, not desirable like she had been before. She was old and wearing out. But after she believed and received strength to conceive and before Isaac was born, Then Abraham takes her to King Abimelech's territory. And once again, Abraham isn't just imagining that his wife is that beautiful. Abimelech says, who is that woman over there? Bring her to me. And he starts courting her, so to speak. So her youthful beauty and vigor had been restored. Now, what about Abraham? We can see this with him, too. Before they receive strength to conceive seed, he is said to have a body himself that is as good as dead. And I don't think that's just saying that his wife was such, but now Abraham was such. But you see, men can often have children into very old age. I mean, Abraham was 100, 99 when this promise was made. But afterward, he was able to do what? To have more sons. With Keturah, he was able to have more sons. His youthful vigor and fertility were restored, not just a miraculous event of one birth, but they were actually made vigorous and youthful again. This is what God did for them personally, that their youth was restored. But look at what God did. Well, let me say one more thing about that. This is something that we have hope in ourselves, all of us. Every single one of us at the day of resurrection is going to be made young and vigorous again. That's what God's gonna do. That's what he's promised. Okay, so now look at what God did as a result of their faith for the whole world. That's what he did for them personally. He made them youthful and vigorous. What did he do in this event for the whole world? Hebrews 11, 12 speaks of this. He brought forth many nations that He promised to Abraham. First, He brought these nations forth physically. As promised, He established the nation that was later called Israel. He established Ishmael as a great nation. But the nation that He brought forth by Isaac with a covenant was the one that would bring forth the Son of Promise, the Savior of the world. The other children that Abraham had by Keturah and so on, they grew and multiplied over the years to become great people and great nations as well. So God did this physically, but he not only brought forth nations to Abraham physically, but also spiritually. And that's even more amazing. He brought forth Christ, and now it has been 2,000 years, and Jesus is still busy gathering spiritual descendants to Abraham. And that's what we're called, heirs according to the promise, Abraham's seed. All of us who have faith are Abraham's seed, it says in Galatians, and heirs according to the promise. So even in this congregation, we have here people from China, Korea, Ukraine, India, Brazil, Scotland, the Netherlands, the United States, and even Ontario. We've got people from all over the place. God does the impossible. This is a grand thing, that God should save a vast multitude from nations that were sunk in the darkness. Sarah received strength by faith to do this. To physically bring forth nations into the world, but even more, she and Abraham, to bring descendants who were God's people. This was this this birth here precipitated people from all over the world coming to be restored to our Savior and knowing him nations that are alive to God, people from all nations alive to God. How should you respond to all this then? First of all, you should believe so that you who are also without strength may be saved. It's the essence of true religion. We are sinners, and because we are, there is no way for us to save ourselves. It's absurdly impossible. We cannot do it. We are as impotent as Abraham and Sarah were when they were beyond the age to have children, and we're even worse than that. We cannot save ourselves. They were not the ones who saved the world, but they were the ones who brought forth by God's grace the one who is the savior of the world. His is the only way of salvation and you must receive it. How by faith? By faith, you have to trust God to save you if you ignore either your need of it. Ignore the fact that you're a sinner who needs to be restored to God. If you try to be saved by some other method, like Cain, you know, here's my sacrifice. Jesus crucified for Savior is the only one. You will utterly fail, and you will perish in your sin. Unless you trust in him, just as Abraham and Sarah looked to the Lord to bring forth nations for God and the one son that would save the world. And God did. So you must look to the Lord to do what would be completely impossible for you to save you from your sin. And if you don't, then you will not have the blessing. That's the first thing. Second thing, the second response that you should have is that you should give thanks and praise to God for what he has done. for this big picture thing, bringing salvation into a world that was filled with sin in the way that he did this. Praise him for his power and his grace, his mercy that is revealed in bringing forth his salvation, bringing a son that would even be his son and that would go to the cross for us and die for our sins so that we might be saved. It was because of the finished work of Christ. It is because of that that we gather every Lord's Day to give thanks to his name. He calls us together to feast before Him and to rejoice in what He has accomplished for us. The first day of the week, the day that Jesus rose from the dead. This is let us marvel and let us embrace the salvation and let us give thanks and praise to our God. Our whole life should be lived as an expression of thanksgiving to God. We have a rhythm of each Lord's Day that we come together publicly to give thanks. And every day we should in the morning, in the evening, we give thanks to God. However, we work that out, we give thanks and all all through the day, really. But we We look to him and we say, Lord, you have done great things for us and we are glad. And then that's that's the main lesson from our text is the big picture of what God did for salvation. But now there's a personal moral lesson to hear that is very important for us about receiving strength. And we need to see how this works in our lives, too. Third, you need to have faith so that you can receive strength to do what God wants, even though what He wants is impossible for you otherwise, if He doesn't help you. Think about this. I wonder, are you prevented in your Christian walk from doing things that God has called you to do because of your unbelief? Because you're looking at yourself and your own strength and you say, I can't do that. It's true, you can't. Instead of nothing is impossible for the Lord. Is this thing too hard for the Lord? Now, I'm not talking about here just whether you're a true believer or not. We already talked about that. This is when you are you are trusting in Christ for salvation. You know him as your savior. I'm talking about living the holy life that God has called you to live. You say, OK, I can't do that. That's too hard. That's not true. Are you stuck in a rut? Do you have sin in your life that you have made peace with? Because it seems impossible to get rid of it. Where will you get strength to get rid of it? Faith? Trust God? Look to Him? Have you decided that there is nothing you can do about your lust? Nothing you can really do to change your selfishness? Nothing that you can do about your covetousness. You're just that way. Nothing you can do about your worry. I'm just a worrier. It's just how I am. You can't change? No, you can't. Your fear? Yeah, you can't change. You're right. What about pride? Same thing. It keeps cropping up. What about if there's a drinking problem, drug problem, eating problem? About your anger? You blow up. Are you seethed with resentment and bitterness about your lack of zeal for the Lord? You just kind of are cold. You don't have a lot of love for him or desire to please him, love for his kingdom, lack of concern for your neighbor, kind of indifferent about it, whether they're saved or not, whether they're just kind of maybe you don't honor your parents. Maybe you start out to and then it keeps you keep struggling. What about your prayer life? Perhaps you have no heart for these things. You're spiritually barren. You're barren like Sarah was barren. And you're tired of it all, and you're ready to die. Why should I go on? But let me remind you about Sarah. God had made the promise that she would bring forth a son to save the world, which she had absolutely no ability to do. He's promised that he will sanctify us, which we have absolutely no ability to do. How do we receive strength to be sanctified? By trusting in the Lord's promise. We can't, he can. So instead of concluding that it's impossible, Sarah concluded that God is faithful and that he will do what he has promised. By faith, Sarah received strength You don't have to go on at the rate you're going now. You can receive strength by faith. You can do what is impossible for you to do otherwise. Don't settle for mediocrity or even less. Can you take your old, tired walk and make it fresh and vigorous? Like God did with Abraham's old, tired body and Sarah's worn out body, unable to bring forth children, they became young and vigorous. That's what needs to happen to rotting, decaying faith, or rotting and decaying walk. It needs to become youthful and vigorous. You need to be rejuvenated. God is able to give life where things are dying or where there's death. Please stand and let's call on his name. Well, Lord, our God, we thank you for this wonderful chapter about faith and how it tells us about Sarah and how she received strength to do something that she absolutely could not do either physically or spiritually. And we thank you, Lord, that you gave her that strength to do that very thing. She had strength to do it. She's the one that did it. It was your power that gave her the ability, but she's the one that brought forth that child. And we praise you, O Lord, that it was all by your grace. And we pray, Lord, that we would come to you with confidence. And Father, we would not go on, as John Newton said, at this poor, dying rate. That, Father, we would go forth from strength to strength, giving glory to God. We would go forth in your name, trusting you and walking with you and having a hope before us. Father, that you would make us vigorous in our faith, that you would rejuvenate us in our walk, that we would have a spring in our step again instead of an old, tired gate. Father, we thank you that you're able to do this, you're able to do all things. But Lord, we step back too. And we see, you know, we see ourselves struggling and bobbling along, but we are so glad that what you have done is way beyond us, Lord, in all of our weakness, that what we saw here, then the big picture is how you brought salvation to a people that were completely barren and helpless. All of us, the bride of Christ. And now that the bride has become fruitful and she has children who are living for God, who are born again and who will be in glory forever and ever, and who will be raised up and who will be perfected, who will see Christ as He is, who will see Him in His glory, who will be like Him because we will see Him as He is, who will be transformed and be able to live with Him in glory forever and ever. in the fullness of the blessing that you have for your people. You said that you would bless us. You said that you would bless Abraham. And he believed that even though as far as the glory and the inheritance and all that, he had none of it. And we, Lord, also, we know that you will bring all this about whatever it may be about us, however strong or weak we may be, however we may fumble and mess up and all of these things. We thank You, Lord, that our confidence is in You and Your promises, and that You will bring us to glory. But we do pray, Lord, that we would receive promises right now as we walk with You in this world of rejuvenation, of sanctification, of growing, and all of those things, that we would have an active and busy relationship with You, Lord. Help us, Father, do what only you can do. We look to you, Lord. We look to you with hope. But we ask you, Lord, the way the man did when he said, I believe help my unbelief, because we know that there's a lot lacking there. Help us to hear the words. that with you is anything too hard for the Lord. Help us to hear those words and help us to receive them and know that he who promised is faithful the way Sarah came to see when you visited her. Visit us, Lord, with this same truth. Visit us again and again whenever it slips away from us. We pray that you would visit us as we come to the Lord's table and that we would receive the assurance of your mercy and blessing and grace for our lives. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Please be seated as we prepare to come to the Lord's table. May the God of all grace who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while. perfect, establish, strengthen and settle you. To him be the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.