Let's get started. We are in Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11 and then we're going to jump over to Peter. Now, Hebrews and Peter are pretty close together. Hebrews and Peter are pretty close.

You have Hebrews and then if you turn a few pages over, you'll come to Peter, okay? So, Hebrews chapter 11 and we'll read verses eight through 12. And then we're going to go to first Peter three. So, Hebrews eleven eight through 12 and then over to first Peter chapter three and we'll read verses one through seven. Hebrews 11 verse eight.

A wife and mother to be praised. How do we know what wife and mother to praise? Well, pretty simple when it comes to preaching a sermon. God tells us right here because he praises her. So, if he praises her, then, I guess we should praise her also.

Hebrews 11 verse eight, 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 whether he went. By faith, he sojourned in the land of promises and as in a strange country dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he look not look for a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. 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. Therefore, sprang there even of one and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky and multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore, innumerable.

Turn if you would over to first Peter chapter three. First Peter chapter three and verses one to seven. Again, God praises Sarah. First Peter three one through seven, likewise, you wives, be in subjection to your own husbands that if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation or behavior of their wives. While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear, whose adorning, let it not be, that outward adorning of playing of the hair and of wearing of gold or putting on of apparel.

But let it be the hidden man of the heart and that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of meek and a quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price. For after this manner, in the old time, the holy women also who trusted in God adorned themselves being in subjection unto their own husbands. Even as Sarah obeyed, Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are, as long as you do well and are not afraid with any amazement. Likewise, you husbands dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as under the weaker vessel and as being heirs together of the grace of life that your prayers be not hindered. Let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Dear heavenly father, we thank you Lord today for your word and for the reminder of the faith and faithfulness of Sarah. Lord, I pray as we remember her and praise her as you have done. We also remember and praise the mothers that you have given us in our life who have cared for us, have been faithful and loving towards us. We thank you for them. And we honor them today.

But more so also we honor you for your wisdom in ordaining families. The family unit as you have made. To bring you glory. And in service to you. And we honor that in you as well also this day.

And we also thank you most of all for Jesus Christ our savior. Who is a loving, faithful savior, full of grace and mercy towards us. Who cares for us dearly and watches over us every day. For it is in Jesus name we do pray. Amen.

So, who do you think the mother we're going to praise today is? Sarah, okay? Sarah, as I read these verses this morning, I think of how far our world and our modern culture has strayed from the created purpose of mankind and particularly of the family. The things for which God prays Sarah here in these verses, the world today cringes at. A woman who followed her husband.

A woman who was of a meek and a a quiet spirit. A woman who was in submission to her husband, who partnered with her husband, who was praised for having a child and being a mother. If you follow our culture today, those things are under attack in the world in which we live. The partnership and God ordained roles of motherhood and fatherhood of husband and wife, the world scorns and mocks at today. I was just hearing on the radio as I was traveling the last couple days that someone was speaking in the House of Representatives, and they have passed a rule back a few months ago in the House that they cannot refer in any legislation to gender.

Woman, man, mother, father, brother, sister, all that's outlawed in our legislation in the House of Representatives today because we no longer recognize God ordained created sex or gender. And so, instead of referring refer to them as the birthing parent and the fathers are the non birthing parent because how dare we refer to gender which God created and made mothers and fathers. It is a very sad world in that way but we have a great God and he is still good and he's still up in heaven and we can still acknowledge the way in which he created this world, the families that he ordained, and mothers and fathers that he gave to us as children that are very important part of our upbringing and the upbringing of our children. The very idea that a strong woman like Sarah should be praised following her husband and having faith to conceive and to give birth as though it were some great accomplishment in the life of a woman is anathema to the world in which we live but it is not to God. God created man and woman and he said for them to what?

To be fruitful. Be fruitful and fill the earth. And to have children. And to work together in partnership to form a family to the praise of God. And so today, we will praise and recognize what God praises and recognizes even though man may not.

We still will. Now Sarah, like the rest of us, was imperfect. If you know the story of Sarah, you see some imperfections and flaws along the way. Well, guess what? All of us have imperfections and flaws.

Abraham certainly had many imperfections and flaws. But he never lost his faith in who? In his God. And the Bible says his faith was accounted to him for righteousness and that true also of Sarah. Her faith like that of her husband was a work in progress as she also ran ahead of God with Hagar but God does praise her twice in the New Testament, hold her forth as an example of a woman of faith and a wife with a submissive heart to the Lord and indeed those qualities go hand in hand making her a faithful wife and mother and a good example to others today.

Just three points this morning, number one, in faith and obedience, Sarah too left behind all she knew to follow God with her husband. When we read about God calling Abraham, he therefore also called who? He also called Sarah. Genesis twelve four and five. Genesis twelve, four, and five.

So, Abraham departed as the Lord had spoken unto him and Lot went with him and Abraham was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Heron and Abraham took Sarai, her name was later changed to Sarah as Abrams to Abraham and Abraham 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 Heron and they went forth into the land of Canaan, into the land of Canaan, they came. In faith, Abraham left or of the Chaldees and later, Heron to continue his journey to the promised land and who went with him? Sarah did. She left with him from the Ur of the Chaldees. She left with him again to Heron to head to a land that they were not at all familiar with.

A land where they didn't know where they would settle. But they knew one thing. They knew the Lord had called and so they together answered and they followed him by faith. She left her relatives in many ways like Ruth would leave most of hers later on in the story of the Old Testament. She left her homeland.

She left comforts and security to follow the Lord with her husband. She left behind the known for the unknown to follow God. To trust in a promise which seemed quite impossible. That promise being that from her and Abraham, they would have a child and descendants as the sands of the sea and as the stars of the heaven. When as yet they had no children and they were already passed, she was already passed her childbearing years.

She followed God in faith similar to many missionary wives have done in modern times following the Lord of their husbands into the ministry in some cases leaving behind their homelands forever, the luxuries and securities that they had there. When I I think of a few, Adoniram, Judson, you ever heard of Adoniram Judson? Missionary to Burma. Well, Adoniram Judson did not go to the mission field by himself. He went with his wife, Anne.

Hudson Taylor, Hudson Taylor. He went to China. China Inland Mission But he did not go by himself either. For God called Hudson and Maria Taylor to the mission field. Jim and Elizabeth Elliot.

Though Jim Elliot and a a group of fellow missionaries died on on the plane when they landed the plane in Central America there. At the hands of the Alka Indians, most of these missionaries were married and Elizabeth in this case was the one that survived. Actually, went back many years later to the same natives that had killed her husband and at least one of them that actually had a part in killing her husband came to know Jesus Christ as his savior. These missionaries, these men were not called alone. They were called with their wives.

Just to name a few and most of the missionaries that we support as well. Wives went with them and a very important part of their ministry. Some of them like Ann Judson and Maria Taylor and Jim Elliot never returned home at least not home to this Earth or to this country but they are in a better place. But like them, Sarah left also with Abraham to follow God where he would lead. She left in faith that God would lead them to a land of his choosing.

For God, God never makes mistakes where he leads you and guides you is the place he wants you to be. When Kate and I were in Georgia, I was a youth pastor up there for twelve years. I felt the Lord's leading for me to leave the youth ministry and to go into senior pastoring and we thought, you know, it would be neat. We we we went to college in South Carolina then the Lord led us down to Georgia and my parents are in Virginia. Her parents are in Ohio.

So, we thought, well, you know, it'd be neat if we could move which way? North. Wasn't God's will. A matter of fact, I think sometimes God has a sense of humor. And knowing that I said, oh, I can move north.

Instead, he moved me further south. Praise God. I've been here fifteen years and hopefully, I don't have to go any further south than this. But being here has been an tremendous blessing. And I have come to love particularly the winters in Florida opposed to Virginia and Ohio.

But the Lord knows what he's doing. We need to like Sarah and Abraham, be people of faith and trust him where he leads. She left in faith that God would take her to a land of his choosing, protect and keep her there and that he would indeed make of them a great nation and give them a son. She left in submission. Submission first to God.

But also to her husband as it is mentioned here in first Peter. Both things the world today would treat with scorn but God praised. She was not a slave to her husband. She was not treated as a child. She was not owned by him.

She made choices. She gave advice. Some good and some bad. They were partners as they should have been and as husbands and wives should be today in the service of the Lord. It is a blessed partnership that we enter into in marriage that we can follow the Lord together in his service, raise children as he would see fit.

And indeed, Abraham and Sarah are examples of this for us to follow. Perfect examples? No. Not perfect but then again, we're not perfect either. Praise the Lord.

We have a perfect God and he makes up by his grace and mercy what we are lacking but yet good examples and so, here, Sarah is praised by the God, things that God holds dear even if the world does not. Number two, she left in faith and that she stuck with him and did not forsake him when times were tough. She was faithful. She was a faithful wife and mother. Marriage vows.

I, so and so, take you, so and so, to be my wife or husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish from this day forward until death do us part. Sadly, that is not often kept in the world in which we live for many reasons. But Sarah is a good example and praiseworthy of God. Because she did run into many hardships. Because Abraham gave her reasons to be discouraged with him but yet, she stuck with him.

She stuck with him on his journey. She stuck with him in the times when he was following the Lord and the times when he was not. She was faithful to God and she was faithful to him. Reminds me of Ruth. Now, Ruth wasn't leaving with a husband for Moab to go back to Israel.

She was leaving with her mother-in-law but I I I like the sentiment here. Ruth said, entreat me not to leave thee speaking to her mother-in-law or return from falling after thee for whether thou goest, I will go. Where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people and thy God, my God, where thou diest will I die and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me and more also if ought but death part thee and me.

You know, it could be that the marriage vows that we take could almost be written from Ruth's promise that she made to her mother-in-law. And indeed, that should be. The should be the prayer and the desire of both husband and wife. As we see from Ruth here. Proverbs eighteen twenty four, I can't remember if I put it up there.

I did. Says, a man that hath friends must show himself friendly and there is a friend that that what? Stick it closer than a brother. Well, I have a friend. I have two friends that stick it closer than a brother and believe me, my brother is a very good brother.

But but I have a god in heaven and a savior Jesus Christ. Who is better than a brother? And he will never leave me nor forsake me. But I also have a wife. Her name is Katie.

And she has been faithful to me through thick and thin. In good times and bad, when I've been the husband I've ought to have been and sometimes when I have fallen short. Amen. That reminds me of the faithfulness of our God and I thank the Lord for the faithful wife that he has given to me and Abraham certainly thanked the Lord for Sarah as well. As she stuck with him, followed him to Heron, to the promised land, not knowing where they would live, how they would live.

She stuck with him in perilous conditions. She followed him and stuck with him in famine, in danger. When Abraham had to go off to war to bring Lot back. She stuck with him even when he put her at risk. Twice, Abraham did a very foolish thing.

He went to Egypt and then later, he went to Gerar and there because evidently, he at least perceived Sarah to be so beautiful that the pharaoh or the king would want her for self and would kill him to get her, he asked her to say, well, tell them you're my sister and not my wife. Well, that wasn't a total lie, I guess. She was his half sister but she was also his what? She was also his wife. And so, he told her to lie.

And in both times, it got them, and particularly her, in very precarious situations. Yet, when God straightened everything out and you would have thought she would have said, I ain't teaming back up with this foolish no good that did this to me. She went back with him anyway. She was faithful. She was forgiving.

And a good example. She stuck with him even after Hagar. Look if you would in Genesis chapter 16. Genesis chapter 16. Genesis 16.

Now, what did God promise Abraham and Sarah they would have? A child because they were gonna have descendants as the sand of the sea, so they must have children in order for that to be true. At this point, they both were well past when you would normally have children. She was certainly past that age, had long been past that age, had been barren all through her childbearing years. And so in chapter 16 and verse one, now, Sarai, Abraham's wife, bear him no children and she hadn't had made an Egyptian whose name was Hagar and Sarai said unto Abraham, behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing.

I pray thee go in unto my my maid, it may be that I may obtain children by her and Abraham hearken to the voice of Sarai and Sarah, Abraham's wife took Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian. After Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband, Abram, to be his wife. And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived, and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes, and Sarai said unto Abram, my wrong be upon thee, I have given my maid into thy bosom. And when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes, the Lord judge between me and thee. Now, who was it that suggested to Abraham this course of action?

It was Sarah that suggested this course of action. Saying, well, you know, the Lord must have another way because he hadn't fulfilled his promise yet. Have you ever been praying for something and thought, well, you know, the you know, I've been praying for this for ten years and it hadn't happened yet. So, I'm just going to take matters into my own hands and when we do that, we usually end up in what? Trouble.

The Bible says, they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. Wait on the Lord.

Son, his timetable is not often our timetable. He knows what he's doing. Don't run ahead. She ran ahead and guess what? Abraham consented and he ran ahead.

They both ran ahead of the Lord. They both did that which was wrong and what how what did it result in? It resulted in a son born illegitimately. It resulted in conflict between Sarah and Abraham. But did she leave him over it?

Or did she help in some way to raise that son, Ishmael, even though it was not his? Did she stay with him? Yes, she did. She did. She said, I will let the Lord do the what?

I'll let the Lord do the judging. May the Lord judge between me and thee over this matter. You know, there's sometimes we have good reason to be upset with friends and even spouses in our lives. But whenever it is at all possible, the best route to take is always to let who do the judging? Let God take care of it.

Let God take care of it. And we know that when God takes care of it, he always takes care of it the right way. For often times, we do not. And so, she did not abandon him. She did not turn against him.

Sadly, husbands do not always live up to their end of the bargain But praise God for faithful and patient wives who stick with them through the bad times as well as the good. Ephesians five twenty two says, wives, submit to your husbands or to your own husbands as unto who? As under the Lord. Why? Because the Lord always deserves it.

Even when your husband may not. Number three, in faith she conceived and gave birth to a son. Long after she should have been able and she protected that son. That special seed of promise, that special gift from the Lord. In Hebrews eleven eleven, going back there, God specifically praises her in this matter.

It says, 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. She trusted in the Lord and at the age of 90, God gave her a son. Now, did she trust him perfectly? Did she struggle? Did she have to grow in her faith?

Yes, she did. On more than one occasion, she demonstrated just a little bit of doubt. On one occasion, she actually laughed when she heard God say that he would give her a son. A year later, when he came to visit her and Abraham. God heard her and said, why did you laugh?

Of course, she tried to skirt around the issue but what's interesting God told them to name that son Isaac. Guess what the name Isaac means? It means laughter because she laughed when she heard God say at the age of 90, by this time next year, you will have a son. But she did trust in him and she did have a son at such a late time in her life and God praised her for that. You know, he knows our frame.

He knows we struggle. He knows we are a a a work in progress. Progress and praise the Lord for his mercy and grace. Amen. But continue to be that work in progress.

Let your faith grow. As Sarah did and trust in the Lord more each day. She believed in the prophecy concerning her son by faith. She protected that son by faith. She cared for that son.

She raised that son to be a servant of who? To be a servant of God. Proverbs 3,130 says, favor is deceitful and beauty is vain. But a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Evidently, Sarah was a woman somewhat of favor and she was a woman of great beauty but God did not praise her for those things.

He praised her because she feared the Lord. Because of her faith in God. Because of her faithfulness to him and to Abraham. And because of her faith to conceive and bear and raise a son to the glory of God. Again, Sarah was no perfect woman.

There are no perfect wives or mothers or for that matter, husbands or fathers but one, God. However, God still praised her and there's much we can learn from her faithfulness to her God, to her husband, and to her son. Bringing this message to a conclusion this morning with these three closing thoughts. Thought number one, none of us had a perfect mother but most of us had a faithful, loving one. Don't forget to thank God this Mother's Day for the mother that he gave to you.

And if she is still here on this earth, take the time to let her know as well. If you are a mother and wife, be a faithful one. Faithful first of all to God and then to your family. You say, well, I've made some mistakes in the past. Guess what?

We all have made some mistakes in the past. Mistakes in our everyday life, mistakes in being and and and failures and sins. In our marriage, in our family, in the raising of our children, we were not perfect nor will we be. But be faithful. Learn from your failures.

Trust in the Lord. Amen. And thank him for his graciousness and the opportunity we have today to be a more faithful, more loving, more caring, servant of the Lord, husband, wife, mother, or father. In number three, trust in the Lord and believe in the word of God. Trust fully in his word.

Be a woman of prayer. Be a woman of faith. God will reward you. Even when others seem oblivious. I know sometimes mothers, especially when their kids are young, put out so much energy and time into things that the world does not recognize and sometimes their husbands forget to thank them for.

But be aware, God does not forget and God sees and God will reward you. Let's pray. Dear heavenly father, we thank you Lord for this day and this opportunity to remember our mothers, to remember this mother, Sarah, and to learn from her failures as well as her successes. And Lord, I pray, most of all, and if there's one here today that has never trusted Jesus Christ as their savior, that they would recognize that there is one in heaven that loves them more than a mother ever could. One who gave his life for them on the cross, who took the punishment for their sins that no one else could.

We thank you Lord for your mercy and love and grace that has opened the door of heaven to us and we pray if there's one here today that's never trusted you, that hasn't walked through that door by faith today, that they would embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lord of their life and Lord, I pray they will come as we give this hymn of invitation and Lord, I pray for the mothers that are here today that you would encourage each one to be more faithful. And Lord to thank you for the precious opportunity you gave them to be mothers and thank you each day for it. In Jesus name, we do pray. Amen.