Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: So we began with a series of women who changed their world. Not always for the best, we know that. We thought of Eve. I don't know how much she changed her world for the better. Today we're going to be looking at Sarah. We were challenged to be daughters of Eve in the true sense of the word and to live our lives as God intended them to be lived. We also thought of her identity obscured by the fall, and we thought a little bit about her identity renewed in redemption. Now we're going to be looking at Sarah, and of course, we'll still be in the book of Genesis. Let me summarize a little bit of where we were because we're going to have to use that as a base to build on.

Because of the fall and the entrance of sin into the world as revealed in the Bible, we see that God's intention for headship or responsibility of the man degenerated into domination. Instead of man being responsible to God to provide an environment for women to function in equality and partnership with him—and that was God's intention for the man to be responsible for the women to function in equality and partnership along with him—he began to abuse his rule over women, and he became abusive and restrictive. We know that this is evidenced by what we see in history and what we read in our history books. Women were considered the deceiver instead of the deceived.

I touched a little bit on the arguments about that, the fact that in the New Testament we read that Eve was deceived by the serpent. A lot of questions have been raised. Why was she deceived? Was she dumber than the man? Was she not able to discern? Does this prove that she is spiritually inadequate to cope with the things of God? What does it mean that she was deceived? Many people, even though it is not said in so many words, believe that she was deceived because she probably did not have all the information that Adam had and therefore was able to be tricked into making a very bad choice and into sinning, into acting independently of God, of really believing and thinking that she could have all the good things of life apart from the Creator and the source of all the good things in life.

In many parts of the world today, woman is considered the deceiver instead of the deceived. She is the one that entices men into lust as she enticed man, so they think, as she enticed Adam into sin. This has resulted in the mistreatment of women all over the world. Just for a moment, because I didn't have much time to develop it, I want you to look back into Genesis 3 because it has bearing on the passage I want to look at about Sarah in the New Testament. Let's turn to Genesis chapter 3. Man has just fallen, man male and female, both of them. Eve, deceived by the serpent, offers Adam the fruit; he with his eyes wide open sins as well. God comes along and says, "Where art thou?" and begins his seeking ministry of the souls of men.

Jesus, God in human form, said, "I've come to seek and to save that which is lost." Adam, where are you? Adam, where are you? Hidden behind their tree, they had to come out and confront the God whom they had sinned against. God first deals with the serpent, and he said in verse 14, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals. You'll crawl on your belly, you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head, you will strike his heel," which is the first Messianic promise in the Bible. How do you kill a snake? You crush his head.

To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing. With pain you will give birth to children." Apparently, there was no pain attached in God's creative purposes to childbearing before the fall. "Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you." Now I touched on this and I want to come back to it, and I'm going to give you both sides of the controversy all the way through—or controversy, I can't remember whether I'm English or American at this point, but anyway, one of those things. The controversy in Christendom at the moment is, is this passage descriptive? God knowing everything, God knowing forward as well as backward, is it descriptive of what was going to happen because of the fall to the relationships of men and women?

Was this describing the all-known future as God would see it? Is he saying, "Look, because of this, all the relationships between male and female will be spoiled. Man, male and female, will be separated even as you have separated yourself by sinning from me. Sin has come in between. So sin will come in between the male and the female. I never intended it like that. I intended harmony. I intended oneness. I didn't intend competitiveness. I intended companionship. But because of sin spoiling your relationship with me, sin is going to spoil all the relationships with me." Is this descriptive or is it prescriptive? Many people in the Christian world believe that this is descriptive; many believe it is prescriptive. Prescription.

God prescribed that for the woman's good or the woman's punishment, whichever way you like to look at it, God decided that from then on because of the fall, man would rule over woman; that because she was likely to be deceived, she needed authority over her, authority to make some decisions for her, authority to protect her from her own deceptive tendencies. So many people would say this is prescriptive. This is God's good plan to protect the woman almost from herself, from the tendency that she has as a daughter of Eve to be deceived and not to be able to discern. So the man's headship will be there as God's provision and protection for her to counter the sinful element in her nature.

There are two totally opposing points of view on this. The controversy rages round whether the woman is the helper in the sense of subordinate to the man, to help him, to fill up in him that which is lacking, to support him, to be in a supportive role, or to be partner as pre-fall, to be God's perfect partner. Remember, I mentioned the 21 times the word helper is used to describe God helping Israel. So many people would say no, helper is not to say that the woman is the weaker in the sense of being subordinate and in a supporting role, but that helper means to be alongside the man as his partner.

So this headship, this calling your husband Lord as we'll be seeing Sarah was doing, what is this all about? Again, there are two schools of thought. One school of thought says this means authority. There is absolutely no way that we can get away from this sense of authority. The man has authority over the woman. The other school of thought says no, this means source. Source, head being source of all the body's functioning to provide, to nourish, to cherish. Some people try and bring the two together and say it means both. So there is a problem with the word helper, there is a problem with the word headship, and there is a problem with this little word desire.

Do you see this bit? "With pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you." Now it depends on whether you're on the prescriptive or the descriptive side of this, but what does this little word mean? What does it mean she would desire her husband? One side of the argument says this means she would desire this rule, this authority rule to be fulfilled in the man and she would be fulfilled in the supportive role. That is one side of the argument, the prescriptive side of the argument. Yes, God has made the man in authority over the woman, and she is going to come to acceptance of this, submission to it, and she will desire this very authority rule over her life and will find fulfillment in this support role.

The other side of the argument says the descriptive side of what would happen because of the fall says this: She would be longing for the intimacy that she had had before the fall in paradise and find instead no mutual support and a husband that ruled over her without the loving, tender care that was there before the fall. Those that would say I think this passage is descriptive would take that point of view and the others would take the other point of view. Whichever point of view you end up taking, let me say this: That there is one thing we are all agreed upon and that is that God's promised covenant—the word covenant is used, use the word promise—God's promise was that he would create the possibility of having a relationship with him again.

That little Messianic, little obscure perhaps to some of you, that little Messianic promise there: he, the seed, singular, of the woman. God didn't say there will be many seeds or many children of the women. He said there will be one particular descendant of Adam and Eve, and he, singular, speaking of the Messiah, will crush old serpent your head. He will finish you off. He will do death in. He will have victory over you and hell and death and the grave. But in the process, you will bruise his heel. You will not bruise his head; you will bruise his heel. We believe that happened on the cross. Not without cost was this covenanted relationship to happen.

God had this plan. Knowing that man would fall, he had a plan in redemption, and he intended in redemption to roll back the results of the fall, to roll back the results of the bad things that happened between men and women because of the fall, not just between husband and wife. Because there are inequalities, there are things happening between men and women that should not be. In the new covenant as Christians, children of the promise right back there in Genesis, we can look forward to a new community which is called the church, where we can work out hopefully and model new covenant relationships. What are they? They are supposed to model Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, how it was before the fall, what God intended it to be. In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile; in Christ, there is neither man nor woman; in Christ, there is neither black nor white. All the barriers are to be taken away again.

What is that speaking of? It's speaking of the sort of thing that God had in mind before man, Adam and Eve particularly, God's first man and woman, messed the whole thing up. God was giving them a promise, and one of their descendants was called Abraham. He was a man who was not a Jew. He was the father of the Jews, but he was not a Jew. He was a heathen man in the sense that he lived in Ur of the Chaldees among people that were not God's people because God's people didn't exist at that point. But God looked down into Abraham's heart, and I believe he looked down into Sarah's heart, and he said, "Here is a man that I can offer that promise to, that would understand that promise, that knows that man fell."

We don't know what else God revealed to Abraham, but we do know that he appeared to him when he lived in this very sophisticated city. They've dug up half that city, the archaeologists. They have found that there are heating pipes under that city. It was an extremely advanced civilization, thousands and thousands and thousands of years B.C. And Abraham and Sarah were wealthy, well-known people in that city with an incredibly well-known family, possibly the leader or the leadership family of that ancient city. Abraham said, "I believe your covenant. I will look forward to the time that the man you will send, the Messiah you send, will crush the serpent's head and will roll back forever the consequences of the fall."

He became the friend of God, and he had this relationship with this redemptive God. He and his wife Sarah tried to work this whole thing out, tried I believe to model the relationships that had been spoiled by sin. But now of course they had a problem as you and I have a problem because we're born with a sinful nature. We are not Adam and Eve pristine Genesis 1 and 2 creations straight from the hand of God. We are born with a sinful nature and even though we can accept the nature of Christ and even though he lends us his power, we still struggle with this sinful nature. Abraham and Sarah looked forward to redemption; we look back. The cross stands at the crossroads of history, and all the people that lived before the cross look forward to the promise.

God looked down into Abraham and he said, "I see that he believes what's going to happen and he's going to try and work this out, and I count that to him for righteousness. I declare him righteous because he's looking forward to the cross." And when he sees us looking back to the cross, he counts that to us as righteousness. Here we have a family who we're going to look at for a few minutes today, Abraham and Sarah. It's in the New Testament in 1 Peter 3 that we read a little bit about their relationship. I'd like you to turn to 1 Peter chapter 3, and you can keep your finger in Genesis because we'll be back there before long.

He talks about wives being submissive to their husbands so that if any of them don't believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives when they see their purity, their reverence of their lives. They'll see that their beauty doesn't come from outward adornment, such as braided hair, wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it is that of an inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands.

Then he uses Sarah as an example. Like Sarah who obeyed Abraham and called him her master—you might have Lord, the word is Adonai—you are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear. Husbands, in the same way, be considerate as you live with your wives. Treat them with respect as the weaker partner. Incidentally, that doesn't mean weaker intellectually, weaker spiritually, or weaker any other way than sexually. That's what we believe that means because there's only one other place in the Bible that word weaker vessel is used, and Paul uses it when he talks about keeping your vessel in purity; he's talking about sexuality.

In the sense that we are weaker simply because of that part of us that is our sexuality, our femininity, that monthly thing that happens to us—and tell me if that doesn't make you weaker than the guy that never has those ups and downs. That's one thing. The man who is physically stronger because of that is to give honor unto the weaker vessel in that sense. Live with your wives, be considerate to them, it means figure them out, really know them thoroughly. Treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs together with you of the gracious gift of life. Here again we see the balance. Here again we see Peter saying, "Husbands and wives, you can be once again Adam and Eve in paradise because God is trying to roll back the effects of the fall and the damaging thing that happens between men and women's relationships because of sin."

He begins in 1 Peter 4 to tell us what we can do, and he talks about a woman living with an unbelieving husband, submitting where she can. Where she can, not where she cannot. Sometimes we have to obey God rather than man, and if the unbelieving man is asking the believing wife to do something she shouldn't be doing, then she should say no. I think that's pretty obvious. But he's really talking about a woman allowing the spirit of God to give her a composed peacefulness about her life, a serenity instead of this uncomposed turbulent spirit that is in the heart and life of somebody that has not received the peace of God and the Christ of God.

To be a woman who is controlled. He talks about submitting where you can. He talks about being the Bible that the man reads. Without the word, he might be won. I heard a young person once say, "I am the Bible on two legs." He was German; he was trying to describe what had happened since he became a Christian. It was rather funny because he was about 6 foot 2 and he wore those little German lederhosen and he stood up there in a youth meeting in Europe—in Germany actually—and he says, "I am the Bible on two legs." Everybody was gazing at his long legs. But I like that because we are the Bible on two legs.

We are the only Bible that perhaps our husband reads, or our neighbor reads, or the man in the office reads, or the woman in the office reads, or whoever reads. What have the people that we live with read today? What passage of the scripture? What did they read? Because if they won't read the Bible, they can at least read our actions and our lives. Peter is saying submit where you can, be the Bible that they read, and then he says now be pure. Don't cheat on your husband. Be chaste. Be holy. Be clean. Put on the right jewelry. Now be careful here; Peter is not condemning gold jewelry, braided hair, and new clothes.

What he is saying is they shouldn't be the chief aim in our life. What he is saying—and he uses a wonderful verse—he talks about Sarah and he said there's no question about it; she probably had braided hair, lots of gold jewelry—no question about that—and finest clothes that there were. But it was the inner dress that God saw, and he said she is dressed better inwardly than even outwardly. So God looked on Sarah's heart. He looked on the inside and the outside, and he said, "Well, she's pretty well put together on the outside, but I want to tell you something: she's better on the inside than she is on the outside."

If you think of this beautiful woman dressed and jeweled and God said, "Ah yes, but you can't see her heart. In my estimation, her heart is even more beautiful than she is on the outside." You get a picture of what God thought of Sarah. But that little word is really interesting: ornaments. The ornament of a meek and quiet spirit is to God of great price. The word ornament is jewelry. I was thinking about this and I thought, yeah, Jesus jewelry. Jesus jewelry, that's what God wants us to wear. Jesus jewelry, shimmering in the sunlight, alerting people to his presence in our life. The ornaments of a meek and a quiet spirit.

I don't know about you, but this is one of the passages I don't like in the Bible. Whenever I start and look at meek and quiet spirit, I think, oh no, this is one of the pieces that I'd rather not read until I think of somebody like Sarah. Because when I think of Sarah and I think of her well-dressed soul and I hear the Bible describe her as a woman with a meek and a quiet spirit, I say, "Now wait a minute, is this the same Sarah that I read about in my Bible?" Meek means not weak, but controlled strength. Jesus was meek. Was he weak? No. He had a control on that incredible power in his life.

Meek means not provoked by others, without a short fuse. The quiet spirit means you don't provoke others. So there's two sides to a meek and a quiet spirit. A meek spirit is not provoked easily by other people; a quiet spirit doesn't go around provoking others. Now we are meant to be daughters of Sarah, committed, chaste, and controlled. But I have to say as I begin to read my Bible, I find in Sarah, as I look at her just like that off the pages of scripture as she gets to know me and I get to know her, I find her a rebel. I find that she does have a short fuse. I find that she does constantly provoke people around her.

I find that other people are constantly provoked by her. In fact, her story is one of the most turbulent stories in the whole of Genesis. So then how can Peter say, "This is the woman I want you women to emulate. Be daughters of Sarah, walk in her footsteps"? I want to know why. Always read your Bible honestly, openly, ask these questions. Don't say, "Oh well Peter must say it and so all this stuff in here that she's doing has no sense." Try and struggle with this and say, "Well then, how does this fit? How does it fit? How did God take a rebel and turn her into royalty?" Because her name means rebel: Sarai, A-I. And God changed her name to Sarah, which means princess.

How did God take a rebel and make her a royal princess? That's what we're going to find out. Sarah's name, as I just mentioned, comes from the common root of Israel and it means she that strives or is contentious, is a strife-ridden person, full of dispute, controversy, wrangling, irritation. Right! That's what the Bible reveals to us of this woman when we meet her and actually all along the way until she's very, very old. Contention is actually the meaning of the name. You know when you get these little plaques and you say, "Oh, is that what my name means?" If we had had those plaques today, somebody would have bought one and given it to Sarah and said, "This is what your name means: Contention. You say something, she'll say 'but'... oh but." There's always arguing, always wrangling, always strife.

Contention by name and contention by nature. How do we know this? Because in Genesis 18 and Genesis 16, there are stories of her arguing with everybody, being contentious, provoking and being provoked. We do not have time to read all these passages. Let me just fill you in on some of them. In Genesis 16:1-6, we have her arguing with Abraham over God's revealed plan. Remember, he was going to send a seed of the woman to bruise the serpent's head. He had promised Abraham it would be one of his sons, his descendants. Sarah, wanting to help God out of a mess that he'd got himself into, decided to take matters into her own hands.

In the manner of the times according to the culture of their times of where they lived, she took her handmaid, an Egyptian young girl, Hagar, and gave her handmaid to Abraham and said, "Maybe we can have children by Hagar." Well, as soon as Hagar got pregnant for the very first time in her life, she had something that her mistress didn't have, and in typical womanly fashion after the fall fashion, she despised her mistress. When you've got two women living together in close quarters in a tent, it's not very easy to hide, and maybe Hagar didn't even try. I'm sure she didn't say anything; she didn't need to. It was that look that she managed to let Sarah know she was pregnant and Sarah hadn't been able to do that.

Here was something this little slave girl had that she'd never had before, and she had it over her mistress. As soon as Sarah saw Hagar with that look on her face, she began to provoke a controversy in accordance with her name: a strife, a dispute. She went to Abraham and said, "It's all your fault. It's all your fault!" Now I can never figure out why it should be Abraham's fault. He just seemed a bit weak to me in the story, but at least I don't think it was his fault; this was Sarah's idea. "It's all your fault and now my maid despises me." Abraham, almost seemingly from the scriptures with a shrug of his shoulders, said, "Your maid is your maid. She's in your hands, do whatever you want to."

You know what it says in the Bible? It says that Sarah dealt hardly with her. That's another interesting word because it's used in the previous chapter to describe 400 years of agony in the hands of the Egyptians. It says that Israel would be treated hardly by this nation that would take them hostage. So what Sarah did to Hagar was what the Egyptians did to the entire Hebrew nation. That's how hardly she dealt. We don't know whether she beat her, we don't know whether she verbally abused her, but she dealt cruelly, hostilely with her servant maid. Why? Because she dared to look a certain way, because she was pregnant.

Whose fault was it that she was pregnant? Sarah's fault. Here you have a woman and you say, "You mean I'm supposed to follow in her footsteps and she's supposed to be my example?" Sarah was lively all right; no question about it. But you see her arguing with Hagar, arguing with Abraham, and in Genesis 18, arguing with God. Let's just look at that for a minute because I think this is very typical of Sarah as we get to know her. God has come to visit Abraham in human form, in angelic form.

"Where is your wife Sarah?" the angel asked. "There in the tent," this is verse 9 of 18, he said. The Lord said—and notice it's capital letters, the angel of the Lord, a pre-incarnate theophany, self-revelation of God in human form—then the Lord said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah your wife will have a son." Now look at this: Now Sarah was listening at the tent flap. Wouldn't you have been? "What is God saying to my husband? And did I hear my name? Yes, I heard my name." Wouldn't you have listened at the tent flap? I think I would have been tempted to do that.

Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I'm worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?" Then the Lord said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say 'Will I really have a child now that I'm old?' Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the point of time next year and Sarah will have a son." Sarah was afraid, and she lied and said, "I didn't laugh!" God said, "Yes you did, you laughed." No I didn't. Yes you did. No. Here she is. First she argues with Hagar, then she argues with Abraham, now she's arguing with the Almighty.

This was Sarah. A rebel. Lively. Contentious. Provoking. Provocative. But lovely. Lively but lovely. Genesis 12 tells us that Abraham said, "I know thou art fair to look upon." How did he know that? Because the entire world knew she was fair to look upon. They were among hostile people; there was a famine. They went down to Egypt. The princes saw this incredibly wealthy man coming to get grain and all the people that were with him and their herds. Of course, he was invited to the princes' socials and who went with him? Sarah. The princes looked upon her and said, "She's fair to look upon."

By now she was over 80, folks. They recommended her to the Pharaoh that she might become his wife. That's how beautiful she was at the age of 80. You say, "Now there's something wrong here. I mean, the Bible can't..." I was with a woman, and I won't tell you her name—I hope to bring her here one day—but she's nearly 60. I was with this woman in a meeting not too long ago, and she was one of the beauties of her age. She is still so breathtakingly beautiful that when we went a little walk each night around the camp where we were speaking, even the people in the village would literally, as they would see her go past, come out and look.

She still turns heads and will for another 10 years if God spares her. No question about that. She is incredibly beautiful. Incredibly beautiful. Somehow her age has added a beauty. With Sarah, if what we read about her in the Bible is true, that there was not only this outward beauty but this inner beauty as well, then we know why the princes and why the Pharaoh and later King Abimelech—another king—wanted her to be his wife. So she was lively and she was lovely, except her beauty was always getting her into trouble. Never envy somebody that's very beautiful, folks; it brings along with it its own peculiar and particular problems.

She was lively, she was lovely, and she was a liar. Right! She was a liar. She was still lying at the age of 80. She was loyal to a fault. Why was she lying? Because Abraham told her to lie. Why did he tell her to lie? Well, here we do have Abraham in a bad light because he was scared of his skin. He said, "If they see you and you're gorgeous and they want you and they know you're married to me, they'll kill me. So say you're my sister." Now this was not actually a full-blown lie. This was half a lie. But half a lie is a whole lie. Any sort of lie. She was his half-sister. He had married his half-sister. So really, it wasn't a full-blown lie, but it got them into a whole lot of trouble.

So here Peter encourages us to be like her, and you say, "You mean I've got to lie for my husband? If he is in authority over me and he's ruling over me and he tells me to lie for him, did she do the right thing?" I have heard people say from pulpits she did the right thing and God kept her safe. I've also talked to a girl who took that point of view and went to a wife-swapping party because her unbelieving husband told her that she had to go with him and ended up in bed with somebody else. God does not always keep us safe when we submit to any old thing, and the Bible doesn't say submit to any old thing.

If the law of man contravenes the law of God, then Sarah must say no. Sarah didn't say no. At that point, if only she had been able to live like a Genesis 1 or 2 woman, she would have said, "Abraham, where's your faith? Come on! They're not going to kill you. God has promised you that you are going to be the father of so many children that it's like the stars of the sky. So why is he going to kill you? Let's trust God for this. I'm beautiful because God made me beautiful. He can look after that like he's looked after us in this godforsaken wilderness all these years." But she didn't; she went along with her husband.

She was lively, she was lovely, but she was a liar. So what made her into a princess? I think the opportunities to let God control her and her situation. The lifestyle that they'd lived in Haran and Ur had to be left. When I was thinking of this in my book, *Prime of an Apple*, which is now out of print but you can find in garage sales, I was thinking of this and trying to think creatively about it. I was thinking of the tremendous change it must have been for Sarah to go from that style of living to living in a tent in the wilderness, even though they took a whole lot of stuff with them and people with them.

I thought of Abraham going and buying the tent from Jacob the tent-maker. "Excuse my asking, sir, but I trust you're not moving back to Ur of the Chaldees. We wouldn't want you to leave Haran just now." Abraham sighed, then smiling wryly, he sought to give an answer he didn't have. "Jacob, we will be leaving Haran in a little while," he began. "I can tell you we won't be going back to Ur, but I can't tell you just where we will be heading, towards the Negev probably. Desert." Jacob's mind searched frantically for some solid ground of reasonableness. The Negev was an arid desert wilderness, and incredible mental picture of Sarah casually hanging her chandelier from the tent-pole, sunning herself by a muddy desert pool, and swatting flies with her palm frond flitted across his mind.

When they moved out, they moved out of a lifestyle, and Sarah had an opportunity to discover what really is important in life. It isn't things; it's people. It's our relationship with God and with others. Part of making Sarah from the rebel into the princess that she became was an opportunity to do without the things she was used to doing with in lifestyle. Then also what God allowed to happen where the children were concerned or where the children were not concerned—the fact that she went all the way through her life past the years of childbearing without the promised child, and the testing of unanswered prayer.

That's a way that God makes us into a princess. The nos, the waits, the clinging on to what you really know of God when nothing seems to be working out. God tempers our spirit, that contentious, feisty, fighting spirit into a meek and quiet, controlled, peaceful, serene spirit. That way, as we learn patience to wait for the things that God has promised. And also in the lessons that she learned. The lies that she told that did not do anything but bring dishonor on God's name. They were sent away in disgrace publicly. They were rebuked as Pharaoh and then later King Abimelech, when he did the whole same thing again later on in their life, publicly rebuked Abraham and Sarah for the lie that had been told and sent them away with their tail between their legs. God's name wasn't on it through that.

Sarah had to learn it was not the wisest thing I ever did to try and take matters into my own hands and try and find a baby through Hagar. It was not the wisest thing I ever did to tell those lies even though my husband told me to tell them. I believe it's in our mistakes, I believe it's in the things that we do not do right, I believe it's in the decisions that we make that are just pure bad choices and bad decisions that often God uses those very things as tools in his hands to craft a princess out of a block of granite, out of a rebel, and changes.

So what does this word submission mean? Now we know it doesn't mean submission to any old thing, to any old sin. But what does it mean? Maybe we'll talk a little bit about this in the series as we go along. Many women rise up in horror against that word. So let me take it away from you and give you another one that might be more helpful: responsive. What does being a responder mean? Or a servant. What does a servant spirit mean? That's really what the word submission means: to serve. The Bible teaches it. But what does it mean?

The Bible says we're to be submissive to the state, Romans 13:1; to be submissive wives to husbands, Ephesians 5:22; to be submissive children to parents, Luke 2:51, Ephesians 6; to be submissive as a slave to the master, Ephesians 6:5. Now then think, does this word mean the same thing in all of those examples? Obviously not. Obviously not. For example, does it mean the same thing for a slave to be submissive to a master as it does for a wife to be submissive to her husband? Does it mean the same for a child to be submissive to a parent as it does for an adult to be submissive to the state? No.

In fact, there are biblical limits on every one of these things if you get into what submission means in all those different categories. So even this isn't very easy, is it? What does it mean that Sarah should be an example to us in a submissive servant attitude in her relationship to Abraham? To be a princess and he her prince? What does this mean? Well, I believe it means knowing when to disobey your husband. In fact, that was the name of the chapter that I read, *When to Disobey Your Husband*.

I talked to a young woman who believed she had to obey her husband in all things and she said, "You know, I got into an awful mess because he was cheating on his exams down at UWM and he asked me to get the papers. I worked in the office. And he said, 'You get them for me. You're a Christian wife; you do what your husband tells you.'" And she did. They were both dismissed from the university because they were found out. There is a time when to disobey your husband, and you obey your heavenly husband. You don't check your mind at the cloakroom when you marry a Christian man.

You don't check your soul in there either. The secret is an open, willing-to-be-changed attitude. Sarah was a willing-to-be-changed woman. Submission is a general Christian grace. It gives our fallen nature a chance to learn to be like Christ, for Christ submitted himself to a womb, to a single-parent family, to a poor lifestyle, to a cross, to a tomb. And so he gives us a chance and he says, "Be submissive here, be submissive there, because in telling you to do it and in practicing it, you'll become like me." I'm so glad he said wives to husbands; he could have said wives to policemen.

He chose the neatest way to give us practice, and he also told husbands to be submissive to wives. There is plenty of people for all of us to be submissive to, to learn to be a servant. So how do I develop this Sarah spirit? I dress my soul daily in prayer. I start naked before God and I choose a garment for the occasion: a petticoat of patience, a sweater of silence, a hat of helpfulness. I decide what I'm going to dress my soul in today, and I'm going to take as much care over that as I do to dress my body.

If I have ultrasuede on the outside, I'm going to make sure I have ultrasuede on the inside and not ultra-rags. I'm going to learn to listen to God and decide to be teachable. I believe Sarah, who laughed when God told her something, learned to listen and believe. Instead of a cynical, "Go on, show me God" attitude, she came to listen to God and decide to be teachable. I believe that's why God loved her and wanted us to use her as an example. When you've got a rebel nature, you can decide to be made into a royal princess. It's a matter of choice. Will I be a handful or will I be a handmaid?

I can choose to be compliant. I can welcome situations that cause me to depend on God, and I believe that Sarah was able to do that. I think she was terrific. She took off into that desert with her man, committed to God and his cause and to her husband, and she said, "Okay, I don't know what this means, but I'm going to do my best. I will hang my chandelier from the tent pole and that'll do, that's fine. Let's do it." She welcomed situations that caused her to depend on God and that'll change you.

She quit fighting, she quit arguing with God and with his spokesman. She didn't laugh at God anymore; she didn't lie to God. I believe she gave him control of the wild donkey inside her, for that word meek means control like a wild horse by bit and bridle. What you've got to do is give God the control of the wild donkey inside you. Let him ride you. That picture of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the little donkey—I use that as a story, a children's story, *Caleb's Colt*. Jesus sat on him and you know we need Jesus to sit on us and get hold of the wild donkey so that in triumph he can be seen as we ride along in life.

Have you given him control of the wild donkey? Are you a Sarah by nature? How many of us are? I know I am. I'm contentious. I'm feisty. I argue. I want to be my own person in the wrong sense, instead of submitting to a God who submitted himself to the cross for me. Then strangely, in the losing of myself in him, I find myself and my true identity. As I serve him and listen to him, he tells me how to serve other people and helps me discern when I should do what other people tell me to do. He gives me people in my life that I can submit to, as he submitted to people in his life, so that I can learn to be a princess, so I can be a royal lady instead of a royal rebel. That way, I will be following in the footsteps of Sarah whose daughters Peter says we are. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for so much in it. Thank you for the reality of the people that we meet there. Thank you that Sarah was a lively, lovely liar, and yet you took this rebel and you turned her into your princess and you gave her a new name and you gave her a new nature. Through the hard times in life, even though it took 127 years until she died to do it, you did it. Then you put her in the New Testament for us and you said, "Now look at Sarah, be encouraged. She was a rebel, but I turned her into my royal princess and that's what I want to do with you." So submit to me, and I will help you submit to other people for my sake, for the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom. Lord, help us to submit to you and to other people, not because we're women but because we're your disciples disguised as women, seeking to be like Jesus. Lord, may we put on Jesus jewelry, the ornament of a meek and a controlled spirit. Make us like Sarah for Christ's sake. Amen.