By faith also Sarah herself received strength for [the] conception of seed, and [that] beyond a seasonable age; since she counted him faithful who promised.
Hebrews 11:11 lifts Sarah out of the book of Genesis and places her among the heroes of faith. When God promised her a son, the story says she laughed. It ties three things together: a body past childbearing, strength that comes anyway, and one reason for it all. She counted God faithful.
Read the Old Testament account of Sarah and you find no obvious faith at all. One writer draws attention to how unlikely a candidate she was for this list:
It is only in this chapter that we find any mention of Sarah's faith. You look in vain in the Old Testament story for evidence of faith on her part. How good it is to remember that God's eye can detect what we cannot! ... She laughed; and when the Lord spoke to her, she denied it. So the two things that marked her at that time were unbelief and untruthfulness. This seems the least promising soil for any plant of faith to grow in. Yet God could see there the elements of a faith that in His sight was of great price.
Scripture does not just pass over her failures. It leaves them out, and that omission says something about God:
All this makes the grace of God stand out, and it cheers us. God has forgotten her early failures. He records only the later triumph here. What clearer proof could there be that He loves to speak well of His own!
Something changed between the laugh and the birth. Commentators trace the turn to the moment God exposed her — the rebuke did not crush her faith; it started it.
A rebuke of her unbelief had to awaken her faith (Gen. 18). The Lord reproved her. She was afraid in the presence of the One who searched her thoughts. Out of that fear grew a confidence that trusted God to be true to His name. Faith cannot act until the heart first sets aside its own reasoning. ... Sarah judged Him faithful who had promised, once her heart was emptied of self.
What changed her was not an experience but a word God spoke. Another writer puts it plainly:
The plain word of God given to her changed her unbelief into genuine faith, and that faith bore fruit. To take God's word deeply to heart is the very essence of faith.
Notice what the verse says faith obtained: not insight, not courage, but strength. That matters for anyone who has tried to obey God with no strength left:
Faith here connects with the receiving of strength. A step of obedience to God is admirable. A life of steady continuance is better still. But without the supply of God's power, neither is possible. Faith finds this too. It completes a series of seven beautiful products of faith, basic to all godly character: 1. Wisdom (v. 3); 2. Worship (v. 4); 3. Walk (v. 5); 4. Work (v. 7); 5. Obedience (v. 8); 6. Continuance (v. 9); 7. Strength (v. 11).
Sarah's case goes past hard circumstances into the plainly impossible. That is the point.
In Sarah we learn more. Faith looks to God when difficulties press hard. It also trusts God when nature makes a thing impossible. She did not look at the ordinary way of having a son. She did not ask, "How can this be?" Her confidence was in God. He would keep His own word in His own way. ... He brings strength out of weakness and life out of death.
The verse gives its own explanation. It rests on the character of the One who spoke, not on the odds.
This is a fine reason to exercise faith. With her the question was not, "Can it be?" but, "He has said it, so it shall be." She rested on this alone — the word of her God. For who before her had become a mother at ninety?
One writer measures the outcome against what Sarah herself expected:
Here is fruit beyond counting, far past the limits of Sarah's own hopes. Natural hope was dead, so that long before this she had given up any such expectation. ... The fruit of faith's submission is far greater than it appears at the time, or for years afterward. Only eternity will reveal it.
Ridout turns it on the reader:
If God rewarded Sarah's feeble faith, why not yours?
- Seen — God saw faith in Sarah where the story records only unbelief and a denial. He notices what no reader could.
- Emptied — His rebuke exposed her, and out of that fear grew confidence. Faith acts only after the heart sets its own reasoning aside.
- Strengthened — faith's gift here is power. Obedience and endurance are impossible without God's supply.
- Impossible — she did not ask how God would do it. She trusted Him to keep His word His own way. He brings life out of death.
- Multiplied — the fruit ran far past anything she hoped for, and most of it only eternity will show.
Wherefore also there have been born of one, and that of one become dead, even as the stars of heaven in multitude, and as the countless sand which [is] by the sea shore.
This verse closes Abraham and Sarah's story: one man, past all hope of children, became the head of a family beyond counting. It raises two questions — do God's promises depend on human ability at all, and who are the stars and the sand?
The verse describes the father in a way that makes a family seem impossible. One writer sees in this God's usual way of working:
God secures a great company of people according to His purpose, but does so in His own way, from one "as good as dead". As so often in the ways of God, He carries out His plans by vessels of weakness in circumstances that seem hopeless. He brings strength out of weakness, food out of the eater, and life out of death. And from one as good as dead He brings a people "as many as the stars of heaven." "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."
The wording piles the difficulty on both sides, and age makes it worse:
Here faith wins a fresh victory. It overcame utter weakness, made worse by the passing of years far beyond the natural age. The weakness lay on both sides. Scripture names the mother first, and then describes the father in a way that heightens the wonder of such an overflowing family from one as good as dead.
If the man was as good as dead, the numbers had to come from somewhere else. One writer sets what Abraham could have looked at beside what he did look at:
Suppose Abraham had looked up into the sky, sprinkled with countless stars. Then suppose he looked at "his own body, which was as good as dead." How could he ever grasp the idea of a family as many as those stars? Impossible. But he did not look at his own body; he looked at the resurrection power of God. That was the power which would produce the family. So we can see that the stars of heaven and the sand on the seashore are only feeble pictures. What natural object could show the effect of a power that raises the dead?
The verse gives two comparisons, not one. Writers read them as two lines of blessing:
His children were to be as the stars — that is, the heavenly family, those who inherit his faith, as shown in Romans 4:16, which includes every believer. They were also to be as the sand on the seashore — that is, the earthly family. The sea (the Gentile world) may beat upon them, throw up mire and dirt on them, and cover them for a time. But it can never dissolve them or absorb them.
Commentators differ over the sand. Some read it of Israel, others of Israel together with the nations. On the stars they agree, and one writer applies that side to Christians:
Believers in Christ, as children of Abraham, get the heavenly side of the promise — "stars of the heavens"; Israel (and with them the nations) get the earthly side — "sand of the seashore" (Heb. 11:12).
The family began by promise, not by natural strength. Its survival has run the same way:
If ever a people passed through difficulties and dangers, distresses and destructions planned to defeat the promise of God, it was the Jews. That holds even on the smaller question of their numbers. Everyone knows how nations great and small, near and far, have set their policy against them. Again and again through the ages they have tried to cut them off from being a people. Rome took away their place and scattered them as captives over the earth. Even so, it could not put an end to their nation... Yet scattered in this strange way, they are perhaps as numerous as ever.
The words "as good as dead" are not left in the past. One writer turns them on the reader:
Long ago, Abraham received the promised son by God's intervention alone. In himself, Abraham was "as good as dead". In the same way, a sinner can no more justify himself from guilt before God by his own efforts than a dead man could. As far as doing anything to justify ourselves, we are "as good as dead." We are left with nothing but the work of Another — the work of Christ.
- From one. The whole countless family traces back to one man, as good as dead. The numbers prove the source was not in him.
- From death. Abraham measured the promise by God's power to raise the dead, not by his own body. Next to that power, stars and sand are weak pictures.
- From weakness. God works this way again and again: strength out of weakness, life out of death, a great company out of a hopeless case.
- Into two families. The stars picture the heavenly side of the promise, the sand the earthly. Commentators differ on whether the sand means Israel alone, or Israel with the nations.
- Onto you. When it comes to justifying yourself, you are as good as dead too. So the blessing must come from Another, just as it did for Abraham.