Born in Ararat, Victoria, Sarfati moved with his family to New Zealand as a child, where he became a dual Australian and New Zealand citizen. He attended Wellington College in New Zealand, later graduating from Victoria University of Wellington with a BSc (Hons.) in chemistry, and a PhD in the same subject for a thesis entitled "A Spectroscopic Study of some Chalcogenide Ring and Cage Molecules". He co-authored a paper on high-temperature superconductors that was published in Nature in 1987 ("Letters to Nature"), and from 1988 to 1995, had five papers on spectroscopy of condensed matter samples published in other peer-reviewed scientific journals. In 1996, he returned to Brisbane, Australia to work for the Creation Science Foundation, then Answers in Genesis, then its current name Creation Ministries International. In 2010, he moved to the American office of that ministry.