LEARNING FROM THEIR LAUGHTER Genesis 17:1-18:15; 21:1-7 INTRODUCTION A. A laugh can convey many things. It can show hilarity. It can hide insecurity. It can indicate joviality. It can be sinister. It can express great joy. It can be someone else s attempt to belittle us as they "laugh at us." It can lift our spirits as friends share our joy and "laugh with us." Some comedians get paid millions of dollars for their ability to make us laugh, yet even a pauper can throw his head back and laugh with abandon. We speak of having a "funny bone" and a "sense of humor." We have all kinds of expressions for laughter. There are "belly laughs." There are also "belittling laughs." We have words like, "giggle," "chuckle," "snicker," "titter," and "cackle." We say "ha-ha," "ho ho ho," and "tee-hee." We speak of being bent double with laughter, and laughing until we cry. We speak of those who can "keep us in stitches." We know the sinister laugh of the tyrant, the uneasy laugh of the terrified, and the weak laugh of the tired. Every preacher knows that a good laugh in the middle of a sermon can break tension and perk up nodding listeners, yet too much laughter in that setting is irreverent and inappropriate. B. Solomon said that "A joyful heart is good medicine. PR 17:22. Even the Reader s Digest calls laughter, "The Best Medicine." Some of us wonder whether God has a sense of humor. Someone said He does because He made men and women so different, then told them to live together! C. Perhaps there is proof in the Bible passage we are going to read tonight that God does have a sense of humor in that He told Abraham to name his boy, soon to be born according to the Promise, Isaac, which, in Hebrew, means "laughter." D. Genesis 17 and 18 will be our focus tonight as we continue our study in the life of Abraham. These chapters contain several serious things to consider more than we have time for in a single sermon. There is another appearance of God to Abram in which he gives him the covenant of circumcision. God changes his name from Abram to Abraham. Then there is the announcement of the birth of Isaac and the prediction of the future of Ishmael. While I do not want to ignore these serious things, I want to ask you to focus your attention primarily on this issue of laughter as we go through our text tonight. You will see it come up five times. E. Verse 1 of Genesis 17 breaks an apparent silence that had gone on between God and Abram for some 13 years. Read 16:16. That is a reference to that desperate resort to the flesh we studied last time. They had a child through a surrogate slave woman, as described in the earlier part of chapter 16. Now we enter Abram s life 13 years later. F. 17:1-8. We have seen these same promises earlier in Genesis on several occasions. Their mention here is different only in that they are more specific, that is, this is the first time God tells Abraham that he will be the father of a "multitude of nations." 16:10. It is also the first mention of the name change from Abram, which means "exalted father," to Abraham, which means "father of a multitude." God is revealing more details of His intentions for Abraham. Why? Because He is about to begin the sequence of events that will set their fulfillment in motion at last. Also significant in these verses is the first mention of the Hebrew, El Shaddai, which the NAS translates, "God Almighty" in verse 1. Abraham is about to see just how mighty God is, in the fulfillment of His promise against what were now impossible odds from human perspective. He would bring procreative life from the aged bodies of both Abraham and Sarah in the conception of the child of promise, Isaac. We see here also, in the verses that follow that God would mark the descendants of Abraham with a sign of the unique covenant He was making with them. Every male among them, when he reached eight days old, would be circumcised.
G. 17:9-14. There is much that we could say about circumcision that is relevant to our understanding of the Bible that I will not say here due to the limits of time. Sometimes people not well versed in the Scriptures express the view that circumcision, to them, seems barbaric. They cannot see any reason why God would have commanded it. Let me simply remark as we pass that this cutting of the flesh in that special area of the body involved in reproduction would serve as a visible reminder of their responsibility to keep the covenant God made with them and pass it along through their families throughout their generations. The reminder would serve as well, to tie the generations together. Think about it. It was not intended as a public sign, but rather a private sign, a visible reminder that would be seen only by family members. First by a child's parents, then by a young man's wife when he grew up and married, and then again when they passed it on to their children. Contrary to this uninformed view that it was barbaric, I suggest that it was quite appropriate for the purpose God intended. Circumcision was so important to the physical descendants of Abraham that God ordered anyone who refused it to be banished from among the people. The first mention of laughter appears in the next few verses. The one doing the laughing, perhaps surprisingly, is Abraham. While the verses show the patriarch in a less than flattering light, they do reveal something of a state of mind that we sometimes get into. More about that in a moment. The passage contains a marvelous prophecy that Abraham's aged, barren wife, Sarai, was going to need to start picking out baby clothes not for some recently married niece, or some servant woman in their household, but for herself. After a lifetime of waiting, the barren woman was about to have a child. H. 17:15-16. Before we read of Abraham's laughter, we need to be sure we really understand the situation. Sarai, or "Sarah" as she would be called from this point, was 90 years old. Her biological clock had not only run down, it had disintegrated. She was decades beyond the age of child bearing. On top of that, throughout her entire life with Abraham, she had been unable to conceive. And, lest we think that because of their longer life spans in those days, she might somehow have still been young enough to become a mother, we get further verification of the impossibility from the New Testament. Paul tells us in Romans 4:19 that Abraham And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara s womb. All human hope of conception was long gone, yet in the face of that hopelessness comes God's announcement to start decorating the nursery. Can you imagine what kind of news it would be today if a 90 year-old woman and a 99 year old man conceived a child? It would be in every newspaper and on every television program in the country! There would be appearances on Good Morning America and other programs. The couple would receive free Pampers for life. The washing machine companies and baby food companies and the toy companies would line up at their door and beg them to take their free products. What a remarkable happening it would be. So Abraham laughed. He did not plan to laugh. He did not think it over first. It just popped out of him, right there in front of God. I. ABRAHAM'S LAUGH: THE LAUGH OF FORGOTTEN HOPE. A. 17:17-18. 1. Many commentators fall all over themselves trying to vindicate Abraham here for his laughter, or make it sound less than incriminating. "He was laughing for joy," some of them say. I do not think so. Yet I would not accuse Abraham of raw unbelief here, either. As one writer suggested, "I think we see Abraham's humanity here; not a lack of faith, but a lack of expectancy." Paul made it clear in Romans 4:18-19 that Abraham had faith during this time of his life. It is just
II. III. that it had been so long since God promised the child that he had ceased expecting it to happen. 2. For reasons he could not understand, it seemed to him that God had perhaps decided to do something else - or maybe somehow he had misunderstood God's intent. Also, we need to remember that he and Sarai had already produced a child through Hagar. Now for 13 years Abraham had been considering that the promise of descendants would be fulfilled through Ishmael. Thus he says here, "Oh that Ishmael might live before Thee!" B. Do you and I ever let disappointment with God's timing cause us to give up on the promises of God? I suspect that sometimes we do. Why would I say that? Because we seldom persist in prayer. Oh, we pray for days, maybe even weeks. But after that, we drop off. 1. Jesus taught a parable in Luke 18 about a woman who continually petitioned a reluctant judge to hear her case. At first the judge refused, but then after she had, as Jesus said, "worn him out," with her petitions, he helped her. The lesson was, in Jesus' own words, that we should "pray and not lose heart." 2. Abraham had not left God but he had finally just let the promise recede into the background of his mind. He was not thinking about it anymore. It had become, to him, a non-issue. Thus, this laughter reaction when God told him what was about to happen. 3. Probably all of us pray. Yet when time stretches out, do we persist or do we simply grow accustomed to feeling unanswered and finally give up. No, I am not saying we desert God in unbelief. We just grow cold in our faith in His promises. Perhaps, as we imagine the sound of Abraham's laughter from his spot there on the ground, we would do well to ask ourselves if our response would have been any different after the 24 years Abraham had waited. 47. But there is another kind of laugh in these verses we have covered that should be mentioned. THE NEIGHBORS' LAUGH: THE LAUGH OF SKEPTICISM. A. I am not referring to Abraham's laugh here. I refer, rather, to what Abram must have looked like in the eyes of those around him as he came away from this meeting with God with this new name, Abraham, which meant "Father of a Multitude." Can you imagine it when he said, "Friends, from now on I want you to call me 'Father of a Multitude?'" It had been bad enough with the name Abram, "Exalted Father!" Can you imagine how ridiculous he looked to his neighbors and friends? They all knew by now that Sarai was barren. A 99 year old man with only one child, who was really the offspring of a slave woman, who now has to go out and tell everyone that his God just renamed him, "Father of a Multitude?" I can hear them in my mind. "You may be many things, old man, but one thing you're not is the father of a multitude. What an old fool!" B. No, the text does not say it, but you have to know that old Abe looked pretty laughable to his skeptical friends and neighbors. He probably felt like we do sometimes when we stand up for what is right among our unbelieving friends and relatives and they laugh at is. Yet may I remind you that Abraham was about to get the "last laugh" among his skeptical friends and neighbors? So will we. The day will come when our faith will be vindicated. There is yet another laugh in this passage. It is a little harder to name, but it is laughter just the same GOD'S LAUGH: THE LAUGH OF SOVEREIGNTY.
IV. A. 17:19. "Where is the laughter in this verse?" you may wonder. 1. It is in the name God chose for the child of promise. Isaac means "laughter." Why do you suppose God wanted the boy named Isaac? Some say it was a chastising reminder to Abraham of the fact that he fell on his face and laughed. That could be, but I think there is more. 2. Perhaps the birth of Isaac tells us that God laughs at human impossibility. Abraham had said in his laughter, "Will a child be born to a man one hundred years old? And will Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?" That is probably about the same thing his friends and neighbors would say. The implication is that such a thing is impossible. Yet God laughs at human impossibility. He defies all limits and, if you will allow me to indulge my imagination, He must have chuckled when he sent a baby named "Laughter." 3. Perhaps the birth of Isaac also says that God laughs at human skepticism. You see, for years, God had been setting this whole thing up. What other reason would He have for waiting until Abraham and Sarah were beyond the years of child bearing? It was to show to skeptical humanity that He was El Shaddai, God Almighty - the One who is all powerful. It is no coincidence that this is the first mention of El Shaddai as the name of God. 4. You see, in the birth of Isaac, among the hopeless and the skeptics, God truly had the "last laugh." It is encouraging to me that God did not condemn Abraham for his laughter in this passage. Nor did He rebuke him for his statement about Ishmael. In fact, though He made it clear that the Promise would be fulfilled through Isaac and not Ishmael, he let Abraham know that He would also bless his other son. B. 17:20-21. For all we might think and say about Abraham's reaction of laughter to God's announcement of the coming birth of Isaac, he most certainly vindicated himself in his willingness to obey the circumcision order. So willing was He to obey that he did it that very day. Would that our obedience was always this prompt! C. 17:22-27. We will move quickly through these next verses that described a house call made on Abraham and Sarah by three men one of whom Moses calls "the Lord" in verse 1. D. 18:1-8. I do not know when it was that Abraham finally realized that this was a supernatural appearance and that at least two of these "men" were angels. (GE 19:1) Whether he recognized them as heavenly visitors or we are just seeing the response of a man of great hospitality to strangers, I do not know for sure. E. 18:9-15.Sarah's laugh here seems to me to be no different from that of Abraham earlier. It was a laugh of forgotten hope. She had pretty much stopped thinking about the promise, too. Let us quickly move on. The lens of Scripture now cuts away from the tents of Abraham and Sarah and moves to the fate of the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. We will cover these accounts later in the series, Lord willing. For now I want us to skip over to chapter 21 and read of the fulfillment of all this. SARAH'S LAUGH: HOPELESSNESS TURNED TO PURE JOY. A. We have already heard Sarah laugh once. Though she "laughed to herself," as we read back in Genesis 18:12, it had been that same hopeless laugh that we heard from Abraham in the early verses of chapter 17. Now we will "fast forward" to chapter 21, where her laugh takes on an entirely different meaning. B. 21:1-7. Can words describe Sarah's joy here? Any verbiage I come up with seems inadequate. Joy. Hope fulfilled. Elation. Mountaintop. Height of ecstasy. Satisfaction.
Amazement. I think we could wear out a good thesaurus and not touch it fully. As Sarah puts it in verse 7. C. Here are three lessons in retrospect that we can take home with us from all this laughing: 1. Real faith does not exist apart from struggle. It is a struggle to believe that God is going to intervene in our lives and deliver on a promise when the possibility of such a fulfillment goes against all that we have observed. This is even more of a struggle when it has been a long time and we still have not seen a result. To believe that God would deliver a pregnancy to a couple the age of Abraham and Sarah would seem ridiculous in any other setting. Similarly, for a called out believer seeking to live according to God's purpose to stubbornly hold to the truth that "All things work together for good" (RO 8:28) when, at the moment, or perhaps for a long time now, things have seemed to go in exactly the opposite direction, is a very real struggle! 2. God does not cut us out of his plans because of this struggle. Understanding this is critical! If we do not understand it, we will simply lose heart and walk away from Him. I hope you are listening. God did not cut Abraham and Sarah out of His plans because their initial response was laughter. No, I am not trying to encourage such a response and I suspect that neither is He. But, let us face it - real faith is a struggle which must ultimately triumph over the obstacles of unbelief. Paul put it this way as he described Abraham's struggle to believe God in RO 4:18: "Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. 3. Our faith in God's promises will be vindicated. God stakes the reputation of His Name on it. Each time God appeared to Abraham, He emphasized His Name. Genesis 17:1, the first verse of our text, He said, "I am God Almighty [El Shaddai]." If you will check, you will find a similar staking of His Name on the other occasions of promise to Abraham. CONCLUSION A. The fulfillment of God's promises is not merely dependent upon His desire to do something for us. It is also dependent upon His desire to preserve the integrity of His Holy Name. God will keep His promises to us! B. All of us would love to give birth to an Isaac in our lives. No, I am not speaking of adding to our families here. I am simply saying that all of us would love to see God answer our prayers and fulfill His promises. C. May I simply say that God will deliver on His promises all of them and we will one day laugh the laugh of joy in His presence.