“1 Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what He had promised. 2 Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.
3 Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. 4 When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God commanded him. 5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
6 Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” 7 And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.””
For years now I’ve been putting the manuscripts from these sermons online. They are mostly read by people within the United States, but in the past month we’ve also had people reading in Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Hungary, Nigeria, South Africa, India, and Indonesia. I can see which sermons people read and how they stumble across each sermon. One of the more frequent searches that takes people to the site is the search, “does God laugh?”
We studied God laughing at his enemies in Psalm 2; ‘“the kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers conspire together against the Lord and His Anointed One: “let’s tear off their chains and throw their ropes off of us.” The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord ridicules them.’ That isn’t the sort of laughter that people want to know about.
People want to know if God laughs in a happy way. We humans are attracted to mirth, which is overflowing gladness expressed in laughter. We like that when we see it. We know that we don’t want to be the sort of people who never laugh, and we aren’t sure we want to be like God if God never laughs. However, as Bible people, we know that we can’t simply imagine God to be whatever we want Him to be. He is who He is and He reveals what He is like in His Son and in His word and so people are curious whether or not the Bible ever talks about God laughing because they really hope that He does.
This morning we see that God loves to make people laugh out of overflowing gladness. Laughter is one of the happy responses to His promises. God’s promises have a happy laughter to them. That’s good news if you are into mirth. That is good news if you are into gladness. That is good news if you have made it your life’s business to trust God’s promises and that is the claim of this sermon: God’s promises have a happy laughter to them.
We will study this in two points. First: as God promised. Second: great laughter. First, in verses 1-5, we will see that Isaac was born as God promised. Second, in verses 6-7, we see the great laughter of Sarah and, perhaps, of God.
First: as God promised. This is sixteenth sermon on Abraham and the promises of God. Abraham left Ur because God promised to make him into a great nation. It is hard to become numerous if you never make it past the number two. God promised that Abraham’s descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. God promised that Sarah, who couldn’t have children, would have a child. Abraham has been waiting on this promise for twenty-five years by the time we reach chapter 21.
These twenty-five years might be an encouragement to endure for some us. Some of us have been waiting for God’s promise for one year, ten years, or twenty years. These stories of Abraham’s waiting, like all the accounts of the Old Testament, were written so that we might be encouraged and have hope. That’s why the apostle Paul told the Romans that they should read the Old Testament. That might be a good reason for us to read the Old Testament as a church once we’re done reading the New Testament.
This is our sixteenth sermon on Abraham and the promises of God. We now come to the fulfillment of this central promises of a son and it happened exactly as God had promised; verse 1, “Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what He had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.”
This baby was born because and only because the Lord had promised. The first half of verse 1 tells us that the Lord opened Sarah’s womb as He had said. The second half of verse 1 tells us that the Lord did for Sarah as He promised. The end of verse 2 tells us that the baby was born at the very time that God had promised. What happened, happened because God promised and exactly as God had promised.
Now that seems obvious when we are studying Genesis, but it isn’t near as obvious when we are living life. When Monday hits we regularly forget that the God who was at work in the life of Abraham is at work in the lives of us who have faith like Abraham, and so we miss the lesson of this text. Understanding the Bible is much more about trust and obedience throughout the week than it is about being able to read the words on the page on Sunday. God gives you biography after biography in Scripture dealing with His promises so that you come to trust His promises in your autobiography.
That’s how Jesus saw his life. He thought that his Father was actively working out His promises in his life. That’s what gave him the confidence to tell Pilate that the only power Pilate had over him was given him from above. That’s why he could respond to the devil with complete confidence that his Father would care for him. That’s why he could endure the cross. He had complete confidence that his life was like a place in which God would keep His promises. You and I would do well to share that outlook.
In the birth of Isaac Abraham and Sarah saw that God was keeping His promises. What’s interesting is that this birth is recorded with very little fanfare. Considering how much time we’ve spent in Genesis looking forward to the birth of Isaac, the record of his birth is pretty bare bones. There is no pomp to it. John Walton explains that this way, “WhatGod does should never cease to amaze us, but that He consistently shows Himself capable of doing what He does, without apparent effort, is strikingly commonplace and entirely unremarkable.” The account is unremarkable because this birth is exactly the sort of thing that God does. It is par for the course for God.
When you deal with God, you learn that when it comes to Him the remarkable is actually quite common. As one song puts it, “It’s just like You to bring light into darkness. It’s just like You. Lord, it’s just like You… It’s just like You to bring beauty to ashes. It’s just like You. Lord, it’s just like You… it’s just like You to bring life to these dry bones. It’s just like You. Lord, it’s just like You.” If you know God, you know that what we see in the birth of Isaac here is just like Him. That’s part of the reason why it’s told with so little fanfare.
That is also what makes Jesus seem so strangely unremarkable. When you are reading the gospels, you expect him to heal the leper, to forgive sins, and to do what’s right in every situation. It is only when you think of him as being as human as you that you are taken aback.
Abraham recognized that God was at work in the birth of this son. He recognized that this birth was a promise kept. He recognized that this birth happened exactly as God had promised, and so he responded exactly as God had commanded. God had told him to name the boy Isaac. He named the boy Isaac. God had told him to circumcise Isaac on the eighth day. He circumcised Isaac on the eight day. Commenting on this Victor Hamilton wrote, “Abraham is not so much excited as obedient.” I think Hamilton might be wrong on that. It seems to me that obedience was the form that Abraham’s excitement took. Excitement can look like obedience. You see that in David dancing before the Lord. You see that in Peter preaching at Pentecost.
You see that Abraham circumcising his son. He saw that this child was born exactly as God had promised and so he did exactly what he was commanded. His wife, for her part, laughed, and this is a very happy point. It’s our second point: great laughter. Isaac’s name means laughter, which is part of what is going on in Sarah’s words in verse 6, ‘Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” Isaac brought Sarah overflowing gladness in the form of laughter because what seemed impossible to her and her husband had actually happened. You see a similar sort of laughter at the end of the Lord of The Rings. If you’ve never watched these three films, they require a commitment. Altogether they span about 11 hours. Bethany and I watch them most every fall, so they are on my mind right now. They chronicle a seemingly impossible quest to destroy a magic ring. From the beginning, the quest seems almost hopeless. After the ring is, in fact, destroyed, Frodo, the hero, passes out. He wakes up and sees his friend Gandalf who started the quest. When they see each other, they begin to laugh; then each of their friends enter the room and the laughter spreads. It is a two-minute scene of nothing but laughter. They are laughing because what they have longed for seemed impossible, but yet it actually happened. That’s exactly what is going on with Sarah. That’s laughter that simultaneously says, “I can’t believe it happened!” and, “it finally happened!” That’s a laughter of amazement. That’s a laughter of relief.
Sarah makes clear that God gave her this laughter; verse 6, “God has brought me laughter.” God made Sarah laugh. The God of Abraham is a god of mirth. He gives out of what it is His. He makes His people laugh with His overflowing gladness. That’s one of the reasons He makes and keeps promises.
This overflowing gladness was the experience of the exiles when they returned from Babylon. Psalm 126, ‘“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad.’ The people laughed out of overflowing kindness. Why? Because God had kept His promise to bring His people back to their homes. Given the political realities of the day that seemed just as unlikely as a barren woman giving birth; when it happened, the people laughed with joy.
We need to remember this in our saddest moments. During the committal portion of the funeral, I often read from Isaiah 25 for this very reason. This is a promise of the new creation, “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And He will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, “Look, this is our God; we waited for Him, and He saved us. This is the Lord; we have waited for Him; let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation.”
The people have waited for the promise of everything being made right just like Abraham and Sarah waited for the promise of this baby. It often seemed like it wasn’t going to happen just as it often seemed that way to Abraham and Sarah and often seems that way to us. When the people experienced it, they will—we will—respond with gladness and essentially say, “I can’t believe it happened! It finally happened!”
That is Sarah’s laughter. That laughter in that moment more than made up for the tears of the previous twenty-five years. The laughter of that final banquet Isaiah describes will more than make up for the tears of these years. You see that the laughter makes up for the tears in the way God redeems laughter in this passage. Before this story, laughter has been entirely negative in the Abraham stories. Abraham laughed in unbelief at the promise of this son. Sarah laughed in hopelessness at the promise of this son. Abraham and Sarah easily could have interpreted the name of this son Isaac, which means laughter, as a badge of shame—“I’ll teach you to laugh at me.” Now we see that what seemed to like a badge of shame became a crown of glory. It was happy laughter. That’s good for us to keep in mind because there is still a good deal in each of our lives that hasn’t come into focus yet. There is much that seems shameful today which will one day be a cause for overflowing gladness and laughter.
That’s what’s in store for those who trust the promises. Only those who are emotionally invested in the promises will experience overflowing gladness and laughter when the promises are kept. That’s another way of saying that only those who trust the promises will enjoy their fulfillment. That’s another way of saying only those who have faith will be saved.
You can’t have faith in the promises without being emotionally invested in the promises. Sarah only laughed with gladness because she was emotionally invested in the promise of this boy. That emotional investment, which often looked like fears and sorrows over the years, now looked like laughter. If there are no promises of God that will leave you devastated if unfulfilled, you have to ask yourself why you believe you will laugh with gladness when they are fulfilled. Jesus says that the ones who are mourning will be the ones comforted and the ones who are hungering and thirsting will be the ones who are satisfied. If you aren’t mourning and hungering and thirsting because the promises are still unfulfilled, why do you think you will be comforted and satisfied when they are fulfilled?
Experiencing the sort of laughter we see in Sarah necessitates God keeping His promises. The exiles didn’t laugh with gladness until God kept His promise to return them home. The people around the casket at the committal will not be laughing with entire gladness until God makes all things new. It all hinges on God keeping His promises.
You see that for Abraham and Sarah in the birth of Isaac. You see that for the whole world in the birth of Abraham’s descendant Jesus. The gospels start with a genealogy from Abraham to Jesus to show that the birth of Jesus is a moment of glad laughter for the world just as the birth of Isaac was a moment of glad laughter for Abraham and Sarah. This baby boy is the way in which Abraham blessed the whole world. This is the glad laughter of promises kept. Isn’t that the story of Jesus? You watch him and say, “I can’t believe this is happening,” and in the next breath you say, “it is finally happening.”
God knew it would happen. It was His promise. You see that this is all about God’s promise in Sarah’s question in verse 7, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?” Do you know who would have said that to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Not the neighbors. Not the people back in Ur. God. God would have said that to Abraham. God did say that to Abraham. He made that promise. He kept that promise. He gave that baby and she laughed with joy.
So to return to our original question—“does God laugh?”—as yourself: is it more happy to give or to receive? Jesus said that it is more blessed—more happy—to give than to receive. I imagine that you parents find more happiness in giving your children their Christmas presents than you do in receiving your own Christmas presents. If your children have been asking for something for months and you’ve stashed it away for months, you are more excited for them to finally open it than they are to finally open it. They are smiling when they open it, but your smile is bigger. It is more happy to give than to receive. God was happier to give Isaac than laughing Sarah was to receive him. He gave her gladness out of His gladness.
He will be happier than any of us when all His promises are kept. One way to think about the first moment of the new creation is one in which everyone is laughing and God is laughing the loudest. Jesus pictures the new creation as us entering into the master’s happiness. That’s how this story ends for Abraham and Sarah. That’s how the story ends for all who trust the promises. Amen.