God can be funny sometimes, right?
God can be funny sometimes. That statement itself begs the
question, Oh no, is it? Oh, I just, you got to turn it
on. No matter how much you do in the
back, you still have to turn on the remote.
Funny, strange or funny ha ha, which is a legitimate question.
People can be funny, strange, they can be funny, ha ha, ha.
God is the same way. I'm going to answer this
question with a resounding yes. God can be funny, strange, and
God can be funny, ha ha. For example, funny, strange,
God's promise to Abraham and Sarah in Genesis chapter 18 was
funny strange. So Abraham's like 98 years old.
Sarah's like 84 years old. For 15 years, God has been
promising Abraham and Sarah that Sarah's going to have Abraham's
baby. And through that, that that line
of descent, the entire world will be blessed.
And that's a strange thing to promise someone who's 85 years
old, right? That she's going to have a baby
84 years old. And I'm not trying to be
insulting to anyone who might be in that age range, but 84 years
old is old. There's no getting around that.
And well past childbearing years.
And they've been getting that promise for like 1415 years now.
And, and when God came with a couple of angels and they
presented themselves in the form of humans to Abraham and Sarah
and, and God said this time next year, Sarah's going to be having
your baby. And Sarah just laughed.
Now she did it quietly to herself, but God knew.
And God said, hey, why are you laughing, Sarah?
And Sarah's like, I didn't laugh.
And God's like, you laughed. You laughed, I got you, I got
you, you laughed. But she had reason to laugh.
I mean, we have, we're reading the story from this side so we
can say, oh, well, Sarah should have just had faith that God
would do what God said. Well, let's play a little mental
game here. Imagine you have a good friend
that's 84 years old and your good friend comes to you and
they say I had a dream last night and God promised me that
by this time next year I'm going to have a baby.
Your response would be, we think you need some extra care.
Perhaps you shouldn't be living alone anymore.
Let's get someone there with you.
Or better yet, there are a few wonderful facilities in the area
that will keep an eye on you. Right.
That's the response to an 84 year old woman who believes that
God told her she's going to have a baby.
Sarah was right in line with that.
She's like, how dumb do you think I am anyway?
I'm 85, I'm 84. I ain't senile, all right?
I know how biology works. I know I'm well past.
It's been a long time since I had kids.
This is what she said. When?
When that. Oh, is it really?
Oh, no, here we go. I just got to hit the button
harder. Abraham and Sarah were both very
old at this time by this time and Sarah was long past the age
of having children. So she laughed silently to
herself and I said, how could a worn out woman like me enjoy
such pleasure? Now I love this passage because
the Bible just gets real and lighthearted.
There's a lot of dark there. There's some real stuff and some
lighthearted stuff and how could a worn out woman like me enjoy
such pleasure? Let's be clear, she was not
talking about the pleasure of having a baby because that
hurts. I am told she was talking about
the pleasure of making a baby. How can I have such pleasure,
especially when my master, my husband, is also so old.
This ain't happening. We're not making a baby.
We're not having a baby. Not going to happen now.
I could have sworn in my in my brain somewhere along the way I
deleted the my master part there because I didn't want to get
into that today. And it's in the slides in all
three churches. I am not getting down the road
today of Sarah calling her husband her Master.
You can talk about that amongst yourselves after church
sometime. Not going there today, Different
times, different places. But Sarah, Sarah was justifiably
laughing because what God promised was laughable.
It was just strange. It was just what a weird,
strange promise to make to an 84 year old woman and a 98 year old
man. And she laughed, she laughed at
God, and she didn't get in trouble.
God called her on it, you know, but she didn't get in trouble
for it. But God can also be funny, ha
ha, chapter 21, which John already read.
God's keeping his promise to Abraham and Sarah was funny, ha,
ha. Well, just take a look at a
couple verses there again, too. Now the Lord was gracious to
Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what He had
promised and Sarah said, God has brought me laughter and everyone
who hears about this will laugh with me.
This was not, this is a weird promise.
I can't do anything but roll my eyes and laugh.
This was a deep from the heart belly laugh of joy at an 85 year
old woman who was nursing her own baby at her own breast.
This is what's happening and she is filled with joy.
They were so filled with joy that they named their baby
laughter. That's the song we just sang.
Such a perfect song for today. The name Isaac means laughter.
Sarah laughed. Abraham laughed.
Everyone who heard about it laughed with joy.
For them, they named their baby laughter because God had made
this impossible promise come true.
Michael Carter says it's so much more poetically than I can.
But what does Sarah have to laugh about in all of this?
Really, a lot of things. First of all, Sarah had the joy
of being a mother, the joy of being a mother Now times change.
Culture changes and nothing I'm about to say should be construed
as in any way as as sliding any woman or any man that chooses
not to have children, people make that decision.
You can very faithfully and joyfully and happily follow God
making that decision. That's not what I'm talking
about in in Sarah's time in Sarah's culture, having children
with super high level value and it still is for many folks today
and having a baby can be one of the most joyful things anyone
could ever experience today in in Sarah's day and age.
This remember, this is this is before Moses, this is before the
law. This is hundreds of years before
Jesus and the only commandment, well, two commandments they've
been given by God at this point. The second one was when you eat
meat, don't consume the blood. The first one was be fruitful
and multiply. And now Sarah, Sarah's not only
she, she's, she's got the joy of being a mom, of having a baby
that she grew inside her body and now is providing nourishment
made by her body. And she's doing it in
fulfillment of the law, which God gave to be fruitful and
multiply. She's got a very human joy and
is part of a very divine plan. And she's overjoyed with this.
What else? She had the joy of a lifelong
desire come true. Lifelong.
Maybe a little bit of an exaggeration.
I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing even at this day and
age, there was a point in life when little girls thought little
boys were yucky and didn't want to have anything to do with
them. But, you know, let's say it, 10
years old, because that makes the math easy.
Sarah finally thought, well, maybe boys aren't so yucky after
all. And she could see what moms were
and what moms did and, and the honour that moms had and, and
the maybe was, you know, helping care for a little brother, a
little sister, a little cousin and said, I want one of these
one of these days. And 75 years later, it took 75
years and now she's got one of her own, a little baby of her
own, a lifelong desire come true.
I don't know if you've ever had anything in your life that
you're really like deep in your bones wanted, but it never
happened. And then after all, realistic
possibility of it happening, now it happens.
Now what happens? This is where Sarah was.
There was no reasonable expectation nine months earlier,
no reasonable expectation that she would ever have this desire
fulfilled. And now it's fulfilled the
lifelong desire come true. And Sarah now had the joy of
being honored by those around her instead of scorned.
Because again, in that culture, very, very high value for having
babies, being fruitful and multiplying and filling the
earth, carrying on family name and family legacy and family
tradition. And, and that was the one unique
thing that women could do that men couldn't do, having a baby.
And Sarah couldn't have one. Why?
Oh, I'm sure there was lots of talk about that, lots of talk
about that. What's wrong with Sarah that she
can't have a baby? Maybe for a while they thought
it was Abraham, and then at Sarah's suggestion, Abraham had
a baby with Hagar. So no, it's not Abraham.
What's wrong with Sarah? She's not.
Is there something wrong with her body?
She can't have kids. Is she defective?
She inadequate? Maybe there's something wrong
with her morally and God is punishing her by withholding
children from her. We don't know exactly what the
talk was, but there was talk. We don't know exactly what it
was said, but it was almost certainly Sarah's.
Not adequate. Something's wrong with Sarah.
She can't have a child. The dishonor that she would have
experienced would have been a a double nail, a double pain to
the lack of having her dream fulfilled.
Not only did she have to deal with personal disappointment,
but with the scorn of the people around her.
And now Sarah's being honored. Now 85 years old, she's nursing
the baby she just delivered, and she's become not an object of
scorn, but clearly someone blessed and divinely blessed and
miraculously blessed by God. Because this is not possible.
This kind of thing just doesn't happen.
And Sarah went from being the person in the community, the
person in her family that was looked down upon, to now being
one of the most respected women in all of human history, one of
the most honored women in all of human history.
And that's calls for joy. That's calls for joy.
Now we got to stop here though, because clarity and accuracy are
absolutely essential at this point in the story.
Because if we're not clear about what this story is telling us
and why God wanted this story in the Holy Scripture, then we're
we get way off track because it's easy at this point to stop
and see this story. And the message of this story
being that God will really, God loves us and will give us our
hearts desires if we're just faithful, if we pray bad
theology comes out of this. I've heard it phrased in a
couple of ways. Name it and claim it is
something I've heard in some churches and some.
So you know, just just name the thing that that your heart wants
and claim it in the name of Jesus and God will give it to
you. If you believe it, you can
achieve it. Just set your heart and your
mind on it and work for it and ask God and God will give it to
you. Hogwash.
That is not how God works. That is not how our relationship
with God works. Those are misreadings of
scriptures and taking scriptures out of context and making them
into wish fulfillment rather than divine plan.
The purpose of this story, and the main thing in this story is
not that Sarah's lifelong dream came true and ours can too.
That's a side effect, not the main thing.
The main thing here, the main thing, is the faithfulness and
power of God. Not the fulfillment of Sarah's
hopes and dreams, but the faithfulness and power of God.
God promised Abraham and Sarah a baby, and God gave Abraham and
Sarah a baby. It was an impossible promise.
Everyone with half a brain knew that.
It was an impossible, absurd, ridiculous promise.
Crazy Abraham been talking to God again.
God's telling him. Crazy Sarah been listening to
God again. God's telling her she's going to
have a baby. 15 years now. God's been telling them they're
going to have a baby. It ain't going to happen.
And then it happened. The impossible became possible.
And the point is, the thrust of this is that God did what God
said he was going to do, even though by all human measure, it
was impossible for it to happen. If God promised it, God will do
it. That's why this story is here.
That's the thing that we need to hear, that when God makes a
promise, God keeps his promises. Period, end of story.
We can trust God to do what God has said he was going to do,
even when when God has said seems ridiculous and impossible.
Takeaways for us here and where I think this kind of moves into
our daily living and our, our, our, our ongoing faith
development is this is the importance of being open to the
impossible and trusting in God's promise even when it seems
impossible and way overdue. God has made some promises that
seem impossible and are way overdue.
When Jesus left and said be right back, that was 2000 years
ago and Jesus is still not right back.
When Jesus said I will never leave you or forsake you and I
know a lot of people that feel alone and forsaken.
That seems like an impossible promise.
And God's promise to wipe away every tear from every eye is a
promise that was made 2000 years ago and seems long overdue.
When God says to his people, come to me, all you who are
labor or who labor and are overburdened, come to me and I
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon me, you, and
learn from me. From my yoke is easy and my
burden is light. I know a lot of faithful people
who have toiled under heavy burdens for years and years and
years and years and seem to lay those burdens down only when
they died. A promise that is long overdue
and seems impossible. This is the thing, one of the
things that people that reject Christianity, whether atheist or
or or some other spiritual, have some other spirituality that
they work in their life that they point out in Christianity
is one of the things that makes Christianity laughable and
ridiculous. Are these promises that that
people who follow Jesus claim they believe when there's no
evidence and no reason to believe him.
What do you mean Jesus is coming back?
Jesus lived and Jesus died and Jesus is not coming back.
What do you mean wipe away every tear?
God's not going to do that. If we want to make things right
in the world, we have to do that work ourselves.
And there's a lot of work to do to get there, and probably a lot
of killing that we need to do to get there too, before we can
make everyone happy. God's not going to do that.
That's crazy. And if he was going to do it,
why hasn't he done it? If God is good, why is there so
much suffering in the world? Don't tell me that it's going to
end sometime in the future. Why doesn't it end now if
they're all this suffering in the world and either God is not
good or God is not powerful enough and his promises aren't
worth anything? They're laughable, they're
ridiculous, they're impossible. But we know about Sarah and we
know about Abraham, and we know that God's promises, even when
they seem long overdue, that God can and God will keep his
promises. Cultivating and openness to the
impossible. There's tension in this
particular. We got a lot of kids here today,
which is awesome. And one of the things that we
have to continually teach our kids is to be realistic in their
expectations, right? I've spent a lot of time working
with kids for a lot of years. The number of kids I have met
that are going to be professional athletes and rock
stars is extraordinary. I have received no tickets so
far. None.
I don't think they forgot, they just didn't reach those dreams.
We are constantly teaching our children to be realistic, to
temper their expectations, to be realistic, be realistic about
now. I don't like stepping on
anybody's dreams. So when kids come to me and
they're going to play in the NBA or they're going to be in the
NFL, no one seems to want to play professional baseball
anymore or they're going to be a rock star.
I always say that is wonderful, that is great.
I hope that work, that's going to be a lot of work.
You got to have to work at it because a lot of people want
that job and there aren't a lot of those jobs.
You got to work really, really hard, and lot of things can
happen. Injuries, bad luck, all of these
kinds of things. You should have a Plan B Find
something you love to do that you can support yourself and
your family while you're waiting for that other dream to come
true. Have a good Plan B Be realistic.
That's what I'm trying to say to them without stepping on their
dreams, and that's a real thing we have to teach our kids.
And at the same time, we have to cultivate in ourselves and in
our kids and openness to doing the impossible and seeing God do
the impossible. Because sometimes God calls us
to do things and to be in a world in a certain way that
seems utterly and ridiculously impossible.
To go here, to do this ministry, to do that thing, to serve in
this way, to love in this way, to work in this way.
They got it. I don't have the money for that.
I don't have the skills for that.
I don't have the talent for that.
I don't have the influence that I don't have the power for that.
I don't have the prestige for that.
God said don't worry about the how.
The how was God's responsibility, just walking it
out. And we cultivate that.
We need to cultivate that. Otherwise it's so easy to miss
the call of God because often God calls us to do things that
we cannot do on our own power. In fact, in fact, if we can do
it on our own power, why do we need God anyway?
If God calls us to do something, it's almost always something we
can't do on our own. God says, trust me, walk it out.
Just take, do the thing today that you need to do to move in
that direction and we'll get there together.
Trust me with the how you just do, just do.
And we'll see it happen. We'll see.
We've got to cultivate that in ourselves and in our kids as
well, because if we don't cultivate an openness to the
impossible, then they'll miss God.
And we'll miss God because God often calls us to things that
are impossible. Like what?
Like there's some, this is an oxymoron.
Here's some easy, impossible things.
Easy in the sense that we can say, oh, yeah, I can see how
that's impossible. We can be an igniter of joy in
others. This how Sarah ignited joy in
other people. You know Sarah and Abraham had
to do something for that promise to be fulfilled, right?
I can be discreet here, but we all know Sarah and Abraham had
to do something for that promise to be fulfilled.
And by doing that thing, they ignited joy in others.
Sarah said everyone who knows about this is going to laugh
too. They're going to have the same
joy for the same impossible promise that God made come true.
We can ignite joy in others by giving them the gift of
impossible things. There are people in this world
that are absolutely convinced that they are unlovable.
There's nothing in them that's worth anything.
And we can love them in Jesus name.
We can love them with the power and the love of God does no good
for us to go to them and say, hey God loves you, don't tell me
no one loves you, God loves you. We need to love them so that
they know that God will love them too.
Because if the people that say God loves you aren't loving you,
you have no reason to believe God loves you as well.
We go to those folks. We love those folks.
And sometimes it's hard to love people that think they're
unlovable, but we love them anyway.
We love them anyway. We get extended forgiveness to
people that are convinced they are unforgivable.
So you don't understand what I've done.
I don't care what you've done doesn't matter.
What matters. What you, what you do matters,
that matters. You're absolutely right, but it
does not affect my willingness and ability, God's willingness
and ability to forgive you for what you've done.
You don't understand the people I've hurt, the harm that I've
caused, all of that may be true. You don't understand.
I can never make it right. Probably you can't.
Probably you can't undo the harm that you've done because it
doesn't change the fact that I'm going to forgive you in Jesus
name. I'm going to forgive you and I'm
not going to hold those wrongs over your head and I'm not going
to beat you up with them. I'm not going to keep reminding
you of them and I'm not going to use them to to, to, to to
humiliate you or disgrace you or to drag you down.
I forgive you in Jesus name. I forgive you and God Forgives
you and those things will not be held against you.
We can go to folks that are convinced they are inadequate
for the life that's before them and help them to see and believe
the truth that by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, they
are adequate to whatever God puts in front of them, whatever
God has for them. You know, maybe you'll never be
on the I will. I'm not adequate to play in the
NFL. God has not called me to play in
the NFL. I'm not adequate to play the
piano on Sunday morning. You can all thank God that he
hasn't called me to play the piano on Sunday morning.
But whatever God has put in front of any person, God will
make them adequate for that, whatever it is.
And, and we are, I believe we're living in a time when inadequacy
has become epidemic, When younger folks especially look at
the state of the world. And they look at global warming
and they look at all of the social conflict.
And they look at all the political insanity.
And they look at all of the wars.
And they look at all of the awful things that seem to be
just around the corner. And they say, there's nothing I
can do. Why even bother trying?
It's all too big. It's all too awful.
I'm probably going to die before I'm 40 anyway.
What's the point? Or, or or they say I'll never
own a house. I'll never make enough money to
own a house. Why bother getting an education
or a job? I'll never be able to pay for an
education. I can't pay for healthcare.
Why bother? They're even trying.
I can't keep a job. I can't.
I can't, I can't, I can't. It's epidemic.
And the sources are many and
varied, but the response, the response is in God himself and
through us as we understand. I'm not adequate either, but God
loves me and so I'm going to love you.
I'm not acting with either, but God has given me meaningful work
to do. So you there's meaningful work
you can do too. God makes us adequate.
God gives us everything that we need to do whatever God calls us
to do See, I ended up being long again here too.
I apologize, but I got to do one more thing in this, which is
give us a living example, not living anymore.
But I think Nelson Mandela is is one of the most powerful lives.
His story is just incredible. And I don't know, Melissa
Mandela, our younger folks here might not know that he was a a
leader of South Africa as a black man who did the impossible
of becoming a leader of South Africa, even though at the time
when he was a young man, because he was black, he was not
legally. It was awful inside the
apartheid government that made the black large black majority
second class citizens in their own homeland.
And the small white minority had all of the power and ruthlessly
held on to that power. Nelson Mandela went to jail.
He went to prison 27 years. He was in prison 27 years for
most of that time. And I keep forgetting the name
of the prison, Robinette Island. Rob something on Robin SI, can't
remember what exactly, but it was an awful place where he was
treated awfully for years, kept in solitary and confinement for
long periods of time. He was cut off and isolated from
the outside world. He was allowed one guest and one
letter every six months. He was made to sleep in a small
cell on the stone floor, cold and damp, with the only bedding
being a a thin straw mattress mat, not even a mattress.
He was put to hard labor, forced labor in a limestone quarry
where he worked without adequate protection, did permanent damage
to his eyes and lungs. He was treated with disrespect
and indignity and dishonor over and over and over again during
that time. But he had a vision.
He had a dream of a South Africa in which apartheid was
overthrown and democracy reigned and justice was done.
No matter the colour of your skin.
People were treated fairly and equally and justly, no matter
the color of their skin. He believed that when he went to
prison, he was fighting for it when he went to prison.
And he never lost that belief in spite of all.
And did you know he was a Christian?
Did you know he was a Methodist? That's kind of cool.
Nelson Mandela grew up in the Methodist Church where he
learned of the power of God and the impossible things that God
can do. He didn't.
He did not talk explicitly a lot in public, at least.
I don't know what he did in private and public about his
faith. Not a lot, but he lived it.
This is what he one of the things he wrote in his
autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom.
I never lost hope that this great transformation would
occur, not only because of the great heroes I have already
cited, but because of the courage of the ordinary men and
women of my country. I always knew that deep down in
every human heart there is mercy and generosity.
No one is born hating another person because of the color of
his skin or his background or his religion.
People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they
can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the
human heart than its opposite. And so while he was in prison,
no matter how badly his guards treated him, he treated his
guards with dignity and respect and honor.
No matter how hopeless or despairing his fellow inmates
were, he treated them with hope and dignity and respect and
honor. He studied the law himself.
He taught law and social philosophy and social
responsibility and and and political theory to his fellow
inmates. He never, he had this impossible
dream. And I think if you look at his
life, it's difficult, would be very difficult to deny that a
God-given dream, that he had a vision, a promise, and he did
not give up on it. He believed in the possibility
of this impossible thing. And after 27 years in prison, he
saw it come true. It was said about him that he
went in to prison as an activist and he came out of prison as a
statesman, and prison was meant to break him.
But he never lost his hope. He never lost his faith.
And instead of it breaking him, he just grew and faith and love,
offering forgiveness and love and honor and reconciliation,
not just to his friends but also to his enemies that had done
awful things to him. And in and through him and
others, God did the impossible. And South Africa was
transformed. Our God can be funny.
He can be funny, strange. He can be funny, ha ha.
He can take an activist and put him in prison and transform him
into a statesman. He can take an 85 year old woman
and give her a baby and he can do whatever he's promised you
and whatever he's called you to do, he can make you adequate to
do it in Jesus name. Amen.