Holy Spirit, thank you that you are present with us more present than we could ever imagine and that if we are yours that you actually reside and make your dwelling in us, would you now take your word and the feeble frail words that I speak and use them to bring us alive and fresh revitalizing ways and transform us that we might be your people of promise. It's useful in your hands, powerful instrument and the transformation of this world, more and more into the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and whose name we pray, oh man. Two Eskimos were sitting in a kayak and they were chilly, so one of them lit a fire in the craft and unsurprisingly it sank, proving as one said to the other that you can't have your kayak and heat it too. Did you hear the one about the Buddhist who refused Novakane during root canal surgery, his goal was to transcend dental medication. Some of these you know make the rounds in the internet so you've heard something, just bear with me please. Group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel, they were standing in the lobby and discussing fervently their recent tournament victories and about after an hour the manager of the place had enough, he came to him and asked him to disperse, get out of here and they said why? And he moved him off he said because I can't stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer. It's pretty sad about Mahatma Gandhi don't you think? As you know he walked barefoot all over the place which produced these impressive massive calluses in the bottom of his feet. He also ate very little and had a really bizarre diet which caused him to suffer from bad breath. And he was very frail as a result as well. This made him, as you might guess, a super calloused, fragile mystic hexed by halitosis. There was a woman who had twins who gave them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and his name is Amal. The other goes to a family in Spain they name him Juan. Years later Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother upon receiving the picture she tells her husband that she wishes also to have a picture of Amal and her husband responds, oh honey, they're twins. If you've seen Juan, you've seen him all. Now you laugh and some of you are saying, yeah I'm laughing at you, not with you. But be honest, doesn't it feel good to laugh? I mean is there anyone who doesn't enjoy a good laugh? You're saying that is not what I call a good laugh. Nevertheless, the principle is laughter. It's like this ton of bricks. It's for a moment taken off of your shoulders. There's just real benefit. There's a real blessing to laughter. Woody Allen, I think, agreed it was a blessing. He said, I'm thankful for laughter except when milk comes out of my nose. You know that feeling? It's even worse when it's coke. You're laughing so hard. And you just come out spewing out everywhere. It's a blessing. And some people have been recognizing this in the medical community over the last number of years. The medicinal benefits of laughter that add value to the old adage that laughter is the best medicine. There was a movie about the real life physician. Movies called Patch Adams starring Robin Williams several years ago. You may remember that movie. I heard about it where this physician had had enough of simply following the route of conventional medical practice and decided that there really was something to laughter being the best medicine. So he took on the outfit of a clown, but on the rubber nose and everything. And someone said he went too far. But he says there's a lot of real results from this as well. And there was even a study at the University of Maryland not too long ago that demonstrates that when we really laugh, you know, especially when it's really gut, belly laughs, that there is a chemical released into the bloodstream that relaxes the blood vessels. And in addition, maybe as a result of this, laughter actually reduces blood pressure and heart rate. And the results showed conversely that those who don't laugh, people who are really stiff out there who don't laugh, are 40% more likely to have heart problems than those who do laugh. And so if you don't laugh, you better start right now or tomorrow morning, you need to go see your cardiologist. Now listen, I get hissed and you were much more gracious in the first service. I get hissed for my puns and sense of humor or lack thereof. But I want you to hear me. God likes laughter. God is a punster. You're going, what planet are you on? God is a punster. And the passage that the widow's read for us a few minutes ago begins to illustrate this. And really what we're going to see is that this concept of laughter was used by the Holy Spirit as this section of Genesis was penned. Really chapter 17 through 21 to a very creative way, highlight things that are incredibly important because, think of it, laughter tells you a lot about a person. It tells you a lot about the things that a person laughs about or the things that they will not laugh about, absolutely not laugh. It tells you a lot about what's going on deep inside the person. It becomes like a window into that person to understand the sadness that are going on. I mean, things are just such deep sadness that, I mean, you just, you know, best you can do is kind of one of those, you know, just kind of half smiles. And so what is it that laughter can teach us about ourselves, about one another, getting along better with one another, getting along with people who don't agree with you if you're a person of faith that don't agree with you? I hope you understand even the mind and character of God who laughs so much so that he names this child of promise, he laughs. And right in there there was a pun that we'll see, but there's several puns that God gives in this passage. We're looking, you know, in this series at the life of Abraham, this powering figure that goodness, all roads in three world religions, major world religions, lead to this great patriarch. And in the Bible, you see all the roads, the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, finding their way, sometimes circuitously, but nevertheless finding their way back to this great individual back to Abraham. And in the life of Abraham, in his own experience, as we've been following it, where do all the roads lead, all the roads lead to the promises that God was giving him that would be realized how in a person, in the person that would come from the union, the marital union between Abraham and his wife Sarah. And so tensions been building throughout, and now we come to the point where we're almost at the point of the great climax in chapter 22, we'll get there in two weeks. But right now in this narrative strung together by the concept of laughter, we have this climax before the climax, we have this tension that is built to such an intensity that it is just about to explode. And so with this understanding, this tension that's building, we want to look at laughter as a window into understanding about life, about ourselves, about one another, and about God. Theologian Rhine Oldenieber said, humor is a prelude to faith, and laughter is the beginning of prayer. This passage is teaching us that laughter matters. This is a laughing matter. This passage that we're going to look at, the ones before and after it as well. And let's look at God's creativity in teaching us about himself. Now all laugh is not created equal. There's at least three different kinds of laughter that we're going to look at to get to this understanding. First of all, there's the laughter of resignation. Then there's the laughter of ridicule and finally the laughter of rejoicing. So first of all, resignation, then ridicule, then rejoicing. First of all, the laughter of resignation. And this is the first laugh that you see in both Abraham and Rebecca. The passage that the widows read for us a few minutes ago from chapter 18 shows us that with Sarah in her laughing, we'll get to that in a widow bit, but we want a first look at... Thank you. We want a first look at the passage that comes immediately before it that we didn't have read in the service yet from the second half of 17. This is Abraham's experience. God's talking to him. And in chapter 17 it says that God said, as for Sarah, verse 15, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarah, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her and nor over. I will give you a son by her. I'll bless her and she shall become nations. Kings of people shall come from her. Abraham's reaction. I mean, imagine yourself. God Almighty is talking to you audibly. And Abraham's reaction, verse 17, he fell on his face and laughed. Can you imagine laughing at God to his face? That's what Abraham does. She'll child be born to a man who's a hundred years old. And even worse, my wife Sarah is 90. And Abraham said to God, oh, that Ishmael might live before you. You know, it's kind of like God's saying, Abraham, been there, done that, but Abraham's going, look, God, let's be practical a bit. What's worse than impractical fate? Let's be practical. God, we're beyond that. I mean, there was this nice concept out there once upon a time. But God, that's long since passed. And I know it wasn't the best thing that we took this alternative course and took matters into our own hands. But we got this nice young man. I mean, he is a real handsome, fit young man named Ishmael. And he's very poised to be the one who could be the legacy and carry through the promises you promised. Come on, God. God said, now, now listen, I'm going to take care of Ishmael. His name incidentally means God hears. Talk about that a little bit later. But, there's no, it's going to come through the one that you're going to have through Sarah. And God, in essence, says, you're, I'm going to have the last laugh in this series of laughs. He says that Sarah your wife, verse 19, will bear you a son and you shall call his name Isaac. And in the Hebrew, that means he laughs. God's going to have the last laugh. I'm going to be the God who fulfills his promises. You just wait and see. Evidently, even that laughing matter did not strike to the core of Abraham. Because the best we can tell, he didn't share this experience with Sarah. Maybe he was too scared she'd laugh at him rather than with him. And so the next episode, which is the one the widows read for us in chapter 18, we've got these interesting visitors that have come to Abraham's tent. He's had his big plate of Mexican food and he's sitting out in the hot sun, the Middle East, taking his siesta as best we can tell. And he wakes up, he's rubbing the sleepy off his eyes and he starts to see something. He's like, he sees these three individuals coming. And it's in summary, what this is is that this is the two angels and the Lord himself. We know that because the chapter starts off by saying the Lord verse 1 appeared to him by the door. And down at verse 10, it says the Lord said, this is God, it's his covenant name for God Yahweh. And then over in chapter 19, we have a follow-up to this where it just says the two angels came to Sodom. So you've got two angels and the angel of the Lord, which I take to be a pre-incarnate visitation of the person of Jesus Christ. Imagine that. And he comes not in fiery judgment, that'll be in chapter 19. It comes in great love and compassion. Two places in the Bible, it calls Abraham the friend of God. Imagine that. I mean this is one who has just laughed in his face. But now God comes and visits him. And they, as best I can tell, hang out for a while. He goes and slaughters a calf and that takes a while to go out and do go through that routine and cook it and prepare the meal. And meanwhile the Lord and the two angels are just hanging out, fellowshiping, being with the friend and what a picture there of what Christianity is all about. Is this intimate, deep communion that we'll share in a few minutes with the Lord as we come to eat and drink with him. But as they're doing this, they begin to talk to one another. And the Lord says, verse 10, or excuse me, verse 9, where's Sarah, your wife? Well, she's in the tent. You know, these are pretty porous walls. So she, this means she can overhear everything. The Lord said, well, as I told you and you implicitly didn't tell her because you were laugh. You considered a laughing matter. I will return to you about a year from now and Sarah, your wife, not a gar, not anyone else, will have a son. And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. And it's just so real clear it spells it out here. Now Abram and Sarah were old, advanced in years because it's kind of wake up. This is not only difficult and challenging. It says the way of women had ceased to the Bible is so diplomatic, isn't it? She couldn't have a child. Look, the way of Christianity is not just impressive. It's impossible without the intervention of a supernatural God. So Sarah's reaction, same as Abram's, laughed to herself. After I'm worn out, and my Lord is old, shall I have pleasure? Well, we could have a whole sermon on that. I'm not going to go there right now. But it is what you think it is, I think. The Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh? Shall I indeed bear a child? And say, shall I indeed bear a child now that I'm old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? Look, there's a lot of different kinds of laughter. And in one sense, this is a laughter, there's spontaneous, and it was funny to them. God's ways are very funny as the Irish, theologian, Alec Moteer says, God is odd. God is odd. He does, his ways are not our ways, and they blow our categories, and they just kind of sometimes make us giggle, right? This is that, but it's more than that. This is a laugh of sadness. This is a laugh of resignation. It's a laugh of despondency. Oh, God, I love you, God. But I've long since left that cute childish notion that you're going to fulfill these grand promises. This is the stars in the sky. Through my wife Sarah, he says, this is a laughing matter, God, it's a joke. For years and years we thought, maybe next year, maybe not. And eventually that led to, and often does in us, to cynicism, bitterness, resignation. Let me see that a lot in our life and experience, don't we? We have maybe early on in our Christian experience, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you have these lofty notions that the God who wrote the Bible is actually the God who lives and moves today, and he is still the God fulfilling his promises. And there's still a sense in which you believe those things, but a lot of you, maybe just unwittingly, without really cognitively understanding what's happened, you have moved into a place of resignation. You see a life situation that is tragic and beyond repair. You've moved beyond the possibility that your marriage is ever going to be really what you had this euphoric, idealistic notion of the outset it'd be. It says, that's not reality. I'll never be that. And so you just resigned to sort of grin and bear it and move on. You've had a loss in your life, maybe a death, maybe there's a real tragic component to your life. And there's such a sadness there where you've just resigned, okay, that's a part of my life that has just gone. It's never, and while you can't replace the loss, you say, I'm never going to get, I'm never going to be able to rejoice in it. I'm just going to deal with that. Even though God says in His word that you can rejoice in your sufferings, that just to use its mumbo jumbo, it does not make sense. You think about a difficult area of struggle in your life, a temptation, a habit, a weakness in your character and you say, man, I just, a thousand and one times, I've come back to God and asked forgiveness. I've done this and that, and nothing seems to change. I'm just resolved, this is the way it's going to be. Is that where you are? I mean, there's so many different ways in which this laughter of resignation could be your own experience. But it basically what it's saying is, the root problem is what God zooms in on there to Abraham to Sarah in verse 14 is anything too hard for the Lord. The God of the impossible, the God that part of the Red Sea, right? The God that called all things into being by the mere word of His power, the God who sustains everything through His providential hand of guidance and governance. You say, yeah, but that's just, that's out there. That's for other people. That's not for this area of my life. You've resigned for practical purposes to be a deist. To have God as the kind of grandfatherly figure out there who's sent everything in motion and now letting things go as they may. You see this certainly in liberal Christianity where the Bible and everything about life is deconstructed. There are nice little stories that emerge from tribal traditions and you're supposed to read them, you know, meaning and beauty. Meaning is as the expression of beauty is in the eye of the behold, or so meaning is in the eye of the behold, everything's relative. And so you're just supposed to get some, you know, some energy, some encouragement out of the nice stories, the Bible. But look, the Bible never claimed that. Liberal Christianity, thankfully, is not that invoked anymore. People come back to the reality that look, the Bible is either what it claims to be or it's not. Either it is a book about the reality of his story, not a bunch of tiny little stories, but the one great and meta narrative of the God who redeems people, the God who parts red seas, the God who erupted in mighty fire at a bush, the God who came down in prophetic ways and various times and places. But ultimately came down to the person in work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the promised son. He is still the same God of promise and these promises were verified over and over again, but permanently through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Is there anything too hard for a God who raises someone from the dead? You know, when the angel came to Mary and said that she was going to have a child, the child of promise, she didn't laugh. She was perplexed. How is this possible? In humility she asks. And the angel replies, the simple, same answer given to Sarah is anything impossible for God. The one true God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who always has the last last laugh is the one who keeps his promises. You can trust him. I love the reaction that Sarah had to all this. She did an Isaac. I mean, don't you do that? You know, you're immediately the spotlights on you. You're exposed. And what does she do? He says you lied and she says, no, I didn't. You said you laughed and said, no, I didn't laugh. So she lied by denying it. And God said, oh, but she did laugh. It makes me think of the words in Hebrews chapter 4, no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Look, God knows everything about your life. He knows all those secret pockets. He knows that he knows those sadness that you cover up. He knows you. Why are you keeping his promises, his love, his kindness, arms linked? Trust in him. Let him who visited Abraham and Sarah, who fellowshiped with them, who called them friend, who is a friend to sinners, let him come and throw his arms of love around you and turn that laughter of resignation into a laughter of celebration. First laughter, we have to hurry. The second laughter is the laughter of ridicule. We're just going to talk about this briefly, but this is one that'd be very easy to just totally not even notice. You know, you've got Isaac over here, the child of promise. He's just getting weaned. This is chapter 21. It's a great day of celebration. The promises come to fruition. And sitting off on the side is now the adolescent Ishmael. He says in verse 8, the child grew and was weaned speaking of Isaac. And Abraham made a great feast in the day. Isaac was weaned. I mean great celebration. But verse 9, Sarah saw, you can imagine, off the side, the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had born to Abraham, laughing. It's the same Hebrew word. It's what root. It's why this translation translates it laughing. Other translations like the NIV, if you've got that width, you'll say he was mocking and that catches the idea of it. See the second kind of laughter. It's not just the laughter of resignation, it's the laughter of ridicule. He's over there, you can imagine just looking down and said, what a joke. What a talk about a laugh. This little punk. I'm in the ancient culture, you know, I'm the crown jewel of this family, the older son. I get all of the blessings. Who is this little running nose punk? All the promises are going to be filled through him. And so he ridiculed him and it led to his expulsion from the family in great pain. It's all a big joke. It's the kind of laugh that the world has, frankly, for those who come to faith in Jesus Christ. We don't have the severe, harsh, oppressive persecution that much of the world, the believers in Christ and other places have. But in America, we do have the little giggle, don't we? The little sneer person actually believes those things in the Bible. You see it pointedly oftentimes in more academic settings, but you see it in the workplace as well. People will tell them the really funny joke at the water cooler and then you walk up and they go, they have virgin ears, they can't hear these kinds of things. And this is a little subtle ways. This is the ways in which our culture paints the picture that if you follow the way of Jesus Christ, it's the way of gloom and doom. Remember the old Billy Joel song, only the good die young sort of typifies that notion that I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. The sinners are much more fun, only the good die young. Now, Ellen's grandmother who died this past week at 93, I can tell you, at Billy Joel never met her. I mean, this woman, I'll tell you, she, nobody could have the fun that Ellen's grandmother could have. She was an amazing one. She loved, she was one of the people that was laughing, trying to tell a joke she'd heard, she could never get through it because she'd start laughing at her own laughter and just kind of get choked up and just, you know, kind of lay there in a puddle of laughter. It's one of those things. Add more fun. I mean, she would dance and just look, that's a lie. And you see that, you know, in that statement about Puritans. Do you ever heard that statement about the Puritan Christians that they were the people who were frowning in adamant consternation that someone somewhere was having a good time. You know, that's not Christianity. Our God left and yet the world in its mysterious ways to pressure us, to squeeze us into its mold, sends this message to us, ridiculing us. We don't have time to get into it in any detail, but the other angle of that point, the laughter of ridicule that I just want to leave you with, is the name of Ishmael, God hears. Because in the one hand, you want to see Ishmael, here's an example of the evil world system laughing at the way of God, how silly are his promises. On the other hand, I want you to see it as the individual person who has been burned throughout their life by Christians. I mean, imagine growing up in Ishmael shoes. You're a mistake. You're an illegitimate child. You're the reason that there's all this domestic discord, Ishmael. You're the problem child, see, instead of the promise child. Imagine the dysfunctionality that he had to grow up with, and as he sent away from the family, you have the beautiful picture. Don't have time to go there, but God pursues him. God hears him. God listens to him. Do you listen to your unbelieving friends? Or do you just look down your nose at him? See, do you even know him? That's far too conflicting. Let's move on finally to the third laughter, the laughter of rejoicing. We have the laughter of resignation, the laughter of ridicule, and the laughter of rejoicing. This is the laugh that we all live for, that really brings release. This is the medicinal laugh. It's the laugh that's full of power. One little picture. You know, the movie Monsters Inc. I hope you saw that movie. It was a child movie, one of those great children's movies that's for all of us. And you have this entire enterprise that is built called Monsters Inc. where these monsters go and scare children. The entire enterprise is built by them scaring children because when they scare a child, that is containers. They can capture the energy that is ignited by the child's screams. They can capture that energy, and through that energy they can make lots of money. It's an energy producing business here. Power business. Until that loses its lustre, and the returns are not the way that they had projected, and so they're getting ready to close down the doors, and you see a couple of these Monsters, you know, kind of saying they're farewells, sharing memories, and they say, well, it's sad, but you know, we had a lot of laughs. And then you can see it come over his face. Wait a minute, we had a lot of laughs. And that leads to the wonderful conclusions of plug years of year and seeing the movie, but that now instead of going and building a business in an enterprise, on scaring all these little children, they turn into comedians, they turn into patch atoms, and they entertain them. And now they have these same little canisters, but now they're filled up instantly, instantly. They just take a little bit of space, they're scaring them, but now by causing them to laugh, oh, the power produced is far greater. I love the statement by the Theologian Carl Bart, laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God. I don't agree with Bart on everything, but I agree with him on that point. It's the grace of God, only the grace of God, my friends, that can bring that deep soul laugh. Why? That's what Sarah said in chapter 21, when she laughed that grace laugh in verse 6, God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh over me, she wouldn't say will laugh at me, but I will become the poster child of grace for the ages, so that God will hold me up, and people will look at me and say, yes, there is a God of promise, there is a God who is a friend of sinners, it's not a God who pays people back for good or bad, but he comes to broken weak, sad, disillusioned, ridiculed, resigned people. And showers his grace and loving kindness upon them. And that's exactly what he did to us through our Lord Jesus Christ, the miracle child through the Virgin Mary, what is impossible for man is possible for God, and he did that through Abraham's seed, Jesus Christ. Who left the rejoicing glory of heaven and became a man of sorrows for a time here in this sin cursed world, that you and I for eternity might be people of promise, people of rejoicing. I know we've gone way over, but let me close with this, this is one of the geniuses of CS Lewis from the street tape letters, his chronicles of how from one demon to another how to torment Christians, talking about laughter, he says this, what the real cause of laughter is, we do not know that is demons. Something like it is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call music, and something of it like it occurs in heaven, a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us. Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged besides the phenomena is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of hell. Heaven, my friends, is unmistakably a place of laughter. It is a place where people spill over intuitively in the kind of soul rejoicing that no one can manufacture power that we will live unto and in for eternity. What is your laughter or lack thereof say about you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit? Amen.